do not; but I cannot be your wife--_that_ is the
truth, too."

"Then why these tears?" said Edward, sternly. "Why all this
_acting?_ Why cannot you tell me calmly, and at once, that you
care not for me, instead of deluding me into the belief that
you do, at the very moment when you refuse me."

Suffocated with grief, I hid my face in my hands while he
spoke; and said to myself, "_Acting_ he calls it! Oh, God! he
calls me an _actress!_ He says there is no truth in me! How
then would he listen to my tale of guilt and of sorrow? How
then could he read truth in my broken accents? How could he
discern the workings of a proud and wounded spirit?"

I raised my head slowly--Edward was gone; I rushed to the door
to call him back, but was met by the servant, who was come to
answer the drawing-room bell. My uncle and aunt came into the
room at the same time, and I retired to mine, to pass another
night betwixt hours of waking misery, and moments of broken
and feverish sleep.

At six o'clock in the morning I was woke out of one of these
last, by the sound of carriage-wheels. Jumping out of bed, I
went to the window, and unclosing the shutter, I saw Edward's
carriage rolling away along the avenue, and ours being packed
in the court below. I felt glad that we were going too; glad
that we were going to London; glad that there was something to
think of--to talk of--to do. _Glad!_ what a misuse of words.
God knows, there was no gladness in my heart that morning, but
it was something to be able to forget myself occasionally in
the bustle and excitement around me. Mr. and Mrs. Middleton
were not aware that anything had passed between Edward and
myself. They mentioned him several times in the course of the
day, and spoke of seeing him in London in three weeks' time.

At seven that evening we arrived in London, where I had not
been for several years before; its immensity, the perpetual
noise of carriages, the heaviness of the atmosphere, made me
feel in another state of existence, and when giddy with the
rapid motion of the carriage, flushed by the sudden transition
from the cold night air to the vicinity of a blazing coal
fire, I sat down to dinner in the small front dining-room of a
house in Brook-street. It was only the uneasiness which I felt
at the idea that any moment might bring Henry Lovell into my
presence, that made me aware that nothing in myself or in my
fate was changed. Really very much fatigued, I begged to go to
be