"Thank heaven for that! And you will take care of him, Mr. Fenton, will
you not?"

"I will do my very best. He saved my life once; so you see that I owe him
a life."

The invalid was conveyed to Hampton on a bright February day, when there
was an agreeable glimpse of spring sunshine. He went down by road in a
hired brougham, and the journey seemed a long one; but it was an
unspeakable relief to John Saltram to see the suburban roads and green
fields after the long imprisonment of the Temple,--a relief that moved
him almost to tears in his extreme weakness.

"Could you believe that a man would be so childish, Gilbert?" he said
apologetically. "It might have been a good thing for me to have died in
that dismal room, for heaven only knows what heavy sorrow lies before me
in the future. Yet the eight of these common things touches me more
keenly than all the glory of the Jungfrau touched me ten years ago. What
a gay bright-looking world it is! And yet how many people are happy in
it? how many take the right road? I suppose there is a right road by
which we all might travel, if we only knew how to choose it."

He felt the physical weariness of the journey acutely, but uttered no
complaint throughout the way; though Gilbert could see the pale face
growing paler, the sunken cheeks more pinched of aspect, as they went on.
To the last he pronounced himself delighted by that quiet progress
through the familiar landscape; and then having reached his destination,
had barely strength to totter to a comfortable chintz-covered sofa in the
bright-looking parlour, where he fainted away. The professional nurse had
been dismissed before they left London, and Gilbert was now the invalid's
only attendant. The woman had performed her office tolerably well, after
the manner of her kind; but the presence of a sick nurse is not a
cheering influence, and John Saltram was infinitely relieved by her
disappearance.

"How good you are to me, Gilbert!" he said, that first evening of his
sojourn at Hampton, after he had recovered from his faint, and was lying
on the sofa sipping a cup of tea. "How good! and yet you are my friend no
longer; all friendship is at an end between us. Well, God knows I am as
helpless as that man who fell among thieves; I cannot choose but accept
your bounty."

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

AN ILL-OMENED WEDDING.

After that promise wrung from her by such a cruel agony, that fatal bond
made between her and Stephen W