d see no harm comes to her, Tom."

"Mrs. Richard, sir?" Tom stared. "God bless me, Mr. Richard"--

"No questions. You'll do what I say."

"Ay, sir; that I will. Did'n Isle o' Wight."

The very name of the Island shocked Richard's blood; and he had to
walk up and down before he could knock at Lucy's door. That infamous
conspiracy to which he owed his degradation and misery scarce left him
the feelings of a man when he thought of it.

The soft beloved voice responded to his knock. He opened the door,
and stood before her. Lucy was half-way toward him. In the moment that
passed ere she was in his arms, he had time to observe the change in
her. He had left her a girl: he beheld a woman--a blooming woman: for
pale at first, no sooner did she see him than the colour was rich
and deep on her face and neck and bosom half shown through the loose
dressing-robe, and the sense of her exceeding beauty made his heart
thump and his eyes swim.

"My darling!" each cried, and they clung together, and her mouth was
fastened on his.

They spoke no more. His soul was drowned in her kiss. Supporting her,
whose strength was gone, he, almost as weak as she, hung over her,
and clasped her closer, closer, till they were as one body, and in the
oblivion her lips put upon him he was free to the bliss of her embrace.
Heaven granted him that. He placed her in a chair and knelt at her feet
with both arms around her. Her bosom heaved; her eyes never quitted
him: their light as the light on a rolling wave. This young creature,
commonly so frank and straightforward, was broken with bashfulness in
her husband's arms--womanly bashfulness on the torrent of womanly
love; tenfold more seductive than the bashfulness of girlhood. Terrible
tenfold the loss of her seemed now, as distantly--far on the horizon of
memory--the fatal truth returned to him.

Lose her? lose this? He looked up as if to ask God to confirm it.

The same sweet blue eyes! the eyes that he had often seen in the dying
glories of evening; on him they dwelt, shifting, and fluttering, and
glittering, but constant: the light of them as the light on a rolling
wave.

And true to him! true, good, glorious, as the angels of heaven! And his
she was! a woman--his wife! The temptation to take her, and be dumb, was
all powerful: the wish to die against her bosom so strong as to be the
prayer of his vital forces. Again he strained her to him, but this
time it was as a robber grasps priceless t