d--make me a lady, and all the rest of it--I shrank from
doing what I knew to be wrong; or perhaps I was only afraid. At any
rate, I would not listen to him. Then he declared that he loved me too
well to let me go--and he asked me to be his wife."

"Oh!" said Lettice. It was an involuntary sound, and Milly scarcely
heard it.

"If you knew," she said, "what a proud and dignified gentleman he was,
you would laugh at me thinking that he really meant what he said, and
believing that he would keep his word. But I did believe it, and I
agreed at length to leave you and go away with him."

"Did you think that I should have anything to say against your marriage,
Milly?" said Lettice, mournfully.

"I--I thought you might. And Mr. Beadon asked me not to mention it."

"Well!--and so you trusted him. And then, poor girl, your dream soon
came to an end?"

"Not very soon. He kept his word----"

"What?"

"He married me, on the day when I left you. Not in a church, but
somewhere--in Fulham, I think. It looked like a private house, but he
said it was a registrar's. Oh, Miss Campion, are you ill?"

Lettice was holding her side. She had turned white, and her heart was
throbbing painfully; but she soon overcame the feeling or at least
concealed it.

"No. Go on--go on! He married you!"

"And we went on the Continent together. I was very happy for a time, so
long as he seemed happy; but I could never shake off that uncomfortable
fear in his presence. After a while we came back to London, and then I
had to live alone, which of course I did not like. He had taken very
nice rooms for me at Hampstead, where he used to come now and then; and
he offered to bring some friends to visit me; but I did not want him to
do that--I cared for nobody but him!"

"Poor Milly!" said Lettice, softly.

"I had been suspicious and uneasy for some time, especially when he told
me I had better go to Birchmead and stay with my grandmother, as he was
too busy to come and see me, and the rooms at Hampstead were expensive.
So I went to Birchmead and told them that Mr. Beadon was abroad. He was
not--he was in London--and I went up to see him every now and then; but
I wanted to put the best face on everything. It would have been too hard
to tell my grandmother that I did not think he cared for me."

She stopped and wiped the tears away from her eyes.

"There was worse than that," she said. "I began to believe that I was
not his lawful wife, or he would