eyes--the grievance of having set up an idol and seen it fall. The
Sydney Campion who had deceived and wronged a trusting girl was not the
man that she had known and loved. That was all. It was nothing that
could be told to the outer world, nothing that in itself constituted a
reason for her leaving him and making him a mark for arrows of scandal
and curiosity; but it simply killed outright the love that she had
hitherto borne him, so that her heart lay cold and heavy in her bosom as
a stone.

So frozen and hard it seemed to her, that she could not bring herself to
acknowledge that certain words spoken to her husband by the stranger had
had any effect on her at all. In the old days, as she said to herself,
they would have hurt her terribly. "_You cruelly deserted her because
you wanted to marry a rich woman._" She, Nan, was the rich woman for
whom Sydney Campion had deserted another. It was cruel to have made
_her_ the cause of Sydney's treachery--the instrument of his fall. She
had never wished to wrong anyone, nor that anyone should be wronged for
her sake. She would not, she thought, have married Sydney if she had
known this story earlier. Why had he married her?--ah, there came in the
sting of the sentence which she had overheard: "You wanted to marry a
rich woman." Yes, she was rich. Sydney had not even paid her the very
poor compliment of deserting another woman because he loved her best--he
had loved her wealth and committed a base deed to gain it, that was all.

She was unjust to Sydney in this; but it was almost impossible that she
should not be unjust. The remembrance of his burden of debt came back to
her, of the bill that he could not meet, of the list of his liabilities
which he had been so loath to give her, and she told herself that he had
desired nothing but her wealth and the position that she could give him.
To attain his own ends he had made a stepping-stone of her. He was
welcome to do so. She would make it easy for him to use her money, so
that he need never know the humiliation of applying to her for it. Now
that she understood what he wanted, she would never again make the
mistake of supposing that he cared for her. But it was hard on her--hard
to think that she had given the love of her youth to a man who valued
her only for her gold; hard to know that the dream of happiness was
over, and that the brightness of her life was gone. It was no wonder
that Nan's recovery was slow, when she lay, day af