uelly callous creature in the world, there, where
the safety and the well-being of the loved one is in direct conflict
with the safety and well-being of others.

She would right gladly have closed her eyes to every horror perpetrated
in France, she would not have known what went on in Paris, she wanted
her husband! And yet month after month, with but short intervals, she
saw him risk that precious life of his, which was the very essence of
her own soul, for others! for others! always for others!

And she! she! Marguerite, his wife, was powerless to hold him back!
powerless to keep him beside her, when that mad fit of passion seized
him to go on one of those wild quests, wherefrom she always feared he
could not return alive: and this, although she might use every noble
artifice, every tender wile of which a loving and beautiful wife is
capable.

At times like those her own proud heart was filled with hatred and with
envy towards everything that took him away from her: and to-night all
these passionate feelings which she felt were quite unworthy of her and
of him seemed to surge within her soul more tumultuously than ever. She
was longing to throw herself in his arms, to pour out into his loving
ear all that she suffered, in fear and anxiety, and to make one more
appeal to his tenderness and to that passion which had so often made him
forget the world at her feet.

And so instinctively she walked along the terrace towards that more
secluded part of the garden just above the river bank, where she had
so oft wandered hand in hand with him, in the honeymoon of their
love. There great clumps of old-fashioned cabbage roses grew in untidy
splendour, and belated lilies sent intoxicating odours into the air,
whilst the heavy masses of Egyptian and Michaelmas daisies looked like
ghostly constellations in the gloom.

She thought Percy must soon be coming this way. Though it was so late,
she knew that he would not go to bed. After the events of the night, his
ruling passion, strong in death, would be holding him in its thrall.

She too felt wide awake and unconscious of fatigue; when she reached
the secluded path beside the river, she peered eagerly up and down, and
listened for a sound.

Presently it seemed to her that above the gentle clapper of the waters
she could hear a rustle and the scrunching of the fine gravel under
carefully measured footsteps. She waited a while. The footsteps seemed
to draw nearer, and soon, alth