if the Captain had brought a masked
executioner to her bedside, and had told her a block was prepared for
her in the adjoining chamber. She had no idea of resistance to the will
of her husband. She endured her existence for nearly five years after
the birth of her child, and during those miserable years the one effort
of her life was to secure the miserable stipend paid for the little
girl's maintenance; but before the child's fifth birthday the mother
faded off the face of the earth. She died in a miserable lodging not
very far from Tulliver's-terrace, expiring in the arms of a landlady
who had comforted her in her hour of need, as she had comforted the
ruined gentleman. Captain Paget was a prisoner in Whitecross-street at
the time of his wife's death, and was much surprised when he missed her
morning visits, and the little luxuries she had been wont to bring him.

He had missed her for more than a week, and had written to her
twice--rather angrily on the second occasion--when a rough unkempt boy
in corduroy waited upon him in the dreary ward, where he and half a
dozen other depressed and melancholy men sat at little tables writing
letters, or pretending to read newspapers, and looking at one another
furtively every now and then. There is no prisoner so distracted by his
own cares that he will not find time to wonder what his neighbour is
"in for."

The boy had received instructions to be careful how he imparted his
dismal tidings to the "poor dear gentleman;" but the lad grew nervous
and bewildered at sight of the Captain's fierce hook-nose and
scrutinising gray eyes, and blurted out his news without any dismal
note of warning.

"The lady died at two o'clock this morning, please, sir; and mother
said I was to come and tell you, please, sir."

Captain Paget staggered under the blow.

"Good God!" he cried, as he dropped upon a rickety Windsor chair, that
creaked under his weight; "and I did not even know that she was ill!"

Still less did he know that all her married life had been one long
heart-sickness--one monotonous agony of remorse and shame.

CHAPTER III.

"HEART BARE, HEART HUNGRY, VERY POOR."

Diana Paget left the Kursaal, and walked slowly along the pretty rustic
street; now dawdling before a little print-shop, whose contents she
knew by heart, now looking back at the great windows of that temple of
pleasure which she had just quitted.

"What do they care what becomes of me?" she thought, as