te as this; it is
after twelve o'clock. Let us think a few minutes, and look at Bradshaw."

But at that moment a furious peal of the bell rang through the house.
We both ran into the hall. The servant had just opened the door, and a
telegraph-clerk stood on the steps, with a telegram, which he thrust
into his hands. It was directed to me. I tore it open. "From Jean
Grimont, Granville, to Dr. Dobree. Brook Street, London." I did not know
any Jean Grimont, of Granville, it was the name of a stranger to me. A
message was written underneath in Norman _patois_, but so mispelt and
garbled in its transmission that I could not make out the sense of it.
The only words I was sure about were "mam'zelle," "Foster," "Tardif,"
and "_a l'agonie_." Who was on the point of death I could not tell.

CHAPTER THE FIRST.

OLIVIA'S JUSTIFICATION.

I know that in the eyes of the world I was guilty of a great fault--a
fault so grave that society condemns it bitterly. How shall I justify
myself before those who believe a woman owes her whole self to her
husband, whatever his conduct to her may be? That is impossible. To them
I merely plead "guilty," and say nothing of extenuating circumstances.

But there are others who will listen, and be sorry for me. There are
women like Johanna Carey, who will pity me, and lay the blame where it
ought to lie.

I was little more than seventeen when I was married; as mere a child as
any simple, innocent girl of seventeen among you. I knew nothing of what
life was, or what possibilities of happiness or misery it contained. I
married to set away from a home that had been happy, but which had
become miserable. This was how it was:

My own mother died when I was too young a child to feel her loss. For
many years after that, my father and I lived alone together on one of
the great sheep-farms of Adelaide, which belonged to him, and where he
made all the fortune that he left me. A very happy life, very free, with
no trammels of society and no fetters of custom; a simple, rustic life,
which gave me no preparation for the years that came after it.

When I was thirteen my father married again--for my sake, and mine
only. I knew afterward that he was already foreseeing his death, and
feared to leave me alone in the colony. He thought his second wife would
be a mother to me, at the age when I most needed one. He died two years
after, leaving me to her care. He died more peacefully than he could
have done