hed to her husband, and was ever secretly hoping
against hope to win back his heart again by regaining some at least of
her personal beauty. Hence it arose that her closet was lined with
bottles, packets, and ointment-pots of every description--nay, bunches of
mystic herbs, charms, and books of necromancy, which in her schoolgirl
time she would have ridiculed as folly.

'Damned if you won't poison yourself with these apothecary messes and
witch mixtures some time or other,' said her husband, when his eye
chanced to fall upon the multitudinous array.

She did not reply, but turned her sad, soft glance upon him in such heart-
swollen reproach that he looked sorry for his words, and added, 'I only
meant it for your good, you know, Gertrude.'

'I'll clear out the whole lot, and destroy them,' said she huskily, 'and
try such remedies no more!'

'You want somebody to cheer you,' he observed. 'I once thought of
adopting a boy; but he is too old now. And he is gone away I don't know
where.'

She guessed to whom he alluded; for Rhoda Brook's story had in the course
of years become known to her; though not a word had ever passed between
her husband and herself on the subject. Neither had she ever spoken to
him of her visit to Conjuror Trendle, and of what was revealed to her, or
she thought was revealed to her, by that solitary heath-man.

She was now five-and-twenty; but she seemed older.

'Six years of marriage, and only a few months of love,' she sometimes
whispered to herself. And then she thought of the apparent cause, and
said, with a tragic glance at her withering limb, 'If I could only again
be as I was when he first saw me!'

She obediently destroyed her nostrums and charms; but there remained a
hankering wish to try something else--some other sort of cure altogether.
She had never revisited Trendle since she had been conducted to the house
of the solitary by Rhoda against her will; but it now suddenly occurred
to Gertrude that she would, in a last desperate effort at deliverance
from this seeming curse, again seek out the man, if he yet lived. He was
entitled to a certain credence, for the indistinct form he had raised in
the glass had undoubtedly resembled the only woman in the world who--as
she now knew, though not then--could have a reason for bearing her ill-
will. The visit should be paid.

This time she went alone, though she nearly got lost on the heath, and
roamed a considerable distance out of