ls sometimes grow
up into very naughty girls. I believe she was delicate as a child, which
probably gave her that spiritual look. Perhaps she was spoiled and
flattered, until her poor little soul was stifled, which is likely. At
all events, she was the coquette of her day--she seemed to care for
nothing but breaking hearts; and she did not stop when she married,
either. She hated her husband, and became reckless. She had no children.
So far, the tale is not an uncommon one; but the worst, and what makes
the ugliest stain in our annals, is to come.

"She was alone one summer at Chillingsworth--where she had taken
temporary refuge from her husband--and she amused herself--some say,
fell in love--with a young man of the yeomanry, a tenant of the next
estate. His name was Root. He, so it comes down to us, was a magnificent
specimen of his kind, and in those days the yeomanry gave us our great
soldiers. His beauty of face was quite as remarkable as his physique; he
led all the rural youth in sport, and was a bit above his class in every
way. He had a wife in no way remarkable, and two little boys, but was
always more with his friends than his family. Where he and Blanche
Mortlake met I don't know--in the woods, probably, although it has been
said that he had the run of the house. But, at all events, he was wild
about her, and she pretended to be about him. Perhaps she was, for women
have stooped before and since. Some women can be stormed by a fine man
in any circumstances; but, although I am a woman of the world, and not
easy to shock, there are some things I tolerate so hardly that it is all
I can do to bring myself to believe in them; and stooping is one. Well,
they were the scandal of the county for months, and then, either because
she had tired of her new toy, or his grammar grated after the first
glamour, or because she feared her husband, who was returning from the
Continent, she broke off with him and returned to town. He followed her,
and forced his way into her house. It is said she melted, but made him
swear never to attempt to see her again. He returned to his home, and
killed himself. A few months later she took her own life. That is all I
know."

"It is quite enough for me," said Orth.

The next night, as his train travelled over the great wastes of
Lancashire, a thousand chimneys were spouting forth columns of fire.
Where the sky was not red it was black. The place looked like hell.
Another time Orth's imag