on Mrs. Linley--brilliant and beautiful, and laughing gayly. Why was
he looking at his wife with plain signs of embarrassment in his face?
Sydney piteously persisted in repeating her innocent question: "I hope I
haven't done anything to offend you?"

He seemed to be still reluctant to notice her--on the one occasion of
all others when she was looking her best! But he answered at last.

"My dear child, it is impossible that you should offend me; you have
misunderstood and mistaken me. Don't suppose--pray don't suppose that I
am changed or can ever be changed toward you."

He emphasized the kind intention which those words revealed by giving
her his hand.

But the next moment he drew back. There was no disguising it, he drew
back as if he wished to get away from her. She noticed that his lips
were firmly closed and his eyebrows knitted in a frown; he looked like
a man who was forcing himself to submit to some hard necessity that he
hated or feared.

Sydney left the room in despair.

He had denied in the plainest and kindest terms that he was changed
toward her. Was that not enough? It was nothing like enough. The facts
were there to speak for themselves: he was an altered man; anxiety,
sorrow, remorse--one or the other seemed to have got possession of him.
Judging by Mrs. Linley's gayety of manner, his wife could not possibly
have been taken into his confidence.

What did it mean? Oh, the useless, hopeless question! And yet, again and
again she asked herself: what did it mean?

In bewildered wretchedness she lingered on the way to her room, and
stopped at the end of a corridor.

On her right hand, a broad flight of old oak stairs led to the
bed-chambers on the second floor of the house. On her left hand, an
open door showed the stone steps which descended to the terrace and the
garden. The moonlight lay in all its loveliness on the flower-beds
and the grass, and tempted her to pause and admire it. A prospect of
sleepless misery was the one prospect before her that Sydney could see,
if she retired to rest. The cool night air came freshly up the vaulted
tunnel in which the steps were set; the moonlit garden offered its
solace to the girl's sore heart. No curious women-servants appeared on
the stairs that led to the bed-chambers. No inquisitive eyes could look
at her from the windows of the ground floor--a solitude abandoned to the
curiosity of tourists. Sydney took her hat and cloak from the stand in a
recess at