iness is intolerable. I am as much alone
as though I lay stark in the churchyard like my poor wife."

Mr. Fraser did not answer him immediately, so taken up was he in
noticing the wonderful changes a week had wrought in his appearance.
Not only did his countenance bear traces of the illness and exhaustion
that might not unnaturally be expected in such a case of bereavement,
but it faithfully reflected the change that had taken place in his
mental attitude. His eyes had lost the frank boldness that had made
them very pleasing to some people, they looked scared; the mouth too
was rendered conspicuous by the absence of the firm lines that once
gave it character; indeed the man's whole appearance was pitiful and
almost abject.

"I am afraid," he said at length, in a tone of gentle compassion,
"that you must have suffered a great deal, Caresfoot."

"Suffered! I have suffered the tortures of the damned! I still suffer
them, I shall always suffer them."

"I do not wish," said the clergyman, with a little hesitation, "to
appear officious or to make a mockery of your grief by telling you
that it is for your good; but I should fail in my duty if I did not
point out to you that He who strikes the blow has the power to heal
the wound, and that very often such things are for our ultimate
benefit, either in this world or the next. Carry your troubles to Him,
my dear fellow, acknowledge His hand, and, if you know in your heart
of any way in which you have sinned, offer Him your hearty repentance;
do this, and you will not be deserted. Your life, that now seems to
you nothing but ashes, may yet be both a happy and a useful one."

Philip smiled bitterly as he answered--

"You talk to me of repentance--how can I repent when Providence has
treated me so cruelly, robbing me at a single blow of my wife and my
fortune? I know that I did wrong in concealing my marriage, but I was
driven to it by fear of my father. Ah! if you had seen him as I saw
him, you would have known that they were right to call him 'Devil
Caresfoot.'" He checked himself, and then went on--"He forced me into
the engagement with Miss Lee, and announced it without my consent. Now
I am ruined--everything is taken from me."

"You have your little daughter, and all the entailed estate--at least,
so I am told."

"My little daughter!--I never want to see her face; she killed her
mother. If it had been a boy, it would have been different, for then,
at any rate, that ac