orned. Then she flew like a frightened creature along the
passages, and without meeting any one, reached her chamber-door. It was
a little way open; she need not knock then--knock and wait trembling for
the answer. Perhaps Mr. Harper was not there, and so for a few minutes
she was safe from the dreaded meeting. She went in.

The room was empty, but her husband's handkerchief and riding-gloves
were lying about; he had apparently just gone down-stairs. Nevertheless,
though a relief, it was rather a shock to her to find the room deserted.
She felt a weight in its silence, forewarning her of she knew not what;
she looked round inquiringly, as if the walls could tell her what had
passed within them since she left. At last she took up her husband's
gloves and laid them by with a care foreign to her general habit, and
with a strange tenderness. When Mary's maid answered her summons,
she could not forbear asking, carelessly, but with an inward
heart-beat--"Where was Mr. Harper?"

"Mr. Locke Harper, ma'am, is sitting reading to master in the library."

He then could sit and read quietly to his father. With him, too, all
household ways went on unaltered--with her only was the tempest--the
despair. Her remorse ebbed down--her pride and anger rose. Light--a
fierce flashing light--came to her eyes, and crimson roses to her
cheeks. She dressed herself with care, and went down--though not until
the last minute--to the drawing-room.

Mary met her at the door. "I was just coming to fetch you. Nathanael
said you had been sitting in Anne's room."

How could he know? Had he watched her?

She answered flippantly, "'Tis very true. I have been enjoying my
own company. Very good company too. Have I detained you, though? Is
everybody here?"

Everybody was here. _He_ was here. Though she never glanced that way,
she saw him, and the look he wore. To others it might seem his ordinary
look, a little paler, a little more reserved, but she knew what it
meant. She knew likewise, now that her passion had subsided, how his
whole life--his stainless life--gave the lie to the accusation she had
cast upon him. She had outraged him in the keenest point where a proud
honourable man can be outraged by his wife; her own hand had cleft a
gulf between them which might never close.

At the thought her heart seemed dropping down--down in her bosom, like
a bird whose wing is broken, it knows not how. Sick, giddy, she clung to
Mary's arm for a moment.

"N