d he was in the house, and came to know about the
trial. She came hurriedly in, and caught him with his head on the table,
in an attitude of prostration, quite new to him; he raised his head
directly he heard her, and revealed a face, pale, stern, and wretched.

"Oh! what is the matter now?" said she.

"The matter is what it has always been, if I could only have seen it.
You have deceived me, and disgraced yourself. Look at those bills."

"What bills? Oh!"

"You have had an allowance for housekeeping."

"It wasn't enough."

"It was plenty, if you had kept faith with me, and paid ready money. It
was enough for the first five weeks. I am housekeeper now, and I shall
allow myself two pounds a week less, and not owe a shilling either."

"Well, all I know is, I couldn't do it: no woman could."

"Then, you should have come to me, and said so; and I would have shown
you how. Was I in Egypt, or at the North Pole, that you could not find
me, to treat me like a friend? You have ruined us: these debts will
sweep away the last shilling of our little capital; but it isn't that,
oh, no! it is the miserable deceit."

Rosa's eye caught the sum total of Madame Cie's bill, and she turned
pale. "Oh, what a cheat that woman is!"

But she turned paler when Christopher said, "That is the one honest
bill; for I gave you leave. It is these that part us: these! these! Look
at them, false heart! There, go and pack up your things. We can live
here no longer; we are ruined. I must send you back to your father."

"I thought you would, sooner or later," said Mrs. Staines, panting,
trembling, but showing a little fight. "He told you I wasn't fit to be a
poor man's wife."

"An honest man's wife, you mean: that is what you are not fit for. You
will go home to your father, and I shall go into some humble lodging to
work for you. I'll contrive to keep you, and find you a hundred a year
to spend in dress--the only thing your heart can really love. But I
won't have an enemy here in the disguise of a friend; and I won't have a
wife about me I must treat like a servant, and watch like a traitor."

The words were harsh, but the agony with which they were spoken
distinguished them from vulgar vituperation.

They overpowered poor Rosa; she had been ailing a little some time, and
from remorse and terror, coupled with other causes, nature gave way. Her
lips turned white, she gasped inarticulately, and, with a little piteous
moan, tottered, and swo