by a devouring
flame. He had been tortured with terrible neuralgic headaches all
through the winter; but though the doctor urged him to try the effect of
a sojourn abroad, nothing would induce him to leave Greenriver.

His tentative inquiries in Italy having proved futile, he clung to the
idea that Toni was still in England; and the thought that she might
return to her home and find him gone was one which recurred to him like
a nightmare whenever he took even the short journey up to town.

"What shall I say, I wonder?" Eva sat gazing thoughtfully into the fire,
while the Spring twilight fell over the river which glided so quietly
past her windows. "If I say she is forgotten it will almost break her
heart; yet if I tell her that her husband is breaking _his_ heart to
find her, will she come to England instantly and humble herself till he
takes her back into his home?"

As she sat there Eva had a sudden vivid sense of the contrast between
her own spoilt life and that of the girl whose pitiful cry still rang in
her consciousness and would not be silenced.

Her own life was ruined, she told herself bitterly. But in that
illuminating moment Eva saw the truth for the first time. She herself
was to blame for the ruin. She had brought all the shame, all the
disgrace upon herself, and the bitter experience of her prison life had
been only the reaping of the harvest which she, by her own act, had
sown.

But Toni's happiness had been broken and spoilt by other means. It was
her very love for her husband which had made her so fatally ready to
believe that only by leaving him could she give him the freedom which he
was supposed--by his wife--to desire. And Eva knew quite well that
without her connivance and encouragement Leonard Dowson would never have
dared to utter his proposal to the young wife of Owen Rose.

Yet if she gave in now and begged Toni to return, assuring her, as she
knew she might safely do, of her husband's ready forgiveness, would not
the spectacle of Toni's ensuing happiness bring all the more cruelly
home to her the wretchedness which must be her own portion from
henceforth?

Although Jim Herrick treated her with unvarying kindness and
consideration, Eva had always the miserable conviction that his love for
her was dead; and although she never showed any feeling in their daily
intercourse, even her bitter and reckless heart was sometimes sore
within her.

Long she sat, wondering how best to treat this