t be hard with Mrs. Wragge; teach her what she must learn as
tenderly as you can."

With those words she left him, and went upstairs.

She lay down on her bed with a heavy sigh, and tried to sleep. It was
useless. The dull weariness of herself which now possessed her was not
the weariness which finds its remedy in repose. She rose again and sat
by the window, looking out listlessly over the sea.

A weaker nature than hers would not have felt the shock of Frank's
desertion as she had felt it--as she was feeling it still. A weaker
nature would have found refuge in indignation and comfort in tears. The
passionate strength of Magdalen's love clung desperately to the sinking
wreck of its own delusion-clung, until she tore herself from it, by
plain force of will. All that her native pride, her keen sense of wrong
could do, was to shame her from dwelling on the thoughts which still
caught their breath of life from the undying devotion of the past; which
still perversely ascribed Frank's heartless farewell to any cause but
the inborn baseness of the man who had written it. The woman never lived
yet who could cast a true-love out of her heart because the object of
that love was unworthy of her. All she can do is to struggle against it
in secret--to sink in the contest if she is weak; to win her way through
it if she is strong, by a process of self-laceration which is, of all
moral remedies applied to a woman's nature, the most dangerous and the
most desperate; of all moral changes, the change that is surest to mark
her for life. Magdalen's strong nature had sustained her through the
struggle; and the issue of it had left her what she now was.

After sitting by the window for nearly an hour, her eyes looking
mechanically at the view, her mind empty of all impressions, and
conscious of no thoughts, she shook off the strange waking stupor that
possessed her, and rose to prepare herself for the serious business of
the day.

She went to the wardrobe and took down from the pegs two bright,
delicate muslin dresses, which had been made for summer wear at
Combe-Raven a year since, and which had been of too little value to be
worth selling when she parted with her other possessions. After placing
these dresses side by side on the bed, she looked into the wardrobe once
more. It only contained one other summer dress--the plain alpaca gown
which she had worn during her memorable interview with Noel Vanstone and
Mrs. Lecount. This she le