She met his appealing gaze with eyes that bore no reproach, only a
fixed and hopeless sadness in their clear depths.

'Yes,' she said, 'let us never speak again of--of what you have told
me to-night--you must make me forget it, if you can.'

The sudden relief almost took away his breath. 'You do not mean to
leave me then!' he cried impulsively, as he came towards her and
seemed about to take her hand. 'I thought I had lost you--but you will
not do that, Mabel, you will stay with me?'

She shrank from him ever so slightly, with a little instinctive
gesture of repugnance, which the wretched man noted with agony.

'I will not leave you,' she said, 'I did mean--but that is over, you
owe it to _him_. I will stay with you, Mark--it may not be for much
longer.'

Her last words chilled him with a deadly fear; his terrible confession
had escaped him before he had had time to remember much that might
well have excused him, even to himself, for keeping silence then.

'My God!' he cried in his agony when she had left him, 'is _that_ to
be my punishment? Oh, not that--any shame, any disgrace but that!'

And he lay awake long, struggling hard against a terror that was to
grow nearer and more real with each succeeding day.

* * * * *

Vincent's sleep was sweet and sound that night, until, with the dawn,
the moment came when it changed gently and painlessly into a sleep
that was sounder still, and the plain common-place bedroom grew hushed
and solemn, for Death had entered it.

CHAPTER XLII.

FROM THE GRAVE.

The days went by; Mark had followed Vincent to the grave, with a
sorrow in which there was no feigning, and now the Angel of Death
stood at his own door, and Love strove in vain to keep him back. For
the fear which had haunted Mark of late had been brought near its
fulfilment--Mabel lay dangerously ill, and it seemed that the son she
had borne was never to know a mother's care.

Throughout one terrible week Mark never left the house on Campden
Hill, while Mabel wavered between life and death; he was not allowed
to see her; she had not expressed any wish as yet to see him, he
learnt from Mrs. Langton, who had cast off all her languor before her
daughter's peril, and was in almost constant attendance upon her.
Mabel appeared in fact to have lost all interest in life, and the
natural desire for recovery which might have come to her aid was
altogether wanting, as her mother saw wi