ot too
close to prevent a British unconsciousness that a cause can ever be
lost.

Society has, in a great measure, forgiven the affront he put upon it,
and receives him to its bosom once more, while his home life can
hardly fail to be happy; with his young and charming wife, and the
only child, to whom she devotes herself.

If the story of his life were better known than it will ever be now he
would certainly be thought to have escaped far more easily than he
deserved.

And yet his punishment still endures, and it is not a light one. It is
true that the world is prospering outwardly with him, true that the
danger is over, that Harold Caffyn has not been heard of for some
time, and that, whether alive or dead, he can never come between Mabel
and her husband again, since she knows already the worst that there is
to tell.

But there are penalties exacted in secret which are scarcely
preferable to open humiliation. The love which Mark feels for his
young wife, by its very intensity dooms him to a perpetual penance.
For the barrier between them is not yet completely broken down;
sometimes he fears that it never will be, though nothing in her manner
to him gives him any real reason to despair. But he is always
tormenting himself with the fancy that her gentleness is only
forbearance, her tenderness pity, and her devotion comes from her
sense of duty--morbid ideas, which even hard work and constant
excitement can only banish for a time.

Whether he can ever fill the place he once held in his wife's heart is
a question which only time can decide: 'Le denigrement de ceux que
nous aimons,' says the author of 'Madame Bovary,' 'toujours nous en
detache quelque peu. Il ne faut pas toucher aux idoles; la dorure en
reste aux mains,' and in Mabel's case the idol had been more than
tarnished, and had lost rather its divinity than its gilding.

But in spite of all she loves him still, though the character of her
love may be changed; and loves him more than he dares to hope at
present; while the blank that might have been in her life is filled by
her infant son, her little Vincent, whom she will strive to arm
against the temptations that proved too strong for his father.

Vincent Holroyd's second book was received with cordial admiration,
though it did not arouse any extraordinary excitement.

It cannot be said to possess the vigour and freshness of 'Illusion,'
and betrays in places the depression and flagging energy of the
wr