be polluted by the sight of you, I would kill you with
my own hand, and die for it on the scaffold. If she ever asks for her
father, I will do you one service. For the honour of human nature, I
will tell her that her father is dead. It will not be all a falsehood. I
repudiate you and your name--you are dead to me from this time forth.

"I sign myself by my father's name--

"EMMA RONALD."

She had said herself that she was unwilling to shock Amelius. This was
the reason.

After thinking a little, she sealed and directed the letter. This done,
she unlocked the wooden press which had once contained the baby's frock
and cap, and those other memorials of the past which she called her
"dead consolations." After satisfying herself that the press was
empty, she wrote on a card, "To be called for by a messenger from my
bankers"--and tied the card to a tin box in a corner, secured by a
padlock. She lifted the box, and placed it in front of the press, so
that it might be easily visible to any one entering the room. The safe
keeping of her treasures provided for, she took the sealed letter,
and, ascending the stairs, placed it on the table in her husband's
dressing-room. She hurried out again, the instant after, as if the sight
of the place were intolerable to her.

Passing to the other end of the corridor, she entered her own
bedchamber, and put on her bonnet and cloak. A leather handbag was on
the bed. She took it up, and looked round the large luxurious room with
a shudder of disgust. What she had suffered, within those four walls, no
human creature knew but herself. She hurried out, as she had hurried out
of her husband's dressing-room.

Her niece was still in the drawing-room. As she reached the door, she
hesitated, and stopped. The girl was a good girl, in her own dull placid
way--and her sister's daughter, too. A last little act of kindness would
perhaps be a welcome act to remember. She opened the door so suddenly
that Regina started, with a small cry of alarm. "Oh, aunt, how you
frighten one! Are you going out?" "Yes; I'm going out," was the short
answer. "Come here. Give me a kiss." Regina looked up in wide-eyed
astonishment. Mrs. Farnaby stamped impatiently on the floor. Regina
rose, gracefully bewildered. "My dear aunt, how very odd!" she said--and
gave the kiss demanded, with a serenely surprised elevation of her
finely shaped eyebrows. "Yes," said Mrs. Farnaby; "that's it--one of my
oddities. Go back to your