arweed,
then the lavered boulders pouring gritty runnels back again, and every
basined outlet wavering toward another inlet; these, and every phase
of each innumerable to-and-fro, made or met their impress in her
fluctuating misery.

"It is the only rest," she said; "the only chance of being quiet, after
all that I have done, and all that people say of me."

None had been dastard enough to say a syllable against her; neither
had she, in the warmest faith of love, forgotten truth; but her own
dejection drove her, not to revile the world (as sour natures do
consistently), but to shrink from sight, and fancy that the world was
reviling her.

While she fluttered thus and hovered over the cold verge of death, with
her sore distempered spirit, scarcely sure of anything, tidings came of
another trouble, and turned the scale against her. Albert de Wichehalse,
her trusty cousin and true lover, had fallen in a duel with that
recreant and miscreant Lord Auberley. The strictest orders were given
that this should be kept for the present from Frida's ears; but what is
the use of the strictest orders when a widowed mother raves? Albert's
mother vowed that "the shameless jilt" should hear it out, and slipped
her guards and waylaid Frida on the morn of Candlemas, and overbore her
with such words as may be well imagined.

"Auntie!" said the poor thing at last, shaking her beautiful curls,
and laying one little hand to her empty heart, "don't be cross with me
to-day. I am going home to be married, auntie. It is the day my Aubyn
always fixed, and he never fails me."

"Little fool!" her aunt exclaimed, as Frida kissed her hand and
courtesied, and ran round the corner; "one comfort is to know that she
is as mad as a mole, at any rate."

CHAPTER IX.

Frida, knowing--perhaps more deeply than that violent woman thought--the
mischief thus put into her, stole back to her bedroom, and, without a
word to anyone, tired her hair in the Grecian snood which her lover used
to admire so, and arrayed her soft and delicate form in all the bridal
finery. Perhaps, that day, no bride in England--certainly none of her
youth and beauty--treated her favourite looking-glass with such contempt
and ingratitude. She did not care to examine herself, through some
reluctant sense of havoc, and a bitter fear that someone might be
disappointed in her. Then at the last, when all was ready, she snatched
up her lover's portrait (which for days had been cast a