tween her and the past, and
there she remained during some minutes that lengthened out like years,
with the wind moaning around her and dead leaves crackling under her
feet. She could see her old home through the naked trees, with the dull
smoke curling in clouds above the chimneys, and the great trees sweeping
their naked branches over it. Oh, how her heart yearned towards it, how
wistfully her eyes watched all those signs of her forfeited life through
the leafless grove and the drifting leaves!

"Can I help you, can I do anything?"

Elizabeth lifted her dreary eyes. It was North. The desolation of that
poor woman smote him with remorse, his voice trembled with human pity.

"The money--you shall have part of that."

Elizabeth shook her head; she had no strength for resentment. All pride
was crushed within her.

"Go," she said, "leave me here alone; I want nothing."

"But I cannot leave you so--I will not."

Elizabeth arose and stood upright among the graves.

"I am going somewhere--this way, I think. One cannot rest here, you
know," she said, with a wan and most pathetic smile. "You and I have
been too much in company--the world is wide--oh, misery, misery, how
wide--but you can go that way and I the other. No one will ask for me."

Was the woman dropping into piteous insanity?

North thought so, and made another effort to arouse her, but she only
entreated him to go away, and at last he went; afraid that the daylight
would find him there.

CHAPTER LXV.

THE HUSBAND RELENTS.

Grantley Mellen turned back to the miserable grandeur of his home. The
proud heart ached in his bosom. What if, from fear or weakness,
Elizabeth did not return to the house? What if she remained there among
the cold graves, or wandered off in terror of his wrath?

The graveyard was full half a mile from the spot where this thought
struck him. He turned at once and went back, feeling how unmanly it was
to leave the miserable creature stricken with such anguish, alone with
that man. He remembered how her uncovered head had drooped under his
denunciations in the moonlight, that the cold wind had lifted the waves
of her hair and revealed the dead marble of a face in which all hope was
quenched. Notwithstanding his wrongs, notwithstanding the ache at his
heart, he would go back and take her home for that one night--only for
that one night.

He walked rapidly towards the graveyard, more eager now to find
Elizabeth than he had