f her arrival. Her aunt, indeed, never spoke openly to
her on the subject. It seemed to be understood between them that it
should be dropped. And there was occasionally a weight of melancholy
about Lady Harcourt, amounting in appearance almost to savage
sternness, which kept all inquiry aloof. Even her grandfather
hesitated to speak to her about her husband, and allowed her to live
unmolested in the quiet, still, self-controlling mood which she
seemed to have adopted with a determined purpose.

For the first fortnight she did not leave the house. At the
expiration of that time, on one fine sunny Sunday morning she came
down dressed for church. Miss Baker remarked that the very clothes
she wore were things that had belonged to her before her marriage,
and were all of them of the simplest that a woman can wear without
making herself conspicuous before the world. All her jewelry she had
laid aside, and every brooch, and every ring that had come to her as
a married woman, or as a girl about to be married--except that one
ring from which an iron fate would not allow her to be parted. Ah, if
she could but have laid aside that also!

And then she went to church. There were the same persons there to
stare at her now, in her quiet wretchedness, who were there before
staring at her in her--triumph may I say? No, there had been no
triumph; little even then, except wretchedness; but that misery had
not been so open to the public eye.

She went through it very well; and seemed to suffer even less than
did her aunt. She had done nothing to spread abroad among the public
of Hadley that fiction as to Sir Omicron's opinion which her lord
had been sedulous to disseminate in London. She had said very little
about herself, but she had at any rate said nothing false. Nor had
she acted falsely; or so as to give false impressions. All that
little world now around her knew that she had separated herself
from her grand husband; and most of them had heard that she had no
intention of returning to him.

She had something, therefore, to bear as she sat out that service;
and she bore it well. She said her prayers, or seemed to say them, as
though unconscious that she were in any way a mark for other women's
eyes. And when the sermon was over, she walked home with a steady,
even step; whereas Miss Baker trembled at every greeting she
received, and at every step she heard.

On that afternoon, Caroline opened her heart to Adela. Hitherto
little