f I
may take the liberty to speak on such a subject, is, though I suppose a
sadness, not perhaps an unmixed evil. For though your pecuniary troubles
have been discovered to the world and yourself by it, your happiness in
marriage was, as you have confided to me, not great; and you are now left
free as a bird to follow your own hobbies.'

'I wonder you recognize that.'

'But perhaps,' he added, with a sigh of regret, 'you will again fall a
prey to some man, some uninteresting country squire or other, and be lost
to the scientific world after all.'

'If I fall a prey to any man, it will not be to a country squire. But
don't go on with this, for heaven's sake! You may think what you like in
silence.'

'We are forgetting the comet,' said St. Cleeve. He turned, and set the
instrument in order for observation, and wheeled round the dome.

While she was looking at the nucleus of the fiery plume, that now filled
so large a space of the sky as completely to dominate it, Swithin dropped
his gaze upon the field, and beheld in the dying light a number of
labourers crossing directly towards the column.

'What do you see?' Lady Constantine asked, without ceasing to observe the
comet.

'Some of the work-folk are coming this way. I know what they are coming
for,--I promised to let them look at the comet through the glass.'

'They must not come up here,' she said decisively.

'They shall await your time.'

'I have a special reason for wishing them not to see me here. If you ask
why, I can tell you. They mistakenly suspect my interest to be less in
astronomy than in the astronomer, and they must have no showing for such
a wild notion. What can you do to keep them out?'

'I'll lock the door,' said Swithin. 'They will then think I am away.' He
ran down the staircase, and she could hear him hastily turning the key.
Lady Constantine sighed.

'What weakness, what weakness!' she said to herself. 'That envied power
of self-control, where is it? That power of concealment which a woman
should have--where? To run such risks, to come here alone,--oh, if it
were known! But I was always so,--always!'

She jumped up, and followed him downstairs.

XIII

He was standing immediately inside the door at the bottom, though it was
so dark she could hardly see him. The villagers were audibly talking
just without.

'He's sure to come, rathe or late,' resounded up the spiral in the vocal
note of Hezzy Biles. 'He wouldn