and how indifferently she made return.

With the desire to ease the heartache she is enduring, she tries--in
vain--to encourage a wrathful feeling toward him, calling to mind how
ready he was to believe her false, how easily he flung her off, for
what, after all, was but a fancied offense. But the very agony of his
face as he did so disarms her, recollecting as she does every change
and all the passionate disappointment of it.

Oh that she had repulsed Philip on the instant when first he took her
hand, as it had been in her heart to do!--but for the misery he showed
that for the moment softened her. Mercy on such occasions is only cruel
kindness, so she now thinks,--and has been her own undoing. And
besides, what is his misery to hers?

An intense bitterness, a positive hatred toward Shadwell, who has
brought all this discord into her hitherto happy life, grows within
her, filling her with a most unjust longing to see him as wretched as
he has unwittingly made her; while yet she shrinks with ever-increasing
reluctance from the thought that soon she must bring herself to look
again upon his dark but handsome face.

Luttrell, too,--she must meet him; and, with such swollen eyes and
pallid cheeks, the bare idea brings a little color into her white face.

As eight o'clock strikes, she rises languidly from her bed, dressed as
she is, disrobing hurriedly, lest even her woman should guess how
wakeful she had been, throws open her window, and lets the pure cold
air beat upon her features.

But when Sarah comes she is not deceived. So distressed is she at her
young mistress's appearance that she almost weeps aloud, and gives it
as her opinion that balls and all such nocturnal entertainments are the
invention of the enemy.

CHAPTER XXV.

"Ah, starry hope, that didst arise
But to be overcast!"

--Edgar A. Poe.

"The ring asunder broke."

--_German Song._

At breakfast Molly is very pale, and speaks little. She toys with her
toast, but cannot eat. Being questioned, she confesses herself
fatigued, not being accustomed to late hours.

She neither looks at Luttrell, nor does he seek to attract her
attention in any way.

"A good long walk will refresh you more than anything," says Talbot
Lowry, who has been spending the past few days at Herst. He addresses
Molly, but his eyes seek Cecil's as he does so, in the fond hope that
she will take his hint and come with him for