nmarried women in England are there would do the same?"
she said to herself, as she folded the paper, and put it into an
envelope, and sealed the cover. The moment that the letter was
completed she sent it off, as she was directed to send it, so
that there might be no possibility of repentance and subsequent
hesitation. She had at last made up her mind, and she would stand
by the making. She knew that there would come moments in which she
would deeply regret the opportunity that she had lost,--the chance
of greatness that she had flung away from her. But so would she
have often regretted it, also, had she accepted the greatness. Her
position was one in which there must be regret, let her decision have
been what it might. But she had decided, and the thing was done. She
would still be free,--Marie Max Goesler,--unless in abandoning her
freedom she would obtain something that she might in truth prefer to
it. When the letter was gone she sat disconsolate, at the window of
an up-stairs room in which she had written, thinking much of the
coronet, much of the name, much of the rank, much of that position
in society which she had flattered herself she might have won for
herself as Duchess of Omnium by her beauty, her grace, and her wit.
It had not been simply her ambition to be a duchess, without further
aim or object. She had fancied that she might have been such a
duchess as there is never another, so that her fame might have been
great throughout Europe, as a woman charming at all points. And she
would have had friends, then,--real friends, and would not have lived
alone as it was now her fate to do. And she would have loved her
ducal husband, old though he was, and stiff with pomp and ceremony.
She would have loved him, and done her best to add something of
brightness to his life. It was indeed true that there was one whom
she loved better; but of what avail was it to love a man who, when he
came to her, would speak to her of nothing but of the charms which he
found in another woman!

She had been sitting thus at her window, with a book in her hand, at
which she never looked, gazing over the park which was now beautiful
with its May verdure, when on a sudden a thought struck her. Lady
Glencora Palliser had come to her, trying to enlist her sympathy for
the little heir, behaving, indeed, not very well, as Madame Goesler
had thought, but still with an earnest purpose which was in itself
good. She would write to Lady Glencor