reats just when a disclosure
would be hardest to bear. But I suppose Mr. Quarrier will rather give
up everything than submit to this. Oh, the pity! the pity!"

Lilian let her hands fall and sat staring before her.

She felt as though cast out into a terrible solitude. Mrs. Wade's voice
came from a distance; and it was not a voice of true sympathy, but of
veiled upbraiding. Unspeakably remote was the image of the man she
loved, and he moved still away from her. A cloud of pain fell between
her and all the kindly world.

In these nights of sleepless misery she had thought of her old home.
The relatives from whom she was for ever parted--her sister, her kind
old aunt--looked at her with reproachful eyes; and now, in anguish
which bordered upon delirium, it was they alone who seemed real to her;
all her recent life had become a vague suffering, a confused
consciousness of desire and terror. Her childhood returned; she saw her
parents and heard them talk. A longing for the peace and love of those
dead days rent her heart.

She could neither speak nor move. Torture born in the brain throbbed
through every part of her body. But worse was that ghastly sense of
utter loneliness, of being forsaken by human sympathy. The cloud about
her thickened; it muffled light and sound, and began to obscure even
her memories.

For a long time Mrs. Wade had sat silent. At length she rose, glanced
at Lilian, and, without speaking left the room.

She went upstairs and into her bed-chamber, and here stood for a few
minutes in the dark, purposeless. Then she seated herself in a low
chair that was by the bed side. For her, too, the past night had been
one of painful watching; her nerves threatened danger if she stayed in
the same room with Lilian. Here she could recover something of
self-control, and think over the latest aspect of affairs.

Thus had she sat for nearly half an hour, when her reverie was broken
by a sound from below. It was the closing of the front door. She sprang
up and ran to the window, to see if any one passed out into the road;
but no figure became visible. The gate was closed; no one could have
gone forth so quickly. A minute or two passed, yet she heard and saw
nothing.

Then she quickly descended the stairs. The door of the sitting-room was
open; the room was vacant.

"Lilian!" she called aloud, involuntarily.

She sprang to the front door and looked about in the little garden.
Some one moving behind caused her