upposing that such trouble is near you. If I am
so you will forgive me my solicitude.

Rumours have reached us from more than one quarter
that--oh! Griselda, I hardly know in what words to conceal
and yet to declare that which I have to write. They say
that you are intimate with Mr Palliser, the nephew of the
duke, and that your husband is much offended. Perhaps I had
better tell you all, openly, cautioning you not to suppose
that I have believed it. They say that it is thought
that you are going to put yourself under Mr Palliser's
protection. My dearest child, I think you can imagine with
what agony I write these words,--with what terrible grief I
must have been oppressed before I could have allowed myself
to entertain the thoughts which have produced them. Such
things are said openly in Barchester, and your father, who
has been in town and has seen you, feels himself unable to
tell me that my mind may be at rest.

I will not say to you a word as to the injury in a worldly
point of view which would come to you from any rupture with
your husband. I believe that you can see what would be the
effect of so terrible a step quite as plainly as I can show
it you. You would break the heart of your father, and send
your mother to her grave;--but it is not even on that that
I may most insist. It is this,--that you would offend your
God by the worst sin that a woman can commit, and cast
yourself into a depth of infamy in which repentance before
God is almost impossible, and from which escape before man
is not permitted.

I do not believe it, my dearest, dearest child,--my only
living daughter; I do not believe what they have said to
me. But as a mother I have not dared to leave the slander
unnoticed. If you will write to me and say that it is not
so, you will make me happy again, even though you should
rebuke me for my suspicion.

Believe that at all times, and under all circumstances, I
am still your loving mother, as I was in other days.

SUSAN GRANTLY.

We will now go back to Mr Palliser as he sat in his chambers at the
Albany, thinking of his love. The duke had cautioned him, and the
duke's agent had cautioned him; and he, in spite of his high feeling
of independence, had almost been made to tremble. All his thousands a
year were in the balance, and perhaps everything on which depended
his position before t