placed;
but Stanbury, urged by the circumstances of his position, pulled out
his watch, pleaded the hour, and escaped.

He found Mrs. Trevelyan waiting for him at the station at Siena.
He would hardly have known her,--not from any alteration that was
physically personal to herself, not that she had become older in
face, or thin, or grey, or sickly,--but that the trouble of her
life had robbed her for the time of that brightness of apparel, of
that pride of feminine gear, of that sheen of high-bred womanly
bearing with which our wives and daughters are so careful to invest
themselves. She knew herself to be a wretched woman, whose work in
life now was to watch over a poor prostrate wretch, and who had
thrown behind her all ideas of grace and beauty. It was not quickly
that this condition had come upon her. She had been unhappy at
Nuncombe Putney; but unhappiness had not then told upon the outward
woman. She had been more wretched still at St. Diddulph's, and all
the outward circumstances of life in her uncle's parsonage had been
very wearisome to her; but she had striven against it all, and the
sheen and outward brightness had still been there. After that her
child had been taken from her, and the days which she had passed in
Manchester Street had been very grievous;--but even yet she had not
given way. It was not till her child had been brought back to her,
and she had seen the life which her husband was living, and that her
anger,--hot anger,--had been changed to pity, and that with pity love
had returned, it was not till this point had come in her sad life
that her dress became always black and sombre, that a veil habitually
covered her face, that a bonnet took the place of the jaunty hat that
she had worn, and that the prettinesses of her life were lain aside.
"It is very good of you to come," she said; "very good. I hardly knew
what to do, I was so wretched. On the day that I sent he was so bad
that I was obliged to do something." Stanbury, of course, inquired
after Trevelyan's health, as they were being driven up to Mrs.
Trevelyan's lodgings. On the day on which she had sent the telegram
her husband had again been furiously angry with her. She had
interfered, or had endeavoured to interfere, in some arrangements as
to his health and comfort, and he had turned upon her with an order
that the child should be at once sent back to him, and that she
should immediately quit Siena. "When I said that Louey could not be
s