gard what anybody may say. Of
course, it will be said that I--went astray, and that he forgave me."

"Nobody will say that, dearest; nobody. Lady Milborough is quite
aware how it all was."

"What does it signify? There are things in life worse even than a bad
name."

"But he does not think it?"

"Nora, his mind is a mystery to me. I do not know what is in it.
Sometimes I fancy that all facts have been forgotten, and that he
merely wants the childish gratification of being assured that he is
the master. Then, again, there come moments, in which I feel sure
that suspicion is lurking within him, that he is remembering the
past, and guarding against the future. When he came into this house,
a quarter of an hour ago, he was fearful lest there was a mad doctor
lurking about to pounce on him. I can see in his eye that he had some
such idea. He hardly notices Louey,--though there was a time, even at
Casalunga, when he would not let the child out of his sight."

"What will you do now?"

"I will try to do my duty;--that is all."

"But you will have a doctor?"

"Of course. He was content to see one in Paris, though he would not
let me be present. Hugh saw the gentleman afterwards, and he seemed
to think that the body was worse than the mind." Then Nora told her
the name of a doctor whom Lady Milborough had suggested, and took her
departure along with Hugh in the carriage.

In spite of all the sorrow that they had witnessed and just left,
their journey up to London was very pleasant. Perhaps there is no
period so pleasant among all the pleasant periods of love-making as
that in which the intimacy between the lovers is so assured, and the
coming event so near, as to produce and to endure conversation about
the ordinary little matters of life;--what can be done with the
limited means at their mutual disposal; how that life shall be begun
which they are to lead together; what idea each has of the other's
duties; what each can do for the other; what each will renounce for
the other. There was a true sense of the delight of intimacy in the
girl who declared that she had never loved her lover so well as when
she told him how many pairs of stockings she had got. It is very
sweet to gaze at the stars together; and it is sweet to sit out
among the haycocks. The reading of poetry together, out of the same
book, with brows all close, and arms all mingled, is very sweet. The
pouring out of the whole heart in written words, which th