ws of her new
home upon the world, lest it should know and reproach her. All the
sisterhood of friendship is cut off from her. If she dares to go abroad
she feels the sneer of the world as she goes through it; and knows
that malice and scorn whisper behind her. People, as criminal but
undiscovered, make room for her, as if her touch were pollution. She
knows she has darkened the lot and made wretched the home of the man
whom she loves best; that his friends who see her, treat her with but
a doubtful respect; and the domestics who attend her, with a suspicious
obedience. In the country lanes, or the streets of the county town,
neighbours look aside as the carriage passes in which she sits splendid
and lonely. Rough hunting companions of her husband's come to her table:
he is driven perforce to the company of flatterers and men of inferior
sort; his equals, at least in his own home, will not live with him. She
would be kind, perhaps, and charitable to the cottagers round about
her, but she fears to visit them lest they too should scorn her. The
clergyman who distributes her charities, blushes and looks awkward on
passing her in the village, if he should be walking with his wife or
one of his children. Shall they go to the Continent, and set up a grand
house at Paris or at Florence? There they can get society, but of what
a sort! Our acquaintances of Baden,--Madame Schlangenbad, and Madame
de Cruchecassee, and Madame d'Ivry, and Messrs. Loder, and Punter, and
Blackball, and Deuceace, will come, and dance, and flirt, and quarrel,
and gamble, and feast round about her; but what in common with such wild
people has this poor, timid, shrinking soul? Even these scorn her. The
leers and laughter on those painted faces are quite unlike her own sad
countenance. She has no reply to their wit. Their infernal gaiety scares
her more than the solitude at home. No wonder that her husband does not
like home, except for a short while in the hunting season. No wonder
that he is away all day; how can he like a home which she has made so
wretched? In the midst of her sorrow, and doubt, and misery, a child
comes to her: how she clings to it! how her whole being, and hope, and
passion centres itself on this feeble infant!----but she no more belongs
to our story; with the new name she has taken, the poor lady passes out
of the history of the Newcomes.

If Barnes Newcome's children meet yonder solitary lady, do they know
her? If her once-husband