choly wanderings and blighted life,--thus had she, on the
impulse of the moment, written the letter which had reached Darrell at
Malta. In it she referred but indirectly to the deceit that had been
practised on herself--far too delicate to retail a scandal which she
felt to be an insult to his dignity, in which, too, the deceiving
parties were his daughter's husband and her own mother. No doubt every
true woman can understand why she thus wrote to Darrell, and every true
man can equally comprehend why that letter failed in its object, and
was returned to her in scorn. Hers was the yearning of meek, passionless
affection, and his the rebuke of sensitive, embittered indignant love.

But now, as all her past, with its interior life, glided before her, by
a grief the most intolerable she had yet known, the woman became aware
that it was no longer penitence for the injured friend--it was despair
for the lover she had lost. In that stormy interview, out of all the
confused and struggling elements of her life--long self-reproach,
LOVE--the love of woman--had flashed suddenly, luminously, as the love
of youth at first sight. Strange--but the very disparity of years seemed
gone! She, the matured, sorrowful woman, was so much nearer to the man,
still young in heart and little changed in person, than the gay girl
of seventeen had been to the grave friend of forty! Strange, but those
vehement reproaches had wakened emotions deeper in the core of the wild
mortal breast than all that early chivalrous homage which had exalted
her into the ideal of dreaming poets. Strange, strange, strange! But
where there is nothing strange, THERE--is there ever love?

And with this revelation of her own altered heart, came the clearer
and fresher insight into the nature and character of the man she
loved. Hitherto she had recognised but his virtues--now she beheld his
failings! beholding them as if virtues, loved him more; and, loving him,
more despaired. She recognised that all-pervading indomitable pride,
which, interwoven with his sense of honour, became relentless as it was
unrevengeful. She comprehended now that, the more he loved her, the
less he would forgive; and, recalling the unexpected gentleness of his
farewell words, she felt that in his promised blessing lay the sentence
that annihilated every hope.

CHAPTER III.

WHATEVER THE NUMBER OF A MAN'S FRIENDS, THERE WILL BE TIMES IN HIS
LIFE WHEN HE HAS ONE TOO FEW; BUT IF HE HA