felt-was over.

"No, Lady Caroline, it cannot be. You will soon see yourself that it
cannot. Living, as we do, in the same neighbourhood, we may meet
occasionally by chance, and always, I hope, with kindly feeling; but,
under present circumstances--indeed, under any circumstances--intimacy
between your house and ours would be impossible."

Lady Caroline shrugged her shoulders with a pretty air of pique. "As
you will! I never trouble myself to court the friendship of any one.
Le jeu ne vaut pas la chandelle."

"Do not mistake me," John said, earnestly. "Do not suppose I am
ungrateful for your former kindness to my wife; but the difference
between her and you--between your life and hers--is so extreme."

"Vraiment!" with another shrug and smile, rather a bitter one.

"Our two paths lie wide apart--wide as the poles; our house and our
society would not suit you; and that my wife should ever enter
yours"--glancing from one to the other of those two faces, painted with
false roses, lit by false smiles,--"No, Lady Caroline," he added,
firmly, "it is impossible."

She looked mortified for a moment, and then resumed her gaiety, which
nothing could ever banish long.

"Hear him, Emma! So young and so unkindly! Mais nous verrons. You
will change your mind. Au revoir, mon beau cousin."

They drove off quickly, and were gone.

"John, what will Mrs. Halifax say?"

"My innocent girl! thank God she is safe away from them all--safe in a
poor man's honest breast." He spoke with much emotion.

"Yet Lady Caroline--"

"Did you see who sat beside her?"

"That beautiful woman?"

"Poor soul! alas for her beauty! Phineas, that was Lady Hamilton."

He said no more, nor I. At my own door he left me, with his old merry
laugh, his old familiar grasp of my shoulder.

"Lad, take care of thyself, though I'm not by to see. Remember, I am
just as much thy tyrant as if I were living here still."

I smiled, and he went his way to his own quiet, blessed, married home.

CHAPTER XXI

The winter and spring passed calmly by. I had much ill-health, and
could go out very little; but they came constantly to me, John and
Ursula, especially the latter. During this illness, when I learned to
watch longingly for her kind face, and listen for her cheerful voice
talking pleasantly and sisterly beside my chair, she taught me to give
up "Mrs. Halifax," and call her Ursula. It was only by slow degrees I
did so, truly; for she w