t. "We are your cousins, and we wish to be your friends, my
wife and I. Will you listen to us?"

She sobbed still, but less violently.

"Only, first--you must promise to renounce for ever guilt and disgrace."

"I feel it none. He is an honourable gentleman--he loves me, and I
love him. That is the true marriage. No, I will make you no such
promise. Let me go."

"Pardon me--not yet. I cannot suffer my wife's kinswoman to elope from
my own house, without trying to prevent it."

"Prevent!--sir!--Mr. Halifax! You forget who you are, and who I
am--the daughter of the Earl of Luxmore."

"Were you the King's daughter it would make no difference. I will save
you in spite of yourself, if I can. I have already spoken to Mr.
Vermilye, and he has gone away."

"Gone away! the only living soul that loves me. Gone away! I must
follow him--quick--quick."

"You cannot. He is miles distant by this time. He is afraid lest this
story should come out to-morrow at Kingswell; and to be an M.P. and
safe from arrest is better to Mr. Vermilye than even yourself, Lady
Caroline."

John's wife, unaccustomed to hear him take that cool, worldly,
half-sarcastic tone, turned to him somewhat reproachfully; but he
judged best. For the moment, this tone had more weight with the woman
of the world than any homilies. She began to be afraid of Mr. Halifax.
Impulse, rather than resolution, guided her, and even these impulses
were feeble and easily governed. She sat down again, muttering:

"My will is free. You cannot control me."

"Only so far as my conscience justifies me in preventing a crime."

"A crime?"

"It would be such. No sophistries of French philosophy on your part,
no cruelty on your husband's, can abrogate the one law, which if you
disown it as God's, is still man's--being necessary for the peace,
honour, and safety of society."

"What law?"

"THOU SHALT NOT COMMIT ADULTERY."

People do not often utter this plain Bible word. It made Ursula start,
even when spoken solemnly by her own husband. It tore from the
self-convicted woman all the sentimental disguises with which the world
then hid, and still hides, its corruptions. Her sin arose and stared
her blackly in the face--AS SIN. She cowered before it.

"Am I--THAT? And William will know it. Poor William!" She looked up
at Ursula--for the first time with the guilty look; hitherto, it had
been only one of pain or despair. "Nobody knows it, except you