licity.

Having drunk his tea, he arose, bathed, and dressed with a calm mind.

Then he came down stairs.

She was not in the breakfast-room, where only one place was laid, and,
concluding that she was breakfasting in her own room, he sat down to
table.

After the meal, and with another sheaf of the infernal early post
letters in his hand, he crossed to the smoking-room, where he closed the
door, put the letters on the table and lit a cigar. Then, having smoked
for a few minutes and collected his thoughts, he rang the bell and sent
for Mr. Church.

"Church," said he when that functionary arrived, "will you tell--my wife
I want to see her?"

"Her ladyship left last night, your Lordship, she left at ten o'clock,
or a little after."

"Left! where did she go to?"

"She went to the South Kensington Hotel, your Lordship."

"Good heavens! what made her--why did she go--ah, was it because I did
not come back?"

"I think it was, your Lordship."

Mr. Church spoke gravely and the least bit stiffly. It could easily be
seen that as an old servant and faithful retainer he was on the woman's
side in the business.

"I had to go out," said the other. "I will explain it to her when I see
her--It was on a matter of importance--Thanks, that will do, Church."

Alone again he finished his cigar.

The awful fear of the night before, the fear of negation and the loss of
himself had vanished with a brain refreshed by sleep and before this
fact.

What a brute he had been! She had come back forgiving him for who knows
what, she had taken his part against his traducers, kissed him. She had
fancied that all was right and that happiness had returned--and he had
coldly discarded her.

It would have been less cruel to have beaten her. She was a good sweet
woman. He knew that fact, now, both instinctively and by knowledge. He
had not known it fully till this minute.

Would it, after all, have been better to have deceived her and to have
played the part of Rochester? That question occurred to him for a moment
to be at once flung away. It was not so much personal antagonism to such
a course nor the dread of madness owing to his double life that cast it
out so violently, but the recognition of the goodness and lovableness of
the woman. Leaving everything else aside to carry on such a deception
with her, even to think of it, was impossible.

More than ever was he determined to clear this thing up and tell her
all, and, to his honou