His visits were not frequent, but he became, in the end, acquainted with all the family, and even resumed a certain intercourse with Horace and Milly, his first meeting with whom was accidental and very painful. To see him elderly, stout, and (but perhaps this was one effect of some refinement of jealous and wounded feeling on the part of Mrs Lycett-Landon) oh so commonplace! and fallen from his natural level, shuffling his feet, reddening, smiling that confused and foolish smile, conciliating his children, gave to his wife almost the keenest pangs she had yet suffered. She could not bear to see him so lowered from his natural place. Tragedy is terrible, but when it drops into tragi-comedy, tragi-farce at the end, that is the most terrible of all. Pity, shame, something that was like remorse, though she was blameless, was in his wife's heart. The impulse in her mind was to go away out of the house that was his, and leave him in possession. But, to do him justice, he never, by look or word, reminded her that the house had been his, or that he was anything but a visitor. And what was the explanation of the strange passion which made him, at fifty, depart from all the traditions of his virtuous life--whether it was a passion at all, or only some wonderful, terrible gust of impatience, which made duty and the rule of circumstances, and all that he was pledged and bound to, insupportable--she never knew; nor whether he found that this poor game was even for a moment worth the blazing flambeau of revolution which it cost; or whether it cost him still more than that candle--the young life which he had blighted; whether Rose lived or died; or where he came from when he paid these visits to his old home, and disappeared into when they were over: all this Mrs Lycett-Landon lived in ignorance of, and so, in all probability, will die. MADEMOISELLE. CHAPTER I.