indeed, and they were not a few--were ascribed to one source. She had known this man in former days; he was of her society and set, and had probably made love to her, as had hundreds before; and Frank ground his teeth as he thought how Barbara's reputation as a flirt, and her attractive qualities as a coquette, had been kindly mentioned to him by more than one of her old friends. Some quarrel had probably occurred between them; during which he Frank had crossed her path, had fallen at her feet,--dazed idiot that he was!--and she had raised him up, and out of pique had married him. That was the story, Frank could swear to it! he turned it over and over in his mind until he believed it implicitly, and conjured up the different scenes and passages, which made his blood boil and sent him, with set teeth and scowling brow, stamping through the long-echoing Mesopotamian squares, to the intense wonder of the policeman and the few passers-by in those dreary thoroughfares. Only when he was quite alone, however, did he in the least give way to his emotions. When he was at home--where he and Barbara would now sit for hours without exchanging a word, and where the occasional presence of a third person rendered matters more horrible, compelling them to put on a ghastly semblance of affectionate familiarity--when he was at home, or down at the _Statesman_ Office, where he could be thoroughly natural, he was moody, stern, and silent. His manner had lost that round jollity which had always characterised it, and his appearance was beginning to change: he was thinner; there were silver lines in the brown hair, and two or three deep lines round the eyes.