"Philip, Philip! what have I done? How could I tell?" she murmured, distractedly, tears welling into her eyes. "If I had only known! But how could I dream that child had any fascination for you? How could I fancy----" "Hush! No, you are in no way to blame. You could not know it. _I_ barely knew it till last night," he answered, gently. "Philip loves her, and _I_ have made her marry Goodwood!" thought Lady Marabout, agonized, remorseful, conscience-struck, heart-broken in a thousand ways at once. The climax of her woes was reached, life had no greater bitterness for her left; her son loved, and loved the last woman in England she would have had him love; that woman was given to another, and _she_ had been the instrument of wrecking the life to save or serve which she would have laid down her own in glad and instant sacrifice! Lady Marabout bowed her head under a grief, before which the worries so great before, the schemes but so lately so precious, the small triumphs just now so all-absorbing, shrank away into their due insignificance. Philip suffering, and suffering through her! Self glided far away from Lady Marabout's memory then, and she hated herself, more fiercely than the gentle-hearted soul had ever hated any foe, for her own criminal share in bringing down this unforeseen terrific blow on her beloved one's head. "Philip, my dearest, what _can_ I do?" she cried, distractedly; "if I had thought--if I had guessed----" "Do nothing. A woman who could give herself to a man whom she did not love should be no wife of mine, let me suffer what I might." "But _I_ persuaded her, Philip! Mine is the blame!" His lips quivered painfully: "Had she cared for me as--I may have fancied, she had not been so easy to persuade! She has much force of character, where she wills. He is here now, you say; I cannot risk meeting him just yet. Leave me for a little while; leave me--I am best alone." Gentle though he always was to her, his mother knew him too well ever to dispute his will, and the most bitter tears Lady Marabout had ever known, ready as she was to weep for other people's woes, and rarely as she had to weep for any of her own, choked her utterance and blinded her eyes as she obeyed and closed the door on his solitude. Philip--her idolized Philip--that ever her house should have sheltered this creature to bring a curse upon him! that ever she should have brought this tropical flower to poison the air for the only one dear to her! "I am justly punished," thought Lady Marabout, humbly and penitentially--"justly. I thought wickedly of Anne Hautton. I did not do as I would be done by. I longed to enjoy their mortification. I advised Flora against my own conscience and against hers. I am justly chastised! But that _he_ should suffer through me, that my fault has fallen on his head, that my Philip, my noble Philip, should love and not be loved, and that _I_ have brought it on him----Good Heaven! what is that?"