"I tell you candidly," he says, with reckless emphasis, "I should have been false to one or other of you, and it certainly would not have been to you." "You malign yourself," she says, looking at him with steadfast love. "Do I? What a fool you are!" he says, roughly. "Well, by your own mad folly you have separated us irretrievably. Blame yourself for this, not me. My affairs are so hopelessly entangled that I must quit the country without delay. Your own mad act has rolled an ocean between us." He turns, and goes towards the door. Wild with grief and despair, she follows him, and lays a detaining hand upon his arm. "Not like this, Horace!" she whispers, desperately. "Do not leave me like this. Have pity. You shall not go like this! Be merciful: you are my all!" "Stand out of my way," he says, between his teeth: and then, as she still clings to him in her agony, he raises his hand and deliberately strikes her. Not violently, not severely, but still with sufficient force to make her stagger backwards and catch hold of a chair to keep her from falling. He is gone: and she, stunned, quivering, half blind with nervous horror, still stands by the chair and tries to realize all that has passed. As she draws a deep breath, she places her hand, with a spasmodic movement, to her left side, as though to quell some darting pain that lies there. The action brings back consciousness, and that saddest of all things, memory. "He did not mean it," she whispers to herself, with white set lips. "It was not a blow; it was only that he wished to put me to one side, and I was in his way, no doubt: I angered him by my persistency. Darling! How could I think that he would hurt me?" Languid, heart-broken, she creeps to her bed, and, flinging herself upon it, dressed as she is, sleeps heavily until the morn, "diffusing round a trembling flood of light," wakes her to grief once more. CHAPTER XXXVI. "Have mind that eild aye follows youth; Death follows life with gaping mouth; Sen erdly joy abidis never, Work for the joy that lastis ever; For other joy is all but vain, And erdly joy returns in pain."--W. DUNBAR. Something within her knows he will return. Yet all the next day long she sits in terrible suspense, not being certain of the end. Towards noon he comes, sullen, disdainful, and dark with depression. He sinks into a chair, looking tired and careworn. "You have over-fatigued yourself?" she says, gently, going over to him and touching his hand lightly. "No. I have been to Pullingham again and back; that is all." "There again?" she says. "And you saw----?"