Threw her off! Had they ever been near enough for him to do so; were not they quite as near now as ever they had been? Was it not only the blessed darkness of her mental vision which had hitherto kept her from discovering this fact? “He never loved me,” Heather decided—“never; and he has found it out too late.” And then there came over her soul a terrible pity for him, which swallowed up all sense of personal wrong—all anger—all selfishness. She could not unmarry him; she could not give him the woman he might have loved, the wealth that might have made him contented. She was no heroine—this Heather of mine; tragedy was not in her nature. The idea of freeing him from the yoke under which he had voluntarily put his neck, never occurred to her. To flee to the ends of the earth, to part from him, leaving a note of insufficient explanation behind; to rush off with the first man who whispered a few civil words to her, and let her husband walk through the Divorce Court to liberty; to purchase a little bottle of poison and kill first her children and then herself—these very feasible and proper courses, were ideas which never even crossed Mrs. Dudley’s mind. Outside of lunatic asylums, amongst the decorous and unexcitable people to be met with in society, or when we take our walks abroad, we are told, by those who profess to know their fellow-creatures thoroughly, that such impulsive, devoted, unselfish creatures exist; but Heather’s imagination never soared to such heights of passionate self-sacrifice. They were married, and the time for even thinking of parting with Arthur being past for ever, all she could do was to try to make him as happy as possible. For who could tell? Like David, she thought that the Lord might yet be gracious to her, that some day, perhaps, Arthur would know how much she loved him, and give her back a portion of love in return.