And Mr. Linchmore? Had his wife judged him rightly? Yes, even so. The sad truth that she loved him not had crept slowly yet surely into his heart, vainly as he had striven to crush it; her indifference he had borne without resentment, hoping that in time she might be brought to love him; for he still loved her passionately, as also sternly, almost harshly, if I might so say. His was not a nature to change, and then his love for her had been the one deep, intense feeling of his manhood, a love that nothing short of death could change; but with his knowledge of her deceit had gone his trust; and latterly almost his respect. He now lived hoping that time might change her heart, or draw it towards him--a hopeless wish, since the very presence of him she had wronged, and who had innocently wrought his and her own life-long misery, was a reproach and bitterness to her. No wonder he was severe and stern! Yet there were times when his old impetuous nature would have sway, and shut up in his room alone with nothing but despairing thoughts, he would pace it in utter anguish of spirit, hoping, looking for what never could be, namely, the love of his wife. And so they lived on. She fearing his love. He mourning hers. What did she care for the dark Frenchman of whom her husband had grown jealous? and who had singled her out from among a multitude it might be for her haughty beauty, or it might be for the _éclat_ of being thought the favoured one of her who was the centre of admiration around which so many flocked at Paris the winter before Amy's arrival at Brampton? He had no intention, that man of the world, of falling in love with her; it was a flirtation, nothing more, and cost neither a pang. That she encouraged his attentions was without a doubt; that she despised him was without a doubt, too, seeing his absence--for Mr. Linchmore had positively forbidden him the house--did not cost her a sigh, not even a thought. What mattered it if he went? there were others to pay her the self-same attentions, others as gay and fascinating. So she went on her way in no degree wiser or better for the obstacle she had stumbled upon in her path, the provocation of her husband's wrath. Flirt she must. How otherwise divert her thoughts? those thoughts that crowded so relentlessly into her brain, threatening to overwhelm her with the memory of the one loved and lost; him whom she had thought to forget, or of whom she had hoped to crush out the remembrance. Ah! her heart was not all coldness. Did she not love her children passionately; and were not her very faults, bad as they were, caused by the one false step--the forsaking her early love? The storm between husband and wife blew over; it was not _outwardly_ of long duration, and again Mrs. Linchmore singled out another--it mattered not to her whom she flirted with. "_La belle Anglaise_"--as she was called--cared not; life to her was a blank--a dreary waste.