"I cannot be sufficiently grateful," he answered; "but--" there was an almost imperceptible tone of sarcasm in his voice; "but I never have been parted from my wife, Lord Randolph; and I do not think she would desire or like it--that is, I hope not." And he fixed his eye for a moment on the other's face, who saw nothing, and consequently more than once urged the subject upon Miles, who grew at last almost rude, beyond his power of control. "Tremenhere's out of temper to-day," said the visitor to himself. "I'm sure it would be the best thing he could do, and a duty, to place that sweet wife of his, in her proper sphere; I'll be at him again." All these groundless suspicions wore on his really noble nature, every thing giving way before them; even the sacred hope which once had been so dear to him, the re-establishing his mother's fame, became a blank. He cared for nothing, except to watch and verify his doubts; he became weary, feverish, ill, and an enigma to all! almost too--oh, worse than all--a terror to poor Minnie, who was lost in wonder and perplexity. If she quitted the room for a longer time than was pleasing to him, he stole from his easel, and listened; if he saw her writing, he could not rest till the letter was placed in his hands, even the book on which she had written it was examined, to trace whether the blotting-paper had kept the words confided to it; and, when all had been done with feverish haste, the man sat down, and hated himself for his meanness, and seeking out Minnie, drew her to his heart, as if he would keep her ever there, and almost wept over her in penitence and love; for never a man loved more madly or fatally for the peace of both. He would start from some mad dream of desertion, and, stilling his very heart to listen, find her sleeping purely and calmly as an infant beside him. Such a state could not last; Minnie, every one noticed it, but few--or better said, none--guessed the cause, so well did he veil his thoughts. We have spoken little of Minnie's late home, but there was little to interest the reader in that tranquil abode,--tranquil, except when Dorcas sought to recall Minnie there, and to their hearts; this might have been accomplished long before the present time of which we write, had there not been extraneous influence to keep alive the feeling against her. Marmaduke Burton was not only a visiter, but a constant correspondent, when absent, of Juvenal's; nothing was left undone which could widen the breach, and it was with the "deepest regret," he said, that he felt compelled, by a sacred duty, to inform Juvenal, as her uncle, that the once pure Minnie was deceiving her husband, as she had all of them. Alas! the girl who flies her home, leaves an unanswerable argument against her, when the world afterwards adds sin, shame, or a levity to her charge; however innocent she may be, the "once" is a precedent for all.