“It is not her fault,” he said. “It is the want of training. She has never realised it, what she married for. She thinks it was only to be happy, to be loved and flattered, to have everything happy round her.” This the poor young fellow said as if it was the best excuse in the world. “That is how she has been brought up. It is not her fault. She has not considered me, nor that there is a duty; and was I to be the one to remind her of her duty, Durant? I did not want her to love me because it was her duty. I wanted her to do her duty because of her love,” said Arthur, unconsciously antithetical. Durant listened to everything, and made few comments. If he said anything in sympathy for his friend which meant condemnation of Nancy, Arthur rose up and stopped him. “How can you tell how she was aggravated?” he said. It was not till the middle of the night that Durant could persuade him to go to bed; and by that time the desolateness of the dreary little house without Nancy, which had no soul or meaning but Nancy, struck Lewis almost as much as it did Arthur. Poor little miserable shell of a place, which had outgrown its sense and its use! Next day was a busy but a miserable day. Durant was at the Bates’ little house as soon as it was opened in the morning, hoping that his eloquence might be more effectual than that of the poor young husband, and that he might be able, through her mother, to induce Nancy to come back. He found Mrs. Bates very anxious and tearful, very well disposed, but powerless. He gave her a hint of the proposal he had brought from Oakley, and of the unconditional surrender of the Curtises, which the mother carried to her daughter upstairs, but without any favourable issue. Later he came back with Arthur. Nancy kept upstairs, she would not show--and all the household was against her. “I never held with it,” said the tax-collector. “I told my wife so from the first. I never hold with a young woman complaining of her husband. Mrs. Bates is too kind a mother, that’s what it is.” These things penetrated into Arthur’s heart almost unawares; that his wife had complained of him all through; that there had been talk of the advantages of the marriage, and that Nancy had hoped to be well off, and to make a great match, and had married him with that view. All these things sank into his heart. Was this true, or was it all the truth? It cannot be said that he believed it, yet it acted upon him as if he had believed, bringing a mingled pain and bitterness, against which at this moment he was incapable of struggling. All that day long they kept coming and going, pleading with her to return; but when another night came, and the slow hours dragged through with the same excitements as before--without her, or hope of her--all sense of possible renewal died out of these hasty young hearts, and the severance seemed complete. END OF SECOND VOLUME. London: Printed by A. Schulze, 13, Poland Street.