in her way of acting, gave her his support through all. This generous, if perhaps foolish, resolution, which was full of that grieved and suffering love which can no longer deny the justice of the accusations against its beloved, had been come to before he knew the necessity of returning home; but that necessity made it less forced and unnatural. For the last week of their stay there was little attempt at amusement. Denham, who had found great satisfaction in watching the proceedings of the bride, and who had already made many circles merry by his descriptions of her husband’s anxious endeavours to interest her in what she saw and heard, and her own absolute ignorance and unconcealed _ennui_, was ever at hand to suggest something, and had indeed two or three plans of his own for sharing this charming spectacle with some of his friends, with a trust in Arthur’s simplicity, which might not have been justified by the event. There were two in particular to whom he had promised an introduction to his “delicious Englishwoman,” had the young pair accepted the box at the Odéon which he had offered them, and the mischievous attaché was much disappointed by the failure of his plans. They declined it, however, with one accord. Nancy had quite convinced herself that it was “no fun” going to plays when you did not understand a word, and Arthur, on his side, had become disgusted with everything public. How did he know that they might not meet some one else whom he should be obliged to introduce to his wife, and whom his wife would receive with the same amiability which she had shown to Mrs. Curtis? The Curtises were still in Paris, and he had himself held an agitating conference with his aunt and Mary; but they came no more to the Rue Rivoli. This opportunity of making friends had been turned into the easiest way of making enemies. He would make no more such essays. Accordingly they sat “at home,” in the pretty little room with the white walls and white curtains. Arthur could always write his letters--it was not many he had to write now, as his family correspondence was cut off, and he had dropped most of his friends, but still he kept up the phrase; he wrote his letters, while she sat by the fire, sometimes taking out and putting in frills or trimmings to her dresses, sometimes yawning over a newspaper; they talked to each other a little now and then, and yawned in the intervals; they had no books except a few Tauchnitz volumes, which saved them from a complete breakdown, and they went early to bed which seemed always a virtuous thing to do. Thus the days went by. They did not talk any longer about going “home,” but it was tacitly understood between them that they were going _back_. This was what they had got to call it. And the day was fixed, and the boxes packed, and all settled, with scarcely any further consultation. Life, however, had become very sober prose after the triumphant exultation of the beginning, when three weeks after their