impossible, lie beside her, without so much as remembering their existence. Thinking! How could she help thinking? As long as there is nothing particular in your mind it is, of course, easy enough to occupy it with external matters; but when it is full--full to overflowing---- So Clare thought and thought till her mind felt on the eve of giving way. Arthur Arden had done her a great wrong--she thought he had done her such a wrong as a woman can never forgive to a man--not only preferred another to her, but made false pretences of love to her in order to enjoy that other’s society. Injury and contempt could go no further. He had wounded her heart, and struck a deadly blow at her maidenly dignity and pride. It was the bitterest wrong, and as such she had resented it. And yet perhaps Arthur Arden had been wronged as bitterly; perhaps he had unconsciously suffered all his life, and Providence had thrown the means of avenging him into her hands. Edgar, too, had been wronged, not in the same way, but by being made an instrument of injury. But from the thought of Edgar she shrank as if it hurt her. And her father, whom she had held in such reverence, whom she had worshipped as the very embodiment of all the Ardens, whom she had loved so much, and who had loved her--Clare shrank as if a shower of blows were hailing upon her head. She had thrust herself into his secrets, and now she must bear the burden. If she had pried over his shoulder while he was living, how poor, how dishonourable she would have felt herself; but she had done worse than that. She had stolen a surreptitious glance at his secrets after he was dead. Then she tried to calm herself down. Perhaps the words she had read did not mean what they seemed to mean. Perhaps they referred to something perfectly innocent, some piece of generosity on her father’s part of which he had said nothing to any one. But Clare felt that even were this the case she must bear the penalty of her prying. She dared not examine further. Her half-secret, which perhaps was no secret, must be the burden of her existence. Never would she breathe it to any one, never allow she knew it; never, never escape from its burning presence. If there was wrong involved, she must allow that wrong to go on; she must not even permit herself to see or approach the man who was the sufferer. And then, all at once, in the midst of her rage and indignation against him, and while she still felt that no punishment was too great to requite his treachery, there suddenly came upon poor Clare, in her inexperience and ignorance, a fit of such yearning for him as rent her very heart. What! with her injury so fresh, with all that anger and bitterness in her mind? Dismayed, bewildered, torn asunder, she thus found out that love will not go out of the heart at any formal bidding. It turned and rent her, like the demon, convulsing her very soul with pain. She opened her heavy eyes after the struggle with a despairing amazement in them.