thrift; it was the end of possibility--the knowledge that now there was no longer anything to expect. On the other side of the passage Bessie’s own sleeping-room was inhabited by a restless fever of disappointment and despair and hope. There was Mrs Christian lying on her daughter’s bed. The poor woman was half-crazed with the whirl of passion in her brain. That intolerable sense of having been duped and deceived, of actually having a hand in the overthrow of all her own hopes, aggravated her natural disappointment into frenzy. When she recollected her state of exultation that morning, her confident intentions--when they were to remove, what changes were to be in their manner of life, even what house they were to occupy--it is not wonderful if the veins swelled in her poor head, and all her pulses throbbed with the misery of the contrast. But with all this there mingled a vindictive personal feeling still more exciting. Nancy, whom she knew more of than any one else did--her close, secret, unwavering enemy; and even the innocent lawyer, whom, in her present condition of mind, she could not believe not to have known of this dreadful cheat practised upon her, or not to care for that prize which, now that it was lost, seemed to her worth everything that was precious in life. The poor creature lay goading herself into madness with thoughts of how she would be revenged upon these enemies; how she would watch, and track out, and reveal their hidden plots against her; how she would triumph over and crush them. All these half-frenzied cogitations were secretly pervaded--a still more maddening exasperation--by a consciousness of her own impotence. The evening came creeping in, growing dark around her--silence fell over the little house, where nobody moved or spoke, and where all the world, the heavens, and the earth, seemed changed since this morning; but the wonder was how that silence could contain her--all palpitating with pangs and plans, a bleeding, infuriated, wounded creature show no sign of the frenzy it covered. She had lain down to rest, as the saying is. How many women are there who go thus to a voluntary crucifixion and torture by lying down to rest! Mrs Christian lay with her dry eyes blazing through the darkness, no more able to sleep than she was to do all that her burning fancy described to her. She was a hot-blooded Celtic woman, of that primitive island which has preserved her name. If she could have sought sympathy, here was nobody to bestow it. Not the heart which that poor ghost of manhood in the next room had lost out of his chilled bewildered bosom; not Bessie’s steadfast, unexcited spirit. The poor soul saved herself from going wild by thinking of her boy; holding out her passionate arms to him thousands of miles away; setting him forth as the deliverer, with all the absolute folly of love and passion. He would come home and have justice done to his mother. Never fancy was more