"She is very pretty, I suppose, and a great deal younger than I am; never looks sullen, and has no cause. And yet he's not a man I should have thought to have been beguiled by any woman. _I_ never beguiled him, and I was pretty in my time, ay, and _new_ too! And I have lived in his sight all these years, and he has never sacrificed an hour of time or thought to me. And now he leaves me without hesitation, though I am ill. I have not talked about it, to be sure; but what is his skill worth, if he did not see it in my face and hear it in my voice without being told! I was not a _case_--I was only his wife; and he never thought of looking, never thought of caring whether I was ill or well. I appear at breakfast, and I go out every day; that's quite enough for him. I wonder if he knew what I suspect, what I should once have said _I hope_, is the cause; but that is a long time ago. Would it have made any difference? I don't mean now; of course it would not now; nothing makes any difference to a man when once his heart is turned aside, and quite filled by another. I don't think I ever touched his heart; I know only too well I never filled it." Mabel Wilmot was right. She had never filled her husband's heart. She had touched it though, for a time and after a light holiday kind of fashion, which had subsided when life began in earnest for them, and which he had laid aside and forgotten, as a boy might have abandoned and lost sight of the toys with which he had amused himself during a school vacation. And the girl had been deceived; had built silently in the inveterately undemonstrative recesses of her heart and fancy a fairy palace, destined to stand for ever empty. It had been swept and garnished; but the prince had never come to dwell there: he with busy feet had passed by on the other side, and she had nothing to do but to sit and mourn in the empty chambers. She had borne her grief valiantly until now; she had only known the passive side of it. But that was all over for ever; and the day that dawned after Wilmot's wife had received his letter found her a different woman from what she had been. "Are you sure you are not ill, Mabel?" asked Mrs. Prendergast the day after their colloquy over the letter. "You are so black under the eyes, and your face is so pinched, I fancy you must be ill." "Not more so than usual," said Mrs. Wilmot shortly. "Than usual, my dear! What _do_ you mean? Have you been feeling ill lately?" "Yes, Henrietta, very ill." "And have you been doing nothing for yourself? Have you not had advice?" "You know I have not. You have seen me very nearly every day, and you know I have done nothing without your knowledge." "But Wilmot?" said Mrs. Prendergast. "O Wilmot! Much he knows and much he cares about me! Don't talk nonsense, Henrietta. If I were dying, he would not see it while I could keep on my feet, which, I certainly should do as long as I could."