again with joy? The sorrowful look was a tribute to one who had cruelly deceived her, who had merited her bitterest hatred for the manner in which he had treated her. A word, probably, would disperse those clouds of grief, would turn her from a weeping mourner to an outraged woman, would show her how terrible was her present position, and would probably render her wildly anxious to escape from it. But to speak that word to Alice, to acquaint her with John Calverley's crime, would be to point out to her her own degradation, to inflict upon her the sharpest wounds that brutality could devise, to uproot her faith in honesty and goodness, and to send her forth cowering before the world. The man who could do this would prove himself Alice Claxton's direst enemy; it was Humphrey Statham's hope to take rank as one of her dearest friends; and in this hope he suffered and was silent. One of her dearest friends! Nothing more than that; he had never dared to hope that he should be anything more to her. She was likely to remain constant to the memory of him whom she believed to have been her husband, and no one who had her welfare at heart would attempt to shake her in that constancy. With the exception of the doctors, indeed--who were not likely to trouble themselves--there was no one capable of giving her the information so fatal to her peace of mind, save the three tried friends who were occupying themselves in watching over her. Three tried friends? Yes, he thought he might say that; for this Frenchwoman, whom he had distrusted at first, seemed to be fulfilling her self-imposed duty with strictness and singleness of purpose. Humphrey Statham was not a man likely to be imposed upon by specious assurances, unless they were carried out by corresponding acts. When Martin Gurwood had made him acquainted with Madame Du Tertre's proposal, he had agreed to their acceptance _faut de mieux_, but only as a temporary measure, and without any opinion of their lasting qualities. However, since Pauline's association with the Pollington-terrace household, he had carefully watched her, and in spite as it were of himself, found himself compelled to give her credit for unselfishness and devotion to Alice's cause. What might be her motive, what the guiding-string of her conduct, so long as it involved no danger to Alice, was no concern of his. Humphrey Statham was too much a man of the world to ascribe it entirely to the sense of wishing to do her duty, or the gratification of an overweening affection which she had taken for the deserted girl. He argued rather that she herself had been the victim of some treachery or some disappointment in a degree similar to that unconsciously suffered by Alice, and that hence arose her sympathy for Mrs. Claxton, which, added to a dislike of the world, had induced her to seek for the position of Alice's companion. But this idea Humphrey Statham kept to himself; as being one rather likely to frighten a man of Martin