upon sin, but how can a baby sin? | mother. She sat down on a low nurs ing-chair near the fire, and burst intɔ an uncontrollable passion of weeping a weeping so sad and so terrible that it threatened to rend body and soul asunder-a weeping which was agony to see, as it was agony to suffer, but it was better than the unnatural calm— had Mr. l'Estrange known it. He was, however, really alarmed; and, having rung the bell, the nurse sent for Mrs. St. Vincent. Where is he gone, and why? Happy people, with husbands that love them, keep their children, and mine is gone! I envy John Goodman's wife! You know she nursed my little baby, and she was so kind to him, and she has four lovely children to climb upon her knee and to hang round her neck; and John, her husband, adores her, and says there is not such another woman in all the world. He only spared her to us because he said he was sorry for She tried soothing at first, and then me. It must have been because they began to scold every one-the nurse thought baby always delicate that they for not having summoned her sooner; were both so kind. Sometimes I think Mr. l'Estrange for having allowed her I must go away; I cannot live here! | daughter to come into this room ; and The nurseries open out of this room. the unfortunate Geraldine herself, who Colonel Trevelyan did not wish it at was now so utterly exhausted that she first, but he was kind about it, and gave lay back with her eyes shut, and apme my way; and now they are silent parently with very little consciousness rooms, and so dreary. Would you like of what was going on around her. to come in? ?" Mr. l'Estrange, feeling he could be of no further use, and quite overcome by the sad scene, left the room, and shortly afterward the house. CHAPTER XV. "To be her champion, And war with fiends for her; that were a 'quest'- She got up languidly, and to humor her Mr. l'Estrange followed. The sad tidiness of that big, beautiful room struck even upon him with a pangthe cot wheeled into a corner and covered up, the toys all put away. Only one vestige of the dead baby remained a little shoe and sock, probably forgotten by the nurse, lay in a corner of the mantel-piece. Geraldine walked straight up to it, took it mechanically, and put it into her dress. The nurse, who was sitting by the fire doing some work, looked surprised at her mistress's entrance. She got up respectfully, and saying, "I hope you feel a bit better, ma'am," left the room. But the sight of the desolate nursery was too much for the poor young | Square," and the initials. He had had "COME to me; I must speak to you, and at once. G. T." This was all the note contained, except the date; and as Mr. l'Estrange had never seen Geraldine's handwriting, he would have been altogether at a loss as to who his correspondent was, but for the direction, แ "Grosvenor no communication with the Trevelyans | was so unlike herself, that Arthur was since he left them six months before, both surprised and alarmed. He took after the death of the poor baby. He the letter she held out to him, and had had called several times in Grosvenor no sooner glanced at it and at the Square to inquire after our heroine, and signature, than the mystery was solved. had been told she was not in town- It was from the Duchess of Clevedon that no one knew when the family to Colonel Trevelyan, and left no would arrive, as they had gone to the doubt, even upon a mind so innocent sea-side for the health of Mrs. Trevel- and unsuspicious as Geraldine's, of the yan, who was very far from well. nature of the connection between them. It referred slightly to the young wife and her bitter weeping over her dead child, and pitied him for being tied to so senseless a being. It was evident that the writer was really attached to Colonel Trevelyan, and was bitterly jealous of even the little kindness which the death of their child had caused him to show his wife; that she regretted the seclusion in which he had lately lived; and that she sought to see him immmediately on his arrival in London. Arthur could neither ignore nor disobey the summons, though he now fully realized that the less they saw of each other in the future the better. It was already early in the afternoon when the note reached him; but he lived so far from fashionable precincts, that he did not wait to do more than put away his pictures; and, having left word with the servant that his model was not to wait for him, he hailed a hansom cab, and was soon on his way to Grosvenor Square. door flew open, and besides the porter, Mrs. Trevelyan's own servant was evidently waiting to conduct him to the presence of his mistress. He found Geraldine pacing up and down the long drawing-room, looking flushed and excited, but considerably stronger than when last he had seen her. She shook hands with him in silence, but no sooner had the door closed than she said, almost wildly: The "You will forgive me for troubling you. I have no one to consult, no one to help me, and I am almost beside myself. My father is gone abroad to recruit after his accident, and of course my mother is with him. Read that." "I found it in his dressing-room, when I went to get something for him, which he wanted for his foot. He has not been well lately; he hurt his ankle, and was quite helpless for several days. I ought not to have read it, I know; but I picked it up on the floor, and put it into my pocket with some of my own letters; and until I got to the allusion to myself, I could not imagine from whom it came." She spoke in cold, measured tones now, but with a degree of concentrated indignation, which was only restrained by a great effort. "It accounts for this also," she said, handing him an anonymous letter, which warned her in coarse terms She spoke so abruptly, her manner to beware of a certain aristocratic lady, high in the scale of the upper | ignorant of the temptations by which ten thousand. "I got this some months ago, but was too miserable to take any notice of it. Now, this is more than I can bear, and I am going. I have sent for you to ask your advice -you have always been kind to mewhere shall I go ?" He looked at her with grave compassion, much as you would look at a child-for to him she seemed little more. "My dear Mrs. Trevelyan, you cannot leave your home because you have found a letter which-" he hesitated-" which I deeply regret should have ever fallen into your hands." "You do not believe it?" she said, eagerly. "I do not love Colonel Trevelyan, but I would rather not believe it-for the sake of my dead child I would rather not. I should like to be able to respect my darling's father. Say you do not believe it, and I will thank you from my heart." Mr. l'Estrange could not speak, but she read his answer in his eyes; and her husband's perfidy seemed all the blacker, that it apparently produced no surprise in her listener, and was evidently already known to him. The artist had not the faintest idea that she drew these conclusions from his manner. He had always dreaded the moment when she should be enlightened, but he was not prepared for the vehemence of her indignation, | nor for the agony of shame and grief which overpowered her. He forgot that the very young are the harshest of judges, and that the seclusion and innocence of her life made her quite men of the world are surrounded. "Where am I to go?" she repeated, fiercely, all her gentle feminine sweetness gone. "Advise me, for God's sake; I have not a friend in the world but you, and under his roof I will not stay! He promised as I did—he has broken his vows, I am free from mine; I will go." "Dear Mrs. Trevelyan, where can you go? If your father and mother had been in England, you might have gone to them for a time; and I wish to Heaven they were within reach-for perhaps, under the circumstances, a temporary separation would be better for you both; but now I fear you must stay and bear it; and God help you! for man cannot." "And is that all you have to say?" she broke in, passionately. "You, who call yourself my friend, ask me—expect me, to stay in this house, where the grossest insult to a wife has been dealt to me-me, who, poor wretch, have nothing to love, who have lost my little child, and with it every thing I cared for-his little child too; and I would have loved him for its sake, if he would have let me. Do you know that even my father cannot sympathize with me now, as he used, and that literally I seem to have nothing left in this world to care for; worst of all, I am beginning to doubt the existence and the happiness of another. That he could so deceive me! that that woman could come and live in our house, and stay under the same roof as my innocent child, and rob me and him like that! I see it all now. THE LAW OF DIVORCE. Edmund was never the same to me after she came. Why, even the servants must have known it." She colored all over in her passionate wrath: the shame of the whole hideous fact struck her with such horror, that she might have been the guilty one. "Yes, I will go this very night! But where to? I am glad the baby is gone now. I should not have liked him to rough it, but I am young and strong, and can. Do advise me." "Will you be guided by my advice if I give it?” Mr. l'Estrange said almost sternly. "Will you promise me beforehand to do nothing rashly?" "I don't know, I can't say," she answered, awed by his manner, but still speaking fast, and as if she hardly knew what she was saying. 65 "I thought so!" she exclaimed triumphantly; "I was sure there was some law which protects women. Tell me what it is." "It is called the law of divorce," he said, sadly. "No doubt, if you choose to bring up this letter and other proofs, which I fear you could get, you could bring your husband's name into the Divorce Court, and the law in its present state would annul your marriage; but how you would bear it, God only knows. You shuddered just now to think that the servants knew of this unrighteous act. How would you feel if the whole of London could read in print all the details of the case against your husband? How would you like it to be the gossip, not only of private houses, but of the clubs? What anguish must be yours when you heard the proud name your little son would have borne, "If your father were here, would you listen to him?" he urged. "Of course I would; how can you dragged through the dirt, loaded with ask?" "He would tell you to be patient, and to submit. You belong to your husband now, and can have no separate existence of your own. It is your duty to stay with him. Will you make his wrong right by leaving him? Because he has broken his vow, are you released from yours? Believe me, Geraldine, you are in your right place only in your husband's home and under his protection." "There is a law-I am sure there is-which releases me," the girl said between her teeth, almost under her breath; but Arthur caught the words. "Yes," he said gently, "there is the law." infamy, derision, and spite, and you realized that it was your own act which had brought this about?" The unfortunate girl clasped her hands above her head and said: “Oh, spare me! you are cruel.” "It is you who are cruel," he said gently—" cruel to yourself, cruel to me, cruel to the man whose name you bear." His heart bled for her, but this was not a moment in which to spare her. He felt that he must speak boldly, and make her face all the consequences of the step she was contemplating. "You are young and fair, and, as you say, without friends who could or would protect you against your hus band. A woman always bears the blame, even when she is as guiltless as you are, and when the wrong is as hard to bear. If you leave the protection of your home, the world will say at once there must have been errors on both sides—faults of temper, or something. If you remain, you put your husband so utterly in the wrong, that every feeling of chivalry will rise up in him." "You do not know him," she said sadly; "you judge him by yourself. He has neither chivalry nor any thing else. He thinks I am sufficiently honored by being his wife. He thinks a fine house and diamonds and a well- | appointed carriage are all that a woman can or does care for; that they constitute sufficient happiness to make you able and willing to bear any thing -any indignity and degradation, for it is degradation that his conduct has brought upon me. You may say what you please—you may think what you like; but God never intended that there should be such a difference between men and women-that the code of morals should be strict for one and lax for the other. You think I am young, and can be no judge of these things. I was young once; but I am so no longer. I feel as old and weary of my life as a woman double my age might do. I wished to make a good wife. Even in my sorrow, almost unshared as it has been, I have tried to be an unselfish one; for my child's sake I have always thought tenderly of my husband; with all my heart I have wished and prayed and tried to do my duty-God knows I have. But it is over now. No man should dare to insult his wife as Colonel Trevelyan has insulted me. He thinks of me as a child, and as such unlikely ever to suspect and discover his treachery. Ah me, a child! A child, then, with bitter experiences, with a loveless life before me-a dishonored home to live in. I ask you again, how am I to stay here and bear it? Do you think I would sully my lips by letting him know that I have discovered his secret? Do you think I am a woman to do this, or to reproach him? I would die first; and so I ask you, how am I to stay here? how am I to live my life under this roof, with that horrible secret burning in my heart-with its guilt pressing upon my soul, and dragging me down to the level of a sin so hideous? And him?-for, after all, he is my husband. I cannot bear that he should go to hell; and we know that for sins like this there can be no redemption—not even the blood of Jesus can wash away a stain so foul." He let her rave on, being amazed and overwhelmed, and almost inclined to think she must have cared somewhat for the man whose faithlessness could move her to such indignation as this. He judged as a man would, not seeing that her pride was outraged so cruelly, that the insult was to her pure nature a more deadly one than it would have been to many women-to an older one perhaps, or to one who had seen more of the world, and knew something of its temptations and its sin. He was as sorry for her as he could be. But he also was agonized. What if she loved this husband, who |