vicinity of Windsor, carry out these prescriptions by herself; and it scarcely needed his mother's entreaties to make Arthur see that, faute de mieux, he must be the companion of the beautiful Miriam's walks and rides. And so it came about that these two saw a good deal of each other. She could hardly, in the immediate and respectful; which even a very young girl appreciates, especially from a man in every way her superior; and to her he was like a god; she adored him. But she was not deceived; she read his complete indifference in eye and voice and manner, and the hopelessness of her love was gradually and surely sapping the springs of her life. No physician could minister to a disease like this. It was killing her, and she knew it; and she was thankful that if this was to be the end, her last months on earth were such blissful ones, spent with him listening to his voice, with its haunting sweetness, reading the lines of the grand and now growingly-stern face; marking his rare smiles, his gentle courtesies, his entire devotion to even the caprices of his sick mother. She, if any one could, appreciated the painstaking thoughtfulness for others which marked all his actions, the combined humility and strength, which, in their rare union, made him so judicious a guide-so tender a friend. I can imagine no place better suited to love-making than Windsor Forest, in its glorious, serene summer beauty. But although Arthur's artist eye had always found pleasure in the girl's marvellons beauty, his heart was full of the one woman who had absorbed it years ago, whom he loved, and ⚫ would love always to the end of time. Geraldine, old and faded and wrinkled, would have been more to him than this fairest of God's creatures, in her radiant prime. Few men are capable of constancy like this, without any hope of reward; but Arthur l'Estrange was one of these exceptions; and happy it is, I think, that they are rare. No other woman could ever touch his great heart. He had some of the elements of genius too in his composition, and genius is ever peculiar, proverbially humble too, and free from self-consciousness. And thus it never dawned upon him that the kind thoughtfulness he showed to his lovely companion, and which he would have shown to any woman under similar circumstances, was deepening day by day the passion which he had long ago inspired in the girl's warm and somewhat undisciplined nature. No wonder she had come to love him. He had been kind to her always, But if Arthur was blind, his mother was not. She did not intend this young life to wither if she could help it. She believed that marriage would cure him; she saw that he was heartsick; but she did not think that because he could not have the woman he loved, he should therefore not marry at all. And the more Mrs. l'Estrange saw of Miriam, the more she felt what a tender and devoted wife she would make to her son. She had a lighter nature, too, than his-a less sensitive and exacting one; and Mrs. l'Estrange believed in the force of contrasts, and was more than ever bent on bringing | now. I cannot take a step like this these two together. A busy man, she without imploring you to advise me— argued, wanted a wife more than other and not only for now, but for the fumen--some one to think for him, care ture: you know me so well, you can for him, watch over him. She had tell me what to do. My mother urges practised such strict economy all her me, but I shrink from obeying her in life, that Arthur would be very well this matter. I am no longer a very off at her death; so she had no fears young man, and I know well what a on the score of money; and for the loveless marriage means, especially to rest she built many castles, in which me. Geraldine, for once I must drop her beautiful protégée figured as the my mask, and tell you what you have heroine. probably guessed already. I have no love left to give to any woman. Colonel Trevelyan even is not wronged by this avowal. You know how I have held my peace for years; how I have never sought to see or meet you; how I have tried to prove a true friend, and not a false one. They say Miriam Lisle loves me; that I must marry her to save her life. I am not so vain as to believe this; but if you bid me, I will do it. I owe my mother much, and would make great sacrifices for her; she has set her heart on this marriage; the girl is true and tender, and has wound herself into my mother's life— shall I take her into mine? I tremble and am afraid; for I can never love her as a wife should be loved. Still, if you advise me to do it, I shall believe it to be right." It is a very common idea, even among very good people—that a great love may be filled by a lesser one; and that if you cannot have the woman who is all in all to you, you had better take one to wife who may be something. I must own I think it a dangerous theory, and to try the experiment | more dangerous still; but then I am a bachelor, and as such, perhaps, an incompetent judge. Mrs. l'Estrange must have forgotten her own youth-forgotten that she had resisted every entreaty, every persuasion, turned a deaf ear to the father who doated upon her, and whom she adored; yet she had left him to make a marriage on which she had set her heart for ten years, and which he had as long and as obstinately opposed. Old people should remember that they were once young themselves. CHAPTER XVIII. "But thou, If thou shouldst never see my face again, “I HAVE never written to you before and I hope you will forgive me Geraldine's answer was short and like herself: "I advise you to marry Miriam Lisle. I cannot say I wish it; but I think you will be doing right, and I pray God to bless you both. Let it be soon, for I cannot bear this long. She will not grudge my seeing you sometimes; and your mother, perhaps, will come to me when it is over. My love how she had been the ideal of his to her. "GERALDINE TREVELYAN." She sent Miriam a wedding-present, a beautiful and costly one, which delighted the girl, and a very loving, tender letter. The days went on. It was September when Geraldine first heard from Mr. l'Estrange on the subject of his marriage; it was late in November when the events I am about to chronicle took place. At first that letter had comforted her she knew she was beloved-he had said so; and for many weeks the knowledge was so sweet to think of-to know that she, and she alone, possessed his heart. She bore up well, and some of her old sunny joyousness came back to her. What did it signify who he married, or when, so long as he loved her? They would be more than ever to each other, when both were trying to live for duty, and for duty only; when to both a loveless life was before them, and nothing could alter it. In the old days she had often thought of his marrying, and fancied | how desperately in love he would be, and how tender and chivalrous and romantic would be that devotion. What a fate was in store for the object of it! She did not wonder that he was to marry Miriam; his mother wished it, and the girl loved him. She shivered a little at this; but altogether I think that she was happier after that letter than she had been for years; and some weeks later she received another from him, in which he told her all his secret life from the first moment he beheld her; how her goodness, and her unselfishness, and her purity, had taught him many lessons; how, had they met earlier, it would have been the hope and happiness of his life to try and win her; how, as time went on, and he had seen her as a wife, he had learned to respect her more and more; how her influence had helped him through his life, had kept him from wrongdoing; how, having once given his whole heart into her keeping, he could never take back the gift, but the pure love had sanctified his life, and made holy to him the name of woman. He told her how he should never cease to love her, but as the angels are loved; and ended by praying God to bless her, to bless them both, to make them able to do their duty in this world, though happiness was denied them. Geraldine treasured this letter even more than the former; and peace, for the first time since her ill-starred marriage, seemed to settle on her heart. She visited the tiny grave of her firstborn, and wept with less bitterness than she had ever done since that sad time. She played with her sweet, beautiful little girl, and went singing about the old house with much of her early brightness. This happy state of things had lasted some weeks, when one morning, at breakfast, Colonel Trevelyan flung down the paper with an expression strong even from his lips. "I always thought the fellow a fool, but not such an ass as this-a man really well-born too. Lucky, poor Doncaster has been dead these twenty | ever lighted on. It is well for us that such moments cannot last, for they threaten to unhinge reason; and no doubt for the time we are not sane. years. He was a proud old fellow, and I believe it would have killed him. With such a name too! Miriam Lisle -a Jewess, of course.-Geraldine, did you know what a fool L'Estrange was going to make of himself?" And, indulging in more coarse witticisms than I care to repeat, he fortunately did not wait for an answer; as at that moment they came to say his horse was waiting; and presently he left the room. They were alone at Trevelyan; and as soon as the door closed upon her husband, Geraldine picked up the paper and read the announcement. Then, for the first time, she seemed to realize what had happened; that he was lost to her; that from henceforth they would become almost strangers to cach other. She carried the paper upstairs, and went slowly to her boudoir -the room she had sat in when her child died. The day seemed interminable-and yet she never knew how it went; she locked her door, and did not even hear the servants when they came to tell her that luncheon was ready. Some hours later, they said the same thing about the tea, and Geraldine's maid came and asked to speak to her. Still she never moved. At last her little girl came and battered at the door with her tiny babyhands, and called, "Mamma, mamma!" piteously; but the mother neither heard nor heeded. She was in fact both deaf and blind-for the sunshine poured into the room; and if she thought about it at all, it struck her as the dreariest day her eyes had | Fortunately for her, Colonel Trevelyan had ridden far to attend some petty sessions, and would not be home till evening; so she was left undisturbed. She sat on in blank despair; for the first time realizing all that Arthur l'Estrange had been to her. She was frightened at herself, and at the might of her own feelings. It was not so much sorrow that she felt as furyfury; blind, impotent, wild despair gnawed at her heart. How dare any woman be his wife? Why was she always to suffer, and others to be happy? She had, as we know, felt passionate indignation when her husband had so wronged her in the early days of their married life. She shuddered even now, when she thought of the curse he was bringing upon his own soul by his wickedness; she had prayed for him in abject selfabasement, and had even hated herself at times because she had forgiven him. It seemed to her pure soul as if she was contaminated by his sin; but God had helped her, and she had been a faithful and good wife, if not a loving one. And this was the end-this was the blow which was to crush her. She was to go through her life unloved always, and the man who had been her true and tender friend had formed for himself other ties. Might she even pray for him now? That was the agony, the crowning agony of all. She had a very gentle, very good, very unselfish nature, this poor woman of whom I write; but she shuddered now at herself; she felt that her heart had depths which she had never fathomed. What had she expected? Did she think that Arthur was never to marry for her sake? that he was to disappoint and grieve his widowed mother, and live alone always, without children's voices and woman's love, because of her?-she who could never be any thing to him-she who was fettered by ties which at that moment seemed loathsome as they had never done before, unbearable, too hard. Then Satan whispered to her, why might they never have been any thing to each other? Why should both their lives be wasted for evermore, as they would be, as they were-for what? that she might respect the honor of a man who did not know what the word honor meant. Gradually she recollected what had taken place-that he was married also; fettered as she was. Oh, why had he done it? she cried in anguish. Why had he put that invincible barrier between them? Was not life hard enough to her before? Was it not all she could do to bear it? And she had lost him as a friend. Even in her misery she could not be so wicked and ungenerous as to rob another woman of her husband. But she hated the woman who was his wife-and natures like hers are not given to hatred-and it was bitter to her, unspeakably bitter. There are no words in human language which can paint the suffering of that long and weary day. As she grew calmer, she began to wonder what would they do, this man and his wife, with love only on one side; and who could help loving Arthur l'Estrange? Was he not so good and so true, so tender too, that in time he also must love the beautiful, winning creature who was now his wife? Yes, he would love her, Geraldine felt sure, some day; not perhaps as he might have loved her. And oh the agony of that "might!" What did it not reveal to her! To have been loved like that-protected, shielded, helped through life-not as the plaything and the idol of an hour or a day, but the companion and friend of a lifetime, who would be dearer as years went on, even though they should endure for eternity. That was her idea of love. Vaguely she knew it was his also; and if he had really loved her like this, why had he left her to so sad a fate? why had she hardly seen him all the summer? why for years had she not even heard from him? Visions floated through her mind of what life with him would have been, in perhaps a foreign land with cloudless skies and glorious sunshine; a life in which he could have worked out some of his beau-idéals, and she would have helped him in her sweet womanly fashion, watching, and waiting, and loving, and praying, as so many women spend their lives, not expecting him to give up any thing for her, and yet ready to give up all if need be for him. She seemed to realize that an infinite beauty and an infinite holiness would have belonged to a union like this—a union which would be beautiful and holy to the end. For the first time it came into her |