"Name o' goodness!" uttered Davvy, who was three-parts Welsh, and was privately wondering whether her lady had gone suddenly demented. "And what's it all for, my lady?—and where is it you want to go?"

Anywhere; this house is no longer a home for me. At leastthere, don't stand staring, but do as I tell you," broke off Lady Adela, saying anything that came uppermost in her perplexity and fear. "Put up a few things for me in haste, and get a cab."

'Am I to attend you, my lady?" asked the bewildered woman. "No-yes-no. Yes, perhaps you had better," finally decided Lady Adela, in grievous uncertainty. "Don't lose a moment."

Davvy obeyed orders, believing nevertheless that somebody's head was turned. She got herself ready, packed a carpet bag, had the thought to take her lady a cup of tea, exchanging a little private conference with her crony, the butler, while she made it, and ordered the cab. Then she and Lady Adela came down and got into it, neither of them having the slightest notion for what quarter of the wide world she was bound.

"Where to?" asked John of Davvy, as she followed her mistress into the cab. "Where to, my lady?" demanded Davvy, in turn. "Anywhere. Tell him to drive on," responded Lady Adela. "Tell him to drive straight on," said Davvy to John.

"Where can I go? —Where shall I be safe?" thought Adela to herself, as they went along. "I wonder-I wonder if Sarah would take me in?" came the next thought. "They "-the "they" applying to the legal thief-catchers-" would never think of looking for me there. Sarah is angry with me, I know, but she won't refuse to hide me.Davvy, direct the man to Colonel Hope's."

This last sensible injunction was a wonderful relief to Davvy's troubled mind. And to Colonel Hope's they went.

Lady Sarah "took her in," and Adela hid herself away in the bedroom of her sister Frances. Truth to say, they were in much anxiety themselves, the Colonel included, as to what trouble and exposure might not be falling upon Adela. They did not refuse to shelter her, but they let her know tacitly how utterly they condemned. Lady Sarah was coldly distant in manner; the Colonel would not see her at all.

Before the day was over- it was in the afternoon-Grace came to them with the truth-that Charles Cleveland was released and had gone to Netherleigh. Adela, perhaps not altogether entirely reassured about herself, said she would stay at the Colonel's another night, if permitted: and she did so.

That was the explanation of Adela's absence from home. She had left the house in fear; not voluntarily to quit it, or her husband. Her husband, however, not knowing this, took up the other view, and dwelt upon it as he walked away from Lord Acorn's in the summer sun. Not that, one way or the other, it would make any difference to him. Entering his house, Mr. Grubb went straight up-stairs to his

dressing-room, intending to change the coat he wore for a lighter one. The bed-room door came first. He opened it, intending to pass onwards, when he came face to face with his wife.

Just for a moment he was taken aback, for he had supposed the room to be empty. She had returned from Lady Sarah's, and was standing at the dressing-glass, doing something to her hair, her bonnet evidently just taken off. She wore a quiet dress of black silk-the

one she had gone away in.

That frequent saying, "when the devil was sick" was alluded to a few pages back. It might again be quoted. Lady Adela, when she thought the trouble had not passed and her heart was softened, had mentally rehearsed once more a little scene of tenderness, to be enacted when she should next meet her husband. She met him now; and she turned back to the looking-glass without speaking a word. She now knew that the danger was over; over for good. Charley was discharged scatheless; her own name had been kept silent and sacred-and there was an end of it.

She turned back to the glass, after looking round to see who it was that had come in, saying not a word. Possibly she anticipated a lecture, and deemed it the wiser plan to keep silent-who knew? Not Mr. Grubb. She gave him neither word nor smile, neither tear nor kiss.

He walked across the room and stood at the window nearest the dressing-table, turning to face her. Could she not have said good morning?—could she not have asked him how he had been these three days, and what the news was from Blackheath ? She appeared to be too much occupied with her pretty hair.

"I must request you to give me your attention for a few minutes, Lady Adela."

There was something in the proud, distant tone, in the formality of the address, that caused her to glance at him quickly. She did not like his face. It was stern, impassive, as she had never before seen it. "Yes," she answered, quite timidly.

In the same cold tone, with the same unbending countenance, Mr. Grubb in a few concise words informed her of the resolution he had taken. He could never allow her to inhabit the same house with himself again; her father and mother would receive her back in her maiden home. The arrangements connected with this step had been settled between himself and Lord Acorn: and-and-he should be glad if she made it convenient to leave Grosvenor Square that day.

Intense astonishment, gradually giving place to dismay, kept her silent. The comb dropped from her hand. "Anything but this," beat the refrain in her heart; "anything but this!" For Lady Adela, so alive to the good opinion of the world, would almost have preferred death than that she should be put away publicly by her husband.

"You have no right to do this," she cried, her face ashy pale.

"No right! After what has passed? Ask your father whether I possess the right, or not," he added, his voice stern with indignation. "But for my clemency, you might have taken the place from which Charles Cleveland has been released."

"Is that the reason?" she gasped.

"It has afforded the justification for the step. Following on the course of treatment you have dealt out to me for years

"I have been very wrong," she interrupted. "I meant to have told you so. I have not behaved as-as-I ought to behave for— for a long while; I acknowledge it. Won't you forgive me?" "No," he answered-and his voice had no relenting in it.

"I will try and do better; I will indeed," she reiterated: but not daring now to offer the caresses her imagination had planned out. "Oh, you must forgive me; you must not put me away!"

"Lady Adela, but a few days ago, it was my turn to make supplication to you; I did so more than once. I told you I would protect, forgive, shield you. I prayed you, almost as solemnly as I pray to Heaven, to trust me; to trust me-your husband-as you wished it to be well with us in our future life. Do you remember how you met that prayer?-how you answered me ?"

Ay, she did.

brance.

And the red colour flushed her face at the remem

"As you rejected me, so must I reject you."

"Not to separation!"

"Separation will be only too welcome to you. Have you not been telling me as much for years?"

"But not in earnest; not to mean it really. I will give up play— I have given it up-believe that. A man may not reject his wife," she continued, in agitation.

"He may when he has sufficient reason for it. Look at the wife you have been to me; the shameful treatment you have persistently dealt to me. I speak not now of this recent act of disgrace, by which you hazarded your own good name and mine-I will not trust myself to speak of it—but of the past. Few men would have borne with you as I have borne. I loved you with a true and tender love how have you repaid me?"

"Let us start afresh," she said, imploringly putting up her hands. Indeed this was a most terrible moment for her.

"It may not be," he coldly rejoined. "My resolution has been deliberately taken, and I cannot change it upon impulse."

"I had meant to pray you to forgive me-for this and for all the past; I had indeed. I had meant to say that I would be differentwould try to love you."

"Too late."

"In a little while, then; later," she panted, her face working with emotion and the tears starting to her eyes. "You will take me back

later! In a week or two."

"Neither now nor later. My feelings were long, long outraged, and I bore with you, hoping for better things. But in this last fearful act, and more especially in the circumstances attending it, you have broken all allegiance, you have deliberately thrown off my protection. Lady Adela, I shall never live under the same roof with you again."

He crossed the room with the last words, and quietly left it. A faint cry of distress seemed to be sounding in his ear: "Mercy! mercy!" as he closed the door. Descending the stairs with a deliberate step, he caught up his hat in the hall, and went out. And Adela, the usually indifferent, fell to the ground in a storm of

tears.

CHAPTER XXVI.

ON THE WAY FROM BLACKHEATH.

STROLLING hither and thither, just as his steps led him, for in truth he had no purpose just then, so intense was his mental distress, Mr. Grubb found himself somehow in Jermyn Street. He was passing the Cavendish Hotel when a hand was laid upon his arm. A little lady in a close bonnet and black veil, standing at the hotel entrance, had arrested him.

"Were you going to cut me, Francis Grubb?"

"Miss Upton!" he exclaimed, coming, with an effort, out of his wilderness and clasping her offered hand. "I did not see you; I was buried in thought."

"In very deep thought, as it seemed to me," rejoined Miss Upton, regarding his face with a meaning look. "Come up-stairs to my sitting-room."

"Are you staying here?" he asked. "Only until to-morrow afternoon. ing.

I came from home this morn

Sit down, and take some lunch with me," she added, putting off her bonnet. "It is here, you perceive. I told them to have it on the table by one o'clock. They are punctual, and so am I." "You have been out?"

"Only to Chenevix House. I came up on business of my own, but I wanted to see the Acorns, so I drove there at once, after reporting myself here to the hotel people, to whom I wrote yesterday to secure my rooms. No meat! Why, what do you live upon?"

Something like a faint smile parted his lips. "Thank you-no, not to-day. I am not hungry."

"All the more reason that you should eat," peremptorily returned Miss Upton, placing a substantial plate before him. "You cannot let me eat alone whilst you look on!"

He took up his knife and fork; then laid it down again, intending to cut some bread for her and for himself. Miss Upton mistook the action.

"Try," she kindly whispered, leaning forward and laying her hand

for a moment upon his. before you."

"Other men have had to bear as much

So, then, she knew it! A vivid red dyed his brow. was this allusion, even from her! “You have heard of it?" he breathed.

How painful

"I heard of the trouble about the cheque last week from the Rector, during a flying visit he had to pay Netherleigh. The man was in terrible distress, hardly knowing whether his son was guilty or not guilty. A little further news dropped out later, and yesterday Charles was brought home by his father and stepmother; his name cleared, but somebody else's mentioned."

She paused a moment.

Mr. Grubb said nothing.

"When I reached Lady Acorn's this morning, she was alone-and in a tantrum," continued Miss Upton. "Not temper, but real, genuine distress. 'Betsy,' I said, as I sat down by her, 'I have come to hear the whole truth of this miserable business, so begin at the beginning, and tell it me.' And she did tell me. She is full of wrath and bitterness and who can wonder?"

"Against me?"

Against you! No. Against Adela. She told me all; all, I am sure, that she knows herself; and she did not spare her daughter in the recital. She said that Mr. Grubb-you-were at that moment with Lord Acorn, negotiating, she believed, the articles of a separation. Was it so?

"Yes. They are arranged."

"Alas! I have long foreseen that it might come to it. Before there was any notion of this last terrible offence of hers, I thought the day of retribution must surely come, unless she mended her ways. But we will say no more now. Adela is my god-daughter, and I will do what I can for her, but I would rather have seen her in her grave."

He lifted his eyes to the earnest face.

"I would indeed. Far rather would I have seen her in her grave than what she is a heartless woman. You have been to her a husband in a thousand, and this is how she has requited you. Well,

we will leave it, I say—and you shall give me half a glass of that sherry wine."

"Only half a glass?"

"Only half one. I never could take much wine, and latterly it has not seemed to do for me at all. And now, tell me if you don't mind telling tales out of school-how Acorn is going on; for I expect you know. Fighting shy of his debts, as usual? "

In spite of the mental pain that pressed so heavily upon him, Mr. Grubb could not forbear a smile, her tone was so quaint. "Just now his lordship is flourishing," replied he, his voice assuming corresponding lightness. "He had a slice of luck at the Derby: won, it is said, between ten and twelve thousand pounds."