not talk so. You are young yet, as compared with many people. As, in fact, is my mother."

Margery Upton touched his arm that he should look at her. "How do you know I have not an incurable disease? Why should such a thing not fall on me, as well as on your mother?"

Something in the tone, something in the earnest look, struck on him with prophetic fear. "Dear Miss Upton !-it cannot be!" he

slowly whispered.

“It is. I am dying, Francis. Dying slowly but surely. The probability is that I shall go before your mother goes."

He remembered how worn and weary he had thought her looking for some time past; how especially so on this same morning when she stopped him at the door of the Cavendish. He recollected how little she had taken lately to eat and drink. He recalled a sentence, a word, that had fallen from her now and then, seeming to imply that she saw the close of life drawing near. Yet still, with all this presenting itself palpably to him with a sudden mental effort, he could only reiterate "It cannot be !"

"It is," she repeated.

know it now."

"I have suspected it for some time. I

A lump seemed to rise in his throat. How truly he esteemed and valued this good lady, he never quite realized until this day. She resumed

"I know that my friends, the few who consider they have a right to concern themselves about me, wonder I should have come up to town so much more frequently during the past few months than I was wont to come. What I do come for is to see my physician, Dr. Stair. I live too far off to expect him to travel down to me; and the journey does me no harm. I have an appointment with him tomorrow at eleven: after that, I return home."

"Is it the heart ?" he asked, drawing a deep breath.

"It is not the heart: but it is a disorder none the less fatal than some of those diseases that attack the heart. It is about two years now-perhaps not quite so much," she broke off, "since I began to fear I was not well. I let it go on for a little time; Frost, our local doctor, did not seem to make much out of it; and then I came up to Dr. Stair. He is a candid, straightforward man, and he plainly said he did not like my symptoms, but he thought he could subdue them and set me to rights. I did get better for a time; the malady seemed to have been checked, though it did not entirely leave me. Latterly it has returned with increased force; and I know my fate."

The disclosure shocked him greatly, brought to him the keenest pain. "If I could but avert it!" he cried, in sorrow; "if I could but ward it off you!"

"No one on earth can do that. For myself, I am quite resigned; resting, and content to rest, in God's good hands."

"And, how long ——"

"How long will it be before the end comes, you would ask," she said, for he did not conclude the sentence. "That I do not know. I mean to put the question to Dr. Stair to-morrow, and I am sure he will answer it to the best of his belief. It may be pretty near."

"Do you suffer pain ?" "Always; more or less.

is over."

That will get worse, I suppose, before it

"Alas, alas!" he mentally breathed.

"Should not your friends

be made acquainted with this, dear Miss Upton ?"

"My chief friends are acquainted with it. I have no very close friends. The Rector of Netherleigh is the closest, and he has known it for some time. That is, he knows I am suffering from a disorder that I shall probably never get the better of. Your mother knows it, for I told her this evening; and now you know it. My faithful maid Annis knows a little-Frost and Doctor Stair know most of all. Nobody else knows of it in the wide world: and I do not wish that anyone should know." "Is it right? Right to them?"

"Why, what other friends have I? Lady Acorn, you may say. She has never been as a friend to me. Your mother and I, had opportunity been given, might have been the truest and dearest friends, but I and Betsy Acorn, never. She and I do not assimilate. enough to proclaim my condition to the world when I become so ill that it cannot be concealed."

Time

"I wish I could die in your place!" he too thoughtlessly exclaimed. Though, indeed, trouble of all kinds seemed to be pressing so sharply upon him that he almost did wish it.

"You have

"Don't talk silly nonsense," reproved Miss Upton. your work to do in the world, your duties to fulfil. Rely upon it, God does not call us away so long as any remain to be done."

"The young die as well as the old. Strong men, men in the prime of life, as I am, are taken away."

"For some wise purpose that we cannot understand here," she rejoined. "Such a man seems to leave a multitude of duties unfulfilled behind him; I grant you that; but in God's sight, when He summons him away, the duties must be over. the best!" she added, in a dreamy tone. looking back, I seem to have lived!"

How short is life at "What a little while,

She fell into a reverie, and they scarcely exchanged another word for the rest of the way.

"You will not speak of this to the Acorns," she said to Mr. Grubb, as the carriage stopped at the hotel.

With

"Certainly not, as you do not wish it. Or to anyone else." "It would only give a fillip to Lord Acorn's extravagance. the prospect of coming into Court Netherleigh close at hand, he would increase his debts thick and threefold."

Francis Grubb nodded assent; he knew how true it was: he shook VOL. XXXII,

N

her hand with a long, lingering pressure, and watched her up the stairs. Then, dismissing his carriage, he walked through the lighted streets to Charing Cross station on his way back to Blackheath.

it.

It may be that he shunned his home lest his wife should still be in He need not have feared. Within an hour of his departure at mid-day, while she was still in the depth of the bewilderment the blow had brought her, Lord Acorn arrived. His errand was to take her away with him; and to take her peremptorily. He did not say to her, "Will you put on your bonnet and come with me, Adela;" he said, curtly, "Come.”

"I cannot leave my home in this dreadful way, papa," she gasped, voice and hands alike trembling. "I cannot leave it for ever."

"You will," he coldly answered. "You must. You have no alternative. I am come to remove you from it."

"No, no," she pleaded.

"Oh papa, have mercy! Papa, papa!" "You should have made that prayer to your husband, Adela— while time to do it yet remained to you."

She clasped her hands in bitter repentance. yet; I know he will.

He will let me remain

"He will forgive me

"Never," interrupted Lord Acorn. "You may put that notion out of your mind for good, Adela. Francis Grubb will never forgive you, or receive you back while life shall last."

She moaned faintly.

"And you have only yourself to thank for it. Put your things on, as I bid you," he sternly added. "This is waste of time.

your maid to me for instructions."

And send

And thus Lady Adela was removed from her husband's house, overwhelmed with shame and remorse.

CHAPTER XXVII.

A DREARY LIFE.

BASKING in the light of the late but genial autumn sun lay Court Netherleigh. A sunshine which, on the low-lying lands of the hollow, had to struggle through a mist that told of the fading year, for September was quickly passing.

Wintry aspects obtain indoors, at any rate, whatever they may do without. In that favourite room of Miss Upton's where we first saw her-Miss Margery's parlour, as it is called in the household-she sits to-day, shivering near a blazing fire, a bright cashmere shawl worn. over her purple silk gown, a simple cap of rich white lace shading her shrunken features. Her malady is making steady progress, and she

always feels cold.

The small and pretty room has been renovated, but its old colours are retained; the paper on the walls is still of white and gold, the carpet, hangings, and chairs are green. The glass doors, that used to

stand open whenever the sun shone or the air was balmy, are closed to-day. On the table at her elbow lies a book of devotion half closed, her spectacles resting between the leaves; one of those books that the gay and busy world turn from as being so gloomy, and that bring comfort so great to those who are leaving it. Margery Upton sits back in her chair, looking up at the blue heavens, where she is so soon to be.

"I cannot help wishing sometimes," she began in a low dreamy tone, "that more decided revelation of what Heaven will be had been vouchsafed to us. I mean as to our own state there, our work, our occupations. Though I suppose that all work-work, as we call it here will be as rest there. We know that we shall be in a state of happiness, of bliss beyond conception; but we know not precisely of what it will consist."

"I suppose we were not meant to know," replied the young lady to whom she spoke, and who sat apart on the green satin sofa, her elbow resting on one arm of it, her delicate hand shading her face. The tone of her voice was weary and depressed, the other hand lay listless on her coloured muslin dress. "Time enough for that, perhaps, when we get there-those who do."

"Don't be irreverent," came the quick reproof.

"Irreverent! I did not mean to be so, Aunt Margery." "You used to be irreverent enough, Lady Adela.

knows."

"Ay; used.

As the world

Times and things have changed for me." It was indeed the Lady Adela sitting there. But she was altered in looks almost as much as Miss Margery. The once careless, saucy, haughty girl had grown sad, her manner utterly spiritless, the once blooming face was pale and thin. Yesterday only had she come to Court Netherleigh, following on a communication from Lady Acorn. "I can do nothing with her; she is utterly self-willed and obstinate; I shall send her to you for a little while, Margery," wrote Lady Acorn to Miss Upton: and Margery Upton had written back that she might

come.

That a wave of trouble had swept over Lady Adela, leaving desolation and despair behind it, was all too palpable. To be put away by her husband in the face of her own family and of the world, was to her proud spirit the very bitterest blow possible to be inflicted on it; a cruel mortification, that she would never quite lose the sting of so long as life should last.

On the very day the separation was decided upon, not an hour after Mr. Grubb left her in her chamber after apprising her of it, Lord Acorn, as you have read, came to the house, and took her from it

with little ceremony. His usual débonnaire indifference had given place to a sternness against which there could be no thought of rebellion. She took up her abode at Chenevix House that day, and Davvy followed with the possessions that belonged to her. She was not

received kindly, or treated warmly. No, she had given too serious offence for that. Her mother did not spare her in the matter of reproach; her father was calmly bitter; Grace was cold. Lady Sarah Hope ran away to the country to avoid her, taking her sister Frances and Alice Dalrymple; and Lady Sarah did not scruple to let it be known at her father's why she had gone.

Lord and Lady Acorn might have their personal failings, the one be too lavish of money, the other of temper, but they had at least brought up their daughters to be good and honourable women, instilling into them upright principles; and the blow was a sharp one. They deemed it right and just not to spare her who had inflicted it in wanton wilfulness-and they let her pain come home to her. It all told upon Adela.

The world turned upon her a cold shoulder. Rumours of the separation between Mr. and Lady Adela Grubb soon grew into certainty; and the world wanted to know the cause of it. For, after all, the true and immediate cause, that terrible crime she had allowed herself to commit, never transpired. The very few individuals cognisant of it buried the secret within their own bosoms for her good name's sake. No clue transpiring as to this, people fell back upon the other and only cause known, more or less, to them-her longmaintained cavalier treatment of her husband. Mr. Grubb must have come to his senses at last, reasoned society, and sent her home to her mother. And society considered that he had done righteously.

So the world, taking up other people's business according to custom, turned its back upon her. Which was, to say the least of it, inconsistent. For now, had the Lady Adela been suspected of any grave social crime; one, let us say, involving fears of having to appear before the Judge of the Court of Probate, society would have shaken hands with her as usual, so long as public proceedings remained in abeyance what everybody might privately see or suspect, goes for nothing. This other offence was lighter, it did not involve those fatal extremes; this was more as though she were being punished as a naughty child; consequently the world thought fit to let its opinion be known, and to deal out a meed of censure on its own immaculate score.

But it told, I say, on Lady Adela. Told cruelly. Cast off by her husband for good and aye; tacitly reproached daily and hourly by her parents; rejected by her sisters, as though she might tarnish them if brought into too close contact; and looked askance at by society; Lady Adela drank the cup of repentance to the dregs.

If she could but undo her work !-if that one fatal morning, when she found the cheque-book lying on the floor of her husband's dressing-room, had never been numbered in the calendar of the past! She was for ever wishing this fruitless wish. She was for ever wishing that her treatment of her husband had been different in the time before that one temptation set in.