"Well, well, we have paid for it, I say. Paid bitterly and cruelly." 66 I have. You have not."

"No?" somewhat indifferently returned Selina, her attention partly given to her lace again, for she was never serious long. "How do you make that out?"

"You have your husband still. Poverty with him, with one we love, must carry little sting. But for me-my whole life is one of never-ending loneliness, without a future, without hope. Do you know what fanciful thought came to me the other night?" she went on, after a pause. "I have all kinds of fanciful ideas when I sit alone in the twilight. I thought that life might be so much happier if God gave us a chance once, during its course, of beginning it all over again from the first. Just once, when we found out what dreadful mistakes we had been making."

"And we should make the same again, though we began it fifty times over, Adela. Unless we could carry back with us our dearlybought experience."

Adela sighed. "Yes, I suppose so. God would have ordered it so had it been well for us. He knows best. But there are some women who seem never to make mistakes, who go on their way smoothly and happily."

"Placing themselves under God's guidance, I imagine," returned Selina. "That's what my mother says to me, when she lectures me on the past."

Adela's eyes filled with tears. "Yes," she murmured, in meekness, recalling that it was what she had been striving to do for some little time now-to hold on her way, under submission to God.

Their conversation turned into other channels, and by-and-by, when Adela was rested, she rose to leave. Selina accompanied her into the hall.

"Won't you just say how d'ye do to my husband," she cried, opening the door of their common sitting-room. "He is here." Adela made no objection, and followed Selina. Oscar was standing in the bay window, facing the door. And someone else, towering nearly a head above him, was standing at his side.

Sir Francis Netherleigh.

They stood, the husband and wife, face to face. With a faint cry, Adela put up her hands, as if to ward off the sight-as if to bespeak pardon in all humility for herself, for her intrusion, and disappeared again, whiter than death. It was rather an awkward moment for them all. Selina disappeared after her, and shut the door.

"Is Lady Adela ill?" asked Sir Francis of Oscar, the question breaking from him involuntarily in the moment's impulse-for she did, indeed, look fearfully so.

'Ay," replied Oscar, "ill with remembrance.

Repentance has

made her sick unto death. Remorse has told upon her."

But Sir Francis said no more.

Adela had departed across the fields with the best speed she could command. About half-way home she came upon Mr. Cleveland, seated on a stile and whistling softly.

"Those two young rascals of mine"-alluding to two of his little sons-"seduced me from my study to help fly their kites," he began to Adela. "Here I follow them, to the appointed field, and find them nowhere, little light-headed monkeys !-But, my dear, what's the matter with you?" he added, with fatherly kindness, as he remarked her pale, troubled face. "You look frightened."

"I have just seen my husband," she panted, her breath painfully short. All the old pain that she had been striving to subdue had come back again; the sight of him, whom she now passionately loved, had stirred all the distressing emotion within her.

"Well ?" said Mr. Cleveland.

"Did you know he was at Netherleigh ?"

"He came down to-day."

"He was in the bay parlour with Oscar, and I went into it. Itit has agitated me."

"But why should it agitate you?" rejoined the old Rector, who was very matter-of-fact. "It seems to me that you ought to accustom yourself to bear these chance meetings with equanimity, child. You can scarcely expect to go through life without seeing him now and then."

Adela bent her head and broke into sobs. protecting hand upon her shoulder.

Mr. Cleveland laid his

"My dear, my dear! Strive to be calm. sight of him ought not to put you into this state. like him so much still?"

Surely a momentary
Is it that you dis-

"Dislike him!" she exclaimed, the contrast between the word and the truth striking her painfully, and causing her to say more than she would have said. "I am dying for his forgiveness; dying to show him my remorse; dying because I lost him."

The Rector did not quite see what answer would be suitable to this. He held his tongue, and Adela resumed.

"I wish I were a Roman Catholic ! !"

The good man, evangelically Protestant, felt as if his grey hair were standing on end with surprise. "Oh, hush!" said he. "You don't know what you are saying."

"I do wish it," she sobbed. "I could go into a convent then, and find peace."

"Peace!" echoed Mr. Cleveland. "No, child, don't let your imagination run away with that notion. It is a false one. No woman, entering a convent in the frame of mind that you seem to be enter taining, could expect peace, or find it."

Any way, I-I should feel more at rest. I should have to bear life then, you know. And, oh, I was trying to do so: I was indeed trying!"

Thoroughly put out, the Rector made no comment. Perhaps would not trust himself to make any.

"I suppose there are no such things as Protestant convents, or sisterhoods," she went on, "that receive poor creatures who have no longer any place in this world?”

"Not to my knowledge," sharply replied Mr. Cleveland, as he jumped off the stile. "It is time we went home, Adela.” They walked away side by side. Gaining the Rectory-a large, straggling, red-brick building, its old walls covered with timehonoured ivy-Adela ascended to her chamber, and shut herself in with her grief. She was wondering whether any other living woman could have entailed upon herself so much unhappiness, had blighted her life as she had blighted hers. Put away from her husband! Put away from him for ever and for ever!

How he must despise her!-despise her for her past shame and sin! despise her in her present contemptible humiliation! she reflected, a low moan escaping her, he so pure and upright in all his ways, so good and generous and noble ! Oh that she could hide to the end, from him and from the world!

Lifting her trembling hands and her despairing face, Adela breathed a faint petition that the Most High would be pleased to vouchsafe to her somewhat of His heavenly comfort, or else take her out of the tribulation that she could so little battle with.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

AN ALARM.

IT WAS a few days later. Mrs. Oscar Dalrymple, who had been spending the afternoon with her mother and Mary Lynn, was preparing to return to the Grange. Alice had just come home again, a bright colour on her hectic cheeks, but weaker, as it seemed to them all. Alice was happier than she had been for years, in her sweet unselfishness. The trouble which had divided Colonel Hope and his nephew was at an end; Gerard had been reinstated in his uncle's favour, and was to marry Frances Chenevix. Lying on the sofa by the window, in the fading light, Alice had been giving them various particulars of this, and Selina, greatly interested, lingered longer than she had intended. But she had to go.

Jumping up hurriedly, she began to put on her bonnet and cloak. Mrs. Dalrymple rang the bell. It was to tell Reuben to be in readiness to attend her daughter.

"As if I wanted old Reuben with me, mamma!" exclaimed Selina. "Why, I shall run home in no time!"

"He had better be with you," sighed Mrs. Dalrymple: the sigh given to the disturbed state of things abroad. "The neighbourhood is not very quiet to-day, as you know, Selina, and it is getting dusk.”

It was not quiet at all. The summary process, eviction, had been resorted to by Pinnett, as regarded the tenants of the Mill Cottages. He had forced them out with violence. One of them, named Thoms, had resisted to the last. Go out he would not, and the assailants could not get him out.

A meeting was to be held this same evening at Farmer Lee's. It could not be called a secret meeting; the farmer would have disdained the name; but those about to attend it waited until the dusk should shelter them, conscious that they were likely to speak treason against their landlord.

"Thoms is out," cried Farmer Bumford, as he entered Mr. Lee's house, in excitement.

"Out! How did they get him out ?"

"Unroofed him, Lee. Pulled his place to pieces bit by bit, and so forced him out. He is now with the rest of the unfortunate lot." "I thought such practices were confined to Ireland," said the honest farmer. "It's time something was done to protect us. Oscar Dalrymple will have his sins to answer for."

It was at this hour, when the twilight of the autumn evening was deepening, that Selina started for home. She chose the way by the common a longer way, and in other respects not so desirable to-night. Selina's spirit was fearless enough, and she wanted to see whether the rumour could be true-that the unhappy people, just ejected, had collected there, meaning to encamp on it. Reuben, with the licence of an old and faithful servant, remonstrated, begging her to go home by the turnpike road: but Selina chose to cross the common. Surely enough, the unfortunate lot, as Mr. Bumford called them, had gathered there on its outskirts, in view of their late homes, their poor goods and chattels, much damaged in the mêlée, piled in little heaps around them. Men, their hearts panting for revenge, sobbing and moaning women and shivering children, there they stood, or sat, or lay about. The farmers, Lee and Bumford, would later on open their barns to them for the night; but at present they expected to encamp here, under the stars.

In the midst of the harsh converse that prevailed, the oaths, and the abuse lavished on Oscar Dalrymple-for these poor, ignorant labourers refused, like their betters, to believe that Pinnett could so act without the landlord's orders-they espied, hurrying past them at a swift pace, their landlord's wife. Selina walked with her head down; now that she saw the threatening aspect of affairs, she wished she had listened to Reuben, and taken the open road. One of them came running up; a resolute fellow, named Dyke.

"You'd hurry by, would you?" said he, in a tone that spoke more of plaint than threat. "Won't you turn your eyes once, to the ruin your husband has wrought? Look at the mud and mortar! If the walls warn't of new brick or costly stone, they was good enough for us. They were our homes. Look at the spot now!"

Selina trembled visibly. She was aware of the awful feeling abroad against her husband, and a dread rushed into her heart that they might be going to visit it on her. Would they ill-use her ?-kill her? Reuben spoke up: but he was powerless against so many, and he knew it; therefore his tone was more conciliating than it would otherwise have been.

"What do you mean by molesting this lady? Stand away, Dyke, and let her pass. You wouldn't hurt her: if she is Mr. Dalrymple's wife she was the Squire's daughter, and he was always good to you."

"Stand away yourself, old man; who said we were going to hurt her?" roughly retorted Dyke. ""Taint likely; and you've said the reason why. Ma'am, do you see these ruins? Do they make you blush ? "

"I am very sorry to see them, Dyke," answered Selina. "It is no fault of mine."

"Is it hard upon us, or not, that we should be turned out of the poor roofs that sheltered us? We paid our bit of rent, all on us; not one was a defaulter. How would you like to be turned out of your home, and told the poorhouse was afore you and an order for it, if you liked to go there?"

"I can only say how very sorry I am," she returned, distressed as well as terrified. "I wish I could help you and put you into better cottages to-morrow! But I am as powerless as you are."

"Will you tell him to do it-the master? We are coming up to ask him. Will you tell him to come out and face us, and look at them ruins, and look at us; at our wives and little ones shivering there in the cold ?"

Selina seemed to be shivering as much as they were. "It is Pinnett who has done it," she said, "not Mr. Dalrymple. You should lay the blame on him."

"Pinnett !" roared Dyke, throwing his arm before the other men, now surrounding them, to stop their murmurings, for he thought his own speech the best. "Would Pinnett have dared to do this without the master's orders? Pinnett's a tool in his hands. Say to him, ma'am, please, that we are not going to stand Pinnett's doings and be quiet; we'll drown him first, let us once catch hold on him; and we be coming up to the Grange ourselves to say so to the master."

Finding she was to be no further detained, Selina sped on to the Grange. Oscar was in the oak parlour. She threw herself into a chair and burst into tears.

"Oscar, I have been so terrified. As I came by the common, with Reuben, the men were there, and

"What men?" interrupted Mr. Dalrymple.

"Those who have been ejected from the cottages. They stopped me, and began to speak about their wrongs."

"Their-wrongs-did they say?"