before I saw Mr. Hamleigh. Oh, what a child I was in those dear days, how happy, how happy."

She burst into tears, melted by the memory of those placid days, the first tears she had shed since she received her lover's answer.

"And you will be happy again, dear. Don't you remember that passage I read to you in 'The Caxtons' a few days ago, in which the wise tender-hearted father tells his son how small a space one great sorrow takes in a life, and how triumphantly the life soars on beyond it?"

"Yes, I remember; but I didn't believe him then, and I believe him still less now," answered Christabel, doggedly.

Major Bree called that afternoon, and found Mrs. Tregonell alone in the drawing-room.

"Where is Belle?" he asked.

"She has gone for a long country ride—I insisted upon it."

"You were quite right. She was looking as white as a ghost yesterday when I just caught a glimpse of her in the next room. She ran away like a guilty thing when she saw me. Well, has this cloud blown over? Is Hamleigh back?"

"No; Christabel's engagement is broken off. It has been a great blow, a severe trial; but now it is over I am glad: she never could have been happy with him."

"How do you know that?" asked the Major, sharply.

"I judge him by his antecedents. What could be expected from a man who had led that kind of life—a man who so grossly deceived her?"

"Deceived her? Did she ask him if he had ever been in love with an actress? Did she or you ever interrogate him as to his past life? Why you did not even question me, or I should have been obliged to tell you all I knew of his relations with Miss Mayne."

"You ought to have told me of your own accord. You should not have waited to be questioned," said Mrs. Tregonell, indignantly.

"Why should I stir dirty water? Do you suppose that every man who makes a good husband and lives happily with his wife has been spotless up to the hour of his marriage? There is a Sturm und Drang period in every man's life, depend upon it. Far better that the tempest should rage before marriage than after."

"I can't accept your philosophy, nor could Christabel. She took the business into her own hands, bravely, nobly. She has cancelled her engagement, and left Mr. Hamleigh free to make some kind of reparation to this actress person."

"Reparation!—to Stella Mayne? Why don't you know that she is the mistress of Colonel Luscomb, who has ruined his social and professional prospects for her sake. Do you mean to say that old harpy who gave you your information about Angus did not give you the epilogue to the play?"

"Not a word," said Mrs. Tregonell, considerably dashed by this intelligence. "But I don't see that this fact alters the case—much. Christabel could never have been happy or at peace with a man who had once been devoted to a creature of that class."

"Would you be surprised to hear that creatures of that class are flesh and blood; and that they love us and leave us, and cleave to us and forsake us, just like the women in society?" asked the Major, surveying her with mild scorn.

She was a good woman, no doubt, and acted honestly according to her lights; yet he was angry with her, believing that she had spoiled two lives by her incapacity to take a wide and liberal view of the human comedy.

CHAPTER III.

"GRIEF A FIXED STAR, AND JOY A VANE THAT VEERS."

They went back to the Cornish moors, and the good old manor-house on the hill above the sea; went back to the old life, just the same, in all outward seeming, as it had been before that fatal visit which had brought love and sorrow to Christabel. How lovely the hills looked in the soft summer light; how unspeakably fair the sea in all its glory of sapphire and emerald, and those deep garnet-coloured patches which show where the red sea-weed lurks below, with its pinnacles of rock and colonies of wild living creatures, gull and cormorant, basking in the sun. Little Boscastle, too, gay with the coming and going of many tourists, the merry music of the guard's horn, as the omnibus came jolting down the hill from Bodmin, or the coach wound up the hill to Bude; busy with the bustle of tremendous experiments with rockets and life-saving apparatus in the soft July darkness; noisy with the lowing of cattle and plaintive tremolo of sheep in the market-place, and all the rude pleasures of a rural fair; alive with all manner of sound and movement, and having a general air of making money too fast for the capability of investment. The whole place was gorged with visitors—not the inn only, but every available bedchamber at post-office, shop, and cottage was filled with humanity; and the half-dozen or so available pony-carriages were making the journey to Tintagel and back three times a day; while the patient investigators who tramped to St. Nectan's Kieve, without the faintest idea of who St. Nectan was, or what a kieve was, or what manner of local curiosity they were going to see, were legion; all coming back ravenous to the same cosy inn to elbow one another in friendly contiguity at the homely table d'hôte, in the yellow light of many candles.

Christabel avoided the village as much as possible during this gay season. She would have avoided it just as much had it been the dull season: the people she shrank from meeting were not the strange tourists, but the old gaffers and goodies who had known her all their lives—the "uncles" and "aunts"—(in Cornwall uncle and aunt are a kind of patriarchal title given to honoured age)—and who might consider themselves privileged to ask why her wedding was deferred, and when it was to be.

She went with Jessie on long lonely expeditions by sea and land. She had half a dozen old sailors who were her slaves, always ready to take her out in good weather, deeming it their highest privilege to obey so fair a captain, and one who always paid them handsomely for their labour. They went often to Trebarwith Sands, and sat there in some sheltered nook, working and reading at peace, resigned to a life that had lost all its brightness and colour.

"Do you know, Jessie, that I feel like an old maid of fifty?" said Belle on one of those rare occasions when she spoke of her own feelings. "It seems to me as if it were ages since I made up my mind to live and die unmarried, and to make life, somehow or other, self-sufficing—as if Randie and I were both getting old and grey together. For he is ever so much greyer, the dear thing," she said, laying her hand lovingly on the honest black head and grey muzzle. "What a pity that dogs should grow old so soon, when we are so dependent on their love. Why are they not like elephants, in whose lives a decade hardly counts?"

"Oh, Belle, Belle, as if a beautiful woman of twenty could be dependent on a sheep-dog's affection—when she has all her life before her and all the world to choose from."

"Perhaps you think I could change my lover as some people change their dogs," said Belle, bitterly, "be deeply attached to a colley this year and next year be just as devoted to a spaniel. My affections are not so easily transferable."

Mrs. Tregonell had told her niece nothing of Angus Hamleigh's final letter to herself. He had given her freedom to communicate as much or as little of that letter as she liked to Christabel—and she had taken the utmost license, and had been altogether silent about it. What good could it do for Christabel to hear of his illness. The knowledge might inspire her to some wild quixotic act: she might insist upon devoting herself to him—to be his wife in order that she might be his nurse—and surely this would be to ruin her life without helping him to prolong his. The blow had fallen—the sharpest pain of this sudden sorrow had been suffered. Time and youth, and Leonard's faithful love would bring swift healing. "How I loved and grieved for his father," thought Mrs. Tregonell. "Yet I survived his loss, and had a peaceful