or other. At half-past five he went to the street in which the offices of Sloper and Halliday were situated, and loitered up and down the pavement smoking a cigar, and looking dismally every now and then towards the window of Mr. Dobb's apartment.

He had come to that street with the intention of seeing the brewer's-clerk, whose day's work always ended at six o'clock. But as the clock struck six Mr. Catheron threw away the end of his cigar and turned the corner of a narrow lane leading towards the open country. If a sheriff'sofficer had been pursuing him, he could scarcely have walked faster than he did. He only stopped at last from sheer exhaustion. And when he did come to a standstill, he looked about him like a man who for the first time discovers which direction his steps have taken. He found himself in a flat swampy meadow on the bank of the Merdrid. There were cattle standing a few paces from him, staring at him with big stupid eyes, and straight before him, upon the low line of the western horizon, the sun was going down in a sea of blood.

"I couldn't face that fellow," muttered Gervoise Catheron; "I know I'm the meanest coward that ever trod this miserable earth; but I couldn't face him-I couldn't stand any more of his howling."

He stood so long in the same attitude staring at the darkening water that the staring cattle grew tired of watching him, or perhaps mistook him for some inanimate object looming darkly above the low swampy shore, and dropped their heavy heads to resume the slow munching of their evening meal. After standing thus for some ten or fifteen minutes, Gervoise Catheron turned suddenly and ran across the meadow on his way back to Castleford. He ran nearly all the way, entered the barracks unobserved, and went straight to his room. He locked his door before he went to a little table, on which there stood a mahogany pistol-case-not his own, or it would have been pawned, but left in his custody by a youngster in the regiment. The lieutenant unlocked this case, took out one of the pistols, examined the loading by touch rather than by sight, for the room was

almost dark, and then dropped it carefully into his pocket.

He made his way out of the barracks, for the officers were at mess. He heard their loud voices and the jingling of glass and silver as he went by the room where they were assembled, and thought

-Heaven knows how bitterly-what a pleasant friendly gathering it was, and how happy the man must be who could join that cheery circle with a light heart and an untroubled conscience.

He went out of the gas-lighted passages into the gloomy dusk of the gathering night. As he crossed the barrack-yard he looked up to the quarter where the moon would have been, had there been any moon that night.

O God of heaven, had it come to this!—that it should be to his interest for the earth to be hidden in darkness-the darkness that could not cover him from the eye of his God, but might shroud his doings from the sight of his fellowmen!

CHAPTER VI.

"J'AI DU T'AIMER, JE DOIS TE FUIR!"

MARCIA DENISON remained in her own apartments throughout that day on which Mr. Holroyde made himself agreeable to Sir Jasper. That this man should be her father's guest-that he should exist for four-and-twenty hours under the same roof that sheltered her, filled her mind with a passionate indignation, against which she struggled in vain. Arthur Holroyde the man whose baseness had blighted a good man's existence the man whom Godfrey Pierrepoint had followed across the Atlantic, and tracked from city to city, from state to state, and who had yet gone scatheless-and now, after fifteen years, still lived, and still held his head erect before the face of his fellow-men, and dared to intrude himself upon honest people!

And this man

came to the Abbey in the character of Mrs. Harding's friend. All Marcia's prejudices against the woman whom she had tried in vain to tolerate were intensified by the coming of Arthur Holroyde.

"Can I forget what Godfrey Pierrepoint's friend told him about this man?-that the slightest association with his name was death to a woman's reputation. And yet Mrs. Harding is so intimate with him that he comes here to visit her, and remains here as her friend."

Until now Marcia Denison had intended to stand aside, passive and uncomplaining, while her father allied himself to this woman, if it should please him to take her for his wife.

"Why should I interfere with his happiness?" she had thought; "I suppose he can only be happy in his own way, however strange or perilous the way may seem to me. I shall only have to seek another home; and my father's house has never been so much a home to me that I need feel the change very deeply."

It is not to be supposed that any set of people