two who suffered most. The Sister's coldness nearly broke Virginia's heart, and sent her to her knees in agonies of grief; whereby she was made colder and yet colder to her father as some sort of expiation; while Hermione-now chafed by the vicar's satirical congratulations on the evident peace established between her and her husband-now excited to spasmodic self-assertion by his allusions to her rights of property, and sighing regrets that she could not take back her gift of control-" not being strong against the man whom she had loved so fervently"-roused to feverish unrest of vanity by his praise, to unwholesome excitement by his half-checked words, his suddenly averted eyes, his ostentatious self-control-discontented with herself and her life, her past and her present alike-soon slipped into the state and place from which that fortnight's rest had apparently rescued her. Her heart torn between those two opposing influences— now longing to throw herself into her husband's arms, beseeching him to forgive her sin against his love, and to take her to himself as of old-now kneeling to Mr. Lascelles, confessing her most intimate feelings, her most secret thoughts, and giving herself to his guidance; oscillating between wifely love and ecclesiastical fanaticism-old affections and new excitements-it was scarcely to be wondered at if her humour became varied and uncertain beyond what it had ever been before. Neither was it to be wondered at, seeing how things really were with her too, if Virginia had an anxious kind of look, restless and searching, like a caged creature looking for means of escape.

This closeness of companionship which was to guard, unite, and reclaim, was daily becoming insupportable to both Hermione and Virginia; and consequently daily more disastrous to Richard's own interest. It threw the charm of difficulty and the fascination of the forbidden into the scale with the other attractions found at the

Vicarage. Hermione's interviews with Mr. Lascelles-Virginia's with Sister Agnes and Father Truscott-were briefer and seldomer than before, but they were more fervid and intense in consequence. So much had to be packed into a small compass; and certain feelings, certain resolves and wishes, like gun-cotton, gain force by compression. Do what he would Richard felt the ground giving way under his feet, and the hands which he strove so hard to retain, slipping cold and limp from his. An evil fortune seemed to pursue him which made all his efforts useless, and worse than useless. The force that opposed him was as irresistible as electricity, as overpowering as gravitation; and he was as relatively weak as Thor when he stirred the foundations of the earth and wrestled with that feeble-looking crone whose name was

Old Age. And what was true on its own side with Hermione was as true with Virginia, if the threads here were of a slightly different complexion from those which wove the tangled web there.

When convinced that no good was coming to him or to them by the present method, Richard one morning broached the subject of foreign travel, saying with transparent pretext :

"Would you not like to escape the hard winter, Hermione? The weather is really terribly trying! I long for the sunshine and blue skies, say of Italy. What do you say?--shall we pack up and go?"

This was much for him to propose, pretext as it was. He had no travelling blood in him, and he loved both his home and his work, his bodily quiet and mental activity, too well to like the idea of knocking about foreign towns where was as little repose as duty.

"Travel? no indeed!" said Hermione with a made-up shiver, as she turned her head to the window and the dreary prospect lying before her. She seldom looked at her husband in these later days; never when she could avoid it, met his eyes.

Virginia looked at her mother wistfully.

"Would you not like to go to Italy, mamma?" she asked-" not go to Rome ?"

"" No, not even to Rome," answered her mother with a forced laugh. "We are best at home."

"If you and the child like it I am ready, and should be glad to go," said Richard turning to Virginia as an advocate unexpectedly retained.

'Certainly not!" said Hermione with a nervous cough. "It makes me cold to think of it."

Mr. Lascelles had prepared her for the chance of this proposal. He had foreseen it, and had warned her so that she should not be taken by surprise.

"A very few days of easy travelling in well-warmed carriages would take us out of all this snow and frost and bring us into summer sunshine and spring flowers," said Richard, drawing on his imagination liberally.

"Yes, mamma,” urged Virginia; "it would be so lovely at Rome now!"

Her mother gave her a warning look.

"If you like to go with your father, do my dear," she said. "I will not hinder you. I shall not go. I would not dream of leaving

home at this time; but you can if you like, of course."

"Virginia would be a very sweet travelling companion," said

Richard fondly ; "but without her mother, I doubt if either she or I

would like it."

Hermione blushed and looked embarrassed.

"You are very good," she said shyly, like a great girl receiving a compliment from her lover. "I dare say Italy would be very pleasant just now I am sure indeed that it would—but for many reasons I am best at home, and it is only waste of time to talk about going."

On which she got up and left the room, on pretence of attending to some domestic duty which did not exist and which she would not have attended to if it had existed.

For her reward, Mr. Lascelles assured her that all the heavenly hierarchy were well pleased at her constancy, and, what was more to the purpose perhaps, that he himself was entirely content. But he warned her that the infidel against whose wickedness they were both arrayed would spread his snare again; and he prepared her with her weapons of defence against those "innumerable devices of Satan" of which this objectionable agnostic was supposed to be the chosen executant. Wherefore it came about that, when Richard went back on the same subject-this time emphasizing his own wish by complaining of not feeling well;—and indeed he was looking miserably ill ;—of suffering from the weather, craving for sunshine, wanting change, excitement, movement-Hermione took up an argumentative tone, saying with a kind of unnatural firmness and indifference which showed clearly enough what was the unconquerable strength of will behind her :

"If you really require change, Richard, go abroad by all means. We shall take no harm and you will get good."

"But will you not come with me?" he asked.

She shook her head.

"Impossible," was her only answer.

"I should not care to go without you," he said with grave tenderness.

"Oh, that is childish," she answered with mock primness. "Old married people as we are, we can afford to be separated for a few weeks without breaking our hearts."

As she said this she suddenly crimsoned, then turned aside with a little laugh as affected as the rest.

"And if I laid it on your duty as a wife?" asked Richard with a smile, but conscious that he was trying a dangerous experiment.

"I should then oppose you with my duties as a proprietor,” said Hermione, repeating her lesson. "If you left, I should stay behind to look after my affairs."

She spoke in a level, artificial voice, her heart misgiving her. But Superior had told her what to say, and she was bound to obey him.

Reading between the lines Richard understood so far.

"Morse"-the bailiff-" would attend to all the business details," he said quietly.

"I should not choose to give everything up to Morse. I would prefer to superintend them myself," she answered.

past.

He smiled.

Her words called up one of the sweet images of the

"It would be pretty to see you over the books," he said, remembering her old-time inability to add up a page in a day ledger with tolerable exactness, and her general confusion between pence and shillings which made the total not a little misleading.

Hermione flushed.

"It is your fault that I can do so little," she said with petulance. "I think it is very hard that I know so little of my own affairs; and I must say I do not like to be so entirely in the dark as I have been kept all my life."

This was the first card of the new lead, the first indication of the new departure.

Richard looked at her full and straight in the face-his own was grave rather than stern.

"You shall be enlightened on all that concerns us at any moment when you will give me your attention," he said. "I have no wish to keep you in the dark.”

"It is very odd then that you have done so," said Hermione. Then repenting of her injustice, she added impulsively: "No, I should not say that after all! It has been the fault of my own wretched indolence."

"Less that than the result of your loving trust," said Richard. "Where one can do all single-handed, is it not a waste of force to employ two? But for my own part I shall be delighted to show you all the mysteries of book-keeping and lease-letting. When will you come for your lesson?"

He smiled again as he spoke. The vision of her pretty golden head bending over the accounts in his study, as she used in the first days of their marriage, when she thought that somehow her money had grown in the night because she put down an account of fifteen pounds in the shilling column and was the triumphant possessor of so much more than she had a right to expect-the vision of her certain mistakes and their pleasant correction came before him as perhaps

the beginning of a new life between them and the sweeping away of those wretched misunderstandings by which they were kept asunder.

"When will you come, wife?" he asked again, forgetting the terms on which they were living, and leaning forward with sudden eagerness.

She felt the false move that she had made. What would Superior say if he heard of this monstrous proposition of friendly intercourse with her excommunicated husband? and what would he do were she to assent to it? The thought made her shiver.

"If you go from home I will find it all out by myself," she said hurriedly, in the tone of one half-frightened. And, as you say, while you have the management of things, I am not wanted."

And then the conversation dropped. Richard went wearily into his study while she, stifling her heartache by first reading a page or two of De Imitatione, turned to an illumination which the vicar had begged her to do for his own private room. It was to be a secret between them; and secresy gave it a greater charm and carried with it a deeper danger. But even though the work pleased her, and Superior was the centre of her holiest feelings and highest life-so she was for ever repeating to herself-a tear dropped on the vellum, which gave her infinite trouble to work over,

After this nothing more was said about leaving Crossholme. Here too Richard's aim had been taken-and had failed.

Things went on in this uncomfortable way, the gulf between this infidel father and husband and his converted beloved growing deeper and wider day by day, till suddenly on a certain Wednesday morning Hermione and Virginia appeared at the breakfast-table, dressed in black, and with a generally austere air that Richard must have been blind not to have seen. They had been down to "mattins," and Hermione had evidently been weeping; while Virginia was even more serious than usual, and with more of that perplexed and feverish expression which had lately taken the place of her former calm intensity. Religion with her had been neither fear nor doubt nor yet division of feeling. It had been one straight path which she was called on to follow, and which she would have died rather than forsake. Now something had sprung up within her soul of which even her mother, even Superior was ignorant-and must remain so until she had seen her way once more clearly. But during this time of fighting through her difficulties, she was almost as unhappy as her father, almost as torn and tossed and hesitating as her mother. And her face on this Wednesday morning was the mirror of her mind.