when hearts are miles apart and the practitioner is a man of rags?
Yet there he sat, strewing himself with snuff to keep himself awake,
blinking with dim eyes at her, wondering for ever at her inscrutable
nature, conversing improvingly upon his cases in the courts, or upon
his growing fortune that he computed nightly like a miser. Sometimes, in
spite of his drenchings of macabaw, sleep compelled him, and, humped in
his lug-chair, he would forget his duty, yet waken at her every yawn.
And she--she just looked at him as he slept! She looked--and loathed
herself, that she--so clean, so graceful, so sweet in spite of all her
sin--should be allied with a dead man. The evenings passed for her on
fettered hours; but for the window she had died from her incubus, or at
least stood up and shrieked and ran into the street.

But for the window! From there she saw the hill Dunchuach, so tranquil,
and the bosky deeps of Shira Glen that she knew so well in dusky
evenings and in moonlight, and must ever tenant, in her fancy, with
the man she used to meet there. Often she would turn her back upon that
wizened atomy of quirks and false ideals, and let her bosom pant to
think to-night!--to-night!--to-night!

When the Chamberlain and Montaiglon were announced she could have
cried aloud with joy. It was not hard in that moment of her elation to
understand why once the Chamberlain had loved her; beside the man to
whom her own mad young ambition manacled her she seemed a vision of
beauty none the worse for being just a little ripened.

"Come awa' in!" cried the lawyer with effusion. "You'll find the
mistress and me our lones, and nearly tiring o' each other's company."

The Chamberlain was disappointed. It was one of those evenings when Mrs.
Petullo was used to seek him in the woods, and he had thought to find
her husband by himself.

"A perfect picture of a happy hearth, eh?" said he. "I'm sweared to
spoil it, but I'm bound to lose no time in bringing to you my good
friend M. Montaiglon, who has taken up his quarters at the Boar's Head.
Madam, may I have the pleasure of introducing to you M. Montaiglon?" and
Sim Mac-Taggart looked in her eyes with some impatience, for she hung
just a second too long upon his fingers, and pinched ere she released
them.

She was delighted to make monsieur's acquaintance. Her husband had told
her that monsieur was staying farther up the coast and intended to come
to town.. Monsieur was in business; she f