mation
respecting my movements. With a sincere wish for your
welfare, I remain,"

Yours, etc.,

"Bearwarden."

She was stunned, stupefied, bewildered. What had he found out? What
could it mean? She had known of late she loved him very dearly; she
never knew till now the pain such love might bring. She rocked herself
to and fro in her agony, but soon started up into action. She must do
something. She could not sit there under his very picture looking down
on her, manly, and kind, and soldierlike. She ran down-stairs to his
room. It was all disordered just as he had left it, and an odour of
tobacco clung heavily round the curtains and furniture. She wondered
now she should ever have disliked the fumes of that unsavoury plant.
She could not bear to stay there long, but hurried up-stairs again
to ring for a servant, and bid him get a cab at once, to see if Lord
Bearwarden was at the barracks. She felt hopelessly convinced it was
no use; even if he were, nothing would be gained by the assurance, but
it seemed a relief to obtain an interval of waiting and uncertainty
and delay. When the man returned to report that "his lordship had been
there and gone away again," she wished she had let it alone. It formed
no light portion of her burden that she must preserve an appearance
of composure before her servants. It seemed such a mockery while her
heart was breaking, yes, breaking, in the desolation of her sorrow,
the blank of a future without _him_.

Then in extremity of need she bethought her of Dick Stanmore, and in
this I think Lady Bearwarden betrayed, under all her energy and force
of character, the softer elements of woman's nature. A man, I suppose,
under any pressure of affliction would hardly go for consolation
to the woman he had deceived. He partakes more of the wild beast's
sulkiness, which, sick or wounded, retires to mope in a corner by
itself; whereas a woman, as indeed seems only becoming to her less
firmly-moulded character, shows in a struggle all the qualities of
valour except that one additional atom of final endurance which wins
the fight at last. In real bitter distress they must have some one to
lean on. Is it selfishness that bids them carry their sorrows for help
to the very hearts they have crushed and trampled? Is it not rather a
noble instinct of forgiveness and generosity which tells them that if
their mutual cases were reversed they would themselves be capable of
affording the sympathy th