her feelings, her sufferings, and her
thoughts in her own breast, and having found no sympathy where she ought
to have found it, refrained from seeking it elsewhere.

Lord Basset would have been astonished had he been accused of ill-using
his wife. He never lifted his hand against her, nor even found fault
with her before company. He simply let her feel as if her life were not
worth living, and there was not a soul on earth who cared to make it so.
If, only now and then, he would have given her half an hour of that
brilliance with which he entertained his guests! if he would
occasionally have shown her that he cared whether she was tired, that it
made any difference to his happiness whether she was happy! She was a
woman with intense capacity for loving, but there was no fuel for the
fire, and it was dying out for sheer want of material. Women of lighter
character might have directed their affections elsewhere; women of more
versatile temperament might have found other interests for themselves;
she did neither. Though strong, her intellect was neither quick nor of
great range; it was deep rather than wide in its extent. It must be
remembered, also, that a multitude of interests which are open to a
woman in the present day, were quite unknown to her. The whole world of
literature and science was an unknown thing; and art was only accessible
in the two forms of fancy work and illumination, for neither of which
had she capacity or taste. She could sew, cook, and act as a doctor
when required, which was not often; and there the list of her
accomplishments ended. There was more in her, but nobody cared to draw
it out, and herself least of all.

Lady Basset bowed gravely in reply to Godfrey's courtesy, broke the seal
of the letter, and gazed upon the cabalistic characters therein written.
Had they been Chinese, she would have learned as much from them as she
did. She handed back the letter with a request that he would read it to
her, if he possessed the art of reading; if not, she would send for
Father Collard.

For a moment, but no more, the temptation visited Godfrey to read the
letter as something which it was not. He dismissed it, not from any
conscientious motive, but simply from the doubt whether he could keep up
the delusion.

"Good!" said Lady Basset, when the letter had been read to her; "and now
what is that you are to tell me?"

"Dame, suffer me first to say that it is of the gravest moment that
th