therine's chamber. She took her in her
arms, exclaiming, 'Catherine, we are women, but we must act like
men.' A flood of mingled tears relieved the dreadful emotions which
agitated the wretched pair. One moment's consideration showed them
the worst--a future of hopeless despair. Hardman's love _was_, then,
a mere fitful passion, lit up by Catherine's former surpassing
beauty.

Upon her face and form, with their matchless loveliness, his fancy
had fed since his banishment; his imagination, rather than his heart,
had kept her image constantly before him. But when he beheld her in
reality, so different from the being his memory-dreams had lingered
over, his passion received a sudden check. When he beheld her pallid
cheek, there was no heart-love to tell him it was grief for him which
had hollowed and blanched her beauteous face. His lightly-based
passion all but extinguished, instead of soothing the misfortune
which the ravages of disease had brought upon her, gradually became
colder and colder. In two months after his return the final blow was
struck, and Herbert Hardman became the husband of the Lady Elizabeth
Plympton!

From the day of the nuptials, Catherine Dodbury covered her face with
a thick black veil, and no mortal had ever seen her face, except her
faithful domestic, to the day of her death. She and Mrs Hardman
retired to a distant part of the country, to leave the bride and
bridegroom in undisturbed possession of the estate. Mrs Hardman did
not long survive her son's marriage. On her death, it was discovered
that all the property at her disposal she had left to her son--to be
enjoyed after his death by Catherine--who, the testatrix never
doubted, when she executed the will (for which purpose she made her
solitary journey to Barnstable), would, if ever he reappeared, become
Herbert's wife.

But how fared the married pair?

At first they lived happily enough; but, when the enthusiasm of love
was over, other excitements were sought. They removed to London.
Herbert became wildly dissipated, and his wife habitually expensive.
The estate was soon impoverished, trees cut down, and the whole
steeped in mortgages. Crime succeeded. By a legal juggle, Catherine
was deprived of her reversionary rights; and when every penny was
gone, the wretched Hardman ended his days in a debtor's prison. His
wife followed him, leaving no child to inherit the estates.

Catherine had, during all this while, lived with her father til