with despair and grief.
"So"--she says, vehemently--"it is the world's talk. You know it: it
is, indeed, common property, this disgraceful story." Something within
her chokes her words; she can say no more. Passion overcomes her, and
want of hope, and grief too deep for expression. The gentle wells that
nature supplies are dead within her; her eyes, hot and burning,
conceal no water wherewith to cool the fever that consumes them.

"You are a stranger to me," she says, presently. "Yet to you I have
laid bare my thoughts. You think, perhaps, I am one to parade my
griefs, but it is not so; I would have you----"

"I believe you," he interrupts her hastily. He can hardly do
otherwise, she is looking so little, so fragile, with her quivering
lips, and her childish pleading eyes, and plaintive voice.

"Take courage," he says, softly: "you are young: good days may yet be
in store for you; but with me it is different. I am on the verge of
the grave,--am going down into it with no one to soothe or comfort my
declining years. Dorian was my one thought: you can never know how I
planned, and lived, and dreamed for him alone; and see how he has
rewarded me! For youth there is a future, and in that thought alone
lies hope; for age there is nothing but the flying present, and even
that, for me, has lost its sweetness. I have staked my all, and--lost!
surely, of we two, I should be the most miserable."

"Is that your belief?" says Mrs. Branscombe, mournfully. "Forgive me
if I say I think you wrong. You have but a little time to endure your
grief, I have my life, and perhaps"--pathetically--"it will be a long
one. To know I must live under his roof, and feel myself indebted to
him for everything I may want, for many years, is very bitter to me."

Sartoris is cut to the heart: that it should have gone so far that she
should shrink from accepting anything at Dorian's hands, galls him
sorely. And what a gentle tender boy he used to be, and how incapable
of a dishonest thought or action! At least, something should be done
for his wife,--this girl who has grown tired and saddened and out of
all heart since her luckless marriage. He looks at her again keenly,
and tells himself she is sweet enough to keep any man at her side, so
dainty she shows in her simple linen gown, with its soft Quakerish
frillings at the throat and wrists. A sudden thought at last strikes
him.

"I am glad I have met you," he says, quietly. "By and by, perhaps, we