ion, I committed to writing the necessary instructions
for watching over the frail tenure of my mother's life.

"Let me give you one word of warning," he said, as we parted. "Your
mother is especially desirous that you should know nothing of the
precarious condition of her health. Her one anxiety is to see you
happy. If she discovers your visit to me, I will not answer for the
consequences. Make the best excuse you can think of for at once taking
her away from London, and, whatever you may feel in secret, keep up an
appearance of good spirits in her presence."

That evening I made my excuse. It was easily found. I had only to tell
my poor mother of Mrs. Van Brandt's refusal to marry me, and there was
an intelligible motive assigned for my proposing to leave London. The
same night I wrote to inform Mrs. Van Brandt of the sad event which was
the cause of my sudden departure, and to warn her that there no longer
existed the slightest necessity for insuring her life. "My lawyers" (I
wrote) "have undertaken to arrange Mr. Van Brandt's affairs immediately.
In a few hours he will be at liberty to accept the situation that has
been offered to him." The last lines of the letter assured her of my
unalterable love, and entreated her to write to me before she left
England.

This done, all was done. I was conscious, strange to say, of no acutely
painful suffering at this saddest time of my life. There is a limit,
morally as well as physically, to our capacity for endurance. I can only
describe my sensations under the calamities that had now fallen on me in
one way: I felt like a man whose mind had been stunned.

The next day my mother and I set forth on the first stage of our journey
to the south coast of Devonshire.

CHAPTER XXX. THE PROSPECT DARKENS.

THREE days after my mother and I had established ourselves at Torquay,
I received Mrs. Van Brandt's answer to my letter. After the opening
sentences (informing me that Van Brandt had been set at liberty, under
circumstances painfully suggestive to the writer of some unacknowledged
sacrifice on my part), the letter proceeded in these terms:

"The new employment which Mr. Van Brandt is to undertake secures to us
the comforts, if not the luxuries, of life. For the first time since my
troubles began, I have the prospect before me of a peaceful existence,
among a foreign people from whom all that is false in my position may be
concealed--not for my sake, but for the sake of my chil