did you come and disturb my life a second time?' she harshly asked.
'Why did you pester me with your conscience, till I was driven to accept
you to get rid of your importunity? Frances and I were doing well: the
one desire of my life was that she should marry that good young man. And
now the match is broken off by your cruel interference! Why did you show
yourself in my world again, and raise this scandal upon my hard-won
respectability--won by such weary years of labour as none will ever
know!' She bent her face upon the table and wept passionately.

There was no reply from Mr. Millborne. Frances lay awake nearly all that
night, and when at breakfast-time the next morning still no letter
appeared from Mr. Cope, she entreated her mother to go to Ivell and see
if the young man were ill.

Mrs. Millborne went, returning the same day. Frances, anxious and
haggard, met her at the station.

Was all well? Her mother could not say it was; though he was not ill.

One thing she had found out, that it was a mistake to hunt up a man when
his inclinations were to hold aloof. Returning with her mother in the
cab Frances insisted upon knowing what the mystery was which plainly had
alienated her lover. The precise words which had been spoken at the
interview with him that day at Ivell Mrs. Millborne could not be induced
to repeat; but thus far she admitted, that the estrangement was
fundamentally owing to Mr. Millborne having sought her out and married
her.

'And why did he seek you out--and why were you obliged to marry him?'
asked the distressed girl. Then the evidences pieced themselves together
in her acute mind, and, her colour gradually rising, she asked her mother
if what they pointed to was indeed the fact. Her mother admitted that it
was.

A flush of mortification succeeded to the flush of shame upon the young
woman's face. How could a scrupulously correct clergyman and lover like
Mr. Cope ask her to be his wife after this discovery of her irregular
birth? She covered her eyes with her hands in a silent despair.

In the presence of Mr. Millborne they at first suppressed their anguish.
But by and by their feelings got the better of them, and when he was
asleep in his chair after dinner Mrs. Millborne's irritation broke out.
The embittered Frances joined her in reproaching the man who had come as
the spectre to their intended feast of Hymen, and turned its promise to
ghastly failure.

'Why were you so weak,