ike
locomotive plants they spread and re-root, till to destroy the
original stem has no material effect in killing them. I made a
mistake in searching you out; I admit it; whatever the remedy may be
in such cases it is not marriage, and the best thing for you and me is
that you do not see me more. You had better not seek me, for you will
not be likely to find me: you are well provided for, and we may do
ourselves more harm than good by meeting again.

'F. M.'

Millborne, in short, disappeared from that day forward. But a searching
inquiry would have revealed that, soon after the Millbornes went to
Ivell, an Englishman, who did not give the name of Millborne, took up his
residence in Brussels; a man who might have been recognized by Mrs.
Millborne if she had met him. One afternoon in the ensuing summer, when
this gentleman was looking over the English papers, he saw the
announcement of Miss Frances Frankland's marriage. She had become the
Reverend Mrs. Cope.

'Thank God!' said the gentleman.

But his momentary satisfaction was far from being happiness. As he
formerly had been weighted with a bad conscience, so now was he burdened
with the heavy thought which oppressed Antigone, that by honourable
observance of a rite he had obtained for himself the reward of
dishonourable laxity. Occasionally he had to be helped to his lodgings
by his servant from the _Cercle_ he frequented, through having imbibed a
little too much liquor to be able to take care of himself. But he was
harmless, and even when he had been drinking said little.

_March_ 1891.

A TRAGEDY OF TWO AMBITIONS

CHAPTER I

The shouts of the village-boys came in at the window, accompanied by
broken laughter from loungers at the inn-door; but the brothers
Halborough worked on.

They were sitting in a bedroom of the master-millwright's house, engaged
in the untutored reading of Greek and Latin. It was no tale of Homeric
blows and knocks, Argonautic voyaging, or Theban family woe that inflamed
their imaginations and spurred them onward. They were plodding away at
the Greek Testament, immersed in a chapter of the idiomatic and difficult
Epistle to the Hebrews.

The Dog-day sun in its decline reached the low ceiling with slanting
sides, and the shadows of the great goat's-willow swayed and interchanged
upon the walls like a spectral army manoeuvring. The open casement which
admitted the remoter sounds now brought