He led a bad, immoral life, and it
was scarcely more than two years after her marriage that Mary Gifford's
eyes were opened to the true character of the man who had won her in her
inexperienced girlhood by his handsome person--in which the boy resembled
him--his suave manner, and his passionate protestations of devotion to her.

Many women have had a like bitter lesson to learn, but perhaps few have
felt as Mary did, humbled in the very dust, when she awoke to the reality
of her position, that the love offered her had been unworthy the name, and
that she had been betrayed and deceived by a man who, as soon as the first
glamour of his passion was over, showed himself in his true colours, and
expected her to take his conduct as a matter of course, leaving her free,
as he basely insinuated, to console herself as she liked with other
admirers.

To the absolutely pure woman this was the final death-blow of all hope for
the future, and all peace in the present. Mary fled to her old home with
her boy, and soon after heard the report that her husband had been killed
in a fray, and that if he had lived he would have been arrested and
condemned for the secret attack made on his victim, and also as a disguised
Catholic supposed to be in league with those who were then plotting against
the life of the Queen.

About a year before this time, a gentleman of the Earl of Leicester's
household, when at Penshurst, had told Mary Gifford that Ambrose Gifford
was alive--that he had escaped to join the Jesuits at Douay, and was
employed by them as one of their most shrewd and able emissaries. From that
moment her peace of mind was gone, and the change that had come over her
had been apparent to everyone.

The sadness in her sweet face deepened, and a melancholy oppressed her,
except, indeed, when with her boy, who was a source of unfailing delight,
mingled with fear, lest she should lose him, by his father's machinations.

* * * * *

It was not till fully half-an-hour after Ambrose had been carried away,
that the shepherd, with his staff in his hand and the lost lamb thrown over
his shoulder, came to the place where Mary was lying.

She had recovered consciousness, but was quite unable to move. Besides the
cut on her forehead, she had sprained her ankle, and the attempt to rise
had given her such agony that she had fallen back again.

'Ay, then! lack-a-day, Mistress Gifford,' the shepherd said, 'how did t