o which
I have been forced would have been in any way altered
had such been the case. I can hardly, I fear, make you
understand the shock with which I have received the
intelligence, that a month or two before I proposed to you
you had been the promised wife of that man. I need hardly
tell you that had I known that it was so I should not have
offered you my hand. To say the least of it, I was led
into my marriage by mistake. But a marriage commenced with
such a mistake as that cannot be happy.

As to your object I cannot surmise. But I suppose that you
were satisfied, thinking me to be of a nature especially
soft and gentle. But I fear I am not so. After what has
passed I cannot bring myself to live with you again. Pray
believe it. We have now parted for ever.

As to your future welfare, and as to the honour which will
be due to my name, which you must continue to bear, I am
quite willing to make any arrangements which friends of
yours shall think to be due to you. Half my income you
shall have, and you shall live here in this house if it be
thought well for you. In reference to these things your
lawyers had better see my lawyers. In the meantime my
bankers will cash your cheques. But believe me that I am
gone, not to return.

Your affectionate husband,

GEORGE WESTERN.

These words he wrote, struggling to be cool and rational while he
wrote them, and then he departed, leaving the letter upon the table.

END OF THE FIRST VOLUME.

VOLUME II.

CHAPTER XIII.

MRS. WESTERN PREPARES TO LEAVE.

Cecilia, when she first read her husband's letter, did not clearly
understand it. It could not be that he intended to leave her for
ever! They had been married but a few months,--a few months of
inexpressible love and confidence; and it was impossible that he
should intend that they should be thus parted. But when she had read
it again and again, she began to perceive that it was so; "Pray
believe it. We have now parted for ever." Had he stopped there her
belief would have only been half-hearted. She would not in truth
have thought that he had been in earnest in dooming her to eternal
separation. But he had gone on with shocking coolness to tell her how
he had arranged his plans for the future. "Half my income you shall
have." "You shall live here in this house, if it be thought well for
you." "Your lawyer had better see my lawyers."