waist; that and nothing
more. Thinking of all this she resolved not to go into that subject.
Should she ever do so it must be when he had come back to her, and
was sitting there with his arm around her waist. She ended her
letter, therefore, very shortly.

As I must wait here till I hear from you, and cannot even
write to my mother till I do so, I must beg you to answer
my letter quickly. I shall endeavour to go on without
drawing any cheques. If I find it necessary I shall have
to write to my mother for money.

Your most affectionate wife,

CECILIA WESTERN.

Oh, George, if you knew how I love you!

Then, as she did not like to send the letter out among the servants
without any address, and thus to confess to them that she did not
know where her husband had gone, she directed the letter to him at
his club in London.

During the next day or two the pity of her servants, the silent,
unexpressed pity, was very hard to bear. As each morning came her
punishment seemed to become more and more intolerable to her. She
could not read. There were none among her friends, not even her
mother, to whom she could write. It was still her hope,--her faintest
hope, that she need confess to none of them the fact that her husband
had quarrelled with her. She could only sit and ponder over the
tyranny of the man who by his mere suspicions could subject a woman
to so cruel a fate. But on the evening of the third day she was told
that a gentleman had called to see her. Mr. Gray sent his card in to
her, and she at once recognised Mr. Gray as her husband's attorney.
She was sitting at the open window of her own bedroom, looking into
the garden, and she was aware that she had been weeping. "I will be
down at once," she said to the maid, "if Mr. Gray will wait."

"Oh, ma'am, you do take on so dreadfully!" said the girl.

"Never mind, Mary. I will come down and see Mr. Gray if you will
leave me."

"Oh, ma'am, oh, Miss Holt, I have known you so long, may I not say a
word to you?"

"I am not Miss Holt. I am still entitled to bear my husband's name."
Then the girl, feeling herself to have been rebuked, was leaving
the room, when her mistress jumped up from her seat, took her in
her arms, and kissed her. "Oh, Mary," she said, "I am unhappy, so
unhappy! But pray do not tell them. It is true that you have known me
long, and I can trust you." Then the girl, crying much more bitterly
than her mistress, left the r