h with his perfidy and cruelty. Can I
forgive? Ask yourself that, Lady Grant. Is it possible that I should
forgive?" After two days spent in conversations such as these, Lady
Grant went back to town and discussed the matter with Mr. Gray. They
did not at present know her brother's address; but still there was a
hope that she might induce him to hear reason and again to consent
to live with his wife. "Of all men," she said to the lawyer, "he is
the most honest and the most affectionate; but of all men the most
self-willed and obstinate. An injustice is with him like a running
sore; and, alas, it is not always an injustice, but a something that
he has believed to be unjust."

Cecilia had written at great length to her mother, telling her with
all details the story as it was to be told, and sparing herself in
nothing. "That wicked man has contrived it all. But, oh, that such a
one as my husband should have been weak enough to have fallen into a
pit so prepared!" Then Mrs. Holt had come up to town and taken her
daughter back with her to Exeter. Now, at last, on this occasion,
the old lady was both energetic and passionate. There had been much
discussion before they had both decided that they would again venture
to live together among their old friends in their old home. But here
Cecilia had shown herself to be once again stronger than her mother.
"Why not?" she said. "What have I done to make it necessary that you
should be torn away from your house? I am not at all ashamed of what
I have done." In this she had blazoned forth her courage with almost
a false conviction. She knew that she had done wrong;--that she had
done that of which among wives she ought to be ashamed. But her sin
had been so small in comparison with the punishment inflicted upon
her that it sunk to nothing even in her own eyes. She felt that she
had been barbarously used. The people of Exeter, or the people of the
world at large, might sympathise with her or not as they pleased. But
under such a mountain of wrong as she had endured, she would not show
by any conduct of her own that she could have in the least deserved
it. "No, mamma," she said; "let them stay away or let them come, I
shall be ready for either. I am a poor, wretched woman, whom to crush
utterly has been within the power of the man she has loved. He has
chosen to exercise it, and I must suffer. But he shall not make me
ashamed. I have done nothing to deserve his cruelty."

And then when