on earth.

"Take me--take me home!" she said, as she threw herself into her
mother's arms.

"Never, my child, to be parted from us again," said her father, as he
pressed her passionately to his heart.

They understood each other, and when the funeral was over, without one
word to "Wentworth--for Pauline could bear nothing more--Mr. Grey took
Pauline home.

That night she was in a high fever, and for two or three days she
continued alarmingly ill--but at the end of that time she was enabled
to sit up.

Mr. Grey had, meanwhile, seen Wentworth; but the nature of their
conversation he did not repeat to his daughter.

One afternoon, however, he came into her sick room, and said,

"Pauline, are you strong enough to see your husband. He entreats to
see you, if but for a few minutes." Pauline murmured an acquiescence.

"My dear," said Mr. Grey, "you must leave them--I have promised it;
but Mrs. Granger (the nurse) will remain."

Wentworth presently entered. He seemed calm, for the nurse's eye was
upon him; asked her how she was, and talked for a few minutes, and
then getting up, as if to take Pauline's hand for farewell, he
approached his lips close to her ear, said some low muttered words,
and left the room.

Pauline did not speak for some time after he had withdrawn, and the
nurse receiving no answer to some question she had asked her, went up
to her, and found she had fainted.

Shivering succeeded to fainting fits--faintings to shivering; they
thought that night that she was dying.

A few days after she said, in a quick, low, frightened voice to her
mother,

"Lock the doors mother, quick!"

Much startled, Mrs. Grey did instantly as Pauline requested, and then
her ear, less fine than the sensitive organ of her unhappy daughter,
caught the sound of Wentworth's voice in the hall below.

"Fear not, my Pauline," she said, as she took her in her arms, "your
father will protect you;" but no sound escaped Pauline's lips. She was
evidently intently listening. Soon loud voices were heard, doors
shutting--and then the street door with a bang. Presently Mr. Grey's
measured tread was heard coming up stairs, and next his hand was on
the lock.

"Is he alone?" were the first words Pauline had uttered since she had
heard her husband's voice.

"He is, my child."

"Pauline, fear not, you shall never see him again," were the words of
her father, uttered in a calm but deep voice.

That night Pauline slept tranquilly, f