he
concealed her heart-sickness. But bride and bridegroom had not long been
home at the castle when the young wife's unhappiness became plainly
enough perceptible. Her maids and men said that she was in the habit of
turning to the wainscot and shedding stupid scalding tears at a time when
a right-minded lady would have been overhauling her wardrobe. She prayed
earnestly in the great church-pew, where she sat lonely and insignificant
as a mouse in a cell, instead of counting her rings, falling asleep, or
amusing herself in silent laughter at the queer old people in the
congregation, as previous beauties of the family had done in their time.
She seemed to care no more for eating and drinking out of crystal and
silver than from a service of earthen vessels. Her head was, in truth,
full of something else; and that such was the case was only too obvious
to the Duke, her husband. At first he would only taunt her for her folly
in thinking of that milk-and-water parson; but as time went on his
charges took a more positive shape. He would not believe her assurance
that she had in no way communicated with her former lover, nor he with
her, since their parting in the presence of her father. This led to some
strange scenes between them which need not be detailed; their result was
soon to take a catastrophic shape.

One dark quiet evening, about two months after the marriage, a man
entered the gate admitting from the highway to the park and avenue which
ran up to the house. He arrived within two hundred yards of the walls,
when he left the gravelled drive and drew near to the castle by a
roundabout path leading into a shrubbery. Here he stood still. In a few
minutes the strokes of the castle-clock resounded, and then a female
figure entered the same secluded nook from an opposite direction. There
the two indistinct persons leapt together like a pair of dewdrops on a
leaf; and then they stood apart, facing each other, the woman looking
down.

'Emmeline, you begged me to come, and here I am, Heaven forgive me!' said
the man hoarsely.

'You are going to emigrate, Alwyn,' she said in broken accents. 'I have
heard of it; you sail from Plymouth in three days in the _Western
Glory_?'

'Yes. I can live in England no longer. Life is as death to me here,'
says he.

'My life is even worse--worse than death. Death would not have driven me
to this extremity. Listen, Alwyn--I have sent for you to beg to go with
you, or at l