ot ungenerous."

"I am sure of that," Gilbert said warmly, touched by her candour.

"You must let me know every day how your friend is going on, Mr. Fenton,"
Adela said after a pause; "I shall consider it a very great favour if you
will do so."

"I will not fail."

They had returned to Cumberland-gate by this time, and at Gilbert's
request Mrs. Branston allowed him to be set down near the Arch. He called
a cab, and drove to the Temple; while poor Adela went back to the
splendid gloom of Cavendish-square, with all the fabric of her future
life shattered.

Until this hour she had looked upon John Saltram's fidelity to herself as
a certainty; she knew, now that her hope was slain all at once, what a
living thing it had been, and how great a portion of her own existence
had taken its colour therefrom.

It was fortunate for Mrs. Branston that Mrs. Pallinson's toothache, and
the preparations and medicaments supplied to her by her son--all declared
to be infallible, and all ending in ignominious failure--occupied that
lady's attention at this period, to the exclusion of every other thought,
or Adela's pale face might have excited more curiosity than it did. As it
was, the matron contented herself by making some rather snappish remarks
upon the folly of going out to drive late on a January afternoon, and
retired to administer poultices and cataplasms to herself in the solitude
of her own apartment soon after dinner, leaving Adela Branston free to
ponder upon John Saltram's cruelty.

"If he had only trusted me," she said to herself more than once during
those mournful meditations; "if he had only given me credit for some
little good sense and generosity, I should not feel it as keenly as I do.
He must have known that I loved him--yes, I have been weak enough to let
him see that--and I think that once he used to like me a little--in those
old happy days when he came so often to Maidenhead. Yes, I believe he
almost loved me then."

And then the thought that this man was lying desperately ill, perhaps in
danger of death, blotted out every other thought. It was so bitter to
know him in peril, and to be powerless to go to him; worse than useless
to him were she by his side, since it was another whose image haunted his
wandering brain--another whose voice he longed to hear.

She spent a sleepless melancholy night, and had no rest next day, until a
commissionnaire brought her a brief note from Gilbert Fenton, telling her
tha