s, that is her dream of happiness, to obey."

The Sister still questioned him with averted head, and he told her what
had passed between Bella and him the last time he saw her, and all
their innocent plans of married happiness. He told her, with the tear
in his eye, and she listened, with the tear in hers. "And then," said
he, laying his hand on her shoulder, "is it not hard? I just went to
Mayfair, not to please myself, but to do an act of justice--of more
than justice; and then, for that, to have her door shut in my face.
Only two hours between the height of happiness and the depth of
misery."

The Sister said nothing, but she hid her face in her hands, and
thought.

The next morning, by her order, Polly came into the room, and said,
"You are to go home. The carriage is at the door." With this she
retired, and Sir Charles's valet entered the room soon after to help
him dress.

"Where am I, James?"

"Miss Somerset's house, Sir Charles."

"Then get me out of it directly."

"Yes, Sir Charles. The carriage is at the door."

"Who told you to come, James?"

"Miss Somerset, Sir Charles."

"That is odd."

"Yes, Sir Charles."

When he got home he found a sofa placed by a fire, with wraps and
pillows; his cigar case laid out, and a bottle of salts, and also a
small glass of old cognac, in case of faintness.

"Which of you had the gumption to do all this?"

"Miss Somerset, Sir Charles."

"What, has she been _here?"_

"Yes, Sir Charles."

"Curse her!"

"Yes, Sir Charles."

CHAPTER VII.

"LOVE LIES BLEEDING."

BELLA BRUCE was drinking the bitterest cup a young virgin soul can
taste. Illusion gone--the wicked world revealed as it is, how unlike
what she thought it was--love crushed in her, and not crushed out of
her, as it might if she had been either proud or vain.

Frail men and women should see what a passionate but virtuous woman can
suffer, when a revelation, of which they think but little, comes and
blasts her young heart, and bids her dry up in a moment the deep well
of her affection, since it flows for an unworthy object, and flows in
vain. I tell you that the fair head severed from the chaste body is
nothing to her compared with this. The fair body, pierced with heathen
arrows, was nothing to her in the days of old compared with this.

In a word--for nowadays we can but amplify, and so enfeeble, what some
old dead master of language, immortal though obscure, has said in words
of