of her granddaughter suggested that a
little exercise of mercy might be attended with the right result. She
looked at a cake on the sideboard. "I have only to forgive Kitty," she
decided, "and the child will talk about it of her own accord."

Chapter XXXI.

Mr. Herbert Linley.

Of the friends and neighbors who had associated with Herbert Linley, in
bygone days, not more than two or three kept up their intimacy with him
at the later time of his disgrace. Those few, it is needless to say,
were men.

One of the faithful companions, who had not shrunk from him yet, had
just left the London hotel at which Linley had taken rooms for Sydney
Westerfield and himself--in the name of Mr. and Mrs. Herbert. This
old friend had been shocked by the change for the worse which he had
perceived in the fugitive master of Mount Morven. Linley's stout figure
of former times had fallen away, as if he had suffered under long
illness; his healthy color had faded; he made an effort to assume
the hearty manner that had once been natural to him which was simply
pitiable to see. "After sacrificing all that makes life truly decent
and truly enjoyable for a woman, he has got nothing, not even false
happiness, in return!" With that dreary conclusion the retiring visitor
descended the hotel steps, and went his way along the street.

Linley returned to the newspaper which he had been reading when his
friend was shown into the room.

Line by line he followed the progress of the law report, which informed
its thousands of readers that his wife had divorced him, and had taken
lawful possession of his child. Word by word, he dwelt with morbid
attention on the terms of crushing severity in which the Lord President
had spoken of Sydney Westerfield and of himself. Sentence by sentence
he read the reproof inflicted on the unhappy woman whom he had vowed to
love and cherish. And then--even then--urged by his own self-tormenting
suspicion, he looked for more. On the opposite page there was a leading
article, presenting comments on the trial, written in the tone of lofty
and virtuous regret; taking the wife's side against the judge, but
declaring, at the same time, that no condemnation of the conduct of the
husband and the governess could be too merciless, and no misery that
might overtake them in the future more than they had deserved.

He threw the newspaper on the table at his side, and thought over what
he had read.

If he had done nothing else