r
brutally or to reply. Still looking out at the street, he said "Yes."

"Free to marry, if you like?" she persisted.

He said "Yes" once more--and kept his face steadily turned away from
her. She waited a while. He neither moved nor spoke.

Surviving the slow death little by little of all her other illusions,
one last hope had lingered in her heart. It was killed by that cruel
look, fixed on the view of the street.

"I'll try to think of a place that we can go to at the seaside." Having
said those words she slowly moved away to the door, and turned back,
remembering the packet of letters. She took it up, paused, and looked
toward the window. The streets still interested him. She left the room.

Chapter XXXII. Miss Westerfield.

She locked the door of her bedchamber, and threw off her walking-dress;
light as it was, she felt as if it would stifle her. Even the ribbon
round her neck was more than she could endure and breathe freely. Her
overburdened heart found no relief in tears. In the solitude of her room
she thought of the future. The dreary foreboding of what it might be,
filled her with a superstitious dread from which she recoiled. One of
the windows was open already; she threw up the other to get more air. In
the cooler atmosphere her memory recovered itself; she recollected the
newspaper, that Herbert had taken from her. Instantly she rang for the
maid. "Ask the first waiter you see downstairs for today's newspaper;
any one will do, so long as I don't wait for it." The report of the
Divorce--she was in a frenzy of impatience to read what _he_ had
read--the report of the Divorce.

When her wish had been gratified, when she had read it from beginning to
end, one vivid impression only was left on her mind. She could think of
nothing but what the judge had said, in speaking of Mrs. Linley.

A cruel reproof, and worse than cruel, a public reproof, administered
to the generous friend, the true wife, the devoted mother--and for
what? For having been too ready to forgive the wretch who had taken
her husband from her, and had repaid a hundred acts of kindness by
unpardonable ingratitude.

She fell on her knees; she tried wildly to pray for inspiration that
should tell her what to do. "Oh, God, how can I give that woman back the
happiness of which I have robbed her!"

The composing influence of prayer on a troubled mind was something that
she had heard of. It was not something that she experienced now.