An
overpowering impatience to make the speediest and completest atonement
possessed her. Must she wait till Herbert Linley no longer concealed
that he was weary of her, and cast her off? No! It should be her own act
that parted them, and that did it at once. She threw open the door, and
hurried half-way down the stairs before she remembered the one terrible
obstacle in her way--the Divorce.

Slowly and sadly she submitted, and went back to her room.

There was no disguising it; the two who had once been husband and wife
were parted irrevocably--by the wife's own act. Let him repent ever so
sincerely, let him be ever so ready to return, would the woman whose
faith Herbert Linley had betrayed take him back? The Divorce, the
merciless Divorce, answered:--No!

She paused, thinking of the marriage that was now a marriage no more.
The toilet-table was close to her; she looked absently at her haggard
face in the glass. What a lost wretch she saw! The generous impulses
which other women were free to feel were forbidden luxuries to her. She
was ashamed of her wickedness; she was eager to sacrifice herself, for
the good of the once-dear friend whom she had wronged. Useless longings!
Too late! too late!

She regretted it bitterly. Why?

Comparing Mrs. Linley's prospects with hers, was there anything to
justify regret for the divorced wife? She had her sweet little child to
make her happy; she had a fortune of her own to lift her above sordid
cares; she was still handsome, still a woman to be admired. While she
held her place in the world as high as ever, what was the prospect
before Sydney Westerfield? The miserable sinner would end as she had
deserved to end. Absolutely dependent on a man who was at that moment
perhaps lamenting the wife whom he had deserted and lost, how long would
it be before she found herself an outcast, without a friend to help
her--with a reputation hopelessly lost--face to face with the temptation
to drown herself or poison herself, as other women had drowned
themselves or poisoned themselves, when the brightest future before them
was rest in death?

If she had been a few years older, Herbert Linley might never again have
seen her a living creature. But she was too young to follow any train of
repellent thought persistently to its end. The man she had guiltily (and
yet how naturally) loved was lord and master in her heart, doubt him as
she might. Even in his absence he pleaded with her to have some