reason why good resolutions have earned for
themselves such an evil repute as paving-stones is because they are
often the result, not of repentance, but of the restlessness that dogs
an evaporating pleasure. This liaison had been alternately his pride and
his shame for many months. But now it was becoming something more--which
it had been all the time, only he had not noticed it till lately--a
fetter, a clog, something irksome, to be cast off and pushed out of
sight. Decidedly the moment for the good resolution had arrived.

"I will break it off," he said again. "Thank Heaven, not a soul has ever
guessed it."

How could any one have guessed it?

He remembered the day when he had first met her a year ago, and had
looked upon her as merely a pretty woman. He remembered other days, and
the gradual building up between them of a fairy palace. He had added a
stone here, she a stone there, until suddenly it became--a prison. Had
he been tempter or tempted? He did not know. He did not care. He wanted
only to be out of it. His better feelings and his conscience had been
awakened by the first touch of weariness. His brief infatuation had run
its course. His judgment had been whirled--he told himself it had been
whirled, but it had really only been tweaked--from its centre, had
performed its giddy orbit, and now the check-string had brought it back
to the point from whence it had set out, namely, that she was merely a
pretty woman.

"I will break with her gradually," he said, like the tyro he was, and he
pictured to himself the wretched scenes in which she would abuse him,
reproach him, probably compromise herself, the letters she would write
to him. At any rate, he need not read them. Oh! how tired he was of the
whole thing beforehand. Why had he been such a fool? He looked at the
termination of the liaison as a bad sailor looks at an inevitable sea
passage at the end of a journey. It must be gone through, but the
prospect of undergoing it filled him with disgust.

A brougham passed him swiftly on noiseless wheels, and the woman in it
caught a glimpse of the high-bred, clean-shaved face, half savage, half
sullen, in the hansom.

"Anger, impatience, and remorse," she said to herself, and finished
buttoning her gloves.

"Thank Heaven, not a soul has ever guessed it," repeated Hugh,
fervently, as the hansom came suddenly to a stand-still.

In another moment he was taking Lady Newhaven's hand as she stood at the
entrance of