ertainty.'

'Lionel spoke to you?' said Mrs. Berrington, holding up her head with a
stare. 'And what is it that he knows?'

'That Captain Crispin was in Paris and that you were with him. He
believes you went there to meet him.'

'He said this to _you_?'

'Yes, and much more--I don't know why I should make a secret of it.'

'The disgusting beast!' Selina exclaimed slowly, solemnly. 'He enjoys
the right--the legal right--to pour forth his vileness upon _me_; but
when he is so lost to every feeling as to begin to talk to you in such a
way----!' And Mrs. Berrington paused, in the extremity of her
reprobation.

'Oh, it was not his talk that shocked me--it was his believing it,' the
girl replied. 'That, I confess, made an impression on me.'

'Did it indeed? I'm infinitely obliged to you! You are a tender, loving
little sister.'

'Yes, I am, if it's tender to have cried about you--all these days--till
I'm blind and sick!' Laura replied. 'I hope you are prepared to meet
him. His mind is quite made up to apply for a divorce.'

Laura's voice almost failed her as she said this--it was the first time
that in talking with Selina she had uttered that horrible word. She had
heard it however, often enough on the lips of others; it had been
bandied lightly enough in her presence under those somewhat austere
ceilings of Mellows, of which the admired decorations and mouldings, in
the taste of the middle of the last century, all in delicate plaster and
reminding her of Wedgewood pottery, consisted of slim festoons, urns and
trophies and knotted ribbons, so many symbols of domestic affection and
irrevocable union. Selina herself had flashed it at her with light
superiority, as if it were some precious jewel kept in reserve, which
she could convert at any moment into specie, so that it would constitute
a happy provision for her future. The idea--associated with her own
point of view--was apparently too familiar to Mrs. Berrington to be the
cause of her changing colour; it struck her indeed, as presented by
Laura, in a ludicrous light, for her pretty eyes expanded a moment and
she smiled pityingly. 'Well, you are a poor dear innocent, after all.
Lionel would be about as able to divorce me--even if I were the most
abandoned of my sex--as he would be to write a leader in the _Times_.'

'I know nothing about that,' said Laura.

'So I perceive--as I also perceive that you must have shut your eyes
very tight. Should you like to know a