s shoulder and saw the map of Italy.

'Those are lakes,' said the child, pointing north. 'Tell me their
names, Mother.'

But she was silent. Her eye had fallen upon Garda, and at the head of
the lake was a name which thrilled her memory. What if she had gone to
Riva? Suddenly, and for the first time, she saw it as a thing that
might have happened; not as a mere dark suggestion abhorrent to her
thought. Had she known the world a little better, it might have been.
Then, how different her life! Pleasure, luxury, triumph; for she had
proved herself capable of triumphing. He, the man of money and
influence, would have made it his pride to smooth the way for her. And
perhaps never a word against her reputation; or, if whispers, did she
not know by this time how indulgent society can be to its brilliant
favourites?

As it was: a small house at Gunnersbury, a baffled ambition, a life of
envy, hatred, fear, suffered in secret, hidden by base or paltry
subterfuge. A husband whom she respected, whose love she had never
ceased to desire, though, strange to say, she knew not whether she
loved him. Only death could part them; but how much better for him and
for her if they had never met! Their thoughts and purposes so unlike;
he, with his heart and mind set on grave, quiet, restful things, hating
the world's tumult, ever hoping to retire beyond its echo; she, her
senses crying for the delight of an existence that loses itself in
whirl and glare.

In a crowded drawing-room she had heard someone draw attention to
her--'the daughter of Bennet Frothingham'. That was how people thought
of her, and would it not have been wiser if she had so thought of
herself? Daughter of a man who had set all on a great hazard; who had
played for the world's reward, and, losing, flung away his life. What
had _she_ to do with domestic virtues, and the pleasures of a dull,
decorous circle? Could it but come over again, she would accept the
challenge of circumstance, which she had failed to understand; accept
the scandal and the hereditary shame; welcome the lot cast for her,
and, like her father, play boldly for the great stakes. His widow might
continue to hold her pious faith in him, and refuse to believe that his
name merited obloquy; his child knew better. She had mistaken her path,
lost the promise of her beauty and her talent, led astray by the feeble
prejudice of those who have neither one nor the other. Too late, and
worse than idle now, to rec