dreary entertainment, and the failure of her
simple stratagems to enliven her saturnine host.

CHAPTER XXVII.

"Then let the funeral bells be tolled, a requiem be sung,
An anthem for the queenliest dead that ever died so young;
A dirge for her--the doubly dead, in that she died so young."

For the first few minutes after the train had moved off Guy was unable
to collect his thoughts. As the tall figure of Mohun passed from his
view, it seemed as if a sustaining prop had been suddenly cut away from
under him, and he felt more than ever helpless. The stubborn strength of
his character asserted itself before long, and he faced his great sorrow
as he would have done an enemy in bodily shape; but neither then, nor
for many days after, could he pursue any one train of reflection long
unbroken.

First he began to think how Constance would look when he saw her. Would
she be much changed? How beautiful she was the night they parted, with
the blue myosotis gleaming through her bright hair! Would her eyes be as
cold as he remembered them then (he had not seen their _last_ look), or
would they forgive him at once, and tell him so? Not if she knew all.
And then, in hideous contrast to her pure stately beauty, there rose
before him faces and figures which had shared his orgies during the past
months, gay with paint and jewels, and meretricious ornament. There was
a deeper horror in those mocking shapes than in the most loathsome
phantasms of corporeal corruption that feverish dreams ever called up
from the grave-yard. If his lips were unworthy, months ago, to touch
Constance's cheek or hand, what were they now? He ground his teeth in
the bitterness of self-condemnation. It would be easier to bear, if she
met him coldly and proudly, than if she yielded at once, as her letter
seemed to promise. Her letter! What became of the first one? If that had
reached him, how much had been saved! Perhaps Constance's
life--certainly much of his own dishonor. The idea did cross him that
Flora might have been concerned in intercepting it, but it seemed
improbable, and he drove it away. With all his revived devotion to
Constance, he did not like to think hardly of her rival; in a lesser
degree he had wronged her too.

You will rarely find the sternest or wisest of men disposed to be harsh
toward errors that spring from a devotion to themselves. It is only
just, as well as natural, that it should be so. If the second cause