bad enough,
Heaven knows, but I am not so bad as to render myself responsible for
the happiness of a wife, for the welfare of children, for a home! With
this hanging over me, how can I hope for any happiness in life? I am as
much under punishment as poor Westwood in his prison-cell. I have no
rights, no hopes, no love. A life sentence did I say that he had
received? And have I not a life sentence too?"

He was standing beside his writing-table, and his eyes fell upon a
photograph which had adorned it for the last six months. It represented
a girl's face--a bright, pretty, careless face, with large eyes and
parted smiling lips. For the first time he did not admire it very much;
for the first time he found it a trifle soulless and vapid.

"Poor Mary," he said, looking at it with a kind of wonder in his
eyes--"what will she say when she finds that I do not go to her father's
house any more? I do not think that she will care very much. She has
seen little enough of me lately! I could not ask her now to link her
fate with mine, poor child! She would hate me if she knew. Best to
forget her, as she will forget me!"

He took the photograph out of its frame and deliberately tore it across;
then he set himself to reduce it to the smallest possible fragments,
until they lay in a little heap upon his writing-table. His face was
grave and rigid as he performed the task, but it showed little trace of
pain. His fancy for "Mary," the pretty daughter of an old professor, had
taken no deep root. Henceforth it vanished from his life, his memory,
his heart. "Mary," like all his other dreams, was dead to him.

A knock at the door startled him as he completed his work. A servant
brought in a telegram, which he tore open hastily. As he expected, it
was from Miss Vane.

"Marion died this evening at seven o'clock, from syncope of the heart.
Funeral on Thursday."

"Another victim!" Hubert said to himself, laying down the pink paper
with something like a groan. "Am I responsible for this too? A life
sentence, did I say? It would take a hundred lives to compensate for all
the harm that Florence and I have done!"

CHAPTER VIII.

"'Cynthia Westwood'--is that your name?" said Mrs. Rumbold. "Dear me, I
always thought that it was just 'Jane' or 'Jenny!' Wouldn't it be better
to change it, and call her something more appropriate to her station?"

"Perhaps," said the injudicious Rector, "she may not like to be called
by a name that do