nd his sister. Philip Hamlyn was caught
by her pretty doll's face, and married her. They called her Dolly: and a
doll she was, by nature as well as by name.

"Marry in haste and repent at leisure," is as true a saying as the
French one. Philip Hamlyn found it so. Of all vain, frivolous, heartless
women, Mrs. Dolly Hamlyn turned out to be about the worst. Just a year
or two of uncomfortable bickering, of vain endeavours on his part, now
coaxing, now reproaching, to make her what she was not and never would
be--a reasonable woman, a sensible wife--and Dolly Hamlyn fled. She
decamped with a hair-brained lieutenant, the two taking sailing-ship for
England, and she carrying with her her little one-year-old boy.

I'll leave you to guess what Philip Hamlyn's sensations were. A calamity
such as that does not often fall upon man. While he was taking steps to
put his wife legally away for ever and to get back his child, and
Captain Pratt was aiding and abetting (and swearing frightfully at the
delinquent over the process), news reached them that Heaven's vengeance
had been more speedy than theirs. The ship, driven out of her way by
contrary winds and other disasters, went down off the coast of Spain,
and all the passengers on board perished. This was what Philip Hamlyn
had to confess now: and it was more than silly of him not to have done
it before.

He touched but lightly upon it now. His tones were low, his words when
he began somewhat confused: nevertheless his wife, gazing up at him with
her large dark eyes, gathered an inkling of his meaning.

"Don't tell it me!" she passionately interrupted. "Do not tell me that I
am only your second wife."

He went over to her, praying her to be calm, speaking of the bitter
feeling of shame which had ever since clung to him.

"Did you divorce her?"

"No, no; you do not understand me, Eliza. She died before anything could
be done; the ship was wrecked."

"Were there any children?" she asked in a hard whisper.

"One; a baby of a year old. He was drowned with his mother."

Mrs. Hamlyn folded her hands one over the other, and leaned back in her
chair. "Why did you deceive me?"

"My will was good to deceive you for ever," he confessed with emotion.
"I hate that past episode in my life; hate to think of it: I wish I
could blot it out of remembrance. But for Pratt I should not have told
you now."

"Oh, he said you ought to tell me?"

"He did: and blamed me for not having told you