we offer you refreshment after your walk?"

"This day week," said Schriften, addressing Philip, and without making a
reply to Amine. Philip nodded his head, the little man turned on his
heel and left the room, and in a short time was out of sight.

Amine sank down on the sofa. The breaking-up of her short hour of
happiness had been too sudden, too abrupt, and too cruelly brought about
for a fondly doting, although heroic woman. There was an evident
malignity in the words and manner of the one-eyed messenger, an
appearance as if he knew more than others, which awed and confused both
Philip and herself. Amine wept not, but she covered her face with her
hands as Philip, with no steady pace, walked up and down the small room.
Again, with all the vividness of colouring, did the scenes half
forgotten recur to his memory. Again did he penetrate the fatal
chamber--again was it obscure. The embroidery lay at his feet, and once
more he started as when the letter appeared upon the floor.

They had both awakened from a dream of present bliss, and shuddered at
the awful future which presented itself. A few minutes was sufficient
for Philip to resume his natural self-possession. He sat down by the
side of his Amine, and clasped her in his arms. They remained silent.
They knew too well each other's thoughts; and, excruciating as was the
effort, they were both summoning up their courage to bear, and steeling
their hearts against, the conviction that, in this world, they must now
expect to be for a time, perhaps for ever, separated.

Amine was the first to speak: removing her arm; which had been wound
round her husband, she first put his hand to her heart, as if to
compress its painful throbbings, and then observed--

"Surely that was no earthly messenger, Philip! Did you not feel chilled
to death when he sat by you? I did as he came in."

Philip, who had the same thought as Amine, but did not wish to alarm
her, answered confusedly--

"Nay, Amine, you fancy--that is, the suddenness of his appearance and
his strange conduct have made you imagine this; but I saw in him but a
man who, from his peculiar deformity, has become an envious outcast of
society--debarred from domestic happiness, from the smiles of the other
sex; for what woman could smile upon such a creature? His bile raised
at so much beauty in the arms of another, he enjoyed a malignant
pleasure in giving a message which he felt would break upon those
pleasur