mbitions, shifts and
struggles! The story would be in every paper in England before another
twenty-four hours were over, headed, "/Remarkable occurrence at
Boisingham Quarter Sessions.--Alleged bigamy of a solicitor./" No
doubt, too, the Treasury would take it up and institute a prosecution.
This was the end of his strivings after respectability and the wealth
that brings it. He had overreached himself. He had plotted and
schemed, and hardened his heart against the de la Molle family, and
fate had made use of his success to destroy him. In another few months
he had expected to be able to leave this place a wealthy and respected
man--and now? He laid his hand upon the table and reviewed his past
life--tracing it from year to year, and seeing how the shadow of this
accursed woman had haunted him, bringing disgrace and terror and
mental agony with it--making his life a misery. And now what was to be
done? He was ruined. Let him fly to the utmost parts of the earth, let
him burrow in the recesses of the cities of the earth, and his shame
would find him out. He was an impostor, a bigamist; one who had
seduced an innocent woman into a mock marriage and then taken her
fortune to buy the silence of his lawful wife. More, he had threatened
to bring an action for divorce against a woman to whom he knew he was
not really married and made it a lever to extort large sums of money
or their value.

What is there that a man in his position can do?

He can do two things--he can revenge himself upon the author of his
ruin, and he be bold enough, he can put an end to his existence and
his sorrows at a blow.

Mr. Quest rose and walked to the door. Halting there, he turned and
looked round the office in that peculiar fashion wherewith the eyes
take their adieu. Then with a sigh he went.

Reaching his own house he hesitated whether or not to enter. Had the
news reached Belle? If so, how was he to face her? Her hands were not
clean, indeed, but at any rate she had no mock marriage in her record,
and her dislike of him had been unconcealed throughout. She had never
wished to marry him, and never for one single day regarded him
otherwise than with aversion.

After reflection he turned and went round by the back way into the
garden. The curtains of the French windows were drawn, but it was a
wet and windy night, and the draught occasionally lifted the edge of
one of them. He crept like a thief up to his own window and looked in.
The drawi