God have
mercy on her soul!"

"Amen!" said Herbert Laurence.

"You will let me take the box away with me, Mrs. Clayton?" he asked,
gently.

She looked up as he spoke, and the tears were standing in his eyes.

"Yes--yes," she said; "take it away; do what you will with it, only
never speak of it to me again."

He never did but once, and that was but an allusion. On the evening of
the day on which they committed the remains of Blanche Damer to the
dust, he lay in wait for Mrs. Clayton on the landing.

"All has been done as she desired," he whispered; and Mrs. Clayton asked
for no further explanation. The secret of which she had been made an
unwilling recipient pressed so heavily on her conscience, that she was
thankful when he left Molton Grange and went abroad, as he had expressed
his intention of doing.

Since which time she has never seen Herbert Laurence again; and Colonel
Damer, whose grief at the funeral and for some time after was nearly
frenzied, having--like most men who mourn much outwardly--found a source
of consolation in the shape of another wife, the story of Blanche
Damer's life and death is remembered, for aught her cousin knows to the
contrary, by none but herself.

I feel that an objection will be raised to this episode by some people
on the score of its being _unnatural_; to whom all I can say in answer
is, that the principal incident on which the interest of it turns--that
of the unhappy Mrs. Damer having been made so great a coward by
conscience that she carried the proof of her frailty about with her for
years, too fearful of discovery to permit it to leave her sight--is _a
fact_.

To vary the circumstances under which the discovery of the contents of
the black box was finally made, and to alter the names of places and
people so as to avoid general recognition, I have made my province: to
relate the story itself, since, in the form I now present it to my
readers, it can give pain to no one, I consider my privilege.

MY FASCINATING FRIEND

William Archer

I

Nature has cursed me with a retiring disposition. I have gone round the
world without making a single friend by the way. Coming out of my own
shell is as difficult to me as drawing others out of theirs. There are
some men who go through life extracting the substance of every one they
meet, as one picks out periwinkles with a pin. To me my fellow-men are
oysters, and I have no oyster-knife; my sole consolation (if it