r heart to adore the rosy Child in the
manger, and received the sacred symbols of His Flesh and Blood, and
entreated Him to remember His loving-kindness that brought Him down from
heaven--yet the whole was far less real, less intimate to her, than the
sound of Hubert's voice as he had said good-bye two months ago; less real
than one of those darting pangs of thought that fell on her heart all day
like a shower of arrows.

And then, when the sensitive strings of her soul were stretched to
anguish, a hand dashed across them, striking a wailing discord, and they
did not break. The news of Anthony's treachery, and still more his
silence, performed the incredible, and doubled her pain without breaking
her heart.

On the Tuesday morning early Lady Maxwell had sent her note by a courier;
bidding him return at once with the answer. The evening had come, and he
had not appeared. The night passed and the morning came; and it was not
till noon that the man at last arrived, saying he had seen Mr. Norris on
the previous evening, and that he had read the note through there and
then, and had said there was no answer. Surely there could be but one
explanation of that--that no answer was possible.

It could not be said that Isabel actively considered the question and
chose to doubt Anthony rather than to trust him. She was so nearly
passive now, with the struggle she had gone through, that this blow came
on her with the overwhelming effect of an hypnotic suggestion. Her will
did not really accept it, any more than her intellect really weighed it;
but she succumbed to it; and did not even write again, nor question the
man further. Had she done this she might perhaps have found out the
truth, that the man, a stupid rustic with enough shrewdness to lie, but
not enough to lie cleverly, had had his foolish head turned by the buzz
of London town and the splendour of Lambeth stables and the friendliness
of the grooms there, and had got heavily drunk on leaving Anthony; that
the answer which he had put into his hat had very naturally fallen out
and been lost; and that when at last he returned to the country already
eight hours after his time, and found the note was missing, he had
stalwartly lied, hoping that the note was unimportant and that things
would adjust themselves or be forgotten before a day of reckoning should
arrive.

And so Isabel's power of resistance collapsed under this last blow; and
her soul lay still at last, almost too m