resolution to leave London, and found that Christina seemed to understand or have guessed it.

"That, too, I know," she said. "You speak of the wretched man, Stephen Lyndon ?"

"I do."

"I did not know his real name or his real nature until lately." (Here she paused.) "But I don't want to speak of him just now. I have sent for you for another purpose, Emanuel." Another pause— and then she said: "I am going to introduce you to-day to a man whose friend I want you to be; for my sake first, and then for his own. I wish you and him to be friends, and I wish that you should know our secrets. You saw me speak to a tall and dark-haired Italian last night ?"

"I did."

"He will come here to-day. He is my husband."

Christina dropped her eyes as she spoke the words, and I was glad that no gaze was on me; for, despite all that had come and gone, this was a heavy shock. Spoken suddenly, firmly, the words seemed to go through me like a rifle-bullet or the thrust of a sword.

Then she looked up again, and a faint sweet smile came over her face, and our eyes met frankly; and she held out her hand to me across the table, as if in obedience to some involuntary and kindly impulse.

I pressed it silently. Thus we sealed our new friendship, and the dream of my boyhood was really over.

After a moment's pause she said: "My husband is an Italian, as you see. His name is Carlo Farini Salaris. He had a title and orders and honours; but he dropped them all because he was disappointed in Charles Albert, and in others too. He had two passions in his lifemusic and his country. Chance brought him to know me when I was a poor girl, an adventuress, many people would have called me,-a beggar almost. He liked my voice; he had faith in me; he had me educated; he brought me out. All that I am he made me. All that I could do for him in return I have done, I am doing."

"I knew that-that you had been married, Christina. I did not know that your husband was living."

"Nor must you know it now. Understand me, it is a secret only known to you, and perhaps one or two others. He has only lately escaped from an Austrian prison, where he was sent for the part he took in Lombard plots and revolutions. He has escaped only, I fear, to take part in other plots. Think how happy the life of his wife must be! I can help him, however, in many ways while I am not known to be his wife. I have carried the fiery cross for him from the Alps to the Straits of Messina, when not even Austrian or Neapolitan police suspected the German soprano of being an emissary of the revolution. Ah, it would be a long and weary tale to tell; it is a sad memory! In this way I

hold my life at his disposal, and my happiness. I will plot for him, scheme for him; smile while I know that he is in danger, flirt when every moment I think to hear news of his death. This is the only way in which I can repay him: I owe him all."

"Surely you have given him something that might repay anything he has done for you?"

"I have given him all I could, Emanuel; and he was generous enough to have confidence in me, and to believe that I would have given him more if I could. Listen, and I will speak to you with a frankness which others might misunderstand, but you will not. I will speak to you as if I were a ghost come back from the grave, to whom the world could no longer have reality, and who had nothing more to do with human hopes, and loves, and misunderstandings, and all the rest of it. Even before I had made a success of any kind, he would have married me, and I would not. You know the reason why. I succeeded through him altogether. He pressed me again and again-tenderly, delicately, like a man with a noble nature. I was coming to England. For the first time since I had left it, you understand. He guessed why I was coming, and I told him all."

"All? All of the past, or-”

"I spoke to him as freely as some of his own country women do to their confessor. I told him that I loved you-yes, I am not ashamed to say it now, and I was not then-and that my dearest hope was to find you. And he said, with his melancholy smile, 'Go to England; but if you do not find him, or have any cause to change your purpose, then promise me that you will come back to me.' I went to England, and you know the rest-Fate was against us."

"Fate was cruelly against me!" I said, starting up; "Fate was against me! And you too, Christina! You threw me away at a word; you had done so before. Don't tell me of love-you never loved me; you were too glad to escape from me; you had your ambition and your career, and you followed your destiny. Well, I don't blame you, and I am not surprised. Peace be between us for the future, and let us be friends if you will; only do not torture me to no purpose by trying to persuade me that that might have been which never could have been. Well, forgive me for interrupting you-"

"You have not interrupted me; the story is all over. very long to tell."

It was not

"O no; let me finish it. You saw me; and I was poor and obscure; and you found no difficulty in taking the chance word of a good-natured, thoughtless girl as decisive of my fate; and you hurried back, and married your friend and patron, who had influence and power. You were grateful to him-quite right; and he exacted his recompense for what he had done, and you gave him yourself as his reward. Well, I offer you my congratulations, and to him too. I am late in the expression of my good wishes, but you must remember how well you

kept the secret of your happiness, and that I thought you were a widow, not a wife."

I saw Christina's cheek flush, and her eyes first sparkle and then fill with tears; but I was not in a mood to be stayed. Everything seemed to have conspired to make me savage, and some infernal spirit within appeared to drive me on, adding word to word.

"Emanuel!"

66

Yes; I thought you were a widow. So, I suppose, did your other friend and patron, Mr. Lyndon. He surely is not in your secrets? Or is he supposed to be your husband's friend, appointed to console you, and give you courage in his absence and his dangers ?"

"I have at least had no reason, as yet, to repent of any confidence I may have placed in him, as I have now to repent of the confidence I placed in you. Emanuel, I know you will be ashamed of your bitterness and your cruelty, and I forgive you beforehand. I know you have reason to complain. I owe you something, too; let me pay a part of my obligation by bearing patiently any insult you may choose to offer. You do not know how cruel you are. I have striven to be a devoted and loyal wife to my husband, as a brave German woman ought to be; and I have suffered much; and if I have had my ambition, it has not been fed for nothing, or bought without heavy penalty; and of the old days nothing remains; and now you insult and scorn me. It is much; but I bear it for the sake of old memories."

She had been seated on a sofa. She now stood up and leaned against the chimneypiece, and tossed her bright mass of hair back over her shoulders with the old familiar impatient action of one whom the weight of it oppressed in a moment of excitement. She looked so like the Christina of old that my anger melted away, and I bitterly repented my hasty words.

"I am always asking you to forgive me, Christina; I must ask you now again, sincerely and humbly, for pardon. I was very bitter, and rude, and brutal, and I knew how unjust I was even at the time. But I only ask you to make some allowance for me. You know how I loved you. O, I am speaking now only of the past, and I might say it if your husband stood there! I loved you deeply. No woman can be loved so twice in a life."

"I know it, Emanuel, and I do forgive you, freely and fully, your harsh words. You too must make allowance for me. My life is an anxious one in many ways. So far, it has been a failure; and yet the best has passed. When I look at you, Emanuel, and make you my own mirror, I see that I too am no longer young. What a handsome, fair-haired boy you were when I first saw you! How many years ago?" "Twelve years ago."

"How old are you now? You may tell me, I shall not betray

confidence."

"I don't know-thirty-two or three."