gatively, as Phillis came to look over his shoulder. 'It is very good, but——’

Before he could continue, she had seized the paper almost roughly, torn it across, and thrown it on the burning coals. Her cheeks were crimson, her voice full of vexation.

I had forgotten that I had it still,' she said hurriedly. I should have burnt it long ago.'

'I beg your pardon,' he replied with cold gravity. 'I did not mean to intrude on your secrets, nor to awake old associations ;' and he closed the desk and put it by.

His words sounded like a taunt; but they were only bitter through excess of feeling. Here was another memento of the past, carefully hoarded away; he had no doubt now who had made that sketch.

The first moment of surprise and distress over, Phillis would have given anything to be able to recall her own words and action.

When she had heard of Charles Cornish's marriage, she had at once destroyed all relics of their friendship with one another, except this drawing, the meaning of which had come so piteously true. Who can tell by what fascination of sorrow, what strange feeling of self-torture, she had kept what could only be a pain to her to look at? She did not know herself; but she could not then bring herself to destroy it. And now when she had even forgotten its existence, it had,

as it were, risen against her in the hands of her husband.

What could he think of it-that sketch, with such a title written beneath it by her own hand? He would think that she could sport with the fact (which she always now felt as a disgrace, not for her own sake, but his) that she had been 'forsaken,' or, as the world prefers to term it, jilted.

How deeply she felt this for his sake, no one could tell; and that he should have been reminded of what she was always fearing lest he should dwell uponreminded through her fault, and by this wretched memento of a past which she only thought upon with shame! It was hard indeed; and no wonder that she lost her self-command!

A moment afterwards, and she had repented bitterly of her hasty action and unconsidered words, for she saw the misconstruction which he had put upon them; but it was too late now, and she did not know how to explain herself.

Would they ever understand one another?

CHAPTER XXIV.

ALONE NO MORE.

IN a small but comfortable sitting-room, overlooking the King's Road, at Brighton, sat Phillis Carrington.

It was a stormy afternoon, early in December; the sea was rough and tempest-swept, and wild scuds of wind and rain came dashing against the window. The prospect out of doors was not inviting; and Phillis had turned her back upon it, and was sitting by the fire, her head on her hand, and an unread novel on her knee.

The November fogs in London had been unusually trying, and Phillis, whose throat and chest were not of the strongest, had been suffering for the last three weeks from what the doctor, whom her husband insisted on her consulting, called a 'bronchial affection.' He recommended a week or two of Brighton air as the best cure; and thither Mrs. Carrington, much against her will, had been brought. The Lion escorted her there, and settled her in lodgings with a

maid; returning to town the same day himself, as he could not leave his business.

It was four-and-twenty hours since her husband had left her, and Phillis felt lonely and sad. At first she had thought that she might find it almost a relief to be separated from him for a short time; for since the unfortunate episode of the sketch, their intercourse had become more constrained than ever, their manner to each other more forced and formal than before; both were too evidently ill at ease and unhappy.

But now that she was away from him, she forgot all the discomfort, the misunderstanding, the want of harmony that spoilt their married life; she only felt how dear her husband had become to her, how blank and empty were the hours, with no thought of his return to cheer them. She was not to see him again for a fortnight; how should she get through the days? What might not befall her in that time? What accident might not happen to him? She might never see him again; and they had parted coldly, without a word of regret on either side. Her heart cried out as she thought of it.

They had been married scarcely four months, and a gulf of division yawned between them, so wide that it might have been caused by long years of domestic misery. What had caused it, and could it never be bridged over? He had loved her when he

married her; she was sure of that; as sure as that she loved him now-from the very depth of her heart-with all the power of her nature.

Her former ill-fated love had sprung up like a weed, flourished awhile with rank luxuriance, and then been plucked up by the roots by the same hand that had planted it. Her present love was like a noble tree, firm and strong and self-supporting; the storms of trouble could not bend it, the cold winds of absence and disappointment could not mar its beauty or disturb its growth; for its roots were planted in honour and reverence, and nourished on a noble friendship, while its topmost boughs were the crown of wedded love.

Did he love her still? or had she cast the whole wealth of her affection at his feet too late? His was not a nature to change; but yet . . . she could not recall one word, one look of his during the past two months that spoke of affection. He was kind to her always, and more courteous now in his manner than it was really in his nature to be, but that was all.

One little thing alone gave her hope; it was only a trifle, but she seized upon it, and clung to its possible significance.

The very morning on which she had left home he had heard the news of the marriage of one of his friends, to a girl who had been attached to him for