THE

CORNHILL MAGAZINE.

APRIL, 1883.

By the Gate of the Sea.

CHAPTER V.

HUSBAND and wife looked at each other for a moment, and then the wife's eyes drooped guiltily. It is characteristic of people at large to be wiser about other people's affairs than they are about their own-being freed, in the one case, of egotism's glasses-and almost anybody can see that although there was sufficient occasion for a domestic scene, there was no reason to regard the position of things as being essentially tragic. You must endure a good deal before you tear yourself from your dearer half

in your sober senses. But the one thing that stared each of these people in the face was a lifelong and inevitable separation.

"I have deceived him," said the wife, with such a cold anguish of repentance as could only come of detection. "He will never believe me nor love me again."

"Is this thing true?" asked Tregarthen coldly. Her aspect was enough to convict her, and he turned away. Icy as he was to look at, VOL. XLVII.-NO. 280.

19.

he was afraid of himself, and felt that he was not to be trusted with many words. He would go away therefore, and would think how best to bear himself in this terrible and unsuspected condition of affairs. He had not gone far when it came into his mind that the condition of affairs -however unexpected it might be-was scarcely so terrible as it had seemed at first. He began to think how strongly he had spoken, when -as it now appeared-his wife had wished to take him into her confidence. After all there was no sin or shame in having been an actress. Colonel Pollard had said things of that very Miss Churchill with whom his wife was now identified which were hideous if true or possible, but he knew them to be false. The more he thought about it the more he was persuaded anew of what he had always known as only a lover knows anything-the purity of his wife's mind and history. She had deceived him in one matter, but then he had forced deception upon her. And after all they were man and wife, and he loved her as he had never loved anybody in his life before or could hope to love a second time. The revelation he had surprised was a thing to be made the best of, to be understood and accepted once for all, and then buried and forgotten.

This resolution was not arrived at in a hurry, and it took him an hour or two to put himself into the new mental attitude necessary to its acceptance. When he had succeeded he went home and awaited Mrs. Tregarthen's return, intending a serious conference and a perfect understanding. When he took her back to confidence there should be no lingering doubt in his mind. She should know all that had been charged against Miss Churchill, and she should deny it, and there should be an end of the episode. He was not shaken in his belief in his wife's honour, and if she had not given him all her confidence it was because she had thought it would imperil his love for her.

"Has Mrs. Tregarthen returned?" he asked the servant who admitted him.

"No, sir."

"Let me know when she does so."

"Yes, sir."

He sat a long time silent and alone, and there came into his mind the not too delicate commendations bestowed upon Miss Churchill by the Captain and his echo the Lieutenant. He went with them into the theatre, and the magic of the beautiful voice touched him again. He went anew through his pleasant fancies of her, and his defence of her against Pollard, and his first meeting with her, and his second, and his third-all the story of his courtship floated through his mind—and he would have sworn to her immaculate purity, or would have died to prove his faith in it.

It grew dusk, and the early summer moon was already shining with a ghostly silver gleam in the darkening violet of the sky. Fears began to rise in his mind, and he pictured the delicate sensitive thing in shame and soreness of heart over this pardonable secrecy of hers, hiding herself and fearing to approach him. He remembered how he had asked his ques