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I have been idling about the common all the morning with a book,' he said, and the rain took me by surprise. But I happened to remember that Joshua lived hereabouts, and thought I would ask you for shelter.'

Esther ushered him into the little parlour, quite speechless with surprise, and very shy in his presence. Again she felt that sense of humiliation with which he seemed always to inspire her, thinking how the commonness of the room would strike him, and watching his dark eyes as they shot one swift glance round it.

But he did not suffer her to feel this long. He talked so pleasantly, that he won her thoughts away from herself, telling her a great deal of his adventures abroad and the lonely life he had led in strange wild places; frightening her a little with the relations of his perils and hair-breadth escapes by sea and land, and then beguiling her into smiles again by some anecdote with a dash of the comic.

You will never go back there any more, will you, Mr. Lyne?' she asked, with the prettiest air of anxiety.

His dark face flushed with a pleased look at this question.

'Well, yes, I think I am very likely to go back. I have so little to care for in England, you see, so little to interest me. What is there in Mirkdale for a man who knows nothing about commerce, or at Mapledean for a man who doesn't care for agriculture? Abroad there is always adventure. I think I shall go to Africa, and push

my way as far as I can.'

He smiled to himself, as it were, with a strangely subtle smile, as he saw Esther's anxious look.

'Poor little soul,' he thought, has it come to this already?'

The rain lasted a long time; or perhaps there were several showers, with only brief intervals between them. At any rate, it did not seem to have left off raining very long when Stephen Lyne went away. He held out his hand at parting, and Esther gave him hers, blushing and wondering that he should stoop to shake hands with his foreman's wife.

He looked down smiling at the little hand, rather the worse for household work, but as small as a lady's, and in the next moment he was gone.

The little Dutch clock in the kitchen struck six as Esther shut the door. Six o'clock! Mr. Lyne had been with her more than three hours, and yet the time had seemed nothing, even to her, for whom time was wont to be so long.

Joshua came home to his tea presently, and his wife told him who had taken shelter there, but not how long he had stayed. The foreman did not seem gratified by this news, but made no remark.

Stephen Lyne came again before that week was over. He had been idling away his morning on the common again, he said. He rather liked the common, though it was dull and flat enough; but a

nice, lazy, quiet place for an idle fellow to lounge away his time. He came to the cottage for some water for his dog, the great tawny mastiff. There was water enough in the pools on the common, of course; but it was brackish, Mr. Lyne told Esther, and he did not care to let the brute drink it.

'You won't mind him, will you, Mrs. Rainbow ?' he asked, holding the animal by the collar. 'He's as gentle as a lamb among friends, though he would do for a man if he saw me assaulted.'

She was a little frightened of the great creature at first, and looked very pretty with her colour coming and going, and her parted lips trembling ever so slightly. Perhaps she was more startled by this second visit of Mr. Lyne's than by the presence of the dog. She brought him a bowl of water, from which he lapped a little with no great appearance of thirst, and then, at a word from his master, stretched himself at full length. Mr. Lyne stayed nearly as long as upon the last occasion, though there was no rain to hinder his departure this time; and again the time seemed very short to Esther as she stitched at her husband's shirts, and listened to that pleasant talk about that vast world whereof she knew so little. She felt herself more than ever ignorant and common in his presence, but he seemed to have no sense of her commonness. If she had been the greatest lady in the land, he could not have been more deferential in his tone. O, if she could only have seen his half-tender, halfcontemptuous smile as he walked back to Mapledean, thinking, 'Poor little soul, has it gone so far already?'

O, by the way, Mrs. Rainbow,' he said, as he was going away, 'you needn't tell Joshua that I've been wasting your afternoon with my idle talk. I don't want him to know what a lazy fellow I am, and how glad of a little pleasant relief to my empty days. It would tell against me at the factory, you see.'

Esther did not see very clearly why Mr. Lyne need care what her husband thought about his manner of spending his days, but she obeyed him nevertheless, and was not sorry to obey him. She did not want to see that troubled look in Joshua's face again.

After this Mr. Lyne came often, very often; at first provided with some puerile excuse for each visit, but by and by without any excuse at all. There is no need to track the seducer's progress step by step. From that first Sunday evening, when he was startled into sudden enthusiasm by Esther's girlish beauty, he had set himself deliberately to accomplish this deadly work. What right had a clodhopper like Joshua Rainbow to such a wife as this? He was not a common libertine, this Stephen Lyne, nor had his youth been stained by vulgar profligacy; but his fancy being once engaged, he thought no more of the price which others might have to pay for his sin or his folly than if these victims of his pleasure had been the lowest creatures of the insect world, crushed out of being by

his passing footstep. He had a refined taste, and was not easily fascinated. Many a pretty woman in those foreign capitals, where Stephen Lyne had drained the goblet of polite pleasure, had tried to win this golden prize in the matrimonial market; but Stephen had shown himself indifferent, and had wandered on fancy free. Never in his life had he seen a face that impressed him like this pale fair face of Esther's; never had his being thrilled with such passion as that which stirred it now, when he thought of Esther. She must be his, at any cost of sin and suffering. Upon that common clod her husband, Stephen Lyne wasted no thought. And for the girl herself, could he doubt his power to win her? could he question the result of his wooing when the time came for him to speak? He counted her won from the moment in which he saw her face shadowed by that anxious fearful look, when he talked of going back to the scene of his old dangers.

He meant to be cautious, however, and to risk nothing by precipitation; and to this end made many visits to the little cottage, and sat many hours in Esther's quiet parlour, without any change in his deferential manner, without uttering a word that could betray the state of his feelings, or alarm Joshua Rainbow's wife. But he knew that he was winning a stronger hold on that untried heart day by day. He could read a hundred signs and tokens of her love, so unconsciously expressed; and he never left her without a sense of triumph in the knowledge of his power.

'I have but to lift my finger, and she will come,' he said to himself.

And so the time went on. It was towards the close of August, sultry oppressive weather, and Stephen Lyne was seized with an impatient desire to make an end of his work, and carry off his prize. He had little doubt that it could be easily done. It was only a question of his own pleasure and convenience when the crisis. should come.

He made out his plan in his own mind, and contrived a scheme for getting Joshua out of the way. There was some money to be collected at Durnside, a large town forty miles from Mirkdale, and Mr. Lyne told Crosby the manager to send Joshua Rainbow for it, instead of the ordinary collector. Mr. Crosby looked at his chief rather curiously when he received this order, and Stephen Lyne returned the curious look with a haughty stare.

Have you any reason for sending Rainbow?' the manager asked. 'It's out of our ordinary way, you know.'

'Of course I have a reason; but I don't care to enter into a discussion of my reasons for any order I may choose to give. So you'll be so good as to see that my wishes are attended to, Mr. Crosby, without giving yourself any farther trouble about the matter.'

The manager bowed, and Joshua Rainbow was told in due time

what he had to do. The journey to and fro, and the business to be done at Durnside, would necessarily occupy a couple of days. This was the first time Joshua had ever had occasion to leave his wife, and the thought of her being alone and unprotected even for one night distressed him. And then it struck him that Esther need not spend the night of his absence in that solitary cottage on the edge of the common. She might sleep at his mother's that night.

He went to the dowager's lodgings to give her notice of this visit, but Mrs. Rainbow the elder was out; so Joshua left a little dutiful note, telling her that he was to leave Mirkdale next morning, and that Esther would spend the following evening and night with her. After this he went home in an easier state of mind, and told his wife of his intended journey. She was quite willing to go to his mother's as he had arranged, little sympathy as there was between her and that stern matron.

If Joshua Rainbow could have known how far away his wife's mind was when she kissed him and wished him good-bye that sultry August morning at the little garden-gate, his heart would have surely broken. But he had not the faintest suspicion of the gulf between them. They had been very happy together, and he had told himself long ago that his young wife had grown to love him, middle-aged fogey as he was.

He went away, smiling back at her and waving his hand to the last, went away, leaving her to her long lonely day, brightened, as every day now was, by the hope of Stephen Lyne's coming. Yes, she loved him. She had never confessed as much to herself—had, indeed, shut her eyes resolutely against the truth; telling herself, whenever she did try to stifle the weak voice of her conscience, that she only liked to see him because he was a brilliant and clever gentleman, and amused her with his varied talk of books that she had never read, and people and places she had never seen.

Would he come that afternoon? It was her first thought every day. She went about her household work in a feverish hurry always now, lest he should come before the place was neat, and her hair and dress arranged for the afternoon. She made little feeble attempts to ornament the parlour,-a rose or two from the scrubby bushes in a glass of water on the chimney-piece, a spotless starched antimacassar of her own workmanship spread on the chintz-covered sofa, she was so utterly ashamed of the cottage and its commonness when Stephen Lyne came into it, though it had once seemed to her the perfection of neatness and comfort.

Did she ever think of her dead baby in these days? Alas, no! A stronger passion than even love for that lost little one had taken possession of her, and she had no room for any other thought.

Stephen Lyne came earlier than usual on the day when Joshua started on his journey to Durnside. He had got into a way of open

ing the door now without knocking. And he came upon Esther suddenly, as she sat at her work, unawares, though she was thinking only of him.

She looked up at him with that transient vivid blush which always made her so beautiful.

'I want you to come for a walk, Esther,' he said,—he had taken to calling her Esther lately, but with no lessening of his respect,'the house is insupportable upon such a day as this. Throw down that odious calico, at which those poor little fingers are always slaving, and come for an idle stroll across the common.'

'I don't like,' she said hesitatingly; it seems so strange for you and I to walk together.'

'Not stranger than for us to sit together in this little room. That's strange enough, if you only knew it, Esther-strange for such a restless spirit as mine to be bound to any place for two or three hours together. Come for a walk, Esther. I have a great deal to say to you, and I fancy I could say it best in the open air.'

She rose to obey him, reluctantly, but quite unable to oppose his gracious bidding. She put on a little straw-hat, and went out with him across the common in the still sultry atmosphere. Not a breath of air stirred the water in the black pools; and Pluto, the mastiff, panted as he trotted by his master's side.

They strolled slowly on, leaving the tranquil common behind them, and passing through the meadows that lay between them and Mapledean. Whatever important communication Stephen Lyne might have to make to his companion, his talk as yet was only of indifferent subjects, a very fitful kind of talk, lapsing every now and then into silence.

They went on thus till they came to the gate where Esther had first seen Stephen Lyne, that quiet Sunday evening a little more than two months ago. Two months! and it seemed to her a lifetime. 'Come in, Esther,' the young man said, in that low languid tone which was not the less a command,' come in and look at the roses once more. Do you remember that Sunday evening, childthe second time I saw you?'

Did she remember it ?-the beginning of her new life, the opening of that strange wild dream which must end soon. Yes; it had come upon her this afternoon that she had been dreaming, and that it was time for her to awaken.

Her heart was beating violently. Yes; she knew now that she loved him that she was guilty of a deadly sin against her husband, had suffered herself blindly to fall into the snare, and was in a measure lost.

'If he knew,' she thought to herself, if Joshua could know how false my heart has been to him, surely he would cast me off— surely he would refuse ever to look upon my face again!'

SECOND SERIES, VOL. II. F.S. VOL. XII.

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