within himself whether his highest duty and truest friendship towards Zara did not demand that he should suggest to her the advisability of attempting to procure at least a judicial separation from her husband; but his own position towards her checked him each time. Had he been in truth her brother, he felt no doubt of what would be his course in the matter; but filling the position that he did, he felt it to be impossible. She herself breathed no hint of such a possibility; indeed, she very rarely mentioned her husband to her friend

at all, and then never in the way of comall,—and plaint or reproach. She seemed to bear with him, Frank thought, as if he had been a wayward child, and she his nurse or keeper; compelled to constant association with him, but not having been granted the authority to cope with his faults.

What a life of martyrdom it must be to her! The more he saw of her, and the

life she led, the less he wondered at the mask which hid her real nature from others; how else could a proud woman endure her slavery? and yet show herself before the world with dignity? What she must have endured, before habit in some sort accustomed her to her matrimonial yoke, he could in part imagine by the great change which one year only (and that, as the first of married life, so frequently the happiest in a woman's whole calendar) had worked on her; transforming her from a high spirited impetuous girl, with a dominant disposition and an excitable mind, into a still stately woman, with self-contained manners, and a power of endurance of daily trial which he could not once have believed her nature to be even capable of. Changed! Her whole being seemed sometimes to be altered beyond recognition.

Once when they were sitting alone

!

together in her drawing-room-though they were oftener apart in a crowd than actually tete-a-tete-she in grave sad-eyed silence, and he waiting as it were upon her thoughts, not liking to intrude upon them, yet anxious to lighten their evident gloom; -she suddenly felt his gaze upon her, and meeting his eyes with a half-melancholy smile, said simply, "Am I very bad company? It is selfish enjoyment. You cannot think what a relief it is to relax the muscles of my face a little while. I think I know, in spirit, what it is to a tired cabhorse to be taken out of the shafts."

"I think it is I who am selfish then," he said, with intention to rise from his chair, "for I am sure you must want to be alone."

'No, no," she answered quickly, and her colour rose ever so little," the presence of a real friend is the most resting form of being alone."

"Some one to say, 'How sweet is solitude,' in fact," and then they both laughed.

But after that Frank realised more than he had yet done, how precious his friendship, involving his constant presence, was to her. Her soul seemed to cling to his, as its one means of rising above the turbid waters of domestic, miserable uncongeniality, in which her daily lot was plunged. Her eye would brighten, her look grew more content, as he entered a room, or approached her side; she leant on him with a fulness of confidence which expressed itself in face and voice, as well as action. Lady Carew might have wealth, position, adulation, and luxury; but the sole joy of Zara's life lay in her one "real friend."

CHAPTER XXIII.

WHAT THE WORLD MIGHT SAY.

"Often the severest penalty seems set against the smallest transgression, . ... we pay dearer for our impru

dences than even for our deliberate wickedness."

MEANWHILE, Zara had seen very little of Mrs Erskine; a few words snatched at an evening party, a brief greeting in the Row, and an occasional note passing between them, had made up the sum of their intercourse.

Sir Harry absolutely forbade his wife to call upon the other lady; and would have ordered her to drop the acquaintance altogether, but that Lady Carew induced Frank to represent to him the impossibility of such a measure.

He did so to oblige her; but in private