Though the news of Miss Altifiorla\'s broken engagement did reach Mrs. Western at St. David\'s, she was in a state of mind which prevented her almost from recognising the fact. It was the very day on which her husband was to come to her. And her joy was so extreme as almost to have become painful. "Mamma," she said, "I shall not know what to say to him."

"Just let him come and receive him quietly."

"Receive him quietly! How can I be quiet when he will have come back to me? I think you do not realise the condition I have been in during the last three months."

"Yes, my dear, I do. You have been deserted, and it has been very bad."

But Mrs. Western did not approve of the word used, as it carried a strong reproach against her husband. She was anxious now to take upon herself the whole weight of the fault which had produced their separation, and to hold him to have been altogether sinless. And as yet she was not quite sure that he would again take her to his home. All she knew was that he would be that day in Exeter, and that then so much might depend on her own conduct. Of this she was quite sure,—that were he to reject her she must die. In her present condition, and with the memory present to her of the dreams she had dreamed, she could not live alone at Exeter, divided from him, and there give birth to her child. But he must surely intend to take her into his arms when he should arrive. It could not be possible that he should again reject her when he had once seen her.

Then she became fidgety about her personal appearance,—a female frailty which had never much prevailed with her,—and was anxious even about her ribbons and her dress. "He does think so much about a woman being neat," she said to her mother.

"I never perceived it in him, my dear."

"Because you have not known him as I have done. He does not say much, but no one\'s eye is so accurate and so severe." All this arose from a certain passage which dwelt in her remembrance, when he had praised the fit of her gown, and had told her with a kiss that no woman ever dressed so well as she did.

"I think, my dear," continued Mrs. Holt, "that if you wear your black silk just simply, it will do very well."

Simply! Yes; she must certainly be simple. But it is so hard to be simple in such a way as to please a man\'s eye. And yet, even when the time came near, she did not dare to remain long in her bedroom lest her own maid should know the source of her anxiety. At one time she had declared that she would go down to the station to meet him, but that idea had been soon abandoned. The first kiss she would give him should not be seen by strangers.

But if she were perplexed as to how she would bear herself on the coming occasion he was much more so. It may be said of him, that through his whole journey home from Dresden he was disturbed, unhappy, and silent. And that when his sister left him in London, and that he had nothing immediately before him but the journey down to Exeter, he was almost overwhelmed by the difficulties of the situation. His case as a man was so much worse than hers as a woman. The speaking must all be done by him, and what was there that he could say? There was still present to him a keen sense of the wrong that he had endured; though he owned to himself that the punishment which at the spur of the moment he had resolved upon inflicting was too severe,—both upon her and upon himself. And though he felt that he had been injured, he did gradually acknowledge that he had believed something worse than the truth. How to read the riddle he did not know, but there was a riddle which he had not read aright. If Cecilia should still be silent, he must still be left in the dark. But he did understand that he was to expect no confession of a fault, and that he was to exact no show of repentance.

When the train arrived at Exeter he determined to be driven at once to the Hotel. It made him unhappy to think that everyone around him should be aware that he was occupying rooms at an inn while his wife was living in the town; but he did not dare to take his portmanteau to Mrs. Holt\'s house and hang up his hat in her hall as though nothing had been the matter. "Put it into a cab," he said to a porter as the door was opened, "and bid him drive to the Clarence."

But a man whose face he remembered had laid his hand upon his valise before it was well out of the railway carriage. "Please, Sir," said the man, "you are to go up to the house, and I\'m to carry your things. I am Sam Barnet, the gardener."

"Very well, Sam," said Mr. Western. "Go on and I\'ll follow you." Now, as he well knew, the house at St. David\'s was less than half a mile from the railway station.

He felt that his misery would be over in ten minutes, and yet for ten minutes how miserable a man he was! Whilst she was trembling with joy, a joy that was only dashed by a vague fear of his possible sternness, he was blaming his fate as it shortened by every step the distance between him and his wife. At last he had entered the path of the little garden, and the door of the house was open before him. He ventured to look, but did not see her. He was in the hall, but yet he did not see her. "Cecilia is in the breakfast parlour," said the voice of Mrs. Holt, whom in his confusion he did not notice. The breakfast parlour was in the back part of the house, looking out into the garden, and thither he went. The door was just ajar and he passed in. In a second the whole trouble was over. She was in his arms at once, kissing his face, stroking his hair, leaning on his bosom, holding his arm round her own waist as though to make sure that he should not leave her; crying and laughing at the same moment. "Oh, George, my own George! It has all been my doing; but you will forgive me! Say that one word that I am \'forgiven.\'" Then there came another storm of kisses which frustrated the possibility of his speaking to her.

What a wife she was to possess! How graceful, how gracious, how precious were her charms,—charms in which no other woman surely ever approached her! How warm and yet how cool was the touch of her lips; how absolutely symmetrical was the sweet curve of her bust; what a fragrance came from her breath! And the light of her eyes, made more bright by her tears, shone into his with a heavenly brightness. Her soft hair as he touched it filled him with joy. And once more she was all his own. Let the secret be what it might, he was quite sure that she was his own. As he bent down over her she pressed her cheek against his and again drew his arm tighter round her waist. "George, if you wished to know how I love you, you have taken the right step. I have been sick for you, but now I shall be sick no longer. Oh, George, it was my fault; but say that you have forgiven me."

He could not bring himself to speak so much of an accusation as would be contained in that word "forgive." How was he to pardon one whose present treatment to him was so perfect, so loving, and so lovely? "Sit down, George, and let me tell you how it was. Of course I was wrong, but I did not mean to be wrong."

"No, no," he said. "There shall be no wrong." And yet why had not his sister told him that it would be like this? Why had she so stoutly maintained that Cecilia would confess nothing. Here she was acknowledging everything with most profu............