On the same morning which saw the last sorrowful interview between Helen Norman and Arthur Golding, a conversation, not very striking in itself, considering the interlocutors, but of some importance when viewed in the light of succeeding events, was being held in Mrs. Waghorn’s boudoir between that lady and her husband.

Maud had risen, in accordance with her usual habits, at the reasonable hour of eleven, and towards noon was lying on an extremely comfortable couch, close to a cheerful fire, with a tempting breakfast arranged upon a low table within easy reach of her hand. Now and then she ate a mouthful of toast or sipped her coffee, then she would seem to forget everything in a fit of deep reverie; another moment she would take up the book which lay open upon the chair beside her and read a page or so with apparent interest. The book was “Madame Bovary,” and to all appearances, Maud was reading it for the first time; at all events she was only about the middle of it. Time was of little consequence to Mrs. Waghorn, and the announcement of the hour of twelve by a little silver-voiced clock upon the mantel-piece did not even cause her to raise her head.

Another sound, however, making itself heard upon the stairs a few minutes after, seemed to have more effect upon her. It was a quick, heavy step, which she knew perfectly well and which appeared somewhat to surprise her. The step was unmistakably approaching her door. She had scarcely time to resume her attitude of careless ease before her door was thrown violently open, and Mr. John Waghorn made his appearance. She did not raise her head as he entered, and only a slight fluttering of the pages of her book indicated that his entrance made any impression upon her.

“What the devil does that mean?” he cried, advancing close to her and holding a piece of paper so as almost to touch her face.

“Thank you,” she replied, calmly; “but I am not at all shortsighted. If you will have the kindness to let me hold it at a proper distance I may be able to answer your question.”

He threw it upon her lap, and stood regarding her with a fierce, malevolent scowl. Mr. John Waghorn’s personal appearance had not improved with time. Though still eminently respectable, when not seen at the domestic hearth, it was assuming something of haggardness, which the kindly disposed would impute to business cares, the more knowing and the less friendly to troubles of a somewhat different nature. At all events, the woman who could with impunity be made the subject of a regard such as the present one was scarcely to be envied.

Maud placed the piece of paper on the open pages of “Madame Bovary” and contemplated it for a moment. Then she replied, with much calmness, and without raising her eyes —

“It strongly resembles a milliner’s bill. It is a somewhat strange time though for bills to be sent.”

“It was sent because I wrote for it,” replied Mr. Waghorn. “But what the devil does it mean, I ask you? ￡110 odd, since Christmas. How do you explain it?”

“By the simple fact that it is customary for ladies to wear dresses,” she replied, sarcastically, “and that I do not pretend to sufficient moral courage to make an appearance in public without one.”

“Damn your fine airs!” cried the gentleman, seizing the bill rudely from her hands. “Answer plainly. Is this a correct account, or isn’t it?”

“I see no reason to doubt its correctness!” replied Maud. “I really cannot be expected to remember every article which is sent to me, together with its price.”

“Very well!” he exclaimed, folding up the bill and thrusting it into his waist-coat pocket. “Then I shan’t pay it, that’s all!”

“Indeed?” she asked.

“No, I shan’t!” he repeated. “They may take an action, if they like; most likely they will. But they can’t get money out of empty pockets, that’s one satisfaction. What’s more, I shall send a notice to all your tradespeople that they’re not to supply you in future, and, if that’s not enough, I’m hanged if I don’t advertise you in the papers. See if I don’t!”

“You are of course at liberty to behave with just as much rudeness and brutality as accords with your nature,” remarked Maud, taking up her book as if to resume her reading.

Mr. Waghorn stood with his hands thrust into his trouser-pockets, biting his lower lip. Perhaps it was his position which suggested Maud’s next remark.

“You made some allusion to empty pockets,” she said. “Did you mean anything by it, or was it one of those pieces of gentle irony in which you are wont to find pleasure?”

Mr. Waghorn turned slightly away, but almost immediately faced round again.

“You will know sooner or later,” he said, kicking over a handsome little buffet which stood before the couch, “so I may as well tell you plainly at once. If I said empty pockets, I meant it. You needn’t be surprised any morning if you have to leave this house. I shall have to sell it, and the sooner the better.”

“Or, in plain words,” suggested Maud, laying down her book, and, for the first time, looking her husband in the face, “you are about to become a bankrupt?”

“It isn’t unlikely. It’s well I have your money to fall back upon, or things might go devilish hard with us.”

As he ceased speaking he began to whistle to himself, and walked to the window. Maud’s eyes followed him with an expression half of surprise, half of gratified hatred.

“I didn’t quite understand your last remark,” she said, after a moment’s silence.

“I said,” he replied, turning only half towards her, and still pretending to look at something down in the street, “that if I hadn’t your money to fall back upon, things might go devilish hard.”

“My money?”

“Yes, your money,” he repeated, with irritation. “I suppose it isn’t all spent, is it?”

“If you mean what was settled upon me at my marriage, I am happy to be able to inform you that neither principal nor interest has been touched. As to your having it to fall back upon, I am at a loss to understand the expression.”

She rose as she spoke, and stood in front of the fire, drawing a light shawl about her shoulders. Over the mantel-piece was a large mirror, in which she regarded herself. The mirror reflected a peculiar smile.

“It isn’t hard to understand plain English,” exclaimed her husband, suddenly facing her. “If my money’s all done I suppose we must make yours go as far as it will, mustn’t we?”

“Mr. Waghorn,” was the calm reply, “we had better understand each other at once. The money which is mine, I mean to keep to myself. If necessary I must live on it; but I should wish immediately to relieve your mind from any expectation of sharing it with me. Perhaps you will understand me better if I say that I would not draw a cheque for one guinea to save your life tomorrow.”

She gave expression to this amiable sentiment with a quiet clearness of tone and a firmness of countenance which showed very plainly she meant what she said. For a moment Mr. Waghorn regarded her with lowering eyebrows, evidently at a loss how to reply to this declaration of opinion.

“In other words,” he remarked at length, in a lower voice than ordinary, “if you find the ship sinking you’ll just do your best to get clear of it.”

“Precisely,” replied Maud.

At this reply, extinguishing the last ray of hope which had served to sustain the impudent courage of his base nature, Waghorn suddenly gave reins to the passion which was boiling within him. His eyes flashed and his face became red with anger.

“I dare you to say so!” he cried. “By God! I dare you to say so! Who is it that has done most to ruin me, if not yourself, with bills like this? And now you think to get out of all the consequences and run away to live on your own money. But you shan’t do so, don’t think so. Do you know who it is you are trying to bully? Damn you, you she-devil! Who’s master here, you or I?”

“It appears by your own confession,” replied Maud, stepping back a little before his violence, but speaking with undiminished firmness and calmness of tone, “that you won’t be master here long. If you flatter yourself that you have ever been master of me, I assure you, you are strangely mistaken. I, indeed, am to have the charge of ruining you made against me, am I? I suppose your own temperance and frugality are so eminent that you are at a loss to account for expenditure otherwise. If you ever gambled, if you ever drank, if you had ever kept mistresses, it would have been a different thing. But then your abstinence from all those vices has been so wonderful. If you had been in the habit of betting on horse-races or losing money at cards, your friends would certainly have talked of it, and I should have heard their amiable comments, which, as it is, I have never done. If you had been in the habit of drinking too much I should certainly have noticed it, I might even have seen you intoxicated at times; it is even possible you might have been so unlucky as to figure in the police-court for drunken assaults; but as I never knew you anything but strictly sober and gentlemanly in your demeanour that suggestion is of course impossible. Then, if you had had a weakness for the society of second-rate actresses and ballet-girls, one might have explained a great deal of expenditure, but such a hypothesis is of course out of the question. Otherwise I should certainly have seen ill-spelt letters to you occasionally, lying about your bedroom; I might have noticed you driving about in hansoms at night with young ladies of dubious appearance; or even such a thing might have happened to me as to go down into my own drawing-room after midnight and to find you revelling there with some half-dozen common prostitutes. But how shocking such things would have been; how happy I should esteem myself that I have a husband so absolutely faithful to his wife! Yes, certainly I must be the cause of your ruin. I can see no other explanation of it!”

She had scarcely pronounced the last word of this speech, burning throughout with the fiercest sarcasm, when passion overmastered the hearer’s last remnant of self-restraint. Uttering a frenzied oath, he sprang forward, and, with his open hand, struck her a fierce blow upon the head. With a shriek, half of alarm, half of pain, she fell back upon the couch; but in a moment started up from it again. Whilst Waghorn stood, quivering with passion, and blind to her movements, she had sprung to a drawer, wrenched it open, and grasped something which glistened in her hand. There was an instant flash, a loud report, and the mirror over the fire-place shattered into a thousand pieces. Whilst the sound of the pistol-shot was still echoing loudly through the room, Waghorn once more leaped like a tiger upon the maddened woman, wrenched the pistol from her hand, threw it aside; then, grasping each of her arms, dashed her violently upon the floor. Twice he raised her by her arms, twice dashed her down again, she shrieking loudly. At the last blow she became insensible. Then he took up the pistol, and, thrusting it into his pocket, left the room in time to meet the servants who were rushing up-stairs, and give them a satisfactory explanation of the alarm.

After Arthur’s departure, Helen Norman passed the rest of the day in strict seclusion; not even Lucy Venning was summoned to keep her company. The fits of violent grief, almost of despair, which alternated with her hours of silent suffering, were such as no one might be witness of. She knew well that this agony would be but transitory, that the morrow would find her once more calm and resolved to struggle with her fate; but in the meantime the storm of passion must have its way, must wreak its full fury upon her frame, must make her weak in body in order that she might become strong in soul.

In the course of the afternoon she was disturbed by a knock at her door. She did not open, but asked what was wanted. A servant informed her that Mrs. Waghorn had called and wished very much to see her. Helen shuddered at the thought of an interview with Maud, in her present state of mind; she knew that it would be impossible for her to endure the stream of small talk, flavoured with cynical comments upon the speaker’s self and the world in general, which Maud had of late only appeared capable of. She sent her compliments to Mrs. Waghorn, begging she might be excused on consideration of somewhat severe indisposition. Apparently this message sufficed, for the servant did not return.

During the night she woke up in a fit of coughing, such as had once before broken a sleep of anguish, and with the same results. There was blood in her mouth. Again the hours of nameless terror had to be endured, again she seemed to see ghostly figures sitting beside her bed. Again she felt acutely her painful loneliness, more now, after the brief taste of such delightful companionship than ever before. Lucy was sleeping in the next room, but what was to be gained by waking her? Lucy was a dear, affectionate child, a sweet associate of calm hours, but for midnight scenes such as this all unfitted.

Peace came with the............