The stream of my narrative, instead of lingering round that group of excited duellists on the French coast, turns again back to England, and to that place of refuge which the wandering woman, ‘Jane Peartree,’ found in the extremity of her distress.

After her first night under the roof of Mount Eden, and after her first wild impulse to rise and fly on and on, she subsided into a kind of restless slumber, accompanied with violent shivering and nausea, and before twenty-four hours had passed violent fever had set in. Over the details of this illness, which lasted many weeks, I have no intention to linger. We pass on to the period when the invalid, sufficiently convalescent to sit up in the smaller chamber to which she had been conveyed, began thoroughly to realise the fiery ordeal through which her life had passed.

It was a room overlooking the lawn and shrubberies, which, at that season, were carpeted and draped with snow; and she sat one morning, looking out—on the white ground, on the shrouded trees, on the red sun beyond, hanging like a pink balloon close to the cold and foggy marshes, through which flowed the sullen Thames.

By her side stood the French girl Adèle, who, throughout the sickness, had been her voluntary nurse, and had watched her with extraordinary tenderness and care.

‘You are stronger to-day than ever, mademoiselle,’ she was saying in French; ‘you will soon be able to leave this room.’

The invalid sat silent, her eyes on the dreary, winter landscape, her pale beautiful face set like a mask of utter forlornness and despair; then slowly, convulsively, her bosom shook, her eyes filled, and large tears coursed silently over her cheek.

‘O mademoiselle, do not weep! It breaks my heart to see you. Courage! Are you not nearly well? Ah, yes! and there will be happy days in store for you, after so great trouble.’

The invalid smiled sadly, and shook her head; then reaching out a wasted hand, she took one of the French girl’s.

‘Adèle!’

‘Yes?’

‘Did you ever care for any one very, very much? I don’t mean foolishly, like young girls who think they love; but passionately, religiously, with your whole heart and soul? I do not speak of women, but of men, Adèle; though there are good women too.’

With a curiously beautiful shame Adèle turned her face away, while a faint flush crept over her face. After a moment she replied evasively:—

‘There are few good men, mademoiselle.’

‘But have you known none?’

‘Yes, one—one only,’ replied Adèle with sudden warmth, ‘and I think there is no other like him in the world. Ah, mademoiselle, it is so strange that you should ask me, since he is coming here to see me this very day.’

‘Tell me about him, Adèle,’ said the invalid gently.

‘To tell you truly all he is, mademoiselle, I should have to tell you all I have been, and then, you might hate me! But no, you are too good. I know you have never been there—-where he found me—in the life which is worse than hell. If you have been unfortunate, you have not-been to blame; but I—I have been a devil, tempted by a devil! Ah, yes!’

As she proceeded, the girl seemed to yield more and more to the hysterical excitement of her temperament and race. Her face went ghastly pale, her eyes swam with tears, her hands opened and shut convulsively.

‘Do not speak of it,’ said the other, taking her hand again gently—‘since it gives you such pain.’

‘No, mademoiselle, let me speak,’ returned Adèle struggling with her agitation, ‘but I will not speak of that, but of him who raised me from it and saved my life for God. Twice, mademoiselle, he came like the angel he is; the first time it was too soon; the second time I thought it was the Lord Himself, standing—ah, so beautiful!—at my bedside.’

She ceased, and, pressing her hands upon her bosom, gazed out through the window, as if indeed she saw before her the heavenly vision of which she spoke. Then, after a little time, the invalid broke the silence, saying:—

‘I think I understand you. I, too, have known such a man as you describe—all goodness, all kindness—so different to the rest. But I brought great misery to him, and sometimes I think his heart must be quite broken. That is what fills me with despair.’

‘Truly, mademoiselle?’

‘Yes. If I could be certain that he was happy, that he had forgotten me, I should not mind.’

‘Was he your lover, mademoiselle?’ asked Adèle, suddenly looking into her companion’s eye.

‘He was my husband,’ was the reply.

Adèle uttered an exclamation.

‘Ah, that is different!’ she cried in wonder. ‘And—and—you left him, madame?’

‘Yes, Adèle.’

‘Although you loved him so much!’

‘Because I loved him.’

‘And does he live, madame?’

Again the softly summoned word ‘madame,’ so significant of a new curiosity and a new respect.

‘Yes, he lives, unless he has died of sorrow. I brought disgrace upon him; it was unhappy for him that we ever met; and so—I left him.’

‘Does he know you are here, madame?’

Jane Peartree started nervously; then, smiling sadly at her own terror, shook her head.

‘God forbid!’

‘And you are really his wife, madame?’

‘Yes.’

Adèle walked to the window thoughtfully, and stood there continuing the conversation.

‘It must be so dreadful,’ she said, ‘for husband and wife to part. I was never married, madame, but I understand. A little time ago I was reading in an English newspaper, of an English merchant, a rich man, whose wife left him suddenly, and no one knew why. She had been an actress in the theatre, and he had fallen in love with her upon the stage. Then, owing to some disagreement, she ran away.’

Fortunately, Adèle was not looking at her companion; otherwise she would have been startled by the change that had come over her. Leaning back in her invalid chair, with the last trace of colour faded from her cheek, and her form trembling violently, she murmured, in a voice of forced composure—

‘Yes;—and did she return?’

‘Ah, no, madame. The lady drowned herself that very night, and the body was afterwards found in the Morgue, at the police station, and identified by her husband. It was the account of the inquest which I read in the journals. Though the body had been long in the water, and was quite disfigured, the husband recognised it at once.’

‘But how?’

‘Easily. By the clothes upon it, and by a pair of bracelets which the gentleman’s sister had given to the lady, as a birthday gift.’

The invalid uttered a low moan, and Adèle, approaching her, saw with su............