The sun shone brightly into my room in the morning, but there would be no more day\'s sun for me. What a night I had passed! If you have ever been deceived in the manner I had, you will understand it; if not, all the writing in the world would fail to convey to you a tithe of the misery that was mine--and that would be mine for years to come. Her husband! whilst he pretended to love me!

All my study would now be to avoid Mr. Chandos. Entirely I could not; for we must meet at the daily repasts when he chose to sit down to them. In that I could not help myself. I was very silent that morning, and he was busy with his newspapers.

He rode out after breakfast; to attend some county meeting, it was said; and returned at four o\'clock. I remained in my own room until dinner-time; but I had to go down then.

He appeared inclined to be thoroughly sociable; talked and laughed; and told me of a ludicrous scene which had occurred at the meeting; but I was cold and reserved, scarcely answering him. He regarded me keenly, as if debating with himself what it could be that had so changed my manner. When the servants had withdrawn, I quitted my place at table, and sat down in a low chair near the fire.

"Why do you go there?" said Mr. Chandos. "You will take some dessert?"

"Not this evening."

"But why?"

"My head aches."

He quitted the table, came up, and stood before me. "Anne, what is the matter with you?"

My breath was coming quickly, my swelling heart seemed as if it must burst. All the past rose up forcibly before me; he, a married man, had mocked me with his love; had--oh, worse than all!--gained mine. It was a crying insult; and it was wringing bitterly every sense of feeling I possessed. Anything else I could have borne. Mrs. Penn had hinted at some great crime; words of his own had confirmed it. Had he committed every crime known to man, I could have better forgiven it. But for this deliberate deceit upon me, there could be no forgiveness: and there could be no cure, no comfort for my lacerated heart.

"Are you angry with me for any cause? Have I offended you?"

The question unnerved me worse than I was already unnerved. It did more, it raised all the ire of my spirit. A choice between two evils only seemed to be left to me; either to burst into hysterical tears, or to openly reproach Mr. Chandos. The latter course came first.

"Why did you deceive me, Mr. Chandos?"

"Deceive you!"

"Yes, deceive me, and wretchedly deceive me," I answered in my desperation; neither caring nor quite knowing what it was I said. "How came you to speak to me at all of love knowing why it is that you cannot marry?"

He bit his lip as he looked at me. "Do you know why it is?"

"I do now. I did not yesterday, as you may be very sure!"

"It is impossible you can know it," he rejoined, in some agitation.

"Mr. Chandos, I do. Spare me from saying more. It is not a subject on which either you or I should enlarge."

"And pray, Anne, who was it that enlightened you?"

"That is of no consequence," I passionately answered, aroused more and more by the cool manner of his taking the reproach. "I know now what the barrier is you have more than once hinted at, and that is quite enough."

"You consider that barrier an insuperable one--that I ought not to have avowed my love?"

I burst into hysterical tears. It was the last insult: and the last feather, you know, breaks the camel\'s back. Alas! we were at cross-purposes.

"Forgive me, Anne," he sadly cried. "Before I remembered that there might be danger in your companionship; before I was aware that love could ever dawn for me, it had come, and was filling every crevice of my heart. It is stirring within me now as I speak to you. My pulses are thrilling with the bliss of your presence; my whole being tells of the gladness of heaven."

In spite of the cruel wrong; in spite of my own bitter misery; in spite of the ties to which he was bound, to hear the avowal of this deep tenderness, stirred with a rapture akin to his every fibre of my rebellious love. I know how terribly wrong it must seem; I know how worse than wrong is the confession of it; but so it was. I was but human.

"I am aware that I have acted unwisely," he pursued, his tone very subdued and repentant. "Still--you must not blame me too greatly. Circumstances are at least as much in fault. We were thrown together, unavoidably; I could not, for reasons, absent myself from home; you were located in it. Of course I ought to have remembered that I was not free to love: but then you see, the danger did not occur to my mind. If it had, I should have been cold as an icicle."

To hear him defend himself seemed worse than all. I had thought, if there lived one man on the face of the earth who was the soul of nobility, uprightness, honour, it was Harry Chandos.

"It was the cruelest insult to me possible to be offered, Mr. Chandos."

"What was?"

"What was! The telling me of your love."

"Anne, I told it you because--forgive my boldness!--I saw that you loved me."

Heaven help me! Yes, it was so; I did love him. My face grew burning hot; I beat my foot upon the carpet.

"I did the best that could be done: at least I strove to do it. It was my intention to lay before you the unhappy case without disguise, its whole facts and deterrent circumstances, and then to say--\'Now marry me or reject me?\'"

"How can you so speak to me, sir? Marry me! with--with--that barrier?"

"But that barrier may be removed."

Oh! I saw now, or fancied I saw, the far-off thought he was driving at. Staying seemed to make matters worse; and I got up from my seat to leave him.

"Your turning out to be who you are of course made the difficulty greater. I said so last night----"

"No, it does not," I interrupted, with an impassioned sob, partly of love, partly of anger. "Whether I am regarded as a poor strange governess, or the daughter of Colonel Hereford, there could never, never be any excuse for you."

"Is that your final, calm opinion?" he asked, standing before me to ask the question.

"It is, Mr. Chandos. It will never change. You ought to despise me if it could."

"Forgive, forgive me, Miss Hereford! Nothing remains for me now but to ask it."

I could not forgive him; but I was spared saying it, for Hill opened the parlour-door in haste.

"Mr. Harry, will you please go up to the west wing? At once, sir."

"Any change, Hill?"

"No, sir; it\'s not that. A little trouble."

"Oh! Mrs. Chandos is there, I suppose?"

"Yes, sir."

Need he have asked that question, have mentioned her name in my presence? It struck me that it was a gratuitous insult. Mr. Chandos followed Hill from the room, and as soon as I thought he was safe within the west wing, I flew up to my own chamber.

"Flew up with a breaking heart: a heart that felt its need of solitude, of being where it could indulge its own grief unseen, unmolested. I was not, however, to gain my chamber; for, at the entrance to the east wing stood Mrs. Penn, and she arrested me.

"Come into my sitting-room," she said. "Mrs. Chandos will not be back for an hour. She is paying a visit to the west wing."

"Mr. Chandos also," I replied, as indifferently as I could well speak.

"Mr. Chandos also," she assented, having paused to look in my face before speaking. "They meet there more frequently than the house suspects."

"But why may they not meet? Why is it that they live estranged--or appear to do so?"

"Sit you down," she said, drawing me along the passage and into a small sitting-room. "Here is a warm seat by the fire. There is estrangement between Mr. and Mrs. Chandos, but how far it precisely extends I cannot tell you."

"I did not ask you how far the estrangement extended; I asked you its cause."

"Be content with knowing what you do know, Miss Hereford, without inquiring into causes. The advice is offered you in kindness. I can tell you one thing, that never was more impassioned love given to woman than he at one time felt for Mrs. Chandos."

Ashamed I am to confess that the words caused my heart to chill and my face to burn. I turned the latter where it could not be seen. Mrs. Penn continued.

"He says he loves you, but, compared with the passion he once bore for Mrs. Chandos, his love for you is as nothing. Contrast the pale cold beams of the moon with the burning rays of the tropical sun, and you have a type of that passion, and of this one."

"Why do you say this to me? Is it well?"

"I deem it well. I say it because I think it right that you should know it: were you my own child I should say more. You have one course only before you, my dear, a plain and simple one."

"What is it?"

"To quit Chandos."

"I shall not do that."

"Not do it?"

"No."

"Miss Hereford, you must. There lives not a more attractive man than Harry Chandos: and you are already three parts in his toils."

"In his toils? I do not understand you, Mrs. Penn."

"My dear, I only alluded to toils of the heart. I don\'t suppose he would so far forget himself as to attempt positive ones."

I would not answer her: I felt too indignant, and sat holding my throbbing temples. How dared she so speak to me?

"Your own good sense might to show you the necessity of leaving him. By this time to-morrow evening you must have put miles between yourself and Chandos," she eagerly continued, as though she had a personal interest in my going. Hot, angry, flushed, I resented both the words and the advice.

"Mrs. Penn, you are making too much of this. I think you have taken a wrong view of things. My heart is all right, thank you."

"Is it!" she retorted. "You cannot stay on here, his companion. You cannot, Anne Hereford."

"I will! Whether with him as a companion or without him is not of any moment--he will not eat me. But I do not quit Chandos until my legitimate plans call me away."

In point of fact I had nowhere to go to; but I did not say that. All this, and her assumption of reading my love, drove me into a perfect fit of anger.

Mrs. Penn paused, seemingly in deliberation, and when she next spoke it was in a whisper.

"Has he given you any hint of what the dark cloud is that hangs over Chandos? Of the--the crime that was committed?"

"No."

"It was a very fearful crime: the greatest social crime forbidden in the Decalogue. When the police rode up here the other night I thought they had come for him. I know Mr. Chandos thought it."

"For whom?"

"For Mrs. Chandos\'s husband," she answered, in a sharp, irascible tone. "Why do you make me repeat it?"

At least I thought she need not repeat the word "husband" in my ears.

"It was murder," she continued, "if you wish to hear the plain English of it."

"Was there a trial?"

"No. That has to come. Certain"--she seemed to hesitate--"proofs are being waited for. Poor Mrs. Chandos has not been quite right since: when the moon is at the change and full they think her worse; but at all times it is well that she should be under surveillance. That is why I am here."

I did not speak; I was thinking. No doubt it was all true.

"Poor thing! the blow was enough to turn her brain," observed Mrs. Penn, musingly. "But I fancy she could never have been of strong intellect. A light, frivolous, butterfly girl, her only recommendation her beauty and soft manner."

"What you told me before was, that she had used Mr. Chandos ill."

"And so she did; very. But that was altogether a different matter, quite unconnected with what followed."

"How did you become acquainted with these things, Mrs. Penn?"

"In a perfectly legitimate manner. Believe me, Anne, this house is no proper home for you; Harry Chandos is an unfit companion. Quit both to-morrow."

The pertinacity vexed me nearly beyond bearing. "I\'ll think of it," I said, sharply; and getting up quickly made my escape from the room and the east wing.

Not any too soon. To go to the east wing was against the law, and as I turned into my own room, Mrs. Chandos was coming down the gallery, Mr. Chandos by her side.

"When will you get it for me, Harry?" she was saying as they passed my door.

"Shortly, I hope. The booksellers here may have to send to London for it, but I\'ll see that you have it as soon as possible."

He held open the door of the east wing for her to enter, and then took his way downstairs. I followed presently. Tea would be waiting and I expected to preside at it. How could I absent myself from the routine of the house and the oak-parlour--I, who was but there on sufferance, an interloper? Were the circumstances that had passed such as that I--a lady born, and reared to goodness and modesty and all right instincts--ought to make a commotion over? No. And I felt as if I could bite my tongue to pieces for having said what I did to Mr. Chandos just now. Henceforth, I would hold on my course in calm self-respect; meeting him civilly, forgetting and believing that he forgot anything undesirable that had passed. As to the "crime" spoken of by Mrs. Penn--well, I thought it could not be: crime of any sort seemed so entirely incompatible with Mr. Chandos.

And my love? Oh, don\'t make me speak of it. I could only resolve to beat it down, down, whenever it rose in my heart. Others had suffered, so must I.

He did not appear at tea. I drank mine with what relish I might, and Joseph came for the things. Ah, what passion is like unto love! None can control it. I had resolved to put it away from me and that whole evening it was uppermost! Fifty times I caught myself yearning for his presence, and saying to myself unbidden that life was a blank without him. Very shortly after taking away the tea-tray, Joseph came in again.

"I am going to close the shutters, Miss."

"Very well. Who ordered it to be done?"

"The master."

"The master" meant Mr. Chandos. As Joseph put aside the white curtains to get to the shutters, I looked out. Pacing the lawn in the moonlight, with his arms folded and his head bent, was Mr. Chandos; pacing it as one in pain. And yet he had thought of me in the midst of............