"So glad to meet you," he said, "You
can tell me the meaning of all this."

"Of what?" she said.

"About your husband. What on earth
made him do that? It seems incomprehensible;
with the ball at his foot——"

"I know nothing," she said, excitedly.
"What can you mean?"

"Oh, then you have not heard." And he
pulled the evening paper out of his pocket.
He held this paragraph before her eyes. A
film seemed to come over them as they read:

"ST. ARTHUR'S, NOON.—Mr. Conway, one
of the candidates, has withdrawn. No
reasons assigned for this unexpected step.
The other candidate walks over."

She hardly knew how she got home; but
now, indeed, the old shadow seemed to
be cast before her for all time—a dreadful
presage of evil. She waited for his coming
as it grew dark. At the hour she had
guessed he entered, and hurriedly embraced
her, all as usual.

"Well," he said. "There, I am out of
all that. The bubble is burst for ever!"

She was quite calm, "But why? What
does it all mean?"

"It looks like a mystery, a madness,
does it not? and so it is. To-morrow I
might have been member—my life and
hope; a few months later have held office;
later on—but that is all finished, and for
ever."

"But why—why? Ah, tell me, I
implore you."

"There is good reason for it, at least in
my mind, whom it most concerns. As a
favour I ask you not to press or worry me
about this act. I could not tell you; to
make such a terrible sacrifice I must have
had a terrible necessity of some kind. I
am fretted and disappointed, and it will
add to my trouble if I have to face any
importunity. There was a real and
substantial reason. Can I depend upon you
for this?"

Gazing at him like one just stunned with
a blow, she said "Yes."

"Then now adieu to that dream of folly
which I wrote to you of. That romantic
life, the one in which I had such hopes, is
done with for ever. Oh!" and he covered
up his face, "what a fall! What a wretched
miserable fall! Ah, Jessica, that St.
Arthur's was an ill-omened place for us all."

Thus ended that episode of his life. He
did not come back to the subject, nor did
her old pride venture to approach it. For
the public it was a nine days' wonder. His
money had fallen short; he had "broken
down;" there was a very awkward business
which wanted clearing up. But between him
and Jessica there seemed to be a widening
gap. He was the same to her, and yet she
felt there was a fatal alteration. Do what she
would, arm herself in what way she would,
she could not shut out the dim idea that
this strange sacrifice was in some way
connected with her. Yet not a word or a look
of his pointed to this, beyond a gaze of
hopeless disappointment, a miserable
dejection, as he sat with his eyes fixed on her.
As he would not trust her, she disdained
to ask his confidence; and she was wretched,
worse: she felt that this was but the
beginning of a wretchedness that was to last
all their lives.

He had a restless and feverish eagerness,
as she noted, about Dudley, always writing
to him, waiting for letters from him. At
last she saw him receive one with a foreign
postmark, in Dudley's writing, and which
made him start. "Gone to India. Was
there ever such treatment?" he muttered.
"Oh, it is cruel to leave me in this way!"

Another letter came that seemed to
promise an early return, and he grew calm
again. His wife's quick sense noted also a
certain discomfort, lasting only for a second,
in his manner, when she first entered the
room; and the same eager sense noted also
a sort of devotion to her that seemed
forced, and almost acted, that fretted her
and drove her almost to madness.

He was getting ill. His heavy sacrifice
preyed on his mind, and within the week he
was lying in a nervous fever, with a squadron
of doctors about him. These gentry gave
him over, with, of course, a saving clause,
"unless some extraordinary turn took
place."

Jessica watched and waited on him
with a sort of frantic devotion that took
pride in every sacrifice and suffering. For
her there was no rest; for her no sleep.
When the doctors passed their sentence—
for as such the patient's friends look on it
—that he was not to live unless he did
live, she received it with an icy insensibility.
Her thoughts that night went back
to her own life, which might as well, it
seemed to her, end with his—that weary
penitential course which, with the exception
of a few weeks of happiness, had been
the pattern of her existence. She was
weary. He had been dead to her many
weeks now; morally, his heart had been
turned from her; the rest would make little
difference, save to him.

It was getting towards midnight, and
her eyes were on the ground reading all
these things fiercely in the very pattern of