Black Tarn, the bleak desolateness of which
harmonised only too well with his present feelings.
Scarcely knowing what he did or where he was,
he passed the whole day upon those barren crags
in a state of confused and stormy tumult, where
was neither perception nor arrangement, but
only fierce pain of burning hatred. But the evening
came, and he must return to the home which
was worse than a grave to him, and to the chains
which ate into his soul. The wrong that he had
done was bearing bitter fruit.

In the lane, face to face, and where there was
no possibility of escape, he suddenly saw May
Sefton and her mother. It was the first time
they had met since his marriage; for May had
been often from home, and Laurence had
purposely avoided her. But now he went up to her,
held out his hand as in olden times, shook hers
warmly, spoke to her with a thick breath and a
searching eye, and with a face so troubled that
even May, unsuspicious as she was, noticed it,
and wondered what had happened to disturb
him. Mrs. Sefton saw nothing. She only
said carelessly as they parted, "Mr. Grantley
was very cordial to-day, but did not look
well."

May said she thought him looking ill too, but
was very glad to have seen him at all, and wished
that Mrs. Laurence was a more cordial woman,
for Mr. Laurence Grantley was the most
delightful person in the neighbourhood. May
would have become much more eloquent on the
subject, but something checked her, and she did
not care to renew the conversation.

Laurence turned back into the woods the
instant he left them; and it was long past nightfall
when he returned to the Hall, late for dinner.

After dinner, looking round moodily for some
object to speak about and break a deadly silence,
he noticed, on the drawing-room table, a beautiful
spray of holly, thick with crimson berries,
clustering like drops of blood about the stem.
A sudden thought struck him.

"A fine branch," he said, taking it in his hand,
and fixing his eyes steadily on his wife; " but the
finest holly I ever saw, was once at Eagley, a
small village, at the house of a poor woman
there; what was her name?"—musingly.
"Oh! Jane Gilbert! I remember the circumstance
as if it was only yesterday: the cold,
bleak December day, the holly bough with its
blood-red berries, and the fair-haired peasant
woman, with ' Jane Gilbert' on the little sign
above her door."

A deadly slate-coloured pallor on Annie's
face, a slight quiver of the loose-hanging underlip,
and the cold hand passed slowly over her
hair, were all the signs she gave that the name
had touched her. But Laurence noted them all.

"I don't like holly," she said, flinging the
branch into the fire.

"No? Why is that?"

Annie kept silent, and looked obtuse.

He went on: " Eagley is a place well worth
seeing; you ought to go there some day, and see
.Mrs. Gilbert's holly bush."

Anne's face was livid. "You seem mad
about Mrs. Jane Gilbert!" she said, and turned
her back rudely.

"Your chameleon and yourself are, I see, in
your usual sympathy," continued Laurence, who
seemed bent on talking. " You are ghastly, and
your chameleon looks dying. Shall Dr. Downs
prescribe for you both?"

"I am not going to have Dr. Downs," said
Annie, stolidly.

"I think you will," said Laurence.

"What did he mean by Eagley and Jane Gilbert?"
thought Annie, as she sat motionless at
her toilette that night. " Clarke Jones was
here a long time the other day, and Clarke Jones
is an Eagley man. But he could not have known.
Nurse Brown would never have betrayed me,
and she is dead, they say: if she is, no one
living knows but myself, and no one living knows
that I know it. She believes that I died. Yet,
what does it all mean? Why this change of
manner? Why this persistence about the doctor?
So unlike him, too! Well! let the worst come.
I will face it out."

Obedient to his summons, the next day Dr.
Downs called at the Hall; a man full of pleasant
gossip and scientific news; a shrewd,
blandly-talkative man, who told everything he
knew, and who knew everything to tell; invaluable
as a circulating medium of talk as a kind
of peripatetic news-letter.

"You will not find much apparently amiss
with Mrs. Grantley," said Laurence, very anxiously;
"but, my dear doctor, though no physiologist,
even I can see the necessity of some
immediate treatment. She is very strange at
times; has odd fancies, odd dislikes; her feelings
become perverted, her affections turn to wild
and causeless enmities; she is full of monstrous
suspicions. In a word, her mind is unsettled.
I do not know what to do with her."

"Bless my soul, Mr. Grantley! I thought
I was on quite a different errand," said Dr.
Downs, taken by surprise. Dear, dear! Poor
young lady! Ah! I always said it—scrofula,
unmistakable scrofula. Never mistaken, Mr.
Grantley, in that, however it may show itself.
But, come! We must hope and work for the
best, before we despair. A little change of
air and change of scene may do all the good in
the world. It sometimes checks a budding
manifestation entirely."

"You think it might save my wife?"

"I hope so; but I should hardly like giving
an opinion before seeing her, you know. May I
see her?"

"Certainly; come with me: she is in the
drawing-room."

"Annie!" he said, as they entered the room,
"Dr. Downs has called to see you."

"Dr. Downs might have been spared the
trouble," said Annie, sullenly, not rising nor
taking the smallest notice of the physician. " I
am quite well, and you know that I am, Laurence."

"Well! we don't think there is anything
ve-ry much the matter," said Dr. Downs, in a
smooth, conciliatory, but highly aggravating