dead blank to her, she could have let him go?
She had heard of such things; she knew they
happened; she knew that many women in "the
world" took their husbands' infidelity quietly
if not kindly, and let them go, turning them
to the resources of wealth and pleasure. She
had no such resources, nor could these have
appeased her for a moment, if she had had. She
cared nothing for liberty, she who had worn the
chain of the most abject slavery, that of engrossing
passionate love for an unworthy object,
willingly, had hugged it to her bosom, had
allowed it without an effort to alleviate the
pain, to eat into her flesh, and fill it with
corruption. But, more than this, she could not let
him go, for his own sake; she was true to the
law of her life, that " honour rooted in dishonour"
knew no tarnishing from her; she
must save him, for his own sake—from himself,
she must save him, though not to bring him
back to her—must save him, in spite of himself,
though she longed, in the cruel pangs of her
woman's anguish, to have done with it—to have
found that nothingness in which she had come
to believe as the " end all," and had learned to
look to as her sovereign good.

She had reached such a conclusion, in her
meditations, on the night of the great storm at
Homburg; she had determined on a course to be
adopted, for Routh's sake. She would discard
fear, and show him that he must relinquish
the desperate game he was playing. She
would prove to him that fate had been too strong
for him; that in Mrs. P. Ireton Bembridge the
fatality which was destined to destroy him existed;
that her acquaintance with Arthur Felton,
and her knowledge of Arthur Felton's affairs,
into whose extent Routh had no possible pretext
for inquiry, must necessarily establish the
missing link. She would hide from him her
own sufferings; she would keep down her
jealousy and her love; she would appeal to him
for himself; she would plead with him only his
own danger, only the tremendous risk he was
involving himself in. Then she must succeed;
then the double agony of jealousy of him and
fear for him in which she now lived must subside,
the burning torment must be stilled. The
time might perhaps come in which she should so
far conquer self as to be thankful that such
suffering had brought about his safety, for there
could be no real security for them in London,
the terrible fact of Deane's identity with Arthur
Felton once known. After that discovery, no
arguments could avail with George; the strength
of all those which she had used would become
potent against her, their weight would be
against her- that weight which she had so
skilfully adjusted in the balance. After all, she
thought that night, as she sat in the darkness
and idly watched the lightning, hearing the
raging wind unmoved, what would a little more
misery matter to her? Little, indeed, if it
brought him safety; and it should, it must!

From this condition of mind she had been
roused by Routh's startling announcement of
their departure on the morrow. The effect
produced upon Harriet was strange. She did
not believe that Routh had been only to the
gaming-rooms that night; she felt an immutable
conviction that he had seen Mrs. Bembridge,
and she instantly concluded that he had
received a rebuff from the beautiful American.
Inexpressibly relieved,—though not blind enough
to be in the least insensible to the infamy of her
husband's faithlessness, and quite aware that
she had more, rather than less, to complain of
than she had previously believed;- for she rightly
judged, this woman is too finished a coquette to
throw up her game a moment before Her own
interest and safety absolutely obliged her to do
so—she acquiesced immediately.

Had Stewart Routh had the least suspicion of
the extent of his wife's knowledge of his life at
Homburg, he could not have been lulled into
the false security in which he indulged on his
return to London. He perceived, indeed, that
Harriet closely noted the state of his spirits,
and silently observed his actions. But he was used
to that. Harriet had no one to think of but
him, had nothing to care about but him; and
she had always watched him. Pleasantly, gaily,
before;—coldly, grimly, now; but it was all the
same thing. He was quite right in believing
she had not the least suspicion that Mrs. P.
Ireton Bembridge was in London, but that was
the sole point on which he was correct. Had
he known how much his wife knew, he would
have affected a dejection of spirits he was far
from feeling, and would have disarmed her by
greater attention to her during the few hours of
each day which he passed at home.

Harriet was at a loss to account for his
cheerfulness; but, strong of mind and heart as
she was, she was not altogether free from the
weakness of catching at that interpretation of a
mystery in which there was some relief for her
own pain. So she concluded that he had been
only passingly, and not deeply, hurt by the
coquetry of the woman who had attracted him,
and that he had recovered from the superficial
wound, as soon as he became again immersed
in the schemes which had awaited him in
London.

He had told her little concerning these
schemes, but she considered this reticence due
to her own withdrawal from her former active
participation in the business of his life, and it
was an additional inducement to her to hope
that Routh was taking the resolution which she
desired. " When we get back to London, I will
think about it," he had said, and she clung to
the hope, to the half promise in the words.
He was surely settling affairs so as to enable
him to avoid the bursting of the storm. The
tacit estrangement between them would account
of his doing this silently; his vile temper, which
Harriet thoroughly understood, and never failed
to recognise in action, would account for his
denying her the relief of knowing his intentions.
Many small things in his daily life, which did
not escape the quickened perception of his wife,
betokened a state of preparation for some decided
course of action. The time of explanation must