his tone with every letter ; sometimes
sending threats, sometimes entreaties ; now
endeavouring to terrify her into submission,
and now to cajole her into complaisance. For
a week this went on, not a day passing without
a letter of one or the other character.
When he did not insult her by evil names
and foul suspicions ; when he did not wound
her in every nerve of her woman's heart, and
wring her pride till the sense of degradation
became real torture, he appealed to her
generosity in the most heart-rending terms,
for the sake of his wife and family and the
influence that his disinheritance would have
on his world when known. It would be his
death-blow. It was from death that he asked
her to save him. Though perhaps that letter
wound up with a fierce attack, and an
intimation that to-morrow, without fail, he would
send down a policeman and handcuffs.

Magdalen was peculiarly frank by nature;
yet she was not able to speak to Paul of the
news which troubled her. She knew that he
could not go through with it bravely, and she
did not want the additional embarrassment
of his weakness. If he sunk, as she was
quite sure he would, under the first
approach of such a gigantic trouble, she would
have to support him as well as herself.
That would complicate her troubles. So
she said nothing, and bore her own burden
in silence. But this was the beginning
of sorrow between them. Pre-occupied,
excited, and consequently irritable, her whole
mind and soul bent on one thing only, and
that of such fearful import as to overshadow
every other portion of her life, Magdalen
grew hourly more and more impatient of
Paul's girlish tenderness and poetic reveries;
of his gentle bewailings, worse than impatient.
He never complained, but he perpetually
bewailed in a dove-like fashion, without any
expressed cause. He spoke always in a
melancholy voice and on melancholy subjects:
he wrote sad verses, and wept much; under
any kind of emotion, whether joy or grief,
tears were always in his eyes. He followed
her about the house with a kind of mournful
watching, as if he was afraid of something
carrying her off bodily from before his eyes.
He was for ever creeping close to her, nestling
in, if she had left space on the sofa large
enough for a sparrow to perch on. Then she
would move farther away, with perhaps an
apology. Then he would look hurt; perhaps
have a fit of mournful sulkiness, which it
was inexpressibly painful to witness. When
that was passed, he would go to her with an
air tenderly forgiving, and attempt some
gentle caress; and, when she repulsed him,
as she generally did now—although she did
not know why, his caresses annoyed her — he
would either droop suddenly like a stricken
bird, or stand like the lover in a melodrama
who opens his vest and cries "Tyrant! strike
your victim! "— with that provoking kind of
resignation which infers meek virtue on the
one side and hard barbarity on the other !
Or, with the temporary combativeness which
belongs to weak natures, he would press any
particular manifestation of love on her until
he made her accept it, unless she had undertaken
to discuss the matter openly, which
was not desirable for either. So she would
submit to his offered kiss, or suffer him to
take her hand, or hold her waist and press
him to her (they were just the same height,
and she was much the stronger), with her
teeth set hard and her nerves strung like
cords. She felt sometimes as if she could
have killed him when he touched her.

He came oftener than ever to the house;
and he had always haunted it like a spectre
or an unlaid ghost. But now he was never
absent; she was never alone, never free from
him. She began to weary of him fearfully,
and to feel that solitude was an unspeakable
luxury. She was brought to the pass of
feeling that, to escape from Paul Lefevre, her
affianced lover, was one of the things most
to be desired and attained in her daily life.
He tried to lead her to talk of their
marriage, and she turned pale instead. He spoke
of the great things they would do in life
together: and her lip curled contemptuously.
He repeated again and again his own
high hopes; and she answered, "Dreamer!
to believe in a future of fame without endeavour ;
content to say that you will be famous,
while taking no means to become so; dreaming
away the hours which should be
employed in action, and thinking that the will
can do all things, even without translating
that will into deeds: enthusiast! who of
ideas makes realities, and of hopes certainties."
This was but a sorry answer,
however true, to the burning thoughts that did
verily stand the young artist in place of
deeds. They were finding out how little
moral harmony there was between their
natures, and how unfit they were for the
real union of life.

Paul came one day, as usual, early in the
morning. He used to run all the way from
his lodgings to Oakfield, so that he always
came in a terribly excited, heated, panting
condition, which of itself irritated Magdalen.
To-day he came, flushed and eager; pouring
out a volume of love as he entered, and for
his greeting flinging himself at Magdalen's
feet, embracing her knees, and calling her his
morning star and his life. Magdalen had
not slept all the previous night; she too
was excited, but in a different way — irritable
and nervous. She would have given the
world to be alone, but how could she send
Paul away? However, being there, she
must make him reasonable. He spoke to her
passionately and tenderly; she answered him
in monosyllables, her head turned away or her
eyes on the ground. He took her hand, and
she withdrew it, saying, "Dear Paul, leave
me alone to-day, and do not touch me." He
asked her if she had chosen the plain silk or