can cast yours. Fire can combat fire. If
I am a daughter of Sidi Calhha, may Allah
wither your members, break your teeth,
cut out your tongue, and blind your eyes!
Take that, by way of my parting present!"

"You have lost your senses, both of you,"
interposed the magistrate, shocked at the
bitterness of their maledictions. Happily,
Allah pays no regard to the madness of men;
and, believe me, the evil destiny which you
invoke on each other will have no influence
whatever. Allah has something else to do
than to attend to your angry imprecations,
especially when they are so wicked and
implacable. Go in peace, but separately, for
you were not made for one another. It was
not Allah who joined you together."

"Be accursed to your seventh generation!"
was the farewell address which the male
plaintiff bestowed on his former wife.

"And you to your seven hundredth
generation!" was her exasperated rejoinder.

                       NEMESIS.

IN FOUR CHAPTERS. CHAPTER THE THIRD.

GARSTON regained so absolute a mastery
over himself that he guarded successfully
against every circumstance that might tend
towards the discovery of his crime. I was in
great perplexity and sorely distressed. What
if I were at once to denounce him as the
murderer of Anna?  Would the charge gain
a better reception with the world because
I made it? Would not sympathy for the
victim be forgotten in abhorrence of the callous,
although public-spirited kinsman? Or,
would not some disgrace be directly cast on
our family?—unmerited disgrace, it is true—
but not the less hard to be borne; as they
who measure it out well enough know. What
had most weight with me, was the knowledge
that the trial and conviction of Garston for
the murder of the girl whom she had loved,
whom she had protected, and who had fallen
a sacrifice the moment that protection was
withdrawn—would accelerate and embitter
the last moments of my mother. Yet, in
proportion to the force of these considerations,
a disinclination to shape my course in
obedience to their dictates, grew upon me. I
began to feel, not a horror only, but a detestation
of the man who had set me upon reviewing
the chances of acquiescence in crime on
the one hand, and of disgrace and misery
on the other, and who was to obtain an
immunity from punishment by a mental
process, taking place in any other heart but
my own, would consign him out of hand to
the gibbet.

Looking up, and casting my eyes towards
the farther end of the room, I was startled by
observing Garston in the door-way. He was
undressed, and was beckoning me. I could
not but go to him—besides, it was expedient
that I should keep my own counsel.

"Silence!" he whispered, "don't let anybody
hear us. Come with me into my room."

"Here," he added, when he had got there,
"is the key. Open that chest. A thousand
thanks. Now, forty drops out of that
bottle in half a wine-glass of water. Put it
to my mouth. Here, Arthur, you are a kind,
good fellow!—a dear fellow. My nerves, you
see, are prostrated."

I prevailed upon him to go into bed, and
sat down by his side. Already my heart
began to melt towards him. "I have gone
through such a dreadful night," said he, with
clasped hands stretched from the bed, and
with eyes of lifeless misery raised to mine
"such a dreadful night, that the like of it
cannot again be mine on this side the grave.
Other dreadful nights await me, I fear;
though none so terrible as that. Yet, what
can be more terrible than losing one's senses?
I dread that—O! I dread that!"

He paused, still gazing at me with a doubting
and yet beseeching expression. "Will
you attend me, should that come upon me?"
he asked suddenly. "You are going to say,
your mother;—not for the world. She is
too ill, and it would kill her; and no servants
—they believe anything they hear that
is horrible; and no doctor,—he can be of no
avail in a case like mine. Say you will be
my nurse?"

I assented. I could not withdraw the hand
he had seized.

"Bless you!—bless you! Keep that
mother's heart of yours in your bosom all
your life, dear boy! Man that is born of a
woman should partake chiefly of the mother's
nature; so would humanity, tenderness, and
mercy be more prevalent in the world.
Do not be surprised or alarmed. Men in
delirium say things the farthest in life from
their thoughts, feelings, and intentions. I
once knew a man in Rome whom I tended
during a long illness,—one of the purest and
best of human beings. In his aberration, he
accused himself of the most shocking crimes.
Of course, I did not believe a word he said."

Garston talked a great deal more in the
same strain, shocking me at intervals by
attempts at mirth, which made me fear an
access of the delirium he dreaded; but, after
giving him, at his request, a composing
draught, I saw him sink into a heavy sleep
which promised continuance, and I left him.

I was, I found, late at the breakfast-table.
My mother had been waiting for us some
time. I felt it necessary to inform her of
Garston's illness. She was a little disturbed.

"Arthur, I never saw my husband in such
a state as he was last night," she murmured.
"He talked and acted strangely, did
he not? Did he say what a night he had
passed?"

I told some pacifying lie; beginning to hate
myself, and the course of duplicity and
subterfuge I had now entered upon. She would
go to see him after breakfast, on my assuring