A Woman Martyr

if turned to stone, her beautiful eyes riveted on the sp

seemed to writhe in an agony of despair. "

med to come to life again. She clenched her nails into her gloved hands so vehemently that the fine kid was rent. She suppressed her almost ungovernable desire to groan out her misery, and as she

t--Nature, fate, the Creator who made us, alone, know. But I am his, he is my lo

hood and chain it to his fouled existence, rose and asserted itself in a strong, overpowering will--to belong to Vansittart, its rightful owner by legitimate

ally, by some mysterious agency, within her soul. And she quietly returned to the ballroom, calmed; for she was as

oorway. The heat, the buzz, the patter of feet upon the parquet--they were dancing a cotillon--the braying of th

l so--I am subject to horrid neuralgia, and it has just begun. I am distracted with pain! I

felt suddenly weak and tremulous as he drew her hand within his arm. She loved him! He was certain of it! She loved him! She ha

tly listening to the prattle of the surrounding dowagers, and trying not to wish the evening at an end. "How dear of you to to say '

eir carriage. As he stood bareheaded under the awning after they had driven off, he glanced up at the sky--it had been raining and now a wreath of cloud had parted to disclose a misty moon--and a vague but real remorse that he had not kept up with the noble truths he had learned at his dead mother's knee in those days which seemed a century or more ago brought the moisture to his happy

tly joyful if he could have see

he could get rid of her without exciting any suspicio

rtfully dropped by him and picked up by a school friend, delighted to feel herself one of the dramatis person? in a living loveplay. This and ensuing love-letters proved the young man a clever scribe. He represented himself as a member of a distinguished family, banished from home on account of his political opinions. The secret correspondence continued; then, with the assistance of a bribed housemaid whose mental pabulum was low class novelettes with impossible illustrations of seven

om school to her old nurse in the little suburban house where she let lodgings, and their marriage before the Registrar, to attain which Victor Mercier had falsely stated her age, and their parting immediately after! She went to her uncle somewhat in disg

atter her whole life at once and for ever. She read in a daily paper of a discovered fraud in the branc

ning horror, made her shiver even now. In her desperation she had confided in her

solation. "Such as him daren't ever show his face at Sir Thomas'! Your husbin'? The law 'ud soon rid ye of a husbin' of his sort

e to life, and in

If only I had the courage to tell Uncle--all! I believe he might forgive me. But I could never

ed the first. There was nothing else to be done. And, she must b

f neuralgia to rise. Her aunt came up and petted her, and she was

out to a dinner whither she should rightly have accompanied them. "Tell them not to disturb me unless I ring. I shall go to bed directly and get a long s

al of the day, she rose, dressed herself in a short cycling costume and a long cloak, tied a veil over her smallest, plainest hat, took a latchkey she had once laughingly stolen from he