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368 his horse in the yard, and, seeing his wife's maid at the kitchen door, desired her to beg her mistress to come to him in the book-room. He would not allow one half hour to pass toward the waning of his purpose. If it be ordained that a man shall drown, had he not better drown and have done with it?

Mrs. Robarts came to him in his room, reaching him in time to touch his arm as he entered it.

"Mary says you want me. I have been gardening, and she caught me just as I came in."

"Yes, Fanny, I do want you. Sit down for a moment." And, walking across the room, he placed his whip in its proper place.

"Oh, Mark, is there any thing the matter?"

"Yes, dearest, yes. Sit down, Fanny; I can talk to you better if you will sit."

But she, poor lady, did not wish to sit. He had hinted at some misfortune, and therefore she felt a longing to stand by him and cling to him.

"Well, there; I will if I must; but, Mark, do not frighten me. Why is your face so very wretched?"

"Fanny, I have done very wrong," he said. "I have been very foolish. I fear that I have brought upon you great sorrow and trouble." And then he leaned his head upon his hand, and turned his face away from her.

"Oh, Mark, dearest Mark, my own Mark! what is it?" and then she was quickly up from her chair, and went down on her knees before him. "Do not turn from me. Tell me, Mark! tell me, that we may share it."

"Yes, Fanny, I must tell you now, but I hardly know what you will think of me when you have heard it."

"I will think that you are my own husband, Mark; I will think that—that chiefly, whatever it may be." And then she caressed his knees, and looked up in his face, and, getting hold of one of his hands, pressed it between her own. "Even if you have been foolish, who should forgive you if I can not?"

And then he told it her all, beginning from that evening when Mr. Sowerby had got him into his bedroom, and going on gradually, now about the bills, and now about the horses, till his poor wife was utterly lost in the complexity of the accounts. She could by no means follow him in the details of his story, nor could she quite sympathize with