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 Then she gave him her hand, and gradually lifted her eyes to his face. 'Yes,' she said; 'it will be for ever. There will be no coming back for me.'

'Nay, nay; we will not say that. That's as may be hereafter. But it will not be at once. It had better not be quite at once. Edith tells me that you go on Thursday.'

'Yes, sir; we go on Thursday.'

She had still allowed her hand to remain in his, but now she withdrew it, and asked him to sit down. 'Lucius is not here,' she said. 'He never remains at home after breakfast. He has much to settle as to our journey; and then he has lawyers to see.'

Sir Peregrine had not at all wished to see Lucius Mason, but he did not say so. 'You will give him my regards,' he said, 'and tell him that I trust that he may prosper.'

'Thank you. I will do so. It is very kind of you to think of him.'

'I have always thought highly of him as an excellent young man.'

'And he is excellent. Where is there any one who could suffer without a word as he suffers? No complaint ever comes from him; and yet—I have ruined him.'

'No, no. He has his youth, his intellect, and his education. If such a one as he cannot earn his bread in the world—ay, and more than his bread—who can do so? Nothing ruins a young man but ignorance, idleness, and depravity.'

'Nothing;—unless those of whom he should be proud disgrace him before the eyes of the world. Sir Peregrine, I sometimes wonder at my own calmness. I wonder that I can live. But, believe me, that never for a moment do I forget what I have done. I would have poured out for him my blood like water, if it would have served him; but instead of that I have given him cause to curse me till the day of his death. Though I still live, and eat, and sleep, I think of that always. The remembrance is never away from me. They bid those who repent put on sackcloth, and cover themselves with ashes. That is my sackcloth, and it is very sore. Those thoughts are ashes to me, and they are very bitter between my teeth.'

He did not know with what words to comfort her. It all was as she said, and he could not bid her even try to free herself from that sackcloth and from those ashes. It must be so. Were it not so with her, she would not have been in any degree worthy of that love which he felt for her. 'God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb,' he said.

'Yes,' she said, 'for the shorn lamb—' And then she was silent again. But could that bitter, biting wind be tempered for the she-wolf who, in the dead of night, had broken into the fold, and with