to her lips. " I have forgotten what I ought to
have remembered. I have thoughtlessly distressed
you!"

"No'!" said Magdalen. "You have encouraged
me."

"Encouraged you?"

"You shall see."

"With these words, she rose quietly from the
sofa, and walked to the open window. Before
Norah could follow her, she had torn the Trust
to pieces, and had cast the fragments into the
street.

She came back to the sofa, and laid her head
with a deep sigh of relief on Norah's bosom.
"I will owe nothing to my past life," she said.
"I have parted with it, as I have parted with
those torn morsels of paper. All the thoughts,
and all the hopes belonging to it, are put away
from me for ever!"

"Magdalen! my husband will never allow
you—I will never allow you myself—-"

"Hush! hush! "What your husband thinks
right, Norah, you and I will think right too.
I will take from you, what I would never have
taken, if that letter had given it to me. The
end I dreamed of, has come. Nothing is
changed but the position I once thought we
might hold towards each other. Better as it is,
my love—far, far better as it is."

So she made the last sacrifice of the old perversity,
and the old pride. So she entered on
the new and the nobler life.

* * * * *

A month had passed. The autumn sunshine
was bright, even in the murky streets; and the
clocks in the neighbourhood were just striking
two, as Magdalen returned alone to the house in
Aaron's Buildings.

"Is he waiting for me?" she asked, anxiously,
when the landlady let her in.

He was waiting in the front room. Magdalen
stole up the stairs, and knocked at the door.
He called to her carelessly and absently to come
in—plainly thinking that it was only the
servant who applied for permission to enter the
room.

"You hardly expected me so soon?" she
said, speaking on the threshold, and pausing
there, to enjoy his surprise, as he started to his
feet and looked at her.

The only traces of illness still visible in her
face, left a delicacy in its outline which added
refinement to her beauty. She was simply
dressed in muslin. Her plain straw bonnet had no
other ornament than the white ribbon with which
it was sparingly trimmed. She had never looked
lovelier in her best days, than she looked now—
as she advanced to the table at which he had
been sitting, with a little basket of flowers that
she had brought with her from the country, and
offered him her hand.

He looked anxious and careworn, when she
saw him closer. She interrupted his first
inquiries and congratulations, to ask if he had
remained in London, since they had parted—if
he had not even gone away for a few days only,
to see his friends in Suffolk? No: he had been
in London, ever since. He never told her that
the pretty parsonage-house in Suffolk wanted
all those associations with herself, in which the
poor four walls at Aaron's Buildings were so
rich. He only said, he had been in London ever
since.

"I wonder," she asked, looking him attentively
in the face, " if you are as happy to see
me again, as I am to see you?"

"Perhaps I am even happier, in my different
way," he answered, with a smile.

She took off her bonnet and scarf, and seated
herself once more in her own arm-chair. " I
suppose the street is very ugly," she said; " and
I am sure nobody can deny that the house is
very small. And yet—and yet, it feels like
coming home again. Sit there, where you used
to sit and tell me about yourself—I want to
know all that you have done, all that you have
thought even, while I have been away." She
tried to resume the endless succession of
questions by means of which she was accustomed to
lure him into speaking of himself. But she put
them far less spontaneously, far less adroitly
than usual. Her one all-absorbing anxiety in
entering that room, was not an anxiety to be
trifled with. After a quarter of an hour wasted
in constrained inquiries on one side, in reluctant
replies on the other, she ventured near the
dangerous subject at last.

"Have you received the letters I wrote to
you from the sea-side?" she asked, suddenly,
looking away from him for the first time.

"Yes," he said, "all."

"Have you read them?"

"Every one of them; many times over."

Her heart beat as if it would suffocate her.
She had kept her promise bravely. The whole
story of her life, from the time of the home-wreck
at Combe-Raven, to the time when she
had destroyed the Secret Trust in her sister's
presence, had been all laid before him. Nothing
that she had done, nothing even that she had
thought, had been concealed from his knowledge.
As he would have kept a pledged engagement
with her, so she had kept her pledged engagement
with him. She had not faltered in the
resolution to do this—and now she faltered over
the one decisive question which she had come
there to ask. Strong as the desire in her was
to know if she had lost or won him, the fear of
knowing was, at that moment, stronger still.
She waited, and trembled: she waited, and said
no more.

"May I speak to you about your letters?"
he asked. " May I tell you—-?"

If she had looked at him, as he said those few
words, she would have seen what he thought of
her, in his face. She would have seen, innocent
as he was in this world's knowledge, that he
knew the priceless value, the all-ennobling
virtue, of a woman who speaks the truth. But
she had no courage to look at him—no courage
to raise her eyes from her lap.

"Not just yet," she said, faintly. "Not
quite so soon after we have met again."

She rose hurriedly from her chair, and walked