that way, when he knew himself to be in
the right! It was almost ridiculous—no!
it was quite ridiculous! And she threw
herself back on the sofa, and suddenly
burst out laughing. At the first word of
remonstrance, however, which fell from her
husband's lips, her mood changed again, in
an instant. She sprang up once more
kissed him passionately, with the tears
streaming from her eyes, and implored him
to leave her alone to recover herself. He
quitted the room so seriously alarmed about
her, that he resolved to go to the doctor
privately, and question him on the spot.
There was an unspeakable dread in his mind,
that the nervous attack from which she had
been pronounced to be suffering, might be a
mere phrase intended to prepare him for the
future disclosure of something infinitely and
indescribably worse.

The doctor, on hearing Mr. Carling's report,
exhibited no surprise, and held to his
opinion. Her nervous system was out of
order, and her husband had been needlessly
frightened by a hysterical paroxysm. If she
did not get better in a week, change of scene
might then be tried. In the mean time, there
was not the least cause for alarm.

On the next day she was quieter, but she
hardly spoke at all. At night she slept well;
and Mr. Carling's faith in the medical man
revived again. The morning after, was the
morning which would bring the answer from
the publisher in London. The rector's study
was on the ground-floor; and, when he
heard the postman's knock, being especially
anxious that morning about his correspondence,
he went out into the hall to take his
letters the moment they were put on the
table.

It was not the footman who had answered
the door, as usual, but Mrs. Carling's maid.
She had taken the letters from the postman,
and was going away with them up-stairs.
He stopped her, and asked why she did not
put the letters on the hall table as usual.
The maid, looking very much confused, said
that her mistress had desired that whatever
the postman brought that morning, should
be carried up to her own room. He took
the letters abruptly from the girl, without
asking any more questions, and went back
into his study.

Up to this time, no shadow of a suspicion
had fallen on his mind. Hitherto, there had
been a simple, obvious explanation for every
unusual event that had occurred during the
last three or four days. But this last
circumstance in connection with the letters was
not to be accounted for. Nevertheless, even
now, it was not distrust of his wife that was
busy at his mind—he was too fond of her and
too proud of her to feel it—the sensation was
more like uneasy surprise. He longed to go
and question her, and get a satisfactory
answer, and have done with it. But there
was a voice speaking within him that had
never made itself heard before; a voice
with a persistent warning in it, that said—
Wait; and look at your letters first!

He spread them out on the table, with
hands that trembled he knew not why.
Among them was the back number of the
Times, for which he had written to London,
with a letter from the publisher explaining
the means by which the copy had been
procured.

He opened the newspaper, with a vague
feeling of alarm, at finding that those letters
to the Editor which he had been so eager to
read, and that perfecting of the mutilated
volume which he had been so anxious to
accomplish, had become objects of secondary
importance in his mind. An inexplicable
curiosity about the general contents of the
paper was now the one moving influence
which asserted itself within him. He spread
open the broad sheet on the table.

The first page on which his eye fell, was
the page on the right-hand side. It contained
those very letters—three in number—which
he had once been so anxious to see. He
tried to read them; but no effort could fix
his wandering attention. He looked aside,
to the opposite page, on the left hand. It
was the page that contained the
leading-articles.

They were three in number. The first
was on foreign politics; the second was a
sarcastic commentary on a recent division
in the House of Lords; the third was one of
those articles on social subjects which have
greatly and honourably helped to raise the
reputation of the Times above all contest
and all rivalry.

The lines in this third article which first
caught his eye comprised the opening
sentence of the second paragraph, and contained
these words:-

It appears, from the narrative which will be
found in another part of our columns, that this
unfortunate woman married, in the spring of the year
18— one Mr. Fergus Duncan, of Glendarn, in the
Highlands of Scotland—

The letters swam and mingled together
under his eyes, before he could go on to the
next sentence. His wife exhibited as an
object for public compassion in the Times
newspaper! On the brink of the dreadful
discovery that was advancing on him, his
mind reeled back; and a deadly faintness
came over him. There was water on a side
table—he drank a deep draught of it—roused
himself—seized on the newspaper with both
hands, as if it had been a living thing that
could feel the desperate resolution of his
grasp—and read the article through, sentence
by sentence, word by word.

The subject was the Law of Divorce; and
the example quoted was the example of his
wife.

At that time, England stood disgracefully
alone as the one civilised country in the world