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tural instinct after wrong: to crush and smother them all the insolent foreigner, the faithless wife in one fierce hand-grasp of passion. Could he not yet put his heel upon the serpent? In these precious letters which the Count had given him did he now read his own name hooked on to every epithet of contempt, amidst the most passionate expressions of devotion to another. A dimness, indeed, came upon the page, almost humanely, as he read. Ah, surely, his eyes must have been aching into tears when he exclaimed to himself bitterly, "Am I truly, then, such a fool and beast?" The thickening of the blood in the throat, the singing of it in the ears, the rushing as of invisible waters into some ghastly pit within him-how one can conceive all that! All belief was

now assuredly overthrown, all honour, all truth eclipsed, and not one star in the sudden midnight that had fallen upon him. Yet, was that man of such a nature and temperament that if, as he stood there in the loneliness, crumpling in his hot hand those hideous riddles, his strong heart in a chaos and whirl of angry confusion-his old pointer dog, turning up wistful eyes, had put a paw upon his knees, and thrust his nose into his hands-he, instead of kicking off the beast, must, without doubt, have burst into a paroxysm of tears, and sobbed like a child. Then,

too, if tears once came, much would be softened. Out of the chaos and blackness would, mournfully as it were, arise the image of his young wife as he first beheld her. What memories would rush upon him! Their first -dance, his arm yet tingling round her waist; his awkward boyish courtship, its timid beginning, its delicious growth; the old dreams and fancies, the time she used to smile on his boy-bablings, the pressure of her hand in histhat hand since so cold, now so false; kind looks in the eyes he loved so the lost poetry of the poor man's life! Roseville still loved his wife, and in this lay his bitterest anguish of all. Even in that forlorn hour, out of his utter dejection of soul, with those damning proofs of treachery still in his hand, with what yearning and tenderness could the rough-faced, weak-hearted man have thrown his arms about -her neck, and blessed her. But then came sternest-eyed Duty to his side, with her reproachful, firm rebuke.

There was a hard task set him to be done, and he plucked up his heart to go through with it, hoping, indeed, that heart might break, and so spare him, before the work was ended. How should he meet his wife now?

She was sitting in the little boudoir, alone with her feverish reveries. It was time, indeed, to dress for the park, but the carriage had been sent away from the door. She thought her head ached, and the sunshine was failing unnoticed from the window-pane; still she sat there, with her hands clasped about her knees. Surely it was some strange foreboding at her heart that made her start with such a wonderstricken air, at the sound of so light a footfall as that which fell between the heavy curtains at the further end of the room. She looked up, and saw her husband. He had crept in silently, and was standing there, quite still, with his eyes fixed strangely upon her. She would have spoken to him, but an odd kind of fear clung to her lips, and kept her silent awhile. It was not his wont to enter that room ever without knocking. At last she said

"What are you doing there, Roseville?"

"Do not stir," he answered musingly, with a very low voice, though somewhat husky; "do not take your head from the light."

"What do you mean?" she asked, with a surprised, alarmed tone; but he did not answer.

"Why don't you come out of those curtains into the room, and sit down ?" she asked.

"I was thinking--” he said, without moving.

"What of?" she said, with a sort of laugh that failed and turned into a nervous cough, for she felt frightened. "I was thinking," he replied, very slowly, of that day in the churchcan you recollect? It was in this month of June too, was it not?June, my birth-month also when the orange flower dropped out of your hair, as we came back into the porch. Do you remember, you wore a bunch of white orange-flowers that day; and it fell out, and you said I must put it back. So I wove it again into your hair; and some one said it was an omen, and we both laughed — do you remember?"

She stared at him with a puzzled

look.

"Stay" he went on, "there, as you were! Ay, so. Your hair I always said it had a golden tinge in it, not purple. The sunshine was on your head just then as it is now-only the morning sunshine, not the afternoon's. That is what made me think of itand the orange-flower. Have you forgotten these things?"

"What nonsense is this?" she cried; "I have other things to think of besides orange-flowers.'

"

"Then," he said, "you have never thought what they mean, those flowers; and why you women wear them on your bridal day?"

"What do they mean?" she said, mechanically, not knowing what she was saying.

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"They mean," he answered, "purity, I think. Yet I don't know either," he went on; for if that were so, why should you only wear them the first day?"

"What strange notions!" she said. "Strange-yes. Not long ago," he said, "I had a kind of dream-a sort of waking fancy rather-that we were there again in the church, as in the old time, and that the flowers fell again too, all as it happened that day; only, when I put them back into your hair, they withered up suddenly, each blossom of them, and blackened, and fell down a second time, and would not stay there. A foolish fancy, to be sure, for why should the orange-flower wither in your hair? One, two, three, four, five-how many years since then ?"

"Are you ill, Roseville?" she asked in alarm, completely puzzled.

"Not very well, indeed," he answered. "Let me sit here with you a little while, and talk. It is not often that we talk together now. I wish to speak to you; I have something to say to you. There, do not move; sit still; be calm. I am quite calm, am I not? You would not think I had anything to vex me now, would you?-that any body had wronged me greatly any one in whom I trusted. That, in fact

"What is the matter?what do you mean?" she started up, and shrieked. "Speak it out — quick! what have you to say to me? My God! why do you keep your hand hid in your bosom there?""

"Ay," he said, "to be sure, why? They have been there too long too

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In a moment it all flashed upon her. She caught up the letters her own, she knew them at once-and tore them into fragments, scattering them about her.

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They are forgeries, garbled forgeries!" she cried. "Lies, all lies!do you believe them, Roseville ?"

He turned upon her, without other answer, a look of such intense, reproachful scorn, that without doubt, if mere scorn could blast and slay where it falls, she must have fallen, with her falsehood in her, shrivelled at his feet. As it was, she did, indeed, fall there, her confidence utterly deserting her.

"Before God, Roseville," she said, "I swear to you I am innocent !”

He did not answer; he was muttering something about his mother's

name.

He said

"We were a proud old family."

"Innocent!" she interrupted, "innocent. O my God! not what you suppose me. Will you hear me, Roseville, before you spurn me? I have been very miserably wrong, very miserably deceived; and, as you see, punished, too, miserably; for you will (I can bear it all!) do whatever your name of husband gives you the right to do to me. I have wronged you-I confess all; see, from my heart I do, Roseville! wronged you deeply. But I am not so bad. so bad. I would not have been Roseville, do you hear me? I do not ask you to forgive me-only to

"

"You must, indeed," he said, "be very, very miserable. I pity you. Do not be afraid; I shall do nothing harsh-only the name must be saved. Thank God, no one knows of this. I trust no one knows; it will be easier easier to spare you pain. O," he cried, suddenly and bitterly, "O, if you had but loved me!"

And as she lay there, a confused heap, as it were, in her abject overthrow, he seemed to her so noble-he, the wronged husband-by the side of the faithless lover, for whom she had so nearly lost herself, that her heart was lifted up for a moment into a

higher nature than its own, and it seemed as if, out of very hopelessness, she could indeed love him.

"O stay! " she cried, clinging to him, for he was going. "Roseville, it seems as if a better voice than mine was speaking in my heart at this moment-in Heaven's name do not refuse to hear it. I never knew you until now, your nobleness, your worthmyself, my own deep unworthinessI that thought myself so high! If, indeed, my love could win me back, at some yet, perhaps, far-distant hour, your respect, and you would let me grow to love you as you deserve, as I never knew I could love till now different kind of love, indeed, from that which, from this day, is for ever perished a higher, a holier one ;—if, if this could be so-oh, do not cast me off to perish, back into my old self again! Tell me that I may try to love you, Roseville, my husband!"

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He put his hand upon her head, and bent down and kissed her cold forehead, and raised her sorrowfully from the ground; and as he did so his tears, hot burning tears, fell down upon her. For a moment it seemed to him that the gates of Paradise were opened in the far distance; but he held his hand tight upon his heart, and knew not whether it were not only a mirage, a phantasm over a desert.

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"No," he said slowly, and with a deep painful sigh; "no, you deceive yourself. It will not last. The emotion of a moment like this exaggerates all things. Yet if ever, if ever .0 no! I must not, dare not hope any more. From my heart I forgive you, and pity you, and will save you, if possible. That is all I can do; and now I must go and think for us both what may be best. I shall do nothing harsh, you need not fear. The fault was mine, too -most mine, perhaps. I should have looked more narrowly; but I trusted you so. We must both suffer; compose yourself— we will yet save the name, my mother's name; and then what is it to suffer a little?. noblesse oblige!"

While this scene was enacting, the Count met Geraldine on the stairs, and hastily caught her hand.

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"My heart's own, my chosen one," he whispered, hurriedly; "the last hour is come now. We must part, then, I suppose-perhaps for ever! I have quarrelled with Roseville; I can never enter his house again. Tomorrow I leave England."

She turns death-white, and staggers back. He catches her in his arms, and bears her into her room. There you

can conceive easily what their hurried interview was like: the girl's desolation; the old proposition of the Count, dexterously reiterated now for the last time, with all the energy and heat of apparent despair; the fatal assent; the sealing embrace.

"Have no fear," said C., "I will arrange all. To-night, then? The trance, you know, deceives them all. And then, O darling! beneath softer summer stars than these, what vistas of happiness are not already dawning far away! Far away!"

Lord Roseville is suddenly aroused from his moody self-communings to learn that Miss Geraldine has been found senseless in her room. Doctors

are sent for. All other thoughts are for the moment set aside, in the sudden alarm caused by the girl's illness. In the evening, later, comes a letter from Count C., to say he is about to leave England on the morrow

"When you think the matter over, mon cher," he says, "you will, I am sure, see the folly of what you call 'satisfaction.' I never refuse an offer of that kind; but, ma foi! I have done you a real service. the best action I can remember ever having performed. As for miladi, believe me that I appreciate her superior nature as highly as you do yourself. Let us hope, however, that this lesson may improve it. For the rest, what can you complain of? I might have done you harm, and did not. Neither did I bring about this affair. Remember, mon cher Lord, vous avez debouché la bouteille ; il faut boire le vin !"

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CHAPTER I. HOW THEY ALL MET AT THE HALFWAY HOUSE.

UPON a fine, bright morning in this present summer, and about two hours after daybreak, the ricketty old mail-car that plies between Galway and Clifden wound its way up the steep road by the side of Lough Shindilla, and reached the Halfway House, or, as it is somewhat grandiloquently termed in the tour-books, Flynn's Hotel. The driver pulled up his horse, and applying to his mouth a battered copper bugle, blew thereon a blast consisting of a succession of monotonous brays that went rumbling and brattling up the hill-sides till they were lost in the distant acclivities of the Maamturk mountains. After a moment a man came round the corner of the house, carrying a leathern bag in his hand, and stepped out upon the roadside. He was a tall, able-bodied fellow, apparently about five-and-thirty years of age, dressed in the costume of a comfortable farmer, with an intelligent, placid countenance, and an easy swing of his limbs that bespoke at once great muscular power with no very great inclination to over-tax it-a fine specimen of a race which in this part of the world borders on the Titanic.

"Morrow, Mr. Flynn."

"Morrow kindly, Dinny. Have you anything for me from town?”

"Here's a portmanteau," said the driver, as he swung a small one from the well of the car into the arms of the host of the Halfway House; "the gentleman will be here for dinner himself at seven o'clock, and desires you have a bed for him."

The host first looked at the name upon the brass plate, “MR. J. F. SMITH,” and then, apparently satisfied with the inspection, replied

"All right, Dinny."

An interchange of letter-bags having taken place for Mr. Flynn kept the post-office for the district-the carman executed with his tongue and teeth that indescribable chirp whose tone can be only approximately represented by the letters kr-kr-kr, and eking it out with an application of his doubled thong to the flank of his horse, away once more rumbled her Majesty's mail on its way to Clifden. The owner of the "hotel" stood a moment or two on the roadside looking about him-first up the road, then down it, then before him, and then behind; and having finally made his meteorological observations along the hilltops, he once more passed round the corner, and was seen no more. But a stranger could not be contented with such a passing survey of the scenery around. The little wayfaring inn was retired some perches from the roadside an humble hostelry, such as might be met with only in wild districts. It consisted of a square thatched cabin, from one of the ends of which projected at right angles a lower range, which was terminated by a little projecting building that formed the post-office. Two fine whitethorn bushes, built round with seats, stood at the exterior angle. A Cochin-China cock strutted upon an incipient heap of manure hard by, and several noble Aylesbury ducks were taking their morning bath with an abundance of quacking and splashing in a neighbouring pool. In front, towards the south, might be seen stretching away the district of Iar-Connaught, with many an intervening hill and lake; to the westward spread the flat, marshy ground through which ran the chain of mountain lakes so well known to all the lovers of angling; on the eastern side lay Lough Shindilla, and beyond it one might catch, northward, a glimpse of the skirt of the great Lough Corrib, with the ruins of the old fortress of the O'Flaherties, known in the legends of the country as "Cushla-na-Kirk," or the Hen's Castle; while behind the house rose, to the north, the bold outline of the Maam range of mountains, along whose base wound a wild bridle-road that led through the defile to the picturesque and lonely lake of Kylemore; and farther off

still, in the extreme north-west, a magnificent view of the twelve pins of Bennabola opened on the vision-just now, however, the tops of those hills were crowned with a cap of clouds, which the experienced eye of the host of the Halfway House had noted with a significant shake of his head as he passed into his domicile.

"Here's Mr. Smith's portmanteau," said the host to his wife.

"That's the gentleman that we got the letter from last night," was the

response.

"Of course.

Kill a couple of ducks for his dinner; and have a bed ready in the little room off the parlour."

The cap of clouds was not upon the head of " the Pins" for nothing. As the day wore on, drizzling showers of rain began to fall-then they passed away, and the sunshine broke out; then the rain came again, and then the sunshine, till, by afternoon, the whole horizon closed round with dull, leaden clouds, and the heavens wore the appearance of an unmistakably wet day. At four o'clock there was a regular down-pour, just as a chaise and pair going towards Galway rattled past the house at a spanking pace. It had not passed a dozen perches when smash went the near fore-wheel-the horses came to a dead stand. The driver jumped from his seat, uttering an exclamation, half malediction half prayer. There was a shrieking of female voices from within; and the next moment the door was opened, and out sprang a gentleman, who quickly extricated two ladies, and all three stood in the rain, looking hopelessly about them. In such an emergency the shelter of the Halfway House was not to be despised, and so the travellers and their baggage in a short time were safely deposited within its walls. They proved to be an English gentleman with his wife and her sister, and were completing their hymeneal tour in the wilds of Connemara. To repair the damage in this locality was out of the question, so it was decided that the party should put up for the night at the hotel, and get a fresh chaise from Galway in the morning. Accordingly they took possession of all the available apartments, except the little parlour and bedroom, which were considered to belong to Mr. Smith by right of his previous engagement. The hours wore on while the host and his family were busy in making preparations for the comfort of the bridal party, when the cuckoo upon the top of the little wooden clock beside the dresser in the kitchen began to execute a number of convulsive jerks, like a hen when meditating the operation of egg-laying, and then, with a whirring noise, the hammer of the bell struck the hour of seven. Just at the same moment a man lounged as leisurely up to the house as if the rain was not falling in tubfulls, and entered the kitchen. His legs were cased in a pair of leathern fisherman's boots that reached above the knees. He was dressed in a coat of shepherd's plaid, with a sou'wester of oilcloth on his head; a wicker basket was slung at his side, and he had a fishing-rod and landing-net in his hand.

"A misty sort of an afternoon, neighbour," said the stranger, addressing the host, shaking himself like a water-dog, and dashing the rain from his hat in a shower all around him.

"Bedad, you may say that, sir," returned the host, as he helped him off with his basket, on which was written in black paint the letters J. F. S.

"Just in time for dinner, I see," said the stranger, eying a pair of duck s twisting at the fire, and exuding a most appetising odour.

"We'll be ready for you, sir, before long," replied the host, who had noticed the initials; "you're the gentleman that was to be here this evening."

"Not a doubt of it," said the stranger. "Ah!" he continued to himself, that was a capital thought of Wilddrake, to give notice of my approach on his way to Oileanroe;" and without more ado he seated himself at the fire, took out his cigar-case, and began to smoke, while the steam rose in rival clouds from his garments. Before long the ducks changed their locality, and lay upon the table in the little parlour, and the guest sat down to make acquaintance with them. He had just made a masterly cut right along the sternum of one of the fowls, when the grating of wheels was heard on the gravel outside; then a dialogue took place in the kitchen between the host and some one apparently just arrived.

"I'm mighty sorry I can't accommodate you, sir; the only spare room was engaged yesterday by a gentleman."

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