an outside world would perhaps deem worthy of consideration. Only the slow, dull misery of hopeless incompatibility of temperament; the exquisite torture inevitable when a pure-minded, highly sensitive woman is domineered over by an essentially low and vulgar nature. Mrs. Denton's loathing for her husband, for his gluttony, his habits, his exasperating witticisms, increased as his age matured them; and so sickeningly unendurable had her position become to herself that she had felt that any other misery but this present misery must be preferable.

She had small idea that any effort of her own would bring her happiness. She was merely nerving herself to get relief. If she had felt the pain less, she might have succeeded. Some women, it seems, are able to give the laugh to the wretchedness growing out of a life involving mistake; but Margaret never laughed-she had only stiffened.

Some women, again, find their joys in the stolen fruits of regrasped happiness. Margaret was too much of a woman, even in her misery, to so desolate her womanhood.

It would have been easy indeed to gather excited delight from more than friendly overtures; but Margaret had borne her burden proudly, and prayed that she might go down to her grave and make no sign. It was the maddening sense of wrong done to her sister that had overthrown her steadfastness, and even now she wanted no revenge. She wanted nothing but to be let alone. She knew her health was breaking under the strain, disguise it to herself and others as she might. She acknowledged that she had spoiled her own life that no one was to blame. She hated Hugh, but she hardly blamed him. When she admitted that all that had happened was in the

nature of things, and that she might have foreseen it, she had lashed herself to the uttermost. Her one desire now was that he would leave her alone.

"Oh, let me go!" she cried, suddenly facing him.

"Let you go? I'll be d-d if I do! Margaret Denton! Who's Margaret Denton? Oh, she's separated from her husband, you know!' Oh, I hear 'em saying it up and down. Fault on both sides, you may be sure!' No, my dear, you don't!"

"I don't care what they say!"

"But I do, Madam! Do you think I'm going to let you ruin my social position by giving out to the world that I'm so vile you can't live with me?"

"I tell you I must go."

"And where, pray, I wonder? What does Maud think of all this? Does Maud know that you wrote that letter to me?"

"Oh, no!" said Margaret, hastily.

"I imagined not! Well, I have not the smallest objection to your staying on here for some weeks, I should like to meet your wishes in every possible way. Besides, it will look quite natural. But after that, no more nonsense. Shenton-on-Thames, if you please. And pray do not think that I require any excess of affection-far from it. We have managed without quite comfortably for long now. I have provided for you generously now for twenty years and more, and it will not suit me to dispense with your services at any moment that suits you best. Even from the housekeeping point of view, I think you owe it me to stay on to the finish."

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Oh, you won't understand!" she cried.

"I understand all there is to understand, my dear. You are sick of me. You wish that poison were not a

hanging matter. I regret it; but the disorder must be

controlled. Pray understand that I should never dream of allowing you an income apart from the fulfilment of your proper position. I should not, however, press my personal wishes so far as to put you under lock and key, and if on further consideration you think it wise to break with me, and that it would be a pleasant thing for your sister and niece to have said what would be said, your disgrace added to"

"You shall not say it!" she cried. But as he spoke she knew he had turned the key. The conventional chain is strong and unyielding. She panted more wildly than ever for freedom, if such it could be called, and yet she wavered, and the lip trembled fatally.

He stopped at her outcry, and looked at her calmly.

"Now, look here, my dear. It's not the least use in the world. It was for better, for worse. It is, according to you, worse. Very well. So be it!"

"I tell you I can't! I can't!" and down came the splashing drops. "I have done my best all these years, and I don't make any reproaches-but-let me go!"

"And I can only say," he went on, cheerfully, "that, considering everything, any impartial judge would say I had treated this matter infinitely better than you deserve, or than you expected!"

She made no reply. The old helplessness was paralyzing her once more. She knew as well as this man sitting so comfortably opposite her that she could never carry through her ultimatum. Knew that the galling chain would eat into her flesh in just the same old places. It seemed as though it only needed the word, the pushing open of the door, to gain freedom, but she remained silent, and the door closed for all time.

In a few moments Maud entered, and greeted her brother-in-law with intense civility.

He behaved in his least objectionable manner, pleasantly declined tea and also the use of the carriage, as he admitted that he had been to lunch with Mrs. de Renegil, and that she was expecting him back, before he left by the mail. He was extremely busy, he told Maud, and regretted that he could not stay on a few days, but he hoped his wife would feel herself at liberty to remain at Langbarrow as long as ever she was needed.

Maud thanked him, remarking that it was always a pleasure for her to have her sister, and in a few minutes more he was gone.

And then the sisters looked at each other.

"Well, darling?"

"Maud, I deceived you. I did write to him, but it was to ask him to release me. He has refused-of course. I have given in-of course! I am a woman cursed with weakness. For such a woman there is no hope in this world. I had a dream. It is over. I will come down later," and she turned and left the room.

CHAPTER XXVIII

JOAN soon pulled up and slackened her pace out of consideration to the Beloved, who was pluckily splashing along some way behind. All the mud which he did not collect under his body was flung off behind, shot from his hard pads.

As the dog trotted past her, he eyed her impertinently as if he would dare her to suggest that he was out of wind through want of condition brought on by three weeks' idling.

That afternoon Joan trotted up and down without plan. It really did not matter where she went, so long as she felt the horse's invigorating movement beneath her, but wherever she appeared she received her welcome from many a smiling face, from over a hedge, or a cottage gateway. Joan enjoyed the quick exchange of kindly greeting, just as though it were all an old dream come round again. Yet this ride could not be an unmixed pleasure when every road, view, field, and rock teemed with associations of the days that would never more be. To Joan de Renegil there now existed a great unalterable Past, utterly disjointed from, yet indissolubly linked with the Present and Future. That was the strange paradox.

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Then-Now-Sometime!" thought she to herself. To say that Joan, in spite of her gay words to Réné, did not acutely feel the change in her mother's and her own condition, would be to deeply underrate all her ap