He was fond of

was part of his character. her-almost too passionately fond, for her staider liking-but he was unused to thwart his own will in anything, least of all in those seeming trifles, for the consideration of which true unselfishness bethinks itself. Did she want to read when he wanted to walk, he good-humouredly put aside her book, with an assumption that a walk with him must, of necessity, be the most pleasant thing in the world. Did she want to walk when he wanted to rest, he laughingly set up his laziness as an all-sufficient plea for her remaining within doors. He was at no pains to conceal his weariness when she read her favourite books to him. If he felt sleepy when she sang or played, he slept without apology. If she talked about a subject in which he took no interest, he turned the conversation remorselessly. He would not have wittingly offended her; but it seemed to him natural to yawn when he was weary, to sleep when he was fatigued, and to talk only about those subjects which interested him. Had anybody told him that he was selfish, he would have been astonished. Thus it came about that Sylvia one day discovered that she led two lives— one in the body, and one in the spirit-and

that with her spiritual existence her husband had no share. This discovery alarmed her, but then she smiled at it. "As if Maurice could be expected to take interest in all my silly fancies," said she; and, despite a harassing thought that these same fancies. were not foolish, but were the best and brightest portion of her, she succeeded in overcoming her uneasiness. "A man's thoughts are different from a woman's," she said; "he has his business and his worldly cares, of which a woman knows nothing. I must comfort him, and not worry him with my follies."

As for Maurice, he grew sometimes rather troubled in his mind. He could not understand his wife. Her nature was an enigma. to him; her mind a puzzle which would not be pieced together with the rectangular correctness of ordinary life. He had known her from a child, had loved her from a child, and had committed a mean and cruel crime to obtain her; but having got her, he was no nearer to the mystery of her than before. She was all his own, he thought. Her golden hair was for his fingers, her lips were for his caress, her eyes looked love upon him alone. Yet there were times when her lips were cold to his kisses, and her eyes

looked disdainfully upon his coarser passion. He would catch her musing when he spoke to her, much as she would catch him sleeping when she read to him,—but she awoke with a start and a blush at her forgetfulness, which he never did. He was not a man to brood over these things; and, after some reflective pipes and ineffectual rubbings of his head, he

gave it up." How was it possible, indeed, for him to solve the mental enigma when the woman herself was to him a physical riddle? It was extraordinary that the child he had seen growing up by his side day by day should be a young woman with little secrets, now to be revealed to him for the first time. He found that she had a mole on her neck, and remembered that he had noticed it when she was a child. Then it was a thing of no moment, now it was a marvellous discovery. He was in daily wonderment at the treasure he had obtained. He marvelled at her feminine devices of dress and adornment. Her dainty garments seemed to him perfumed with the odour of sanctity.

The fact was, that the patron of Sarah Purfoy had not met with many virtuous women, and had but just discovered what a dainty morsel modesty was.

VOL. II.

19

CHAPTER XVIII.

IN THE HOSPITAL.

HE hospital of Port Arthur was not a cheerful place, but to the tor

tured and unnerved Rufus Dawes it seemed a paradise. There at least-despite the roughness and contempt with which his gaolers ministered to him-he felt that he was considered. There at least he was free from the enforced companionship of the men whom he loathed, and to whose level he felt, with mental agony unspeakable, that he was daily sinking. Throughout his long term of degradation he had, as yet, aided by the memory of his sacrifice and his love, preserved something of his self-respect, but he felt that he could not preserve it long. Little by little

he had come to regard himself as one out of the pale of love and mercy, as one tormented of fortune, plunged into a deep into which the eye of Heaven did not penetrate. Since his capture in the garden at Hobart Town, he had given loose rein to his rage and his despair. "I am forgotten or despised; I have no name in the world; what matter if I become like one of these?" It was under the influence of this feeling that he had picked up the cat at the command of Captain Burgess. As the unhappy Kirkland had said, "As well you as another ;" and truly, what was he that he should cherish sentiments of honour or humanity? But he had miscalculated his own capacity for evil. As he flogged, he blushed; and when he flung down the cat and stripped his own back for punishment, he felt a fierce joy in the thought that his baseness would be atoned for in his own. blood. Even when, unnerved and faint from the hideous ordeal, he flung himself upon his knees in the cell, he regretted only the impotent ravings that the torture had forced from him. He could have bitten out his tongue for its blasphemous utterings-not because they were blasphemous, but because their utterance, by revealing his agony, gave