either as much of a miscreant as Bob Rushton himself, or the fertile weaver of romances not an echo of which the King's Head had ever heard.

The rest of the company had all dispersed, some wondering what had happened; for it was plain to the dullest that something was amiss; others having heard distorted rumours, making them still more out of shape and line; while those who had been chosen to spend the day at Paumelle House, to break the tedium of the time for the father and check the tears of the bereaved mother, found ample employment in arguing and conjecturing from the facts as really known-judging before proofs brought or evidence given, according to the way of rash minds certain of their lights.

At last the little party of accusers and defenders drew up at the door, and one by one alighted. Then Derwent took Guy Perceval as it were into custody, and, with his hand firmly grasping the other's arm, went into the house to fling the stone which was to prove if the fair seeming surface of the still waters was the true expression of the pure and hidden depths; or if, when disturbed, would be revealed a mass of muddy foulness hitherto undreamt of by the world about the banks.

They found Mr. and Mrs. Smith, strangely enough, in the drawing-room; and the children at least felt how opportune the chance was. It took off what else would have been the appearance of taking these beloved parents before the judgment seat; an informal judgment seat it is true, but none the less potent.

When they entered, Muriel, breaking away from Arthur, threw herself into her father's arms.

'Dear, dear papa!' she said, kissing him passionately in between her sudden sobs and tears; dear, best-beloved papa!

She knew all in her heart, but her election was made. Though the whole world should forsake him, she would remain faithful; she and her mother would love and reverence him to the end; sacrificing their own happiness that he might forget his sorrow, sharing his humiliation that he might believe himself replaced in honour.

6 Father!' said Derwent, in his clear voice, standing straight and proud, while Edmund smoothed Muriel's hair, and kissed her forehead, and forgot the graver bearing of the moment in his grief at her distress. 6 Father! here is a man who says that you have been-I scarcely like to insult your ears by using such words-but he says that you have been a forger, and are a returned convict. Will you tell me how I can best punish him?'

'I will tell you instead how I got my information, Mr. Smith,'

said Guy, speaking with an agitation that sharpened his tones into bell-wires. My coachman heard it yesterday evening from that man Rushton whom you have taken into your service. The two were drinking together at the King's Head-for which Romer will have to go-and Rushton, not quite sober, but not so drunk as not to know what he was about, told him that you had been prison companions at Bindwood, and that your offence had been forgery, as his had been theft. This is all that I know; but knowing it, I told Lady Machell as my duty to an old friend. If false, your innocence can be easily proved; if true, it is only right that your neighbours should know the truth; and more especially -all things considered-the Machell family.'

There was a dead silence. Mrs. Smith kept her eyes fixed on her husband; his were still on Muriel, always clinging to him, always holding him like a treasure to her heart-her dear papa, her poor papa; whatever else might be, always her own, her beloved, her father.

C Yes, it is easily disposed of if false,' said Sir Gilbert cheerfully; while Lady Machell, looking now at Edmund Smith and now at Arthur, and from this last to Muriel, drawing up her figure and tightening her lips, put in as a rider :

'But it must be investigated, Mr. Smith-strictly.'

Still Edmund did not speak. He flushed and turned pale; looked round as if to find some place of retreat-some hole where he might hide; and then turned his haggard eyes with pathetic appeal to his wife ever watching him, ever marking his mood and following on his will. He flung up his hand as if in despair. He had been tracked and hunted down, and escape was impossible. It was useless to fence or to deny. The truth had caught him, and he was the captive of her as well as of his past.

His wife read it all. She made a few steps towards him with the grace of a queen, the dignity of a goddess. Never had she looked so grand, so beautiful, so noble, so superior to man and to fate! She stood by his side and took his hand in hers, carrying it reverently to her lips.

'Yes,' she said in a voice as clear as Derwent's had been, lifting her head and meeting Lady Machell's steady, scornful gaze as steadily if not so scornfully; 'what you have heard is true. He is a returned convict; and my loved and honoured husband through it all!’

(To be continued.)

BELGRAVIA

DECEMBER 1877.

The World Well Lost.

BY E. LYNN LINTON.

IN

CHAPTER XXXIV.

IN ARMS.

N the eyes of the world, excess in virtue is an unpardonable offence. Be truthful, loyal, honest, chivalrous, up to the rational standard of the majority, and when you fall short, conceal; but to go beyond that standard is to bring on yourself as much condemnation as if you had fallen short-and perhaps a little more.

Thus, wifely devotion is a very good thing in its way, and women are required to be faithful to their husbands and mindful of their vows; but there are limits: and when society is incensed against a man, it would that his wife, sticking close to him on principle, was incensed against him too, rather than that her devotion should be by the free choice of love. It does not like its sinners to be consented with, nor the dishonour which it has branded to be condoned; it forbids that its excommunicated should be succoured, and would, if it could, banish its moral lepers to a place apart where the clean should not be offended by their presence; and when even their own stand lovingly by its banished, it holds itself aggrieved by a devotion which defies its decrees and nullifies its punishment.

This was the state of public feeling at Grantley Bourne where Mrs. Smith's fidelity was discussed as warmly as Mr. Smith's crime; and the one found to be very nearly as blameworthy as the other. She was condemned on all sides and for every kind of reason:-some saying that she ought to have thought more of her children than of her husband; others, that she had insulted society by living there at all; others again, that she outraged morality by professing to still love a convicted felon : but some stood sternly on the strict text, for better, for worse,' and while suffering no paltering with the strict application of the words, maintained that she should

VOL. XXXIV. NO. CXXXIV,

K

have gone into exile from the first, and have separated her children from the children of the unconvicted, as the goats, poor things, should be separated from the sheep. They could not get over it. Conjugal fidelity and felony-felony which should, if it does not, break up a marriage as poison used to shatter fine Venetian glassa returned convict for the husband of one's neighbour and the father of one's hypothetical daughter-in-law? It was not a pleasant position for anyone; though perhaps the family of the unfortunate convict himself was the most to be pitied:-to hear Grantley Bourne, it would seem society-society which had rubbed its virtuous shoulders with a convict, and given its own clean hands in fellowship to a forger.

Indignation meetings were held from house to house, where Miss Forbes and Mr. Oliphant were the only speakers who said a good word for Mrs. Smith or a charitable one for her husband.

Mrs. Constantine maintained that Mrs. Smith ought to have told them from the first, and thus have saved them from the humiliation of such a dreadful association—or at least have left them free to choose their own line of action. But even Lady Machell confessed that this was an act of heroism hardly to be expected; and when the other shifted her ground and said it was an infamous thing to come to the place at all, Sir Gilbert mildly remarked that she must live somewhere, and it would have been the same thing to any neighbourhood wherever she had gone.

Then she should have kept herself in rigorous seclusion,' said Mrs. Constantine sharply.

On which Miss Forbes turned round on her without mercy, and in that sledge-hammer manner so well known to all, reminded Mrs. Constantine and Grantley Bourne in general that the poor dear soul had never sought any among them, but had been from the first noticeably reticent and restricted. So the rest were forced to confess; but they did it with a sniff, understanding the cause of it now, and no better pleased than they had been when they did not understand it, and had resented her refusal of the intimacy which they offered as an affront that deserved rebuke.

Mrs. Lucraft's opinion was that she ought to have made her husband dead, and not have let him come home at all; but Mrs. Constantine, whose ideas on the marriage vow were strict, professed herself shocked, and said that she was bound to keep with him under any change of circumstance, only she ought not to say that she loved and respected him. This was her offence-a padding of her cross highly reprehensible, and indeed an offence against morality in the abstract. Then there were the children, continued Mrs. Constantine sternly; a felon's children; and Muriel engaged

to that poor dear Arthur Machell! What a dreadful state of things! -and suppose that young Derwent had followed up matters at Sharpeley, and become attached to Mina-Mina was twenty-eight, if a day as it seemed likely at one time, what a fearful catastrophe! How thankful she was to an over-ruling Providence who had taken such gracious care of her and her dear girls!

It all came round to the same thing-Guelfs and Ghibellines, white and black, each party stood on the one central position:It was a dreadful state of things, and Mrs. Smith was very much to blame. But the odd part of it was, that everyone found now that he or she had suspected something of the kind from the first; and each reminded the other of sundry dark sayings, which, like the Sibyl's oracles, were intelligible only after the event, and served neither for light nor guidance when darkness was about and men were wandering in lost paths.

It was Miss Forbes who mainly provoked these discussions, under the idea that talking clears the air, and that the hearty advocacy which she carried into them would do the poor dears good. And certainly she stood by them gallantly.

She for one would not desert them, she said again and again, with the style and air of a grenadier protecting a house full of frightened huddled women. They were penitent; that poor dear fellow was broken-hearted; and she was on the side of those who rejoice over sinners saved. She had just sent them over a basket of choice pears such as they had not at Owlett, and yesterday she sent some grapes and the last of her late marrow fats.

Some people laughed at her, and some looked coldly on her for her advocacy; some twitted her with a weakness for criminals-as witness Bob Rushton, the slippery scoundrel!—and some asked her jeeringly :-did she want men to get up a public testimonial to Mr. Smith, as was done for that interesting murderer who not only saved his neck from the halter, but even received a purse of gold in token of a nation's penitent regard?

Miss Forbes was not a woman to be laughed out of her position of antagonism, or jeered into voting with the majority. She generally held her own pretty firmly to the end; and in the present matter, if she could not turn, she at least did something to stem the torrent, and made some among them feel that all against one were odds more unequal than Englishmen in general think just. Even this was a gain which counted for something, and was so far better than no gain at all.

At Machells, things were, as might have been expected, black and stormy enough. My lady assumed Arthur's acquiescence in