can't start till after to-morrow. Miss Gwilt is to give us some more music, and you know you like Miss Gwilt's playing." Midwinter turned aside to buckle the straps of his knapsack. "Give me another chance of hearing Miss Gwilt when I come hack," he said, with his head down, and his fingers busy at the straps.

he rang for his hat and umbrella, and resolved to take refuge in the major's cottage.

"I might have gone a little way with him," thought Allan, his mind still running on Midwinter as he put on his hat. "I should liked to have seen the dear old fellow fairly started on his journey."

He took his umbrella. If he had noticed the face of the servant who gave it to him, he might possibly have asked some questions, and might have heard some news to interest him in his present frame of mind. As it was he went out without look

"You have one fault, my dear fellow, and it grows on you," remonstrated Allan; "when you have once taken a thing into your head, you're the most obstinate man alive. There's no persuading you to listen to reason. If you will go," added Allan, suddenly rising as Midwinter took up his hat and sticking at the mau, and without suspecting that his servants knew in silence, "I have half a mind to go with you and try a little more of Midwinter's last moments at Thorpe-Ambrose than he roughing, too!" knew himself. Not ten minutes since, the grocer and butcher "Go with me!" repeated Midwinter, with a momentary bit- had called in to receive payment of their bills and the grocer terness in his tone, "and leave Miss Gwilt!" and the butcher had seen how Midwinter started on his journey. The grocer bad met him first, not far from the house, stop

Allan sat down again, and admitted the force of the objection in significant silence. Without a word more on his side, Mid-ping on his way, in the pouring rain, to speak to a ragged little winter held out his hand to take leave. They were both deeply moved, and each was anxious to hide his agitation from the other. Allan took the last refuge which his friend's firmness left to him, he tried to lighten the farewell moment by a joke. "I'll tell you what," he said, "I begin to doubt if you're quite yet cured of your belief in the dream. I suspect you're running away from me, after all!"

imp of a boy, the pest of the neighborhood. The boy's customary impudence had broken out even more unrestrainedly than usual at the sight of a gentleman's knapsack. And what had the gentleman done in return? He had stopped and looked distressed, and had put his two hands gently on the boy's shoulders. The grocer's own eyes had seen that; and the grocer's own ears had heard him say, "Poor little chap! I know how

Midwinter looked at him, uncertain whether he was in jest or the wind knaws and the rain wets through a ragged jacket, earnest. "What do you mean?" he asked.

better than most people who have got a good coat on their backs." And with these words he had put his hand in his pocket, and had rewarded the boy's impudence with the present of a shilling. "Wrong hereabouts," said the grocer, touching his forehead. "That's my opinion of Mr. Armadale's friend!" The butcher had seen him farther on in his journey, at the other end of the town. He had stopped-again in the pouring rain-and this time to look at nothing more remarkable than a half-starved cur, shivering on a doorstep. "I had my eye on him" said the butcher; "and what do you think he did? He

"What did you tell me," retorted Allan, "when you took me in here the other day, and made a clean breast of it? What did you say about this room and the second vision of the dream? By Jupiter!" he exclaimed, starting to his feet once more, "now I look again, here is the second vision! There's the rain pattering against the window-there's the lawn and the garden outside-here am I where I stood in the dream-and there you are where the shadow stood. The whole scene complete, out of doors and in; and I've discovered it this time!" A moment's life stirred again in the dead remains of Midwin-crossed the road over to my shop, and bought a bit of meat fit ter's superstition. His color changed; and he eagerly, almost fiercely disputed Allan's conclusion.

for a Christian. Very well. He says good-morning, and crosses back again; and on the word of a man, down he goes on his knees on the wet doorstep, and he takes out his knife, and cuts up the meat, and gives it to the dog. Meat, I tell you again, fit for a Christian! I'm not a hard man, ma'am," concluded the butcher, addressing the cook, "but meat's meat; and it will serve your master's friend right if he lives to want it."

"No!" he said, pointing to the little marble figure on the bracket, "the scene is not complete-you have forgotten something as usual. The dream is wrong this time, thank God -utterly wrong! In the vision you saw, the statue was lying in fragments on the floor; and you were stooping over them with a troubled and angry mind. There stands the statue With these old unforgotten sympathies of the old unforgotten safe and sound!-and you haven't the vestige of an angry feel- time to keep him company on his lonely road, he had left the ing in your mind, have you ?" He seized Allan impulsively by town behind him, and had been lost to view in the misty rain. the hand. At the same moment the consciousness came to him The grocer and the butcher had seen the last of him, and had that he was speaking and acting as earnestly as if he still be-judged a great nature, as all great natures are judged from the lieved the dream. The color rushed back over his face, and he grocer and the butcher point of view. turned away in confused silence.

"What did I tell you?" said Allan, laughing a little uneasily. "That night on the wreck is hanging on your mind as heavily as ever."

"Nothing hangs heavily on me," retorted Midwinter, with a sudden outburst of impatience," but the knapsack on my back, and the time I'm wasting here. I'll go out and see if it's likely to clear up."

"You'll come back?" interposed Allan.

THE END OF THE THIRD BOOK

BOOK THE FOURTH.

CHAPTER I.-MRS. MILROY.

Two days after Midwinter's departure from Thorpe-Ambrose, Mrs. Milroy having completed her morning toilet, and having dismissed her nurse, rang the bell again five minutes afterwards,

Midwinter opened the French window, and stepped out into and on the woman's reappearance, asked impatiently, if the post the garden.

"Yes," be said, answering with all his former gentleness of manner, "I'll come back in a fortnight. Good-bye, Allan; and good luck with Miss Gwilt!''

had come in.

"Post?" echoed the nurse.

"Haven't you got your watch? Don't you know that it's a good half hour too soon to ask for your letters?" She spoke with the confident insolence of a ser

He pushed the window to, and was away across the garden vant long accustomed to presume on her mistress's weakness, before his friend could open it again and follow him.

Allan rose, and took one step into the garden; then checked himself at the window, and returned to his chair. He knew Midwinter well enough to feel the total uselessness of attempting to follow him, or to call him back. He was gone, and for two weeks to come there was no hope of seeing him again. An hour or more passed, the rain still fell, and the sky still threatened. A heavier and heavier sense of loneliness and despondency-the sense of all others which his previous life had least fitted him to understand and endure-possessed itself of Allan's mind. In sheer borror of his own uninhabitably solitary house,

and her mistress's necessities. Milroy, on her side, appeared to be well used to her nurse's manner; she gave her orders composedly, without noticing it.

"When the postman does come," she said, see him yourself. I am expecting a letter which I ought to have had two days since. I don't understand it. I'm beginning to suspect the servants."

The nurse smiled contemptuously. " "Who will you suspect next?" she asked. "There! don't put yourself out. Fl answer the gate bell this morning; and we'll see if I can't, bring you a letter when the postman comes." Saying these words in

the tone and manner of a woman who is quieting a fractious | under the pressure of calamity, to resign themselves than to child, the nurse, without waiting to be dismissed, left the

room.

Mrs. Milroy turned slowly and wearily on her bed, when she was left by herself again, and let the light from the window fell on her face.

It was the face of a woman who had once been handsome, and who was still, so far as years went, in the prime of her life. Long continued suffering of body, and long-continued irritation of mind, had worn her away-in the roughly-expressive popular phrase to skin and bone. The utter wreck of her beauty was made a wreck horrible to behold, by her desperate efforts to conceal the sight of it from her own eyes, from the eyes of her husband and her child, from the eyes even of the doctor who attended her, and whose business it was to penetrate to the truth. Her bead, from which the greater part of the hair had fallen off, would have been less shocking to see than the hideously youthful wig, by which she tried to hide the loss. No deterioration of her complexion, no wrinkling of her skin, could have been so dreadful to look at as the rouge that lay thick on her cheeks, and the white enamel plastered on her forehead. The delicate lace, and the bright trimming on her dressing gown, the ribbons in her cap, and the rings on her bony fingers, all intended to draw the eye away from the change that had passed over her, directed the eye to it on the contrary; emphasized it; made it by sheer force of contrast more hopeless and more horrible than it really was. An illustrated book of the fashions, in which women were represented exhibiting their finery by means of the free use of their limbs, lay on the bed from which she had not moved for years, without being lifted by her nurse. A hand-glass was placed with the book so that she could reach it easily. She took up the glass after her attendant had left the room, and looked at her face with an unblushing interest and attention which she would have been ashamed of herself at the age of eighteen.

"Older and older, and thinner and thinner!" she said. "The major will soon be a free man-but I'll have that redhaired hussy out of the house first!"

She dropped the looking-glass on the counterpane, and clenched the hand that had held it. Her eyes suddenly riveted themselves on a little crayon portrait of her husband hanging on the opposite wall; they looked at the likeness with the hard and cruel brightness of the eyes of a bird of prey. "Red is your taste in your old age, is it?" she said to the portrait. "Red hair and a scrofulous complexion and a padded figure, a ballet-girl's walk, and a pickpocket's light fingers. Miss Gwilt! Miss, with those eyes, and that walk!" She turned her head suddenly on the pillow, and burst into a harsh, jeering laugh. "Miss!" she repeated over and over again, with the venomously-pointed emphasis of the most merciless of all human forms of contempt-the contempt of one woman for another.

The age we live in, is an age which finds no human creature inexcusable. Is there an excuse for Mrs. Milroy Let the story of her life answer the question.

She had married the major at an unusually early age; and, in marrying him, had taken a man for her husband who was old enough to be her father-a man who, at that time, had the reputation, and not unjustly, of having made the freest use of his social gifts, and his advantages of personal appearance in the society of women. Indifferently educated, and below her husband in station, she had begun by accepting his addresses under the influence of her own flattered vanity, and had ended by feeling the fascination which Major Milroy had exercised over women infinitely her mental superiors, in Lis earlier life. He had been touched, on his side, by her devotion, and had felt, in his turn, the attraction of her beauty, her freshness, and her youth. Up to the time when their little daughter and only child had reached the age of eight years, their married life had been an unusually happy one. At that period, the double misfortune fell on the household, of the failure of the wife's health, and the almost total loss of the husband's fortune; and from that moment, the domestic happiness of the married pair was virtually at an end.

|

resist, the major had secured the little relics of his property, had retired into the country, and had patiently taken refuge in his mechanical pursuits. A woman nearer to him in age, or a woman with a better training and 'more patience of disposition than his wife possessed, would have understood the major's conduct, and have found consolation in the major's submission. Mrs. Milroy found consolation in nothing. Neither nature nor training helped her to meet resignedly the cruel calamity which had struck at her in the bloom of womanhood and the prime of beauty. The curse of incurable sickness blighted her at once and for life.

Suffering can, and does, develop the latent evil that there is in humanity, as well as the latent good. The good that was in Mrs. Milroy's nature shrank up under that subtly-deteriorating influence in which the evil grew and flourished. Month by month as she became the weaker woman physically, she became the worse woman morally. All that was mean, cruel, and false in her, expanded in steady proportion to the contraction of all that had once been generous, gentle and true. Old suspicions of her husband's readiness to relapse into the irregularities of his bachelor life, which, in her healthier days of mind and body, she had openly confessed to him-which she had always sooner or later seen to be suspicions that he had not deserved— came back, now that sickness had divorced her from him, in the form of that baser conjugal distrust which keeps itself cunningly secret; which gathers together its inflammatory particles atom by atom into a heap, and sets the slowly burning frenzy of jealousy alight in the mind. No proof of her husband's blameless and patient life that could now be shown to Mrs. Milroy; no appeal that could be made to her respect for herself, or for her child growing up to womanhood, availed to dissipate the terrible delusion born of her hopeless illness, and growing steadily with its growth. Like all other madness it had its ebb and flow, its time of spasmodic outburst, and its time of deceitful repose-but active or passive, it was always in her. It had injured innocent servants, and insulted blameless strangers. It had brought the first tears of shame and sorrow into her daughter's eyes, and had set the deepest lines that scored it in her husband's face. It had made the secret misery of the little household for years-and it was now to pass beyond the family limits, and to influence coming events at Thorpe-Ambrose, in which the future interests of Allan and Allan's friend were vitally concerned.

A moment's glance at the posture of domestic affairs in the cottage, prior to the engagement of the new governess, is necessary to the due appreciation of the serious consequences that followed Miss Gwilt's appearance on the scene.

On the marriage of the governess who had lived in his service for many years (a woman of an age and an appearance to set even Mrs. Milroy's jealousy at defiance), the major had considered the question of sending his daughter away from home, far more seriously than his wife supposed. On the one hand, he was conscious that scenes took place in the house at which no young girl should be present. On the other, he felt an invincible reluctance to apply the one efficient remedy-the keeping his daughter away from home in school-time and holiday-time alike. The struggle thus raised in his mind once set at rest, by the resolution to advertise for a new governess, Major Milroy's natural tendency to avoid trouble rather than to meet it, had declared itself in its customary manner. He had closed his eyes on his home anxieties as quietly as usual, and had gone back, as he had gone back on hundreds of previous occasions, to the consoling society of his old friend the clock.

It was far otherwise with the major's wife. The chance which her husband had entirely overlooked, that the new governess who was to come might be a younger and more attractive woman than the old governess who had gone, was the first chance that presented itself as possible to Mrs. Milroy's mind. She had said nothing. Secretly waiting and secretly nursing her inveterate distrust, she had encouraged her husband and her daughter to leave her on the occasion of the picnic, with the express purpose of making an opportunity to see the new governess alone. The governers had shown herself; Having reached the age when men in general are readier, and the smouldering fire of Mrs. Milroy's jealousy had burst

into flame, in the moment when she and the handsome stranger scrupulously and plainly answered. The one sole opening for first set eyes on each other. an attack which it was possible to discover, was an opening which showed itself, after more practical matters had been all disposed of, in the closing sentences of the letter.

"I was so struck" (the passage ran) "by the grace and distinction of Miss Gwilt's manners, that I took an opportunity, when she was out of the room, of asking how she first came to be a governess. In the usual way,' I was told. A sad family misfortune, in which she behaved nobly. She is a very sensitive person, and shrinks from speaking of it among strangers— a natural reluctance which I have always felt it a matter of delicacy to respect.' Hearing this, of course I felt the same delicacy on my side. It was no part of my duty to intrude on the poor thing's private sorrows; my only business was to do, what I have now done, to make sure that I was engaging a capable and respectable governess to intruct my grandchild." After careful consideration of these lines, Mrs. Milroy having a strong desire to find the circumstances suspicious, found them suspicious accordingly. She determined to sift the mystery of Miss Gwilt's family misfortunes to the bottom, on the chance of extracting from it something useful to her purpose. There

The interview over, Mrs. Milroy's suspicions fastened at once and immovably on her husband's mother. She was well aware that there was no one else in London on whom the major could depend to make the necessary inquiries; she was well aware that Miss Gwilt had applied for the situation, in the first instance, as a stranger answering an advertisement published in a newspaper. Yet knowing this, she had obstinately closed her eyes, with the blind frenzy of the blindest of all passions, to the facts straight before her; and, looking back to the last of many quarrels between them which had ended in separating the elder lady and herself, had seized on the conclusion that Miss Gwilt's engagement was due to her mother-in-laws's vindictive enjoyment of making mischief in her household. The inference which the very servants themselves, witnesses of the family scandal, had correctly drawn-that the major's mother, in securing the services of a well-recommended governess for her son, had thought it no part of her duty to consider that governess's looks in the purely fanciful interests of the major's wife-was an inference which it was simply impossible to convey into Mrs. Milroy's mind. The resolution which her jeal-were two ways of doing this. She might begin by questioning ousy of her husband would, in any case, have led her to take after seeing Miss Gwilt, was a resolution doubly confirmed by the conviction that now possessed her. Miss Gwilt had barely closed the sick room door when the whispered words hissed out of Mrs. Milroy's lips, "Before another week is over your head, my lady, you go!"

From that moment, through the wakeful night and the weary day, the one object of the bedridden woman's life was to procure the new governess's dismissal from the house.

the governess herself, or she might begin by questioning the governess's reference. Experience of Miss Gwilt's quickness of resource in dealing with awkward questions at their introductory interview, decided her on taking the latter course. "I'll get the particulars from the reference first," thought Mrs. Milroy, "and then question the creature herself, and see if the two stories agree."

The letter of inquiry was short and scrupulously to the point. Mrs. Milroy began by informing her correspondent, that the The assistance of the nurse, in the capacity of a spy, was state of her health necessitated leaving her daughter entirely secured-as Mrs. Milroy had been accustomed to secure other under the governess's influence and control. On that account, extra services which her attendant was not bound to render her- she was more anxious than most mothers, to be thoroughly by a present of a dress from her mistress's wardrobe. One after informed in every respect about the person to whom she conanother, articles of wearing apparel which were now useless to fided the entire charge of an only child; and, feeling this Mrs. Milroy, had ministered in this way to feed the nurse's anxiety, she might perhaps be excused for putting what might greed—the insatiable greed of an ugly woman for fine c'othes. be thought, after the excellent character Miss Gwilt had reBribed with the smartest dress she had secured yet, the house-ceived, a somewhat unnecessary question. With that preface, hold spy took her secret orders, and applied herself with a vile Mrs. Milroy came to the point, and requested to be informed of enjoyment to her secret work. the circumstances which had obliged Miss Gwilt to go out as a governess.

The days passed, the work went on-but nothing came of it. Mistress and servant had a woman to deal with who was a match for both of them. Repeated intrusions on the major, when the governe s happened to be in the same room with him, failed to discover the slightest impropriety of word, look, or action, on either side. Stealthy watching and listening at the governess's bedroom door, detected that she kept a light in her room at late hours of the night, and that she groaned and ground her teeth in her sleep-and detected nothing more. Careful superintendence in the day-time, proved that she regulary posted her own letters, instead of giving them to the servant; and, that on certain occasions when the occupation of her hours out of lesson-time and walking-time was left at her own disposal, she had been suddenly missed from the garden, and then caught coming back alone to it from the park. Once, and once only, the nurse had found an opportunity of following ber out of the garden-had been detected immediately in the park -and had been asked with the most exasperating politeness, if she wished to join Miss Gwilt in a walk. Small circumstances of this kind, which were sufficiently suspicious to the mind of a jealous woman, were discovered in abundance. But circumstances on which to found a valid ground of complaint that might be laid before the major, proved to be utterly wanting. Day followed day, and. Miss Gwilt remained persistently correct in her conduct, and persistently irreproachable in her relations towards her employer and her pupil.

Foiled in this direction, Mrs. Milroy tried next to find an assailable place in the statement which the governess's reference had made on the subject of the governess's character. Obtaining from the major the minutely careful report which his mother had addressed to him on this topic, Mrs. Milroy read and re-read it, and failed to find the weak point of which she was in search in any part of the letter. All the customary questions on such occasions had been asked, and all had been

The letter, expressed in these terms, was posted the same day. On the morning when the answer was due, no answer appeared. The next morning arrived, and still there was no reply. When the third morning came, Mrs. Milroy's impatience had broken loose from all restraint. She had rung for the nurse in the manner which has been already recorded, and had ordered the woman to be in waiting to receive the letters of the morning with her own hands. In this position matters now stood; and in these domestic circumstances the new series of events at Thorpe-Ambrose took their rise.

Mrs. Milroy had just looked at her watch, and had just put her hand once more to the bell-pull, when the door opened and the nurse entered the room.

"Has the postman come ?" asked Mrs. Milroy.

The nurse laid a letter on the bed without answering, and waited, with unconcealed curiosity, to watch the effect which it produced on her mistress.

Mrs. Milroy tore open the envelope the instant it was in her hand. A printed paper appeared (which she threw aside), surrounding a letter (which she looked at) in her own handwriting! She snatched up the printed paper. It was the customary post-office circular, informing her that her letter had been duly presented at the right address, and that the person whom she had written to was not to be found.

"Something wrong?" asked the nurse, detecting a change in her mistress's face.

The question passed unheeded. Mrs. Milroy's writing-desk was on the table at the bedside. She took from it the letter which the major's mother had written to her son, and turned to the page containing the name and address of Miss Gwilt's reference. "Mrs. Mandeville, 18 Kingsdown Crescent, Bayswater," she read eagerly to herself, and then looked at the address on

her own returned letter. No error had been committed; the ]. directions were identically the same.

"Can you close it again, so that nobody would know ?"!
"Can you spare the scarf that matches your pearl-grey

"Something wrong?" reiterated the nurse, advancing a step dress?" asked Rachel. nearer to the bed.

"Thank God-yes!" cried Mrs. Milroy, with a sudden outburst of exultation. She tossed the post-office circular to the nurse, and beat her bony hands on the bed-clothes, in an ecstasy of anticipated triumph. "Miss Gwilt's an impostor! Miss Gwilt's an impostor! If I die for it, Rachel, I'll be carried to the window to see the police take her away!"

"Take it!" said Mrs. Milroy, impatiently.

The nurse opened the wardrobe in silence; took the scarf in silence; and left the room in silence. In less than five minutes she came back with the envelope of Miss Gwilt's letter open in her hand.

"Thank you, ma'am, for the scarf," said Rachel, putting the opened letter composedly on the counterpane of the bed.

"It's one thing to say she's an impostor behind her back, Mrs. Milroy looked at the envelope. It had been closed as and another thing to prove it to her face," remarked the nurse. usual by means of adhesive gum, which had been made to give She put her hand as she spoke into her apron pocket, and, with I way by the application of steam. As Mrs. Milroy took out the

a significant look at her mistress, silently produced a second | letter, her hand trembled violently, and the white enamel

Ne," said the nurse, "for Miss Gwilt."

The two women eyed each other, and understood each other without another word.

"Where is she?" said Mrs. Milroy.

The nurse pointed in the direction of the park. for another walk before break fast-by herself."

"Out again,

parted into cracks over the wrinkles on her forehead. "My drops," she said. "I'm dreadfully excited, Rachel. My drops!"

"No

Rachel produced the drops, and then went to the window to keep watch on the park. "Don't hurry," she said. signs of her yet."

Mrs. Milroy still paused, keeping the all-important morsel of paper folded in her hand. She could have taken Miss Gwilt's

Mrs. Milroy beckoned to the nurse to stoop close over her. life-but she hesitated at reading Miss Gwilt's letter. "Can you open it, Rachel?" she whispered.

Rachel nodded.

"Are you troubled with scruples?" asked the nurse, with a "Consider it a duty you owe to your daughter."

sneer.