they might one day be. Thank God, I shall soon be out of England!'

'And do you think I feel nothing?' cried Gwendoline, her features quivering and the hot flame mounting to her brow. 'I would rather have died than appear false to you. You will, as you say, in time forget: but I shall remember.... Can I think of you leaving England, sailing over the sea to that fever-stricken town, alone and miserable, the brightness gone from your face, without my heart breaking? O love, I shall never change, really never! Always to wait for your coming to long for the sound of your voice-to remember the light in your eyes and your smile, and never to see you-it will kill me very quickly!'

'If we were only going into action,' he said, looking away from her over the sea, 'instead of marching over sun-scorched roads and mountains, where no freshness, no verdure, is seen-no spring or valleys to remind one of England, it would not be so hard to part. . . . The terrible inaction and languor of that tropical clime maddens one. ... How I long for the word "charge!"-for the ring of the trumpet-call-the clash and clang of swords-the tramp of horses and all the deadly paraphernalia of war! In that alone should I forget you !'

Her arms were about his neck, a smile on her poet's face, that held all the patience of heroism and all the sorrow of thought.

'Good-bye; Heaven bless you! It was hard to release her. The old idyllic dream seemed realised at last amid these autumn flowers, beneath this canopy of leaves, these swift-passing clouds.

'If I die, recollect, beloved, that your face will be the last I see. There is no anger, no bitterness, left now in this parting, since I

have been betrayed, not in thought, but by necessity.'

And, once more strained to his breast, she took her farewell of her dead; the nobility of sacrifice may have sustained her in that supreme moment, as, with blinding tears darkening her vision, she sought to return, and now and then he turned and waved his hand.

Betrayed, not in thought, but by necessity! It is the story of many women's lives.

CHAPTER XVI.

'BOYCOTTED.'

'Has any one tasted my sorrow, and learnt to endure?

Bear the curse of a fate that knows neither design nor desert?

But has any one, tasting my sorrow, had proof of its cure,

Stood the test of the fiery furnace, and come out unhurt?'

MRS. BLACKMORE and Patricia had long been sent to Coventry, or, in other words, were under the ban of public contempt and displeasure. Social ostracism is a terrible thing, especially in a village; and the number of estrangements that had taken place among their immediate friends and neighbours had, indeed, completely isolated them from society.

'We shall live it down,' they said at first, before the extreme bitterness of the position made itself felt, and before those who sat in judgment upon them had sought to humiliate them to the dust.

After all, it was but a rumour, which every one could not believe; a few must surely remain faithful. But the change of feeling evinced on the part of their neighbourswho, if they had never been very warmly disposed, had always been decently civil-seemed a very

thankless return for many spontaneous acts of kindness and friendship; and English snubbing is more painful than any other, because it is never veiled by any charitable artifices that lessen its scathing severity. There is a robustness and vigour in the John Bull nature that admires the candour of plain speaking which spares no nerves, admits no half-surmises or half-truths, and makes no allowance for weakness, indecision, or impulse. Its coldness is sound, honest, unmistakable ice; it despises poetry, and woe betide the offender that is caught red-handed in his guilt, and brought before the tribunal of those who feel their credulity or respectability has been imposed on! It was this absence of sympathy, this indifference to the beauties of thought, expressed in the most classically perfect metre, that exiled Lord Byron, and alienated him from his native land; his genius and temperament were alike antipathetic to his countrymen, and the bitterness and desolation that pursued him were as little understood as his passion and enthusiasm. The man whose poetry 'makes the blood leap' was before his age; romanticism had then scarcely begun its existence, and, awaking in Germany, spread to France and England, and entered into many phases of modern progress. If, however, on the other hand, the offender happens to be a mulatto, Zulu, Turk, Greek, or any foreigner whose eccentricity has amused society, justice will be tempered with mercy. People love to toady to the charming exotics who are more or less weeds on their own soil. Men whose careers would keep three serials going are treated here as princes, provided they are insolent, and admire themselves dutifully in mirrors as they talk, and treat their worshippers to doses of vulgar

tyranny. They labour to fascinate the foreigner till he is overwhelmed; his art is lauded to the skies, for they have no opinion of their own but running after a name, believe what has been paid for in puffing paragraphs. Give the mulatto lady a harp or guitar, dress her in red, blue, or pink, and society is delighted. The impudent rolling eyes are so full of native fire, the contrasts of colour are 'so funny.' The music-hall ballads appeal to their love of ridicule. Advertise the zither-player or violinist as having been embraced by kings and princes, when their répertoire holds but six airs, and their fortunes are made. Men and women of talent will do well to remember, when they enter Art's arena, that they are pitted against foolsasses in lions' skins-who will outwit them always by superior cunning and tact. They are more thick-skinned, more clever in worldliness and imposture; and if they cannot get on by jingling their cap and bells, they will adopt the humility of Sir Pertinax MacSycophant in the Man of the World, and succeed by 'booing.' The dramatist will go to Paris or Germany, form his play on some stirring melodrama there, reproduce it in England, excluding all that is refined and artistic-for the absence of feeling and art in his productions has hitherto brought crowded houses, and he knows his public. This reproduction will be afterwards developed into a novel, in which some starveling 'classic' will aid him; he is pronounced a genius, when every situation has been readapted and every idea borrowed; while the process of dwarfing and degrading pays, because through all there runs a vein of humbug, venal, vulgar, and unpoetic; and he has mastered the great secret of human success -the art of cheating somebody.

Mrs. Blackmore and Patricia, unfortunately for themselves, had never learnt the science of humbug, or they would never have resigned themselves to the monotony of a country life. They bent their heads before the storm, hoping, by patience and calm, to baffle its raging. They had never sought society, but nevertheless they were in a certain set, so that the motives which actuated people to pursue a hostile course of conduct to them-wearisome as dyspepsia, cutting as east winds— must have been of a powerful and convincing nature; and, with Lady Marsden offering the fullest proof of their truth, no loophole of escape presented itself anywhere. Clique, which is rampant in villages, very soon showed its teeth, then raised its discordant voice; a kind of intangible 'summing up' was pronounced against them, to which they made no appeal.

It was indeed a well-authenticated fact, which had been long running the round of the sensational gossips of the village, that Mrs. Blackmore's husband had been an arrested forger, who died in prison. Reginald Treverton's actions had been such as to have destroyed every basis of confidence; so that, after finding him wanting, he never could be trusted again. Was it from him, then, that these reports had originated? Mrs. Blackmore scarcely thought so, as he was anxious, for reasons of his own, now that he had possession of his letters, to keep the affair dark. Who, then, was hunting them down? The secret she had so long preserved was at every one's mercy, and they were to be 'Boycotted.' The hundred-pronged tongue of scandal scattered broadcast, as it ever does, many exaggerated assertions, which malicious busy-bodies repeated far and wide with eager unction; so that, as

they amiably declared, the place should be made too hot to hold them.'

Mrs. Blackmore bore it all very patiently for a time. She had gone through the same thing before, and she would very likely have to go through it again. Still, it did seem hard that an act of moral weakness, prompted by another, who escaped scot-free after entangling his friend in many difficulties-a crime which the victim had expiated with his life-should bear such bitter fruit. They soon learnt that Lady Marsden had systematically encouraged the general snubbing, and had led the hue and cry against them. It was one of those cases her ladyship delighted in sitting in judgment on. She denounced the Blackmores' conduct as infamous. If they had such a dark history, why not have gone abroad, or taken another name and lived in London? Here was Derwent Heath-a dear, handsome, strong-willed young fellowmadly in love with Patricia, a convict's daughter! It was enough to madden Lady Hester and his father. It never struck her that it would have been wiser and kinder to have sought Mrs. Blackmore first, warned her of what she knew, and have let them leave the neighbourhood quietly. Why could not Lady Marsden, blessed with a fine income, enjoying life and society, and always in the full shine of prosperity, have spared those who were in the shade, and guarded their cruel secret with desperate courage, though it preyed on them as the fox's teeth on the Spartan lad? There is, however, an impulsive maliciousness in rich people of constitutional good-nature that, like the unpoliteness of the polite, will break out on occasions like an epidemic. She it was who had trumpeted their misfortune far and wide in every ear.

'We must leave the neighbourhood,' Mrs. Blackmore was saying one afternoon to Patricia, who felt more wounded than broken by the general desertion.

The love of a girl like Patricia is a flower which only expands under the sun of kindness and hope; and the fear pressed hard upon her that Derwent, although leal and stanch as ever, under future heavy pressure from his family, must inevitably, sooner or later, abandon her.

'It will be better to go, dear,' she answered steadily; 'and yet it may be weak to allow ourselves to be driven away. Only I don't think you can quite bear the strain any longer.'

Mrs. Blackmore rose and paced the floor. The recent suffering and mortification had begun to break her spirit; she very seldom left her cottage or garden, her face wore the pale pinched look of excessive grief. It was hard to have lived a loveless life for years, to be alone, forsaken, a social blot, neither wife nor widow. Harder still not to have been able to share the loved one's doom, not to have pillowed his poor dying head on her breast. Fate had flung her down a challenge, so that she was for ever torn by conflicting feelings: on the one side, madness and death; on the other, life and patience patience which is cruel as the grave, and is only a kind of conscious death.

She had never been a strikingly beautiful woman; her forehead was low and broad, with a splendid sweep of eyebrow, denoting intellectual power and grasp; her eyes, which were dark and magnificent, had grown harder of late, and so had the mouth, which looked colder and more disdainful, since she rarely smiled. She needed her courage more than mirth. Before, when younger, she let people say

and do their worst, bearing her wrongs with careless indifference; but now they were striking at her heart. Her young daughter's happiness was jeopardised; the ukase had been issued that cut them off from society, and she also was under the ban of the world's cen

sure.

Her own spotless innocency of life, and the consciousness of her moral worth and integrity, for ever striving against an unjust Fate, had upheld her, and given a certain armour and strength to her mind that resisted unpleasant impressions, and made her rise to every occasion; but now she saw the mistake she had made in not having completely retired from the world; they were for ever branded with the terrible scarlet letter of disgrace. Her chief desire was not to face the storm, but to escape from its wrath-to bury themselves in some quiet London street, where no one troubled about their existence. She felt too weak to follow out any train of reasoning; she paled and faded under the discovery like a plant removed from air and light; for there is no sickness so deadly as anguish of mind, no ignominy so crushing as that which holds us up to public shame. Her life had long 'crept on a broken wing,' and she had borne everything with the cold and contemptuous passivity of one overtaken by evil circumstances she could not control, and submitting to unmerited wrongs. She had no power to shape or prevent the course of events, and it was for Patricia she had sought to live— sensible, brave, sweet-tempered Patricia, who had so long resisted Derwent's attentions, and thus worked him up into a state of dangerous desperation by her coldness and indifference. How would Lady Hester and Mr. Heath act? that was the question she now

sought to solve. Would they cut them as the rest had done, with the exception of the doctor and curate, who trusted to minister to their temporal and spiritual ailments?-Mr. Sievely, in particular, being more than ever devoted to Patricia, hoping to wean her affections from Derwent Heath, and her mother's mind from philosophy and speculation.

Mr. Heath and Gwendoline had formerly passed many pleasant evenings at Rose Lea; he had even sanctioned his son's engagement; and, full as Mrs. Blackmore was of anxiety and terror, her faith in Derwent never quite wavered. They had done all in their power to dismiss him, avoiding him whenever possible. His mad passion for Patricia had neither blinded nor dazzled her; her love was serious, founded on affection, and it was her nature to find at present more joy in its reflection than in his.

Through the long summer days, when Mrs. Blackmore had been either gardening or busy over household matters, Derwent had amused himself by reading aloud to Patricia as she was engaged on her art needlework, which was sold at one of the ladies' guilds, and added to their slender income. The evenings generally closed with music. She had no inconsiderable talents. She played and sang with exquisite taste and feeling, and recited with dramatic fervour.

It was the end of October-a bleak desolate afternoon, the wind blowing the remaining withered petals off the china-asters and chrysanthemums, and Patricia, after advising her mother to seek some rest, as she had passed a sleepless night, threw down her work and buried her face in her hands.

She was alone now; her mother's eyes were closed. Looking up suddenly, Patricia saw Lady Hester picking her way gingerly across the

dreams of love, no romantic enthralment, had ever occurred to the girl till Derwent crossed her path. She knew what life signified for her that they owed their income to the kindness of an eccentric relative, who might discontinue it any day; and she must then leave her mother, and go out as governess or companion, swelling the number of that army of poor ladies who are little better than so many white slaves, and far worse off than servants. She had feared nothing; her health was perfect; it was her nature to be lively and happy; but when her heart's solitude was disturbed by a lover she soon learnt to adore, the throbs of hope and fear grew daily more trying than any certainty of abandonment.

In

Lady Hester swept into the modest, prettily - furnished, little drawing-room, that bore so many evidences of the ladies' taste, industry, and skill, while the servant carried her card to Patricia. spite, however, of her rising agitation, she was calmer than might be supposed. Patricia knew she had come to exasperate her, irritate and degrade her, as far as possible; but she still preserved her soft calmness of manner. There had never been any lightness or coquetry about Patricia; and it was impossible not to respect her sin