The Diary opened thus:

"Here am I in London. I don't know whether to be frightened or glad. Luigi is very kind, but he did not tell me he would bring me to such miserable lodgings as this. Would it not have been better had we never met? I should have known that a teacher cannot be rich. Yet I do think him handsome, and he makes love so meltingly that I would rather live in a garret than not have married him. No letter from grandmamma. She is very unkind. Mamma would not have treated me so had she been alive. But what is an orphan to expect but unkindness?"

A few days later: "To-day I heard from Miss Cowley" (this was the schoolmistress, as I knew from reference in the grandmother's letters). "She says I have acted wickedly and have forfeited all happiness in this world by marrying a beggarly Italian teacher. How my eyes flashed when I read 'beggarly Italian teacher!' The cold-hearted thing would have cried with fear had she seen me. Luigi is out all day and he comes in tired, and to-night I thought he received my kiss coldly. But it must be my fancy. Oh, what a fancy I have! I think I shall go mad some of these days."

The chronicle continued much in this strain through many entries. It recorded from time to time a letter from her grandmother inclosing five pounds, but repeating her assurance that she would have nothing more to do with her. Then the tone of the diarist grew more querulous; though her love for her husband deepened, so it seemed, in proportion as his fell off.

"How can I help being jealous?" she wrote in one entry; "he is all day long away from me teaching other girls, any one of whom he may admire far above me and secretly love. When I told him this he seemed to shrink away from my look; and indeed it was passionate enough; and he cried out, half in Italian and half in English, 'God of mine! you will go mad if you do not keep that devil of a spirit of yours down!' I threw myself on his neck, and asked him never, never to cease to love me. His beautiful eye melted, and he fondled me with his exquisite grace. So I go to bed happy."

If her husband earned money she seemed to benefit little from it; for some of her records ran, that she had to sit in the dark till he came home, for there was no candle in the house, she had no money to buy one, and the stingy landlady did not offer to lend her a lamp. "To-day I dined on bread-and-cheese and some of the potatoes left from yesterday, fried. If grandmamma knew this she would send me some money. But I'll not write to her about it. No, she shall think I am flourishing; and if I were dying with hunger I would just wish her to think I had plenty to eat."

Up to a certain entry she continued writing of her husband in warm terms. She avowed her belief that she must be somewhat crazy to find him so fascinating. "Sometimes I think him more so than at other times," she wrote; but added, "if I am to regain my reason at the sacrifice of my love I would rather be mad." There was a good deal of pungent writing in these entries. I could find nothing to illustrate the slightest mental derangement. But her language was curiously characteristic, and the exhibition of a nature made up of warm and sudden passions, impulsive and generous, but vengeful and arbitrary too, was absolutely complete.

Before long her entries grew somewhat incoherent. She is racked with jealousy. She is certain that her husband has ceased to love her. "I have been married now six months," she says; "how dare I humour such misgivings? But what is it that tells me of Luigi's indifference? Not my bodily eyes, for his behaviour is not altered. The spirit sees farther than the reason. If I loved him with my mind I should not have these presentiments; but I love him with my soul. It is my soul that is jealous; and the soul is endowed with the vision of immortality and can make the future present.

"To-day is my birthday. I am twenty-two years old. It has rained steadily since the morning. I watched the muddy water in the gutter boiling round the grating near the lamp-post until I fell asleep. A cheerful birthday! There was a little piece of boiled beef for dinner, hard as my shoe, and the potatoes were not cooked. Yet when Luigi comes home, he never asks me if I am hungry. Does he care? He would if he knew. But how should he know? I I am always pale, so that he sees nothing unusual in my white face. I sometimes think he is afraid of me. He said last night, 'Your eyes flash like a madwoman's.' I answered, 'It is with love!'"

There were no records of any hours of pleasure. Sometimes she chronicled a short walk. The place of her abode was not named; but I judged from some references to the locality that they must have lodged in the neighbourhood of Leicester Square. The landlady was a German, and the diarist complained of the atmosphere of the house having been made all day long nauseating and tepid with the smell of cooking.

"I asked Luigi before he left for Hammersmith to take me away from this dirty house. But he shrugged his shoulders and said he was too poor to move. I told him that the bad smell of the cooking made me sick, and that the landlady entertained foreigners, who came tramping in at all hours of the day, jabbering and singing like savages, and poisoning the place with the rank fumes of tobacco. 'You should write to your grandmother to send you some money,' said he, 'and then we will seek better apartments.' I told him I would not write to grandmamma again after her last letter, no, not if I were dying. 'Then I am too poor to help you,' he said, stroking his moustache and humming a tune, with an air of such cruel indifference that my eyes filled with tears, though my breast heaved with a passion I could not keep down. 'We have been married a little more than six months,' I said, 'and you are already tired of me.' 'And you of me,' said he. 'It is false!' I cried, in a rage; 'but I suppose you want an excuse for your increasing indifference, and would tell a lie rather than not have one.' 'You did not bring me any money,' he replied, 'and yet you are always grumbling at our poverty. Don't I work like a slave for what I get? 'Tis a pity you are not more educated, for you might go out as a governess, and together we could earn a competence.' 'I did not marry to become a governess,' I said, 'and if you love me as you once professed, you could not name such a scheme.' He made a gesture of impatience, and uttered something in Italian. 'What do you say?' I exclaimed. He gave a shrug and left the room. And this is what my dream of love has come to! O how could I moralise if I were not the text! Patience? Yes, I could be patient if I had something solid to hold. But can I be patient holding sand, and watching the grains slipping through my fingers? Oh! my weariness of heart! and my head aches so I can hardly see this paper."

Here there was a leaf torn out. The next entry was dated exactly a year after. The records now became rhapsodical. Strange dreams were chronicled, and conversations which she had held in her sleep.

The first entry spoke of her delight with Elmore cottage. What followed was full of brief references to the past, especially to the events of the year she had omitted to record. Yet brief as they were I could gather the story.

Her husband had deserted her, possibly on the very date of the last entry I have transcribed. By her allusions to her feelings, the shock of his leaving her must have driven her almost mad. "I would thrust him deep, deep into the hell he has lighted in my heart against him; but he comes before me in the night when I am numbed by sleep and am powerless to thrust him off. O what a hate his face drives into me!"

"To-day I came across mamma's emerald ring. It reminded me of that day of hunger when I had to pledge it. I paid the odious German her rent, and went across to the little cook-shop at the corner and bought some cold meat. Do I not remember how delicious it tasted! How did I live through those days? I do not know. I sometimes look at my body and wonder how it could have held together under the pressure of so much utter, utter misery. It is bitter to have trusted nobly and to be betrayed remorselessly. It is bitter to feel hunger and poverty and the cruelties of the cold and selfish world. But when these bitternesses are combined, must not the heart be made of steel not to crack and burst?"

How long she remained in this state of destitution I could not gather. But in one entry she recorded her amazement on receiving a letter from her grandmother's solicitor, saying that the old lady had died suddenly, intestate, and that, as the next of kin, she inherited the property. In the same memorandum she referred to the number of names she went over before she hit on one to assume. It was her evident fear that her husband would claim her, should he hear of her whereabouts, now that she had come into property. Under the pseudonym of Mrs. Fraser, and hidden in the obscurity of Cliffegate, she believed herself perfectly secure against detection. This at least is my inference, from one or two passages in the diary; it is probably correct. Some entries before that which I am about to transcribe, the following notice, cut from a newspaper, was gummed:

"March 12, at Courtland Street, London, Luigi Forli, aged 35, of gastric fever."

And beneath it she had written:

"Sent me by Mr. Fells in the letter that enclosed my quarter's money."

Up to a certain point, from this sentence her diary was singularly rhapsodical. Then a more connected narrative began:

"Why did he send me that bouquet? 'Mr. Thorburn's compliments!' He does not know what sort of a woman he sends his compliments to. How I hate compliments! That vile Italian could compliment. Oh! per Bacco! his speech was flowery and sugary as a wedding-cake. What came of it? My eyes, my hair, my mouth, my skin, soon surfeited him—though he ransacked heaven and earth for comparisons. If I chose a male friend he should be blunt and sharp—with a hard tongue that could utter words as ringing in their tones as sovereigns. Such a one would not send me flowers.

"Mr. Thorburn called to-day. He must have courage, for he knows my aversion to society. If I walk in my sleep let him thank me; he dared not have come without this excuse. I felt my blood tingling in my forehead and fingers when I looked in and saw that the gentleman, as he had announced himself, was a stranger. But the time rots so with me—oh! that excellent word just hits the decay of the hours! they drip, drip away, like sodden wood—I could not be displeased at his intrusion. There is life in a new face, and I am beginning to think Lucy too ugly to keep; now that is because she is the only person I see, and her face comes looking in on me through my ugly thoughts and takes their deformity. But he is nice-looking. He is thoroughly English. Oh what a charm there is in a true English face! It is so manly, so genial, so sterling and courageous!—the very opposite to those yellow Italian visages with their red-black eyes and lollipop smirks. I am not sure that I couldn't like this man. He invites confidence, somehow. And there is a big and ponderous ghost called Solitude, that drives me towards him. His eye meets mine fearlessly. He thinks me beautiful. If he were to see me in a passion, with my hair loose and my eyes on fire, would he shrink like my valiant little southerner?

"I rated Mr. Thorburn to-day for watching me. I must like him, to have spoken so smartly. If I could not help meeting a man whom I disliked, I would serve him as my husband served me, and would betray him with such sweetness as would make him think me a witch. I have the power. I think I must be mad at times. Such high thoughts take me that my body will not hold my spirit, and some day I shall see it glide from me and vanish, with just such a laugh as I give when I know I shall not be heard, and when my mood is intoxicating. Let me own here, all to myself, that Mr. Thorburn pleases me. He reminds me of the picture of papa in grandmamma's locket. He must be greatly taken with me to presume as he does. He is too much of a gentleman to force himself upon me as he does if his courtesy did not fall before my beauty. If he should fall in love with me—let him. Am I a celestial intelligence, that I can control a man's heart, and bid it not love, if I choose it should not love? His dream gives him a claim. If I was asleep at the time then must that vision have been my soul which slipped from my body and shone upon him from a cloud. It was possible, and I would have told him this, but his smile can be ironical; and his nature is not yet right for the reception of my beliefs. Why did he kiss the rose I flung away? I can tell; but I will not write it down.

"He was more tender than he was yesterday. His love deepens, and gilds his smile and fires his eye. When I touched his arm it trembled. He makes me no more compliments. He relishes my bluntness, but would he relish it if he knew the sorrow whence it sprang? Sorrow is a rich soil; flowers grow in it sometimes; but more often grow roots that prick, weeds that sting, blossoms whose perfume is poison. Shall I encourage him? If I do, I will not have the heart to say him nay, for he has brought a new light to my heart and a new hope to my life, and my gratitude should make me generous.

"My husband came to me last night. He stood at the foot of the bed. His face was as pale as the dim moon that shone over his shoulder through the window. I thought he had come from the grave, his eyes were so hollow and his hands and cheeks so dry. I clapped my hands and cried, 'Now I thank thee, Oh God! for he is dead, and his shadow has passed from the world.' I awoke. I could not believe it a dream, and crept to the door to see if he stood outside, and went to the window to see if his shadow was on the flowers. All was bare and bleak and white in the eye of that cruel moon, who looks into my brain and chills it with her frosty glare. Then to bed again I went, and fell a dreaming of Mr. Thorburn. How palpable are my dreams!"

The following entry was dated some days later:

"He is making me love him. He has an influence over me, and I find myself listening to his words and cherishing them. He makes me calm. Shall I forego the blessed peace he transfuses through my being? I could love him: but memory will not let me go to him, and like a wrinkled hag casts her long lean arms about me and holds me from him. My heart is empty—there is room for love. My spirit hungers; shall I not satisfy her cravings? I weary of this solitude. The air about me is peopled with spiritual beings; I toss my arms, but they will not leave me. They make my loneliness horrible. One in the night told me I should be their queen if I would go with them. But where would they take me? I prayed to the Blessed Virgin for help; but they would not go. Why should they haunt me? I do not invoke them. But if I fix my eyes on any part of the room a shape comes out, and I have to dash my hand to my head and leap like a child to frighten it off."

From this point there was a blank. When she resumed her diary she was at Elmore Court:

"How happy I am! The days go by me like a song. I am loved tenderly and truly; and my love grows deeper and deeper, like an onward-running river. But the pain in my head increases, and now and then some of my old horrors return. I stood watching Arthur for an hour last night. He did not stir. His face was calm and happy, and my eyes took their fill of its peace. He does not know I keep this record, and he shall not know. O God! if he knew the past, would not his love fall from him like a garment? But my memory grows weak; and it is well I preserve these jottings, for I could not taste all the sweetness of the present if I had not the past at hand to contrast it with.

"This afternoon I saw a hand that held a knife in the air. I trembled and cowered. It slowly faded and I went on raking. When I met Mrs. Williams I told her what I had seen. The way she looked at me pained me. I saw she did not believe me, though she pretended she did. I do not wish her to think me a liar. I made her promise not to tell Arthur. I would not have him think me untruthful for all the treasures the sea holds."

The character of many entries which followed was akin to this. Some of them contained passages which would appear absurd and incredible in print. Then came this record:

"The room swims and I feel sick—so sick that I wish to die. Arthur went to London this morning, and I cried more bitterly than he will ever know. He cannot guess what agony our separation causes me. It must be a cruel necessity that takes him away. After he was gone, the sunshine drew me into the garden, and I went beyond into the fields, for my flowers give me no pleasure when he is absent. Before long a man came towards me, and I saw it was Luigi Forli. I thought he was a vision, and I tried to waive him away; but he drew near, and laid his hand on my arm, and turned me into stone. The blood surged up from my heart and made my ears echo with thunder. He talked, but I did not hear him. Then he warmed, and cried out that though I was his wife, he would not take me from Arthur. I said, 'You are dead.' He answered, 'No. I announced my death to get a living.' And he said I must give him money; he would keep my secret and go away. He named a large sum. He told me he knew I could not give it to him all at once. I might pay it in portions. He would remain at Cliffegate until it was paid. What was it to him how I should get this money? I had married a rich man, and must get the money under any pretext I could invent. If I failed he would call on Arthur. I turned and looked at him, and he sprang a yard away from me."

A line of writing that followed this was illegible; it broke off suddenly. The pen seemed to have fallen from her hand, for there was a smudge across the sheet. A single entry followed:

"He told me I was mad. I said, 'God be praised, for it gives me courage.' I bade him have no fear. He watched me with glittering eyes; his face was hard with avarice and pale with misgiving. I put my hand in my pocket and said, 'When you receive this you should give me peace.' He shrugged his shoulders, and said: 'I am poor; and since you are my wife and have money it is fair you should help me to live.' I pointed to the moon, and whilst he raised his eyes I stabbed him in the back. He gave a leap in the air, and I jumped away, for I thought he meant to spring on me. But he suddenly fell on his breast with a cry. The dew fell like blood. I turned him over and saw he was dead. I took him by the arm and pulled him under the hedge."

This ended the diary.