The sun shone brightly into my room in the morning, but there would be no more day's sun for me. What a night I had passed! If you have ever been deceived in the manner I had, you will understand it; if not, all the writing in the world would fail to convey to you a tithe of the misery that was mine—and that would be mine for years to come. Her husband! whilst he pretended to love me!

All my study would now be to avoid Mr. Chandos. Entirely I could not; for we must meet at the daily repasts when he chose to sit down to them. In that I could not help myself. I was very silent that morning, and he was busy with his newspapers.

He rode out after breakfast; to attend some county meeting, it was said; and returned at four o'clock. I remained in my own room until dinner-time; but I had to go down then.

He appeared inclined to be thoroughly sociable; talked and laughed; and told me of a ludicrous scene which had occurred at the meeting; but I was cold and reserved, scarcely answering him. He regarded me keenly, as if debating with himself what it could be that had so changed my manner. When the servants had withdrawn, I quitted my place at table, and sat down in a low chair near the fire.

"Why do you go there?" said Mr. Chandos. "You will take some dessert?"

"Not this evening."

"But why?"

"My head aches."

He quitted the table, came up, and stood before me. "Anne, what is the matter with you?"

My breath was coming quickly, my swelling heart seemed as if it must burst. All the past rose up forcibly before me; he, a married man, had mocked me with his love; had—oh, worse than all!—gained mine. It was a crying insult; and it was wringing bitterly every sense of feeling I possessed. Anything else I could have borne. Mrs. Penn had hinted at some great crime; words of his own had confirmed it. Had he committed every crime known to man, I could have better forgiven it. But for this deliberate deceit upon me, there could be no forgiveness: and there could be no cure, no comfort for my lacerated heart.

"Are you angry with me for any cause? Have I offended you?"

The question unnerved me worse than I was already unnerved. It did more, it raised all the ire of my spirit. A choice between two evils only seemed to be left to me; either to burst into hysterical tears, or to openly reproach Mr. Chandos. The latter course came first.

"Why did you deceive me, Mr. Chandos?"

"Deceive you!"

"Yes, deceive me, and wretchedly deceive me," I answered in my desperation; neither caring nor quite knowing what it was I said. "How came you to speak to me at all of love knowing why it is that you cannot marry?"

He bit his lip as he looked at me. "Do you know why it is?"

"I do now. I did not yesterday, as you may be very sure!"

"It is impossible you can know it," he rejoined, in some agitation.

"Mr. Chandos, I do. Spare me from saying more. It is not a subject on which either you or I should enlarge."

"And pray, Anne, who was it that enlightened you?"

"That is of no consequence," I passionately answered, aroused more and more by the cool manner of his taking the reproach. "I know now what the barrier is you have more than once hinted at, and that is quite enough."

"You consider that barrier an insuperable one—that I ought not to have avowed my love?"

I burst into hysterical tears. It was the last insult: and the last feather, you know, breaks the camel's back. Alas! we were at cross-purposes.

"Forgive me, Anne," he sadly cried. "Before I remembered that there might be danger in your companionship; before I was aware that love could ever dawn for me, it had come, and was filling every crevice of my heart. It is stirring within me now as I speak to you. My pulses are thrilling with the bliss of your presence; my whole being tells of the gladness of heaven."

In spite of the cruel wrong; in spite of my own bitter misery; in spite of the ties to which he was bound, to hear the avowal of this deep tenderness, stirred with a rapture akin to his every fibre of my rebellious love. I know how terribly wrong it must seem; I know how worse than wrong is the confession of it; but so it was. I was but human.

"I am aware that I have acted unwisely," he pursued, his tone very subdued and repentant. "Still—you must not blame me too greatly. Circumstances are at least as much in fault. We were thrown together, unavoidably; I could not, for reasons, absent myself from home; you were located in it. Of course I ought to have remembered that I was not free to love: but then you see, the danger did not occur to my mind. If it had, I should have been cold as an icicle."

To hear him defend himself seemed worse than all. I had thought, if there lived one man on the face of the earth who was the soul of nobility, uprightness, honour, it was Harry Chandos.

"It was the cruelest insult to me possible to be offered, Mr. Chandos."

"What was?"

"What was! The telling me of your love."

"Anne, I told it you because—forgive my boldness!—I saw that you loved me."

Heaven help me! Yes, it was so; I did love him. My face grew burning hot; I beat my foot upon the carpet.

"I did the best that could be done: at least I strove to do it. It was my intention to lay before you the unhappy case without disguise, its whole facts and deterrent circumstances, and then to say—'Now marry me or reject me?'"

"How can you so speak to me, sir? Marry me! with—with—that barrier?"

"But that barrier may be removed."

Oh! I saw now, or fancied I saw, the far-off thought he was driving at. Staying seemed to make matters worse; and I got up from my seat to leave him.

"Your turning out to be who you are of course made the difficulty greater. I said so last night——"

"No, it does not," I interrupted, with an impassioned sob, partly of love, partly of anger. "Whether I am regarded as a poor strange governess, or the daughter of Colonel Hereford, there could never, never be any excuse for you."

"Is that your final, calm opinion?" he asked, standing before me to ask the question.

"It is, Mr. Chandos. It will never change. You ought to despise me if it could."

"Forgive, forgive me, Miss Hereford! Nothing remains for me now but to ask it."

I could not forgive him; but I was spared saying it, for Hill opened the parlour-door in haste.

"Mr. Harry, will you please go up to the west wing? At once, sir."

"Any change, Hill?"

"No, sir; it's not that. A little trouble."

"Oh! Mrs. Chandos is there, I suppose?"

"Yes, sir."

Need he have asked that question, have mentioned her name in my presence? It struck me that it was a gratuitous insult. Mr. Chandos followed Hill from the room, and as soon as I thought he was safe within the west wing, I flew up to my own chamber.

Flew up with a breaking heart: a heart that felt its need of solitude, of being where it could indulge its own grief unseen, unmolested. I was not, however, to gain my chamber; for, at the entrance to the east wing stood Mrs. Penn, and she arrested me.

"Come into my sitting-room," she said. "Mrs. Chandos will not be back for an hour. She is paying a visit to the west wing."

"Mr. Chandos also," I replied, as indifferently as I could well speak.

"Mr. Chandos also," she assented, having paused to look in my face before speaking. "They meet there more frequently than the house suspects."

"But why may they not meet? Why is it that they live estranged—or appear to do so?"

"Sit you down," she said, drawing me along the passage and into a small sitting-room. "Here is a warm seat by the fire. There is estrangement between Mr. and Mrs. Chandos, but how far it precisely extends I cannot tell you."

"I did not ask you how far the estrangement extended; I asked you its cause."

"Be content with knowing what you do know, Miss Hereford, without inquiring into causes. The advice is offered you in kindness. I can tell you one thing, that never was more impassioned love given to woman than he at one time felt for Mrs. Chandos."

Ashamed I am to confess that the words caused my heart to chill and my face to burn. I turned the latter where it could not be seen. Mrs. Penn continued.

"He says he loves you, but, compared with the passion he once bore for Mrs. Chandos, his love for you is as nothing. Contrast the pale cold beams of the moon with the burning rays of the tropical sun, and you have a type of that passion, and of this one."

"Why do you say this to me? Is it well?"

"I deem it well. I say it because I think it right that you should know it: were you my own child I should say more. You have one course only before you, my dear, a plain and simple one."

"What is it?"

"To quit Chandos."

"I shall not do that."

"Not do it?"

"No."

"Miss Hereford, you must. There lives not a more attractive man than Harry Chandos: and you are already three parts in his toils."

"In his toils? I do not understand you, Mrs. Penn."

"My dear, I only alluded to toils of the heart. I don't suppose he would so far forget himself as to attempt positive ones."

I would not answer her: I felt too indignant, and sat holding my throbbing temples. How dared she so speak to me?

"Your own good sense might to show you the necessity of leaving him. By this time to-morrow evening you must have put miles between yourself and Chandos," she eagerly continued, as though she had a personal interest in my going. Hot, angry, flushed, I resented both the words and the advice.

"Mrs. Penn, you are making too much of this. I think you have taken a wrong view of things. My heart is all right, thank you."

"Is it!" she retorted. "You cannot stay on here, his companion. You cannot, Anne Hereford."

"I will! Whether with him as a companion or without him is not of any moment—he will not eat me. But I do not quit Chandos until my legitimate plans call me away."

In point of fact I had nowhere to go to; but I did not say that. All this, and her assumption of reading my love, drove me into a perfect fit of anger.

Mrs. Penn paused, seemingly in deliberation, and when she next spoke it was in a whisper.

"Has he given you any hint of what the dark cloud is that hangs over Chandos? Of the—the crime that was committed?"

"No."

"It was a very fearful crime: the greatest social crime forbidden in the Decalogue. When the police rode up here the other night I thought they had come for him. I know Mr. Chandos thought it."

"For whom?"

"For Mrs. Chandos's husband," she answered, in a sharp, irascible tone. "Why do you make me repeat it?"

At least I thought she need not repeat the word "husband" in my ears.

"It was murder," she continued, "if you wish to hear the plain English of it."

"Was there a trial?"

"No. That has to come. Certain"—she seemed to hesitate—"proofs are being waited for. Poor Mrs. Chandos has not been quite right since: when the moon is at the change and full they think her worse; but at all times it is well that she should be under surveillance. That is why I am here."

I did not speak; I was thinking. No doubt it was all true.

"Poor thing! the blow was enough to turn her brain," observed Mrs. Penn, musingly. "But I fancy she could never have been of strong intellect. A light, frivolous, butterfly girl, her only recommendation her beauty and soft manner."

"What you told me before was, that she had used Mr. Chandos ill."

"And so she did; very. But that was altogether a different matter, quite unconnected with what followed."

"How did you become acquainted with these things, Mrs. Penn?"

"In a perfectly legitimate manner. Believe me, Anne, this house is no proper home for you; Harry Chandos is an unfit companion. Quit both to-morrow."

The pertinacity vexed me nearly beyond bearing. "I'll think of it," I said, sharply; and getting up quickly made my escape from the room and the east wing.

Not any too soon. To go to the east wing was against the law, and as I turned into my own room, Mrs. Chandos was coming down the gallery, Mr. Chandos by her side.

"When will you get it for me, Harry?" she was saying as they passed my door.

"Shortly, I hope. The booksellers here may have to send to London for it, but I'll see that you have it as soon as possible."

He held open the door of the east wing for her to enter, and then took his way downstairs. I followed presently. Tea would be waiting and I expected to preside at it. How could I absent myself from the routine of the house and the oak-parlour—I, who was but there on sufferance, an interloper? Were the circumstances that had passed such as that I—a lady born, and reared to goodness and modesty and all right instincts—ought to make a commotion over? No. And I felt as if I could bite my tongue to pieces for having said what I did to Mr. Chandos just now. Henceforth, I would hold on my course in calm self-respect; meeting him civilly, forgetting and believing that he forgot anything undesirable that had passed. As to the "crime" spoken of by Mrs. Penn—well, I thought it could not be: crime of any sort seemed so entirely incompatible with Mr. Chandos.

And my love? Oh, don't make me speak of it. I could only resolve to beat it down, down, whenever it rose in my heart. Others had suffered, so must I.

He did not appear at tea. I drank mine with what relish I might, and Joseph came for the things. Ah, what passion is like unto love! None can control it. I had resolved to put it away from me and that whole evening it was uppermost! Fifty times I caught myself yearning for his presence, and saying to myself unbidden that life was a blank without him. Very shortly after taking away the tea-tray, Joseph came in again.

"I am going to close the shutters, Miss."

"Very well. Who ordered it to be done?"

"The master."

"The master" meant Mr. Chandos. As Joseph put aside the white curtains to get to the shutters, I looked out. Pacing the lawn in the moonlight, with his arms folded and his head bent, was Mr. Chandos; pacing it as one in pain. And yet he had thought of me in the midst of it; of my possible timidity, and desired that the shutters should be closed.

It was nearly ten o'clock when he came into the parlour for some papers. I concluded he was going to his own sitting-room.

"Good-night!" he said, holding out his hand as usual.

Should I take it? A momentary debate with myself, and then I shook hands coldly with him. Had I not decided to let the past be as though it had never been? And all the display of resentment possible would not convert bad into good.

Days went on: days of an unsatisfactory life. The physician, Dr. Laken, came over, and stayed two of them. Of Mr. Chandos I saw but little: he was out and about, and more than usual in the west wing. I seemed estranged from everybody. Mrs. Penn I shunned; Mr. Chandos was just courteous to me, nothing more, and I had never been intimate with any one else in the house.

And now I resolved to leave. It would not look now as though I hurried away in passion, or because I feared my own love. Heaven knows I wished to do right, whatever it cost me; and reason pointed out that to remain longer was not only inexpedient but might be looked upon as such: The life for me was beginning to be intolerable. He was with me at times, the very fact of his presence feeding the love that held possession of me; and the image of Mrs. Chandos upstairs began to haunt me as a spectre. It was not possible longer to deceive myself with fine resolutions; my eyes were opened to the fact that I could not begin to forget him or to love him less so long as I stayed at Chandos.

I wrote to Madame de Mellissie, telling her that I felt obliged to cancel my engagement with her, and should quit Chandos. Then I wrote to the Misses Barlieu, asking them to receive me while I looked out for another situation, and begging them not to refuse me on the score of the fever: I was not afraid of it; I said, I need not go near the infirmary. But I truly hoped and expected it had by that time passed.

It was a fine afternoon, and a fancy came over to take the letters to the village post-office instead of leaving them on the hall-table, so I put my things on. In going out at the portico I met Mrs. Penn.

"Do you know that you are looking ill—that this struggle is telling upon you?" she abruptly exclaimed, but in a tone full of kindness. "Why don't you make an effort, and quit it?"

"The effort is made," I answered, half in anger, half in despair, as I held to her view the letters in my hand. "Here is the announcement to those who will, I hope, receive me. I must wait for an answer, and then I bid adieu to Chandos."

"My dear, you have done well," she answered, as she passed into the house, and I out of the portico.

Leaning against the wall, on the far side, was Mr. Chandos, who must have heard what had been said. That she was unconscious of his vicinity, I was certain, and, for myself, I started when I saw him. He said something, but I made as if I did not hear, and went quickly on.

The post-office was farther than I thought. I picked some ferns and blackberries; and I lingered on my road in miserable musing. By the time I turned to go home again, it had grown dusk. There was a lane near to Chandos, which led to a small entrance-gate at an obscure part of the grounds: the laurel-gate it was called, because many laurels grew near it. By taking this way I should cut off a good portion of the road, and down the lane I turned. Very much to my surprise, I came by-and-by to a cottage. A cottage I had never seen before; and was very sorry to see it now, for it showed me that I had turned down the wrong lane.

It was the waste of time that vexed me; but all I could do was to retrace my steps and take the right lane. It was nearly dark night when I at length got to the laurel-gate; some of the stars were shining.

The gate was unlatched, as if the last person who passed through had omitted to close it. A narrow path led to other narrow paths, which branched off through the trees; I hesitated which to take, not being certain which would lead me soonest to the house; and as I stood thinking, a dark form came following me down the lane. It was Mr. Edwin Barley's.

The dark night, the superstition attaching to the place, the proximity of the man I so dreaded, brought enough of terror. He might be coming to seize me and claim me then! The fear lent me wings. Flying up a path at hazard, I never ceased the speed until I was in the broad walk, and close—it was rather curious that it should be so,—to Mr. Chandos. He was coming in from an errand to the lodge.

With a sense of protection that was as a very balm to my spirit, I rested my hand on his arm. All considerations were merged in the moment's terror. I forgot his great offence; I forgot my own self-esteem: standing there, he appeared to me only as a great and powerful protector, one in whom I might find safety and shelter.

"Oh, Mr. Chandos! In mercy take care of me!"

Once more, as if nothing wrong had stepped between us, he held me against his side. He must have felt the throbs of my beating heart.

"What has alarmed you?" he asked, in a tone a great deal too full of tenderness.

My only answer was to draw back amid the side trees, that I might be hidden from Edwin Barley. Mr. Chandos came and stood there also.

"What is it, Anne? The ghost? Or Edwin Barley again?"

My senses were in a degree returning to me and I told him what had occurred; turning my head to listen still.

"He will not follow you here. As to the lane, usage has made it public property, and he has a right to walk in it if he chooses."

I turned to the house. He quietly put my arm within his. "Suffer it to be so for an instant, Anne; you are trembling still."

And so we went on thus.

"What was it I heard you say to Mrs. Penn about quitting Chandos?"

"I think the time has come for me to quit it. If the Misses Barlieu can receive me, I shall go to them. I have written to ask."

"That's the letter you have been so far to post! Were you afraid I should intercept it?—as mine was intercepted!"

"Not that. I thought the walk would be pleasant."

"Rather too late a one, nevertheless!"

I did not tell him I had wasted my time in it, picking ferns, eating blackberries, thinking, and finally losing my way. "What's this?" said Mr. Chandos.

He alluded to the handful of ferns I carried, and without ceremony took one of the best sprays and put it in his coat "as a keepsake."

"If you are to leave, Anne, I must have something to remind me of you—you know!"

There was a light sound in his voice, which seemed to say he treated the notion of my leaving as a jest; as if he knew I should not go.

"I shall leave, Mr. Chandos!"

"Not just yet, at any rate. Madame de Mellissie left you with us, and to her only can we resign you!"

"I have written to Madame de Mellissie also, telling her I now take my plans upon myself."

"Oh, been posting that letter also, I suppose! Go you must not, Anne; I cannot part with you."

Every right feeling within me rose in rebellion against the avowal, and I strove to withdraw my arm, but my strength was as nothing in his firm grasp.

"I cannot part with you, I say; it would be like parting with life. These last few days—when we have been living in estrangement—have sufficed to show me what it would be were you to be away entirely. And so——"

"But you know you ought not to say this to me, Mr. Chandos!" I interrupted, speaking passionately and through my blinding tears. "It is unworthy of you. What have I done that you should so insult me?"

"Listen to me for a minute, Anne. I have been weighing things calmly and dispassionately; it has been my employment since the night of the explanation, when you told me you had become cognizant of preventing circumstances. I have endeavoured to judge unselfishly, as though the interest lay with another—not with myself; and I confess I cannot see any good reason why you should not become my wife. I mean, of course, later; when difficulties that exist now shall be removed from my path."

It was strangely unaccountable to hear him speak in this manner. I had always deemed him to be of a most honourable nature, one to whom the bare allusion of anything not good and perfect and upright, would be distasteful. Before I knew of existing circumstances, it had been bad enough to speak to me of love; but now——

Whether he had taken my silence for acquiescence I know not; I suppose there can be no doubt of it; but he suddenly bent his head and left some kisses on my face. Was he insane, or only a bad man?

"I could not help it," he hastily murmured in agitation. "I know it is wrong and foolish, but a man has not always his actions under cold control. Forgive me Anne! Stay here to gladden me: and hope, with me, that things will work round. I should not bid you do so without good reason."

A variety of emotions nearly choked me. His words told upon me worse than his kisses. How could things work round so that he might be free, save by one event, the death of his wife?—and she was young and healthy! How dared he during this, her life, urge me to remain there to gladden him? But for the strongest control, I should have burst into hysterical tears born of indignation and of excitement; and little recked what I said in my passion, as I wrenched my arm away from him.

"Things work round, Mr. Chandos! Are your thoughts glancing to a second murder?"

I borrowed the word from Mrs. Penn's mysterious communication—winch I had not believed. It was very bad of me to say it; I know that; but when in a passion of confusion one does not wait to choose words.

"Anne, you might have spared me that reproach," he rejoined, in a subdued tone of pain.

"How have you spared me?"

"It may end brightly yet; it may indeed. What's that?"

A rustling amidst the dense shrubs on the right caused the question. Possibly with an idea that it might be Edwin Barley, Mr. Chandos quitted me to look. I darted across the road, and plunged amidst the trees, intending to get on by a bye-path, and so escape him. Suddenly I came upon Lizzy Dene, talking to a man. She started back, with a faint cry.

"I am going right for the house, am I not, Lizzy?"

"Quite so, Miss. Take the path on the right when you come to the weeping elm-tree."

I had nearly gained the tree, when Lizzy Dene came up with me. The woman seemed to be in agitation as great as mine.

"Miss," she began, "will you do me a favour, and not mention who you saw me talking to?"

"I should be clever to mention it, Lizzy. I don't know him."

"But, please Miss, not to say you saw me talking to any one. The young man is not a sweetheart, I do assure you; he is a relation; but those servants are dreadful scandalmongers."

"You need not fear; it is no affair of mine. And I am not in the habit of telling tales to servants."

She continued to walk a little behind me. It seemed I was to have nothing but encounters. There, on a garden-chair, as we turned on to the lawn, sat Mrs. Penn.

"I am sitting here to recover breath," she said, in answer to my word of exclamation. "It has been taken away by surprise. I don't quite know whether I am awake or dreaming."

"Have you seen the ghost, ma'am?" asked Lizzy, breathlessly, putting her own comment on the words.

"Well, I don't know; I should just as soon have expected to see one as Lady Chandos. She was in the pine-walk.

"Impossible, Mrs. Penn," I exclaimed.

"Impossible or possible, Miss Hereford, Lady Chandos it was," she answered, in a resolute tone. "I can tell you I rubbed my eyes when I caught sight of her, believing they must see things that were not. She wore a black silk cloak, and had a black hood over her head. It was certainly Lady Chandos; she seemed to be walking to take the air."

To hear that any lady, bed-ridden, as may be said, was suddenly walking abroad in a damp, dark night to take the air, was nearly unbelievable. It was quite so to Lizzy Dene. Her eyes grew round with wonder as they were turned on Mrs. Penn.

"Then I say with Miss here that it's just impossible. My lady's no more capable of walking out, ma'am, than——"

"I tell you I saw her," conclusively interrupted Mrs. Penn. "It was twenty minutes ago, at the turn from dusk to dark. I came and sat down here, waiting for her to pass me: which she has not done. But I suppose there are other paths by which she could gain the house. Lizzy, how obstinate you look over it!"

"And enough to make me, ma'am; when I know that my lady it could not be."

"Do you see much of her?" asked Mrs. Penn.

"Me! Neither me nor nobody else, ma'am. If ever Hill calls me to help with a room in the west wing, my lady has first been moved out of it. Since her illness, Hill does the work there herself. No, no; it never was my lady. Unless—unless—oh, goodness, grant it may not be!—unless she's dead!"

"Why, what does the girl mean?" cried Mrs. Penn, tartly.

Lizzy Dene had suddenly flown into one of her rather frequent phases of superstition, and began to explain with a shivering sob.

"It is just this," she whispered, glancing timidly over her shoulder. "Hill was in some distress at mid-day; we servants asked her what was the matter, and she said my lady was worse; as ill as she could be. Now, it is well known, in the moment of death people have appeared to others at a distance. I think my lady must have died, and it was her spirit that Mrs. Penn has just seen in the pine-walk. Oh! ah! oh!"

Lizzy Dene wound up with three shrieks. In some curiosity—to say the least of it—we crossed the lawn. It was curious that Lady Chandos, if worse, should be abroad. Hickens was at the hall-door, looking out probably for me. It was past dinner-time.

"How is Lady Chandos?" I impulsively asked.

"I have not thought to inquire this evening, Miss. I suppose, much as usual."

"Isn't she dead?" put in Lizzy.

"Dead!" he echoed, staring at the girl. "Anyway there's a basin of arrowroot just gone up for her, and I never heard that dead people could eat. What crotchet have you got in your head now, Lizzy Dene?"

I think we all looked a little foolish. Mrs. Penn laughed as she ran in; Lizzy Dene went round to the servants' entrance.

"Hickens," I said, in a low tone, passing him to go upstairs, "I have the headache, and shall not take any dinner. Perhaps Harriet will kindly light a bit of fire in my room, and bring me up some tea."

For I had caught a glimpse of Mr. Chandos and the dinner, both waiting for me in the oak-parlour.