can learn any thing.  Believe me, I will protect mam’zelle, or I should say madame, at the loss of my life.  Write to me as soon as you receive this.  There will be an inn at Ville-en-bois; direct to me there.  Take courage, monsieur.  Your devoted TARDIF.”

“I must go!” I exclaimed, starting to my feet, about to rush out of the house.

“Where?” cried Jack, catching my arm between both his hands, and holding me fast.

“To Olivia,” I answered; “that villain, that scoundrel has hunted her out in Normandy.  Read that, Jack.  Let me go.”

“Stay!” he said; “there is no chance of going so late as this; it is after twelve o’clock.  Let us think a few minutes, and look at Bradshaw.”

But at that moment a furious peal of the bell rang through the house.  We both ran into the hall.  The servant had just opened the door, and a telegraph-clerk stood on the steps, with a telegram, which he thrust into his hands.  It was directed to me.  I tore it open.  “From Jean Grimont, Granville, to Dr. Dobree.  Brook Street, London.”  I did not know any Jean Grimont, of Granville, it was the name of a stranger to me.  A message was written underneath in Norman patois, but so mispelt and garbled in its transmission that I could not make out the sense of it.  The only words I was sure about were “mam’zelle,” “Foster,” “Tardif,” and “a l’agonie.”  Who was on the point of death I could not tell.

CHAPTER THE FIRST.

OLIVIA’S JUSTIFICATION.

I know that in the eyes of the world I was guilty of a great fault—­a fault so grave that society condemns it bitterly.  How shall I justify myself before those who believe a woman owes her whole self to her husband, whatever his conduct to her may be?  That is impossible.  To them I merely plead “guilty,” and say nothing of extenuating circumstances.

But there are others who will listen, and be sorry for me.  There are women like Johanna Carey, who will pity me, and lay the blame where it ought to lie.

I was little more than seventeen when I was married; as mere a child as any simple, innocent girl of seventeen among you.  I knew nothing of what life was, or what possibilities of happiness or misery it contained.  I married to set away from a home that had been happy, but which had become miserable.  This was how it was: 

My own mother died when I was too young a child to feel her loss.  For many years after that, my father and I lived alone together on one of the great sheep-farms of Adelaide, which belonged to him, and where he made all the fortune that he left me.  A very happy life, very free, with no trammels of society and no fetters of custom; a simple, rustic life, which gave me no preparation for the years that came after it.