"Peace on Earth, and mercy mild,
     Sing the angels, reconciled;
     Over each sad warfare done,
     Each soul-battle lost and won.

    "He that has a victory lost
     May discomfit yet a host;
     And, it often doth befall,
     He who conquers loses all."

Christian, after sitting waiting in the study for a long hour, received a message from her husband that he would not be home that night.  He had to take a sudden journey of twenty miles on some urgent affairs.  This was not unusual.  Dr. Grey was one of those people whom all their friends come to in any emergency, and the amount of other people’s business, especially painful business, which he was expected to transact, and did transact, out of pure benevolence, was incalculable.

So his wife had to wait still.  She submitted as to fatality, laid her head on her pillow, and fell at once into that dull, stupid sleep which mercifully comes to some people, and always came to her, in heavy trouble.  She did not wake from it till late in the following morning.

A great dread, like a great joy, always lies in ambush, ready to leap upon us the instant we open our eyes.  Had Miss Gascoigne known what a horrible monster it was, like a tiger at her throat, which sprang upon Christian when she waked that morning, she, even she, might have felt remorseful for the pain she had caused.  Yet perhaps she would not.  In this weary life of ours,

    "With darkness and the death-hour rounding it,"

It is strange how many people seem actually to enjoy making other people miserable.

Christian rose and dressed; for her household ways must go on as usual; she must take her place at the breakfast-table, and make it cheerful and pleasant, so that the children might not find out any thing wrong with mother.  She did so, and sent them away to their morning play—­happy little souls!  Then she sat down to think for a little, all alone.

Not what to do—­that was already decided; but how to do it—­how to tell Dr. Grey in the least painful way that his love had not been the first love she had received—­and given; that she had had this secret, and kept it from him, though he was her husband, for six whole months.

Oh, had she but told him before her marriage, long, long ago!  Now, he might think she only did it out of fear, dread of public opinion, or seeking protection from the public scandal that might overtake her, however innocent.  For was she not in the hands of an unscrupulous man and a malicious woman?  It was hopeless to defend herself.  Why should she attempt it?  Had she not better let herself be killed—­she sometimes thought she should be killed, to so great a height of morbid dread had risen her secret agony—­and die, quietly, silently, thus escaping out of the hands of her enemies, who pursued her with this relentless hatred.