Angry but undaunted, his eloquent eyes boldly bore up under hers, as if in mortal challenge; and he bowed, with a degree of graceful hauteur, fully equal to her own best efforts.

“Madame’s commands shall be rigidly and literally obeyed, for Cuthbert Laurance is far too proud to obtrude his presence or his homage on any woman; but Mrs. Orme’s interdict does not include that public realm, where she has repeatedly assured me that gold always secures admission to her smiles, and from which no earthly power can debar me.  Watching you from the same spot, where last night you floated like an angelic dream of my boyhood, like a glorious revelation upon my vision and my heart, I shall defy the world to mar the happiness in store for me, so long as you remain in Paris.  A distant but devoted worshipper, cherishing the memory of those thrilling glances with which ‘Amy Robsart’ favoured me, permit me to wish Madame Orme a pleasant ride, and good afternoon.”

He bent his handsome head low before her, and left the room less like an exile than a conqueror, buoyed by an abiding fatalism, a fond faith in that magnetic influence and fascination he had hitherto successfully exerted over all, whom his wayward, fickle, fastidious fancy had chosen to enslave.

When the sound of his retreating footsteps was no longer audible, the slender white-robed figure moved unsteadily across the floor, entered the adjoining dressing-room, and locked the door.

The play was over at last, the long tensions of nerve, the iron strain on brain and heart, the steel manacles on memory, all snapped simultaneously; the actress was trampled out of sight, the weak, suffering, long-tortured woman bowed down in helpless and hopeless agony before her desecrated mouldering altar, was alone with the dust of her overturned and crumbling idol.

“My husband!  O God!  Thou knowest—­not hers—­not that woman’s—­but mine! all mine!  My baby’s father!—­my Cuthbert—­my own husband!”

“Oh past! past the sweet times that I remember well! 
Alas that such a tale my heart can tell! 
Ah, how I trusted him! what love was mine! 
How sweet to feel his arms about me twine,
And my heart beat with his!  What wealth of bliss
To hear his praises; all to come to this,—­
That now I durst not look upon his face,
Lest in my heart that other thing have place—­
That which men call hate!”

CHAPTER VIII.

“Nonsense, Elise!  She is but a child, and I beg you will not prematurely magnify her into a woman.  There are so few unaffected, natural children in this generation, that it is as refreshing to contemplate our little girl’s guileless purity and ingenuous simplicity, as to gaze upon cool green meadows on a sultry, parching August day.  Keep her a child, let her alone.”

Mr. Hargrove wiped his spectacles with his handkerchief, and replaced them on his Roman nose with the injured air of a man who, having been interrupted in some favourite study to take cognizance of an unexpected, unwelcome, and altogether unpleasant fact, majestically refuses to inspect, and dogmatically waves it aside, as if to ignore were to annihilate.