“What bills?  Oh!”

“You have had an allowance for housekeeping.”

“It wasn’t enough.”

“It was plenty, if you had kept faith with me, and paid ready money.  It was enough for the first five weeks.  I am housekeeper now, and I shall allow myself two pounds a week less, and not owe a shilling either.”

“Well, all I know is, I couldn’t do it:  no woman could.”

“Then, you should have come to me, and said so; and I would have shown you how.  Was I in Egypt, or at the North Pole, that you could not find me, to treat me like a friend?  You have ruined us:  these debts will sweep away the last shilling of our little capital; but it isn’t that, oh, no! it is the miserable deceit.”

Rosa’s eye caught the sum total of Madame Cie’s bill, and she turned pale.  “Oh, what a cheat that woman is!”

But she turned paler when Christopher said, “That is the one honest bill; for I gave you leave.  It is these that part us:  these! these!  Look at them, false heart!  There, go and pack up your things.  We can live here no longer; we are ruined.  I must send you back to your father.”

“I thought you would, sooner or later,” said Mrs. Staines, panting, trembling, but showing a little fight.  “He told you I wasn’t fit to be a poor man’s wife.”

“An honest man’s wife, you mean:  that is what you are not fit for.  You will go home to your father, and I shall go into some humble lodging to work for you.  I’ll contrive to keep you, and find you a hundred a year to spend in dress—­the only thing your heart can really love.  But I won’t have an enemy here in the disguise of a friend; and I won’t have a wife about me I must treat like a servant, and watch like a traitor.”

The words were harsh, but the agony with which they were spoken distinguished them from vulgar vituperation.

They overpowered poor Rosa; she had been ailing a little some time, and from remorse and terror, coupled with other causes, nature gave way.  Her lips turned white, she gasped inarticulately, and, with a little piteous moan, tottered, and swooned dead away.

He was walking wildly about, ready to tear his hair, when she tottered; he saw her just in time to save her, and laid her gently on the floor, and kneeled over her.

Away went anger and every other feeling but love and pity for the poor, weak creature that, with all her faults, was so lovable and so loved.

He applied no remedies at first:  he knew they were useless and unnecessary.  He laid her head quite low, and opened door and window, and loosened all her dress, sighing deeply all the time at her condition.

While he was thus employed, suddenly a strange cry broke from him:  a cry of horror, remorse, joy, tenderness, all combined:  a cry compared with which language is inarticulate.  His swift and practical eye had made a discovery.

He kneeled over her, with his eyes dilating and his hands clasped, a picture of love and tender remorse.