Mr. Beresford bowed, smiled bitterly, and went back to Coventry, with whom he had a curious interview, that ended in Coventry lending him two hundred pounds on his personal security.  To dispose of Mr. Beresford for the present I will add that, soon after this, his zeal for the poor subjected him to an affront.  He was a man of soup-kitchens and subscriptions.  One of the old fogies, who disliked him, wrote letters to The Liberal, and demanded an account of his receipts and expenditure in these worthy objects, and repeated the demand with a pertinacity that implied suspicion.  Then Mr. Beresford called upon Dr. Fynes, and showed him the letters, and confessed to him that he never kept any accounts, either of public or private expenditure.  “I can construe Apollonius Rhodius—­with your assistance, sir,” said he, “but I never could add up pounds, shillings, and pence; far less divide them except amongst the afflicted.”  “Take no notice of the cads,” said Dr. Fynes.  But Beresford represented meekly that a clergyman’s value and usefulness were gone when once a slur was thrown upon him.  Then Dr. Fynes gave him high testimonials, and they parted with mutual regret.

It took Grace a day to get over her interview with Mr. Beresford; and when with Jael’s help she was calm again, she received a letter from Coventry, indited in tones of the deepest penitence, but reminding her that he had offered her his life, had made no resistance when she offered to take it, and never would.

There was nothing in the letter that irritated her, but she saw in it an attempt to open a correspondence.  She wrote back: 

“If you really repent your crimes, and have any true pity for the poor creature whose happiness you have wrecked, show it by leaving this place, and ceasing all communication with her.”

This galled Coventry, and he wrote back: 

“What! leave the coast clear to Mr. Little?  No, Mrs. Coventry; no.”

Grace made no reply, but a great terror seized her, and from that hour preyed constantly on her mind—­the fear that Coventry and Little would meet, and the man she loved would do some rash act, and perhaps perish on the scaffold for it.

This was the dominant sentiment of her distracted heart, when one day, at eleven A.M., came a telegram from Liverpool: 

“Just landed.  Will be with you by four.

“Henry little.”

Jael found her shaking all over, with this telegram in her hand.

“Thank God you are with me!” she gasped.  “Let me see him once more, and die.”

This was her first thought; but all that day she was never in the same mind for long together.  She would burst out into joy that he was really alive, and she should see his face once more.  Then she would cower with terror, and say she dared not look him in the face; she was not worthy.  Then she would ask wildly, who was to tell him?  What would become of him?