half read in the bustle of the morning.  It was to tell of their arrival at Corfu; their voyage along the Mediterranean—­their music, and dancing on board ship; the gay new life opening upon her; her house with its trellised balcony, and its views over white cliffs and deep blue sea.  Edith wrote fluently and well, if not graphically.  She could not only seize the salient and characteristic points of a scene, but she could enumerate enough of indiscriminate particulars for Margaret to make it out for herself Captain Lennox and another lately married officer shared a villa, high up on the beautiful precipitous rocks overhanging the sea.  Their days, late as it was in the year, seemed spent in boating or land pic-nics; all out-of-doors, pleasure-seeking and glad, Edith’s life seemed like the deep vault of blue sky above her, free—­utterly free from fleck or cloud.  Her husband had to attend drill, and she, the most musical officer’s wife there, had to copy the new and popular tunes out of the most recent English music, for the benefit of the bandmaster; those seemed their most severe and arduous duties.  She expressed an affectionate hope that, if the regiment stopped another year at Corfu, Margaret might come out and pay her a long visit.  She asked Margaret if she remembered the day twelve-month on which she, Edith, wrote—­how it rained all day long in Harley Street; and how she would not put on her new gown to go to a stupid dinner, and get it all wet and splashed in going to the carriage; and how at that very dinner they had first met Captain Lennox.

Yes!  Margaret remembered it well.  Edith and Mrs. Shaw had gone to dinner.  Margaret had joined the party in the evening.  The recollection of the plentiful luxury of all the arrangements, the stately handsomeness of the furniture, the size of the house, the peaceful, untroubled ease of the visitors—­all came vividly before her, in strange contrast to the present time.  The smooth sea of that old life closed up, without a mark left to tell where they had all been.  The habitual dinners, the calls, the shopping, the dancing evenings, were all going on, going on for ever, though her Aunt Shaw and Edith were no longer there; and she, of course, was even less missed.  She doubted if any one of that old set ever thought of her, except Henry Lennox.  He too, she knew, would strive to forget her, because of the pain she had caused him.  She had heard him often boast of his power of putting any disagreeable thought far away from him.  Then she penetrated farther into what might have been.  If she had cared for him as a lover, and had accepted him, and this change in her father’s opinions and consequent station had taken place, she could not doubt but that it would have been impatiently received by Mr. Lennox.  It was a bitter mortification to her in one sense; but she could bear it patiently, because she knew her father’s purity of purpose, and that strengthened her to endure his errors, grave and serious though