"Through him!" uttered Lady Harriet, in an accent of wondering disbelief. "What ever do you mean?"

"My lady, the child was his."

"What child?"

"The child for which she is to suffer."

The Lady Harriet Devereux half rose from her chair, and then sank back in it, her countenance one picture of horror. Lady Tennygal bit her lip, and the crimson flushed up to the roots of her hair.

"Ladies, I don't know what you may be to him," added the mother, through her sobs, "perhaps his relations, even his sisters: I hear he has no wife. But I must say it, though you are, that he is a bad, wicked man, or he would not have behaved so shameful to a poor defenceless governess."

"We cannot enter into Colonel Devereux's good or bad conduct," hastily cried the Lady Tennygal. "It is impossible he could help your daughter now, were he here, and his will ever so good. Not all the country could save her."

"Ma'am, perhaps he might. She says so. Oh, let me try!" she beseechingly added, clasping her hands. "Ladies, if you had a child condemned to death, you would be as anxious as me not to leave a stone unturned. If Colonel Devereux comes home in time, promise me that I shall see him."

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"Yes," said Lady Harriet Devereux, rousing herself, "I will promise it. Though I see no possible chance of aid from any quarter, and think you must be labouring under a mistake to hope for it, you can see him if will. Poor woman! what has happened was no fault of yours." "Oh, my lady! Fault of ours! Will you believe that, till my poor child was arrested, we never knew she had gone wrong: we never knew there was a child, and we saw it in the newspapers first, and then we did not believe it. It is gospel truth what I am telling you," she sobbed, the tears raining from her eyes in torrents. "And, until this day, I never heard the name of Colonel Devereux, or knew there was such a person.'

As the unhappy mother left the room and the house, Lady Tennygal advanced behind the chair of her sister-in-law, leaned over her, and pressed her flushed forehead against Lady Harriet's ear, as she whispered: Dear Harriet, do not take this too much to heart. It is horrible in itself, but, remember, he was not your husband then. When these sort of unpleasant antecedents come out, our only plan is to dismiss them, if possible, from our thoughts for ever. I do not defend him; but I would strive to soothe your feelings by suggesting that the sin was not against you: you were not his wife then."

A murmur, half assent, half groan, which she could not entirely suppress, was the only answer given by Lady Harriet Devereux. "The sin was not against you: you were not his wife then," these words grated harshly on her ear. She alone knew, or ever would know, for she was one to hide her sufferings in her heart, all the wrongs he had enacted against her since. She bore with him; bore in silence: for the sake of her two children she would not bring on an open rupture with their father-as many another outraged wife is content to bear.

"You remember one thing, Bessie," she could not help saying; "when the disturbance occurred, which led to Miss May's being turned from

your house, how solemnly your brother protested his innocence. That was when we were on the point of marriage. Deceit, deceit !" she muttered to herself, "nothing but deceit throughout."

"I do remember it," answered Lady Tennygal, in a tone of bitter mortification," and I was inclined to believe him. My husband always thought he was guilty."

That same day Colonel Devereux landed at Deal. After his marriage he had repurchased into the army: hence his rise in rank. He, and a friend, Major Courtney, and sundry more friends (choice spirits all the crew, and Colonel Devereux was the oldest and the worst), had been on a foreign cruise in the major's yacht. They had been for some time without touching at any port, so that news was fresh to them. Colonel Devereux and one of the others, Viscount Dooham, purposed getting up to town at once, and, while waiting for a train to start, solaced themselves with some refreshment and the newspapers.

"Hallo!” cried the viscount, who was a very young man, "here's a woman going to be topped on Monday."

"Ah!" carelessly remarked Colonel Devereux, who was yawning over some military news.

"I say, waiter," said the viscount, halting in his reading, and looking up from the newspaper, "what did she do? It says she is young and educated."

"Who, sir?" asked the waiter, who had not been attending. "This-what's the name ?-Sophia Lyvett."

"It's a lady who killed her child, sir."

"A lady?" repeated the viscount, heaving up his eyebrows, and kicking Colonel Devereux's feet, that he might take note of the amusing waiter.

"Yes, sir, a lady. Leastways, her husband was a gentleman. She was just married, and nobody knew anything about this child, so she got afraid, and killed it. It's said that when the police went to take her, she was dressed out in satin and diamonds, going to a ball.” "Was she tried in that?" sneered Colonel Devereux.

"In what, sir?"

"The satin and the diamonds.

sensation in the court."

Dooham, she must have created a

The waiter shook his head. "I don't think she was, sir, or the papers would have said it. She was remarkably handsome.'

off."

Young and handsome!" echoed Lord Dooham. "Perhaps she'll get

"Oh no, sir, there's no chance of that. She's to be hung on Monday morning, without fail. I know some gents as talk of going up to see it." "Devereux," cried Lord Dooham, when the waiter moved away, "did you ever see a turning-off?"

Colonel Devereux nodded.

"I never did," said the viscount, deprecatingly, almost ashamed to avow the fact. Suppose we go and see this one ?"

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"You can go," said the colonel, "I shan't. The last I went to, I said I'd never go to another. It is not worth it." He got up and stretched himself as he spoke, utterly unconscious that the unhappy child who was gone, or the still more unhappy mother, could be in any possible way connected with him.

: Colonel Devereux departed from Deal, and went steaming up to London. It was growing dusk when he reached his home. A woman who had waited, in her patience, outside that house since the afternoon, saw the cab drive up, and watched him in. He greeted his wife with cool indifference: it was the best greeting he ever vouchsafed her. That Lady Harriet received him this night with unusual coldness he did not notice, and would not have cared for, if he had. He ordered lights into the library, and went in, and Lady Harriet let her aching head fall upon her hand. There were moments when her hard lot pressed poignantly upon her: it did this night.

She was interrupted by the entrance of the footman. He, whom we saw at the door in the afternoon.

"My lady," he cried, "here's that woman come again. I believe she has been waiting outside all this time. She will not go away, and she says your ladyship promised her she might see the colonel."

"Yes, I did. Show her at once into the library. It is right that she should see him," Lady Harriet added, in a murmur to herself—" right, in justice and in mercy."

Mrs. May took Colonel Devereux by surprise.

The servant said, as

he threw open the door, "A person to see you, sir," for she had refused to give her name, and then he closed it again. The colonel was standing before two wax-lights, reading letters. Mrs. May looked at him: a dark, repulsive-featured man, who stared at her with astonishment.

"Who are you? What do you want?" was his haughty demand. "Oh, sir, don't be harsh with me! You know you ought not, for you are the real author of all this misery. I have come with a message from her, my poor child, Sophiar Lyvett, who is in Newgate a waiting for her execution."

A recollection of Lord Dooham's conversation with the waiter at Deal recurred to Colonel Devereux. He connected the woman's words with that, as having reference to the same subject, but he connected them with nothing else.

"Waiting for her execution!" he angrily repeated, when his surprise allowed him to speak. "Sophia Lyvett!-what have I to do with it, if she is? She is nothing to me."

"She ought to be something to you," retorted Mrs. May, indignant at his want of humanity. "She was something to when she was Sophiar May."

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"So-phi-a May!" he slowly uttered, his tone changing to one of dread. "It is not Sophia May who is condemned, is it ?"

"It is nobody else, sir," answered the mother, bursting into tears. "She had just married Mr. Fred Lyvett when-when it happened." The drops of perspiration broke out on his face. He sat down and wiped it. "It was the crime was child-murder, was it not ?" he asked, in a low tone.

"Too true it was, sir. Committed upon your own
"Nonsense, woman!" he screamed, with a start.
"Your own child, sir. She never had no other.

child.” "My child !" And she has kept

the secret well for never has she let it out to no human being till this morning, when she told me, her mother."

He rubbed and rubbed, and could not get his face dry; perhaps he

rubbed, now, to bring some colour into it, for it had turned of a dead whiteness. Wicked, callous, void of conscience as he was, the news had shocked even him. Mrs. May thought how blue and ugly he looked, as the light from the candles shone upon him.

"Sophiar says you can save her, sir," she resumed, dropping her voice to a whisper. She says that you are related to some great man, an officer of state, I think she called him, who can pardon or hang criminals, according to his will, and that you must ask for her pardon from him, and get it."

"The-the

"I cannot do it," returned Colonel Devereux, aghast. person you allude to would not listen to me. I-I don't know any person; I don't know what you mean," he added, speaking his contradictory words with hesitation.

"Oh, sir, she says you can. I believe, from your own manner, that you can and may you find mercy yourself in your dying hour, as you now-if it be in your power-show mercy for my child!"

"Come, don't introduce any of that trash," was the irreverent interruption. "It will not weigh with me; quite the contrary. It is impossible that I can attempt anything to save her."

Colonel Devereux spoke scornfully, and poor Mrs. May could have found, in her heart, to shoot him as he sat. "Then am I to go back to the prison to-morrow, to that unfortunate girl, who is beside herself with hope and excitement, and tell her that you refuse to help her?" she asked. "That will be a bad finish to my day's work. Sir, I have stood outside this house ever since the afternoon, pacing about in the broiling sun and sitting down upon the opposite door-steps, with no comfort but my weary heart."

"No one asked you to do it," was the colonel's rejoinder.

"Perhaps not," she resentfully replied. "But the lady gave me hope that you might be home to-night, and I should have waited there all night, and to-morrow, and the next night, if you had not come." "What lady?" he hastily inquired.

"One as came up to the door when he, with the yaller breeches and white head, would have drove me from it. He called her 'my lady,' and she brought me in, and was sorry for me, and gave me leave to enter tonight."

"My wife!" involuntarily exclaimed Colonel Devereux, in a strange sort of tone.

"I thought you had no wife, sir. If it was, I am sorry I told her all, for I'm sure she has a kind heart, and such news was enough to break it. There was another lady with her, younger."

"You had no business to come to my house at all," he irritably exclaimed, rising and pointing to the door; "you can go out of it now. I have no power to save your daughter. In saying I had, she was running her head into a delusion. Tell her so."

"Sir," cried Mrs. May, preparing to depart, "you best know. But if ever so little power rests with you, and you mean to sit down with your hands afore you and not try to use it, but let her go uncared for to her. cruel death, I can only say that you ought to suffer for her, for you will deserve it worse than she does, and so the public will say when they comes to know the truth. She has been silent and kept your counsel, but it's

30

more than I'll be, if she dies. I'll tell it out, as long as there's a soul left to listen to me."

She turned and left the room. Had the natural lines of his face not been so scornful, his sinister black eyes so cruel, she would have fallen down prostrate and clasped his knees, and besought him, with tears, to accord her prayer; but she saw there was neither goodness nor humanity, no, nor a spark of compassionate feeling, to arouse in Colonel Devereux.

Colonel Devereux's first movement, on being left alone, was to take a few strides on the library carpet, and give vent to sundry accompanying oaths. When he had, by these means, a little cooled his wrath, he sat down to deliberate.

His imagination took him, and would take him, to the next Monday morning, to the sight which Lord Dooham had invited him to go and witness. The various points rose up before him, one after another, like the pictures in a phantasmagoria. The great ugly machine, raised aloft in the air; the sea of faces lifted to it; the deep bell of St. Sepulchre, tolling out its deadly strokes; Calcraft playing with his cords; the chaplain, in his white surplice, coming slowly on, reading the service for the dead over the living; and an ill-fated girl tottering on behind, who certainly, in one sense, owed her doom to him. Colonel Devereux, in spite

of himself, turned sick, and his limbs shook under him.

Self was always a prominent feeling in Colonel Devereux, and the last few words spoken by Mrs. May made more impression on him than all the rest that the truth, if Sophia died, should go forth to the world. That, at any rate, must be stopped. Presently he started a hurry, who might have just decided on some plan of action, and reup, like one in turned to the drawing-room. His wife sat there still.

"Do you happen to know whether Sir Archibald is in town?" he demanded, in the sullen tone he usually adopted to her.

"He is," answered Lady Harriet. much to do to leave it. So your sister said, this afternoon, when she "And complaining of having too came home with me."

So! It was Lady Tennygal, then, who had been the second lady spoken of by Mrs. May! And he had sworn to her and Tennygal that he had never- He turned impatiently to leave the room.

"Are you going out ?" asked Lady Harriet.

"I am.

What of that ?"

"Nothing," she sighed. "Shall

you

be late ?"

Very possibly. I may not be in at all.”

Then he left, and making his way to his father's residence, learnt that Sir Archibald was dining out. Lady Devereux was at home.

"Alone ?" he inquired.

"No, sir. Lady Tennygal is with her."

With a muttered word, not at all a fair one, Colonel Devereux turned to leave the house again.

he looked back to say.

"Oh yes, sir."

"Sir Archibald breakfasts early, as usual ?"

Early rising was not amongst the virtues of Colonel Devereux. Besides, he had passed a restless night, and towards morning he dropped into a heavy sleep. It was past eight when he awoke. With uncom