Lawrence looked round. The two la- | sooner saw Lawrence than she drew back, dies who had been standing at the win- flushing deeply. dow, had followed him to the door to look at the sky, and consider the chances of the weather clearing. Lawrence hesitated" no longer. "I beg your pardon," he said, taking off his hat, "I have a carriage here with a hood, and it would give me pleasure if I could be of the slightest use to you. Unfortunately I am driving myself, or the carriage should be entirely at your disposal; but if you would care to occupy the vacant seat He had addressed himself more directly to the younger of the two ladies, the one who had just spoken; and she it was who replied. "Thank you very much, but my sister and I do not mind the rain at all," she said; "it does not matter to us, does it, Sophy? It is our cousin we are thinking of. She is so delicate, and she has only just recovered from an illness. Sophy, shall we go and persuade her? If it would not really inconvenience you - she said, turning again to Lawrence. "My carriage is at the door," he said, "I drove over from the Eaux-Chaudes this morning, and I am this moment about to return there." "You are very kind,” she said coldly, answering words he had not spoken, but my cousins are mistaken. I much prefer to ride." Lawrence bowed and turned as if to go, but changed his mind. "You will not come?" he said. His voice and manner were so odd, that Clarice, the younger of the two sisters, who stood behind in the passage, opened her eyes wide and looked at him. 66 "Nonsense, Emilia," interposed the elder lady in her decided voice, you must not risk catching another of your colds. What will mamma say if she is detained here as she was at Luchon? And since Mr. "I will go," said Emilia suddenly. She gathered up her skirt and walked quickly down the steps of the terrace to the road where the carriage was standing. Lawrence tarried for one moment before fol. lowing her. "My name is Henry Law. rence," he said to the sisters. "I should perhaps have mentioned it before. I am staying for a day or two at the EauxChaudes." He raised his hat and hurried after Emilia. The carriage was a small, light vehicle with a seat for the driver "You are very good, and what you pro-and one other. Lawrence helped Emilia pose would be a real boon to my cousin," in, raised the hood, got in himself, and they said the elder sister after a moment's hes- drove off. itation. "I will speak to her. She is not easy to persuade, but I should be glad if she would consent to take advantage of your kindness. It was such a day as this that brought on her illness before." They re-entered the inn, and Lawrence waited outside in the shelter of the doorway. Five, ten minutes perhaps, passed, then footsteps and voices approached once more, and the third lady whom he had seen seated at the table appeared. She came out, holding up her habit, a tall and slender young woman of four or five and twenty, moving with grace and certainty, with an air of ease and distinction proper to a beautiful woman accustomed to good society. Her features were clear-cut and refined, her complexion delicate; she had brown eyes with dark lashes and rather marked eyebrows slightly raised, giving character to her whole face in an expression half-weary, half-indifferent. She had yielded, it would seem, to the importunities of her companions, and came forward with the air of one in truth habitually indifferent to life and life's possible incidents. But she no There was a moment's silence. "This has been done on purpose," said Emilia then, in a tone of indignant haughtiness. No," Lawrence answered: "I was aware that you were in the Pyrenees, but I thought you were still at Luchon. I only arrived at the Eaux-Chaudes last evening. Our meeting to-day was quite unlooked-for by me." There was another silence, broken this time by Lawrence. "It seems hard, Emilia," he said with emotion in his voice, "that when I would willingly see you again under my roof, you should resent the offer of half an hour's shelter from the rain." that the past was cancelled. Oh, let it rest! Why renew the discussion now? We have met and are friends. In half an hour we part again, and go each our own way. Let the past rest." she had a sense of freedom, of adventure, of exultation even. Emilia was a woman of conventionalities, as Englishwomen brought up in a certain class of society can hardly fail to be. She lived a life that "It shall be as you wish," said Law- was before all things conventional, a life rence, after a moment's consideration. of social exactions, of kindly, monotonous "Believe me, I have no wish to take ad-affection; but she was not conventional vantage of an accidental meeting to force by nature, and she found some glamor of on you a painful discusssion. We meet enchantment in this one half-hour in as friends, you say, and those words are which she had escaped into a new atmowelcome from you to me, Emilia. For sphere. It was only for one half-hour, a the moment, at any rate, they content brief space of thirty minutes, of which me." nearly half were already gone; it pledged her, it bound her to nothing. But it revived her; it sent the blood to her cheeks, and life to her eyes. Her first mood changed; she sat up and pushed back her hat, welcoming the rain-laden gusts of wind that swept through the mountain gorge. But Lawrence wrapped the carriage rug closer around her. "That is well," she said, smiling a little, "and I am glad to be sheltered from the rain. So for the moment, as you say, we are quits." They drove on in silence; Emilia content indeed to be sheltered from the pelting rain, content to rest and say nothing, leaned back with an unexpected feeling of repose after her short moment of indignant resistance and repulsion. A sense of bien-être, of personal comfort after discomfort, has power to blunt even a strong emotion for a time; and Emilia, to her own surprise, found no present strangeness in this unlooked-for hour, which had brought about a meeting with her husband. A few minutes went by, and then her cousins passed her at a swift canter, the guide leading her own horse. They waved a salute as they swept past. "Those are your cousins?" said Law rence. 66 Yes," said Emilia, rousing herself, "I thought you knew them." 66 No," he said, "we never met before. They were not at our wedding, you may remember. Your cousin Sophy was still in India; your cousin Clarice was I forget where- at school perhaps." Probably," said Emilia with indifference; "no, I remember now, you cannot have met them before." She leaned back again in the little vehicle, looking straight before her at the rain-obscured, mist-blotted mountain cliffs and forests. That cloud-wrapped scene in which all landmarks were confused or effaced, gave a sense of isolation, of sep. aration from the world which she found inspiring. Yes, it was strange to be driving through this strange, shrouded land with her husband, unseen for three years; but it was a strangeness that exhilarated her. The consciousness of his presence did not oppress Emilia; she would have thought beforehand that it would that it would be a moment of painful embarrassment. On the contrary, You must be careful," he said, "your cousins will not forgive me if I let you catch cold." Emilia sank back passively within the hood. She did not in truth want to catch cold; her colds were events remembered and discussed for months afterwards. Lawrence's next words, kept carefully at a level of commonplace, followed not unnaturally on his last; they were prompted by a recollection of what had passed at the little inn. "You spent some time at Luchon, did you not?" he said, "and you will soon be leaving the Eaux-Chaudes. Your aunt seems to travel a great deal." "Yes, we travel a great deal,” said Emilia. "All the winter we are at Cannes; all the spring and autumn we spend in Italy; all the summer -I don't know wherein the Pyrenees, at German baths, in Switzerland-what does it matter? it is all the same." rence who was not a man of moods, and swered, "in thinking beforehand of a country like Italy, it is as a disembodied spirit that one imagines oneself there, a spirit at one with all the loveliness that one pictures—not oneself with one's life to drag one down and tinge everything to a sad, monotonous coloring. Oh! I love Italy still, and in memory it always takes again some of that ideal charm- but it is not the Italy of vines and statues and sunset skies I dreamt of as a girl. I have looked at too many sunsets since then." She sat silent for a minute; then, rous-letters. In the somewhat wandering life ing herself, looked at her companion with you lead, they seem constantly to miss a sort of surprise. you." How strange that I should say all this to you," she said, smiling with an air of polite apology, as at an immeasurable distance from him. 66 I never talk so, I never think so, I believe; but now I rave like a sentimental schoolgirl." Emilia blushed. "I have received them," she said. "But you would not answer them?" "No, I would not," she replied coldly; "I burnt them unread." "Not at all," said Lawrence; "you" speak what I also have felt in moments of depression." "But I am not a depressed person," said Emilia, still smiling; "far from it. My life is a happy one- ideally happy, some people might call it. I have a home, friends, ample leisure, no cares, no responsibilities. It is responsibility, you know, that weighs a life down, that makes it really depressing." Lawrence did not answer; there was a false ring in Emilia's voice that forbade response; but as the horse slackened its pace up an ascent, he glanced round at his wife, and his eyes rested for a moment on her profile, clear and pale beneath her plume-shadowed hat. Emilia blushed, conscious of his gaze, though her eyes were downcast; and angry with herself for 'this involuntary blush, she bit her lip in vexed embarrassment, and colored more deeply. Lawrence instantly turned away his eyes, and shook the horse's reins to quicken its pace. "I am afraid you will hardly escape a wetting, after all," he said: "these little hired horses have no idea of hurrying themselves." "But I am not at all wet," said Emilia, "and I am glad to have been sheltered from the drenching I should certainly have had on horseback." Lawrence considered for a moment. "Why?" he said then. The question was a simple one, but it disconcerted Emilia. "I—I did not wish to read them," she said; "the past is past. Why return upon it?" "I suppose because we have still a future which it cannot but modify," said Lawrence. "You will do me a favor, Emilia, by reading this letter and by answering it. Next month I am going to the East; I have a three years' appointment in Constantinople. It shall rest with you to decide whether all communications between us shall cease for those years or not. To-morrow you shall give me your answer, and I will abide by your decision." He put the letter in her hand. They had reached the hotel, and he helped her to alight from the carriage. "You look tired," he said with concern, as she hesitated before entering the house. "You have not been well lately, your cousins told me. You do not look strong." "Oh, I am well now," said Emilia carelessly. She turned to go, then turned again. "Thank you," she said, you have been kind and generous in this last hour, when you had it in your power to be otherwise; you have insisted on no point that could give me pain. It might have She spoke cordially. Her mood changed been a painful moment: your considerafrom moment to moment. This half-hour tion has made it otherwise. On one halfwas in truth strange to her, and each min-hour at least in our lives I shall look back ute seemed to mark an epoch. To her- with pleasure." self it was as though some familiar habit of mind, some long-worn mask were slipping from her, and she must continually strive to grasp and fit it on again. Law She smiled slightly as she spoke the last words. Lawrence did not smile; he simply bowed without speaking, and Emilia passed on into the house. As she went along the upper corridor, | dog-lover, and one appreciated at its full the door of her cousin Clarice's room half opened and she looked out. "It is you, Emmy," she said, "you are better off than Sophy and I are. We are drenched, absolutely drenched. Emmy, who is that Mr. Lawrence? Surely it. is EMILIA went down to dinner that evening, feeling shaken, excited with an excitement that was assuredly not pleasure, and yet was not pain; an exaltation rather, lifting her above the usual dead level of her existence. She had thought for a moment of excusing herself, of remaining up-stairs with some ordinary pretext of a headache; she accused herself of stupidity in at once admitting to her cousin that it was her husband she had met; she was sure that she would now have to undergo inquiring looks, even perhaps sympathetic words—and Emilia, like most of us, hated a sympathy that insisted on what was abnormal in her lot. Decidedly, she had thought, she would remain up-stairs. But her aunt, Lady Meriton, a confirmed invalid, was apt to resent all illness but her own as a personal affront; or at any rate, illness that came at mal à propos moments when she was not in the mood for petting it. With a gentle interest in many things, in her daughters, in society, in select gossip, in afternoon tea, in Emilia's unhappy marriage, she had only one very ardent interest in life outside her own health, and that was the health of her three dogs - Reine, Duchesse, and Marquise. One or other of these was seldom absent from her side or her thoughts; they habitually travelled with her, they were the present representatives of a long line of favorites, whose biographies, advent, life, and death she faithfully held in sacred memory. "When my girls were little they used to be quite jealous of the dogs," she had been known to say plaintively, "but that was absurd. Of course the children couldn't be to me what the dogs were; they couldn't lie in my arms all day and never leave me at night, like Fifine. It nearly broke my heart when she died; nothing could make up for her loss. I have never really got over it." For the rest, Lady Meriton was a gentle, kindly woman enough, and as far as possible kept her dogs to herself and her maid — a virtue rare indeed in your true worth by her family and friends. But Emilia at once abandoned her half-formed project of a headache, knowing that her absence from the table d'hôte might create a commotion worse than anything else to bear. Besides, she wanted she thought she wanted to see her husband again. She had not the remotest intention of changing her present mode of life. It suited her, she said to herself now, as she had often said before, whilst her maid removed her damp riding-habit and began to arrange her dress for dinner. As for the mutual duties of husband and wife, their just relations to each other and to society, she held no account with them at all; they had nothing to do, she had long since told herself, in a marriage into which she had been persuaded against her will, in which there had been no pretence of love on either side. That episode in her life she had closed and never meant to re-open. She did not read her husband's letter; she had not even made up her mind whether she would read it; it lay on her writing-table for consideration later on. But she thought she would like to see him again, to readjust her ideas concerning him. For years she had felt hard, bitter, resentful; but after this afternoon she could retain those long-cherished feelings no longer. He was not quite what she remembered him; no, he was certainly different from what she had thought. Those first months of her married life had left impressions on her mind that she had held to be righteous as they were indelible; and now a time had come when she must doubt their justice and recognize that others, due to a calmer moment, might well replace these, connected with a disastrous past. Emilia was ignorant as to whether Lawrence were staying in the hotel or no; but nevertheless she made her toilette with more care than usual this evening. As a rule, beyond a preference for certain stuffs and colors, she showed an absolute indifference in the matter of dress, resigning herself entirely to the hands of her maid; but this evening a new sentiment made her rouse herself, select herself the gown she wished to wear, and give an unusual attention to the arrangement of her hair. If Emilia had not been too proud and too reticent, even to herself, to analyze this sentiment, she might have discovered that it was an awakening of feminine coquetry which had been stifled for years the desire to look well in the eyes of a man who was interested in her. But Emilia was not given to self-introspection; she acted now simply on the impulse of the moment, and went down-stairs to the dining-room. Her husband was not at the table d'hôte. She ascertained it at a glance, as she looked down a row of familiar faces. She was late, her cousins and her aunt were already seated her aunt with her two dogs Reine and Duchesse, one on either side. They were charming dogs, silky, well-kept, well-behaved; but there were people in the hotel unfeeling enough to rejoice that the third dog, Marquise, had been left at a Pau hotel in charge of Lady Meriton's man. She and her maid had agreed between them that they could not manage more than Reine and Duchesse on their few days' excursion into the mountains; and though there had been a moment of grave deliberation as to whether it might not be worth while to bring the manservant also to attend upon Marquise, it had been decided finally to leave them both behind. But Lady Meriton was not at ease; she had constant words and thoughts to give to her absent favorite, and she was talking about her now when Emilia came in. "Poor Marquise will be so lonely," she was saying to Clarice, who sat next to her, and who was more sympathetic than Sophy, "I wish we could have brought her. Stevens is careful, I know, but I am not quite certain that he understands Marquise. It might have been better to leave Duchesse — only Duchesse cannot stand the heat, and Stevens could never have been trusted with Reine. On the whole, perhaps, we did what was best. Ah, Emilia, poor child, there you are and the soup has just been taken away. But we can have it brought back." Emilia, seated between her two cousins, found herself obliged to submit to all the attentions proper to the nervous headache she had thought of as a pretext for absence. Not that they supposed she had a headache; it was their way of showing sympathy the sympathy she deprecated for the mental discomfort they imagined her to be undergoing. Her aunt spoke to her softly, in carefully lowered tones; her cousin Sophy filled her glass with wine, her cousin Clarice offered her the use of her fan and smelling-bottle. Emilia, half amused, half exasperated, sat helpless through dinner; but as soon as they had gone up-stairs afterwards to their little salon, she took the matter into her own hands. "I met my husband to-day, Aunt Clarice," she said, "he is staying here." "So Clary told me, my dear," said her aunt in a tone of gentle compassion. "Well?" "That is all," said Emilia indifferently; and taking up a review, she checked all comment by setting herself to read. But she could not read. An unopened letter came continually between her and the page, a letter that lay awaiting her on her table up-stairs. She presently rose and, wishing her aunt and cousins goodnight, went up to her own room. She dismissed her maid at once, and wrapping herself in her long white dressing-gown, she began to pace her room with unquiet steps; she began to do what for three years she had shrunk from doing-she began to review her life. Emilia was not a woman to live alone; the whole course of her education had tended otherwise. She was cultivated without being learned, accomplished as girls with French nurses and German governesses and London masters, learn to be accomplished; she played and drew well, she spoke several languages fluently, she read all the new books and a good many old ones; but she was not self-sufficing, she had no independent ways; she was out of harmony with the ever-increasing rush of womankind along lonely, deviating paths. To travel about the world a solitary woman, or even accompanied by a maid, would have been wholly repugnant to her. She had no advanced views; a London house with social-science lectures, with philanthropic schemes, with coffee taverns and school-board meetings to fill her days, would have suited her hardly better than a life of lonely wandering. She was essentially a woman to be moulded to anything by the will of one for whom she greatly cared, to turn politician, secretary, diplomatist, nurse, camp-follower, to meet the needs of a husband whom she loved. Or to reverse the picture, in an atmosphere of praise and affection, as an adored and cherished wife, she would again have been in her element, and a hundred charms of tenderness and gracious ways would have blossomed in the friendly air. Left to herself, half of life would always be wanting. She had done what she thought best, when she left her husband six months after their marriage day. On a married brother, older than herself, and on his wife, she laid the blame of a marriage arranged for her and insisted on at a moment when her spirit was weakened, nearly broken by the desertion of a man she had loved. She had come to live with her |