sorry for her in her heart, gave her permission to help in the additional labour of the house.

The servant was gone to bed, and Rose was sitting up by the kitchen fire, waiting to let in Grant, when Robert Waldron's low knock reached her ear. She was scarcely afraid of being recognised now; especially in the dim light kept burning in the entrance. Yet she crept slowly and tremblingly to the door, and paused with her fingers upon the handle before turning it. Who could it be on the other side? And what errand brought them there? It was not Grant, for he was to have tapped softly on the window, lest the patient should have fallen asleep. Her heart throbbed, and her lips felt dry. But she fancied the person outside was about to give a second knock, and she threw the door open quickly and fully.

For a minute or two Rose Morley and Robert Waldron stood face to face in silence, feeling as if they had met in another world. Yet it was the old place, the door she had opened to him so often, the threshold he had crossed with guilty feet. There was the difference only 'twixt now and then; but the wofulness of the change was in Rose. He stood there, still handsome, almost

young, with the air and mien of a man with whom all the world was pleased; and she confronted him, motionless, nearly lifeless, a faded withered woman, bowed down with the world's censure. He closed his eyelids as if to shut out a vision so repugnant to him; but Rose, with eyes that would not blench, gazed steadfastly and mournfully into his face.

"Hush!" she whispered, in a guilty tone, and with a gesture of silence, such as she might have used in the former days, "he is sleeping perhaps. Follow me softly. There is nobody to see you."

He would have given worlds to escape from this interview, yet he had no power to resist. He followed her reluctantly, watching her now with keen eyes, which would not allow him to pass over any change in her. It was the same Rose, but with no more bloom or sweetness. The poor emaciated hand was trembling, the face was marked and sallow, the slender and graceful figure meagre and bent. Her eyes only were the eyes of Rose, though their deep blue was troubled with shame. She was leading him through the house, and across the court, when the flame of the candle she carried

flickered in the wind; he could see how transparent her hand was as she curved it round the flame. Where could she be taking him? He climbed a steep staircase after her, and the light fell upon the swarthy leaves of ivy about the door; and then he remembered the melancholy little room opposite Hester's window, which had once oppressed and fascinated his attention. Had Rose been in the house at the time when John Morley nearly murdered him? Was it possible that she had even then been concealed so near to him, in a refuge of which he could never have dreamed?

This refuge was a mere, bare, comfortless cell in his eyes. The poor pieces of furniture, provided by Hester with so much difficulty, looked mean and scanty. The two chairs, the table, the pallet-bed, a book or two upon the narrow window-sill, a basket of work, this was all the room contained. The walls were dark with smoke, and the low roof was not ceiled. There was not a loft over the stables at Aston Court which was not better fitted for a human dwelling than this. Yet this was the poor shelter to which Rose Morley had been brought-by him. He had not spoken yet; he could not speak.

Could this monstrous dream be by any chance a reality? His conscience also was so diligently at work among the records of the past, turning back to old leaves which had long since been pressed down, that he was unconscious of his own dumbness before this awful apparition of his first love. If she had kept silence, he would have sat mute for hours, gazing at her in blank bewilderment.

"You have found me out," she murmured at last, in a voice of fear, "and there is no help for me but to throw myself upon your mercy. Do not drive me from here; do not betray me. Nobody knows I am here, except Hester and Carl Bramwell. If If you ever had any love for me, leave me here in peace."

"Here!" he repeated, casting round the place a glance of disgust.

"Yes, here," she added, vehemently. "Why, it is a hundred times better than the place to which I might have fallen through you. Do you know who has saved me and gives me now this refuge? It is Hester. But for the remembrance of her, the good little child I had forsaken, I might have fallen lower than I did. I owe all to Hester, my little Hetty."

Her voice, broken and trembling, fell into sobs, until she could speak no more. The name of Hester brought Robert back to the present, and his deep absorbing love for her, so widely different to his fitful and poisoned passion for Rose. What influence had her presence there upon Hester with regard to

him?

"How long have you been here?" he asked, in lowered tones, as if afraid of being overheard. "I have sought for you everywhere. I could not endure to think of you in poverty, without a home, and without friends. Why did you never let me know where you were? It was cruel to me."

Still thinking of himself, he asked this last question in a tone of so much tenderness, that Rose trembled and flushed a little. A last gleam of the good-tempered vanity of her girlish days flashed across her saddened heart.

Why have you never married, Robert?" she asked. "I could have been happier and more contented if you had been married. Have you never loved any one" but me? she would have added, but her lips only moved, no sound came through them.