CHAPTER XIV.

CHANGES-AND REVELATIONS.

TEN years! We were married ten years. What had happened to the other persons who had played a part in this history in those ten years.

My cousin Mountiford went to India with his regiment shortly after my marriage; he stayed there seven years and married the daughter of a rich indigo planter; his father died, and he returned home and left the army and has lived at Crawdour Hall since. He comes to see me when he comes to London, and brings his wife too. She is older than he is, and rather plain, but a quiet gentle woman. He is very polite and respectful -for him-to her; and she seems very fond of him, but not very happy. They have no children; he might be more than polite and

respectful to her, I fancy, if they had; and she

would look happier.

friendly to Philip, and

He is always very

Philip gets every year more friendly to him. Lady Crawdour,-old Lady Crawdour now,-lives with them at the Hall. I rather pity Mountiford's wife for this, too; but I think she makes a more amiable daughter-in-law than I should have done.

Mr. Duchesne had to leave Texton; to which Lord Texworth however did not return himself, but put it under the charge of a housekeeper, who keeps it all in order against any time that he may choose to come. Having satisfied Mr. Duchesne's lawyer of his existence, he returned to the Continent, where he will remain, Mr. Bright says, he thinks always; where on the Continent, Mr. Bright does not tell people definitely.

Miss Duchesne married Lord John Randolph, who spent as much of her fortune as he could get at, and then treated her so cruelly that

she had to return to her father, who had married also, a rather passée beauty of noble birth but most impoverished fortune. But Mr. Duchesne did not prove quite as complaisant a husband as from the difference in their rank, years, and personal appearance she had expected he would. Notwithstanding all his fine promises to me, he did consider there was to be some limit to the expenditure of his cash in fine clothes, jewels, equipages, entertainments, etc. And he showed no sort of generosity at all in another matter, that of lovers. He set his face against them,decidedly against them,-which his wife didn't. Particularly he set it against one, whom particularly she didn't. An old lover, that is, a lover of her unmarried days, but not old in years. Mr. Duchesne employed detectives both professional and amateur; amongst the latter a waiting-maid, who developed an especial genius for espionage; a footman of

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no mean talents in that line, and a Machiavellian page. The Lord Chief Justice Wilde,-God help the Lord Chief Justice Wilde, heard it all, and set Mr. Duchesne free to marry again; but people say that he does not show any particular inclination to try the experiment a third time.

Bobbie

The Thayers are at Crawdour still. was got into Christ's Hospital, by Mr. Stillington; and once a month Philip and I immolated ourselves by having him to spend his holiday with us. Now he has been taken into the office, and we are afflicted with him every alternate Sunday at dinner. Sarah is married to Joe Todd: Mrs. Lukins went to the church to see the ceremony, and went into hysterics of spite, in the porch, at its conclusion.

And Dr. Jones married Polly Bright. Augusta still stands "on the bridge at midnight." Julia Grace, it is thought likely, will be married yet to her father's partner, who has

been paying his attentions to her for about

eleven years.

"Philip, don't you think Mr. Stillington looks very ill ?"

"Well, he is not what he used to be, certainly; but he says there is nothing the matter with him."

"I don't believe him; and I don't believe that he thinks so himself. He looks shockingly ill; he eats hardly anything. And when he sinks back in that chair in the evening, he seems as if he would never have strength to rise out of it again."

"He is up to no work at all, I know," said Philip. "He comes just as usual; but when he has looked over a few letters, he sinks back, as you say, in his chair, and stays there for the day, mostly. But I don't see anything he can do."

"I wish he would come and live with us. He does not mind the children, and he could