removed to his lodgings hard by. They met Arnold Brinkworth at the gate. He had, by his own desire, kept out of view among the crowd; and he decided on walking back by himself. The separation from Blanche had changed him in all his habits. He asked but two favours, during the interval which was to elapse before he saw his wife again to be allowed to bear it in his own way, and to be left alone.

Relieved of the oppression which had kept him silent while the race was in progress, Sir Patrick put a question to the surgeon as they drove home, which had been in his mind from the moment when Geoffrey had lost the day.

"I hardly understand the anxiety you showed about Delamayn," he said, "when you found that he had only fainted under the fatigue. Was it something more than a common fainting fit?"

"It is useless to conceal it now," replied Mr. Speedwell. "He has had a narrow escape from a paralytic stroke.'

"Was that what you dreaded, when you spoke to him at Windygates ?"

my

"That was what I saw in his face, when I gave him the warning. I was right, so far. I was wrong in estimate of the reserve of vital power left in him. When he dropped on the race-course, I firmly believed we should find him a dead man."

"Is it hereditary paralysis? His father's last illness was of that sort."

Mr. Speedwell smiled. "Hereditary paralysis?" he repeated. 'Why the man is (naturally) a phenomenon of health and strength-in the prime of his life. Hereditary paralysis might have found him out thirty years hence. His rowing and his running, for the last four years, are alone answerable for what has happened to-day."

Sir Patrick ventured on a suggestion.

"Surely," he said, "with your name to compel attention to it, you ought to make this public—as a warning to others ?"

"It would be quite useless. Delamayn is far from being the first man who has dropped at footracing, under the cruel stress laid on the vital organs. The public have a happy knack of forgetting these accidents. They would be quite satisfied, when they found the other man (who happens to have got through it) produced as a sufficient answer to me."

Anne Silvester's future was still dwelling on Sir Patrick's mind. His next inquiry related to the serious subject of Geoffrey's prospect of recovery, in the time to come.

"He will never recover," said Mr. Speedwell. Paralysis is hanging over him. How long he may live, it is impossible for me to say. Much depends on himself. In his condition, any new

imprudence, any violent emotion, may kill him at a moment's notice."

"If no accident happens," said Sir Patrick, "will he be sufficiently himself again to leave his bed, and go out ?"

"He has an appointment that I know of for Saturday next. Is it likely that he will be able to keep it ?"

"Quite likely."

Sir Patrick said no more.

Anne's face was be

fore him again, at the memorable moment when he had told her that she was Geoffrey's wife.

THE END OF THE THIRTEENTH SCENE.

Fourteenth Scene.

PORTLAND PLACE.

I

CHAPTER THE FIFTY-FIRST.

A SCOTCH MARRIAGE.

T was Saturday, the third of October-the day on which the assertion of Arnold's marriage to Anne Silvester was to be put

to the proof.

Towards two o'clock in the afternoon, Blanche and her stepmother entered the drawing-room of Lady Lundie's town-house in Portland Place.

Since the previous evening, the weather had altered for the worse. The rain, which had set in from an early hour that morning, still fell. Viewed from the drawing-room windows, the desolation of Portland Place in the dead season wore its aspect of deepest gloom. The dreary opposite houses were all shut up; the black mud was inches deep in the

roadway; the soot, floating in tiny black particles, mixed with the falling rain, and heightened the dirty obscurity of the rising mist. Foot-passengers and vehicles, succeeding each other at rare intervals, left great gaps of silence absolutely uninterrupted by sound. Even the grinders of organs were mute; and the wandering dogs of the street were too wet to bark. Looking back, from the view out of Lady Lundie's state windows to the view in Lady Lundie's state room, the melancholy that reigned without was more than matched by the melancholy that reigned within. The house had been shut up for the season: it had not been considered necessary, during its mistress's brief visit, to disturb the existing state of things. Coverings of dim brown hue shrouded the furniture. The chandeliers hung invisible in enormous bags. The silent clocks hybernated under extinguishers dropped over them two months since. The tables drawn up in corners-loaded with ornaments at other times-had nothing but pen, ink, and paper (suggestive of the coming proceedings) placed on them now. The smell of the house was musty; the voice of the house was still. One melancholy maid haunted the bedrooms upstairs, like a ghost. One melancholy man, appointed to admit the visitors, sat solitary in the lower regions—the last of the flunkies, mouldering in an extinct servants' hall. Not a word passed, in the drawing-room, between Lady