a violent effort, and turning from her, said

calmly,

"That can affect me in no possible degree."

At that moment the door opened to admit Lady Margaret Annesley, and Ruth went forward to support her to her seat with an alacrity which testified to the mental relief her presence afforded. Her expectations deceived her however, for the old lady was scarcely seated and her salutations exchanged with Faul-conbridge, when she began to discuss the time and place of their nuptials with the heedless garrulity of old age. For she had been informed of the probability of the event by the dutiful affection of Ruth, who did not dream that, under any circumstances, the subject would have been alluded to in Faulconbridge's pre

sence.

Faulconbridge could not overlook the agony of shame and confusion the contre-temps inflict

ed, and after a few moments of polite attention, rose to take leave.

CHAPTER XVII.

"Oh grande!

Oh generosa! oh degna

Di mille imperi! ah quale eccesso è questo

D'inudita virtù !"

METASTASIO.

"I MUST not do it by halves," said Ruth when she had pondered for the hundredth time every expression of Faulconbridge, and three whole days of painful reflection had stamped both his words and manner indelibly upon her memory. "I must not leave one doubt of my decision on his mind, and I will not dare to

trust again my calmness to his entreaties. His proud integrity will continually oppose itself to my endeavours. It must be so. Did he not swear to his own banishment if I refused his vows upon such grounds. That cruel proviso ! But let me not falter. Other grounds must not be withheld. If the sacrifice would be effective it must be complete."

She shuddered vehemently as she contemplated the further effort of that sacrifice, and for the first time, her features bore the impress of an anguish that was overwhelming.

"I had hoped this last, and oh! how infinitely the greatest!-trial might have been spared me," said she; "I trusted that to resign my own happiness would have sufficed; that, at least, I should not have been required to immolate myself upon the altar of a sterner woe. Thou, kind Heaven, hast ordered it otherwise;

confirm thine own decree by deigning also strength for its performance." She flung her folded arms upon the table, and wept with an utter self-abandonment which seemed the opening of the flood-gates of a sorrow that was to last through time. She buried her face upon her arms, and the struggling sighs that rent her heart, seemed to carry with them all the pentup agony which her self-command had so long restrained. Her multiplying trials, like the fabled Titans, rose the fiercer and more revolting after each defeat, and she asked herself what folly had led her to account that a suffering, in comparison of which the misery that lay before her, was as the storm to the summer breeze.

Ruth seated herself once more to her desk; that desk which of late had furnished so many a record of pain and heroism; but the expression of face, with which she now addressed herself