minate way, was sensible of it. Her rooms were precisely as she left them, but she had outgrown all their belongings. She wondered she had ever cared for the books on the shelves. The pretty furniture appeared childish in its taste, and paltry in its quality, after the splendor of her apartments in Aske Hall. She could not help a feeling of contempt for the mementos of the very days that in her memory had been bathed in a rosy light.
So that in the earliest hours of her wicked desertion from duty, she felt that she had made a grave mistake. But alas, alas, how hard are the backward steps to a forsaken home! And after her father's open defiance of Aske, the road seemed barred to her. She was powerless to struggle against the forces, internal and external, that bound her to her transgression. Then she made an effort to resume her old place in Burley House, and among the society which she had been wont to gather there. But she was no longer a bright young girl surrounded by lovers, with the glory of a high social position before her. She was a deserted wife, with a shadow upon her name.
In the heyday of her youth and beauty and
