towards Catherine?'

'When I left her she was beautiful,' was the reply; 'now she is'----

'You need not finish the sentence,' rejoined Mrs Hardman. 'I see it
all, and will urge you no further: our household's happiness is
wrecked.'

The sorrowing lady sought Catherine's chamber. She took her in her
arms, exclaiming, 'Catherine, we are women, but we must act like
men.' A flood of mingled tears relieved the dreadful emotions which
agitated the wretched pair. One moment's consideration showed them
the worst--a future of hopeless despair. Hardman's love _was_, then,
a mere fitful passion, lit up by Catherine's former surpassing
beauty.

Upon her face and form, with their matchless loveliness, his fancy
had fed since his banishment; his imagination, rather than his heart,
had kept her image constantly before him. But when he beheld her in
reality, so different from the being his memory-dreams had lingered
over, his passion received a sudden check. When he beheld her pallid
cheek, there was no heart-love to tell him it was grief for him which
had hollowed and blanched her beauteous face. His lightly-based
passion all but extinguished, instead of soothing the misfortune
which the ravages of disease had brought upon her, gradually became
colder and colder. In two months after his return the final blow was
struck, and Herbert Hardman became the husband of the Lady Elizabeth
Plympton!

From the day of the nuptials, Catherine Dodbury covered her face with