CHAPTER VII .-- A SURPRISE AWAITS HER.
Feb.

5 .-- Writing has been absolutely impossible for a long while; but I now reach a stage at which it seems possible to jot down a line.
Caroline's recovery, extending over four months, has been very engrossing; at first slow, latterly rapid.

But a fearful complication of affairs attends it! O what a tangled web we weave When first we practise to deceive! Charles has written reproachfully to me from Venice, where he is.

He says how can he fulfil in the real what he has enacted in the counterfeit, while he still loves me?
Yet how, on the other hand, can he leave it unfulfilled?
All this time I have not told her, and up to this minute she believes that he has indeed taken her for better, for worse, till death them do part.

It is a harassing position for me, and all three.