"There--don't you come.

I Can look after myself." He went, and Mrs.Boyce remained alone in the great fire-lit room.

She put her hands on the mantelpiece, and dropped her head upon them, and so stood silent for long.

There was no sound audible in the room, or from the house outside.

And in the silence a proud and broken heart once more nerved itself to an endurance that brought it peace with neither man nor God.
* * * * * "I shall go, for all our sakes," thought Marcella, as she stood late that night brushing her hair before her dimly-lighted and rickety dressing-table.