The Story Continued by Marian Halcombe

had learnt to make for his sake. Oh! I hope he is never lonely enough and sad enough to think of me and see me as I have thought of him and see him !” As she said those melancholy words, all the lost tenderness returned to her voice, and all the lost beauty trembled back into her face. Her eyes rested as lovingly on the blighted, solitary, ill-omened view before us, as if they saw the friendly hills of Cumberland in the dim and threatening sky. “Don’t speak of Walter any more,” I said, as soon as I could control myself. “Oh, Laura, spare us both the wretchedness of talking of him now!” She roused herself, and looked at me tenderly. “I would rather be silent about him forever,” she answered, “than cause you a moment’s pain.” “It is in your interests,” I pleaded; “it is for your sake that I speak. If your husband heard you⁠—” “It would not surprise him if he did hear me.” She made that strange reply with a weary calmness and coldness. The change in her manner, when she gave the answer, startled me almost as much as the answer itself. “Not surprise him!” I repeated. “Laura! remember what you are saying⁠—you frighten me!” “It is true,” she said; “it is what I wanted to tell you today, when we were talking in your room. My only secret when I opened my heart to him at Limmeridge was a harmless