had been cheated. I loved him, and clung to him long after I knew him to
be selfish and false and cruel. It seemed to be a part of my nature to
love him. My life was not the kind of life one reads of in novels. It was
no existence of splendour and luxury and riot, but one long struggle with
debt and difficulty. We lived abroad--not for our pleasure, but because
Mr. Kingdon could not venture to appear in England. His brother, Lord
Durnsville, had never promised to pay his debts. That was a falsehood
invented to deceive my sister. For seven long weary years I was his
slave, a true and faithful slave; his nurse in illness, his patient
drudge at all times. We had been wandering about France for two years,
when he brought me to Paris; and it was here he first began to neglect
me. O, if you could know the dreary days and nights I have spent at the
hotel on the other side of the river, where we lived, you would pity me."

"My dear love, my heart is all pity for you," said Gustave. "Do not tell
me any more. I can guess the end of the story. There came a day in which
neglect gave place to desertion."

"Yes; Mr. Kingdon left me one day without a warning word to break the
blow. I had been waiting and watching for him through two weary days and
nights, when there came a letter to tell me he was on his way to Vienna
with a West Indian gentleman and his daughter. He was to be married to
the daughter. It was his poverty, he told me, which compelled this step.
He advised me to go back to my friends in Yorkshire. To go back!--as if
he did not know that death would be easier to me. There was a small sum
of money in the letter, on which I have lived since that time. When you
first met me here, I had not long received that letter."

This was the end of her story. In the depth of her humiliation she dared
not lift her eyes to the face of her companion; but she felt his hand