possible, and it would be absolutely necessary to account for it. Could she persuade him to stay in bed and feign illness, so that she might tend him for a time, alone, and then give out that pain of body, not of mind, had changed him so? It was a poor and shallow device enough, but, since no other chance presented itself, it seemed feasible.

"John, dear!" said she softly.

"I hear you," answered he, in as low a tone, but freighted with no tenderness, as hers was; not that it was unkind, but to her sensitive ear it suggested indifference-the knowledge that the worst has happened that can happen, and that there is no remedy-the indifference of despair. "What is it,

Maggie?"

"I wish to ask a favour of you."

A piteous moan broke from his lips.

"It is no question, John," continued she hastily. "Do not fear that I shall ask what it may pain you to reply to. If it is your good pleasure to be silent upon what occurred last night, I shall respect your silence. I need not tell you my own wishes upon that subject, for you must know them. It is something- and I thank you for it-that you do not attempt. to deceive me. You shall keep your secret-if needs must." Here her hand sought his, as though in ratification of that promise, and he carried it to his lips and kissed it—so cagerly, that if he had been her slave, and she some eastern tyrant who had granted to him, unasked, his forfeit life, he could not have shown a more reverent, nay, abject gratitude. "The favour I would beg of you, John, is simply that you will keep your bed this morning, or at least your room

"It is impossible!" interrupted he, in a hoarse whisper; "I dare not!"

"Dare not? Then there is danger in this matter, as I feared," thought Maggie. "He has been overpowered by villains, and only had his life spared upon condition that he

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should not breathe a word of their presence here last night. He has promised to go about his usual business, and comport himself in all things as though no such outrage had occurred. A wild and improbable idea, as she recognised it to be, even while she entertained it, but was not every circumstance about her become wild and dreamlike? That John had not asked the reason of her singular request was itself astounding, and only explicable on the ground that things much more singular as well as serious were filling his mind.

"Is it for fear of calling attention to what happened last night, John! I am asking for your own sake, be sure of that," added Maggie hastily, for a look of piteous pleading crossed his face, as though he would have reminded her of her promise, "that you would get up"

"Yes, yes; I must get up," interrupted he, like one talking to himself; "I must go to office; there must be nothing different to-day from what was yesterday."

"But there is something different, John-something very, very different."

She hesitated to tell him what had happened to him. An absurd story, that had once made her laugh at some old man, a friend of her father's, who had taken to a Welsh wig, came into her mind how everybody had stared, and jibed at him, and made him miserable, till at last he threw it into the fire, and went back to his grey hairs again,

"Different?" whispered her husband, holding his hands before him, and regarding them with great interest—an action which she had somewhere seen before. "I see nothing.".

"It is not in your hands, John, dear; it is in your faceyour hair, that has turned grey."

She had risen and brought a hand-glass, that he might convince himself of the truth of her statement; but he did not even look at it.

"Grey, am I?" said he. The simple faith with which he

accepted the astounding fact, since her words had spoken it, went to Maggie's heart. "Well, I am no worse for that. It proves nothing."

"Nay, dear, but it must needs excite attention-comment, and you know what a gossip Mrs Morden is. My notion is, that you should keep your room, and affect some sharp illness, so that the change should not seem so sudden, nor excite such wonder. If I could only get you away from Rosebank without being seen, then, after a week or two"

"Leave Rosebank?" exclaimed he vehemently, and rising from the pillow into a sitting posture, as though moved by an electric shock. "That would be madness."

"I know you have always an objection to leave home," continued Maggie quietly, and purposely ignoring his excitement; "and if that is insurmountable, the next best thing you can do is to feign illness in your own room. I will give orders to Mrs Morden that you are not to be disturbed, and will bring up your meals myself."

This arrangement of Maggie's was not so much agreed to by her husband as tacitly acquiesced in. Important as it evidently was, in his eyes, to keep matters quiet, and all things in their usual track, the plan to effect it had apparently no interest with him, while the singular transformation that had necessitated it seemed scarcely to have awakened his surprise. He lay mostly with closed eyes, as though the growing light annoyed them, without movement, and, unless addressed, in silence; while Maggie proceeded with her toilet, herself full of anxious thought. The necessity for action, however, brought her some relief; she had to make up her mind what to say to the housekeeper, and what to her father, regarding John's pretended illness, that should suggest its being serious, and at the same time exclude their presence from his bedside. To pronounce it to be contagious would, in their case, sho well knew, be no prohibition; and, moreover, it would neces

sitate calling in a doctor. She knew of no complaint—and, indeed, perhaps there was none-the effect of which was to "age" its victim, as last night's events had worked with John.

As she left the room, she stooped down unsought and kissed his forehead, an action rare with her, and which, yesterday, would have evoked his tenderest smile. He looked up, and tried to smile, as she had seen her father do during his late illness the very muscles, as in his case, seemed to refuse their office. But her husband's eyes told a different tale-it was not physical paralysis that forbade his smiling, but the burden of an intolerable woe that weighed him down, and which he would not suffer her to share. If she had been Richard's wife, she would have fallen on her knees, and besought his confidence, certain that, no matter what his gloom, she had the gift to brighten it; it might have been shame, or even crime, and yet she would not have despaired of giving him comfort; but in John's case, though there could be neither shame nor crime, she was doubtful of her powers. She could do only her loving duty to him, as best she might, another way.

CHAPTER XXVI.

DARK, WITHOUT DAWN.

As bent to keep what she knew of her husband's secret, as resolved not to question him upon that portion of it which she knew not, Maggie was careful to let fall no hint to Mrs Morden of having been disturbed upon the previous night. The housekeeper's first remark, when she was told that John was ill, was: "La! then Lucy was right, after all, when she woke me up with saying she was sure that somebody was moving about in the parlour. It was master, I suppose, after the brandy?" Maggie was about to assent when she was saved from the exposure of her own deceit by the old woman's garrulousness.

"But, lor' bless me, where are my wits gone to! I was thinking of the old master's time, when there was always a bottle of brandy in the cupboard. I forgot Master John was a teetotaler, and had bricked up the cellar."

"Yes; but he was in the parlour, for all that," observed Maggie quietly: "he found he couldn't sleep, and so went downstairs, and took up a book, to pass the time."

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Ay, and so caught cold, I'll warrant!" exclaimed the old woman scornfully; "a thing Mr Thurle never did in all his life. That's what comes of studying, as you might say, out of hours. And now I daresay he's feverish; and if he gets low, as is like enough, and wants support, how is he to get it, having taken that foolish pledge?"