"I don't want to hear his name mentioned," interrupted Lucretia.

The mother strained her eyes at her daughter's face. She could find nothing to hint at insanity, not the dimmest monition of aberration. She was as she had always been, saving that now she had taken to herself a stateliness of demeanour, an importance and even pomp of bearing, lofty and victorious as though her soul was swelled with exultation over the issue of her extraordinary battle.

"Why did you go through the service, Lucretia?" asked the mother, seating herself.

"I felt the change coming over me whilst I was dressing," answered the young wife. "Mother, it was agony! I had not the courage to declare to myself I would not marry him. I ought to have had the courage. I can never live with him."

"But you'll wear his ring?"

"Oh yes. I don't mean to be faithless to myself. I know what I am, and how I intend to remain."

"How we shall be talked about !”

"What is the value of the opinion of a few handfuls of dust in skirts or frock-coats? I know that I have acted with sickening stupidity. But that is my concern, I am still queen of myself, and "-slowly and deliberately"I do not mean to live with Captain Reynolds."

A gleam of good sense at this moment irradiated the darksome cells of Mrs. Lane's brain. What could be more transparent than that her daughter was in no mood to be reasoned with? That the application of the remedial drug in her condition of mental sickness was certain to injure her and not benefit her? She might be managed with patience, she must be allowed time for reflection. You may soften a tough steak by

beating it, but you shall not mend a broken leg with a mustard leaf.

Mrs. Lane, influenced by good sense, quitted her daughter and went downstairs to find that five pounds' worth of refreshments had been left on her hands untasted by, God help her! the wedding guests.

NEXT

CHAPTER II

THE MEDICAL CERTIFICATE

EXT day, shortly after twelve, Captain Reynolds called at Chepstow Place. He was shown into the parlour, and Mrs. Lane speedily arrived. She was pale and agitated. When this poor woman's spirits were fluttered she could not keep her seat, but flitted about the table, lifting a pinch of her dress and pinning it to the table's side, so to speak, as though she would fasten herself securely.

"Well," said Captain Reynolds, with profound anxiety, "what does Creeshie say?"

"I am sorry to answer that she is as obstinate this morning as she was yesterday. Indeed she is firmer and harder. She will not listen to me. She declares, in the most imperious way, that she will not live with you."

Reynolds' face darkened as though to a sudden scowl of the sky. He held a stick in his right hand. He raised it to his left hand and broke it with an unconscious and obviously involuntary effort, looked at the pieces, and threw them into the grate. The strength of the stick, the ease with which it had been broken, the mood the action expressed, frightened Mrs. Lane, who pinned her pinch of gown to the edge of the table half a dozen times in as many seconds.

"Can you, as her mother, give me any idea why she will not live with me?" said Captain Reynolds.

"None-none whatever," answered Mrs. Lane, shaking her head.

"Has she explained her reasons for refusing?"

"No. She told me that the change came over her whilst she was dressing for the marriage. It worked in agony in her, but failed to give her resolution enough to decide not to go to church. All the rest of her words may be summed up in her one determined remark, 'I do not mean to live with him."

"

He put his hand in his pocket and pulled out an envelope containing perhaps half a dozen letters. He replaced the envelope without looking at its contents.

"I was reading them," he said, "last night. They are a few that I like to carry about with me. She calls me her darling, and tells me that she is mine. One letter, not a fortnight old "-he pressed his hand upon the pocket containing the envelope as though his heart, that beat close under, was paining him-" is full of love, of everything that a man could wish to read in a letter from a woman he is shortly to marry. What have I done to deserve this treatment? What have I been guilty of that she should take her love and her marriage vows away from me? Is she at home?" "Oh yes; but do

mother.

not attempt to see her," cried the

"But why not? Why mightn't the very sight of me induce a change in her, and bring about what you must wish, surely?

Again his brow was dark, as though his face was shadowed by a thunder squall in the sweep of the wind over a heaving deck at sea.

"She knows you were coming. see you she would have said so.

Had she wished to Her threat to poison

herself haunts me like a nightmare. I know she is in

that state of mind when she could commit some frightful, heart-breaking act if you attempted by roughness, or command, or any other manner you might adopt to bend her mind, which is now as rigid as that poker."

The little woman spoke with unusual energy. Conviction of the truth of her views compacted her reasoning faculties and supplied ideas and words to her tongue. "Will you go and tell her that I am here, that I wish to see her if only for five minutes," said Captain Reynolds.

"Oh yes; but I know what her answer will be," answered Mrs. Lane, moving to the door as though she was weary, and she went upstairs, whilst Captain Reynolds stood at the window, with his arms folded and his lips set, as though his teeth were clenched behind them.

Mrs. Lane was at least a quarter of an hour absent, and at every sound Captain Reynolds started, and looked, and listened. When at last the old lady returned, he stared beyond her, but she was alone. She began to pin her dress to the table as rapidly as her fingers could work, whilst she exclaimed

"I knew how it would be. She went to her bedroom and locked me up with her, and then turned me out and locked herself in again; and she swears that the thought of living with you is dreadful to her. She would rather die, and as I am sure she has poison hidden in her bedroom, she will kill herself if you persist."

She burst into tears.

"Good-bye, Mrs. Lane. I don't know when we shall meet again," said Captain Reynolds; and, taking his hat from a chair, he walked out of the house.

He repaired to the hotel at which he had slept, and