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After receiving his letter she had run over on what she had told herself was a vain chance Though angry enough when that letter first reached her, she had, with that force of character which marked her, declared to herself that such a resolution on his part was natural In ive up all his old allies, all his old haunts The whole world h of Englishwomen, to be sure that when her past life should be known, as it would be known, she would be avoided in England With all the little ridicule she ont to exercise in speaking of the old country there was ever mixed, as is so often the case in the minds of Alish excellence To have been allowed to forget the past and to live the life of an English lady would have been heaven to her But she, as sometimes scorned and sometimes feared in the eastern cities of her own country, whose name had become almost a proverb for violence out in the far West,--how could she dare to hope that her lot should be so changed for her?

She had reminded Paul that she had required to be asked often before she had consented to be his wife; but she did not tell him that that hesitation had arisen from her own conviction of her own unfitness But it had been so Circumstances had made her what she was Circumstances had been cruel to her But she could not now alter theradually, as she came to believe in his love, as she lost herself in love for hied She had, however, almost known that it could not be so But this man had relatives, had business, had property in her own country Though she could not be ht not a prosperous life be opened for him in the far West? Then had risen the offer of that journey to Mexico with ht detain him there for years With what joy would she have accompanied him as his wife! For that at any rate she would have been fit

She was conscious, perhaps too conscious, of her own beauty That at any rate, she felt, had not deserted her She was hardly aware that ti it And she knew herself to be clever, capable of causing happiness, and ood comrade--which are so much in a woether in some country in which those stories of her past life would be matter of indifference, could she not ive up everything and go away and spend his days in some half-barbarous country for her alone? She knew it all and was hardly angry with hiainst her But treated as she had been she ame with such weapons as she possessed It was consonant with her old character, it was consonant with her present plans that she should at any rate seery