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"I understood you to say there was no hope!" interrupted Mrs

Aylett

"So Dr Ritchie declares But I cannot bear to believe it!"

She pressed her fingers upon her eyeballs as if she would exclude

some horrid vision

"My dear sister! your nerves have been cruelly tried To- else--through a different

medium As for the object of your amiable pity, he is, without

doubt, some low, dissipated creature, of whom the world will be well

rid"

"I a like

refine about him in all his squalor and

unconsciousness I noticed his hands particularly They are slender

and long, and his features in youth and health ht the sa his absence to-night, as the fondest woret her husband's disappearance? And she rave!"

"I have lived in this wicked world longer than you have, my sweet

Mabel; so you must not quarrel with uileless heart," said Mrs Aylett, the

sinister shadow of aabout heras a pendant to your

crayon sketch of hood and desolation the probability that the