Mary Anne gave up the child uncomplainingly, as meekly as she would have surrendered herself if the Captain had brought a masked executioner to her bedside, and had told her a block was prepared for her in the adjoining chamber. She had no idea of resistance to the will of her husband. She endured her existence for nearly five years after the birth of her child, and during those miserable years the one effort of her life was to secure the miserable stipend paid for the little girl's maintenance; but before the child's fifth birthday the mother faded off the face of the earth. She died in a miserable lodging not very far from Tulliver's-terrace, expiring in the arms of a landlady who had comforted her in her hour of need, as she had comforted the ruined gentleman. Captain Paget was a prisoner in Whitecross-street at the time of his wife's death, and was much surprised when he missed her morning visits, and the little luxuries she had been wont to bring him.

He had missed her for more than a week, and had written to her twice—rather angrily on the second occasion—when a rough unkempt boy in corduroy waited upon him in the dreary ward, where he and half a dozen other depressed and melancholy men sat at little tables writing letters, or pretending to read newspapers, and looking at one another furtively every now and then. There is no prisoner so distracted by his own cares that he will not find time to wonder what his neighbour is "in for."

The boy had received instructions to be careful how he imparted his dismal tidings to the "poor dear gentleman;" but the lad grew nervous and bewildered at sight of the Captain's fierce hook-nose and scrutinising gray eyes, and blurted out his news without any dismal note of warning.

"The lady died at two o'clock this morning, please, sir; and mother said I was to come and tell you, please, sir."

Captain Paget staggered under the blow.

"Good God!" he cried, as he dropped upon a rickety Windsor chair, that creaked under his weight; "and I did not even know that she was ill!"

Still less did he know that all her married life had been one long heart-sickness—one monotonous agony of remorse and shame.

Chapter III - "Heart Bare, Heart Hungry, Very Poor"

*

Diana Paget left the Kursaal, and walked slowly along the pretty rustic street; now dawdling before a little print-shop, whose contents she knew by heart, now looking back at the great windows of that temple of pleasure which she had just quitted.