of so terrible a step quite as plainly as I can show it you.  You would break the heart of your father, and send your mother to her grave;—­but it is not even on that that I may most insist.  It is this,—­that you would offend your God by the worst sin that a woman can commit, and cast yourself into a depth of infamy in which repentance before God is almost impossible, and from which escape before man is not permitted.

I do not believe it, my dearest, dearest child,—­my only living daughter; I do not believe what they have said to me.  But as a mother I have not dared to leave the slander unnoticed.  If you will write to me and say that it is not so, you will make me happy again, even though you should rebuke me for my suspicion.

   Believe that at all times, and under all circumstances, I
   am still your loving mother, as I was in other days.

   SUSAN GRANTLY.

We will now go back to Mr Palliser as he sat in his chambers at the Albany, thinking of his love.  The duke had cautioned him, and the duke’s agent had cautioned him; and he, in spite of his high feeling of independence, had almost been made to tremble.  All his thousands a year were in the balance, and perhaps everything on which depended his position before the world.  But, nevertheless, though he did tremble, he resolved to persevere.  Statistics were becoming dry to him, and love was very sweet.  Statistics, he thought, might be made as enchanting as ever, if only they could be mingled with love.  The mere idea of loving Lady Dumbello had seemed to give a salt to his life of which he did not now know how to rob himself.  It is true that he had not as yet enjoyed many of the absolute blessings of love, seeing that his conversations with Lady Dumbello had never been warmer than those which have been repeated in these pages; but his imagination had been at work; and now that Lady Dumbello was fully established at her house in Carlton Gardens, he was determined to declare his passion on the first convenient opportunity.  It was sufficiently manifest to him that the world expected him to do so, and that the world was already a little disposed to find fault with the slowness of his proceedings.

He had been once at Carlton Gardens since the season had commenced, and the lady had favoured him with her sweetest smile.  But he had only been half a minute alone with her, and during that half-minute had only time to remark that he supposed she would now remain in London for the season.

“Oh, yes,” she had answered, “we shall not leave till July.”  Nor could he leave till July, because of the exigencies of his statistics.  He therefore had before him two, if not three, clear months in which to manoeuvre, to declare his purposes, and prepare for the future events of his life.  As he resolved on a certain morning that he would say his first tender word to Lady Dumbello that very night, in the drawing-room of Lady de Courcy,