By Berwen Banks

"It's only a mile, and I thought you would like a walk, so I have told

the boy to fetch your luggage in the donkey cart."

"A walk will be very acceptable after sitting all day cooped up in a

railway-carriage."

"Well, now, tell me all about your wife. You know I have heard nothing

since that one letter you wrote after you turned up again. What

adventures you have had, my dear fellow! and wasn't Valmai overjoyed to

see you back again?"

"No, Ellis, and that is all I can say to you now. It is a long story,

and I would rather wait until later in the evening."

"All right, old fellow, in the smoking-room to-night."

And in the smoking-room that night they sat late, Cardo opening his

heart to his friend, recounting to him the tale of his unfortunate

illness in Australia, his return home, and the unexpected blow of

Valmai's unrelenting anger and changed feelings towards him,

culminating in her utter rejection of him, and refusal to live with him.

"Astounding!" said Gwynne Ellis, "I will not believe it. It is a moral

impossibility that that loving nature and candid mind, could ever so

change in their characteristics, as to refuse to listen to reason, and

that from the lips of one whom she loved so passionately, as she did

you."

"That is my feeling," said Cardo, "but alas! I have her own words to

assure me of the bitter truth. 'If I ever loved you,' she said, 'I

have ceased to do so, and I feel no more love for you now, than I do

for yonder ploughman.' In fact, Ellis, I could not realise while I was

speaking to her that she was the same girl. It was Valmai's lovely

outward form, indeed, but the spirit within her seemed changed. Are

such things possible?"

Ellis puffed away in silence for some seconds before he replied: "Anything--everything is possible now-a-days; there is such a thing as

hypnotism, thought transference--obsession--what will you? And any of

these things I will believe sooner, than that Valmai Wynne can have

changed. Cheer up, old fellow! I was born to pilot you through your

love affairs, and now here's a step towards it." And from a drawer in

his escritoire he drew out an ordnance map of the county of Monmouth.

"Now, let me see, where lies this wonderful place, Carne Hall, did you

call it? I thought so; here it is within two miles of my new church.

In a month I shall be installed into that 'living,' and my first duty

when I get there shall be to find out your wife, Cardo, and to set you

right in her estimation."

"Never," said Cardo; "she has encased herself in armour of cold and

haughty reserve, which not even your persuasive and cordial manners

will break through."