threshold. A peculiar, sweet, half melancholy smile gave a strange dignity for the moment to Mr. Money's somewhat rough face, and he gently let the curtain fall.

"Wasn't there some great person, Mr. Heron—Burke, was it?—who used to say that whatever troubles he had outside all ceased as he stood at his own door? Well, I always feel like that when I lift this curtain."

It was a pretty sight, as he again raised the curtain and led Heron in. The drawing-room was very large, and was richly, and, as it seemed to Heron, somewhat oddly furnished. The light in the lower part was faint and dim, a sort of yellowish twilight, procured by softened lamps. The upper extremity was steeped in a far brighter light, and displayed to Heron, almost as on a stage, a little group of women, among whom his quick eye at once saw the girl who had come up to the door at the same time with him. She was, indeed, a very conspicuous figure, for she was seated on a sofa, and one girl sat at her feet, while another stood at the arm of the sofa and bent over her. An elderly lady, with voluminous draperies that floated over the floor, was reclining on a low arm-chair, with her profile turned to Heron. On a fancy table near, a silver tea-tray glittered. A daintily dressed waiting-maid was serving tea.

"Take care of the floors as you come along," said Money. "We like to put rugs, and rolls of carpet, and stools now in all sorts of wrong places, to trip people up. That shows how artistic we are! Theresa, dear, this is my friend, Mr. Heron."

"I am glad to see you, Mr. Heron," said a full, deep, melancholy voice, and a tall, slender lady partly rose from her chair, then sank again amid her draperies, bowed a head topped by a tiny lace cap, and held out to Heron a thin hand covered with rings, and having such bracelets and dependent chainlets that when Heron gave it even the gentlest pressure, they rattled like the manacles of a captive.

"We saw you in Paris, Mr. Heron," the lady graciously said, "but I think you hardly saw us."

"These are my daughters, Mr. Heron, Theresa and Lucy. I think them good girls, though full of nonsense," said Mr. Money.

Lucy, who had been on a footstool at Miss Grey's feet, gathered herself up, blushing. She was a pretty girl, with brown, frizzy hair, and wore a dress which fitted her so closely from neck to hip that she might really have been, to all seeming, melted or moulded into it. The other young lady, Theresa, slightly and gravely inclined her head to Mr. Heron, who at once thought the whole group most delightful and beautiful, and found his breast filled with a new pride in the loved old England that produced such homes and furnished them with such women.

"Dear, darling papa," exclaimed the enthusiastic little Lucy, swooping at her father, and throwing both arms round his neck, "we have had such a joy to-day, such a surprise! Don't you see anybody here? Oh, come now, do use your eyes."

"I see a young lady whom I have not yet the pleasure of knowing, but whom I hope you will help me to know, Lucelet."

Mr. Money turned to Miss Grey with his genial smile. She rose from the sofa and bowed and waited. She did not as yet quite understand the Money family, and was not sure whether she ought to like them or not. They impressed her at first as being far too rich for her taste, and odd and affected, and she hated affectation.

"But this is Nola Grey, papa—my dearest old schoolfellow when I was at Keeton; you must have heard me talk of Nola Grey a thousand times."

So she dragged her papa up to Nola Grey, whose color grew a little at this tempestuous kind of welcome.

"Dare say I did, Lucelet, but Miss Grey, I am sure will excuse me if I have forgotten; I am very glad to see you, Miss Grey—glad to see any friend of Lucelet's. So you come from Keeton? That's another reason why I should be glad to see you, for I just now want to ask a question or two about Keeton. Sit down."

Miss Grey allowed herself to be led to a sofa a little distance from where she had been sitting. Mr. Money sat beside her.

"Now, Lucelet, I want to ask Miss Grey a sensible question or two, which I don't think you would care twopence about. Just you go and help our two Theresas to talk to Mr. Heron."

"But, papa darling, Miss Grey won't care about what you call sensible subjects any more than I. She won't know anything about them."

"Yes, dear, she will; look at her forehead."

"Oh, I have looked at it! Isn't it beautiful?"

"I didn't mean that," Mr. Money said with a smile; "I meant that it looked sensible and thoughtful. Now, go away, Lucelet, like a dear little girl."

Miss Grey sat quietly through all this. She was not in the least offended. Mr. Money seemed to her to be just what a man ought to be—uncouth, rough, and domineering. She was amused meanwhile to observe the kind of devotion and enthusiasm with which Mr. Heron was entering into conversation with Mrs. Money and her elder daughter. That, too, was just what a man ought to be—a young man—silly in his devotion to women, unless, perhaps, where the devotion was to be accounted for otherwise than by silliness, as in a case like the present, where the unmarried women might be presumed to have large fortunes. So Miss Grey liked the whole scene. It was as good as a play to her, especially as good as a play which confirms all one's own theories of life.

"England, Mr. Heron," said Mrs. Money in her melancholy voice, "is near her fall."

"Oh, Mrs. Money, pray pardon me—England! you amaze me—I am surprised—do forgive me—to hear an Englishwoman say so; our England with her glorious destiny!" The young man blushed and grew confused. One might have thought his mother had been called in question or his sweetheart.

Mrs. Money shook her head and twirled one of her bracelets.

"She is near her fall, Mr. Heron! You cannot know. You have lived far away, and do not see what we see. She has proved faithless to her mission."

"Something—yes—there I agree," Mr. Heron eagerly interposed, thinking of the St. Xavier's settlements.

"She was the cradle of freedom," Mrs. Money went on. "She ought to have been always its nursery and home. What have we now, Mr. Heron? A people absolutely in servitude, the principle of caste everywhere triumphant—corruption in the aristocracy—corruption in the city. No man now dares to serve his country except at the penalty of suffering the blackest ingratitude!"

Mr. Heron was startled. He did not know that Mrs. Money was arguing only from the assumption that her husband was a very great man, who would have done wonderful things for England if a perverse and base ruling class had not thwarted him, and treated him badly.

"England," Theresa Money said, smiling sweetly, but with a suffusion of melancholy, "can hardly be regenerated until she is once more dipped in the holy well."

"You see we all think differently, Mr. Heron," said the eager Lucy. "Mamma thinks we want a republic. Tessy is a saint, and would like to see roadside shrines."

"And you?" Heron asked, pleased with the girl's bright eyes and winning ways.

"Oh—I only believe in the regeneration of England through the renaissance of art. So we all have our different theories, you see, but we all agree to differ, and we don't quarrel much. Papa laughs at us all when he has time. But just now I am taken up with Nola Grey. If I were a man, I should make an idol of her. That lovely, statuesque face, that figure—like the Diana of the Louvre!"

Mr. Heron looked and admired, but one person's raptures about man or woman seldom awaken corresponding raptures in impartial breasts. He saw, however, a handsome, ladylike girl, who conveyed to him a sort of chilling impression.

"She was my schoolfellow at Keeton," Lucy went on, "and she was so good and clever that I adored her then, and I do now again. She has come to London to live alone, and I am sure she must have some strange and romantic story."

Meanwhile