impossible for her to pick it out, or resent it, or do anything but declare her willingness to help her husband by any means in her power.

"Why, my dear girl, it is as much for your sake as for mine! And as to the necessity for it, I must tell you what Minnie Bodkin said to me to-day. Minnie is an excellent creature, full of friendly feeling—a little too conceited and fond of lecturing" (Castalia's face brightened); "but much must be excused to an afflicted invalid, who never meets her fellow-creatures on equal terms."

Castalia looked almost happy. But she said, "As to her affliction, it seems to me that she has been growing much stronger lately."

"Yes; I am glad to think so too. But let the best happen that can be hoped—let the disease, that has kept her helpless on her couch all these years, be overcome—still she must always be so lame as to make her an object of pity."

"Poor thing! I daresay it does warp her mind a good deal. What did she say to you?"

Algernon recapitulated a part of Minnie's warnings, but gave them such a turn as to make it appear that the greatest wrath and impatience of the Whitford tradesmen were directed against his wife. "They have a narrow kind of provincial prejudice against you, Cassy, on account of your being a 'London fine lady.' Me they know; and, in their great condescension, are pleased to approve of."

"Oh, everybody likes you better than me, of course," answered Castalia, simply. "But I don't care for that, if you will only like me better than anybody."

The genuine devotion with which this was said would have touched most men. It might have touched Algernon, had he not been too much engrossed in mentally composing the rough draft of Castalia's letter to her uncle, and putting his not inconsiderable powers of plausible persuasion to the task of making it appear that his wife's personal extravagance was the chief cause of their need for ready money.

"Don't tell him that I even know of your writing. My lord will be more willing to come down handsomely if he thinks it's for you only, Cassy," said Algernon, as he drew up his wife's writing-table for her, placed a chair, opened her inkstand, and performed several little acts of attention with a really charming grace and gallantry.

So Castalia, writing almost literally what her husband dictated—(although he kept saying at every sentence, "My dear child, you ought to know best how to address your uncle;" "Well, I really don't know, but I think you might put it thus;" and so forth)—completed an appeal to Lord Seely to anticipate by nearly a quarter the allowance he continued to make her for her dress out of his private purse, and, if possible, to increase its amount.

One such appeal had already been made and responded to by a gift of money. It had been made immediately after the arrival of the newly-married couple in Whitford, on the ground of the unforeseen expenses attendant on installing themselves in their new habitation. In answering it Lord Seely had written kindly, but with evident disapproval of the step that had been taken. "I cannot, Castalia," he said, "bid you keep anything secret from your husband, and yet I can scarcely help saying that I wish he did not know of the cheque I inclose. I fear he is disposed to be reckless in money matters; and nothing encourages such a disposition more than the idea that aid can be had from friends for the asking. Ancram will recollect a serious conversation I had with him the evening before your marriage, and I can only now reiterate what I then assured him of—that it will be impossible for me to repeat the assistance I gave him on that occasion."

"What assistance was that, Ancram?" asked Castalia, who knew not a word of the matter.

"Oh, I believe my lord made me the munificent present of two pair of breeches, and an old coat and waistcoat, or so."

"Made you a present of an old coat and breeches! What on earth do you mean?"

"I mean that he paid a twopenny outstanding tailor's bill for me. And he writes now as if he had conferred the most overwhelming obligation."

The fact was that Lord Seely had discharged a great number of Algernon's debts; all of them, as his lordship imagined. But there was clearly no need of troubling Castalia with these details.

When the letter was finished and sealed, Castalia still sat musingly tracing unmeaning figures with the point of her pen on the blotting-book. At length she said with some hesitation, "Ancram, how is it that we spend so much money? I don't think I am very extravagant."

"'So much money!' Good Heavens, Castalia—but you really have no conception of these things. Our whole income, and twice our income, is a miserable pittance. The Dormers pay their butler more."

She was again silent for a little while. Then she said, "Isn't there anything we could do without?"

Her husband looked at her in astonishment. It was a quite unexpected suggestion on Castalia's part. "Could you be kind enough to point out anything?" he asked drily. She looked somewhat cast down by his tone, but answered, "There's that last case of wine from town—the Rhine wine. Don't you think we might send it back unopened, and do with a bottle of sherry, now and then, from the 'Blue Bell?' Your mother finds that very good."

"Pshaw!" with the accustomed sharp, impatient contempt. "My mother knows no more about wine than a baby. To drink bad wine is absolutely to poison oneself. I can't do it, and I don't mean to let you do it, either. And when one knows that it is only a question of a few months, more or less, and that directly I get a better berth these greedy rascals will be paid their extortionate bills in full—positively, Castalia, it seems to me childish to talk in that way!"

It was the same with one or two other suggestions of retrenchment she ventured to make. Algernon showed conclusively (conclusively enough to satisfy his hearer, at all events) that it would not do—that it would be absolutely imprudent, on their part, to make any open retrenchment. All these sharks would come round them at once, if they smelt poverty. "I know these gentry better than you do, Castalia," said he. "There is no way of getting on with them except by not being in a hurry to pay them. Nothing spoils tradespeople so much as any over-alacrity of that kind. They immediately conclude that you can't do without them!"

"Oh, they're disgustingly impudent creatures, these Whitford tradespeople! There is no doubt in the world about that," said Castalia, in perfect good faith. "Only I thought you seemed to be made uneasy by what Miss Bodkin said to you on the subject."

"To be sure! But, my dear girl, your method would never answer! I do want money, very badly. And I do hope and expect—as I think I have some right to do—that my lord will assist us without delay, and without making one of his intolerable prosy preachments on the occasion. And we must have a few pounds to go on with, and stop the mouths of these rapacious rascals. But no retrenchment, Castalia! No 'Blue Bell' sherry! Good Heavens, it makes one bilious to think of it! I really cannot sacrifice my digestion to advance the commercial prosperity of Whitford. And when one considers it, why should we destroy our peace of mind by worrying ourselves? Lord Seely has got us into this scrape, and Lord Seely must get us out of it. Voilà tout!"

After that the rest of the evening was spent very harmoniously. Algernon could not repress two or three prodigious yawns, but he politely concealed them. And when Castalia went to her pianoforte, he woke up at the conclusion of an intricate fantasia quite in time to thank her for the performance, and to praise its brilliancy. In a word, so agreeable an evening, Castalia told herself, she had not passed for many weeks, although it had certainly begun in an unpromising way. So softened was she, indeed, by this gleam of happiness, that several times she was on the point of making a confession to her husband, and entreating his forgiveness. But she could