be more careful in future."

Helen's face fell. Accustomed as she was to her stepmother's constant fault finding, to be reproved in this fashion and sent to bed like a baby before Cousin Mary stung her into fresh rebellion.

"It is still only a quarter to eight," she said, glancing at the clock. "Why should I go to bed before my usual hour? I have done nothing wrong. I couldn't help knocking up against you just now."

"Helen"—and for once the colonel's tone was really stern, for the insolence of his daughter's tone angered him. "Helen, how dare you speak in that way to your mother? Go to bed instantly, and don't let me see you again until you are ready to apologize."

For a moment Helen stood transfixed. Never in all her life had her father spoken to her so before. Every vestige of colour left her face; her white lips just moved, but no words came. Then she turned round and walked quietly out of the room, forgetting even to slam the door behind her.

"I suppose that we have to thank you for being spared a scene, Mary," said Mrs. Desmond as she sank into her chair with a deep sigh.

"I'm afraid that Helen is too much for Margaret," observed the colonel, addressing his visitor, but looking anxiously at his wife.

"Why don't you send her to a good school then?" asked the former briskly. "It's a lonely life for her here, poor child!"

"Because, Mary," interposed Mrs. Desmond, "I do not approve of a school training for girls; and I shall never shirk a duty that I have undertaken for my dear husband's sake, however painful and wearing it may be."

The colonel pressed his wife's hand, while Miss Macleod went on:

"And yet in this case a school training might be the best. Probably the child is too much alone and needs young society."

"Nonsense, Mary! Was not I brought up alone in this very house? Helen has many more indulgences than I ever had, and yet I was always happy and contented."

"But I should say, Margaret, that your disposition and Helen's are totally different. I can remember you a prim little girl sitting up in your high chair working your sampler or repeating Watt's hymns. And do you recollect your horror when I once went out of doors while I was putting on my gloves and afterwards proposed to race round the square? Ladies never did such things, you said. Now I have a suspicion that Helen might be very easily induced to race anybody along Regent Street."

The colonel smiled. There was a time when he used to boast of his little girl's high spirits and untamed ways.

"She has—" he began, but his wife interposed:

"I remember you, Mary, as a regular hoyden," she observed, and was about to go on when the announcement of dinner put an end to the conversation.

Mrs. Desmond could be a very pleasant companion when she chose, and upon this occasion she did choose, being anxious not only to obliterate from her husband's mind the painful impression caused by Helen's conduct, but also to convince her cousin that her marriage was an entirely happy one. Dinner was excellent and daintily served. In the evening an old friend of the colonel's dropped in, and there was plenty of bright talk. Colonel Desmond seemed profoundly contented, and his wife scarcely less so. Only Cousin Mary's thoughts wandered sometimes away from the cheerful voices and the pretty drawing-room, with its bright lights and fragrant flowers, to a small darkened chamber somewhere overhead, where she suspected that a forlorn little figure might be tossing restlessly and a young soul hardening for want of the love that is its right.

"Poor young thing!" thought Cousin Mary, longing in her eager way to run to the rescue, and yet knowing that she must bide her time if she would not make bad worse. But, thinking thus, the softness of her cousin's manner and the ancient endearments that passed between husband and wife had rather an irritating effect upon her. Once or twice there was a sharpness in her speech that a little astonished the good colonel.

"I expected from what I heard to find your cousin a charming woman," he said when he and his wife were alone together. "She has a pleasant enough face, but rather a sharp tongue, hasn't she?"

"Poor Mary!" laughed Mrs. Desmond softly. "She is a good soul at heart. A little hard, no doubt, but she has many excellent points."

Next day, although none of the usual noisy tokens of Helen's presence in the house were lacking, neither she nor her governess appeared at luncheon. Cousin Mary judged it wiser to ask no questions, but she sat in the drawing-room long after Mrs. Desmond disappeared to dress for that evening's dinner-party, hoping to catch a glimpse of the young culprit. But although she allowed herself only ten minutes for dressing, and was obliged in consequence to put on her plainest gown in place of the more elaborate one she had proposed wearing, she caught never a glimpse of Helen. Just, however, as she was closing her bed-room door behind her she heard her name called.

"Cousin Mary!"

The voice came in an eager whisper from the landing above.

"Cousin Mary, do just wait one minute."

"I'll wait five if you like, although I'm a wee bit late."

There was a rush down the stairs.

"O!" cried Helen, "please don't speak so loud. The old cat will hear if you do. The old cat is her maid. She is always trying what she can find out. The servants—but, O! I didn't come to say this. Look here! I know there was going to be a dinner party to-night, and I knew that she would have flowers, and I was determined that you should have some too. So I ran away from old Walker this afternoon. I gave her such a fright you should have seen her face. And I bought these."

As Helen, breathless and triumphant, finished speaking, she placed a bunch of lilies of the valley in Cousin Mary's hand.

"My dear child! I scarcely know what to say. O, yes! of course I will wear them," in answer to a blank look of dismay on Helen's face. "I thank you, dear, indeed I do. But, O! Helen, why did you do wrong for me? And, dear child, I have missed you all day."

Helen's face hardened.

"Has she been setting you against me too?"

"Helen, I can't stop now. I promise to wear your flowers and to think of you all the evening. Will you promise me something?"

"If I can."

"Will you try to put all unkind and ungenerous thoughts out of your head until I can see you again?"

"I don't know what you mean by ungenerous. Other people—"

There was a step on the stairs. Helen flew away, and Cousin Mary, going her way down, nearly fell into the arms of Mrs. Desmond's maid.

"I was coming up, miss, to see if I could assist you," said that individual demurely.

Cousin Mary put her aside rather coldly and proceeded to the drawing-room, where the guests were already gathered, and where Mrs. Desmond glanced at her cousin with some displeasure. This was occasioned not only by the lateness of Miss Macleod's arrival, but by the plainness of her attire, which, in Mrs. Desmond's opinion, was emphasized by a great bunch of lilies of the valley pinned carelessly in the front of her bodice without any attempt at arrangement, and looking, as that lady afterwards said, as if they had just come from the nearest greengrocer—a guess that came considerably nearer to the truth than most guesses do.

Dinner was a long and rather tedious affair. Cousin Mary's neighbours were not particularly entertaining, and although she tried to exert herself to talk her thoughts wandered constantly to the lonely child upstairs. In the drawing-room matters were still worse. Most of the ladies present were known to each other, and their small gossip sounded quite meaningless to an utter stranger like Miss Macleod. Mrs. Desmond, who, to do her justice, was never negligent of her duties as a hostess, noticed her cousin's abstraction, and tried more than once to draw her into the conversation, but without much success. When the gentlemen appeared there was a little very indifferent