and looked after the younger ones, and gone to bed at ten o'clock, and never wanted change or excitement for years. I don't know—it seems as if it was not me, but somebody else, who passed such a calm and happy fortnight in that quiet old country house.

"But I woke up the first day Sir Henry came home. I was looking my best, and he took care I should know he thought so before he had been five minutes in the room. At dinner, too, he was perfectly odious, and the way he helped me to claret, after three hours' acquaintance, was an insult in itself. Can you believe the man wrote me a letter that very night, and had the effrontery to put it on my pincushion himself after I had gone down to breakfast? Such a letter! excusing the outrageous nature of the whole proceeding, and thus showing he knew perfectly well how badly he was behaving, on the score, if you please, of his age and experience in such matters! He had often fancied himself in love before, he said, but he now knew that he had met his fate for the first and last time. He should leave home, he protested, that same day, and unless I could give him some hope of toleration, if not of forgiveness, should probably never return, for he dreaded my displeasure more even than he loved the very ground I trod on, &c., &c. All in the worst and washiest style, as silly and vulgar as a Valentine! But he didn't leave home; for, to my dismay, he appeared at tea-time, on the best possible terms with himself, having been out all the morning with the Bragford hounds, and lunched, as he told us, in very charming society at the 'Peacock.'"

A Red Indian displays, I believe, wonderful fortitude and self-command under punishment, but a woman tortured by another woman far surpasses the savage in the calm hypocrisy with which she masks and subdues her pangs. Not a quiver in her voice, not a shadow on her face, betrayed more than natural curiosity, while Mrs. Lascelles inquired, in a tone of perfect unconcern:

"Do you remember, by chance, whether it was the day of the railway accident?"

The day of the railway accident was impressed on her memory, less indeed by the collision, which only damaged a few trucks in a goods-train, than by an interview she held with Sir Henry after luncheon, in which he had given her to understand, as distinctly as he could without saying it in so many words, that amongst all the women of the world there was but one for him, and her name was Rose Lascelles!

"I do remember something about a smash that same day at Bragford Station," answered Miss Ross, "and it seemed to me miraculous that nobody was hurt. I only saw it in the papers next morning, for Sir Henry never mentioned the subject—I suppose he was so full of other matters."

"What do you mean?" said Mrs. Lascelles, getting up to stir the fire, and so turning her face from her companion. "You think I am interested in Sir Henry Hallaton, and you have got something more to tell me about him. Frankly, I am interested—to a certain extent. Be as open with me as I am with you, and tell me all you know."

Miss Ross took the pug on her lap, settled herself in a comfortable attitude, and proceeded calmly with her narrative.

"That same evening, when the girls went to bed, Sir Henry detained me, almost by force, in the library. Without the slightest reserve or hesitation, he related all the particulars of his interview that afternoon with yourself. He assured me solemnly, that you were avowedly attached to him, and ready at any time to become his wife. He showed me a letter you wrote him, and a ring you had given him to keep."

"He took it to be mended!" interrupted the other, with great indignation. "I never gave it him—I insisted on having it back that very day."

"It wouldn't come off," proceeded Miss Ross, "for I own I was malicious enough to ask for it as a proof of his sincerity, and I couldn't help laughing while he tugged and tugged to get it over the joint of his little finger. Then he told me that he had thought of marrying only for the sake of his daughters; that he had looked about him for what the advertisements call 'a suitable person,' and had selected Mrs. Lascelles—I use his own words—as a lady-like woman, with a good fortune, not at all bad-looking, and thoroughly devoted to himself."

"Upon my word, I am very much obliged to him!" broke, in the other, with but little more vehemence, after all, than the occasion demanded. "The man has lied to you like a villain! and his lie is all the more cowardly that it has a certain leaven of truth. Engaged to him I never was; love him I never did; I might have liked him, perhaps, if I hadn't found him out in time, but there is no fear that I shall ever like him now!"

"All this fiction, then," continued Miss Ross, "served as a preamble for a proposal in form to the young lady who had entered his house as companion to his daughters, and whom he was bound, by every manly sentiment, to shelter and protect. I told him so, and he answered that he could in no way fulfil this duty so completely as by making me his wife. Then I laughed at him—I couldn't help it—and he looked so hurt and sad, for he's not a bad actor, that I almost pitied him for the moment, as you do pity people on the stage, though you know it's acting all the time. At last I got sleepy, and wanted to go to bed, so I determined to put him to a real test, knowing perfectly well what would be the result.

"I pretended to soften. I gave him my hand, no more, though he was an old player, and obviously accustomed to consider such concessions the preliminaries of a winning game. Then I told him he ought to know my history; that I had entered his house under false pretences; that long ago, and far away (this is true, Mrs. Lascelles, but let it never again be alluded to by you or me), I had loved and been deceived, and could never care for any one in that way again. Lastly, I reminded him of his children, his age (I couldn't resist that!) and his position, watching him very narrowly while I shammed a good cry, and sobbed out 'Sir Henry, I am not fit to be your wife.'

"Then I unmasked my man, just as I expected all along. His face brightened, he never dropped my hand, he looked pleased and altogether relieved, while he embarked on a long and fluent dissertation, in which he insisted on the advantages of a protector and a home, on his own merits, on my friendless position, and on the reparation I owed him for his resolution at once to break off with you. Not a word now about matrimony. Oh! I was never deceived in him from the beginning—not for a moment!

"I told him so. 'Do you think,' I said, 'after all I have gone through, after all I have confessed to you, that I have a spark of sentiment, an atom of romance left—that I would trust myself to the tender mercies of any man living, except as his wife?'

"He turned pale, walked to the fire, poked it furiously, and came back with his hands in his pockets glaring at me like a tiger. 'Then be my wife, Miss Ross!' he growled. 'You won't like it, but I'll do my best to make you happier than the others!' He was horridly put out, I saw, so I made him a curtsy, took my candlestick, and marched off to bed. I locked my door, you may be sure, and as he was off early next morning to pay a visit in the neighbourhood, he came and knocked several times to wish me 'Good-bye,' but I pretended to be asleep, and before he returned yesterday I was gone.

"Mrs. Lascelles, you are the only person who was ever good to me without a selfish motive. I have tried to repay you by putting you on your guard. I can begin my fight with the world where I left off—I rather like it. But think of me kindly sometimes, and try not to forget our drive in the dark to Midcombe Station. I must go now. I don't suppose we shall ever meet again!"

But she didn't go, notwithstanding, for Mrs. Lascelles had many more questions to ask, many more confidences to receive, all tending to the condemnation of her false adorer,