The Fault of One
Author: Rowlands, Effie Adelaide
Date: 2016-01-14T06:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Fiction
Description: Ebook prepared by crutledge@knology.net
Rights: Public Domain

TABLE of CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER IX

CHAPTER X

CHAPTER XI

CHAPTER XII

CHAPTER XIII

CHAPTER XIV

CHAPTER XV

CHAPTER XVI

CHAPTER XVII

CHAPTER XVIII

CHAPTER XIX

CHAPTER XX

CHAPTER XXI

CHAPTER XXII

CHAPTER I.

It was a glorious June afternoon, London was a blaze of sunshine and gorgeous colouring; the air was full of that indescribable essence of life, and the enjoyment of life, that is symbolical of the London season. Ascot was just over, and town was therefore more than usually full. In Piccadilly the block of traffic brought carriages, cabs,.carts, and omnibuses to a standstill some times for a quarter of an hour together. To an idle person this delay had its share of amusement, no doubt, more especially as the difficulty of locomotion had been made greater by the fact that the road had been taken up in the most crowded part of the thoroughfare, and in consequence provoked universal comment and grumbling.

The top of an omnibus is by no means the worst place in the. world to see the London streets; on a sunny afternoon in June it is decidedly pleasant up aloft, for if there be the faintest of faint breezes stirring the air, an “outside” passenger gets the benefit of it. On this particular afternoon the wind whispered occasionally through the hot sunshine in a soft fashion, and as the Park was neared it carried the fragrance of innumerable flowers on its wings. On the top of one of the Putney omnibuses a young man sat with his arms folded and his hat tilted a little over his eyes, looking straight ahead down the broad sunlit incline of Piccadilly. He was very, very grave; not even the humour of the ’bus driver, who flung cockney sarcasm generously at the local authorities in particular, and his colleagues in general, as his weighty vehicle was brought to anchor almost at every yard, could move George Thurso to a smile. The beauty of the day, the gaiety, the luxury of life that was spread about him, had no attraction for him. When a man has something bitter and sad in his heart, the sunshine is as night to him; the fragrance, the laughter, the enjoyment of a summer day, something that carries hurt, not pleasure.

He had put himself on the top of this particular ’bus in a fit of deepest depression. It was immaterial to him where he went—what he did. Fortune had ebbed down to its lowest with him. He had faced the fight bravely; against all sorts of odds he had struggled on, and now, when a final and unexpected blow had fallen, he felt suddenly as if he could struggle on no longer—as if life were for the moment done. He sat alone on the front seat of the omnibus. He gave no attention to others, and the last thought in his troubled mind would have been the idea that some one’s attention was drawn to him. Therefore it was with a great start—a start that brought a wave of colour for an instant into his pale, handsome face—that he felt the ’bus driver’s whip touch his arm.

“Beg parding, sir,” the man said, respectfully, “but there’s a lady as has been trying to catch your eye these five minutes past. Oh! I ain’t made no mistake—look for yourself, sir. She’s just alongside of us in that there victoria.”

George Thurso bent forward, and the next moment he had removed his hat in answer to a bright nod and smile of welcome. Then, as a little grey-gloved hand beckoned to him imperatively to come down, he found himself descending the steps mechanically, and the next moment he was in the road, standing beside the smart carriage with its graceful, delicately-dressed inmate.

“Get in,” Mrs. Crawshaw commanded, quickly. “You are a day-dreamer, George. Why, I saw you at once, and I have done all I could to attract your attention. Why do you hesitate? Are you busy? Can’t you come with me for a turn in the Park? It is a century since I saw you. I was only wondering this morning where you were, and why you had forgotten me. You have not been to pay me a visit for quite a year.”

“Society and I have parted company, dear Mrs. Crawshaw,” the young man said, with a faint smile.

He still hesitated to get into the carriage, but, as the traffic was beginning to move on again, and she refused to let him go, he had perforce to obey.

Helen Crawshaw was neither a young woman nor an old one. She had seemed young at the distance, but the milliner’s art, combined with that enduring perfection which is so characteristic of an English complexion, gave her a youth she had no right to claim. She was charming enough, however, to look at, and when she smiled at George Thurso there was an expression in her eyes that spoke of a heart as well as charm.

“I asked Frank about you the other day, but he could give me no news. George, why have you banished yourself so completely from all your old friends? Those who loved your mother should surely have had a place in your memory.”

His face contracted as she spoke of his mother; his colour had faded away again; he looked grave, ill, weary. “Does absence mean forgetfulness? I think not, dear friend,” he answered her, then he began speaking more hurriedly. It was like a dream to feel himself in the luxurious carriage, bowling as on feathers down Piccadilly.

“I think I went under altogether when my mother died,” he said slowly, after a little pause. “ You will understand what I mean. . . . Her death came so utterly unexpectedly. You will remember how brave and strong she seemed when our trouble came upon us—no, not even my father’s shocking death, nor the ruin that followed, seemed to have had the ec \r> her. She was my courage—my strength. But for her I don’t think—nay, I am sure I should never have done all I did do in those days, never have made even a faint effort to retrieve, in some degree, my dead father’s honour; but mother carried me through all—till her strength went, and I was left alone. I am not going to depress you by telling you what my life has been since that time.”

There were tears in Helen Crawshaw’s eyes. “But, my dear, dear boy,” she said, almost tenderly, “you should not have cut yourself adrift from all of us—from me. Remember I loved your mother. My Frank and you were boy mates together. These things constitute a claim.”

He just touched her outstretched hand.

“When one’s own kith and kin disown one, one is apt to be sceptical even of such friendship as yours,” he said bitterly, most bitterly.

“Ah! ” Mrs. Crawshaw leaned forward a little eagerly. “Tell me, George, has Sir Richard Thurso never helped you, never-”

The young man’s face flushed; his voice was not very steady as he answered her: “I did not want help from my uncle. All I wanted was the knowledge that his enmity was ended when my father died.”

Mrs. Crawshaw looked at him in silence a moment. “He has been against you, then?” she asked.

George Thurso just bent his head. “In every way possible.” He paused a moment. “I am his heir, you see. At least, I learn he has no children. He would he glad, I think, if he could hear that I was dead.”

“Oh, hush!” Mrs. Crawshaw looked most troubled. She felt as though she had suddenly left the radiance of the summer behind. In sympathy she was standing in the gloom of a sorrow too deep for words. She suddenly gave a new order to her footman.

“Tell Myatt to take me home again,” she said; then, turning to the young man beside her, she added, “I cannot lose a chance of a long, long chat with you, George, my dear. You are not busy, you see; so you can come home with me and we will have tea, and be cool and cosy in my own pet room.”

George hesitated only a moment, then yielded. Her interest, her tender womanliness, wooed him out of himself. Actions of his boyhood flashed in his mind as he listened to her voice, and eventually followed her in through the doorway of her splendid house. She seemed to bring back a touch of his mother’s beloved living presence. Tired, anxious, troubled as he was, he felt at rest almost when with this gracious, sympathetic woman.

She pushed him into a chair and hovered about him, noting with a pang how shabby his clothes were, and how worn and thin his handsome face had grown.

“And this is Grace Thurso’s darling child, the boy who had the childhood of a prince,” she said to herself as she made him a cup of tea, and insisted on his eating some of the dainty sandwiches that were arranged so prettily on the tea table. She was aghast to realise he was actually hungry.

“You will tell me all about yourself, George,” she said, in a little while: “I want to know everything—everything, remember.”

“I can tell my all in a few words,” he said, giving her a smile that made his grey eyes beautiful. “I am a disappointment, a failure”—he caught his breath sharply—“a man who cannot earn a penny, try as he will. The world is big—there is plenty of work, and money, and success in it, but not for me, dear friend, not for the son of William Thurso, fraudulent banker and suicide!”

Before she could utter one pained word, he had risen, and standing beside the window, his face averted, had gone on speaking: “To-day when you saw me I had just come from my last situation; I was discharged this morning. Trade has slackened, there is no work for an extra clerk; they called me an extra clerk, so I am turned off. My uncle,” he looked backward an instant, “wrote me, nearly two years ago, that my only chance lay in emigration. I think I begin to see now he was right. I shall leave England at once, and, perhaps, in another country I may find it easy to buy my daily bread. I am alone, thank God! Were it otherwise, I do not think I could endure my life another hour.”

Mrs. Crawshaw rose and went to him affectionately. “You are worn out with trouble, dear George,” she said, “and life is hitter to you, whichever way you turn. I am glad indeed I met you to-day, if only to take away at least one terrible burden from you. T>o you. xssS&y think that people are so cruel as to cast so dark and lasting a stain on your father’s memory? Unfortunate poor William Thurso was, but never fraudulent. My husband always declares that had your uncle, your father’s brother, chosen to come forward in that hour of need, there never would have been a check to the fortunes of the bank; but Sir Richard refused bluntly, coldly, to do anything, and when the crisis came, it broke your father’s heart, and ended as—as—we know. You must let me comfort you, my poor boy,” Helen Crawshaw went on, more hurriedly, as she felt him grasp her hands, and bend his head over them, trembling with agitation in every limb as he stood; “you have lived alone with sorrow so long you see things in distorted form—as they never have been, never will be. Your ill luck in your employment has been the working of chance, nothing more. Believe me, this is so, for even were your trouble over, your father’s memory true—there is the task your mother fulfilled, the noble sacrifice she and you both made, to remain a monument of honour to you as long as you shall live.”

She stood beside him as he sank into a chair and covered his face with his hands.

“You will see my husband this evening—he will advise you for the best in every way,” she said, softly, after a little pause. Her hand rested in motherly fashion on his head. In such a moment, all the feminine follies and weaknesses of which Helen Crawshaw, in ordinary circumstances, might be capable, were swallowed up in the burst of motherhood she felt for this young, sorrow-laden creature.

“Your uncle—you know we are friends with him—it may not be impossible-,” she began, hesitatingly, a moment later; but George lifted his head proudly at the words.

“If I were dying of starvation,” he said, grimly, “I would not let my name be carried to my uncle or to his wife.”

Mrs. Crawshaw interrupted him. “You know Sheila? You dislike her?” she asked; her tone had something eager, half incredulous in it. He got up wearily, his hand pressed to his eyes; he felt very ill, quite worn out with this last burst of agitation. Suffering with him so rarely had the opportunity to pass into words.

“I have never met Lady Thurso,” he said, speaking with difficulty, “but she is my uncle’s wife; no more is needed;” he heavily on a chair. “I—I think I must leave you, dear Mrs. Crawshaw,” he said, faintly. “I am ashamed to have fatigued you with my small worries. Ton have been very, very kind. I—I beg you to forgive me. I must go now. I-”

Mrs. Crawshaw was just in time to guide him to a chair. He dropped into it, white, mute, unconscious. She gave a little cry, and went to touch a bell, but before she could reach it the door had opened, and a girl, a tall, slender, sweet-faced girl, entered. She wore something white, something soft and clinging, and had on a white, close-fitting bonnet There was the air of a child about her, she looked so simple, so young.

“I came up unannounced!” she began, half laughingly, but as she saw that silent, pallid face resting quietly in the chair, and Mrs. Crawshaw’s hurried ministrations with salts bottle and eau de Cologne, she stopped instantly.

“Something has happened; you are troubled, dear,” she said, involuntarily. She put down her sunshade and moved forward quickly. “Let me help you,” she whispered.

Mrs. Crawshaw’s face had a set look. “Please ring the bell, Sheila; there is work here, I fear, for a doctor.” She rose as the other, in a startled, silent way, moved to the bell and rang it; then she called Lady Thnrso back to her in a low voice. “Perhaps there is work here for you also, Sheila,” she said. “This is George Thurso, your husband’s nephew, the son of the man whom he could, and should, have saved from ruin and death three years ago.”

CHAPTER II.

The Jane day had faded slowly, reluotantly almost, into night—a soft, tender, grey night jewelled with stars, and freshened by a delicious wind from the west. It was a night to woo one oat of the hoase. At the doors and windows, and narrow balconies of hundreds of small London houses, people were gathered to breathe the soft, cool air of night, and dream perchance of country fields or murmuring seas with that unconscious longing for space and nature which the sammer always brings. In one of the smallest and most conventional of such London houses, a girl was standing leaning over the balcony, her eyes fixed on the passers-by in the street below with an expression that was half irritation, half nervousness. The twilight had deepened into night since she first went there to watch for some expected arrival. Inside the room at her back the gas had been lit, and a few odds and ends of people were scattered about, some reading, others playing cards. It was the shabby, well-used drawing-room of a cheap boarding-house, and there was an air of poverty, of struggle, about each one of its inmates.

The mistress of the house was a woman prematurely aged, and with every trace of having been handsome, if not quite beautiful, in her girlhood. She looked careworn and peevish now, as if the burden of life had fretted her beyond all endurance. She was one of the card players, and every now and then she would sigh and glance at the girl’s form seen vaguely in the balcony beyond. A second girl was lounging in a chair close to the card table, reading a tossed and soiled-looking hook. She lifted her head dreamily as her mother suddenly spoke to her sharply.

“Do, for goodness’ sake, go and tell Zillah to come in from that window, Marian; she has been there for this hour or more.”

Marian rose with a yawn. She was a pretly girl, exceedingly untidy. She went up to her sister on the balcony. “Mamma says you are to come in. They want you to sing.” Marian looked at the other a little curiously as she spoke, “Why, I believe you have been crying!” she exclaimed.

Zillah Westlake turned upon her sister half fretfully. “I am not going to sing; I am sick and tired of singing or doing anything in this horrible dirty old hole. I did think for once I was going to escape out of it, if only for an evening, but even that is taken from me.”

Marian leaned against the window lazily. “Oh, I forgot,” she said, half sneeringly, “this was the night that your grand Mr. Thurso was to take you to the exhibition. So much for his promises; and you worked precious hard to get him to make even that promise. I cannot imagine why you trouble yourself about him, Zillah. I call him conceited and stuck up, always living in the clouds, far too grand to mix with us—only living here because he can’t afford to go anywhere else.”

“I know perfectly well what yon think of him,” Zillah retorted, sharply. “You have never taken any pains to hide your feelings. One would have thought you would have been glad to think we had one gentleman at least in the house.” She paused a moment. “If he is stuck up with you, he is not with me,” she said then, defiantly.

Marian laughed. “You are making a mistake, Zillah,” she said; then, not without good nature, “I know you are dying to get away from this house. Tou fancy you see an escape through George Thurso. I advise you to put him out of your head. He is certainly a gentleman, and he is very handsome, hut he is a pauper, and moreover, I believe,” Marian added, “he will always be what he is—a poor and an unhappy man. He is kind to you because he is sorry for you. Tou know you have the trick of making people sorry for you, Zillah. My life is just as dull and hopeless as yours; but people never pity me as they do you. Listen, there is mamma calling again; do come in.”

“I am coming,” Zillah answered, and she turned and followed her sister into the room, not pausing to seat herself, however, but passing quickly through the doorway and down the narrow stairs in eager haste. Her eyes had caught sight of a tall, familiar figure coming slowly up the street. She hastened to meet it.

She was standing in the entrance, a dark, strikingly handsome young creature, with the gas falling full upon her, as George Thurso mounted the steps, almost weakly.

“Tou are late,” she said to him, plaintively. There were tears in her voice and. vu Vet soft eyes. “I—I thought you were coming early this evening.”

Thurso looked at her half tenderly. He was worn out with his eventful day. He had been too weak to move for a couple of hours after his fainting fit. Mrs. Orawshaw had, in fact, refused to let him move. She had kept him a prisoner till her husband had come home; and then there had been a long conversation which had left George more weary, yet more hopeful than he had been for many a day. With so much new thought pressing his mind, he had completely forgotten Zillah and his promise to her. His heart smote him suddenly. He had no feeling for the girl save a pitying kindness. He could not but feel sorry for this young, brilliant creature, who seemed made for life and life’s pleasures, not for the shabby, sordid, monotonous fate that was hers. He had been sorry for Zillah ever since she had come home from a cheap suburban hoarding-school, and had made one of the usual party in Mrs. West-lake’s dingy house. He treated her as a child, accepted her pretty attentions as from a child, and had fallen into the habit of breaking his customary sad silence to exchange some words with her. She had no place whatever in his thoughts yet. Each night when he had come home from bnsiness he had felt a wave of faint pleasure in the realisation that some one watched for him, some one greeted him. Beyond this his feelings never went. He could hardly have described Zillah Westlake had he been asked to do so. He was conscious of her beauty in the same way that he realised the beauty of a flower, of the sunshine, of a glorious summer night It never touched him or appealed to him. He was only sorry for Zillah as he would have been sorry for any one whose demand for pity was put so cleverly and so constantly before him. How he was more than sorry—he was hurt The day before he had been moved—how he hardly knew —into making a promise that he should give Zillah one evening away from the dreary home life. He had had a passing pleasure in acquiescing when he saw what delight this gave the girl, and her tears were a reproach to him now.

“Forgive me,” he said, most sincerely, and he held out his hand. “Forgive me, Miss Zillah. I am so sorry to have disappointed you, but I have been detained. I could not get here before. I do not know how to tell you how sorry I am. Zillah let her hand rest in his confidingly. “Come into the garden,” she said, almost gaily.

Now that he was returned she was content. George went with her to the narrow, smoke-grimed plot of grass christened, by courtesy, a garden. Had he yielded to his own feelings he would have gone straight up to his own room to rest and ponder over all that the Orawshaws had said to him. His meeting with his mother’s old friend was not merely a pleasure, it was a turning point to him, and from this his fortunes might mend, and mend rapidly.

He was in no mood to listen to Zillah’s chatter; but he had disappointed her, and his natural kindness of heart made him put self on one side for a moment. Besides, the future suggested to him by Mr. Crawshaw would take him far away from Zillah and this shabby little London house where he had lived and suffered these past two “years. He could afford to spare her one short half-hour now. He had a thrill of something like joy as he pictured the pathway that his new duties would open out to him. The hope that his good, kind friends had poured once more into his heart had given a new touch of beauty to his eyes. Zillah Westlake saw that expression in his eyes, and her poor, selfish, narrow heart took also a thrill of hope from his unconscious hope. She had never seen him wear so bright an air before.

“Have you had important business to-day? Has something happened?” she asked him, eagerly.

All that happened to him was indirectly her business also, since she had determined to he his wife,—determined through him to reach that higher, brilliant world which was the proper place for such beauty as hers. She knew he was poor, but she knew more than that, and she set the keenest value on the Thurso name and connections.

“Has something good happened to you, Mr. George? Oh! tell me about it,” she said, and the witchery of a living sympathy stole to his veins for the first time.

He was nearer to her in this moment than even Zillah was aware. His reticence, his seal of silence slipped from him. He had told her all that had happened that day, pacing slowly up and down the little garden with her hand clinging to his arm.

“And to-morrow I leave tor “Saws., thence to make my way to Egypt, to take tip the post Mr. Crawshaw has offered me,” he said, at the end. There was enthusiasm as well as hope in his voice now.

Zillah had listened in silence till these last words came, then self washed itself about her like a mighty flood. Breaking into violent weeping, she cast herself upon his breast, everything forgotten in this mighty unexpected disappointment.

“Oh, you will take me with you. I love you, I love you, George!” she cried, wildly. “Tou will not leave me here; I—I shall die if you leave me here. I am so unhappy!”

A whirl of hot emotion blinded George Thurso for an instant; he half staggered as Zillah flung her arms about him, then his senses returned. He tried to put her from him gently, and as he did so he was conscious that another voice was breaking through the sound of Zillah’s sobs. It was Zillah’s mother who spoke; she stood on the little iron steps a witness to this scene.

“Bring her indoors, George,” Mrs. ‘Westlake said, hurriedly; then, as neither Thurso nor Zillah moved, she advanced down the steps towards them. “You should have spoken to toe first,” she said, reprovingly, to the young man, “Zillah is so excitable. But there, I forgive you,” she went on; “only come in, both of you. This is much too public a place for love-making; and you are wanted indoors.”

Thurso stood motionless, bewildered beyond all description. Words gathered themselves hotly together, but when he would have spoken his throat seemed closed. All he was conscious of doing was putting Zillah coldly from him, with all the repugnance of which his nature was capable.

Mrs. Westlake put her arm about her daughter. “I was coming to find you, George,” she said, her tone a mixture of excitement and affability. “A messenger has just arrived; he brings you great news, George. You are wanted at once; the cab is waiting. Your uncle, Sir Richard Thurso, died suddenly this evening!”

CHAPTER III.

The news of the sudden death of Sir Richard Thurso received prominent attention in most of the leading journals of the day. The dead man had never been popular, but his wealth had given him a place in the political and social world which signified a kind of celebrity. His marriage two years previous to the opening of this story had occasioned much comment, since his aversion to matrimony had almost passed into a tradition; and, truth to say,although there were many women ready enough to share the power of his wealth, there were very few who were sufficiently brave to face the prospect of domestic life with such a man. There had been such an element of churlishness, a grim, dogged objection to the sunshine or gaiety of human nature, stamped indelibly upon Richard Thurso, that despite his money he was a man whom society shunned and disliked—a man who lived utterly apart and alone till he took unto himself a wife. The advent of a wife was in itself a matter of surprise to everybody; and when it became known what manner, of a woman it was who had been made Lady Thurso, this surprise deepened considerably.

Sir Richard’s young wife was a social success from the very beginning. It was not merely that she was such a pretty creature. Had Sheila been plain instead of pretty, she must have conquered just the same; it was because she was so sweet-hearted, so thoroughly charming, so fresh and so sincere. The more the world saw of Lady Thurso, the more the world wondered how and why so fair and happy a girl could have consented to sacrifice herself and her youth (for it was a sacrifice) to such a life as marriage with Richard Thurso must have signified. That Sheila had been tempted by the Thurso title and money was a theory that of course held ground with a good many fi>lk, but the minds that could harbour this thought against Sheila were not numbered among those whom she called her friends. As a matter of fact, Sheila had become Sir Richard Thurso’s wife for two reasons—one a strong one with which she had absolutely nothing to do, the other a simple one rising like a fragrance from her beautiful womanly Her marriage had been brought about firstly, then, by the clever manoeuvres of a clever and worldly mother, who was far too poor and far too ambitious to let Sir Richard slip away into some other matrimonial net, when she saw the power her fair young daughter exercised upon the grim, unloved man; in the second place it was pity, the strong, innocent pity that Sheila ghve so bountifully to the rich, solitary man almost from the first moment of their acquaintance, that helped to transform the girl from simple Sheila Reynolds into Sheila, Lady Thurso, and it was this same pity that proved such a barrier of strength and support to the girl when, the marriage being accomplished, she realised slowly and surely what it was that her mother had done. For without her mother’s carefully laid plans, most truly Sheila would never have been brought in contact with Thurso at all, much less have parted with her youth and the possibilities of that youth so easily. To reproach her mother was something that never came to Sheila; not even when there came days, hours, and even weeks, when life with the man she had married was almost unbearable. The knowledge of the late-born fierce love she had inspired in the heart of this strange man came as a shock to Sheila. To her unsophisticated mind such feelings as had Richard Thurso in sway were far, very far away from what she dreamed love to he. Love should be something tender, indescribably beautiful in its sympathy and faith; not expressed in wildest jealousy, increasing doubt, and wearisome suspicion. It was indeed a strange experience for Sheila, this perpetual life of doubt and jealousy. There were times when Sir Richard turned and rended himself for his folly in having entrusted his name and his declining years to the care of a young and beautiful girl. He was cynical to the last degree; he trusted no one, not even a dog, and he saw himself in such moods with the eyes of contempt with which he would have looked on another man who had done as he had done.

These times were less hard for Sheila to endure than the days of jealousy, of espionage, days when she could not move from the house without his companionship, or without the knowledge that she was being shadowed, go where she might. A less happy and thoroughly good nature than Sheila’s must have suffered terribly from such an experience; and. her, though her heart could not he really harmed, it was inevitable that much of her sunny childish delight, her spontaneous youth and beautiful faith, was brushed away, and that a weariness, a coldness, and a hardness that was hut a form of wounded pride, should come in their stead. Throughout her two years of married life, Sheila spoke to no one of what she was called upon to suffer in those years. Least of all would she have spoken to her mother, who was far too happy in her eldest girl’s success, and far too busy planning a like success for her two other daughters, to he ready with sympathy for such imaginary troubles. Sheila had (so her mother tvould have declared) absolutely nothing in the world to wish for! What girl was better placed than she? and what wife could have desired a more devoted husband than Sir Richard? Of all her friends, and their number was very great, Helen Crawshaw was perhaps the one in whom Sheila could have found it easiest to confide, yet no word was even spoken by her, and what Mrs. Crawshaw knew was gathered by intuition, never by fact. When the news of Sir Richard’s death was brought to Mrs. Crawshaw that evening, After she and her husband had reluctantly allowed George Thurso to leave them, her first thought had been one of relief and gladness on Sheila’s account.

“I feel horribly wicked,” she had said to her husband, “but I simply cannot be sorry. I have never been a good hypocrite. I always detested Richard Thurso, and to know that that child is free is a great happiness to me.”

“What an extraordinary thing you should have met George to-day!” Mr. Crawshaw had remarked; his wife’s words had apparently not shocked him in the least. “No need to help him now, Helen; he was a pauper an hour ago, now he is a rich man, a very rich man,” Mr. Crawshaw had added, “ for, whatever he may have done with other moneys, Sir Richard had no power to will away a farthing of the entailed estate.”

“We must send a message at once. He will only just have reached his lodgings. Dear George, I long to see him and tell him this news myself.” After she had written a hurried message on one of her cards and given orders to have it despatched by a hansom immediately, Mrs. Crawshaw had taken up Sheila’s note. The girl had written in pencil. She had written very simply, but somehow beneath those words the older woman seemed to read a burden of suffering.

“Dearest Friend,”—was what Lady Thurso’s letter said,—“I have terrible news to give you. Sir Richard died this evening quite suddenly. The doctors tell me it was syncope of the heart, and that he did not suffer much. I thank God for that! I write to you without delay, for I know that you will communicate this news to the proper quarter. I am, as you know, utterly unaware of how or where to reach my husband’s relations. I shall be grateful, therefore, for any assistance you can give me in this matter.

““Your loving

“Sheila.”

“It is foolish of me, perhaps,” Helen Craw-shaw had thought to herself as she hastily wrote a few words of deepest sympathy to the widowed girl, and then had sat and waited impatiently for George to come, “it is foolish of me, and most likely all imagination, but I cannot help feeling something must have happened between Sheila and her husband to-night; and remembering the child’s grieved face as she went away from me this afternoon, and having seen poor George, I reproach myself a little also. I ought to have remembered that Sheila knew nothing of that old story, and my blunt words must have given her a shock. I must go to her first thing in the morning—I feel she will perhaps be glad to see me.”

It was not, however, till a week after the night of Sir Richard’s death that Mrs. Craw-shaw and Lady Thurso met. This delay was not brought about through any neglect on Mrs. Crawshaw’s part. She had called regularly each day during that long weary week, but she had never been able to see Lady Thurso.

Mrs. Reynolds, Sheila’s mother, would have been only too pleased to have received Mrs. Crawshaw, for she was turning from one friend to another to pour out her indignation against the fate that robbed Sheila of nearly everything which Sir Richard’s widow most surely might have expected to have possessed; but Mrs. Crawshaw had no sympathy for Mrs. Reynolds. She was a worldly woman enough herself in some things, but she had too much heart to countenance such unblushing worldlmeaa aa characterised Mrs. Reynolds’s every action; besides, she loved Sheila dearly, and the girl’s silent subjection to a life which was odious to her, and which had been brought about simply and solely by her mother’s selfish ambition, was the strongest reason for Helen Crawshaw’s objection to Mrs. Reynolds.

The story of Sir Richard’s sudden death was made more interesting by the fact that he had died without a will, thereby leaving nothing to his young widow save a small sum of money that had been settled on her at the time of her marriage, the rest of his possessions passing in bulk to the heir, a certain nephew of the dead man, a young, and it was immediately rumoured, a handsome man, a person whom the social world immediately determined upon welcoming with open arms. Mrs. Reynolds’s open anger over the matter of the will was accorded a certain amount of sympathy.

“It was, undoubtedly, very hard lines,” so said the world when the matter was discussed; “for, of course, no one could have imagined that a man in Sir Richard’s position would have been so imprudent as not to have provided gen-erously for his widow; and just as, undoubtedly,

Lady Thurso had only married such a man hoping for a speedy widowhood and freedom to enjoy her good fortune. And now here she was free, with only a miserable five hundred a year to call her own, whilst the new man walks in and takes everything. Oh! yes, it was certainly very hard lines.”

Mrs. Crawshaw was one of those who had been most surprised and dismayed when she heard the news that no will was forthcoming; not that she felt this would affect Sheila very much, but because she knew only too well that others would annoy the girl over the matter, her mother most of all. Though she did not see Sheila during that week, she met George Thurso constantly.

The young man had taken the news of his changed fortunes very quietly. He expressed neither surprise nor pleasure. When the lawyers communicated with him, informing him there was no will in existence, George had desired that a still further rigorous search should be made, in order that this matter might be thoroughly well established.

“This money is mine by right of justice,” he said to Mrs. Crawshaw, who bad. herself his greatest help for the moment, and who took the place that a mother or sister might have. He smiled in a feint, cold way as he made this remark. “Still,” he had added, quietly, “I prefer that there shall he nothing left undone that may seem to Lady Thurso and her friends as necessary. Moreover, I agree with you. I cannot understand how a man like my late uncle could have died comfortably without a will, more especially when he remembered I was to inherit all.”

The funeral came and passed, and though every comer of Sir Richard’s rooms, every box and drawer, was opened and searched, not a ghost of a will came to light. The head of the firm of solicitors who had acted for the dead man could only reiterate a statement he had made from the beginning, which was to the effect that Sir Richard Thurso had always been averse to making a will, and that, although approached on the subject more than once, he had on each occasion definitely refused to entertain the matter at all.

“Had I not insisted till I had almost worked Sir Richard into a passion,” this lawyer said to the new baronet when the question of the will was finally agreed upon as being settled, “I am convinced he would not have made even this small settlement upon Lady Thurso.”

Sir George Thurso smiled faintly. “Pray assure your client of my sincere sympathy in her disappointment,” he said, and his sneer was unmistakable.

The same sneer underlaid his manner whenever the subject of Sheila was introduced by Mrs. Crawshaw. It was evident to her in a very little while that Sir George had nothing but contempt for his uncle’s widow; and while this hurt Helen Crawshaw keenly, she hardly knew how to resent it She was hurt in a good many ways by George’s manner in those days when they were thrown together so much. To herself and her husband he was absolutely charming.

“If I live to be a hundred I shall never forget what you did for me that day,” he said to Helen Crawshaw every now and then. And once he said to her, “I regret that I am a rich man only that I might have taken advantage of the work Mr. Crawshaw was going to give me, and so have worked myself into your esteem, and made myself worthy of your respect sjuA. effissSassur “That is something you have always possessed, dear George,” Mrs. Crawshaw said, simply, and she was touched by his words. Nevertheless, in a hundred other ways she was made conscious of an armour of bitterness, of hardness about the nature of the young man.

- She spoke out her regret on this subject when Sheila and she met at length.

Lady Thurso had made an appointment for her friend to go for the last time and pay her a visit in the house where she had lived and suffered; and when Helen Crawshaw saw the girl she was inexpressibly shocked.

Sheila was thin and pale—a worn woman rather than a girl. “I could not see you before,” she said, as the older woman took her in her arms and kissed her; “and yet I have wanted you so much.”

Mrs. Crawshaw had tears in her eyes as she released Sheila.

“Tell me your troubles, darling,” she said, tenderly.

But Sheila shook her head.

“Not now; I must wait a little while. Helen, I want to go away—far, far away, I-” The girl sat with her cold hands pressed over her eyes a moment; then she gathered np her courage. “I have had so many blows this week.”

My mother-” She could get no further.

Bising, she went to a table and brought a letter. “This came this morning. I—I was utterly unprepared for it I want you to help me, Helen.”

Mrs. Crawshaw took the letter; it was a few curt words from Sir George Thurso, written in the third person. It stated, very coldly, that after considering the letter he had received from Lady Thurso’s mother, the writer regretted he saw no reason why he should make over to Lady Thurso the sum of money suggested, since Hie income left to Lady Thurso by his uncle was, if not excessive, at least quite ample for the requirements of one person.

A hot flush dyed Sheila’s pale face as Mrs. Crawshaw put down the letter, and stretched out her hands to the girl.

“I—I forgive him. He has suffered; he is hitter in consequence. I cannot tell you how his white face has haunted me since that day. It—it was the cause of nearly all that happened. But my mother,” Sheila broke off, “I caawiat forgive her, Helen—I cannot!” and then the tears came in a piteous fashion.

Mrs. Crawshaw had the deepest sympathy for George, hut this letter seemed to her cruel beyond all description.

“I am bewildered by this,” she said to Sheila, as she did all she could to console the girl. “It seems to me impossible that this can be George Thurso. I know I have not seen him for a long time, but he was such a dear boy, so big-hearted, so chivalrous, so good. You remember the story I told yon of his mother’s and his own sacrifice when that terrible trouble came to his father. I cannot reconcile this hard, cruel man with such a dear creature as George has ever seemed to me. I must speak to him on this.” Sheila’s voice qnivered as she answered this.

“If you love me, Helen,” she said, proudly, coldly, “you will never speak my name to Sir George Thurso. I have answered this letter. He can believe in the repudiation of my knowledge of what my mother had done or not, just as he likes. Our lives will never cross in the future, and whether Sir George holds me in contempt or not can never hurt me!”

It cost Mrs. Crawshaw a great effort not to speak to George when next they met; but she felt she would only stab Sheila still further by so doing, so she refrained. She could not, however, subdue a certain coldness in her manner, which Sir George noticed.

“There has been a scene over my letter, of course,” he said to himself as he was being driven to his hotel after parting with Mrs. Craw-shaw. “Many hypocritical tears will have been shed, and my dear good friend will actually believe that Lady Thurso was in no way cognisant of her mother’s appeal! As if one could take the word, or have faith in a girl so lost, so sordid, as to have married such a man! Mrs. Crawshaw is a woman, therefore she knows not women. To her girls may still be pure, single-hearted, and good; she needs her range widening, and in this, it may be, I can help her.” His handsome face grew hard and cold as he was bowled swiftly through the crowded streets. Since that most eventful night he had not put foot within the precincts of Mrs. Westlake’s house. He was staying now at a hotel in one of the side streets off Piccadilly, and already Zillah’s dark, picturesque beauty had become a familiar feature to the porters and waiters of this Twice a day her mother and herself, garbed in deep mourning, called to leave some message or make inquiry for Sir George Thurso, and, with that indescribable freemasonry which exists between certain minds, Zillah had managed to convey the real position to these servants and hirelings.

“He can’t escape if he wants to,” was the keynote of all she did. For Zillah was by no means sure of her future, although she had taken every precaution to ensure its safety. In the very hour that George had driven rapidly away from that scene in the garden, every inmate of the house and of the houses near knew Zillah’s secret, knew that she was going to be married to the handsome young man who had boarded with her mother so long, and who had just succeeded to the title and estates of Sir Eichard Thurso, his uncle. Congratulations flowed in on every side, and Zillah was the queen of the hour. When George did not return to the boarding-house she grew feint with dread, but her mother’s tact reassured her. If George did not come to them they would go to him. Until the funeral was over the matter could not be arranged very definitely, but if Sir George Thurso imagined he was going to escape the results of that twilight scene in the garden, then he was very much mistaken. This was the unexpressed thought that underlay Mrs. Westlake’s demeanour, and gave Zillah’s halting courage strength.

CHAPTER IV.

Despite the fact that George Thurso had withdrawn himself instantly from his old dwelling-place and the inmates of the house, and that he had preserved an unbroken silence with the Westlakes during the days that followed, vouchsafing neither answer nor notice to the messages and letters they showered upon him, Zillah might have spared herself the fears and misgivings which attacked her so sharply, for the young man had not the smallest intention of withdrawing from the position thrust so unexpectedly upon him. He accepted this position in a spirit of cynicism and philosophy mingled. At the very first, when he had been almost too bewildered to realise what had happened when he had driven away through the summer night, still weak and tired from an exhausting day, with thought clashing upon thought in his excited brain, he had been conscious of nothing bat the strongest aversion to the girl he had just left, mingled with anger and contempt for her clever mother. But the anger against the Westlakes died away gradually in the course of a few hours, and something like pity, and even sympathy, for Zillah came in its place. Against the natural repugnance which all proud and true-hearted men must have felt for the unblushing worldliness that Zillah and her mother were demonstrating each day now, George set one single fact, and on that fact his resolution for the future was built. The fact was that when Zillah had suddenly made that startling avowal to him of love and despair, she had been in complete ignorance of the change fate had all at once worked in his destiny. He was perfectly well aware that it had been a paroxysm of selfishness that had forced the girl into so unusual a declaration. Still the fact remained that she had confessed her love when he was yet a poor man, a man with nothing in the world to give any woman save hope and dogged courage. All that followed after was, of course, a hideous dream to him: he saw the vulgarity, the eagerness, the girl’s exultant delight, and feverish selfishness; and all these things worked to add greater depths to that cynicism which Mr. Orawshaw was deploring so much, and which swept away for him all that was high, beautiful, and real in human nature,—all those things, in fact, which had been a daily faith with him in his happy youth. He classed Zillah with Sheila: there was no difference in his eyes between them, save that in a degree he set Zillah higher; she had at least shown him that she would have been content to share poverty and hardship with a man she loved, and Lady Thurso had not even this saving grace to excuse her marriage with the man who was just dead. Such a marriage, George Thurso said to himself, had been a mere barter; and now that Sheila found what a bad bargain she had made, she was of course, he added scornfully, ready to weep her eyes out of her head for rage. There really was no limit to the scorn he heaped on his uncle’s widow; and all Helen Crawshaw’s tender and eager desire to put the girl (for girl Sheila was still) in a better light before him only served to increase his feeling of bitter contempt for her.

On Sheila he visited now all the weary resentment that had been gradually massing itself together in his heart for Sir Richard Thurso during these past three years. “With an injustice that was foreign to him, he set down to the girl’s account all the wrong the dead man had done to his beloved mother. When he recalled those terrible days of mental anguish and privation which his mother had been called upon to bear after his father’s death, and which Eichard Thurso could have so materially prevented, he felt that no harshness was too great to be levelled against one whom he denounced as worldly, frivolous, selfish, vain and heartless, a fitting companion to the man she had married. Had any one come to George Thurso at this time and told him— what was the absolute truth—that until that afternoon when she had come upon him so unexpectedly in Mrs. Crawshaw’s drawing-room, his uncle’s wife had been in total ignorance of his existence, or of any one of the circumstances connected with his father’s ruin—his parent’s untimely death, he would have fiercely refused to believe this. As it was, no one gave him this information. Mrs. Crawshaw was tactful enough to instantly cease from her task of pleading Sheila’s case with Sir George.

“It goes to my heart that the child should be so terribly misunderstood,” she said to her husband after that brief conversation. vtitix young man on the subject of Mrs. Reynolds’s letter to him. “But as I see I only do more harm, not good, I think I had far better be silent, and not even mention Sheila’s name. Her mother has more than one sin to answer for where Sheila is concerned,” Helen Crawshaw had added, with a grimness that was born of deep and complex feelings.

“Yon must not expect to find George very easy to handle,” Mr. Crawshaw had replied, thoughtfully. “I saw that first night he was here, before all this happened, how deep the iron of suffering had gone into his soul. Such experiences as he has had to endure since his father’s death have been enough to change the nature of any man.”

Against such reasoning as this Mrs. Crawshaw had nothing to offer. Nevertheless, it hurt her to the quick to realise how hard and bitter Sir George had evidently resolved to be with his uncle’s widow.

“And I am absolutely convinced, though Sheila refuses to say anything about it, that it must have been an argument on the subject of George that brought on the excitement she told me about, that ended so fatally,” she mused to herself more than once when dwelling on the thought other friend. “I saw Sheila had a terrible shock that day she arrived here and found George so ill. Sometimes I wonder if I did not do wrong in having spoken to her so frankly. If I had not been upset myself, I think I should have hesitated before I said what I did. How I can do nothing but hold my tongue in future— which is quite the hardest thing for me to do at any time, and more especially now.”

In contradistinction to her trouble over George’s attitude to Lady Thurso, Helen Craw-shaw could not fail to be touched by the expression and evidence of sincere gratitude and affection the young man lavished on herself and her husband. Sir George regarded the offer Haul Orawshaw had made him that eventful day as being a benefit bestowed, even though circumstances had prevented him from availing himself of the kindness.

“You came to me when literally I had not another hope left,” he had said to his father’s old friend when occasion brought round the subject of his past; “and for this I shall give you gratitude as long as I live.”

He said this calmly but convincingly.

Helen Crawshaw felt in such a moment that the sweet nature of the hoy she had loved most dearly in years gone by was still unharmed and unchanged, although his manner might have made her believe otherwise.

“I shall give him a little time, as Paul says,” was her final decision on a matter that was, in a sense, a trouble to her. “Everything is” so new with him yet. By degrees, when he has grown accustomed to his position, I shall be very much mistaken if George does not prove himself the same dear, gentle-hearted creature he was as a boy. I must see as much of him as possible. I am glad he has decided not to go abroad just yet. He will have to marry one of these days.” There was a sense of complacent pleasure to Mrs. Crawshaw in this last thought. She saw herself playing a very agreeable part in the matter of Sir George Thurso’s marriage, and in an unconscious sort of way she found herself setting all the marriageable maidens and women she knew in review before her. There was no hurry, however, in this business. Ho doubt Thurso would want to enjoy his independence for a year or so. He had to make his first acquaintance with social life—to take his proper place in the world for the first time. Moreover, as her knowledge of the young man expanded, Mrs. Crawshaw saw many difficulties set about the pathway of a matrimonial future for Sir George. He was not by any means an ordinary young man; where women were concerned she had to confess he mystified her a little. That he was as open to influence, and woman’s fascination, as most men, was proved to her by a very simple little accident one afternoon. They had been having tea together in that pretty boudoir which henceforth would always have a place in George’s memory. It recalled so vividly to him the misery of that afternoon they had first met, and he had been talking to Mrs. Crawshaw in his easy, confidential way, which seemed to come only for her, and which was so charming to her, when in turning sharply in his chair, Sir George dislodged a framed portrait from a small table at his elbow, and sent it clattering to the ground. After he had picked it up with an apology and a regret for his awkwardness, he had sat and looked at the pictured face framed within the silver setting for a long moment in silence.

Mrs. Crawshaw coloured hotly for an instant.

“That is a pretty face, George, is it not?” she asked him with a carelessness that was well assumed.

He answered her without taking his eyes from the portrait as he replaced it .“Pretty is hardly the word. I call it a lovely face—a flattered likeness, possibly.”

Mrs. Crawshaw poured him out a cup of tea. “No,” she said, quietly, “not flattered in the least; it is one of the truest portraits I have ever seen. She is a very dear friend of mine.”

George Thurso looked once again at the sweet, girlish face, and touched with wistfrilness, yet having a glimpse of gaiety in the turn of the lips; the eyes he found particularly beautiful. Then you have one very lovely and, I am sure, very true friend,” he observed, and as he stirred his tea he seemed to feel a magnetism in those picturesque eyes that drew his own to meet them almost against his will.

Mrs. Crawshaw had a suffocating sense of elation. She longed to turn and rend him, figuratively—to have pointed triumphantly to Sheila’s face, and have asked him if such a creature could be akin to the hard, worldly, selfish woman he resolutely declared his uncle’s widow to he. But she wisely restrained herself, for Sheila’s sake; and once again, as a consolation, preached the gospel of patience to bring about the justice she longed to see given to her girl friend.

This little episode, however, pleased her. Being an essentially womanly woman, with more than her foil share of romance, she rejoiced to see the signs of a more natural and healthy mental temperament. In a clever, delicate way Helen Crawshaw had probed George about his life during the, past three years. What she feared was an entanglement For, as she told herself afresh each time she saw him, he was very handsome.

“Much too handsome for a man,” she was inclined to say at times; “and with such looks, he must have been tremendously admired”

It was a satisfaction to her to find that George had made no friends.

“I am afraid I was very unpopular with my fellow-workers. Ton see, I was so unhappy, and cared for nothing or no one, and they set down my desire for solitude to a wrong cause. Besides, I don’t make friends easily,” he told her, and then he had smiled his rare smile as he saw a sentence hovering on her lips.

“No; I never forget my friends. We must not fight out that old story again. I did not come to yon, because I had not the heart to go anywhere; but you wrong me if you imagine I ever forgot you, and your love for my mother. It was one of my sweet memories.”

It was no wonder that Helen Crawshaw grew to care a little more deeply for her old friend’s son each time they met. The days slipped by quickly. She was Sir George’s adviser in a hundred different ways, and the young man found an inexpressible (harm in the hours he spent with thiB gracious and graceful woman in her fragrant and pretty drawing-room. There was a harmonious note about Mrs. Crawshaw that appealed to him. At odd times he had a sort of jarring pang as he conjured up the remembrance of Zillah’s glowing and unrefined beauty, and set it here in this atmosphere of a thorough gentlewoman’s home. He felt that Mrs. Crawshaw would have more than a passing regret when she learnt of his approaching marriage; yet he never let himself swerve from his resolve to make Zillah his wife. The truth was that George was deeply sorry for the girl. He had pitied her vaguely from the very first— she was a creature so distinctly out of her element in that dingy overcrowded boardinghouse. Life for her should have been sunny and spacious. She was not a refined or graceful nature, but she was a picturesque spirit of youth —of spontaneous enjoyment of life and life’s gaieties; and, cramped and hound about by poverty and depression, she would, in all probability, fade into a peevish and premature old age. It seemed to him a cruel thing to turn away from the task of giving happiness to this creature, and then there was always the remembrance that she had given him her love; and this was something that touched George more than he could express. He did not love her in the very least; but neither did he hate her. A hundred little memories of Zillah came floating to him from the desolate past, which all pleaded for consideration for the girl. She, out of all the world, had seemed to live to give him thought and tenderness. He saw things now which had escaped him absolutely at the time, but which all seemed to speak eloquently of the love she had confessed so frankly; and he told himself these small things must never be forgotten by him now. He built up a scheme for Zillah’s future and his own, which gave Turn a\8‘0jJa<& pleasure. She was very young stilly and he imagined her to be malleable. Her mental and social education should be. his task. He would remove her for away from the life and the associations she hated so much, poor child, by surrounding her with every sort of refining influence; he would expand her intellectual qualities till she should become the equal of such women as his dead mother and Helen Crawshaw. Each day saw some of his bitter aversion, that had been so strong against the girl at the first, drop away from him. His feelings for her mother were unchanged. He visited on Mrs. Westlake the illimitable contempt that he gave to Lady Thurso. But Zillah was, he felt, happily too young to have her mother very strongly developed in her yet; by reason of this youth and the love which she gave him, she was a subject for his pity—not his scorn.

There was another phase of feeling associated with Zillah and a future life with her. Though George had seemed to accept his change of fortune very calmly, he was in reality deeply moved by sthe knowledge of his wealth. It brought him an immensity of suffering when he recalled all that Ms mother endured and lacked; and whilst it hardened him in some particulars, it touched his heart to its utmost extent of generous impulse in others. He was essentially a man of strong natural devotion. He had loved his parents with a rare love, and he yearned, now that money and luxury surrounded him, to have these cherished ones with him again, so that he could minister to them as he wished. It was terrible to him to realise that he was alone, bereft of all near or dear ties; and involuntarily his heart turned to the thought of this girl who had said she loved him; and he saw in Zillah one who could share with him the benefits of his wealth, and be lifted from poverty and sorrow, even as he would have lifted his mother had she been still with him. Except Zillah, he saw no one who could claim honestly his care and help. To all such as had at odd times tendered him some fleeting kindness, he had made swift return. To a stray office lad who had given him respect, to the hard-worked servant at the boarding-house—to one or two people of this class— George had already shown himself in a most generous mood. But this did not satisfy him. He wanted to do some good and lasting work with his wealth. Zillah, in her poverty a.uh.‘tax pretty youth, seemed to him to answer pathetically to this purpose. It was at least through such means as this that he gradually saw himself resigned to accept a position which at first had been wholly repugnant to him. Once these natural feelings of aversion and objection had been conquered, Zillah’s triumph was easily accomplished.

About a fortnight after his uncle’s death, Sir George went out of town for a little while. Mrs. Crawshaw parted with him as reluctantly as though he had been her own child.

“I hope I am not disloyal to Sheila,” she said to herself; “but the fact is f am awfully fond of George. I quite miss him. He has spoiled me these last two weeks by coming to see me so regularly. I wish my own boy Frank were half as fond of my society. But I suppose Frank would call George a frump, or something of that sort, since he can pay so much attention to an old woman.” Mrs. Crawshaw was rather fond of pathetically alluding to her old age, being comfortably confident that if she were not in her first youth, she was still a most attractive woman —very far indeed from being old. She went on her way much as usual in those days following Sir George’s absence. But still there was a void —a double void. In fact, since a week previously Sheila—and Lady Thurso, too—had gone quietly away, and had written to say it would be many weeks before she would he in town again. Sheila’s departure hurt Mrs. Crawshaw. She missed the girl’s companionship, and feared, too, that Sheila might have resented her friendship with George. But Sheila was far too sensible, too liberal-minded, to have any such feelings.

“I am, on the contrary, glad that you are being kind to Sir George in your own sweet fashion,” Lady Thurso wrote, in answer to her Mend’s expressed trouble on this score: “he has need of your Mendship even more than I have. He has been left so long alone.”

Mrs. Crawshaw had a distinct inclination to cry when she read Sheila’s words. “Some day, I know, I shall have to force the truth home on George. I suppose if I were to just put this little letter in with mine, and let him see for himself what an angel Sheila is, he would be capable of returning it to me with some sneer about hypocrisy. My poor Sheila!”

That very evening as she was dinner, Mrs. Crawshaw received another letter, that upset her even more than Lady Thurso’s. Sir George wrote from the country estate that had passed to him with the tide:

“I am going to have many alterations down here,” he wrote. “The house and furniture are very shabby and musty, and everything seems to speak a story of meanness and rigorous economy. I can remember spending some days here when I was quite a child. As soon as I have had the rooms freshened up a little, I shall hope to have them charmed by your presence. By that time, too, I shall have installed a mistress here, so that all may be done in fitting honour of your visit. I shall bring my wife to see you on the very first occasion. If you will extend to her the same tender friendship you have given me, you will make me happy.

“Ever your attached,

“GeorgeThubbo.”

Mrs. Crawshaw had to run away from her maid’s hands, and carry this news into her husband’s dressing-room.

“I have had such a blow, Paul,” she cried.

“Bead this letter. I am horribly disappointed. I was so sore there was nobody in his life, and I had made all sorts of other plans.”

These little exclamations were made more to herself than to her husband, who read through Sir George’s note most serenely, seeing nothing startling or remarkable in the news it conveyed.

I begin to understand a little” Mrs. Orawsbaw oontinued musingly. Then she paused and frowned. “Paul,” she declared vigorously, “I am not only bitterly disappointed, but I am prepared to detest this woman George has married. I don’t know anything about her, but I feel convinced he is making a great, great mistake—a mistake he will regret once and always.”

How little good, womanly Helen Crawshaw imagined in this moment that these words, uttered half in jest, half in irritation, were destined in the future to become a sorrowful and certain fact!

CHAPTER V.

Outwardly there was very little difference to be noted in the daily life lived in the shabby little boarding-house at West Brompton after the excitement of Zillah’s engagement and marriage had passed away. The neighbours round and about had imagined, of course, that, with their connection with such wealth and grandeur, the Westlakes would remove immediately from their old home and place. But nothing of the sort happened. At least, the boarders came and went as before, and Marian, in her dingy gowns, worked as of old to keep everything going, though keen eyes were quick to note that Mrs. Westlake was very rarely to be seen at her house, and that when she was seen she had an air of one who was no longer harassed for a ready shilling. Pew people cared to question Marian about her sister or her mother. The girl had a very sharp tongue, and was exceedingly quick to make that tongue speak, irrespective of good policy or civility. All the same, the inmates of the house could not quite restrain their curiosity—first, as to what Zillah was going to do in the future, and secondly, what share her mother and sister were going to have in her grandeur. Moreover, Mrs. West-lake’s very much improved appearance, and her frequent and prolonged absences from her home in the weeks following Zillah’s marriage, gave rise to much comment among the hoarders, especially when it was noted that Marian was, if anything, more shabby and untidy than before, and that the household appointments remained, as they had ever been, stamped throughout with the most determined genteel poverty. That there was some little mystery to be explained here was felt generally; and one or two of the more curious dared to brave the terrors of Marian’s ready retort, but with very little success in obtaining what they wanted.

The mystery was, as a good many other mysteries are, a very simple affair. All that the neighbours and boarders had expected to happen to the Westlakes had, as a matter of fact, happened in a sense. Sir George Thurso had communicated to Zillah’s mother h\s of paying a certain sum yearly to her and to her daughter Marian—on the distinct understanding, however, that such money would only be paid whilst they kept themselves wholly apart and separate from Zillah’s life. There was to be no intercourse whatever, Sir George decreed, coldly; and to this decree Zillah had not made the very slightest objection. The girl was far too pleased to be taken away from the life she hated so intensely to stop to study the feelings of anybody. She had no very strong objection to her mother, for there was a very powerful kinship between the nature of her mother and herself, and Zillah felt there might he times when even in her grandeur she should rather enjoy parading that grandeur to a companion so sympathetic as Mrs. Westlake. But where her sister was concerned Zillah had nothing hut active dislike. Marian had been very far from agreeable in those days following on the announcement of Zillah’s engagement to George Thurso, and the change of fortune that had come to him. There was a broad difference between the two girls. Indolent, untidy, shabby, as she was, Marian Westlake had certain golden gnalities in her nature such as Zillah could not even have understood. Marian had, above all things, a sense of pride which gave a dignity even to the darkest and poorest periods of her life; she was honest, too, to a fault. All prevarications and deceits were abominable to her, and Zillah had waged a daily war with her sister ever since she had returned from hoarding-school to grumble and cavil at everything and everybody in her home. To Marian’s quick pride, there was an element in the whole matter of Zillah’s engagement which was most painful. Had she been strong enough to work against her mother, that little episode in the garden would never have been permitted even a remembrance. For Marian was no fool. She, too, in her quiet, keen way, had taken thorough stock of George Thurso in the years he had lived an inmate of her mother’s house; and, knowing him as she did, she was absolutely convinced that the proposal of marriage which her mother communicated so quickly, and with so much elation to all the household, the moment after George had driven away, was neither the young man’s desire nor the outcome of his speech. Marian knew her sister even better than she knew George Thurso, and.what absolute knowledge could not sketch for her in connection with this matter imagination readily supplied.

That night, when they had been alone in their narrow, meagre bedroom, Marian West-lake had spoken to her sister as she had never spoken before. Her words at the beginning were strangely tender, for she, too, in a way, had a pity for Zillah. She admired the girl’s beauty, and she would have loved her sister if Zillah would have had her love. In those few tender words she had set the truth before Zillah.

“You hate this life, and that is natural,” she had said, “and because you hate it, you turn to the first person whom you think can take you away from it. I don’t want to know what happened between you in the garden, Zillah; all I am convinced of is that Mr. Thurso had no more intention of asking you to he his wife than he had of flying. I have watched you both very closely, as you know; and I would stake my life that no one is more surprised than this young man at what has happened to-night.” Then Marian had changed her tone. “Zillah,” she had said, “you don’t know how sorry I am for yon. Perhaps you won’t believe me, but I would give anything to see you happy—really, really happy, I mean; and that is why I want to turn you away from this thing you have done to-night. It’s an awful thing, Zillah, to marry a man who does not love you—perhaps who may despise you! All the money and luxury in the world will never make that sort of thing bearable. Do try and forget this nonsense! Mr. Thurso is now a grand man, and must marry in his own class. If he had ever shown you the smallest affection all these months, I should feel differently about him, hut as it is-

But Zillah had heard quite enough. “Of course I expected something horrid from you,” she had said, calmly. Marian’s words stung her, hut not in the spirit in which her sister had intended. They hurt ZiUah’s vanity—not her pride. “I was quite prepared for a scene like this, Marian,” she had observed, with a sneer and a laugh. “Jealous people always do make themselves so amiable.”

Marian had answered in her sharpest fashion, and had gone on hurling truths at Zillah in a relentless way, till the futility of what she was doing was borne home to her suddenly when she saw that Zillah was fast asleep and her wisdom was being given to the empty air. She had shrugged her shoulders and had closed her lips, and after that, save for one brief conversation with her mother, she said no more.

To Mrs. Westlake Marian had spoken even more frankly than to her sister. “Yon know perfectly well, mother,” she had said, “that this engagement is a farce, an invention of Zillah’s. She has been flinging herself at this man’s head for the last—I don’t know how long. Everybody has been laughing at her.”

“They will laugh the other way now then,” Mrs. Westlake had interpolated, blandly. Then she had become peevish. “You are saying very extraordinary things about your sister, Marian, I must say. Have you no pride?”

“It is because I have some pride that I say what I do,” was Marian’s reply, given sullenly. “It is Zillah who is lacking in pride. But there!—I am a fool to worry myself. Horrible as this business is, I can see you will carry it out to the end!” Though her lips were silent after that, Marian knew how to make her objections felt in the days that followed. “When day after day went by, and neither word nor sign was forthcoming from George Thurso, when, in reckless extravagance, Mrs. Westlake and Zillah bought themselves black garments, and, hiring a carriage, drove each day to make inquiries at Sir George’s hotel, Marian’s eyes and lips were frill of scorn, and even of triumph. She had no pity for Zillah in her fast-growing alarm and disappointment; and Zillah, knowing this, was careful to keep as much out of her sister’s way as possible. When George at last wrote and dictated his terms, it was Zillah’s turn to triumph, a matter in which she did not stint herself. The vulgarity which was the keynote of her nature asserted itself then as it had never done before. She revelled in her sister’s discomfiture. George’s decree about separating her from her family appealed to her immensely. She saw in this a proof of her own immeasurable superiority; and, even though for some reasons, as has been pointed out, she regretted an absolute separation from her mother, Zillah had not the smallest intention of going against Thurso’s wishes. To Mrs. Westlake, her prospective son-in-law’s cold, curt commands were terribly bitter at first, for she had built many dreams of future glory for herself out of this wonderful marriage . But there was a very considerable balm ready for the older woman in the income Sir George offered to pay her each year. She accepted his terms instantly, though she sent him a letter bewailing his harsh desire to cut her off from her darling child; and at the same time that he received her acceptance George got a brief letter from Marian Westlake—a letter penned in a spirit of such indignation as to read almost impertinent.

“This is to inform you,” Marian wrote, “that my mother has communicated to me your offer to pay to us the sum of £500 per annum on the consideration that we hold ourselves bound not to approach your wife in any way, and that I desire in reply to inform you that I not only regard your letter as a most offensive one in every sense of the word, hut that I deplore from the bottom of my heart the fact that this marriage should take place at all. What my mother may or may not do has nothing to do with me. I speak for myself, and I unhesitatingly decline to touch a farthing of your money, or to permit myself to he dictated to by you. Have no fear, however, that I shall ever desire to approach my sister, or hold any intercourse with her whatever. Doubtless it will surprise you to be told that, in my opinion, it is Zillah who disgraces us by becoming your wife—not we who disgrace her.”

This letter was signed in full, and when it was written Marian took it to her mother.

“I want you to read this, mother,” she said, quietly; “and I want you to understand most fully that not one penny of this man’s money must be spent in this house. You are fully aware I have some right to speak on this matter, for it was with the legacy that grandmother Westlake left me that we were able to start this business at all. Consequently I regard this house as my property, and I will not permit one penny, as I have just said, of this man’s to be brought into the house. Make what terms you like with him, but, understand, I mean what I say.”

Mrs. Westlake had blustered and whimpered, but she had cause to know her eldest daughter well, and, although it was with fear and trembling she saw the letter Marian had written committed to the post, she took no steps to prevent it. That Marian could carry her objection to Zillah’s marriage to such a point as to absolutely refuse a sum of money paid regularly, when money was such a scarce and. much needed commodity in their poor little humble home, was something, of coarse, that Mrs. Westlake would never be able to understand.

“Your temper grows more abominable every day,” was all she found herself able to say to the girl. “I am sure I don’t know where it is going to end with you, Marian. And pray will you tell me what you intend to do with all this grand independence of money?”

“I mean to live here and keep the business going just the same as usual,” Marian answered, calmly. “I hate the life; but it is honest, and, since we have sunk a certain sum in the establishment, I shall work on here till I get that sum back again.”

Mrs. Westlake had a sneer ready for this. “And what if you never get it back?”

“Then I shall live on struggling till I die, I suppose. I have always my father’s life in front of me as an example how to live with no money and no hope.”

Marian’s last speech silenced her mother. The story of John Westlake’s life was a very simple one, yet it had been charged with a strong element of pathos. An industrious and enterprising tradesman, he had made the mistake of his life when lie had married a girl of a class a little superior to his own, bringing with her as dowry great personal charms, a stock of airs and conceits, a lack of heart, and no knowledge either of the value of money or the result of extravagance. From her earliest girlhood Marian had learnt the secret of her father’s life—his perpetual struggle, his unending difficulties. She had seen him, as she grew older, grow daily more careworn and weary; and when the grave finally had closed over him, she had not needed his old mother’s bitter words to tell her that it had been her mother’s fault that his life had been what it was.

The venture at the boarding-house carried out further proof of Mrs. Westlake’s disastrous influence. The house was submerged in debt—no matter how Marian might work to prevent this. Money went through Clara Westlake’s fingers like water. If it had not been for Marian, the boarding-house must have come to a smash before the end of the first year; but, having inherited the greater portion of her father’s nature, the girl fought on and on, till, when the day arrived that Zillah left her home for ever, the business actually looked as if it must soon turn and render a small profit.

Marian was perfectly well aware that if it had been possible for her mother to prevent that letter she had written from reaching George Thurso, she would have done so. Bat the letter went, and Marian had the satisfaction of knowing that George had had the truth from her. Her mother was careful to conceal all her correspondence from Marian in those days. She was away from the house whilst the arrangements were being made for the marriage. Sir George had not set a bar on Zillah’s mother and sister from assisting at this ceremony, and after this was over Mrs. Westlake continued to stay away from the house. She did not think it necessary to inform Marian that Thurso had conveyed to her the fact that the whole of the money (which Marian would have shared) was being paid to her. But Marian drew her own conclusions. She saw her mother blossom out into a new period of matured beauty, aided by nice gowns and much comfort; and though Marian was very sore with her mother, and resented keenly the source of their changed circumstances, she could not but feel that the woman was at last enjoying the life that was most fitted for her fortune. Henceforth she realised that she stood alone. Zillah was gone (and Zillah’s future had been a matter of some trouble to Marian). Her father’s relatives were dead; her mother was estranged and had no need of her—at least, not for the immediate moment; and her mother’s family had never vouchsafed any notice of the children of John Westlake. Therefore Marian was really alone. Her solitude did not frighten her. For all her indolence—which was the one characteristic she inherited from her mother— Marian had a sturdy sense of independence and a keen love of fighting. She determined, however hard it might be, she would fight on till she found herself either conquered or conqueror. Her greatest difficulty was the old burden of debt, that never seemed to grow less. Even when her mother was away, and had apparently severed all connection with the boarding-house, Marian found each day a fresh application from some one of the tradespeople or neighbours for money owed or borrowed. This was the one stumbling-block in her path; and a big one it was. After awhile the need of some adviser was thrust home upon her.

She knew no one to whom she could go, but she dressed herself one morning and wash.-bus towards the City. Back to her memory as she was being jolted along came the memory of the lawyer through whom her grandmother’s legacy had been paid. Knowing no one else, she resolved suddenly to go to this man. Happily, she had been to his office in that past time, and she found her way to it almost easily again.

The name “Reynolds” was written upon the side of the door, and as Marian rather hesitatingly knocked and turned the handle, the door opened, and a slender, very pretty young woman, dressed in black, passed out, giving a smile and a little bow to Marian as she went.

Miss Westlake stood and looked after this other woman, unheeding that the door was being held open for her by a young man, who smiled half involuntarily at her evident admiration.

Instantly Marian coloured.

“Please forgive me,” she said, recognising instantly the man she had come to seek. “I want to speak to you if you can spare me a few minutes,” she added. Then, as he was passing in, she said, in her blunt way, “I think that is the prettiest girl I have ever seen in my life!”

Giles Reynolds smiled down at her sympathetically.

“I too share that opinion, Miss Westlake. You see I remember you perfectly; and, what perhaps is more rare, I think my cousin Sheila is as sweet as she looks. She is the widow of the late Sir Richard Thurso.”

Marian Westlake followed him into his inner room in silence. Her meeting with Sheila, and the knowledge that the man she had come to consult should be associated, even so distantly, with the name of Thurso, both surprised and annoyed her.

CHAPTER VI.

Zillah’s first sensation in connection with her marriage and newly acquired grand position had been one of disappointment. To begin with, she had hated the actual wedding ceremony, performed as quietly as .was possible one early morning in the gloomy church, which happened to be the parish church of the hotel where Thurso had put up since his uncle’s death. Zillah had felt chilled and almost frightened as she entered the dull grey building with her mother, and found George waiting with his lawyer for his best man and witness. To Zillah’s mind a wedding ought to have signified everything that was festive and delightful: yards of red cloth, lines of carriages, gay frocks, laughter and chatter, and flowers and sunshine everywhere. To stand in front of an altar with this grave, sad-looking young man, who had mourning in his eyes and expression, if not in his clothes; to hear solemn words spoken slowly in a great church whose empty walls echoed each syllable uttered; to have been forced to wear an ordinary walking gown instead of long, trailing white satin and drooping veil; to have had neither flowers nor bridesmaids, nor, indeed, any eyes to admire. This was something that robbed her wedding of even the faintest charm and satisfaction. In such a moment Zillah’s childishness asserted itself. She found her hand clinging nervously to her mother’s, and tears brought about by fright and acute disappointment rushed up into her dark eyes. Had she been allowed to follow the bent of her own inclination, Zillah would have had the church filled with her neighbours and acquaintances; she would have worn magnificent clothes, and played the role of a queen for one day at least. Of what use to be a woman with a title and position if she was to be denied the pleasure of showing off her grandeur to envious crowds? was what she said to herself, half peevishly. Her tears, her pale, half-nervous, half-wistful look worked most favourably upon George’s feelings. Zillah in this guise seemed to fill exactly the picture his mind had drawn of her; she touched his pity and roused his tenderness, as she stood beside him, trembling in limb. Her beauty was softened and refined by her pallor; she looked very young, very gentle, and very sweet, and something of the nature of love for her was born in Thurso’s heart in this moment. He had a thrill as he heard the words spoken above their heads that pronounced them man and wife, and he whispered a vow to himself that never should this young creature lack from him any of the care and thought and tender protection that a true husband could give. The solemnity of the scene touched him as it touched Zillah, but it appealed to him differently; it roused all that was noblest in his heart; it swept away his bitterness. He seemed to feel the influence of his dead mother hovering about the pure, sacred atmosphere of the altar; almost he could imagine she was whispering her blessing on his union, and commending his young wife to him, to be his constant thought, his life’s future devotion. His hand as it clasped Zillah’s was strong, and he tried to let her feel this strength and comfort. He had a sense of reproach that he should ever have judged this child so harshly as he had done in the beginning. Her love for him had a beauty upon it now it had never had before, and as they walked out of the church together George was conscious once again of that exhilaration of heart and spirit that had made his boyhood so bright and that signifies happiness, or what is akin to happiness. They parted from Mrs. Westlake at the church door, and Zillah’s tears had fallen once again as she turned away from her mother.

“You will let me see her sometimes,” she said to George, piteously; and he soothed her instantly with a promise. Everything was purer and clearer to him in this moment. The ugly sides of the position which before had obtruded and offended him so much were hidden away out of sight for a time at least. Even Mrs. Westlake had seemed to him to wear a less objectionable air. He did not like her; still, she was Zillah’s mother, and despite all her faults she had a certain claim upon them. Therefore he promised gently that if Zillah desired it she should see her mother in the future.

“I want you to be very, very happy,” he said to the girl, and he looked so handsome, so altogether different as he spoke, that Zillah’s tears and nervousness quickly began to vanish; and later on, when she beard that they were going for a few days to Paris, when she new estate in the deference paid her by everybody, Zillah became radiant. After all, the wedding was over and done with. It had been a dull and doleful affair, and she hated even to think about it; but, fortunately, that was an experience that would never come into her life again, and there would be heaps of future opportunities for exhibiting herself and her grandeur to the world; and one of the greatest pleasures which Zillah promised herself in connection with this was an early chance of flaunting herself and her husband’s devotion in Marian’s face.

“Of course she thought she was very clever and smart when she came and told me all those nasty things, and tried to make me understand that George was only marrying me because he was obliged to do it. I should just like Marian to hear what he has been saying to me to-day, and then perhaps she would find out for once she was not so clever as she imagines herself to be!” was the thought that ran exultingly in Lady Thurso’s mind as she was being carried down by express to Dover, with George opposite to her, ready to gratify any wish she might have, and servants in attendance to be summoned at her word. All the disagreeable momenta that she had suffered in those weeks preceding the marriage went swiftly from Zillah’s remembrance. The reality was so very much better than what she had imagined. Her views of smart people and their doings had been gleaned from third-rate novels and occasional newspapers, so that the atmosphere of the life which was started immediately she had become Lady Thurso was charged for her with everything that was novel, satisfying, and delightful. That Zillah should have been surprised and pleased, too, by George’s change of manner was only natural. In all the time she had known him she had never heard his voice so gentle, or seen him look so bright before; and easily enough the girl’s vanity saw in these signs a disposition of affairs most pleasing to herself. The many influences that were at work in the man’s heart, drawing him nearer to her, would never have been understood by Zillah. Young as she was, she was infinitely more practical, more worldly-wise, than George; there was not a grain of sentiment in Zillah’s constitution. She would have had something like contempt for George could she have known the motive that had led him to carry out lavs GL s. contract that had been wholly of her making. Indeed, up to the moment she had become his wife, neither Zillah nor her mother had in the very least comprehended what the motive had been that had held the young man to the position. They had discussed it between themselves frequently, and the only solution they had arrived at was that George had permitted the engagement to go forward because had he sought freedom he might have feared to incur publicity and cost.

After her marriage, however, this prosaic and base suggestion left Zillah’s mind, and she saw in George’s submission nothing but a tribute, and a just one, to her beautiful face and attractive youth. Having put this thought comfortably in her brain, Zillah started out on the pathway of her married life with far more pleasure than she had anticipated; for, truth to tell, up to the very last, though she had clung to the position, and would have so clung through thick and thin, she had not foreseen any great pleasure awaiting her. George’s proud silence during the engagement had upset her considerably; he had seemed so much further away even than he had been in those old days in the boarding-house. How and what life was to be when once the goal was accomplished, and he had become her husband, Zillah had had no idea; but she was quite prepared for something cold and disagreeable to begin with, at all events. The change that came over her, therefore, when she found herself met by the gentlest thought, the kindest care, the most delicate attention, can be better imagined than described. They stayed a few days only in Paris; the heat was too great to make the city pleasant, but Thurso, seeing the girl’s unbounded interest and delight in the shops, the theatres, and the many other amusements, did nothing to hasten their departure. He had given Zillah her cheque-book immediately they were married, and the quiet information of the yearly sum she would have at her disposal took her breath away. Further, he had given her some English bank-notes to enable her to make what purchases she liked in Paris, and his first task when they had driven out from their hotel had been to alight at a jeweller’s and buy a small host of glittering ornaments for Zillah to deck herself with. Life had one of its most pleasant places for George Thurso in those early days. his marriage. Zillah’s youth and irresistible love of life had a great charm for him. He was content to pause a while in the warmth of this charm, which might be ephemeral, but which was soothing to one who had lived for so long a desolate and sunless existence. He could not fail to respond to Zillah’s happiness; it was infectious, and carried him away. There were a hundred small things at hand to rise and attack the charm and the happiness; but George preached patience to himself. It was enough to let this child enjoy herself for a time, to watch her spread her cramped wings and flutter like some gorgeous new-born butterfly from flower to flower. He wanted to let her feel absolutely at ease with him before he began to unfold before her eyes the fact that in her life there would have to be many other things besides pretty gowns, diamonds, flowers, and fragrance. Zillah’s actual ignorance came to him as a little shock. He had never given her education a thought. He knew she had been to a school, and beyond that he had not questioned; but now that they were together, when he was called upon to observe her smallest action and manner, George suffered many a jar. In the old days had he been asked to describe the women of the house where he lived, he would have replied vaguely that he believed them to be ladies. He had been conscious of nothing very definite about them, as has been said, save of Zillah’s dark prettiness and the faint pleasure of her girlish sympathy; and he had lived his life so entirely alone that he had in reality never known what these people were or were not. They had not been married a week before Zillah had quickly demonstrated to him that, whatever she might become by influences, circumstances, or tuition, she certainly, to begin with, was very far removed indeed from refined womanhood. Paradoxical as it may seem, it was this lacking in Zillah that drew her nearer to George. He had cultivated the suggestion that in this girl a means had been sent to him to help him to use his wealth nobly. This suggestion had strengthened each day till it had become a conviction. Beyond this, however, Zillah’s social and educational blemishes served to deepen the pathetic interest she had roused in him. She was undeniably beautiful; money had given her beauty a setting that had brought out her every good physical point; and if, George argued, to tosu.-self, he could do so much for her in one way, why should it be impossible for him to cultivate and beautify her mental being also? She was so young, so impressionable to - influence, that the difficulty of remoulding her seemed to him infinitesimal. At least, he turned to the thought of a future when this girl would be to him an intellectual, as well as an amusing, companion, with a faith that was touching.

Perhaps quite unconsciously, Marian “West-lake’s proud, independent spirit had worked to add to her sister’s good in this respect. Certainly, though Thurso had made no mention of Marian’s letter, nor had sent her any response, her action in writing it had impressed him sharply. He had only had a dim memory of Marian; she had kept well out of his way in the days of his sojourning under her mother’s roof, and if he had thought of her at all in the first rush of his bitter anger against Zillah and her mother, he had thought of her with the same harshness he had meted out to them. Her letter had, however, brought Marian before him in quite another light, and with the knowledge of her fierce and resentful pride had come a rush of respect for her—a sense of contentment that there should be such a widely-different nature in the girl to that which her mother owned. He made the mistake of imagining that Zillah, in like circumstances, would have been every bit as proud and as independent as Marian; her love softened everything to him, and, though he respected Marian, he unhesitatingly determined that Zillah was the superior of her sister. It was for the future to prove to George Thurso how little skilled he was in reading human nature, especially such nature as unhappily belonged to the girl he had married.

From Paris they went a while to Switzerland, which Zillah found rather dull. She was not energetic, and preferred to spend her time loitering in the streets of the towns to making excursions up the mountains. She was quite happy so long as there was a promenade of some kind where she could wear some of her smart frocks and be sure of attracting admiring eyes. She loved to be always en Evidence, and to haunt the shops where she could buy more trinkets, or hats, and eat as many sweets as she possibly could. She was sharp enough, too, to realise there was far more enjoyment for her in these pursuits without her husband, and so she would urge him in her prettiest fashion not to think about her, hut to have all the hard climbing and see all the sights he desired; and her happiest moments were when George, yielding to her pleading, and to the fascination of the new and beautiful world that spread itself about him, took himself off for a day of climbing, and of awed worship up in the solitude of the snowcapped mountain passes.

It was September before they finally turned homewards again. Zillah was impatient to reach England and the big house over which she was to reign as mistress. She had no idea what sort of life it was they were going to lead at Dun-stone, but things had started so well that she was prepared for a long continuation of enjoyment. Travelling about was fatiguing to her, and, besides, it was a little dull having no one to speak to but Thurso. Had she been free to exercise her inclinations, Zillah would have made friends indiscriminately. It would have been far more amusing to her to have chatted and exchanged greetings with the people who were gathered as a rule about the different hotel entrances instead of passing through, as George did, vouchsafing no notice or word to anyone.

The dining alone upstairs in their own rooms, too, seemed to Zillah a very stupid thing to do. Of what use to wear her lovely evening gown and pretty jewels if no one saw them?

On one occasion on their homeward journey, Zillah had had a gleam of new pleasure. They were progressing homeward through Italy, and at Venice Sir George discovered accidentally they had as neighbour in their hotel Mrs. Crawshaw’s beloved son Frank. Between this young man and Thurso there had never been a very strongly expressed friendship. Frank Crawshaw belonged to another type of man, and his life oscillated in a set that was smarter, perhaps, but certainly less steady than his mother’s circle. Consequently, in his days of poverty George Thurso had fallen away completely from all connection with his old friend’s son, and though they had renewed their acquaintance more recently, there was lacking a sense of intimacy, and indeed of any great cordiality, between them. Frank Crawshaw considered Thurso “a deuced lucky beggar” to have come into his uncle’s wealth so easily, and his opinion on Sir George’s treatment of Sheila had been pretty strongly expressed to his mother. There was, therefore, no partic.u.W reason why these two men should have cared to meet, even casually; but travelling circumstances alter many cases, and Zillah’s presence was the most dominant circumstance in this case. Craw-shaw was wandering about the Continent with a friend, an exceedingly wealthy man, the head of an old family, and a man whom society chose to honour, and the result of their staying at the same place as the Thursos was a dinner, at which Zillah played hostess for the first time, and played it remarkably ill. She had decked herself for the occasion in far too smart a fashion, and it was instantly plain to Frank Crawshaw, as well as to his friend, that though Lady Thurso was undeniably handsome, she was just as undeniably inclined to be vulgar. Zillah was absolutely ignorant of the true effect she -was producing. She was in the gayest spirits—flirted and laughed and joked with the two strange young men as though she had known them all her life. It was a delightful evening to her, and she made the most of it; but to George it was the first outside shock that had come, and it hurt him badly. It brought before him the enormous difficulties he would have to contend with in shaping Zillah to even an outward semblance of an ordinary gentlewoman. It made him wince to see the look written so clearly upon the face of Frank Crawshaw and this other man, Lord Courtfeild. He found himself longing all at once for the moment when he should put Zillah into the tactful and kindly hands of Helen Craw-shaw. He did not till this moment realise how much he had been building unconsciously on a friendship between his wife and this older woman to further the hopes and plans he had at heart. Mrs. Crawshaw had not written to him frequently since his marriage, and there had been a touch of distinct coldness in her congratulations; hut still he felt she would always be his friend, and that perhaps some day, when time had moved onward a little, he should open his heart to her, give her the full story of his marriage, and have her sympathy as well as help. ‘In the meanwhile, in order to prevent further blunders, and to save Zillah from the amused and cynical comments of these men of the world, he determined on an immediate departure from Venice.

He was tenderly careful not to say a word to Zillah that might hurt her; he blamed himself entirely for having let her come in contact with anyone, save such a friend as Helen till he had had time to teach her a few of the small yet great things so necessary to her position. It was marvellous how his thought and hope for her expanded in this moment. Love such as he had read of, love even of the kind that he imagined Zillah gave to him, was unwritten in his heart for her or for any woman; he had conceived a tender pity for Zillah and established a life task for himself. Believing in her real worth and beauty, despite all her many faults, he followed up that task eagerly and determinedly. He was quite unconscious that in his very eagerness lay the beginning of a confession—the confession that his marriage was a mistake for Zillah and for himself!

CHAPTER VII.

As Giles Reynolds had told Marian Westlake when he saw her standing outside his office door, he had recognised her instantly.

He had lost sight of the Westlakes since the time when it had been his duty to pay to Marian the legacy inherited from her father’s mother, but he had been much impressed by Marian’s sharp, practical youth at that time, and he had never quite forgotten how much he had been amused by a certain witty brusqueness in the girl’s speech. Marian’s outspoken words of admiration for Sheila’s beauty were quite in the old manner, and made the young man smile.

“I hope there is something I can do for you, Miss Westlake,” he said, as he led the way into his room and put Marian into a chair. Marian smiled grimly.

“If you had another legacy for me I should not object, I assure you,” she said, dryly. Giles Reynolds looked at her sympathetically. She was an attractive creature, although, hsc gjyww. and hat and whole attire was shabbiness itself. Marian had Zillah’s brunette colouring, but whereas Zillah’s eyes were velvety brown, Marian’s were large, clear grey, and whereas Zillah’s lips were ripe for pouts and smiles, Marian’s were set in a sharp, decisive way that spoke of character and some temper, too; for the rest, both girls had graceful, supple figures, a beauty inherited from their mother.

“I am in any amount of difficulty,” Marian said, curtly, after a little pause. “I don’t know exactly why I should come and bother you with my affairs. Perhaps I had better he quite frank with you, Mr. Reynolds, and tell you straight away that I shall not he a very lucrative client.”

Giles Reynolds smiled.

“I shall be glad to advise you and help you in any way I can, if only for remembrance of your grandmother, who was a good friend to me, Miss Westlake.”

Marian’s face lighted a little. It always gratified her to hear pleasant words of her father’s family. She nodded her head in a sharp little way.

“I remembered how much Grannie thought of you; and to-day, when I was in the omnibus, not really knowing to whom I could or should go, I thought of you, Mr. Reynolds, and that is why I am here.”

“Tell me your difficulties,” the young man said, gently.

Marian sighed.

“There are so many—all little ones, still all tiresome.”

She gave him as tersely as possible the story of the boarding-house speculation, and of her own efforts during the last two or three months to keep the business going.

“I am sure it would pay if only there could be an end to the debts,” she said, wistfully, after all was told.

Giles Reynolds was tapping the table with a pen. He was thinking what strange fate it was that should have brought two such young women as Sheila and Marian to his office almost at the same time. They were, of course, wide apart in one sense, but they were very strongly akin in another, since both were brave, proud, and honest. The little recital Marian had made him revived his recollections of her mother, who had come with her to his office at the time of old Mr. Westlake’s death, and, shrewd reader as he was, Giles Reynolds knew perfectly well that all Marian’s difficulties rose through her mother, just as in another way all Sheila’s troubles and difficulties were brought about by her mother. He roused himself to go thoroughly into Marian’s case; he did not choose to tell her so all at once, but he feared the girl had set herself an impossible task, not merely of getting back a portion of the capital invested in this boarding-house, but of even making a meagre livelihood out of it. Marian found him very practical, but very kind; she liked him, and felt immensely comforted merely by talking things over with him.

“I suppose I am not the magnificent manager I imagined I was,” she said to him at one point, and her eyes smiled and her pretty teeth gleamed. The thought crossed the man’s mind involuntarily that this girl was made for some life less wearing and monotonous than the one she had chosen. In questioning, he found she was quite alone.

“My sister is married, my mother is travelling about,” Marian had said, briefly; then, as she saw he paused, hardly knowing what to say, she spoke more impulsively: “Please tell me, Mr. Reynolds, isn’t there any way I can manage to pay off these debts and struggle on? I want to stay where I am if I possibly can. It is a question of pride with me. I am of a pugilistic nature; I love to fight something or somebody.” She rose as she spoke, and Mr. Reynolds rose too.

“Before I can give you a decided opinion,” was the reply, “I must come down and go over your books with you. I suppose you keep some books, don’t you?” he added, laughingly, as he saw an expression pass over the mobile face before him.

“In a sort of way I suppose I do; but I am terribly untidy, Mr. Reynolds; my books consist of scraps of paper, or the backs of old envelopes. I think,” Marian said, quizzically, “I think I made a mistake when I came to a lawyer.”

“I hope you will not find you have made a mistake in ‘ coming’ to me, Miss Westlake. Regard me as a friend first, and a lawyer afterwards.” Marian shook hands with him and was moving away, when she turned back.

“As a friend, then, may I ask you one question?” She asked her question before he had time to answer her. “Do you know anything of Sir George Thurso—is he a good man?” There was something more than mete curiosity in Marian’s voice, something which puzzled Giles Reynolds even as much as her question surprised him. The truth was that for many a day past Marian’s really tender heart had been sore and troubled about her sister. She had quarrelled regularly with Zillah ever since she could remember, hut that signified nothing, and did no injury to her affections. Quarrelling was the natural outcome of two warm natures, and though Marian could say the sharpest words in the world when her temper was roused, she never forgot to be proud of Zillah’s beauty or to realise the girl’s youth and circumstances. There was a matter of three years between their ages, but Marian had always felt herself three times three the elder of Zillah, and in their daily life had adopted a position of much greater age. The matter of Zillah’s engagement had hurt her pride beyond endurance, and Zillah’s attitude in the matter had deepened the hurt; hut afterwards, when she had been alone and in her many hours of solitude she had thought about it all, she had remembered her sister with all the old tenderness, and she had begun to fear and to question in her heart if, instead of being angry, she should have used other means to have saved Zillah from this marriage. Her own letter to George haunted her, too. Perhaps it would have served to make him angry and cold with Zillah. Marian had had several letters from her mother, full of glowing accounts of Zillah’s wonderful happiness, and of all the gifts George had showered upon her. Marian would have liked to have believed her mother, hut her heart misgave her. She read the triumphant note over herself and her objection to the marriage, to he strongly impressed by Mrs. Westlake’s reports. She hoped most earnestly, most eagerly, that there might he an element of truth in Thurso’s supposed infatuation for his wife, yet she could not reconcile it with her own experience of George. Nevertheless, Marian had come to the conclusion that there must have been some kindly motive at work with the young man when he had quietly if coldly permitted the marriage to go forward. She was woman enough to know that Zillah had one power in her beauty, but this did not seem to Marian the whole of the case, and the more she thought about Zillah, the more she puzzled and the more she troubled. After all, Zillah was very young, not yet twenty; she had never been taught wisdom, as a child she had been denied nothing, and George Thurso had undoubtedly had a very great attraction for the girl. Had she done wrong in separating herself so definitely from Zillah? They were only sisters, and Zillah had been wont to look to Marian for much; was it right to have cut the girl away from this old tie? These had been the thoughts that had oppressed Marian so much of late, and this was the train of feeling that formulated itself in the question she found herself putting to Giles Reynolds. She asked the question quite without preparation. The knowledge that he was Sheila Lady Thurso’s kinsman gave her the idea suddenly that he might know something of Zillah’s husband.

She was quick to see Mr. Reynolds’s surprise.

“I have a particular reason for asking,” she said; then she coloured. “Perhaps you do not know that my sister is his wife?”

Giles Reynolds had certainly been very far from knowing this, or imagining it either. He was used to conquering surprise, however, and he answered her quietly:

“I am really unable to give yon an opinion about Sir George Thurso. I have never met him as yet, neither has my cousin—his uncle’s widow. All we know of him is that he has been a man who has suffered much sorrow, and who has no cause either to love or to grieve over his uncle’s memory!”

Marian was conscious of a disappointment, but she did not show it; she thanked him and turned to go, after they had renewed the arrangement of day and hour for Giles to visit her house and go thoroughly into her difficulties. She had, however, the pleasurable sensation of knowing that in Mr. Reynolds she might henceforward count on a sound adviser, and in a degree on a friend, and Marian’s life was sufficiently lonely at this time to make this matter one of great import to her.

She would have been surprised if she could have known how much thought Giles Reynolds was bestowing on her, and she little imagined that that same evening, when she had superintended the modest dinner, listened to the usual grumbles, and gone through the usual tasks, she was being discussed at another dinner-table, and that very pleasant things were being said about her.

Giles Reynolds was a rare but a welcome to Sheila. She had something of a sister’s love for this cousin. They had always been firm friends, and Sheila had an unbounded faith in Giles’s talents. She had never known that this cousin had lived through a little drama of sorrow on her account (that was a story locked away in her mother’s secrets), and now, although the harrier was gone, and Sheila was free to be won once again, somehow the hope had died away from the man’s heart, and the futility of his love was forced home to him, and the words Mrs. Reynolds had so successfully checked three years before were still unspoken. They were admirable friends, however, just as they had ever been, and Sheila had a knack of looking to her cousin to come to her rescue when things got into a tangle. Giles had a peculiarly happy touch with Sheila’s mother, and could set her aright when no one else could. It was Giles who had counselled Sheila to make a little home for herself in London when the matter of her husband’s death and affairs had been finally settled.

“For people with small incomes London is the one place,” he had said. “You are in the heart of everything, and you may be very well sure that in due course of time everybody you want to see will come circling round you; besides, if, as you tell me, you have resolved to have Cynthia to live with you, you must settle down in one spot”

“Cynthia and I love London,” had been Sheila’s reply, and forthwith she and her youngest sister, who happened to be, perhaps fortunately for herself, what her mother called a “lamentably plain girl,” spent the hot, dusty days of late August and early September in hunting for a house. Of course, Mrs. Craw-shaw approved of Giles’s counsel.

“Only,” she wrote to Sheila, “I make me stipulation: the house must be near me—somewhere where I can see you every day.”

Sheila translated this in an elastic sense. ““We have taken a doll’s house,” she wrote back to Scotland when September was a fortnight old. “It is in a tiny, quiet street, not far from the Marble Arch. Of course, this is not very near you, but nevertheless you shall see me just as often as though it were next door.”

It was in this doll’s house in the tiny, quiet street not far from the Marble Arch that Giles Reynolds wended his way to dine on the evening of the day Marian had been to his office. He never went to see Sheila in her new home without a sigh for her and a smile for her mother. Mrs. Reynolds had, figuratively, washed her hands of her eldest daughter. Sheila’s marriage, that had been such a success, to have resulted in such a failure—it was all too terrible!

“And, really, you may just as well open a shop at once,” her mother had said to Sheila, when she heard of the whereabouts of the little house, “as live in the Edgware Road.”

It was extraordinary how happy Sheila and her little sister were fitting themselves into the doll’s house. They did nearly all their decorations themselves.

“Even to hanging the wall-papers!” as Cynthia proudly explained to everybody. It all looked very sweet and modest and cheerful to Giles Reynolds as he entered the doll’s house that evening; and Sheila, he knew, without any words, had a joy in this little home that had never been in any of her previous homes. There were all sorts of new arrangements to show Giles, for they had only been settled in the house a fortnight, and each hour had been employed in making it habitable.

“I did as you advised this morning,” Sheila said to her cousin, as they sat at the little dining-table and discussed a merry little meal, “and while I was at your office Cynthia hung those curtains. Giles, please look at them and admire! By the way, Giles,” Sheila added, when the curtains had been duly admired, “I was going to ask you who that pretty girl was I met on your stair to-day?”

Giles smiled.

“Evidently there is some sort of affinity between you, Sheila,” he said, “for that pretty girl was lost in admiration of you.” He paused a moment as though reflecting if he should speak on, and then decided to do so. “You might guess a good many times, Sheila, before you would imagine who my visitor was! It really was a very strange thing you should have met.”

Sheila looked at him in a puzzled way. She had lost her worn, troubled air, and had the same sweet, childlike expression that had been her greatest charm; her eyes—violet blue in some shades and darkest grey in others—asked the question her lips did not utter. Giles Reynolds seemed to take a sudden determination..

“Do yon know, Sheila, I have half a notion to ask yon to be kind to that girl? I am interested in her; she is not an ordinary character.” He just briefly told her the outline of Marian’s position. “I am afraid, when I go into the matter, I shall find myself compelled to get her out of this business, though that is just what she does not want,” he said at the end.

Sheila was instantly interested.

““Would she care for my friendship, Giles?” Reynolds smiled. “I suppose so. You are not the most sympathetic person in the world for nothing. But, after all, perhaps it is you who may not care for her friendship. Marian Westlake is the sister of Sir George Thurso’s wife.”

CHAPTER VIII.

Before they parted that evening Sheila and her cousin had made an arrangement that Giles should, in his forthcoming interview, prepare the way for an acquaintanceship between Sheila and Marian ‘Westlake.

“And I think we had better keep the matter to ourselves, Giles,” Sheila had said, hurriedly, as she and Cynthia escorted him down the stairs of the doll’s house. “You understand what I mean?” she added, with a blush.

Yes, Giles understood perfectly well. Let Mrs. Reynolds but have an inkling of this arrangement, and there would be no end to her remarks. She had a too lively recollection of George Thurso’s treatment of her to allow her to view calmly any conciliatory movement on Sheila’s part towards people who were now connected with the young man.

“We will have a conspiracy all to ourselves— eh, Cynthia?” Giles said, with a twinkle in his eye. “Remember, should your mother want to know-”

“Oh,” Cynthia observed, very quietly, “mother will never want to know anything from me, because I don’t suppose I shall ever see her now. She never means to come here, you know”— then the younger girl laughed—“but it is Sheila you ought to warn. She is the very worst conspirator in the world. Just look at her now, Giles! Doesn’t she look as if she had promised to commit a murder? Sheila is really—really— frightened of mamma. Aren’t you, Sheila?”

Sheila laughed, coloured, and sighed, as she said “Yes” to this, quite simply.

“I am a coward, you see,” she told Giles as they shook hands, and he passed out through the door.

He walked away haunted by the picture of the fair young creature standing midway on the stairs, so delicately lovely in her simple gown— so gentle, so lonely, and yet so inaccessible. His love had grown accustomed to its burden of hopelessness, where Sheila was concerned; yet to-night he found himself asking why this should be, and why, Sheila being a woman free to be wooed, he was so certain without trying his fate that her love would never be for him. The answer to this question was one his practical mind could not frame into words; yet he was conscious that there was an answer, and that if he were a wise man he would never break the pleasant spell of their friendship (which was, he knew, a great help and comfort to Sheila) by giving voice to the love that had lain hidden in his heart so long. He knew so little about what her thoughts and feelings had been during the two years of her married life; yet he had divined much, more even than she herself knew. She had called herself a coward tonight, and truly. If she had shown some cowardice in her strange, loveless, and most trying union with Richard Thurso, it was a cowardice all the world would have pardoned. She had been, however, brave to the last degree in her resolve to smile away whatever misery there was to be borne, yet there were some things that Giles knew were too much for the gentle strength and courage now; and fear of her mother and her mother’s tactics was the one thing that could beat Sheila into what she called cowardice. There always came a throb of hot, ungovernable anger into the man’s heart when he thought of Sheila’s mother, and the disastrous part she had played in her child’s heart. His aunt’s treatment of himself came last in this reflection. After all, he had been a struggling nobody, and Sheila had never given him the faintest hope on which to:build his love. That he should have been sent to the right-about was not an extraordinary thing. But the marriage the mother had made, and the way in which she had humbled Sheila with George Thurso when the girl’s freedom had come, were two horrible and responsible matters for any woman to have had on her conscience.

“And even now she is not done with Sheila,” Giles said to himself, as he drove homewards in a rapid hansom. “She will leave the child for a time, till perhaps she has worked out a successful fortune for Enid, but she is sure to come back to Sheila. She knows there is the value of even a bigger social acclaim� to be made out of Sheila as a widow than there was as a girl. Enid’s prettiness and possible success may protect Sheila for awhile, but once her mother has married her second daughter she will return to the charge. I have no doubt whatever,” Giles added, cynically, here, “that but for the existence of this young wife my dear aunt would have been hard at work now, planning a marriage between Sheila and her husband’s successor. The kinship between George Thurso and his step-uncle being so slight, this would have been quite possible. Happily there is a wife, so poor little Sheila is spared this, at all events. How good she is! How eager to show her goodness to others! I hope I am not making a mistake in bringing her in contact with this other girl. It is a strange order for me to work so quickly on an impression; and—of course I may be wrong—but I certainly feel drawn to Marian ‘Westlake, and I should like to help her if I can. I don’t imagine that Sheila will be in any danger of coming across either Thurso or his wife in any intercourse she may have with this girl. Even if she did,” was the young man’s final thought as his home was reached, “I for one should not be sorry. Perhaps, when he saw what sort of creature it was he had so cruelly insulted, Sir George Thurso would feel some compunction for his conduct.”

Sheila, on her side, sat thinking very late that night before she went to bed. She brushed out her soft brown hair, and passed into a dreamy mood that was far removed from sleepiness. She was by nature a lover of everything simple; hence the loss of her wealth, of all the cold, heavy luxury that had surrounded her, of the big rooms and many servants, did not hurt her in the very least. She had never been so glad at heart since she was a tiny child as now, when she had this dear little home of her own all to herself. Happiness had as yet not crept into Sheila’s heart. The strongest of the causes that made Giles Reynolds’s love so hopeless with this fair young woman was based on the fact that such love as he cherished had never even dawned on Sheila’s imagination. She was lavish in her affections and friendships; she was dearly attached to her sisters; but she had never dreamed of love for a lover, nor had there ever come to her even the vague, restless longings that trouble many girls’ hearts. Her husband’s so-called love for herself had aroused in Sheila a deep pity and a deeper repugnance. It was not Sir Richard’s age or appearance only that brought that repugnance; it was the narrowness, the doubting meanness, the hardness and jealousy, that constituted the meaning of that love. Sheila knew vaguely that such a marriage was in itself a sacrifice; but she did not understand much beyond that. She had accepted the marriage because she had felt that Sir Richard had need of her companionship—of her comfort; and to give freely of all that lay in her sympathy was the keynote of Sheila’s nature. That there could have been a sweeter, more beautiful companionship possible the girl did not realise then; and though she realised this now (for life teaches its lesson of experience every hour), still Sheila was utterly ignorant of the delights and the greater depths of emotion the human heart can experience.

She had, nevertheless, a large share of romance in her constitution, and as she sat looking into her fire, with her beautiful hair floating about her as a veil, she fell to dreaming visions of the life George Thurso and his young wife were leading at Dunstone. Mrs. Crawshaw had given her a brief outline of what was generally rumoured about the Thurso marriage.

“I confess I was disappointed when I first heard George was taking a wife,” Helen Crawshaw had written; “but I begin to see things a little more clearly, and in this ‘st’Jkfcfc the working out of the man’s nature. He must have had some gratitude in his heart for this girl and her people, as well as love; and now that he is prosperous he shows this by sharing his wealth with them. Truly, he is a strange creature, and I cannot help but find good in him.” Sheila had smiled faintly when she had read this. “Helen is always afraid of praising him to me. I wish she would forget all that passed with me. I forget it, so why not others? I feel convinced there is more good in him than in most His life has proved this already.”

She recalled Mrs. Crawshaw’s letter now, and repeated it to herself with pleasure.

“It is nice to think that a man can be so kind and generous. I am glad he married this girl,” she mused. “She must be nice, I am sure, especially since dear old Giles has taken such a fancy to the sister. I wonder what rooms they will use at Dunstone, and if all the old servants will be kept on. The new Lady Thurso will be happier at Dunstone than Sheila Lady Thurso ever was—that is very certain.”

She shivered a little as she drew hack from her memory the count of her many dreary days in the doll and shabby old house.

“With new furniture and all sorts of new ideas the place ought to look beautiful,” she told herself; and then she fell to wondering if Zillah would ever find her way up to a certain little room in the tower—a room which she had turned into a sort of studio, and which had been her pet corner, almost her only sanctum.

“It used to he so cosy up there alone,” Sheila said to herself, softly, as she rose at length, and, gathering her mass of hair together, plaited it in one long thick braid: “I remember how I used to watch the first touch of spring creep into the trees, and how day by day the leaves used to get thicker and thicker till I could not see the earth at all. I think that little tower room is the only thing I envy Lady Thurso. For the rest—well,” as she glanced about her with a bright smile, noting the dozens of small things with which Cynthia’s love and decorative skill had beautified her small bedroom—“well, I would not exchange this for all the Dunstones in the world.”

Zillah had been a week in her new home, and the element of excitement and delight in settling herself down in the big house had had time to wear off a little. She had tired of travelling, but she had not realised how exceedingly quiet the country could be. She had never lived in the real country before; and she made the discovery, after her first forty-eight hours’ experience of it, that she did not in the least care for the country. She missed the whirl and rush of life which had surrounded her on the Continent; and when she had superintended the unpacking of her innumerable boxes and the stowing away of all her finery in the big wardrobes and cupboards, she had literally nothing whatever to do, except yawn and lounge about the big rooms, looking listlessly at the pictures on the walls (which were so many blank pages to poor little Zillah), and shivering in the chill autumn air, which made itself felt appreciably in the roomy old house. She saw very little of George these first days of their return, for there were a hundred and one things that claimed his attention outside the house. All the closed-up channels of his boyhood’s pursuits were opened out to George once again in the changed circumstances of his life. Things, desires, pleasures, that had been frozen out of all remembrance even by his year’s misery, privation, and suffering, were given back to him now, enhanced twofold by the spell of biting and impossible poverty. He had his stables to restock, his farms to oversee. He planned out for himself a healthy and exhilarating life. They should settle quietly at Dunstone through the winter. He would give Zillah her first experience of country delights. She should commence her riding and driving lessons at once, and he himself would be her tutor. He knew really little about her tastes and inclinations, but he imagined her adaptable. It was possible she might prove to have an interest in his farming undertakings. They should live these next few months in companionship—a communion unbroken by outsiders; and, with her quick brain, he hoped to instill a host of small but essential facts in her mind. He renounced the idea of giving the girl tuition from anyone save himself. He felt she might misunderstand his real thought if he had done as he had first intended —introduced a companion into the house, whose real duty should have been to initiate Lady Thurso into the ways of social and even ordinary life. He was too eager to spare Zillah all he could, and he felt that the girl cared for him so much that she would take instruction from his hand than from another, no matter how gentle or tactful the hand might be. As soon, therefore, as he had got his household into working order, he sketched out for himself a life that he intended to he of good purpose, and that he hoped might be sweetened by sympathy, and in time, by the pure, strong tie of children’s love. His heart yearned to give of its best to the girl he had made his wife. He shut his eyes to the magnitude of the task he had set himself in shaping a beautiful mental creature out of Zillah’s rough and unrefined mind. He saw nothing but his duty in connection with her, and he determined that though real love might never be born for her, yet she should never know the lack of this. On one point he was resolved to be absolutely firm: until Zillah had been shown some of her many deficiencies, he should not allow her to mingle in with the world to which, through her marriage, she now belonged. It was not pride alone that urged this; it was the most delicate thought for her. The memory of that little dinner in Venice was a sharp-edged weapon against Zillah’s share of social life. A hot rush of colour would come to George at the recollection of the amusement his wife had all unconsciously afforded Frank Crawshaw and Lord Courtfeild. This was something that must not happen again, and George set his teeth resolutely and told himself that the next lime these men came in contact with his wife they should feel ashamed of their former and superficial judgment, and should do instant homage to the nature which was as beautiful as the face and form. Zillah, on her side, was only waiting and enduring the monotony impatiently till things were settled sufficiently enough to have the house filled with guests. She was dreadfully bored at Dunstone, and by nothing so much as by the very dignified regime of the household. She was really more than nervous of the servants: they downright frightened her, and she was conscious of making a faux pas at almost every turn.

Out in Switzerland George had told her they would invite Mrs. Crawshaw, and perhaps some of her friends, to come to Dunstone in the autumn. There were odds and ends of his mother’s relations who, with a trick most relations have, had looked up George’s acquaintance now that fortune had smiled on him, and some of the Mends who had lost sight oi hvcn. isst long bad desired to renew their knowledge of him and to meet his wife, And Zillah, knowing of all these, had begun to plan delightful future hours for herself. That George should turn coldly from his relations (some of whom were what Zillah called “swells”) was a matter the girl could not understand in the least. She was neither loyal nor generous herself, so she saw nothing strange in the conduct of those who fly when trouble arrives, and who will flutter back when the sunshine returns. Consequently it was a favourite hope with her that George would quickly accept the proffered friendship of these kinspeople, and give her a chance of meeting them. She brought her longings to utterance at the end of the long, dreary week at Dunstone by inquiring most eagerly when Mrs. Crawshaw and the other promised guests were likely to arrive.

“I hope they will come soon,” she said, and she said it with convincing emphasis. They were sitting at dinner. The servants had gone, and they were alone in the big oak-panelled room. George looked across to where his wife sat—her elbows on the table, her chin supported in her two hands. She was pretty enough, in conscience, in that careless attitude. She i one of her richest tea-gowns, made with the pretense of mourning as was possible, she had hung jewels on her throat and t. She was more of a woman than a child this moment; and a suggestion of strength will and purpose seemed to frame itself in eyes and full lips. George’s heart sank as he answered her.

CHAPTER IX.

“I have come to the conclusion we are better without guests for a little while, Zillah,” was what he said.

Zillah dropped her hands and looked at him. She could not quite realise her disappointment all at once.

“You mean we are to stay here all alone, just by our two selves?” she asked.

George smiled faintly. “Are you afraid we shall be very dull?”

She did not answer him at first; her face, that had flushed into crimson, grew suddenly pale again.

“It is rather dull,” she said, when she found her voice; then with a little break of the sullen tone into wistfulness, “the house is so big, and you are out all the time.”

George rose from his seat far away at the end of the big table with its glittering array of splendid silver and glass, and came and sat down beside her.

“I am sorry to have left you so much alone this week. It was thoughtless of me, Zillah, hut the fact is I have had so much to arrange in outdoor matters.” He took her hand in his. Zillah had a very beautiful hand, one that was absolutely for show, not use; it had the trait of a selfish, indolent, passionate, unintellectual woman in its every line. George had never realised the fact that there might be complete failure for him in his plans till now, when he sat looking down at the hand he held caressingly in his. The womanhood seemed suddenly developed in Zillah to-night; she had lost, somehow, the air of the malleable, youthful creature she had hitherto been. He half feared to speak what had seemed to him so easy. Still, her greatest promise and charm lay in her love for him. She had touched him instantly by those few simple words: “The house is so big, and you are out all the time!”

He drew her towards him and kissed her as he answered her:

“We cannot make the house any smaller, I am afraid, but we can alter the other trouble. I shall not leave you so much alone in the future. I have, in fact, been making all sorts of plans for our days together.”

Still smoothing her hand, with its small, feeble fingers, he very gently sketched out the life he had conceived best for their winter—the life of close companionship, of education. Zillah listened quietly, but her calmness masked a very tumult of feelings. It was as much as she could do not to break into tears. Lacking as she was in many things, she was shrewd to the verge of cunning, and she jumped far, far sooner than George had imagined she would, to the reason that lay at the bottom of all these plans. The truth stung her vanity most sharply. This was a condition of things that had never dawned in her mind when she had dreamed dreams of being George Thurso’s wife. The pictures that had framed themselves so vividly before her eyes then had been a long succession of social delights and triumphs for herself; never had she felt for an instant that she was not equal in every sense to maintaining the highest position in the social world that might fall to her lot. She was so incensed, so hurt, with George that she almost hated him in this moment. Had it been a woman who had suggested to her that there was anything she had to learn in her new life, Zillah would, of course, have complacently laid down the cause of this to jealousy; but it was impossible to find such gratification in her husband’s words. By this time Zillah had grown to know that in all George said or did there was a steady purport, an honesty of intention, which could not be measured; she therefore was face to face now with the unpleasant conviction that she must be lacking in some of the essentials that go to make a successful woman of society, and that her future was not to be either the agreeable or easy one she had pictured. Moreover, apart from her hurt vanity, there was much in what George said that sent a chill through Zillah’s whole nature. She loathed all form of education; bookB, save the lightest of light fiction, had no place in her life. She was astonishingly ignorant; and this was a fault that lay not merely at the door of her constant indolence, but rose from a natural dulness of intellect She was her mother’s own child, and the two years of schooling, which had cost so much, and which would have borne such different fruit had they been given to Marian instead of her younger sister,‘had left Zillah almost as poorly instructed as when she had first become a pupil. To a mind like hers, the value of her womanhood., of her brilliant personality, was the one study she was able to grasp; and in all that was attached to this power and this knowledge, Zillah was an adept. She had never dreamed that to a woman placed as she now was, with a fine position and a good income, anything more would be demanded of her than to look beautiful and dress smartly. Of course, she knew that there were any amount of clever women in the world; but she had preconceived ideas on this subject Clever women, in Zillah’s estimation, were ugly women—at least, all the girls who had shot ahead of her at school were put into the shade themselves by her when it came to a question of looks. There were no niceties or distinctions in Zillah’s mind in a matter of this sort; she did not in the least understand what was required of her by George. He might have spent his life in explaining to her that what she lacked had nothing to do with what she called “cleverness.” These things are not to be taught; they are purely a question of instinct, although, of course, early associations can introduce what Nature has failed to give. “With all her roughness, there was a delicacy, an intuition of refinement, and a womanly pride in Marian’s nature which neither her mother nor her sister would ever possess— simply because such things were blank to their intelligence. So it was that poor Zillah’s heart grew suddenly chilled and frightened at all that George said to her; and when this sensation had passed, there came the spiteful note of a jarred and angry vanity. Swept away by this last feeling, Zillah was capable of telling herself that George had not treated her fairly, and that had she known what sort of life it was he was going to give her she would have hesitated a long time before she became his wife. She found a foolish consolation in letting this angry thought have place with her, but she was far too cunning to speak it aloud. As a matter of fact she did not find it easy to speak at all, and when George had said all he had to say, they sat a long time in silence. Zillah had drawn away her hand from his, and was busy moving it to and fro on the white cloth, letting the light gleam out brilliantly from her many rings. George watched those flashes of radiant colour in a dreamy way. Vaguely he found himself regretting that he had spoken to his wife at all; he had a sense of shyness upon him. Another woman would have quickly realised this, and would, have, Va&VsusSv. to set Mm at his ease; but the earnestness, the deep, moving hopes that had escaped him unconsciously, were quite lost on Zillah. She had not the faintest idea that his inner heart had been for one instant unfolded to her eyes. The eager desire to make sometMng good of their lives framed itself into a reproach on herself; and, indeed, had there been at hand someone to represent to Zillah the manifold dreams that worked together to form George’s every action now, she would have found her husband’s impulses exceedingly silly and far-fetched. Zillah’s ideas of humanitarianism began and ended with herself; her definition of generosity would be to give away a cast-off gown to her maid. She was not in the smallest degree a bad woman; she was merely common throughout—opaque where she should have been clear, and narrow in every direction. Yes; George could not but regret that he had spoken so freely. Her silence alone did not convince him that he had made an error; it was her real self dawning out this night, in every gesture, every line, that brought the chill of hopelessness and disappointment.

He roused himself to move the sullen look from her face.

“I suppose I am an awful blunderer,” be said, with a half laugh. “Don’t look so frightened, Zillah, dear; we are not going back to school again.”

Zillah lifted her eyes with a gleam of semidefiance. “I’m sorry I’ve got such a lot to learn,” she said, slowly.

George smiled faintly.

“My dear child, we all of us have to learn something new every day of our lives, and the higher we are placed-” he stopped abruptly, he was beginning to touch a dangerous subject again. “Come out and see the stables,” he said, instead of continuing his speech. “Your ponies have come; they are a perfect match.”

““Will they kick?” Zillah asked, hurriedly. She had jumped at the idea of going to the stables; it was something to do, although Lady Thurso could not conscientiously say she was particularly happy when passing in such close proximity to animals which she regarded as being altogether wild. “Ponies do kick,” she added, as George laughed; and then, with that air of childishness and wistfulness which was her strongest charm, “I am such a coward!” she said.

George drew her hand through his arm, and insisted on sending for a wrap and enfolding her in it. His heart sank a little as he saw how quickly her nature reasserted itself, and how her spirit hastened away to its own sphere—that sphere that was so far apart from the one he desired her to inhabit.

He played his rile to perfection, however, and when the wrap came—a costly matter of silk and fur, fit for the opera, and certainly the last thing in the world for the country—he admired it so warmly that Zillah’s face was a glow of delight She made a picture of splendid young womanhood as she stood there wrapped about in the delicate gleaming silks, with jewels flashing from her throat and hair and hands, and there was in such a moment a sense of homage in the man’s heart for the creation of such physical beauty, mingling with the natural thrill that stirred him when Zillah’s eyes met his, with as little law or question as the trees are stirred when the wind flowing invisibly moves them from root to topmost twig.

George sat a long time alone that night in his study. It had been his uncle’s room; he remembered it dimly as being a room where he bad sat with his parents on a day long distant, when his grandfather lay dead in the hoose, and the title had descended to the eldest son, that cold, disagreeable step-brother of his father. He had completely altered the room; it had been shabby with age, and now it was the picture of comfort —and of business too; for with his arrival at Dunstone Sir George Thurso had at once been inundated with letters of every sort and description. George threw himself back in his chair and took up a quarterly magazine, but he was not in a reading mood. He had been inexpressibly tender with Zillah, had listened to her chatter patiently, and had finally sent her up to her room with a smile and a kiss.

“To-morrow we shall drive the ponies for the first time,” he had said as she had gone, and her laughter and dark eyes had made a picture on his memory that was pleasurable enough in a sense. But the hurt remained. Hot till this moment did George Thurso realise how much he had built upon the hope of forming their two lives into one strong sympathy; and even now, when Zillah’s nature had spoken as forcibly as it could against the possibility of defeat, he could. not accept the defeat as being final. The thought came to him all at once that he had blundered.

“We men are so clumsy in these things,” he said, and forthwith he determined to alter his tactics altogether. Instead of isolating Zillah from people, he would surround her with those who would he her friends as well as her tutors. In this, however, he must have powerful help, and the one person who could help him, if she would, was Helen Crawshaw. The remembrance of her graceful presence, of her kindliness, of her exquisite tact, came to George as a solace. He threw aside the magazine, and sat down to write to his mother’s old friend.

“I shall say absolutely nothing to her of what is in my heart,” he mused as he wrote, and once his brow darkened. “She will have had one version of my poor Zillah from Frank, but I am not afraid that she will be prejudiced by that. I shall merely ask her to come and stay with us as long as possible, and when she is here I shall leave matters in her hands. I suppose I am forgiven by now” George always smiled faintly when he thought of Mrs. Crawshaw’s anger. Yet she had been undoubtedly angry with him in connection with his attitude to Sheila, Lady Thurso, and somehow since he had been here in Sheila’s former home, a faint feeling of doubt and regret had come to Sir George where his uncle’s widow was concerned, a faint suggestion that he might, after all, have misjudged the woman. Certain it was that now his bitter contempt for Sheila had considerably evaporated. The influence the former Lady Thurso had left behind her in the hearts of the people with whom she had lived had been the greatest testimony in her favour. George had scarcely made a move in any direction during the past week without hearing some kindly mention of Sheila and her ways, just as every new turn brought before him some fresh trace of his uncle’s miserliness and meanness. Thus George had now a faint sympathy with Mrs. Crawshaw’s loyalty to her friend.

“But she has room in her heart for more than one friendship,” he said to himself, as he closed his letter, and when he had given orders that it should be sent to the post the first thing the following day, he took up his magazine, and feeling comforted and hopeful once more, settled himself for the pleasure of a couple of hours’ reading.

Mrs. Crawshaw answered this letter in her own gentle fashion, announcing her departure to Dunstone at the end of the week, and she made known this movement on her part to Sheila and several other people who were lunching with her the same day that she wrote to George.

“Iam going to Dunstone—Paul says he will spare me for a few weeks,” she said, when someone inquired her plans for the autumn. “Sheila, is Dunstone very bad for rheumatism?”

“Dunstone is quite the healthiest place in the world,” Sheila replied, her colour rising a little, as it always did at any mention, direct or indirect, of her husband’s successor.

“Where on earth is Dunstone, mother?” Frank Crawshaw inquired, as he looked, with keenly admiring eyes, at Sheila, and regretted more than ever the contrariness of a fate that had robbed this lovely young woman of all her wealth.

Mrs. Crawshaw’s cheeks took a tinge of Sheila’s colour, as she answered her son.

“Dunstone is George Thurso’s place in West-shire. Surely, you must remember the name, Frank?”

Frank Crawshaw lifted his brows—he was a handsome young fellow, of the well-groomed type one meets in hundreds about Piccadilly and Pall Mall, and was the idol of his mother’s heart.

“Oh! going to take the blushing bride under your wing—eh, mother? “Well, you will have an amusing experience—that is, if you curtail your visit. A little of George Thurso and his wife would go a long way with most people.”

“I am not ‘most people,’” Mrs. Crawshaw said stoutly to this, although her son’s words and manner troubled her. “I confess to a great weakness for George, and I am prepared to like his wife just as well, if she will let me.”

Sheila, who had been feeding the dogs with everything on her plate, broke in here with a faint little laugh: “I have not met Lady Thurso yet; but if she resembles her sister she must be a very nice girl.”

Frank Crawshaw leaned a little towards her. “You are the sweetest and most generous woman in all the world!” he murmured.

Sheila coloured, and her lips took a slightly proud expression. “I am a very ordinary woman,” she said; “only I have a little weakness for being just if I can.”

“My dear!”—Frank Crawshaw always adopted patriarchal airs with young women he admired— “my dear, you have not seen this Lady Thurso, as you confess yourself. Now I have, and-”

Sheila threw a last crumb to the fox-terrier who was clamouring at her side. “And you are always a wise judge, Master Frank, are you not?” she said, demurely.

The young man smiled in a superior fashion: ““Well, I will allow you to overrule me now; hut by-and-by, perhaps, I may have my chance. My mother is not the only one who is going to Westshire. I have promised to share a hunting-box with Courtfeild. We shall be near neighbours of your kinsfolk—they are kin, are they not?—and I expect we shall knock up a sort of friendship. It is generally pretty dull in the evening, and Lady Thurso, as I have just said, can afford some amusement.”

Sheila rose at this moment in response to a signal from Mrs. Crawshaw, and withdrew into the boudoir for a cosy chat; and as she went she was conscious of a wave of regret and pity at the news Frank had just given her. Her regret was for George, and her pity for Zillah. She had heard far too much already from young Crawshaw about the meeting with the Thursos at nice not to be assured that an intimacy with her himself or Lord Courtfeild could not be about harm of a sort to Sir George’s inexperienced young wife. She little imagined, in her ocent and sympathetic way, what a disastrous tiny could be worked out for a woman of lah’s stamp through close contact with men the order of Lord Courtfeild and his many minds.

CHAPTER X.

Giles Reynolds was not tardy in keeping his appointment with Marian. He went thoroughly into the workings of the boarding-house business, and he gave his opinion on the case in a few words.

“You must get out of it,” was what he said, tersely; “it is simply impossible for you to go on, weighted as you are by debt in this way. Had you anything you could realise, and so get together a sum 6f ready money to square the creditors, you could start afresh, and in time, perhaps, get all your money back again. But I understand you have no property of any sort other than this-”

“Nothing,” Marian said, drily. She was bitterly disappointed at his verdict; but she did not intend to dispute his wisdom. In fact, he only repeated what she had felt each hour of the past few weeks:

“I can sell the lease of the house and the furniture, and the goodwill of the place. That ought to bring me in enough to settle up with most of these people; and then-”

Marian did not get farther than this. To sell the lease of the house and furniture was all very well, and to settle up all her mother’s extravagances in addition to the current expenses was an excellent thing. But when this was done, what remained for herself? There had been at least a home—a sort of living, which, hand-to-mouth as it was, was nevertheless a living, and, once gone altogether, what was to he her future?

She sat pondering in a painful fashion for a long while, and Giles Reynolds sat opposite to her in the dingy little back dining-room that looked on to the equally dingy garden, and his heart was stirred with admiration and pity too, as he watched her struggling with the mental situation.

He broke the silence after a while. “There seems to be no right or just reason why you should discharge all these debts, Miss Westlake. Of course, it is not for me to probe the matter too closely; but do you not see yourself that there can he a limit even to such honesty of purpose as yours?”

Marian laughed. “I Bee limits whichever way I look.”

Giles laaghed too, but pursued his question. “Have you not approached Mrs. ‘Westlake on this matter?” Then, as the girl shook her head sharply, he asked, “Why not?” It was the inevitable question—the most natural, quite the hardest to answer, at least to a practical business man.

Marian, however, did not hesitate to give a reply. “My mother and I have quarrelled, Mr. Reynolds.”

“That is absolutely no reason why you should not make application to her to help you to discharge these old debts, Miss Westlake.”

Marian coloured. “I don’t want to ask her anything.”

Once more Mr. Reynolds came to the point— “Why not?”

Marian glanced at him out of her clear grey eyes, quizzically. He understood the meaning of that glance perfectly. “Yes, I know that is one of the disadvantages of a legal mind; it wants to know everything,” he said, with his pleasant smile.

Marian’s eyes smiled back: “There are some things the legal mind cannot be expected to understand.”

“Not many,” was the prompt reply.

Marian still smiled for a moment; then she changed her expression. “Look here, Mr. Reynolds, I had better be quite frank with you. I can’t ask my mother for anything. I know perfectly well she would help to pay off these difficulties; but then I knew that when we separated, and since I did not stipulate anything then, it seems foolish to begin now. Besides-”

“Besides?”

“My mother is a woman who has no idea of the value of money. If you give her five hundred pounds this week, she will not have a farthing the next week, and probably she will have contracted some new debts. I have not heard anything of her lately, but I feel convinced”— the colour deepened in her bright face—“that already she will have found it necessary to ask an advance on her allowance from Sir George Thurso; or, what is easier, will have written to borrow something from my sister. I feel abominably mean saying all this, but you lawyers will ferret out the truth.”

“We lawyers, unfortunately, must sometimes, Miss Westlake,” Reynolds said, drily, though kindly. He was not going to let her see how quickly he had grasped the depths and shallows of her mother’s character. He intended to carry through the matter as business-like as possible, and he could but reiterate his counsel that she should get rid of the house with as much speed as possible.

“It is a confession of failure, and I hate that with all my heart,” Marian said, with a flash of temper, when all was completed; “still, I am not the first person who has failed, and, since I can’t go on, I must sell up.”

“You are to leave yourself in my hands. I will arrange everything,” Giles said as he took his departure. Then, as if struck by a sudden idea, he broached the subject of Sheila. “By the way, Miss Westlake, my cousin—whom you saw the other day, when you came to my office —has expressed a wish to meet you. Would you care about this?”

Marian looked, as she felt, much surprised.

“Lady Thurso?” she said. “I don’t think she can care much to know anything about me,” she added, with her natural roughness.

Giles was not rebuffed by this. He held out his hand.

“I am not quite sure of the etiquette in these matters, but I am quite sure that if you will come and have a cup of tea in my bachelor diggings to-morrow afternoon my cousin will be there to receive you, and will be charmed to meet you. I shall see Sheila and her little sister this evening, and will arrange accordingly.”

Marian felt strangely shy, yet his words moved her.

“I will come,” she said—“but not to-morrow.” She was, however, a little restless at what was happening until she had met Sheila. Then she abandoned all misgivings, and yielded to the charm of meeting with one who was so different from any woman she had yet met. Her admiration for Sheila grew deeper as they sat together in Giles’s pretty bachelor room. Every word Sheila spoke, every movement, was a delight to Marian’s quick senses; but the after effect was one of sorrow, for she saw in this Lady Thurso the picture of the woman Zillah ought to be; and she had a pang of fear and regret for her sister that had never come before. Much, too, of her natural bitterness towards Zillah melted again, into that strong love that she had been wont to pour out upon the dark-eyed little creature in their early years together, and she yearned, for the first time, to know that all was well with Zillah—to see her sister again. She was absolutely at her ease with Sheila, to begin with. Marian, like Zillah, had everything to learn in social smoothness; but her shyness and awkwardness could not take away from her the charm of her fresh youth and her sincerity. Shabby and untidy as her gown was, Sheila found her very pretty and attractive—she realised at once what it was that had made her prosaic cousin take such an interest in the girl.

They talked her over for a little while after she was gone.

“And what is she going to do, Giles, once the house is sold?” Sheila asked, going direct to the crux of the situation.

“She has not said anything about her plans for the future; but she will not be idle long.”

“No,” Sheila admitted, thoughtfully. “Still, it is not always easy for a woman to get a living, Giles.”

““We must put our heads together and concert something. It ought not to be so difficult, with all our friends, to find a haven of some sort for a time at least.”

Sheila coloured faintly. “Will not her sister-”

“Here lie the facts of the case,” Reynolds explained, hurriedly. “This girl is quite alone. Her mother is as worthless as she is selfish; and Lady Thurso, I should imagine from what I have gathered, has by this time completely forgotten she had a sister. One thing is very certain— Miss Westlake will starve rather than claim any kinship with George Thurso and his wife. I confess,” Giles added, frankly, “there is something about this marriage that puzzles me a little, Sheila.”

“I see nothing puzzling in it,” Sheila made answer. She had risen to go, and had drawn her long black cloak over her shoulders. She wore no exaggerated mourning; her clothes were simplicity itself, and her little black bonnet was formed after the fashion of the little white one she had been wont to wear in the summer months, and that made her fair young face wear the look of a mere child. She had a delicious expression on her lips now, and that soft colour that came so quickly to her cheeks.

“Sir George Thurso married for love—that is the explanation of your mystery, Mr. Giles,” she said, half slyly. She was not going to part with her romance so quickly as all that—not even when Giles laughed at her as he did now; and she was more and more assured she was quite right in her definition of things after she had sat and chatted a long time with Mrs. Craw-shaw over her approaching visit to Dunstone.

Helen Crawshaw had given Sheila George’s letter to read, and the girl had felt as if she had come in direct contact with a splendid nature and a true heart as she read. Though George had determined to keep his anxiety—his real desire for his old friend’s presence—out of this letter, he had not been able to subdue altogether the influences that were at work in his heart He touched but little on his wife.

“Zillah will be so charmed to have you with us,” was what he wrote; “she is only a child as yet, but as a child she will gather all your spare sympathy, I know, for you have a weakness for young things. We are settling down comfortably by degrees,” he wrote in another part “I find I could fill every hour of my day with some duty. I have been approached on a dozen local points. I believe I shall accept the post of J.P., but have not yet decided. There is an infinite amount to be done on the estate. I only hope I may carry everything through worthily. I am haunted by old memories at times. If only I had my dear mother with me now! I see in your visit a shadow of her loved and lost self. Do not deny me the joy of having you here for a while. You shared my deep trouble; it is but right you should taste some of my pleasures. I shall wait for your answer eagerly.”

Sheila folded up the letter, and gave it back to Mrs. Crawshaw almost regretfully; she felt as if she would have liked to have kept it, to have read it again. It was a letter that touched her deeply. Mrs. Crawshaw’s affection for George became doubly comprehensible to Sheila after she had had this little glimpse, as it were, into his very heart. It consoled her, too, in a degree. She felt quite, quite sure that a man who could write like this must have a sense of justice, and that in time he would regret, and perchance recall, the horrible things he had stud of her.

“I am so glad you are going to Dunstone,” she told Mrs. Crawshaw. “Mind you climb up to my old den in the tower. That is where I used to live all my time. It is like being out of the world up there.”

She sighed as she spoke, and Mrs. Crawshaw looked at her with tenderness and sharpness allied.

“Sheila, you seem very pale and tired to-day.

What is it?-but I know what it is,” Mrs.

Crawshaw said, answering her own question. “You are feeling the effects of that study little house. I was afraid of this.”

Sheila rushed into defence of her small home.

“It is not in the least stuffy, and we are so happy there—Cynthia and L Am I looking pale? I feel quite well, dearest Helen.”

Mrs. Crawshaw would not hear of the girl leaving her early that day. “I see you so seldom,” she said, “and now I am off again on my travels, and we shall not meet for another few weeks.”

“It is very good of your Mr. Paul to spare you so long,” Sheila said. She realised with a good deal of astonishment that she had to labour with herself to carry on an ordinary conversation. If it was true she looked pale, it was certainly true she felt tired, and perhaps dispirited, for the first time in her life. A curious sensation had crept over Sheila’s heart as she finished reading George Thurso’s letter. It was a sensation akin to envy. She remembered how, years ago, some such feeling had come to her when a marked contrast in the mother of one of her early playmates and her own mother had been forced home upon her. She had longed then for the same companionship—the comprehensive sympathy of that other mother; and now she found herself longing for the constant care, the sympathy, the companionship of someone who would be to her what George Thurso was to Zillah. Not till now had the real meaning of the word “husband” touched her comprehension; not till now had the sweetness, the divine possibilities of love, dawned even in her imagination. She fell in a dazed dreaming, and she sat leaning back in the very chair that held George the day of his fainting fit, listening to all Mrs. Crawshaw had to say in languid fashion.

She was roused after a while by the arrival of some visitors. Helen Crawshaw had the knack of drawing young people about her. Most of her boy’s friends and acquaintances enjoyed an occasional gossip and cup of tea with Mrs. Crawshaw, and not a few of them took their troubles to her also.

One of the new-comers happened to be the Earl of Courtfeild, who, because he was handsome and really a pleasant man, was a favourite of the Crawshaw household, as he was of many others.

This afternoon Lord Courtfeild was armed with an intention.

“Frank tells me you are going to Westshire. Now, I have come to storm a promise out of you,” he said, laughingly, as he greeted his hostess, and held Sheila’s small hand in his a moment longer than was necessary.

“I must be home in three weeks’ time,” was Mrs. Crawshaw’s prompt reply.

“What a magician! Lady Thurso, did you guess my errand so easily?”

“It was not very difficult to guess,” Sheila said, smilingly. She, too, could not but respond to the charm of this man—though if her opinion were probed she would most likely have confessed (why, she could hardly have told) that she did not honestly care very much for Lord Courtfeild. He was agreeable and handsome, and to herself he was invariably courtly and most attentive. But Sheila was not merely moved by looks and manner; she was so sincere herself, she needed sincerity in others.

“My sister Elizabeth and her husband, Musgrove, are coming down in late October, and we cannot be happy without you; please don’t refuse,” the -young man said earnestly to Mrs. Crawshaw.

“My dear Bertie, I am the most out-of-sorts person in a hunting household, I assure you.”

“You are never an out-of-sorts person; and, moreover, I hope to persuade Lady Thurso to honour us also. I-”

“Oh! impossible!” Sheila had spoken so hurriedly that she was hardly aware the word had escaped her. She turned very red as she saw that she was being examined by Lord Court-feild with some surprise.

“I am not going anywhere this autumn,” she added, gently. “You know I have my little sister living with me now, Lord Courtfeild.”

“There will be plenty of room for your little sister too, if only you will bring her, Lady Thurso.”

Sheila still declined, but in her heart she knew she was wavering. All at once a desire to go to Westshire bad come stealing over her—a desire to meet this man who bad so cruelly repulsed her and hart her. It was not a proud feeling that possessed Sheila: it was a simple womanly desire to write her life’s story differently in George Thurso’s eyes—to feel that she was misunderstood, not condemned. Moreover, she had a wish to meet Zillah, and, if possible, to be friends with her. She thought she knew Zillah by knowing Marian, and, as she had really liked Marian, so she should really like George Thurso’s wife. Her hesitation manifested itself to Lord Courtfeild, and it gave him a little triumph. He was not to know the meaning of that hesitation; hut what he did know was that, for the first time since he had met her of late, Sheila was less cold and distant with him; and this meant far more to him than Sheila or anyone could possibly have imagined. Mrs. Crawshaw did not press the matter upon Sheila.

“You will have to consult Cynthia,” she said, as Sheila kissed her and said good-bye.

“My sister will call for your decision this week,” Courtfeild said, as he took her down the stairs. They looked a handsome couple as they passed away, and Mrs. Crawshaw’s face took a sudden expression as she looked after them.

“I must work this. “With a little more persuasion Sheila will go, if only because she thinks it will please me,” she said to herself. Then her thoughts went farther ahead. “It would be a splendid marriage. I never thought of it before to-day, but something in his eyes seemed to tell me all. Of course he loves her—who can help loving her? ’ And though he has been a bit wild, I believe there is good in him. I think I will go with Lady Elizabeth when she calls on Sheila. A change, anyhow, would do her good; and if it were to lead to a big change in her fortune—oh! how I should rejoice! This visit to Westshire may bring forth much.”

CHAPTER XI.

Zillah heard of the approaching arrival of Mrs. Crawshaw with great complacency. The news was not merely agreeable because it promised at least a small relief to the monotony of life at Dunstone, but it signified also that she had obtained her way, and that other things she was planning in her mind would therefore be as easily accomplished. Of course, Zillah did not anticipate any excitement from Mrs. Crawshaw’s visit; she was not even sure she should care about this middle-aged friend of her husband’s; but she had carried away with her from Venice a highly agreeable impression of Frank Crawshaw and his friend, and she imagined that it would be only in the natural sequence of events that Mrs. Crawshaw’s son should make his appearance also in a house where his mother was to be established as a guest for several weeks.

On the morning of Mrs. Crawshaw’s arrival, George went into his wife’s room. Zillah was still in bed, although the day was advancing close to noon; but this was an idleness she had contracted immediately on leaving school, and which she made no haste to correct Of what use to get up? she argued with herself; the day was long enough here at Dunstone. Good heavens! why, she was worn out with ennui long before dinner was over. To do as George did, get up at seven, and go tearing out into the raw autumn morning air, was in Zillah’s eyes simply a mania, and certainly one not to he cultivated. Zillah was very, very dull at Dunstone. There was absolutely no one thing that interested her, or gave her half an hour’s amusement— save, perhaps, when she ordered out the victoria and was driven to the nearest town, where there were a few shops scattered about, and where eyes could be attracted towards her beauty and smart attire. This was the only form of driving Lady Thurso affected. The ponies that George had taken so much pleasure and care in choosing for her were too frisky for her safety, she said, the truth being that Zillah was too indolent to learn how to handle the reins, and she shunned this just as she hated the fatigue and patience necessary for riding lessons. She nevertheless encouraged George in his pursuits. In particular, she wanted him to be associated with the hunting set that she quickly discovered made the neighbourhood of Dunstone their headquarters in the winter. It was the people, the excitement possible from outside sources, that moved her only. She was no hypocrite, either. Utterly ignorant of hurt or disappointment to George, she let him see this quite plainly. Gradually, as day followed day, it came to him that not Mrs. Crawshaw, nor any other creature in the world, could do anything to alter this. Still, his friend’s coming promised him consolation in a way. Several little letters had passed between himself and Helen Crawshaw in the days that had intervened between her acceptance of his invitation and her arrival; and it was the last few lines that she wrote, just the day before her departure, that sent George’s thoughts in a new direction, and made him seek a few moments’ quiet talk with Zillah.

“Yesterday I made the acquaintance of your sister-in-law, Miss Westlake,” Mrs. Crawshaw wrote. “I like her. She is unconventional, hut I should say sincerity itself. A pretty girl, too —a brave one. I have heard a good deal about her lately. She is trying to find some way of earning her living; but there, I am only giving you old news, of course. I shall leave by the train you recommend, and hope to be with you in time for tea.”

“Without pausing to wonder, as he might have done, as to how Marian and Helen Crawshaw had become acquainted, George was conscious of a sharp pang of conscience. Wrapped up in his thoughts, and dreams, and avocations, he had not given more than an occasional memory to Zillah’s people. Of her mother he had heard through his lawyer frequently, and Mrs. Westlake’s many comforts and pleasures were carefully attended to by George’s command. But from Marian there had come neither word nor sigh, and Zillah little knew or imagined how often her husband had her sister in his thoughts. In truth, Marian’s letter, sharp and rough as it had been, had taught George a lesson, and had recalled him to his old just sel£ He could not but sympathise with Marian’s hot, angry pride. The girl’s action robbed even her mother’s easy acceptance of whatever situation George enforced of its mean spirit. George had often wondered how it fared with Marian, and he wondered too, sharply at times, how it was that Zillah had never once expressed a wish to see her people since that first day of her married life, when she had asked so wistfully that her mother and she might be allowed to meet George did not even know if Zillah wrote to her mother; letters-were not much in her line. He had never seen her writing, and he was quite sure, even if she had sent an occasional word to Mrs. Westlake, she had certainly never remembered her sister. Helen Crawshaw’s little sentence about Marian brought a thought rushing suddenly through Sir George’s mind.

“Zillah,” he said, quite abruptly, as he came and found her propped up with pillows, busy glancing through fashion magazines, “Zillah, have you heard lately from your sister?”

Zillah looked, as she was, much surprised. Then her face took a sullen expression. “Ho,” she said, tersely, and she turned over a page with a defiant air.

George stood hesitatingly a few seconds. “I have been thinking,” he said then, half shyly, “I am afraid that I have been very unkind to your sister, Zillah. After all, she is only a girl —only a very little older than you, and she has been living all by herself. It-”

“Oh, don’t worry about Marian. I can assure you she can take every care of herself.”

“I am not worrying,” George said, ignoring the element of spite in Zillah’s voice. “I have only been thinking.”

Zillah laid down the newspaper. She looked excited—in a degree, angry. “Marian and I never .did get on. You don’t remember, I suppose, because you were always living in the clouds, and never saw anything of what was going on. But Marian and I have always quarrelled. She has a horrid temper, George, and then she has always been jealous of me.”

“Yes?” George spoke listlessly. He wanted Zillah to help him forward a little, but she checked and chilled him instead.

“I hope,” Zillah continued, fretfully—“I do hope, George, you are not going to dream of asking Marian here.”

“I had every thought of it,” George said a little coldly. He took out Mrs. Crawshaw’s letter and read out the paragraph concerning Marian.

“I fear,” he said in a low voice, “that this must mean that your sister is in need of help.”

Zillah’s handsome face was now hot with anger. “How dare she go and hunt up your friends, I should like to know? Downright cheek, that’s what I call it!”

George winced. Here was the vulgarity asserting itself with a vengeance. He turned away sharply, saying no more, hut Zillah’s voice followed him.

“I won’t have Marian here—no, not for anything! And I shall just write and give her a piece of my mind, too! Fancy going and telling all her history to Mrs. Crawshaw! As if these people want to know her or anything about her! You might give a little of your dislike to Marian instead of to mamma. She at least does keep herself to herself.”

George drove alone to meet Mrs. Crawshaw at the station, and his pleasure at seeing her once again illumined his handsome face into an exact semblance of his former boyishness. The colour did not linger very long, however; and as they progressed hack to Dunstone, Helen Crawshaw made the discovery that George was not looking well, and certainly looked older.

“Paul says he would not have spared me again so soon for anyone but you,” she told the young man, gaily. She was truly glad to see him again; his old charm was as strong as ever.

“It is very good of Paul,” George said, with a smile. “I hope you will not weary of us very soon. I am afraid it is not very amusing.”

“I love the country, and I have come prepared to enjoy myself very much. I have been to Dunstone before, hut only for a flying visit of an hour. I am told you have completely changed the place, George.”

“It was very shabby.”

A certain little exhilaration of spirit with which Mrs. Crawshaw had started on her visit to the Thursos began to evaporate as she drove along with her young host. Quickly sensitive as she was, she could not fail to feel the depression that was surrounding George, and indirectly she began to respond to it herself. “Certainly not a good beginning,” she mused with some dismay, but her kindliness soon suggested a cause. “It will be a long day before George will shake off the effects of the past few years. Is he wise, I wonder, to come and bury himself down here? I think he needs life, not perpetual thought. Well, I must see what I can do to rouse him. After all, I am rather glad Frank and his Mends will he so near.”,

Mrs. Crawshaw’s first impression of Zillah was certainly a pleasant one. The girl came shyly forward out of the hall lights of the big hall to welcome her first guest. She wore a black gown, but she had pinned a cluster of scarlet flowers in her bodice, and she looked exceedingly handsome and even well bred.

“Decidedly she is more beautiful than the other girl. What glorious eyes, and what a skin!” was the older woman’s comment to herself—made not without the inevitable sigh of regret over her lost youth.

Zillah, on her side, quite approved of Mrs. Crawshaw. She quickly discovered that the new-comer was most exquisitely gowned, and though she was old, of course (poor Helen Craw-shaw!), still she was nice-looking, and she moved and spoke with that manner which Zillah vaguely desired to possess herself. Beyond all this, however, the girl was unfeignedly grateful for the arrival of anyone to move the dull, still atmosphere of her home life.

Helen Crawshaw got to the bottom of the whole story before she had been an inmate of Dunstone for twenty-four hours. The mistake that Qeorge in his loyalty would not confess even to himself was only too glaringly apparent to his mother’s friend.

“There is no love, no sympathy, absolutely nothing,” Mrs. Crawshaw said to herself in dismay. “Why did he marry her? What madness made him ruin his whole life in this way? An entanglement, I suppose. Well, it would have been better to have parted with a few thousands and have kept his freedom than to have carried out the matter to this end.”

All that Frank Crawshaw had said of Zillah was revealed as truth to his mother in these first few days of her arrival at Dunstone. Not for one moment did Helen Crawshaw think that there was aught of wrong in the girl’s nature. Zillah’s one great and unconquerable fault was her inborn vulgarity, her thorough commonness, and her lack of all intellectual qualities. She was a new experience for Mrs. Crawshaw, who found herself studying the handsome young creature most carefully. She applauded George’s intention of remaining in the country during the winter from one point of view, and she disapproved of it entirely from another.

“With a different nature these few months’ preparation would have done marvels, no doubt,” she said to herself, “hut George may keep his wife out of the world all the days of her life— he will never change her. Besides, it is rather hard on the girl. She is panting for a glimpse at the world, and with her beauty there is no reason why she should not have a success of a sort. To box her up here in this way is to drive her into any sort of folly. I must speak plainly. He is waiting for me to begin.”

Mrs. Crawshaw’s plain words were but echoes of unspoken ones in George’s heart. He listened to all this gracious and charming woman had to say quite quietly.

“We will go to town for the season,” he told her, when she had said all she had to say. “But I must stay here during the winter. I have certain things that demand my constant presence. Zillah shall have her share of life; but I want my small share also.”

“I shall carry her back with me for a little glimpse at the shops when I go,” Mrs. Crawshaw hastened to say. “In the meanwhile we must have some amusement here. You know that Lord Courtfeild and Frank are establishing themselves quite close to you. Lady Elizabeth Musgrove will play hostess. There are to be guests all the time, too.”

George coloured faintly. “This will please Zillah,” was all he said. The subject was not an easy one to follow. And then he turned the subject on Marian. He wanted to know all that Helen Crawshaw could tell him.

“I should like to ask the girl to come to us for a long time; but, to be frank, I feel sure she would never come. We quarrelled, she and L” Then, before anything more was said, he asked, hurriedly, “You find Zillah like her sister?” Mrs. Crawshaw shook her head decisively. “Lady Thurso is far handsomer.”

There was a little discomfort in Mrs. Craw-shaw’s heart. She wanted to tell George that there was every prospect of Sheila coming into the near neighbourhood of Dunstone, but she hesitated to speak the girl’s name. Hot once since she had been in Sheila’s former home had mention been made of her; and Mrs. Crawshaw, remembering George’s bitterness about tbe girl she loved so much, preferred to keep the &\L«ass> unbroken. When Sheila came to stay with Lord Coortfeild and his sister, there would be time enough to speak of her. But somehow, despite her matrimonial plans for Sheila’s future, Helen Crawshaw found herself hoping that the girl might change her mind at the last and stay away from Dunstone.

“Although, of course, if they must meet, George cannot possibly be rude to her. I wonder if he is still as hard and nasty about her. I should dearly love to know.”

Tender-hearted Mrs. Crawshaw would have been deeply touched and delighted could she have known what a change had been wrought in George’s feelings towards his uncle’s widow. The work had been done unconsciously but thoroughly, and it was Sheila herself who had brought about the happy result. Life at Dun-stone had signified constant meeting with some influence or memory of the gentle creature who had lived there before him; and bit by bit Sheila’s daily life of the past seemed to be written clearly before George. Turn which way he might, he found some small monument to her womanly goodness; and though the house had been shabby to the verge of dirt, here and there George had come upon some little spot that had been worked into an artistic comer by Sheila’s hands. One of Mrs. Crawshaw’s first duties had been to climb up to the room in the tower that Sheila had told her about, and she had but led the way for George to follow her. They found Sheila’s sanctum actually untouched. Dust had had lime and opportunity to spread itself over everything, yet the place had a marked charm.

“Evidently I have not come to the end of my possessions,” George said, with a little laugh, as he stood looking about the quaint room with its sloping walls and windows set with many panes opening out on to the tops of the tall trees. Sheila had left several odds and ends of sketches hanging, some in frames, others just roughly painted, on the wall. Her easel was there too, and a portfolio with a mass of unfinished pictures. Mrs. Crawshaw ventured to examine everything with the assurance of an old friend.

“Your predecessor has a pretty talent with the brush,” she said, carelessly.

George, feeling strangely shy, walked round and looked at the framed water-colours, the rough sketches, and at a scattering of little ornaments left on the low, broad chimneypiece.

Among these he picked out a photograph. It was the picture of a girl in a tweed coat and gown, with four or five dogs of different breeds grouped about her feet. A cat was basking on a table beside her, and she had a bird of some kind in her hand. Below the picture was written, “A Happy Family. For my dear Helen. With Sheila’s love,” and then a date of about a year ago. George turned to Mrs. Crawshaw with the photograph in his hand. His face was red as he spoke, almost reproachfully: “Why did you not tell me that it was Lady Thurso’s portrait I admired so much in your room that day I-” he paused here, irresolutely.

“Why should I?” Mrs. Crawshaw asked, not without some sharpness. “To speak Sheila’s name to you was a dangerous matter, you know, George! She is a pretty creature, is she not?”

The young man made no answer. He replaced the portrait on the mantelpiece, and in a little while they went downstairs again.

Before they came to the hall, he turned to Mrs. Crawshaw. “Most probably Lady Thurso would like to have these things. I suppose she must have overlooked them in leaving here. Will you write and ask her?”

Mrs. Crawshaw smiled. “Certainly, if you wish it; but I think I had better tell you, George, that Sheila is coming to stay with Lady Elizabeth Musgrove. You may have an opportunity, therefore, of asking her this yourself. Oh, here is your wife in another pretty new frock, and we are just in time for a cosy cup of tea. George and I have been on a voyage of discovery, Lady Thurso. What a fine old house this is to be sure!”

While she sipped her tea and went through her daily task of admiring Zillah’s new gown (in honour of her guest, Zillah thought it only reasonable to wear all her smart clothes, irrespective of climate or place), Mrs. Crawshaw was inwardly congratulating herself on a triumph.

“I must write to-morrow to Sheila and tell her that a mere glance at her picture has conquered her enemy! I am sure it will delight her, and, moreover, if she knows that George is no longer the raging, furious creature he was, she will not hesitate to come down here. This matter with Courtfeild is one I like, on the whole. I believe he would be good to her. Evidently he cares for her very deeply , otherwise why should he seek her? Dear little Sheila! She must be happy after all. I wonder if I could escape to my room now? I have exhausted all my adjectives over this new gown, and there is nothing more to say.”

Gracefully and tactfully Mrs. Crawshaw man-aged to reach the pleasant solitude of her room. Zillah was a trial to her, more than she even confessed to herself. To bring herself into communion with Sheila, even through the medium of a letter, was consoling.

She wrote a long, affectionate epistle to Sheila, and after it was closed and addressed she sat by her fire and dropped into thought; sad thought it was, too, for it was of George she was thinking—of the great, great mistake he had committed. Once a strong impulse made her stretch out her hand as if to throw the letter she had just written into the glowing flames. Then she paused, and the impulse passed. Perhaps, could she have seen into the future, Helen Crawshaw would have realised (what was hidden from her now) that it was more than a passing impulse that tempted her to shut away from Sheila the news of George’s changed feelings for her.

CHAPTER XII.

Sheila found Marian interesting and yet disappointing. Only once had she been able to persuade Zillah’s sister to come and spend an hour in the little house she and Cynthia had made so pretty. On this occasion Helen Craw-shaw had come also, and Marian was given a further glimpse into the world in which Zillah now lived. Her meeting with Sheila and this other woman depressed Marian for her sister’s sake. She saw at once, in her sharp, practical way, all the disadvantages that would attend Zillah at almost every step, and she regretted anew and more deeply the fact of the marriage with George Thurso. She knew Zillah’s character so well, she was only too sure that there must be trouble ahead, not only for the young wife, but for the husband, and, though she was still angry and bitter with George, she did not wish him harm or sorrow. After that one visit to Sheila, however, she refused to go again, and it was Sheila and Cynthia who went to seek. hot.

Cynthia had, indeed, conceived a very great liking for Marian, and Sheila was not far behind her younger sister in her appreciation. Just a few days before they were due for their visit at Lady Elizabeth Musgrove’s, the two sisters journeyed out in a hansom to see Marian.

Sheila had heard from her cousin that morning, and at the end of his letter he had stated just casually that Miss Westlake had found a purchaser for her house, and would in all probability be leaving it at once.

Marian received Sheila warmly, although she was still shy with her new friend.

“Yes; the house is sold and I am going away,” she told them. “I am awfully sorry,” she added, frankly, when all was told. “I hate having to acknowledge myself beaten.”

“And where are you going?” Sheila asked, gently. She was instantly full of kind and generous impulses, but she curbed them, for she had deference for Marian’s pride.

Marian coloured hotly.

“I have written to a relation of my father’s and explained my circumstances. Possibly this uncle—he is really my great-uncle—may suggest something. He is very rich; he made his money by beer, I think. He has taken no notice of ns for some years. My mother quarrelled with all my father’s people. I don’t know why I should tell you all this. I don’t suppose it interests you,” Marian finished, abruptly.

“I want to know everything,” Sheila said, in reply; and indeed she probed the matter thoroughly, and was not satisfied till she knew that Marian had really some hope of help from this old kinsman.

“It’s awfully good of you and Mr. Reynolds to take such interest in me, Lady Thurso. I don’t know that I deserve it, because, of course, if I chose to be different I could-”

Somehow Sheila understood that pause thoroughly. She drank her cup of tea, and she and Cynthia chatted in their own pretty fashion to the lonely, shabby girl with the clear grey eyes and dark skin, and in such an hour Marian was very happy.

“I am sorry you are going away,” she said, involuntarily, when the moment came to say farewell; “shall you be away long?”

“Only a fortnight, I expect. We are going to near neighbours of your sister,” Sheila added, hurriedly; then, more hurriedly, “but I don’t know whether we shall meet.”

Marian paused, and then got very hot “Oh!” she said, quickly; then—“Oh! promise me to be kind to Zillah. I-” she broke off “Why shouldn’t I tell you the truth?” she asked then. “I am not happy about Zillah—it was such a strange marriage. Oh! you will not blame me for saying all this, but I did try to stop it. I suppose I have made an enemy of him, but I told him the truth. I told him plainly he ought not to have made Zillah his wife, it was such a mistake. He was sorry for her, but he never cared about her, he never”—Marian brushed her eyes roughly—“and now,” she went on, not so hurriedly, “I think of her so much. You see, she’s only young, and she knows nothing of life, especially the sort of life she has to lead now, and she can’t have any friends among all the grand people she meets. If—if you would he her Mend!”

Sheila’s eyes had tears in them, too. “I am her Mend already,” she said, gently. “Perhaps you do not know that I, too, have had a quarrel with Sir George; but I think and hope that is over now, and so I shall be able to meet your sister, and you may be quite sure I shall do all in my power for her—if, indeed, there is anything I can do. It is a great pity yon are not with her yourself,” Sheila added, truly, but Marian shook her head.

“Oh, I should be no help to Zillah. I have such a bad temper, and I should be sure to have a fight with some one before I had been in the house half a day.”

That night, when Cynthia had gone to bed, Sheila wrote an answer to Helen Crawshaw’s letter: “What you have told me has pleased me very much—not from purely personal feelings; I want to be on terms of good-fellowship with all the world if I can; and since I have met Marian Westlake I particularly wish to be Mends with her sister. Tou must manage to find out if Lady Thurso has any objection to meeting me; if not, I shall pay her a visit as soon as I am arrived at the Musgroves’. It was good of you to write me such a sweet letter; and are you not glad to think that your favourite, Qeorge, is all you declared him to be? We shall meet again very soon.”

To her cousin Sheila wrote also a few words: “Please, dear Oiles, kindly keep me posted in Miss Westlake’s movements. I am more interested in her than I can describe. I Kope tiaaa uncle will be kind to her. Evidently she will never turn to her mother or her sister; indeed, she told me the other day she believed her mother was about to be married a second time. I am afraid Mrs. Westlake is not a very satisfactory person. Cynthia and I will be home in a fortnight—we can’t stay away from our little nest any longer. I must send you the last letter I had from mamma; it is full of continued horror for our abode, and of delight over Enid’s success. They are going abroad immediately. … I am quite the black sheep still! Poor mamma!”

The house chosen by Lord Courtfeild for his hunting quarters was within half an hour’s easy walking of Dunstone. In other days Sheila had been in the habit of passing through the grounds of this house when she wanted to reach the village by a short cut. The Grange had, as a matter of fact, formerly been a portion of the Thurso unentailed property, and Sir Richard had sold it at a fine price some few years before his death. Out of courtesy to the former owner, the purchaser had always placed the right of way through the grounds at his disposal, and Sheila took frequent advantage of this. It was with a curious feeling of familiarity, and yet of strangeness, that Sheila found herself settled in the largest of the guest chambers at the Grange. Cynthia had a smaller room opening, out of hers, and the windows of both rooms looked out on an expanse of meadow and cultivated land which belonged to Dunstone. Had it not been for Helen Crawshaw’s near presence, and for her desire to meet George Thurso and his wife, Sheila would never have accepted the invitation Lord Courtfeild and his sister sent. With Lady Elizabeth Musgrove she had very little in common. Lord Courtfeild’s sister was a boldly handsome woman, tall and athletic, a very hard rider to hounds, and one who was always at home in a habit or semi-masculine garb, rather than in the soft silks and prettinesses of ordinary womanhood. She was, however, an honest, sincere-spoken woman, and, though Sheila was not in sympathy with her on other points, she liked her for these qualities. Mr. Musgrove was the very shadow of his wife in personality, and Sheila found him dull but courteous. For Frank Crawshaw she had an impatient eoxt oS.

Had he not been so adored by his parents she would probably have judged him a trifle more harshly even than she did. As it was, she rebelled against his foppery and his hopeless extravagance, and, more than all, against his fashionable indifference to his mother’s love. When she came to her thoughts and feelings for Lord Conrtfeild, Sheila always found herself at a standstill for a thorough definition of her regard for this man. Most assuredly, had she so much as dreamed it possible that the interest which Helen Crawshaw was already building into such a strong castle was dawning in the man’s heart for herself, she would have gone to the other end of the world rather than to have come so closely into his life. Even as it was, she was conscious of a faint regret that she had come, as she dressed for dinner, with Cynthia acting as maid. The Earl had been waiting for them at the station, and had himself driven them back to the Grange. He had been, as usual, charming and amusing, and yet Sheila had felt a slight difference in his manner towards herself As they had passed away from the station and turned into the country road, they had met a man on. \xoTse\»fiik.,n man who had lifted his hat as the mail phaeton flashed past him, and whom Sheila had instantly recognised, although the one and only time she had seen him he had been a weak aqd wan image of his present handsome self.

Her host had returned Sir George’s salutation courteously.

“Good-looking chap, Thurso,” he had said as he did so. “Pity he has made such a hash of his life.”

Sheila was repeating these words to herself as she sat letting Cynthia brush out her pretty soft hair. They jarred upon her, and even angered her a little. With the remembrance of Marian so clear in her heart, she was prepared to defend Zillah warmly. She knew perfectly well that she would find much that would be socially wrong about Zillah, but she was herself so far removed from the ordinary worldly mind that -she felt there would be nothing in Zillah which would not be easily overlooked.

Lord Courtfeild’s curt suggestion that George’s marriage had been a ruin for him hurt Sheila. She had given such illimitable sympathy to the young man who had succeeded her husband in his title and wealth; she had such strong pity for all the suffering George had endured in the past, she wanted to hear that now he was well assured of happiness.

Those broken yet explicit words of Marian’s remained with her to enforce home the truth of what Courtfeild had said; hut she did not want to think there was any truth even in Marian’s anxiety.

“I suppose it will be hard, but I shall do my best to try and stop people saying these unkind things to me at least.” Sheila mused on while Cynthia brushed and coiled up her shining masses of hair with clever and loving hands, and she went downstairs by-and-hy, armed more hilly in this determination.

It was felt by all gathered in the house party at the Grange that evening that Sheila Lady Thurso had grown, if possible, more lovely than ever. She was less of a girl; her beauty was more womanly and most sympathetic.

“Bertie is in earnest this time, and good luck to it, say I!” Lady Elizabeth whispered once in her husband’s ear as they were alone for a moment. “Now mind, don’t blunder, Tom; leave them alone as much as possible; follow my lead!”

Frank Crawshaw saw the progress of events in a grumpy spirit. He had gallantly put Sheila “ out of the running” for himself since she had lost her money, and he had never imagined his friend would have taken this particular fancy. Naturally, money was no gain or loss to Court-feild; he had quite enough for any man’s requirements; at the same time, Frank was not at all pleased at what was in the air.

“And I’ll be bound my mother has had a finger in this pie,” he said, irritably, to himself. “ In fact, I am quite sure, left to herself, Sheila would never have come here at all.”

He was so bad-tempered that Sheila noticed it. She went up to her room in good time, for Cynthia had not come down to dinner, .and Sheila wanted a chat with her little sister before going to bed.

“You had better get up early and come with me to see your mother to-morrow morning,” she said to Frank, with her pretty smile. Frank did not smile back. Instead, he looked amazed.

“You are going to Dunstone?” he asked. Sheila nodded her head.

“Yes; I am going to see your mother, and be presented to Lady Thurso.”

““Well,” Frank took her hand surlily; “it’s all very well to pose for an angel, but there are limits, you know, Sheila; and after the way that brute treated you-”

Sheila was very cross, but she managed to curb her temper: “I don’t think I know how to pose; hut I do know that you are a very impertinent person, young Mr. Frank. Good-night “Wake up more agreeable to-morrow.”

Lord Courtfeild escorted her to the stairs. “I was going to ask you to ride early to-morrow, hut I fancy I heard you making other plans, Lady Thurso,” he said, holding out his hand for farewell, and thinking he had never seen a fairer or more desirable creature than this slender young woman in her long black gown, with pearls round her white throat, and her ruffled soft curls felling almost in baby fashion on her brow. He was indeed, as his sister had said, in earnest this time.

“I will ride another day. Will you take Cynthia to-morrow?” Sheila asked, colouring unconsciously beneath the gaze of his eyes, and wishing he would release her hand.

“Possibly I shall not ride, since you cannot. There is no meet to-morrow, you know; but if Miss Cynthia wishes it I am at her disposal.”

Sheila had managed to release her hand, and she turned and went up the stairs after this.

“I must say ‘ Good-night/ Lord Courtfeild. I feel as if we should quarrel if I stay here any longer.” She gave him a little nod, and with a faint laugh, that had a note of vexation in it, she disappeared and gained her room with a sigh of relief. It was certainly pleasant to have half an hour of cosy chat with Cynthia. The moment she was with her younger sister, Sheila quickly forgot her irritation. Cynthia had something of importance to impart also. It seemed that just after Sheila had gone down to dinner a maid had appeared, bringing a basket of the loveliest flowers and a little note.

“And I have been simply dying to open it, Sheila,” Cynthia confessed. “I don’t know the writing, but it must be from some one who knows you well; otherwise how should they have thought of sending you flowers?”

Sheila looked at the note; her cheeks flushed into a lovely colour. Only once before she had seen this handwriting, but she recognised it at once.

“It is from Sir George Thurso,” she said, simply.

“Oh, read it, Sheila darling!” cried Cynthia, hurriedly.

Sheila found that the note was a brief one; it was addressed to “Sheila, Lady Thurso,” and was written in a simple fashion that touched her instantly.

“Dear Lady Thurso” (George had written), “I am sending you a few flowers in my wife’s name and my own. May I hope you will regard these in the light of a message of welcome, and of a plea for forgiveness and forgetfulness? Your friend Mrs. Crawshaw tells me she is sure you have the intention of coming to see us. I beg you will regard the house as your own, and come when you will.

“Yours most truly,

“George Thurso.”

“A very nice letter,” Cynthia observed, as Sheila handed the note to her to read. “Of course you will go. “Won’t it be funny, Sheila, going into a house that was once your own? Will you mind?”

Sheila shook her head with a smile. “No, I am very glad to go.”

Before she went to rest she locked away George’s little note in her jewel-case.

CHAPTER XIII.

Sheila was dressed and out of the house before nine the next morning.

“I told Lady Elizabeth I was going over quite early to see Mrs. Crawshaw,” she explained to her younger sister, after they had breakfasted in their room. “You had better put on your habit at once, Cynthia dear, in case they want yon to ride.”

Cynthia of course obeyed, though she watched her sister garb herself in her outdoor things, and then disappear, a little wistfully.

“I feel so stupid with these people,” she said to herself, “and I don’t believe I shall ever like Lord Courtfeild; his eyes stare so hard, and he laughs just as if he must laugh, not because he cares about it I could get on better with his sister, or with Mr. Musgrove; but I simply can’t bear Frank Crawshaw now—he is so conceited. However, we shan’t stay long, that is one comfort; and I think it will do Sheila good to be oat of London for a while.”

It took Sheila very little time to walk the distance from the Grange to Dunstone. Her spirits rose unconsciously as she walked. The fresh, almost keen air of the autumn morning had the greeting of an old friend for her; and though the memories brought by renewed acquaintance with this particular country were none too gay, yet she was so essentially a nature that responded to the breadth and freshness and space of the country, that it was impossible for her to feel anything but happy as she walked alone. Indirectly, too, she was feeling soothed and helped by the recollection of George Thurso’s little note.

“It is so painful to think one has an enemy,” she said to herself once, and she laughed faintly as she mused on: “Mother was right to say I lacked character and spirit enough to be malicious; most certainly it is not in my nature to be bitter. I am a colourless piece of goods, I fear— never born to achieve great things, or even little ones when they are of a fighting nature.”

She had a fine glow of health in her cheeks as she found herself at the end of her walk, and once again at the entrance of the old house that had been nearer a gaol to her than. a. home.

Sheila was sensible of the very smallest alteration that had been made. Never before had she seen Dunstone with the air it wore now. The conditions of the grounds and paths were in themselves a marvellous improvement. The futility of the sacrifice she had made of her fair young youth came home to her with a rush as she walked up to the wide stone doorway, brilliant with a setting of flowers on either side. She had never dived much into the past in the months that had slipped away since her widowhood, nor in the days when she had lived here and tried to bear brightly with the weight and monotony of life with Richard Thurso, had she fully realised the cost she was paying for the tender-hearted sympathy and. pity which had been the one and only element which had urged her to be the middle-aged man’s wife. She had never till this moment taken herself to task, as it were, and questioned her own motives. But, woman as she was now, with new influences and thoughts and moods possessing her almost at every hour, and working unconsciously a great change in her heart, Sheila felt a rush of hot blood mantle her face as she saw for the first time how easily a worldly or harsh judgment might be given to her girlish dreams, and how few people, if any, would believe that she had married Sir Richard Thurso from purest friendship and sympathy, hoping to bring consolation into a lonely and shadowed life, and absolutely ignorant of the fundamental meaning of the bond she had entered into so earnestly and willingly. Naturally, she must have been set down long ago by the world as a clever girl, who had caught a rich husband with a title almost before she had been out of the schoolroom. Sheila gave a little choking sigh. This thought was new, and it hurt her sharply.

“Oh, dear! life is very hard to understand, and very, very disappointing,” she said to herself, as she rang the outer bell. Gradually the natural sunniness of temper returned. After all, she had the consciousness of knowing she had acted well, if even she had failed to achieve all she had hoped. The big door was open, and, standing without, Sheila had a good view of all the alterations that had been worked in so short a time, and of all the new and beautiful appointments introduced since her day.

“Now,” she confessed to herself, with a faint smile, as a servant came to admit her and carry her name to Mrs. Crawshaw, “now I am beginning to feel what it is to be envious. Oh, what a difference from the dingy old hall! I feel as if a fairy had been here and touched everything with a magical wand!”

She moved about softly from one corner to another, having an added appreciation at every new moment. It was all so well chosen—in such exquisite taste. Nothing was out of place, and Sheila, with her inherent and cultivated sense of the truly artistic in all things, was quick to see that the eye that had arranged the alterations was an eye that studied the value of lines and the classic in colouring.

She was herself in warm harmony with her surroundings. Somehow, though always exceedingly well dressed, there was a touch of the picturesque in the clothes she wore. She was, of course, in black from head to foot, yet there was nothing conventional about her; her little cap-like bonnet had a flavour of some foreign country in its shape, and her mantle hung in lines and folds that seemed to call for a painter’s brush to put them to canvas. Sombre as her garb was, the warm brightness of her beautiful hair, the glow in her cheeks, gave her appearance a radiance, and when she smiled her lips and eyes were indescribably charming.

Hearing a step as she was busy looking at some wonderful oaken furniture, Sheila turned, expecting to see the servant returned, and found herself face to face with George. There was one second of hesitation, then she held out her hand quite easily to him.

“I am Sheila Thurso,” she said, the colour mounting in her cheeks and then fading quickly; “ pray forgive this very early visit. I came to see Helen. I-”

George held her hand firmly for an instant. “I am glad and honoured to see you here, Lady Thurso,” he said, quietly; then, more hurriedly, “You were looking at the alterations—do you approve?”

“Could I do otherwise? The place is an enchantment. I congratulate you most heartily, Sir George! I always felt there were great possibilities for beauty in Dunstone; now I see how right I was.”

““Would you like to look at the rest of the house? I fancy Mrs. Crawshaw will not be down for another ten minutes. I will leave a message for her that we will return here. But,” George paused here — “but I forgot that you have walked from the Grange; you? must he tired; and it is early. Have you-”

Sheila reassured him brightly: “I had my breakfast an hour ago, and I am not in the least tired. Please let us go and see all there is to see; you cannot think how interesting it is to me.”

She inquired for Zillah as they went into the rooms on the same floor as the hall. “I really think,” she said, with her pretty blush, “that Lady Thurso will think me a very unconventional person, arriving at this hour. Helen knows my habits and would not have been surprised to see me at six o’clock in the morning; but other people have to be educated in my ways.”

“The morning is the best time for everything, and the true happiness of the country is that one can dispense with form and ceremony,” George answered, as he replied easily to her query about Zillah: “My wife does not altogether share my love for the morning, but you will see her, I hope, before you go.”

He led her through all the rooms, and they spent a pleasant quarter of an hour. Never till now had George had a thrill of real delight in the work he had done. There was no need of words between them to tell him that the same drift of feeling where art was concerned actuated her as it did him. In truth, he quickly saw in Sheila his superior in many things. She had but to stand and sweep the room with one glance, and she could pick out instantly a fault of colour or construction.

It was astonishing with what ease they fell into discussion together. A lifetime of friendship could not have given them greater ease and. sympathy than they experienced in this their first actual meeting. To George it seemed absolutely natural to see this tall, slender figure moving about the old house: no picture on the walls was so closely in keeping with the atmosphere of the place as Sheila. His feelings were complex as they stood chatting together so brightly; his sense of regret for the harsh, cruel words he had launched at this girl was not to be fully gauged. He was deeply grateful to her for her determination to turn away from all hint or mention of the past; but her magnanimity only made his wrong the stronger, and placed their present position more diaagreeeJoVj.

George had suffered one or two pangs of conscience when he had thought of Sheila, and thoughts of her had been made more frequent since Helen Crawshaw had been a guest in his house. In speaking of Marian, Mrs. Crawshaw had introduced Sheila’s name incidentally; and the story of the little house off the Edgware Eoad, and Mrs. Reynolds’s horrified wrath in connection with it, had been given to George.

Mrs. Crawshaw had not been quite innocent of a desire to make the young man a trifle uncomfortable in this respect She had freely admired all the beauty he had brought into Bun-stone, but she had had the picture of Sheila and Cynthia busy ‘with chintz and hammers before her eyes all the time.

“I shall not be quite happy till I see George figuratively at Sheila’s feet,” she had said to herself, while she had been stabbing and pricking him in the most gracious way possible. That George’s surrender was so close at hand Mrs. Crawshaw had never imagined; hut her quick woman’s instinct divined this the moment she met them together and gave her greeting to them both.

“What do you mean by TVvnnVa^ away from the Grange in this manner?” she chided Sheila, tenderly, as she kissed the girl half a dozen times.

Sheila coloured.

“It is rude,” she confessed; “hut I wanted to see you so much”—with a little laugh—“ and as Sir George has forgiven my early intrusion I don’t think you ought to grumble.”

Mrs. Crawshaw had no intention of grumbling. She sat smiling at her guest with the sense of rare pleasure the sight of Sheila always brought her. George, with a murmured excuse, left them together. He did not go out, as was his usual custom, but went into his study to attend to his letters. He was certainly not so calm in his mind as he had been lately. Sheila’s coming, her simplicity, her most ardent desire for his friendship, and, above all, her forgetfulness of the past, touched him keenly. He was in no mood to do much work, but the force of habit was strong with him, and so he sat down and began opening his numerous correspondence. The first letter he read recalled him sharply to the facts of his life. It was a letter from Mrs. Westlake, asking him for a certain sum of money to be sent to her with as little delay as possible. There was everything in the letter to fret and annoy George; it was couched almost insolently.

“If a man takes and keeps his wife quite away from her mother, he must he prepared to give the mother some compensation,” was what Mrs. Westlake wrote. “I am not satisfied with what I get, and I must have more. Zillah has evidently been well taught by her master, for she ignores every letter I write. It is indeed a cruel thing that a child should he set against its own mother, and after all I have done for Zillah, too. Well, perhaps my turn will come sooner than you both expect; I always believe in people being paid out sooner or later.”

There was much more in this style, and George put it aside without reading it. It sirred him into something like loathing for the woman who had written it. He caught his breath sharply as he realised how impossible it was for him to resent this sort of attack, or how more than impossible it was for him to expect help from Zillah in this matter. To expostulate with her for not sending her mother an occasional letter would have been an inconceivable folly. He did not himself understand why Zillah had not written, save that probably she was too lazy and indifferent He drew a sheet of paper towards him, and hurriedly wrote to his lawyer, directing him to forward the sum requested to Mrs. Westlake, at the same time pointing out to her that this added remittance would not he paid a second time. From this letter he passed on to others, and was busy for an hour or so. When he went into the hall again, he found Mrs. Crawshaw alone.

“Sheila left you an au revoir message; she will come to-morrow afternoon and pay her proper visit to Lady Thurso. Now, George, what have you to say about your aunt, eh?”

George smiled faintly, wondering why it should give him a sense of hurt to hear this title applied even in jest to Sheila. Now more than ever did it seem an impossible thing to ally the thought of such a fresh young wife with the memory of the hard, grim man whose successor he was.

“You have always been right,” he said. To discuss Sheila was not an easy matter, hut Mrs. Crawshaw, with less discernment than usual, was bent on doing this: “They call Enid Reynolds a beauty now in the world; but she will never hold a candle to Sheila, in my estimation. You have no conception what a sweet fairy-like little creature she was when she came out. I am not surprised your uncle fell in love with her— she was simply irresistible.”

George sat with his dogs gathered about him. The hall was cheery now with a blazing fire, a burst of late sunshine and flowers everywhere (the work of Mrs. Crawshaw’s hands, for Zillah only understood flowers to have significance in a bouquet, or in the imitation blossoms necessary for dress), but with Sheila’s departure a charm had gone.

He was silent, and let his companion chat on. “I am secretly praying that Mrs. Reynolds may not come across Sheila for just yet awhile,” Mrs. Crawshaw said by-and-by.

George roused himself to ask “Why?” He felt this was required of him.

“Oh! because the girl is so beautiful and so young that if her mother can spoil her freedom a second time she will. Of course the marriage with Sir Richard was all a clever plot; and she is capable of conceiving another just as successfully, unless I prevent her. For”—Mrs. Crawshaw nodded her head mysteriously and laughed —“for I too have my plot for Sheila’s future, George”

George smiled faintly.

“Is it necessary to plot at all? Is she not happy as she is?”

“Very; hut then it is not the proper life for her. She is much too sweet to be left to struggle on as best she can by herself.”

“But if this contents her?”

“Oh!”—Mrs. Crawshaw threaded her needle and worked about a dozen intricate stitches in her exquisite embroidery—“oh! Sheila is not awake yet. She is content because she is ignorant of what life can give her. She has a beautiful heart, but it has not been touched yet by anything stronger or deeper than pity or sympathy.” George smiled again.

“How clever you women are! How on earth can you he in possession of such a fact as this?” “In the simplest of ways,” Mrs. Crawshaw said, airily. “Naturally, I am not going to disclose these mysteries to you; hut let me tell you, Master George, I can read most people’s hearts and natures as easily as I can read a hook.” “This is interesting,” Sir George said, in reality amused. “I suppose, for instance, you know all that is going on inside my heart just now?”

“I know a great deal more than you would care to have me tell you,” she remarked.

He bent forward his head, caressing the rough head of a faithful Irish terrier crouched close to his knee.

“Suppose you tell me all you know,” he said, a little unsteadily.

“Dearest boy, why should I? One thing I can certainly tell you—and that is that if ever a man was sorry for being hard on a woman he did not know, you are that man. Am I not right, eh?”

“Quite right.”

Mrs. Crawshaw smiled at him affectionately.

“There are other things I could tell you, but I refrain,” she said, half lightly, half in earnest. She looked upwards as she spoke. Zillah was running down the stairs at that moment. She was in very good spirits. Lady Elizabeth Musgrove, having duly left cards upon her the preceding day, had now written inviting them all informally to dinner that evening. Zillah had been for the past hour arranging her toilette for this excitement.

“I have sent word, ‘ Tes, with pleasure,’ ” she told her husband.

She laughed with real delight as she swung herself kitten-like into a chair before the fire. All her sullenness was gone; she was radiant at the thought of this dinner-party. She looked her very handsomest, and her happiness was infectious. Even Helen Crawshaw had a passing liking for her in such a moment.

“After all, she is a child; one cannot expect impossibilities,” she said sagely to herself, and perhaps the gift of divination she had said she possessed passed at this instant from her to George; for he smiled faintly as their eyes met; then, with a sigh, he rose and walked away.

CHAPTER XIV.

Zillah had a real success of beauty that evening at the Grange dinner. Prepared as she was to meet a good-looking girl, Sheila was almost astonished when she was presented to Sir George’s wife to find how strikingly handsome Marian Westlake’s sister was. Of course, she was quick to notice that Zillah was far too elaborately dressed, but since the gown was black this was not so marked as it might have been. The jet and diamonds that sparkled about the bodice made, however, quite a dazzling effect, and, with jewels in her dark hair, Zillah had the proud satisfaction of feeling that she overshadowed everybody. She gave Sheila only a curt sort of greeting. Truth to tell, Zillah had a peculiar resentment against any other woman bearing the same title as herself, and she was not very well pleased at being called upon to meet this young kinswoman of George’s. For Sheila as an individual she had no feeling one way or another. Presently she would add cordial dislike to her resentment for this other Lady Thurso, when it came to her knowledge that Sheila was accounted a beauty also. Tonight she certainly outshone Sheila, who had on a gown of primitive simplicity, and who, having walked miles in the day, looked pale and tired. On her side, Sheila was prepossessed in a 6ense by Zillah; she made the same mistake as George had done in the commencement, imagining that the girl’s abrupt manner cloaked the same good qualities as Marian owned.

She found herself for a moment alone by George before they went down to dinner, and she said some very charming words about Zillah.

“I was prepared for prettiness. I find rare beauty. I think you are much to be congratulated, Sir George. I trace a slight resemblance in Lady Thurso to her sister.”

“Ah! you have met Marian. I wonder if I might ask you a question about her,” George said, hurrying the conversation a little.

Sheila smiled.

“I think you may. I am much interested in Miss Westlake. My cousin is advising her in her business just now. We met first at his office.”

Standing together by the fire in an inner drawing-room, Sheila spoke quite frankly about Marian—her plans, and her possible future; while in the larger room Zillah was laughing and talking to Lord Courtfeild, perfectly happy each time she caught a glance sent in her direction, and totally unconscious that the young man was wondering, in something like a rage, what the dickens Sheila could have to say to that fellow Thurso that seemed of such a confidential nature.”

Courtfeild could not say that Sheila’s visit had commenced satisfactorily for him. He had seen nothing of her all day; she had a trick of vanishing just when he thought to have a cosy half-hour’s chat He had to go to work delicately with Sheila; she was not a woman to be carried by storm. As Mrs. Crawshaw had told George, she had yet to awaken to the realities of life in a great degree, and Lord Courtfeild promised himself the delight of bringing about this awakening. He, who had played at being in love some hundreds of times, was becoming conscious of the actual fact more surely each moment that passed. Nevertheless, he was not insensible to Zillah’s charms, and he was perfectly willing to drift into his customary flirtation with this “bourgeoise” Cleopatra. He found her distinctly handsomer than she had been at their first meeting in Venice, and there was a note of gaiety, of love of life, in Zillah’s whole personality that struck a responsive chord in his own nature. He was inclined to give his pity to the wife this evening, instead of to the husband.

“After all, it is a miserable sort of existence she has had to lead down here, shut up in that rambling old house with a dreamer of dreams— she who is made for dancing, for flirting, for the laughter and merriment of life. He has been tutoring her, evidently; she is less natural, and a little afraid of her words. Of course he made a mistake, hut I doubt if this sort of thing will mend it much.”

Zillah found her first delightful impression of Lord Courtfeild deepened immensely by their second meeting. He was, she told herself emphatically, “a jolly nice fellow, and so handsome too! and not a bit stuck up, although he is a lord!” Perhaps with a desire of annoying Sheila, perhaps because his vanity was flattered, Courtfeild bestowed considerable attention on Zillah that evening. He paid her the most undisguised compliments, and rattled off an amount of nonsense for the pleasure of hearing her hearty laugh ring out. The enjoyment of the evening, in feet, was undoubtedly theirs. A subdued feeling had fallen upon Sheila, quite apart from her fatigue. Frank Crawshaw was sulky, his mother disturbed in her mind by Courtfeild’s determined flirtation with Zillah, and Lady Elizabeth was quite out of temper with her brother. She had long cherished a wish that he should marry; and she knew no woman whom she would welcome more warmly as her brother’s wife than Sheila. She had reason to know Courtfeild well, and she immediately saw in Zillah a possible danger to the hopes she was so anxious to see fulfilled. Moreover, she found little to admire in Zillah— “form” being in Lady Elizabeth’s estimation the first of all things desirable in a woman, a man, or an animal; and poor Zillah certainly was lacking in form.

To George the evening was only what he had expected it to be; and though the method of Zillah’s enjoyment jarred on him, he could not hut feel glad that she was finding some happiness in her own way. She was, in fact, a sort of revelation to him to-night. It was evident enough that in Courtfeild she had found a kindred spirit Never had she been so gay, so sparkling with life and happiness as now. He had dreamed such dreams of chaining down her spirit, and moulding it into a likeness of his own grave, thoughtful one. No wonder Zillah had fretted and pined of late. Pleasure was a necessity to her; excitement something without which she could not live.

“I think I shall have to commission you to help me to find some little comer in town for us this winter,” he said after dinner, as he sat chatting with Helen Crawshaw. Sheila had gone upstairs to say good-night to Clynthia and to bring down some songs.

“That will not be a very difficult commission, George. But have you really made up your mind to leave Dunstone, after all?”

He nodded his head; “Yes; I think it will be best.”

Sheila came in after a few minutes, and sent a smile in their direction. Zillah was sitting in a distant corner, telling both Lord Courtfeild and Frank their fortunes by reading the palms of their hands. The gipsy element in her revelled in this kind of thing. George rose and went to the piano.

“Mr. Musgrove has asked me for a hunting song,” Sheila said to him in amused dismay. “I am in despair, for I don’t know one.”

George glanced at their host, who was fast asleep in a cosy chair in front of the fire.

“He has already composed a hunting song of his own,” he said, as he took up her music. “ I think, do you know, you are much too tired to sing to-night, Lady Thurso,” he added an instant later. Sheila coloured faintly at his thoughtfulness.

“Yes; I am tired. I will play instead, and then I shall not interrupt the conversation.”

She sat down as she spoke, paused a moment, and then commenced playing softly a Chopin nocturne. Sheila was not a great pianist; she played because the music was a source of great joy to her, and this delight was apparent at once to all who heard her. Helen Crawshaw, who had listened often to the girl’s playing, had never found greater charm or beauty in it than she did to-night.

“Go on, Sheila; more—I want more!” she cried, imperatively, when Sheila would have paused. The music had the effect of breaking up Zillah’s prophetic stance.

With his curious nature, in which materialism so strongly abounded, Courtfeild combined a passion for music that was not to be measured by words. He rose and stood, as George was standing, beside that slender figure in the simple black gown, whose small white fingers were capable of stirring the very heart within him as they moved over the keys.

“Thank you,” he said, now and then, as the hands paused before beginning again. “You cannot imagine what such music as yours means to me, Lady Thurso. It is divine!”

Zillah bore with the changed state of things for a little while; then, having worked herself into a real bad temper, and furious with Sheila for robbing her of the attention she loved so much, she bounced up to George, and, breaking in on the flow of melody, declared she was tired and wished to go home.

Sheila was on her feet in an instant, with some pretty, tactful word. She found herself ranged, metaphorically, between George and the roughness of the situation. Refusing to «&sst Zillah’s bad temper or most plain dislike to herself, she laughed and chatted on, and was not satisfied till she saw that an awkward moment was passed over comfortably. Her promise to Marian was in her heart as she did all this, although she saw only too clearly that she could never hope to be the friend to Zillah she would like to have been, for that Zillah herself would be the obstacle to this.

She went to bed after the Dunstone party had driven away, exceedingly weary; yet, after her head was laid on the pillow, sleep refused to come to her, and a curious sort of regret, almost an unhappiness, oppressed her. She was haunted by the remembrance of Zillah’s dark, insolent, passionate face, and by a certain dumb look of suffering in George Thurso’s eyes. The sharp remarks, too, that had passed between Lady Elizabeth and her brother concerning Zillah remained to jar on Sheila’s nerves. She had no reason to defend George Thurso from the sneers of the world. Undoubtedly he had but himself to blame for all that was come, and would come.

Lord Courtfeild’s curt summing up of George as a “weak-backed dreamer, a man fit only for a study, not for the world,” was, for all Sheila knew to the contrary, probably as near a definition of the man’s character as could be given. Nevertheless, Sheila found her sympathy going out with a rush to Zillah’s husband. Her knowledge of what his life had been, of the tragedy that had crushed his soul in boyhood, of the quiet, dogged heroism with which he had plodded on against all disaster, even against the cruel sorrow of dishonour itself, would have given George a lasting place in her thoughts, if even she had never come in contact with him, and tonight she found herself thinking of him with as much keenness of feeling as though he had been someone of her own kin or of her old acquaintance. It seemed to her easy enough to read the growing unhappiness of this man’s future, although, in her just way, Sheila gave an equal amount of pity to Zillah.

“They are as far apart as the two poles,” she said to herself, in dismay. “How can it ever be hoped that they will have happiness together?”

She lay staring into the dark with her sleepless eyes for several hours, and her thoughts were all the time with George Thurso and his wife. She planned all sorts of ways and means to help them, in her usual warm-hearted manner; hat after a time the problem grew beyond her, and almost unconsciously she ceased thinking and drifted finally into a deep sleep.

Marian had paid quite half a dozen visits to Giles Reynolds’s office, and he had driven ont on several occasions to the little dingy house at West Kensington before the business of settling the girl’s small affiurs was finally arranged. There came a day in mid-November when Marian went to the office for a final visit. The house had been sold, the money paid, and the creditors were all receiving their due, through Reynolds. Marian’s visit was unconnected with business.

“I have come to thank you as well as I can, and to wish you good-bye,” she said, abruptly, to the young man.

“I am very glad to see you, although your errand is an unnecessary one. I don’t want any thanks, and I’m not going to say good-bye, Miss Westlake,” was Giles’s answer to this.

Marian coloured.

“I go to my uncle’s this evening,” she observed.

Giles Reynolds laughed.

“Does that imply that you must say farewell to your friends?”

Marian looked at him sharply.

“In a sense, yes,” she answered.

“Why?”

“There are several reasons, Mr. Reynolds.”

“Give me one good one!”

The girl coloured.

“Why do you press things so hard? Sometimes you-” she paused—“I wrote to Lady Thurso this morning. I think she will quite understand why I shall not see her in the future.”

“I don’t think she will in the very least,” Mr. Reynolds said, imperturbably, “she is very reasonable, is Sheila.”

Marian rubbed the handle of her umbrella with her thick glove.

“Mr. Reynolds, the friendship you offer, the friendship your cousin gives, is not really for me. You know that I come of very humble stock. This old man with whom I am going to live is a retired publican. That is not exactly a pretty word in society, is it?”

“Society has very little to say in a matter of real friendship. Look here, Miss Westlake, I am not going to bother you about myself; doubtless you don’t particularly care whether, you see me or not; but I do hope you won’t shut your heart against Sheila. She is uncommonly fond of you, and will grieve, I am sure, if she realises she is not to see you any more.”

Marian paused.

“Sheila is an angel,” she said; then, almost passionately, “It is I who should grieve if I did not see her, Mr. Reynolds. Tou must please forgive me if I say things that sound rude; I only want to be on the safe side. I have several examples of what not to do,” Marian added, grimly, “very near to home.” She rose and gave him her hand as she spoke, and then, in her sharp sort of way, she had twisted herself round, and had vanished before he could say another word.

He heard of her a week or so later. The letter Was written in so cheery a spirit, it satisfied him that she was happy. He put the address in his pocket-book and promised himself the pleasure of seeing the sharp-tongued, handsome girl before long. He was, however, very busy getting through all the work he could before Christmas, and Sheila and Cynthia saw very little of him.

Indeed, Giles had only dined once with his cousins since their return from their country visit. He had found Sheila looking very pale on that occasion, and he had given some fatherly advice about going out of town to a sheltered seaside place, but Sheila had only laughed at this.

“Cynthia and I are not flourishing men of law, to go dancing about all over the world just as we like. We have heaps of things to do in the house, and I must be here to look after Helen Crawshaw, who, I am sorry to say, is anything but well.”

“The air of ‘Westshire does not seem invigorating, I must say!” had been Giles’s remark to this. “By the way, Sheila, you have not told me all about your meeting with the Thursos. Did you go to Dunstone at all?”

“Oh, ever so many times,” Cynthia chimed in. “You cannot think what a beautiful place it is now! And I like George Thurso ever so much!” “The Grange is so close to Dunstone,” Sheila remarked, hurriedly.

“And you got on with the wife? You like her as much as the sister?”

“I hated her,” Cynthia observed, candidly.

“But you know what Sheila is! She never hates anybody, Giles. And I am sure she might very well have hated Lady Thurso. You can’t think how rude she was to Sheila—I was quite glad when we came away. I saw George driving with her this afternoon. They have taken a house in town for some months, but, thank goodness, Lady Thurso won’t trouble us—we are not grand enough for her!”

“Cynthia!”

But Cynthia was not to be checked, and poured out to her cousin the Ml account of all that had occurred in their fortnight’s stay at the Grange—a very graphic account indeed.

“I could not make up my mind which I disliked the most—Lord Courtfeild or Lady Thurso. They are both horrid!”

“Cynthia will never he a diplomat,” Sheila had told her cousin, with a smile and a tinge of extra colour in her cheeks.

Giles Beynolds found himself thinking about Sheila as often as he could spare a thought from his work, and his thought usually framed itself into a regret that he had not worked to prevent her from fulfilling her invitation with the Mus-grovea.

“Naturally it must have been awfully rough on the poor child having to go to Dunstone and meet that man. I feel sure she is sorry she went herself.”

Sheila was indeed very, very sorry she had gone for that visit to the Grange! hut the cause of her regret was far removed from what her cousin imagined.

CHAPTER XV.

Once settled in town for the winter, Zillah prepared herself to be completely happy. Her nature seemed to expand in the dull, murky atmosphere of the great city; she seemed full of unflagging energy, and was ready at any moment for any amount of excitement.

George had not done things in half measures. His first intention, when they had left Dunstone, was to give Zillah a fortnight in town, and then return to their home; but many things occurred to make him change his mind, and instead, therefore, of locating themselves as birds of passage in a hotel, he took a small furnished house, and, to Zillah’s unbounded delight, announced his intention of remaining in town indefinitely.

“Only, I am afraid I shall have to leave you frequently. I must he at Dunstone at least once a week. There is so much I want to personally supervise,” he had said to his wife when they were established in their temporary home—a small house in a fashionable street.

Zillah’s baste to acquiesce in this arrangement was bitter to George; for it robbed him of the only illusion be bad been able to garner to himself out of all those that bis marriage had scattered—the illusion of Zillah’s love for himself. It was a definite hurt to him to even imagine that in this, too, he had made a mistake, yet such an imagination was forcing itself upon him a little every day. Indeed, there was an undercurrent of eagerness, almost pleasure, in Zillah’s manner when the question of his absence was discussed, that, probably betrayed in all unconsciousness by the girl, was only too clear to the man’s sensitive mind, and was in itself a confession of Zillah’s true feelings. George was slow, however, to let this last doubt have place with him. He had parted with so many small dreams and hopes that he did not want to say farewell to the last remaining pleasure associated with his marriage. He scarcely knew what he should do if it were proved to him that the love Zillah had given him had never really existed— that love which had had power to beautify the unbeautiful remembrance of that last evening of his life under her mother’s roof—that love for and through which he had permitted the impossible, and even objectionable, to become possible. If this were taken from him, and from Zillah, what remained for them? What link existed in their mutual lives to keep them together, forbearing, and perhaps, in a sense, happy?

No; George would not let this faint doubt have resting-place with him. He had grown quick in his habit of finding an excuse if not a reason for everything Zillah did. He attributed her seeming pleasure at his suggested absence as being agreeable to her sense of independence, and, more probably still, because she knew his devotion to the country, and she wished to show him that though she loved town herself, she had no wish to debar him from his pleasures.

This last thought being decidedly the most agreeable, George cherished it, and life flowed on smoothly enough in consequence. He went each week to Dunstone, and was sometimes absent two days. Zillah revelled in these days of freedom in a way that is indescribable. A sort of exultant joy would take possession of her when George had driven away. She had no desire to be free of him save that her strong nature, growing stronger each day, chafed beneath the restraining influence of the man. Zillah still held her first opinions of George. She regarded him as being very handsome and everything that was desirable, and she was, np to this time, at least, very content to be his wife. At the same time, she loved her independence; she was never so happy as when the day was before her to be occupied just as she liked, without fear of giving annoyance to another. George’s reproofs, though silent, were none the less effective. Zillah had only to glance at her husband to know when she had committed a greater social fault than usual, and George’s grave, calm, always kind manner would irritate her beyond all measure. Hence, when she could be quite alone, the relief was so great as to be a joy. In town there was, too, always something to amuse her. Her pleasures were innocent enough, if a trifle unconventional. George would have preferred her to have had some regular companion on the days she was alone, but he did not suggest it. Above all things, he wanted Zillah to feel that he had the fullest confidence in her. Building, as he did, upon the supposition that the girl’s nature was, aufond, good, straightforward, and excellent, his theory was a right one. But Zillah did not in the least respond to the faith confided in her. She was capable of many things (given the proper circumstances) of which George could never dream. As it was, life drifted away very pleasantly for Lady Thurso. She had any amount of new friends—people who were brought in contact with her through the kindness of Lord Courtfeild, who had been hospitality itself for the Thursos since their arrival in town, and who was perpetually inviting them to small dinners or arranging theatre parties with fresh guests each time for Zillah’s amusement. The girl took a childish delight in reading over the names of the people she met and who came to call upon her. That Lady Elizabeth Musgrove was not one of these, Zillah cared not a snap of the fingers; and that the majority of her new acquaintances were men signified nothing to her. The names on the cards were all high-sounding ones; and sometimes a vision of the delight it would have given her to impart the fact of her friendship with so many titled people to her former humble friends came to her with a regret that this could not be. Her mother would have been overwhelmed with so much grandeur; but Zillah did not intend to have anything to do with her mother at all. And as for Marian, it was a savage wish with Zillah that she might forget her sister’s existence. Since she had come in contact with Sheila, and had heard of all that Marian had done in connection with the old home and her future, Zillah had no other feeling for her sister but anger. She would not believe that Marian had gone to Giles Reynolds absolutely by chance; she saw in that business a distinct plan of Marian’s to get into the same world as her own—even to he intimate with George Thurso’s kinspeople.

“And after sticking herself up, and being so righteous, and so much better than me, too! “Well, she. may think she is very clever, but she doesn’t come into my house; and I hope her dear Mend Sheila Thurso won’t forget her. Marian is welcome to her, as far as I am concerned, and to Mrs. Crawshaw, too. They are a good lot of hypocrites together!”

Zillah saw very little of Helen Crawshaw. The older woman had been ill ever since the late autumn, and had been unable to leave the house. George went constantly to sit with his old Mend. There was always a hearty welcome for him; and the hour of quiet chat in the cosy boudoir, all draped and closed in for the winter, was a source of real pleasure to the young man.

He tried in vain to induce Zillah to go with him on occasions, but she doggedly refused.

“Mrs. Crawshaw can’t bear me! Oh, I’m not a fool—nor blind, neither! Do you suppose I can’t see things clearly? She’s your friend, and she’s not mine, and I don’t care a pin if she’s ill or well.”

That had been one of Zillah’s speeches in answer to George’s request; and in a little while he ceased to press the matter, for he saw that Helen Crawshaw in truth did not like Zillah, and that it was better they did not meet. This fact might have made a breach of feeling between them had they not been so really fond of one another, and if they had not had a hundred things in sympathy one with the other. It was in Mrs. Crawshaw’s room that George came across Sheila at odd times. They did not meet often. Sheila, in fact, avoided seeing him as much as possible. She usually knew from Mrs. Crawshaw when he was likely to arrive, and on these occasions was absent herself. Other times, when he came unexpectedly, Sheila was glad to see him, and was always ready with a pretty word and a smile to take her friend’s place at the tea-table. There was a delicious influence of charm, something soothing and tender, to George Thurso in these rare hours of meeting with Sheila. She never came to his house, nor did he question the reason of this. He knew that she was going nowhere save to her intimate friends; and this explanation was outwardly sufficient, although it would have been a source of real happiness to him if this Mr young woman had evinced a desire to become a friend of his wife’s. He was aware that Zillah did not care for Sheila; but he was sure that Sheila could have won her way, if she had only tried. Except for an interchange of cards, however, there was no acquaintance between the two Lady Thursos; nor was it likely that this would change. It was with Sheila, in the rare times that they met, that George exchanged all his views, and reported progress in the work he was doing on the Dunstone estate. Naturally, Sheila could follow him in this better than most people, and her interest was very deep. Sometimes, indeed, George had drifted into the pleasure of writing a few lines to his kinswoman and telling her of some things which he felt would interest her.

The winter was a mild one—a splendid hunting season, and also splendid weather for all George’s building and out-of-doors alterations. Christmas (which Zillah and he had spent alone at Dunstone, much to the girl’s annoyance) had been one of the mildest known for years; but as January slipped into February the weather changed. Frost set in with severity, and all George’s schemes and work had to wait. He turned his hack on Dunstone almost willingly, however. A new hope, a new promise of joy, had come to him of late; he lived now for the birth of his child, and for the future that should be built about this child. He had a new and deeper feeling for Zillah in these months.

The girl herself was no pleasant companion; she was reckless and moody by turns, and nothing gave her pleasure. The season, to which she had been looking as a pilgrim turned to Mecca, would be lost to her. She hated children. “Everything is disappointing and horrid!” she said to herself.

Of real worries she had no knowledge. George was careful to keep her mother’s vagaries in the background, and Mrs. Westlake of late had been more than difficult and trying. She had drifted into hopeless financial tangles, had been wooed and then jilted by an adventurous youth who had robbed her of all she possessed, and in one interview that George had with the foolish and impossible woman he had seen a worse future ahead for her—indeed, for himself—if she were not taken care of. Not merely from selfish reasons, George wrote to Marian and told her everything.

“Your mother must be controlled in some way,” he said. “Iam prepared to do all in my power, but she is very difficult. “What I dread is that she may come here and see Zillah; and in her present condition this might have a most unhappy effect on my wife. Write to me frankly; trust me as a- brother. Believe me, I will do anything in my power to help you, but you must help me. When you meet your mother, you will see what it is I fear in the future.”

This letter received a prompt reply:

“I will see my mother. Be at rest about Zillah. If I can prevent it, she shall never be troubled in any way. I don’t know that I shall be able to control my mother, but something must he done.”

This brief letter was signed “Your sister,

Marian,” and George felt a thrill of pleasure as he read the words. He had gratitude in his feelings, too; for he knew what true friend had been at work to heal the breach between Marian and himself. It was strange with what ease he turned to the thought of Sheila’s loyal friendship.

It had been a long hut not an unpleasant winter with Sheila and her little sister. Their home in the dark, cold days was very cosy and pretty, and Sheila was so busy looking after Cynthia’s different studies (in some of which she shared herself) that time went by fleetly. In fact, in a way, Sheila half dreaded the return of spring, for with it would come Hie season, with its rush and turmoil, and its attendant disagreeables. For Sheila these last would include the arrival of her mother in town, and also the reappearance of Lord Courtfeild.

Why she could not have told exactly, Sheila felt convinced that Courtfeild had not taken her few firm, negative words, spoken the last day of her stay at the Grange, to he definite or final. His proposal had been an amazement to her. She had been absolutely unprepared for such a thing. Her surprise had, indeed, been so genuine that it had added bitterness to her refusal. Bat the thought that she had drifted into such a close place even in this man’s imagination stung Sheila’s pride; for she had never liked Lord Courtfeild, even in the most ordinary meaning of the word. Her departure to town, and the many weeks before she met him again, gave Sheila the chance to recover a little; but still, thought of him was constant, and distressing, too. She had feared at first to go to Mr. Craw-shaw’s too frequently, for he was a regular visitor, and the knowledge she had of Courtfeild’s friendship with Zillah all the beginning part of the winter was one of the strongest reasons why she did not approach George’s wife. When she heard that he was gone abroad, Sheila heaved a sigh of deep relief. Some one had told her that Courtfeild had gone on a tour of the world; and though this was soon disproved, yet Sheila’s life was the happier for his absence during the months of March, April, and May. Her sister and her mother were to be in town for the season. Sheila drew a deep breath when she conjured up the sort of existence she would lead if by any chance her mother got to know of Courtfeild’s intentions.

“I have half a mind to take Cynthia out of town now, instead of waiting till July,” she told her cousin one June morning, when she called at his office to discuss some of her modest business. Giles approved.

“An excellent plan—for you as much as for Cynthia. What have you been doing lately, Sheila? You look pale and rather tired.”

Sheila laughed. “Cynthia and I are working like slaves at our music. She has really a great talent for the violin. When will you come and hear a concert, Giles?” Then Sheila turned the tables on her cousin. “Do you know that you look pale, Giles? What have you been doing?”

Giles Reynolds coloured faintly. “I have been helping to bear another person’s burdens. Sheila, that poor child is in great trouble.”

Sheila looked startled. “You mean Marian? I heard from her last week only—one of her usual short, funny little letters. What has happened, Giles?”

“It is the mother. I found it all out by chance. Went to pay Miss Westlake a visit yesterday, and found her almost distracted. The mother, through her own folly, culminating in that mad idea of a marriage back in the antumn, has not only rained herself, bat she has developed a terrible tendency for drink. The old man who has given Marian a home has made it a sine quS non that the girl has nothing to say to her mother if she remains with him; if not-”

“You mean she will lose her home. Oh, Giles, this is really a sorrow! Poor Marian! And she has been so brave—so good!” Sheila paused a moment “I think, Giles,” she said then—“I think yon ought to write and tell all this to Sir George Thurso. I feel, I know, that he will come to Marian’s help.”

Giles Reynolds looked at his cousin keenly. “Your opinion of this man is romantically high, Sheila,” he said, drily.

She blushed a little, angrily. “I think it is the true opinion,” she replied, quietly; and after that they spoke of other things, and then she went away and walked slowly out into the sunshine of the Temple Gardens, and from thence back towards Piccadilly. It was hot walking, but Sheila loved the sun, and the air was preferable to the atmosphere of an omnibus, and cabs were a forbidden luxury.

She was walking slowly along Pall Mall keeping on the shady side, when a cab pulled up beside her and George got out He was pale, but there was a radiance in his eyes that she had never seen before. He took her hand in both of his.

“What happiness to see you! I was just thinking of you! I wanted to give my news to you myself. I know you will be glad to hear it My boy was born last night . . . All the world seems different!”

Sheila’s eyes filled with tears. His joy, his whole presence, thrilled her with a sensation she had never had before. Sbe seemed to be whirled apart from her old calm, sedate, gentle self, and to be swept into a new sphere of thought and feeling. There was an exquisite joy, yet an exquisite pain for her as she felt the touch of George’s hand, and heard his voice so laden with emotion. A veil was torn from Sheila’s heart in this moment, and she saw what an aching void was there—what a numb pretence was her contentment, what a depth of passion ran riot beneath her gentle calm. The day was intensely hot, but she had grown suddenly cold—cold with an immensity of jealousy that not all her beautiful spirit could subdue; the jealousy of a childless, desolate woman, who saw spread before her eyes the story of the truest, most natural, purest earthly joy, and who had no share in the story.

And worse than this mere physical and pardonable jealousy, was the overwhelming knowledge that came to her then that here, clasping her hand, was the one man in all created beings to whom her love, late-born, was given, and who must for ever be a stranger without the gates of her life!

CHAPTER XVI.

If Sheila had yielded entirely to her own wishes Bhe would have spent the remainder of that summer far, far away from London; but, though so seemingly free, Sheila had many bonds to tie her to town. Cynthia’s education was one of the strongest of these ties. The girl had joined some classes immediately on their return from the visit to the Grange, and was working industriously and well. To take her away from town before the legitimate holidays commenced would be waste of money and opportunity. Helen Crawshaw’s health was another cause that made Sheila put self on one side. Mrs. Crawshaw was very delicate this season. She was unable to do a quarter of her usual social work, and many days was too tired and weak to leave the house; and on these days a little message always went rip to the tiny abode near the Marble Arch, begging for Sheila’s company. As her doctors desired Mrs. Crawshaw to remain in London for constant supervision, Sheila’s wish in this one respect was to remain too. Yet, paradoxically, it was at Helen Crawshaw’s house, and through Helen Crawshaw, that she was called upon to meet and suffer those very things that made life in London so hard for her. She hardly knew which trial hurt her the most—her constant intercourse with George Thurso (who never missed a day now in paying a visit to his mother’s loved Mend) or her occasional meetings with the man she not only disliked but feared. Lord Court-feild, like Sir George, was most punctilious in paying every sort of pretty attention to Mrs. Crawshaw. Had she been a young, lovely woman she could not have received more flattering remembrance than she received from these two young men; and Sheila herself was touched and pleased by the daily visits and gifts of flowers and fruit lavished on her friend.

If only she could have avoided both men she would have been content; for she had grown used to her peaceful, sympathetic life with Cynthia, and her happiest hours were spent in sharing Cynthia’s studies and superintending Cynthia’s music. At least, there had been happiness in those hours before that hot June day had come when George had given her the news of his boy’s birth, and her heart had suddenly startled her with the revelation of a truth so beautiful yet so terrible that it had changed the whole tenour of her life, present and future. Sheila, indeed, hardly dared let herself gauge the complex feelings that took possession of her from that day. She knew she was an altered being outwardly as inwardly, but she was powerless to alter this. She winced when Helen Crawshaw’s eyes would rest upon her questioningly. She had the heat always ready as an excuse when her pallor was commented on; and, in truth, the passionate fire of sorrow, of yearning, of suddenly awakened comprehension, that never left her now, was enough to waste her physical strength as it tortured her mentally.

By some irony of fete, too, it was destined that she and George should be drawn into closer intercourse than they had ever been. They met on a common ground of sympathy where Helen Crawshaw was concerned, and Marian’s fate drew them also together. Zillah’s sister had made her choice without demur: she had cast in her lot with her mother, and had in consequence brought down wrath upon her head from her father’s kinsman, who had come to her rescue so willingly. With the intensity of joy that his child’s birth signified to him, George Thurso had lost the last faint remaining touch of bitterness that had marred his character for a time. As he had told Sheila that morning, the whole world seemed different to him. He had no resentful remembrances, even for Zillah’s mother; the inevitable disappointment of his marriage had faded into the background. All his hopes and dreams revived in the tiny, weak person of his son. Zillah’s faults were utterly forgotten in the remembrance that she was the mother of his child. He was the subject of much tender comment from Helen Crawshaw, who had indeed rejoiced that a hoy had been given him, but who had too real a dislike and doubt of Zillah to welcome that hoy as she would have done under other circumstances. She tried^. too, to wean George from lavishing too much love upon the child.

“All children are sweet and dear and beautiful when they are little clinging babies,” she said now and then wistfully to Sheila. “If we could only keep them babies! But they change so soon. In a few years they are ready to forget their own father and mother! I don’t want that boy to put too much of his life and heart in that baby; disappointment when it comes will be so terrible—and disappointment is sure to come from the child of such a mother!”

Sheila, as a rale, tried to be silent on all that touched George Thurso; but once, when words similar to these were spoken, her just nature seemed to urge her to do battle for Zillah. She knew it was a futile task to fight against the older woman’s antipathy to George’s wife, but she did it, nevertheless.

“She is young, and foolish only because she is young, dearest,” was what she urged gently; “it is not just to judge her too harshly, and motherhood will change her.”

But Mrs. Crawshaw was unconvinced, and, in the matter of judging Zillah, strangely unlike her usual gentle self; but her visit at Dunstone had given her too many opportunities of reading Zillah’s character to let her gloss over the faults of the surface.

“She cares just so much for her motherhood,” she told Sheila, with an expressive snap of her fingers. ““With her own lips she told me so the last time I saw her. And she is not merely foolish, Sheila. A fool is a great trial, but is manageable. George’s wife has all the instincts of a creature who can never be governed save by what her own desires dictate. I cannot tell you how much I dislike her. “Why, oh, why,” Helen Crawshaw asked, half fretfully, “could he not have made some other choice? “Why not have taken the sister? She is a rough diamond, I own; still, she is a diamond in her own way.”

“Lady Thurso has great beauty,” Sheila responded to this in a low voice. Her own heart was asking this same query a hundred times a day. Loyal as she was, she could not shut her eyes to the difficulties Mrs. Crawshaw sketched so vividly, although the possibilities of future trouble which the older woman saw so clearly were hidden from her. She dreaded this constant reference to Zillah. She was nervous on many points now. Her broken nights, her ceaseless self-castigation, the struggle that lived perpetually in her heart, brought about this nervousness. She had a dread of meeting Zillah, of seeing the child. Against herself, that hot, suffocating jealousy of Zillah’s maternity haunted her. She grew more slender and paler every day.

“I am anxious about Sheila,” Mrs. Crawshaw said to nearly all the visitors that came to drink tea in her boudoir; “she is not used to a cramped, small house, and this hot summer is most trying to her. Besides, she is turning herself into a governess for Cynthia; it really quite worries me.”

Mrs. Crawshaw was, in fact, more than worried about Sheila’s future. Ignorant of all that had occurred down at the Grange in the earlier part of the year, she could not understand Courtfeild’s attitude.

“Has he any real intentions? If so, why does he not speak to her?” she said frequently to herself. She was more eager than ever for this marriage to be arranged. Lady Elizabeth Musgrove had spoken out her wish on the matter quite freely.

“There’s no creature in the world I should welcome more heartily for Bertie’s wife than Sheila Thurso,” she had confided to Mrs. Crawshaw long ago; but days went by and the engagement between Courtfeild and Sheila was not announced, neither were there any signs that it would come.

Somehow it never entered into Helen Craw-shaw’s mind to question Sheila’s feelings in this matter. She herself found Lord Courtfeild so agreeable, and she saw in him so many excellent attributes that with marriage would develop into definite qualities, that the idea that this rich, handsome young man could be in any degree objectionable to any young woman would have been preposterous to her.

“But why does he not speak?” was what she asked herself impatiently; and, in her blindness and goodness of heart, she took opportunity now and then to introduce pathetic mention of Sheila —of her patience and goodness in her changed life, of her delicacy, and of how desirable it was that the girl should have a different position.

Courtfeild always listened attentively, and with a reasonable show of interest discussed the matter; but he never made any declaration of his feelings; nor when he met Sheila, as he did constantly, did his manner reveal any marked expression of feeling to Mrs. Crawshaw’s watchful eyes. To Sheila the man’s whole bearing was unendurable. She had with her always the vision of that last evening she had spent at the Grange; of the dismayed astonishment with which she had listened to the declaration of the man’s feeling for herself; of the gentleness, with which she had tried to dismiss the subject, and then of Courtfeild’s fierce, passionate refusal to take her answer as decisive.

“I am in no hurry. I can wait, Sheila,” he had said to her doggedly, as she had nervously tried to slip past him and reach the welcome solitude of her own room. “I will wait a lifetime if needs be, hut I will win in the end!”

Sheila had laughed, and not without natural scorn for this bombastic threat.

“Please do not be so foolish, Lord Courtfeild,” she had said, haughtily. “I am very, very sorry to hurt you. Had I only dreamed you had this intention in your mind, I would have gone to the other end of the world before I would have allowed myself to come here. Pray, let us part friends. I am honoured by your proposal, but I have absolutely no wish to contract a second marriage, and I never desire to hear this mentioned again.”

Lord Courtfeild had moved on one side to let her pass. “I am an obstinate sort of brute,” he had answered, and the anger she had kindled in him shone from his eyes, “and I don’t take a failure easily. We will let the matter rest now; but I will wait, Sheila.”

His words had roused her anger also. “You may wait all your life—you will never find me changed,” she had said to him sharply, and with that they had parted; and although time and absence had softened the very objectionable features of this interview to Sheila, yet the remembrance of it came up afresh each time they met. To her proud, sensitive nature, Court-feild’s manner was little less than an affront; there were times when she was forced to meet him that she could hardly endure his presence. She construed his easy silence as he meant her to construe it. She knew that he had not accepted his dismissal, and that something more disagreeable was ahead for her in connection with him. This would not have annoyed her to half the degree it did, had her mind been in its former calm condition; but, nervous and un-happy and overstrained as she was, the mere thought of a further attack from Courtfeild made her ill. Mrs. Crawshaw’s manoeuvres for her matrimonial future were, unfortunately, hidden from Sheila; for, could she have guessed that this loved friend of hers was in a sense leagued with Lord Courtfeild, the whole truth would have come out, and the matter might have been settled. As it was, Sheila shrank even from speaking the man’s name when he was not present; and Mrs. Crawshaw, eager to bring things to a crisis, and fearing that it was Courtfeild’s fault that this had not happened before, was careful to say nothing to Sheila.

Their chief subject of conversation was George Thurso; and this, though it was a pain to Sheila in one sense, was an exquisite pleasure in another. She was never tired of hearing his beautiful nature discussed and exalted—a favourite theme with Helen Crawshaw, who, now that George had made reparation to Sheila for his one cruel wrong, could find no flaw in the man’s character save that he was too easily moved to compassion —too trusting, and too much of a dreamer to be very practical. Judged by the standard of most men, George was decidedly characteristic of sentiment rather than of practical common sense, and this was evinced more definitely every hour he lived. In the days of their greatest grief, when the man they loved lay freshly dead in his grave, George and his mother had made themselves penniless in order that the honour of their dead should be restored to them. Everything they possessed had gone to swell the assets necessary to meet the enormous claims of the creditors; and by this whole-hearted sacrifice of land and invested moneys they had done much, not only to restore confidence in their name, but to pay back to those who had suffered by the failure of the bank a portion at least of what they had lost. And now George was continuing the task his mother had set him.

“I shall not rest till the last farthing has been paid,” he said to Mrs. Crawshaw when, having heard from her husband of the matter, she questioned him eagerly about it. It was a day when Sheila was there, an early July day. Zillah was well again, and was to be seen driving about in gorgeous finery. Her baby and nurse paid frequent visits to Mrs. Crawshaw, but she confined herself to leaving cards; she had no love for Mrs. Crawshaw.

“This will drain you pretty heavily, George,” his old friend reminded him, gently; but he only laughed contentedly.

“Oh! I think I can stand it all right. It means good management and economy, in a sense, of course; but still it can be done, and it must be done also. I shall not rest,” he repeated, “ till the last farthing has been paid.”

“Be careful not to rob Prince Baby,” Mrs. Crawsbaw said, with a faint smile. She was very weak and ailing these hot days, and had refused herself to everyone but George. Sheila was not regarded as a visitor in the household, and Mrs. Crawshaw rarely denied herself the pleasure of a chat with George. She had been doubly eager to see him on this particular day, for she wished to confirm the report her husband had brought her. “Paul calls you a Don Quixote, George,” she told him.

George’s face flushed in the way Sheila knew so well to mean a rush of deep feeling. “I doubt if Mr. Crawshaw would be less ‘ Quixotic’ than I am, given my circumstances,” he answered, quietly.

Mrs. Crawshaw struck him caressingly with her fan.

“You are a young gentleman who will have his own way—that all the world knows. After all, we should praise instead of blame you. If you liked to retaliate you might tell us to mind our own business—mightn’t he, Sheila? for it is certainly no business of anyone’s what you do with your money, your wife excepted; and I presume she has no objection to offer.”

Sheila, who was sorting through some papers for Mrs. Crawshaw, looked up hurriedly at this. She understood the sound in Mrs. Crawshaw’s voice very well; and she knew this remark had not been made lightly. Her eyes caught that hot flush on his face once again, and her heart thrilled a little. She bent her head over her work as he answered Mrs. Crawshaw.

“My wife knows nothing of the matter as yet,” he said, steadily, though there was the sound as of a new-born suggestion of trouble in the voice. “I do not bother her with any details of my business; but even were she to know, as she will know now, I feel she will give me her entire sympathy in the matter.”

A mist of tears came over Sheila’s eyes; the writing on the letters she held grew blurred. “ Bravely spoken! And how he loves her!” was the thought that ran burningly through her heart. It had come to her quite recently as a solution for all that had seemed strange—this fact of George’s love for his wife. She had doubted it vaguely when she had seen them together down at Dunstone; but this last month had swept away the doubt, for no man living could have been prouder or sweeter about his wife than George had been since his child had been born. Another phase of that cruel, futile jealousy passed through Sheila’s most human and lovable heart as she forced the truth home. In such a moment as this she felt the torture of her secret pass into an actual physical pain; quite unconsciously a deep-drawn sigh escaped her lips, a sigh that made both the other two cease speaking and look at her keenly.

“George,” said Mrs. Crawshaw, promptly, “will you do something for me—just take this young lady out and plant her in a chair in the coolest part of the park? Sheila—I insist!” Sheila laughingly offered defiance, though George saw that tears lay close to her eyes. “I am quite well—I don’t know why I sighed; habit, I suppose,” she said.

George stood in front of her, and pleaded with her for many things. “Let me drive you home at least,” he urged, finally. “I want to speak to Miss Cynthia. Well—if you will not drive, give me the pleasure of walking with you.”

But Sheila refused everything.

“By-and-by Cynthia is coming to fetch me, and she would be dreadfully disappointed if she were to find me gone.”

“Cynthia is becoming a nuisance,” Mrs. Craw-shaw observed, with a frown and a smile; and then, seeing that for some reason Sheila was not her usual calm self, and that she shrank from having this remarked, she invented an excuse, and sent the girl on an errand to another part of the house, and after Sheila was gone she deftly turned the conversation back to George’s affairs.

“You will forgive me if I venture to give you one small bit of advice,” she said, as he held out his hand to say farewell. “Speak to your wife, George, of all you are doing. She is well now, and, believe me, it is right she should know.”

George bent his head and kissed her hand.

“You are always wise,” he said, not very steadily.

He went homewards in a subdued, thoughtful way. For once his mind played truant with him as he drifted away from reflection on his schemes and works. He even forgot to remember the little baby features that were so dear to him, and Zillah and her many strange moods slipped into momentary oblivion. He was thinking of Sheila and those unshed tears that had lain in her sweet eyes; and the vision of her pale, troubled, eloquent face held him in a waking dream till his home was reached.

CHAPTER XVII.

The summer days that were so trying to Sheila were scarcely less so to Marian Westlake. She had been very peaceful and comfortable in her new home, when the trouble about her mother arose. Marian had suffered sharply when she had heard some months previously of her mother’s mad infatuation and intended marriage with a man young enough to be her son.

“This must end badly,” she had said to Giles Reynolds at that time in one of her rare moments of confidence; but she had not anticipated how bad that end was to be.

Mrs. Westlake up to the time of Zillah’s marriage had still been a handsome woman, whose many weaknesses had been kept in check very considerably by her straitened means. With the advent of money and independence she had quickly drifted into those habits which were natural to a mind such as hers; and when the inevitable punishment had followed on her crass folly and vanity she had fallen back into an old trick of flying to stimulants for solace and courage. She was utterly unfit to be left alone, and as their old kinsman absolutely refused to have her within his doors, there was nothing for Marian to do but to leave her newfound home and devote herself to the future care of her mother. This all occurred at the time when Zillah’s child was born; and Marian was as eager as George to keep the truth from her sister.

George and she met frequently, and the barrier of resentful pride was broken down in Marian’s heart when she found herself learning George’s qualities for the first time. It no longer hurt her as it had done that her mother should accept money from Zillah’s husband. Intercourse with George softened away all the disagreeables.

For herself, she was independent of George’s help, for her old uncle, moved no doubt by the right purpose of the girl, although he had disapproved so strongly of what she had done, had written to Giles Reynolds announcing his intention to allow Marian henceforward the income of one hundred and fifty pounds per annum.

The money was to be paid through Giles, who, also at Marian’s eager request, undertook to manipulate her mother’s allowance. By this means some check might be held on her.

“Do not give her any money over and above what you consider necessary for her living expenses. She has never been used to money,” Marian had stud to George in one of their early meetings, “and please don’t scruple to be severe with her if she writes to you.”

George flung himself heart and soul into Marian’s arrangements. He had tried hard to induce her to go to see Zillah at least once, but Marian refused definitely.

“Far better not,” she had said in her rough way. “I know you won’t misunderstand me, but our lives lie in such different grooves, and as circumstances are it is better that neither mother nor I have anything to do with Zillah.”

The temptation of seeing the child was too strong for Marian, however. She hungered to look on Zillah’s baby, and at George’s orders the nurse carried the child to the lodgings where Marian and her mother were located as soon as it was able to be taken out.

There had been a very quiet christening ceremony, at which again George had tried to persuade Marian to attend, but in vain; and, seeing that on the point of remaining outside Zillah’s life Marian was firm, he ceased to press the matter after a time, though not without a sincere personal regret; for Marian had won her way into his heart, and her pluck and dogged determination to do her best in life appealed to George strongly.

He knew it was useless to hope that the offer of good fellowship with Marian should come from Zillah. While she had been ill, he had been careful not to speak about her mother and sister, but as soon as she was strong, George told her briefly, and without going into things deeply, of his meeting with Marian, and of the arrangement by which Mrs. Westlake and Marian were to live together.

Zillah’s answer had been characteristic. “I hope they will live out of London,” she had remarked; and then, “I don’t want them here, and I hope Marian will look after mother. She worried my life nearly out of me last autumn!”

“You will not be worried any more,” George had said quietly to this.

Zillah made the most of the remainder of the season that was left to her. A great many people had called on her and seemed interested in her little son. Zillah herself was not interested in him in the least. She did not understand children, and thought her own baby a tremendous nuisance. George’s intensity of happiness in the child’s birth had struck her as comic at first, till she began to be jealous of his love for the little creature. Instead of being touched and pleased by his deeper tone of tenderness to herself, Zillah resented this also, because she felt truly it came through the child. She was looking very beautiful in those few last days of the season, and her greatest joy was to show herself everywhere, to sit conspicuously in a box at the opera, or to drive in the park, and then to read some flattering mention of her name in the society papers. She had already been classed among the new beauties. She developed a great capacity of spending money, and her aspirations took more costly form every day. George had given her an ample allowance, and asked no questions; but Zillah was as feckless” in money matters as her mother. She spent indiscriminately, and was amazed when she was reminded one day that she had overdrawn her account at the bank. Her craze, unfortunately, was for jewels.

George had made her many pretty presents, with which, as we know, she had been enchanted in the beginning; bnt Zillah had not been a week in town before she realised the poverty of her possessions. What were a few paltry brooches to the jewels she saw gleaming on other women? It gave her a definite pain to read of famous diamonds and pearls, and other jewels worn by the leaders of fashion—all heirlooms in celebrated families; and it struck her as being strange that she had inherited nothing of this sort, being George’s wife. Surely there must have been some family jewels which she should have had.

She had meditated upon this in the early part of the season; then had come her child’s birth, and for a long time she had forgotten the matter; but with restored health, all Zillah’s ambitions and vanities were revived stronger than ever.

George’s reply to her query was very simple, but to her most vexatious. “There are no family jewels! my mother had some magnificent diamonds and other things, but these were all sold at the time of my father’s death,” he told her.

Strangely enough, Zillah had asked this question of George at luncheon time on the very day of his interview with Mrs. Crawahaw, when she advised him to put all his business plain before his wife. As he reached his house, and went up to dress for dinner, George lost his haunting thought of Sheila, and remembered all he had temporarily forgotten.

He sighed faintly as he realised how much it would cost him to tell Zillah of what he had done; but Helen Crawshaw’s words had seemed to him to carry a reproach, and he determined to open his heart to his wife that night. It could not be immediately, he decided, for they had some people dining with them, and then they were due at the opera; but a little circumstance served to hasten the matter. As he was running down from the nursery, where he had spent ten happy minutes with the child, he met Zillah coming out of her room. It was no new thing for George to be struck with admiration for his wife’s appearance; but to-night Zillah looked more brilliantly handsome than usnal. She wore a gown of white satin gleaming with jewelled embroideries, and she had a particularly radiant effect, which George realised only vaguely at first. As she passed down the stairs before him, however, he looked at her more closely and noticed that she wore a coronet of magnificent diamonds standing high in her dark hair, and that other diamonds flashed from her throat and ears. He was startled into silence at first, but as they stood alone in the drawing-room (a room typical of Zillah, heavily-scented, over-draped, over-furnished) he found words.

“You are very beautiful to-night, Zillah,” he said with a smile; “but these diamonds are something new, are they not? I-”

Zillah interrupted him glibly. She had taken a sharp, quick look at him when they had met. As a rule George was such a dreamer, he never either realised or questioned what she wore; she had therefore half counted on passing him unnoticed on this occasion; but she had prepared herself with an explanation all the same.

“They are not real,” she said, telling the untruth quite calmly; “they are French diamonds —are they not good? Everybody wears them now; they make a splendid effect, and I wanted something for my head awfully badly.”

George looked at her dubiously. The diamonds shone with such brilliancy, it was hard to believe they were imitations, yet to question her word was impossible. His real feeling was one of aversion that she should descend to this sort of folly.

“I am old-fashioned, I suppose—but I detest everything that is not real,” he said, a little sharply.

Zillah laughed also, sharply.

“My dear George, how absurd! but if you really do hate these, give me something real. I shan’t object, I can tell you.”

Contact with innumerable smart, slangy people had given Zillah a new manner. She was very quick to adapt herself to any influence that was sympathetic to her; her “gaucherie” had gone; she was quite at her ease when she could talk loudly and laugh freely. George had been with her so rarely during the months she had spent immediately on her arrival in town from Dun-stone, that much that she did and most of the people she mixed with were unknown to him. He was quite unaware, for instance, that Court-feild had drifted into being quite an intimate friend of his wife’s, and the change in Zillah’s manner had never been so clearly revealed to him as now. There was an element of grandeur about Zillah that could have amused him had he not felt, as he did. had developed a new phase in her nature—one that would be painful rather than amusing. The doubt as to her affection for him stung him afresh to-night He had learned to forget that doubt during the past few weeks, and he had honestly prayed, as he had first held his child in his arms, that time might lead their lives into closer sympathy with such a link to draw them together.

It was the first time Zillah had given expression to the discontent she had felt so often. She had slipped away from her nervous dread to have the subject of their marriage put before her. Probably she had grown to know George well enough by now to be sure that he would never recall that disagreeable past; and this had given her courage.

George did not answer at first. This was his opportunity for speaking out freely, as Helen Crawshaw had advised; but it cost him a great effort to carry that advice into practice. Zillah’s words had pricked him sharply.

“I would willingly give you jewels, Zillah,” he answered her, coldly, “if it were in my power to do so.”

Zillah, buttoning her gloves and not looking at him, shrugged her shoulders at this, but after a moment she said, impatiently:

“Are we, then, so very poor? I overheard some people talking about your uncle’s properly the other day, and from what they said I should have thought we had a lot of money.”

George took a long, slow look at her. She wore her costly clothes and brilliant jewels very bravely; few women would look handsomer than Zillah that night at the opera; but a sudden repugnance, a definite dislike, crept into the man’s heart for her. Since that night when he had driven away from her mother’s humble home, with a bewildered and oppressed anger for her crowding his every thought, he had never felt towards her as he did now. In such a moment all the tender feelings that the birth of his child had wrapped about the mother were dispelled.

“I think you do not know the real state of the case,” he said, coldly; and in a few dry words he sketched their actual financial position, telling her what it was he had done, and what he was about to do—leaving nothing untold, in fact.

Zillah turned very pale. She had only dimly understood the story of his father’s death and rain. She had certainly never understood how closely and keenly the memory of this father lived in George’s heart. This clear, practical statement of what it signified to them in hard cash brought home to Zillah, far sooner than any amount of words, the fidelity of the man to his dead. Already she had begun to sum him up as being mean. Contrasted with others around her, George was assuredly not lavish or generous. The presents he gave her were contemptibly poor, she considered—her allowance far too little. Their life generally was much less luxurious than it ought to have been. Instead of having spent thousands on that dull old Dunstone, why could not George have bought a smart house in town, and established his wife as she should be established? The girl who had never known any other form of travelling about town in those bygone days than an omnibus or the underground railway had quickly grown aggrieved because her carriage had only a single horse, and she had no footman!

She was so deeply upset, so angry at what George had told her, that words would not come. This certainly was a condition of things she had never dreamed of. It was true, as she had said, that she had heard comment on her husband’s inheritance, and it had given her a thrill of exultant pride to realise that this wealth should be hers also. To even imagine that quite one-half of their yearly income would have to be set apart for the next few years to meet these old liabilities was something that Zillah could not grasp all at once. The knowledge was too bitter, coming at a moment when the need for money was greater with her than it had ever been. She seemed to feel the weight of the unpaid jewels she wore as she turned to greet their first guest, and the amount of money she owed came back to her mind with a rush.

“But I am his wife, and ought to come before all the rest of the world put together,” she said to herself suddenly, and after a while she laughed bitterly; “thank goodness, I can get all the credit I want, and if he can pay his father’s beastly old debts he can pay mine too.”

That night saw the beginning of a new existence between George Thurso and his wife. Zillah gave no outward sign of her deep selfish anger; she only showed a decided inclination to go her own way, to amuse herself and to live her life apart from him. And some wrong, perhaps, should be dealt out to George inasmuch as he did not interfere with her. The things, indeed, that made Zillah’s pleasure were out of his sphere, but that was not the reason that held him aloof; it was the knowledge now that his very first instinct about Zillah had been, alas! only too correct—that she had been a clever intrigante, not a heedless love-sick girl, and that all the good his own charity and tenderness of heart had imagined in her nature had no existence whatever. It could not have been possible for Zillah to do many things she did if there had been a spark of real affection or of gratitude in her. He was conscious of a hot feeling of selfcontempt when he recalled those early days of their married life when he had dreamed of such impossible hopes for their future. He was easily blinded, he told himself bitterly and sadly, as the full and blighting realisation of his great mistake was forced home. His one source of consolation, his one gleam of happiness in his life, was his child. But for this little helpless, delicate creature George would have found it hard to face all that his union with Zillah now signified; the child, however, made all things bearable. He would have supported a thousand heavier disappointments and regrets only to have, as he had, the daily vision of this little child—his own child, the creature in whom was centred all his highest hopes and sweetest thoughts. At the end of the season there was a division of the small family, Zillah, who had received an invitation for herself and George to a very smart house in Scotland, accepted the invitation, without reference to her husband and without hesitation.

George heard of her plans in silence.

“You need not come if you don’t want to,” Zillah told him; and she was sharply disappointed when he answered her that he should come for a brief time.

“I will join you,” he said, “and bring you home, hut firstly I must go to Dunstone, and the child must go to the sea. I thought we might have taken a house somewhere on the East Coast; in fact, I have been inquiring about one, but-”

“Dunstone is very healthy—you are always ramming that down my throat—why not let baby go there ?”

George curbed his temper.

“Make your own plans, and leave me to make plans for the child. This journey to Scotland will he expensive, Zillah,” he added, an instant later. “I will write you a cheque.”

He gave her two hundred pounds; it was a drop in the ocean to Zillah, but she took it eagerly, for ready money was always needed; and then he inquired if she had contracted any debts.

Zillah, hold enough in some things, was a ripe coward in others. She was, moreover, a procrastinator, and she always liked to postpone to the morrow what she ought to have done immediately. Her creditors were not pressing, either; they would he content if they were paid in a year’s time, and Zillah was afraid if George were to know even a quarter of what she owed, he would punish her by not permitting her to go to Scotland.

She prevaricated, therefore.

“I owe a few pounds,” she told him, lightly. “I will pay them before I go up north.”

She had reckoned on having what she called a holiday in Scotland without George, and not being endowed with too much tact, she set to work to try and prevent his coming.

“I’m afraid you won’t enjoy it much,” she said to him; “we shall be very much too noisy for you. I shall only stay a fortnight.”

“I shall come and join you as I said,” George answered to this. He saw her drift, and resented it, for many reasons. “Had you asked my advice, I should not have permitted you to have accepted Lady Monteith’s invitation. She is a kind woman, but her set is objectionable.”

“It is amusing,” Zillah retorted. “I know,” she added, recklessly, “you would like me to be shut up for ever with dowdy old women like Mrs. Crawshaw; but you see I am young, George, and I mean to et\joy myself a bit before I go under altogether.”

They had no more words on the matter. In the first days of August, Zillah and her maid went north, and George, having obtained good airy lodgings himself, escorted his child and nurse down to the sea. He had chosen a quiet, little, unknown place, where the wind blew invigoratingly from the broad ocean, and he lived there as many hours as he could spare from the work he had at Dunstone.

He was happy journeying down to this little village by the sea. He fancied each time he came that the baby had a glimmer of recognition in its big, grey-blue eyes; and the day when the child could lisp his name, and turn to him for fatherhood, would be the sweetest day in all his life to George Thurso!

CHAPTER XVIII.

With the waning of summer into mellow autumn, Sheila seemed to drift back a little into her former bright, vigorous self. She had felt far from well all through the summer, and when Cynthia’s holidays had arrived, she had been almost too tired, mentally and physically, to make plans for their little villeggiatura,” a fact which Giles Reynolds sharply discerned, and as sharply manipulated. Away down on the East Coast he had a sister married to a flourishing doctor, and before Sheila had time to expostulate, or to thoroughly comprehend what was happening, Cynthia and she had been swept off to the pretty Norfolk seaport to remain as guests in their cousin’s house till it was time for Cynthia to return to her classes.

Mrs. Crawshaw had hoped rather wistfully that Sheila would have gone with her to Carlsbad, but Sheila had been obliged to refuse. A journey abroad was expensive, and Cynthia could not be left alone. Moreover, Sheila had had a yearning upon her too strong for words, to be separated for a time from all that made up the association and atmosphere of her life in town. So long as she was near Mrs. Crawshaw, she was bound to come in contact with those things which it was her eager longing to avoid. Even if neither Lord Courtfeild nor George Thurso were directly about Mrs. Crawshaw, their names would be constantly on her friend’s lips, and Sheila, towards the end of that hot, exhausting summer, had arrived at a stage when she almost prayed she might never see, or hear mention of, at least one of these men again.

Her visit to the sea, and daily intercourse with a happy, busy household, worked a tremendous cure in her overstrained nervous system. After a fortnight she could find herself ready to smile at all her vague fears, and discomforts, concerning Lord Courtfeild, and by the end of her stay she had well-nigh dismissed the man from her remembrance altogether. The other keener, more distressful matter which had tortured her heart of late, yielded also to the beneficial effect of her surroundings. She was able, for the first time,‘to probe into that secret that was eating its way into her heart, and, bringing it to light, gaze upon it calmly.

Back in town, she had shrank from the mere thought of such self-analysis; she had had the horrible distraught sensation that even to let herself dwell upon the remembrance of George was to commit a wrong. With a healthy renewal of mental and bodily strength, however, Sheila regained command of herself, and she communed with herself long and frequently over the strange passion that had been born so suddenly into her life. She could arrive at no sort of conclusion as to why this should have come. She accepted it as much a convincing fret as the fact that she was a living creature was convincing. She felt her first unbearable unhappiness, in particular, that first burning sense of jealousy fall from her by degrees; it no longer jarred or hurt her as though some sensitive nerve were touched roughly, when she pictured George and Zillah together. On the contrary, she dwelt mostly upon their mutual life, and she found herself praying and longing that the happiness brought to the man at least, by the advent of his child, might increase and strengthen every day. In that whole-hearted generosity which only a woman’s love is capable of, Sheila longed to be able to stand beside Zillah and help her in all the difficulties which might beset her; she regretted deeply that she had not tried to cultivate a friendship with George’s wife when they had first met, and when her heart had been innocent of all secrets. She deplored this for many reasons, of which Marian’s wistful request to her in the past was not the least; but this she knew now was a chance utterly lost to her, for Zillah’s attitude towards herself was decided and openly unsympathetic.

Sheila made sundry little plans in her mind for helping Lady Thurso, nevertheless; and her first resolve in this direction was to try and woo Helen Crawshaw into a kinder attitude to Sir George’s wife. Mrs. Crawshaw could be, in fact, far more valuable as a friend for Zillah than she herself could have been, and somehow the uneasy thought crossed Sheila’s mind that there must come a time—perhaps before very long— when Zillah would need some such influential Mend to give her support. Of all that passed in the Thursos’ home life Sheila was naturally ignorant She gleaned such knowledge as she had about Zillah’s acquaintances and doings., from the papers. She had already seen that Lady Thurso’s beauty had been discovered, and she was aware of Zillah’s visit to Scotland, because her mother and sister Enid happened to be fellow-guests with Sir George’s wife at Lady Monteith’s house. Mrs. Reynolds had apparently broken through her self-imposed rule of silence with her eldest daughter, only to have an excuse of abusing Zillah, and girding at Sheila through this. It was natural that a woman of the type of Sheila’s mother should find everything objectionable in Zillah.

“A vulgarian au bout des angles, without the good points of a thorough middle-class,” was Mrs. Reynolds’s definition of George’s wife, written bluntly to Sheila. “ Never have I met a more detestable young woman! She cannot speak decently, covers herself on all occasions with jewels (and such jewels! Your poor husband’s money will not last long at the rate these two people are living), and is an atrocious flirt. It is a very remarkable circumstance, I think, that her husband should allow her to be up here alone, but she certainly does not seem to miss him, and will not, I am sure, be too glad when he comes. As for myself, I need hardly say I shall be far enough before he arrives. It maddens me to realise how badly you have played your cards. . . . The knowledge of what you had, and what you lost, all through your own stupidity, is moat exasperating! … To see this woman flaunting about with more jewels and laces and gowns than she can count, and then to think of you and your miserable poverty is more than I can stand; and I suppose you will pretend that you are as happy without these things as with them. … I have only one satisfaction about these horrid Thursos—they are bound to come to some sort of grief. . . . Even with such an income as theirs, extravagance and gambling can make a big difference. She plays cards every night, and the stakes get heavier each time. Lady Monteith was grumbling frightfully about it to me yesterday. … I am not sure that I shan’t leave earlier than I intended. This woman is just the class I consider so injurious for girls like Enid to meet They get all sorts of ideas from them” (Mrs. Reynolds was clear as to what she intended to convey, though her method of expression was somewhat hazy), “and are naturally envious, seeing so many jewels and things. … I hear you are staying with your cousin Edith; of course, this is all on a par with your present condition, though even you must find life in a third-rate doctor’s house hardly enjoyable. Edith lost caste altogether in my eyes when she . .

But beyond this Sheila had not troubled to read. In certain things her mother was as unalterable as the laws of the Medea and Persians, and since these certain things provoked sentiments in Sheila’s breast as equally unalterable, the best plan was to avoid coming in contact with them. She discounted her mother’s description of Zillah, knowing with what prejudice Mrs. Reynolds must deal with anything or anybody connected with George Thurso; still, though she did this, enough of what was the reality remained to trouble her. This rumour of Zillah’s extravagance was no new story to Sheila. More than one person had brought the matter of Lady Thurso’s wonderful diamonds and extraordinary gowns to Mrs. Crawshaw’s sick room during the last days of the season, and the invalid had had her own theory on the subject.

“ This is her way of answering George’s sacrifice,” she said to Sheila, confidentially. “I felt it would go hardly with him when he had to share his scheme with her.”

Even then Sheila had tried to give Zillah a little help.

“Don’t you think it is rather unfair to judge her so harshly without knowing anything definitely, dear?” she had said hurriedly-and softly; yet she had felt as she spoke these words that her friend’s thought might be sadly near the truth. After the arrival of that letter from her mother, Sheila drifted out of any further news of the Thursos. She corresponded frequently with Marian Westlake, but Zillah was never mentioned in these letters. Marian was not a particularly happy letter writer, and when she had discussed the weather and sent many messages to Cynthia, her epistle usually came to an abrupt close. She never by any chance spoke of her mother, and it was not till Sheila was back in her little London home again that she heard, through Giles, of the difficulties which Marian had, and would have to tackle, in connection with her mother and her daily life. Sheila’s own proud and delicate heart winced in sympathy for this other girl, whose task henceforth would be to battle with the cunning craving of a criminally weak, selfish nature. Knowledge of all that signified Marian’s life made an incongruous setting to the occasional reference that the society papers gave to Marian’s sister.

Back in town, Sheila soon learnt that Sir George and Lady Thureo were no longer in Scotland. They were abroad, and were not expected to return to England before November. Sheila was conscious of a sensation of relief as she read this information. She was glad to be home again. London, so far as the fashionable world went, was empty still, though September was creeping into October, but Sheila did not want the fashionable world. She missed her usual walk across the park to Mrs. Crawshaw’s house, but she set herself another walk instead —that of going towards Kensington Gardens to meet Cynthia on her return from her studies. Helen Crawshaw was kept abroad by her doctors, and Sheila of late had had many anxious moments about her friend. Had it not been for her sister she would have gone for a week or so to Nice, whither Mrs. Crawshaw had migrated; but having taken Cynthia’s young life into her hands, she was not free to do all she wanted.

She was walking through the park one warm afternoon (but for the carpet of leaves that strewed the paths and defied the neat sweepers, the day might have been June instead of September), and her thoughts were busy planning out the immediate future for Cynthia as she walked. The girl had developed very marked musical talent, and was eager to have this talent encouraged, and Sheila in consequence was as eager to help her little sister as much as she possibly could. She turned over many plans in her mind as she sauntered along, most charming to look at in her simple, well-cut black gown and wide black straw hat. She had the air of a girl altogether, and quite justified the doubt expressed so often to Cynthia by her fellow-pupils when they sometimes caught sight of Sheila, that this tall, most pretty elder sister could be a married woman.

She had started earlier than customary this afternoon. Cynthia could not be in sight for another hour, so, as the sun was so warm, Sheila walked across to a clump of trees, and taking one of the few remaining chairs, sat down to sort out her thoughts quietly. She gave a great start, a wave of hot, distressed colour dyed her face a few moments later, when she found herself addressed softly by name, and Lord Courtfeild appeared suddenly beside her, very handsome, very smart as usual, and to Sheila most unwelcome.

“To-day I am in luck,” the young man said, as he took her unwillingly given fingers in his. “ You are not in your customary hurry—it is too early for Cynthia, I expect.” He laughed as he saw her puzzled and annoyed expression. “I have been following you for more than a week past,” he explained. “You are a splendid walker, Sheila.”

She flushed again slightly, and drew back in her chair. All her old distrust and vivid dislike to the man broke into life once more in her heart. She saw instantly how right she had been to doubt his seeming acquiescence to her will, and she had a nervous dread that to-day was to be a repetition of their former disagreeable interview.

“You are not abroad then,” she said, coldly, feeling she must say something if she would stave off personal matters.

He had drawn up another chair from a neighbouring tree, and, with an insinuated permission, had seated himself in it.

“I have been all over the world, I think, since last we met—to Cowes, to Scotland, to Homburg, to Carlsbad, to Aix, also to-,” naming the sea port where Cynthia and she had spent their holidays, “and now back to London. You had no idea I was so near you in August last, had you?” he asked with a laugh.

Sheila made no answer, but every line in her face expressed to him the objection she felt to all he intended to convey.

There was everything in her manner to chill him; it was more than evident to him that the barrier he had sworn in his heart to beat down between this woman and himself was as strong, as deeply rooted as ever. It was not merely a sense of hurt vanity that came to Courtfeild as he realised this. Sheila’s dislike gave him a pang of another description, for, as Mrs. Craw-shaw had foreseen, he had put all that was best in himself into his love for her, and though, with such a nature as his, the influence of any pure, sweet woman might have only been transitory, yet for the moment Sheila’s hands could have had the power to make another man of him.

He had been very patient all these months because he had seen that nothing was to be gained by forcing the situation. Patience was not ordinarily one of his virtues, but in Sheila’s case he had imagined it to be the one and only r6le to play. He knew he had Mrs. Crawshaw on his side, and through this friend he had hoped to achieve much. Thus throughout the months that had elapsed since Sheila’s visit to the Grange he had been silent, accepting his dismissal very philosophically to all outward appearances, but adding determination to determination to break Sheila’s will to his, each time they were brought in contact. Her sharp regret at sight of him, her most palpable desire to be free of him, jerked him now for the first time out of his easy conviction that time and patience would work everything as he wished.

A dull red flush crept over his brow as he told this unpleasant truth to himself. Sheila was not looking at him, but she was conscious all the same of his anger, and her own indignant anger was kindled against this man. She tried to dissemble her feelings and to speak naturally, but the effort was almost beyond her.

Lord Courtfeild humoured her in a sense: he spoke of their mutual friends. Sitting back in his chair, digging his stick with savage quietness into the earth, he gave her some late news of Mrs. Crawshaw; he also spoke of the Thursos. He did this deliberately; a sadden thought had flashed into his mind, a vague idea that had found its birth weeks before in a few peevish words that Zillah had said—words that had conveyed nothing to him at the moment, but which took definite form in his mind now.

He spoke of George with the contempt that was habitual with him when he discussed men who were not in his own intimate set, and who held slightly higher doctrines to his own, and there was a curious tone in his voice as Zillah’s name passed his lips, a tone which jarred on Sheila in a way she could not have explained.

“Lady Thurso is making a great reputation for herself as a beauty. I hear she has fascinated everybody at Homburg,” he said, with a faint smile.

“She is very handsome,” Sheila said, quietly; it amused her slightly to read his intention in thus discussing Zillah. It certainly was a foolishness on Courtfeild’s part to imagine that praise of Zillah could vex Sheila. She was a very womanly woman; still, she was above the more commonplace failings of her sex. But a very different feeling rushed through her when in a casual sort of way he spoke of the little Thurso child.

“You know, of course, it was awfully ill a little while back—measles, or something of the sort—and now it is stone blind, I am told. They are having it treated by some celebrated German specialist Thurso is making an awful fuss about this baby, but Miladi is happily ignorant of all maternal anxiety,” he said, in his smooth, indifferent sort of way. He was watching Sheila’s face with eyes that passionately noted her increased beauty, her exquisite sweetness of expression; and as these words were spoken he saw an extraordinary change come over her delicate face, and with that change that curious idea Zillah had given him developed into a conviction. For a few seconds the man’s heart beat too wildly for any emotion to be quite definite; but as he grew calmer he realised that he was absolutely beaten, and that though he might force this woman to become his wife, he could never touch her heart—never once proclaim himself her master.

They both sat silent a long time after that speech. Sheila’s eyes had a mist of tears in them as she told over to herself the story of sorrow these few indifferently-spoken words must convey to the heart of the man she loved. His child to he suffering—to be robbed of sight—perhaps even to have its small life put in danger by this illness! The picture was one too sad for her to look upon all at once. She had before her eyes the vision of George’s radiant face that hot June morning when he had told her of his boy’s birth and of all the joy it signified to him. It was terrible to try and realise the man now, with anxiety replacing joy, and doubt and fear chasing away his happiness.

Courtfeild watched her closely, sullenly. Her face with its varying expressions was as eloquent as a book. He cursed himself impatiently that he should have been so blind all this time. Now that the veil had been rent from his eyes, he recalled many small things that had escaped him in the past—things trivial enough, yet fully significant now, all pointing to the hitter truth that the heart of this woman, so firmly shut to himself, could offer up a life-long devotion to another man, even though, as in this case, it must be a hopeless love. How little Sheila could have imagined the swirl, of hot thought, or the disastrous meaning of these thoughts, that was masked by Courtfeild’s calm bearing. Lost for a time in her sorrowful regret for the man she loved and for the little child so dear to him, she had drifted away from her first uncomfortable sensation brought by Lord Courtfeild s presence, and she woke with a start when he suddenly rose, and, hat in hand, held out his hand for farewell.

“I shan’t trouble you any more,” he said, with his inscrutable smile, “I am off abroad tonight. In all probability I shall join the Thursos. Can I carry any message for you? Sympathy for him, of course”—Courtfeild smiled again as he brushed his hat lightly with his glove before replacing it—“and for her, nothing. Funny how all you women combine to dislike this other woman. In your case, of course, there is a slight explanation; but for others”—he shrugged his shoulders. It pleased him to note that those last few words of his had struck her, although he did not suppose she imagined with what malice they had been spoken. “Lady Thurso often tells me I am her only friend,” he said, still in the same half-laughing way, as he released Sheila’s hand. “She prefers a man for a friend, she also tells me. All the women she knows are either envious of her beauty or in love with her prig of a husband. She must he in a bad way, don’t yon think, when she has to fall back upon me for friendship?”

Sheila was very pale. It was no longer possible for her to misunderstand the meaning of his words. She lifted her beautiful eyes to his quietly and looked at him bravely for an instant.

“Friendship is a great gift and a great responsibility, Lord Courtfeild,” she said, distinctly. Then her voice hurried a little. “It may be that a noble work or an evil one may be wrought by such friendship as you have spoken of. Lady Thurso, I fear, does wrong to many women to doubt them so quickly; but she is, after all, little more than a child, and great wisdom is not looked for in a child. Be a true friend to her, Lord Courtfeild,” Sheila finished, abruptly.

She did not look after him as he walked away, for her heart was thrilling fast, and tears were perilously near her eyes; but she knew that he had left her with no good intent in his heart More than this, that he had drawn some of her secret from her unbidden, and that in so doing he had realised his own defeat In each a moment, with her mind troubled and unhinged, Sheila almost felt she would have preferred that she should have been the defeated. Such a man was not one to brook failure easily, but it was not for herself that Sheila feared now.

CHAPTER XIX.

Apter taking good counsel Sheila came to the conclusion to let Cynthia start and pursue a thorough musical education in London instead of going abroad.

“Quite right, we must uphold our national industries,” Giles Reynolds said to her with a smile, when she told him what she had done. “Besides, the girl will get all she wants here with far less bother than if you took her abroad. I suppose you have no intention of turning Cynthia into a professional.”

“Oh, Giles, if only mamma could hear you,” laughed Sheila. She had flung herself heart and soul into this phase of Cynthia’s education^ her own deep love for music would have given her a right to share in the younger girl’s glowing ambition under any circumstances, but situated as she was, Sheila actually found her only happiness in her sister’s simple desire, and they worked together as if they were students of an equal age. The little house in the Edgware Road became the centre of hard work and many eager hopes. Sheila was more than glad of all the practice, encouragement, and general assistance she had to give, for she found her burden of sorrowful thought and care slip from her in this atmosphere of industry and delightful ambition. The weeks flew into months almost like magic, the holidays were counted impatiently. Cynthia had no pleasure in idleness. Spring, when it came, brought a sense of amazement to Sheila on its clear crisp air. Was it possible that time had passed so fleetly? she found herself wondering frequently. She felt she was even more of a student than Cynthia, and she confessed to herself she had never known how little she could claim to know, till she began to take up life from Cynthia’s point of view. With the end of the winter Mrs. Crawshaw came back to town, and rejoiced Sheila’s heart by seeming and being very much stronger.

The older woman did not in the least approve of the way Sheila was manipulating her life, but all the argument she could urge was not strong enough to make Sheila alter things.

“You ought to go out everywhere this season,” Mrs. Crawshaw said; “it is absurd burying yourself in this way, Sheila.”

“I am quite happy, dearest Helen.”

“You are very selfish and very obstinate,” was Mrs. Crawshaw’s unexpected retort; then, seeing the look of pained bewilderment in the most beautiful eyes before her, she amended her first remark. “You are selfish only in refusing to let your friends have some pleasure in and for you, Sheila.”

“Do you honestly think I should give anybody any pleasure by going out this season?” Sheila asked quite seriously.

It was an unfortunate remark as it happened, for it gave Mrs. Crawshaw a cue how to start an attack she had very near to her heart “You have it in your power most surely to give intense happiness to at least one person, Sheila;” then, going on quickly before the girl could say anything, “Why did you refuse Courtfeild?”

Sheila frowned, and her manner grew a little cold.

“Dear Helen,” she said,gently, “you will forgive me if I do not discuss this matter.”

Bat for once Mrs. Crswshaw failed in her usual tact.

“It would have been such an admirable marriage,” she said, half fretfully. “My dear child, have you the least idea of the power you have over that man? I assure you you could do Just what you like with Courtfeild. He is capable of being a fine nature if you would only take him in hand.”

“I am afraid,” Sheila said in a low voice, “that I have a very great deal of contempt for a nature that refuses to respond to its natural goodness unless it first obtains some little thing it fancies for a moment. A man, Helen dear, should surely be fine on his own account. If Lord Courtfeild is capable of such good qualities, does it not strike you as cowardly on hiB part to sink them in everything that is poor unless a second person, whom he chances to admire or desire, consents to come to their rescue V

Mrs. Crawshaw looked dismayed. I had not the faintest idea you disliked him in this way,” she said, and pursued the matter no further than this. But Sheila understood her pause, and regretted, too, that her feelings for this man had been hidden from her friend, for then, possibly, things would never have gone so far, and she might have been spared much annoyance.

Mrs. Crawshaw drove away from that visit to Sheila considerably disturbed in her mind. She was disappointed, too; she had so very much desired this marriage—had, in fact, counted on it—and now Sheila’s manner and words had completely put an end to that possibility. Mrs. Crawshaw bad driven to see Sheila, fully determined to enforce her will against the girl’s will, and insist on arranging a different life for her. It seemed to Helen Crawshaw nothing less than a sin that a creature so lovely and sweet as Sheila should be buried in the simple life she was now leading.

“She must come out with me this year. I shall give a ball. It will be a kind of reintroduction for Sheila. I must throw Courtfeild and her together as much as possible, and marry them before the end of the season. I expect Sheila must have been startled by his proposal in the autumn. She only wants to be brought out of her shell a little, and then all will go right.”

Such had been the drift of Mrs. Crawshaw’s thoughts as she had driven to pay her visit to Sheila, but everything was changed as she drove back again. She felt disappointed, and saddened too.

“I am afraid this will go hard with Courtfeild,” she said to herself She ordered her carriage to take her for a turn in the park before she returned home. She could think the matter over easier out in the air.

It was a bright, clear April day; already there was a feathery touch of green in the trees, and the flower-beds were a blaze of coloured crocuses.

Leaning back in her carriage, with her furs pulled closely round her, Mrs. Crawshaw noted all that passed about her with but little attention. She could not help feeling sorry for Courtfeild; she knew there was a forcible truth in what Sheila had said; still, she could not help liking and being sorry for the man. She had seen him occasionally during her long stay in Nice; he had been for several weeks at Monte Carlo, and had run over to her villa now and then. It had not needed her son’s words to tell her he was gambling hard and leading his usual reckless life, and she had built on his love for Sheila to alter all this. Naturally the real character of Lord Courtfeild had never been revealed to this gentle and loyal friend of his; she judged him only by what she saw and by the few whispers rumour swept to her ears. She found it hard, therefore, to understand the strength of Sheila’s objection to the man. Her perception was not so keen as the younger woman’s; she saw nothing to doubt, and much to hope for, and she was far too feminine not to mourn a good deal over her broken schemes. As her carriage was turning out of the park she caught sight of the very man who was occupying her thoughts so much. He was walking slowly in one of the side paths of the park, and glancing quickly, Mrs. Crawshaw saw that his companion was a tall, smartly-dressed woman, whose beauty, even at a distance, was quickly recognisable. It was Zillah. She was talking volubly, moving her hands about in a way that was characteristic of her. Neither of the two noted the approach of Mrs. Crawshaw’s carriage; they were evidently too much engaged in the matter they were conversing. Helen Crawshaw drove on to her own house conscious of having had a slight shock. It was a surprise to her to see that there was such an intimate friendship between Courtfeild and the Thursos. She had had no idea that George and Zillah were in town. Indeed, of late she had drifted out of touch with George to a great extent. It was so difficult to carry on a friendship when Zillah stood so antagonistically opposed to it. Not even when Mrs. Craw-shaw had written a letter of shocked sympathy over the child’s illness and subsequent blindness had Zillah vouchsafed the smallest acknowledgment. George had written a very, very sad letter, but he had not mentioned his wife’s name; and after this all the news Mrs. Craw-shaw had of them came from the outside. She knew Zillah, at least, had been at Monte Carlo in the winter, for the society papers by now had fallen into the custom of noting all that Lady Thurso did. She had made herself a reputation as an exceedingly handsome young woman of a go-ahead stamp, and as such was worthy of journalistic attention; hut whether she had been alone at Monte Carlo, or whether George had been with her, Mrs. Crawshaw did not know. It was natural that her thoughts should have turned from Sheila and her life, and rested upon George, as she drove homewards and reached her own house. All the old affection for the boy she had known so long was revived, and she took herself to task for leaving George so long without a letter. It seemed to her something mote than coincidence that she should on entering find a note lying on the hall table addressed in George’s familiar hand.

“Sir George came himself, and when he heard you were out, ma’am, he left the note,” Mrs. Crawshaw’s butler informed her.

George’s note was a brief one: “I have great need of a few minutes’ chat with you. May I claim the privilege of an old friend, and run in this evening after dinner, if you are likely to be at home?”

Mrs. Crawshaw despatched a telegram bidding him come, and passed the intermediate time in a state of keen impatience. She felt it was no idle quest that prompted George to come to her.

“Oh,” she said to herself, with sorrow and with anger too, as she sat with a book unread in her hands, “how right I was to mistrust this marriage! If only he had not been so impatient to ruin himself! Even now I can never bring myself to understand why he married that odious girl.”

When George arrived she kissed him warmly. “I have sent Paul to the club; we shall be free for an hour or so. I have no engagements to-night, and Frank”—with a sigh—“is still abroad. Sit down, George, and let me look at you. What a century since I have seen you! No; I am not going to talk about myself I want all your news. Tell me about little Jack before you speak of anything else.”

George’s free lightened a little. Tears came to Mrs. Crawshaw’s eyes as she looked on him, he was so changed; his brown hair was quite white at the sides, his youth had gone altogether.

“Thank God, the child is well in himself.”

“But-,” Mrs. Crawshaw paused; it seemed too cruel to speak the words.

George took up her broken sentence calmly. “But the case is absolutely hopeless; he will never see. It seems hard to believe this when one looks at his beautiful eyes!”

The woman’s hand stole out to him, and he took it reverently in his.

“I have come to ask you a great favour,” he said, changing the subject; he did not look at her as he spoke, he seemed burdened with trouble. “I want you to tell me first,” be went on, “how much money you have been good enough to lend Zillah, and secondly, dear friend, I want you to give me a promise that you will lend her no more. I know your generous heart, but-”

There was a long silence, which Mrs. Craw-shaw felt she did not know how to break. A deep wave of colour had flashed over her face, and her breath came sharply for a few seconds. Her first instinct, however, was to spare George all in her power, and urged by this instinct she forced herself to speak.

“Why did Lady Thurso tell you she had borrowed money from me, George dear?” she asked, framing her words to sound as little like a denial of the fact as possible.

George sighed.

“It is a long story altogether. Zillah, I regret to say, has no knowledge of the value of money. She was rashly extravagant at the close of last season, and now the consequences have to be met By accident I discovered yesterday that a certain creditor, a jeweller, who has been most pressing of late, had been paid in full, and when I taxed her with this and desired to know how ad by what means she had settled so luge a sum, she confessed that it had been through your help she had been able to do this.”

Mrs. CrawBhaw was silent a long while. She had never been free to free with so awkward, so thoroughly painful a position before. Her very worst fears and doubts of Zillah’s nature were thrust home roughly to her in this evidence of the woman’s bold wrong-doing: That there was much more George could have told, lying behind his few straightforward words, Helen Craw-shaw knew only too well She was roused to farther action as he released her hand and drew out his cheque-book from his coat pocket.

“George,” she said, almost sharply, “before we go any further in this matter I most speak to your wife. Forgive me if I seem unkind to you in this, but—but I must really insist on seeing Lady Thurso.”

He looked at her keenly for an instant, then slipped the cheque-book back into his breast pocket, and caught his breath sharply. “Oh! my God!” he said, in a hollow sort of way,” is there to be nothing but deceit and lies and false dealing everywhere? I believed her utterly, yes, utterly, when she told me she had come to you.

I ought to have known better, but I have been such a fool from the beginning, such a dense, dull-witted fool.” He dropped bis face in bis bands, and sat, crouching forward in an attitude that seemed to belong to physical rather than mental pun, and Helen Crawsbaw, with her eyes blinded with tears, could do nothing but sit beside him and touch his bowed head with feeble yet tender fingers.

When he rose to his feet suddenly, she rose too,

“Where are you going, George?” she said, almost fearfully, for there was a look in his eyes she had never seen before. “What are you going to do, my dear boy? Try and hope for the best”

He turned and held both her hands.

“I am broken-hearted,” he said, hoarsely; “you have no idea what my life has been all this year. I tried so long to hope, as you have just said, for something better. I had such faith in her. I taught myself to believe there was good in her heart and that things would change in time, and when the child came it made all seem possible, although even then I should have seen and known better how poor was my chance of happiness. It has been lately that I have felt and understood more. In the beginning I forgave all because I imagined she loved me. That was the big, big mistake I made, for she has never loved me; she is not capable of loving any creature save herself The—the little child—she turned from it from the first—now-” He tried to pull himself together, hut the strain had been so great his nervous strength seemed shattered.

The gentle, pitying woman soothed him with many tender words, though she felt almost powerless to work any good in front of so overwhelming a sorrow. She would not let him leave her, however, till she had talked things out with him thoroughly. It was the first time George had spoken the truth of his marriage to any creature. How that the seal was taken from his lips he seemed to find a relief in pouring out all the pent-up disappointment, the broken hopes and dreams, the definite suffering that existence with Zillah signified. When he came to the story of the girl’s criminal extravagance he was very gentle.

“Perhaps I was wrong to have undertaken the working off my father’s old liabilities. I fear it was anger over this that incited Zillah to be so rash,” he said, with a sigh: “yet it seemed to me such a distinct duty.”

“George, you must let me go to your wife. Now that she has used my name you will see I have the right to speak freely to her. I shall not be harsh, but I shall put plain truth before her. Everyone has spared her more on your account than on her’s, but some one must speak the truth now.” Mrs. Crawshaw paused. “I fear she is badly surrounded,” she said, when she spoke again.

George said nothing; his face had grown grey looking and tired.

“If you can do any good I will bless you all my life. I do not hope any longer for happiness. I recognise that there is no possibility in this, but I want to put an end to things as they are now; I want to stand between Zillah and her own ruin. She—” he spoke with great difficulty, “she has inherited more than one of her mother’s faults. I have schooled myself to be gentle with her, I have done all in my power to work her life in with mine—I have failed in everything.”

“Let me try,” Helen Crawshaw answered him, “perhaps I shall not fail. At least, I shall do my best to help you, George, my dear. You do not know how I have grieved about you; if you were my own son I could not have felt things more keenly.”

George kissed her hands, and she felt his tears fell on her fingers.

“Tell her I will do all in my power to build up a better future between us, but she must come half way to meet me. She may listen to you—God grant it,” he said, and then he went away, and Mrs. Crawshaw was left to ponder over all she had heard, with a heart wrung with doubts and fears, but steadfast, nevertheless, in her intention of doing all a woman could do to help another; for her intuition led her to see that it was not only George who had need of her pity and help, but that Zillah herself stood in the pathway of immediate danger.

Mrs. Crawshaw was out early the next day, but she did not see Zillah.

“Her ladyship has gone into the country for the day,” the servant told her as she enquired at the door. Sir George, he added, was in the City.

Mrs. Crawshaw drove away deeply disappointed. She had started out with every intention of pleading with Zillah for her own happiness—of dealing with the girl in all gentleness. She had not in the least expected there would be a delay in their meeting. She left no message. “I will call another day,” she told the man, and her horses were turned in the direction of Sheila’s home.

“An honr with Sheila will do me good,” she said to herself. She was conscious for the first time of a strange sense of gladness that the plans she had made for Sheila’s future were all broken. That remembrance of Courtfeild and Zillah together, not merely disturbed her, it put the whole aspect of things differently, more especially as she now felt convinced that it must have been this man to whom Zillah had turned for the help she (Helen Crawshaw) had been supposed to give. She had a sense of pily upon her for Zillah this morning.

“Debt and money difficulties are not crimes, but with such a nature as Zillah’s who knows to what they might not lead?” was what she said to herself. “In such a case as this, Courtfeild, I fear, is not a wise or good friend. I wish I knew where to find him. I would have no hesitation in speaking out my mind quite freely to him. Now I suppose it will be my luck to find Sheila out too.”

Bat Sheila was at home, and at the sound of her friend’s voice she came running down the little staircase to meet her. Her face had a curiously worn, pallid look, she seemed half-dazed, and Mrs. Crawshaw noted that the girl’s hands held a letter crushed between them.

“Sheila! what has happened? Have you had bad news? Cynthia?”

Sheila shuddered faintly. “Helen, what mercy has brought you here this morning? I was coming to you. I—I am so frightened—so shocked.”

Mrs. Crawshaw drew the girl into the cosy little dining-room. She herself was trembling with excitement.

“I was working quite happily this morning when this note was brought me. Bead it, Helen, read it. Perhaps I have made a mistake.”

Sheila sat down and gave the crumpled letter to the older woman.

“It is from Lord Courtfeild,” she said, in a hashed sort of way.

Mrs. Crawshaw read through the pencilled scrawl with difficulty. It was a note of a few lines written with the greatest bitterness, and the woman who read it grasped only too quickly its meaning. She grasped, too, in this most painful moment, the secret Sheila had locked away so bravely in her heart, and that was now so clearly the cause for Courtfeild’s reckless disregard of honour, and his cruel wrong to one weaker and more foolish than himself. She could not say very much to Sheila. Words were so impotent in such a moment; but her heart rose hotly against the man who had cast honour, principle, friendship, all from him in so terrible a manner, and only for the sake of revenge. That his first thought had been to hurl a blow at Sheila proved at once to Helen Crawshaw that this elopement with George’s unhappy wife, announced now to Sheila in this peculiarly brutal fashion, had been deliberately planned to give this punishment to the woman who had rejected him. The question of infatuation for Zillah, or injury to George Thurso, were quite things apart.

In this matter Zillah’s vanity and folly, and George’s faith, had naturally played an important part, but the crime rested wholly on the shoulders of one whom, with a shudder, Mrs. Crawshaw recalled she had desired so eagerly, even up to a few hours before, to mate with the dear, pure-hearted girl who sat before her, tortured with anguished thought, and robbed violently of her peace and contentment, it might be for ever.

CHAPTER XX.

Helen Crawshaw did not leave Sheila till she had seen the girl restored to something like her usual calm. It was a physical hurt to her to see the strained and stricken look in Sheila’s eyes, she felt that the shadows of this mental suffering would never wholly pass away from Sheila’s too sensitive heart For herself it was not till she was alone driving away that the full weight of the trouble and disaster came home to her; it was not possible for her to think of Courtfeild without a thrill of indignation such as had never stirred her before. The man’s wrong was emphasized and made more shameful by his wanton cruelty to the woman she had just left. Of Zillah Mrs. Crawshaw tried not to think at all, and yet a sort of pity, which had had its birth in Sheila’s deep pity for the most foolish and unhappy girl, lurked under indignant contempt. She directed her coachman to take her hack to George’s house. “I must see him without loss of an hour, if possible, and yet I hardly know what I am to say to him, nor how I shall break this news.”

Mrs. Crawshaw’s face had a very worn look as she drove rapidly through the streets. All at once as her eyes wandered restlessly about her, a wave of hot crimson dyed her face, she had a choking sensation in her throat. How she managed to attract her footman’s attention and stop her carriage she never afterwards was able to tell.

Her victoria was drawn up in Piccadilly, close to the entrance of one of the smartest clubs.

“On and bring back Lord Courtfeild to me immediately,” she said to her footman, breathlessly. “Look I he is just entering the club—follow him—you must bring him to me at once.”

She sat with closed eyes, and heart that beat so violently she felt quite faint, till a voice beside her roused her. It was Lord Courtfeild who spoke to her.

He was smiling, but her woman’s eyes saw the havoc written on his face, the mad look of defiance, of utter recklessness, in his eyes. Even his voice, his manner, was changed.

“You want me?” he asked.

Mrs. Crawshaw took his hand.

“Come with me,” she said, faintly; “you must take me home. I—I—am ill.”

The words were not idle ones, she was indeed ill, her excitement had been too great; she could hardly draw a breath.

Courtfeild stood irresolute, his face very dark, his eyes full of a curious conflict He had the air of a man who feared something terrible, yet defied his fear.

“I am just off to the City,” he said, harshly; “to-night I am leaving England.”

“Come with me,” Helen Crawshaw repeated, feebly; her trembling hand clung to his; to remove it, to refuse her, was something even Courtfeild could not do.

He compressed his lips and entered the carriage. They were driven rapidly back to Helen Crawshaw’s home, not a word was spoken on either side, and when the house was reached Lord Courtfeild had almost to carry the fragile woman’s form from the carriage to a chair in the hall. By degrees Mrs. Crawshaw’s strength ebbed back to her, and she mounted the stairs to her boudoir, her hand clasped as tightly as was possible to her, round the young man’s strong hand.

Alone with him she broke into a flood of tears.

“Oh! Bertie, thank God, yon are here! Thank God I saw yon just now! Some merciful angel must have led me to yon.”

Courtfeild sat down in a chair and leaned forward with his hands clasped between his knees; his face was now haggard and less hard.

“Why do you trouble about me?” he asked her, roughly, after a long pause.

Mrs. Crawshaw dried her tears.

“Are we put into this world to think only of ourselves, to be as lost to what is good and right is the poor beasts which have not the divine gift of reasoning? Bertie—Bertie, if you could know what suffering you have caused us this day!”

There was a curious sound in his voice as he spoke.

“You have seen Sheila?”

“I have just come from her,” Helen Crawshaw answered him, sadly; “if you have ever been in contact even for an instant with the beauty of ler heart and nature, you can realise better than [ can tell you in what sorrowful darkness I have eft her.”

He gave an odd little laugh. “And yet she has always hated me.”

“Sheila hates no living creature!’’ was Mrs. Crawshaw’s reply; she was tremblingly eager to ask questions that had to he asked, hut she restrained herself; “moreover, she does not think only of you in this terrible business.”

He raised his head; the old hard, reckless look was in his eyes again.

“Truly, she does not,” he said; “her heart is weeping tears of blood for him!” He changed his tone: “You know she worships this man.”

Mrs. Crawshaw rebuked him coldly, sharply. “Who are you that dare to approach the sacred secrets of a pure woman’s heart? The very name of Sheila is injured by being spoken by you! What she does or does not do is apart from this question. Look to your own state now, and find solace and satisfaction if you can there.”

Never before had gentle Helen Crawshaw spoken so harshly. She watched him as he relapsed into sullen silence, then, rising, she went and stood beside him.

“Courtfeild,” she said, slowly, “you have the right in a certain sense to play havoc with your own life, to willingly bring lasting shame and dishonour on your name and your family, but there is no sin greater or more horrible than the one you have had in contemplation just now. 1 have been blind all this time to what has been passing, bat now I see! Yes! I see that the scheme that has driven that poor, thoughtless, vain creature away from her home to-day has been based on your egregious vanity and built up entirely by your wanton wickedness. To punish a gentle creature whose only wrong is she cannot love you; to harm another creature whose wrong is that he holds a higher place in Sheila Thurso’s heart than you could ever have done, you have stooped to play a despicable game, to use Zillah’s selfish, passionate, unrestrained nature for your own purpose, dragging her in her ignorance to the very brink of ruin itself. Look on your work! study it well! and then ask yourself is it not a manly, a splendid thing you have done? Oh! you have, indeed, the right to be proud of yourself! proud of your poor foolish pupil! proud of your vulgar revenge on a sweet, pure-hearted woman—proud of your broken career! your dishonoured name!” Mrs. Crawshaw was trembling in every limb as she paused for breath; her voice had been low and weak, but not uncertain; each word she had spoken had gone home; she knew it; though the man never moved; never made any response.

“Tell me where I can find Zillah,” she went on after that long pause during which she could hear the throbbing of her own heart.

Courtfeild did not raise his head. “I do not know definitely,” he answered her; his tone was heavy, not sullen now.

“She has left London; they told me at her house this morning she had gone into the country. Am I to understand that this is news to you?”

Courtfeild answered slowly:

“I understood she would go across the channel to-day; her destination was Paris.”

Mrs. Crawshaw drew a sharp breath.

“To which hotel?”

He told the name obediently.

Mrs. Crawshaw went to her writing-table and touched an electric bell, then she wrote hurriedly a few words. “This must be taken to Sir George Thurso’s house at once; if he should not be there, you must drive about till you find him; I wish to see him without delay.” She further ordered her maid to come to her. Lord Courtfeild had risen and was standing in front of the window when the mud arrived. “You mast prepare one of my small boxes; I am going to Paris to-night,” Mrs. Crawshaw said, quietly; “have everything ready to start from here by seven this evening.”

She went up to the silent figure by the window when the maid had gone from the room. “I will not detain you any longer,” she said, coldly.

Courtfeild looked at her in silence for a moment; there was half a sneer on his lips. “So you will trust me to go? Is this wise? How do you know I shall not even now upset your plans?”

“I do not fear you now, Bertie,” Helen Crawshaw said, gently; “if you are not convinced of your own unworthiness, you have at least had good time to reflect on the vastness of your folly, and whatever else you may be, you are not a fool.”

Courtfeild stood looking out of the window while the good, gentle woman who had placed herself so promptly and so courageously between him and further wrong sank into a chair, her always frail strength well-nigh exhausted. His dark, troubled face took a tender expression as he turned at last and looked at her.

“I will go,” he said, in a low and hurried voice. “You have conquered me. I did not think it was in you to be so strong—to lash out so hardly, but I am grateful to you, nevertheless, for what you have done. I—I have not been a sane man for months past. I felt I had lost all when Sheila sent me away from her, and when I realised that she had given to this other man what she refused to me, I-” he checked him self; bending over Mrs. Crawshaw, he took her outstretched hand and lifted it to her lips.

“You have saved me—you trust me—now let me do something to help you. By this lime tomorrow I shall be gone; it may be years before I shall ever come back, but before I go, let me help you.”

Tears filled Mrs. Crawshaw’s eyes. “There is nothing more you can do, Bertie,” she said, very gently; “you are doing now everything I need; yes, I trust you again, and I shall pray for you; you are wise to go away for a time, for though no one will ever know anything save Sheila and myself (I shall work to keep George Thurso in absolute ignorance of the truth if I can; my woman’s wit will suggest some reason for Zillah’s flight to Paris), you will be better away. I know you will forgive me if I do not ask you to remain longer. I must go to Paris with George. I must try and see Zillah first before they meet. Pray God all will be arranged, and that this may he a lesson to Zillah strong enough to change the drift of her life of late. Go, Bertie, and let me have all news of you. I shall not rest till I hear from you. You will forgive my plain words. I could not wrap up what I had to say, yet it cost me a great deal to hurt you, for I have always cared for you very much.”

Courtfeild kissed her hand again several times; he said nothing more, not even when he went away, hut Helen Crawshaw had no need of words to realise that his heart, despite his selfishness and worldliness, had been laid bare before him, and that he was acutely conscious of the fulness of his wrong. She shed more tears when she was alone, and then she took herself to task, and remembering all that lay still before her, she rallied her forces and prepared to meet George, and to arrange for her forthcoming departure.

Her first duty was to write a letter to Sheila, only a few words, but they would carry instant relief to the young, over-charged heart. She told of her intended journey to Paris, and she avoided all mention of Courtfeild’s name; she knew Sheila would understand all she had to convey, however ambiguously her letter was worded. This note of consolation despatched, she sat leaning back with closed eyes for her messenger to return and tell her that George was coming.

There are some things in life which, however great they maybe, however apparently for-reaching their influence, drift quickly into that oblivion of forgetfulness which is so marked a characteristic of the rushing, busy life of the nineteenth century. Occasionally, however, some event occurs which, while offering no more prominent feature than scores of others, seems to startle more completely, and to linger longer in remembrance than these others.

Of such events the catastrophe which was circulated through London by the early evening papers, this same April day that had given Helen Crawshaw so much work, roused a sentiment of incredulous horror and dismay that was no ephemeral thing. It is one matter to read, as we all do, reports of ghastly accidents by sea and land happening in far-off corners of the world, and quite another to be brought face to face with some tragedy that is close at home, breaking in on our most ordinary routine of life.

Of all the accidents that had occurred in the busy English Channel, few had been more terrible than the collision that it was rumoured, only too truly, had taken place between some great homeward-bound vessel and the mail steamer, ploughing its short course across the Channel from Dover to Calais. The first sensation was, as has been said, incredulity. How could it be possible, people urged, that such a thing could have happened in broad daylight as that the Dover boat could have been run into by this big vessel and have sunk in the space of a few minutes, carrying all on board to the bottom with her? The excitement and consternation in London were unbounded. The railway stations and newspaper offices were besieged by enquirers, and doubt and hope expressed by everyone. By night the doubt was set at rest, the hope ended; not a soul, save one of the sailors, had been rescued from the accident. A Channel boat had gone to the bottom in broad daylight, and though the other vessel had endeavoured to offer every assistance in its power, all lives save one had been lost. There were many whose hearts were struck cold with anguish by this intelligence, and to none of those who had relations or friends on the ill-fated boat did the news come with more crushing horror than to the few who were aware that Zillah, Lady Thurso was on hoard this very steamer.

HI and almost prostrate as she was, Helen Crawshaw pleaded to he allowed to go with George to Dover, when he started to make investigations. It was while she had been telling him that it had come to her knowledge that Zillah had gone to Paris, and that she intended to travel with him that same evening to join his wife, that the news of the catastrophe reached them both. There are some moments of human emotion too impossibly difficult to he set down in words; the crushing nature of the sensations which came upon Helen Crawshaw and George Thurso in the first moment of realising Zillah’s probable danger belong to this category. They neither of them dared to let their fear communicate itself to the other, and with the woman there was added the sickening remembrance of what lay hidden as yet from George in this tragedy. The last remnant of youth fled from George Thurso in this moment: the shock following an excessive mental strain turned him almost perceptibly into an old man. He had looked into his old friend’s face with haggard, unhappy eyes. “To have gone like this without a last word! I—I—cannot grasp it yet. We did not meet last night. After I left you yesterday I avoided seeing her. I wanted a little time to think—to plan out the immediate future. This journey you have told me of is something I did not expect. I left home very early this morning. Perhaps you may have been misinformed. I do not understand why she should have gone to Paris. Why should she go away at all just now? I was not angry with her. I tried to be very gentle. Why should she go so suddenly, so mysteriously? I will not believe she is lost. No, not yet.” There were tears in his voice, though his eyes were dry. He was confused by the shock. The significance of things did not come to him fully in such a moment; but be was strong enough to object to his friend risking her health by taking the journey to Dover with him.

“You are ill already,” he said, simply, and then with a sigh fluttering from his lips, “ I shall be better alone on such an errand.”

So Helen Crawshaw let him go, and then her woman’s courage went from her, and she sent for Sheila. She had need of some one who would understand and sympathise without words, and her heart was rent, not only for the terrible end that had come, she felt only too sure, to Zillah’s young life and for the misery this had brought to George Thurso, but for that other man, through whom alone this hapless creature had been led to divide herself from duty and home, and whose death lay thus indirectly at Courtfeild’s feet. In the hours that followed, when the worst was made known to them, and Zillah, Lady Thurso’s name was written largely among the names of those who had perished, her body being one of the several rescued from the water, the two women, who sat silent in a darkened room together, had the same thought in their hearts—the dread of what effect this most unexpected tragedy would have upon Courtfeild’s rash nature.

“He promised to send me news of himself,” Helen Crawshaw said, restlessly, now and then to Sheila. All that had passed between herself and Lord Courtfeild had been told to Sheila. “I should be glad if I could know where he is, Sheila. I dread—I scarcely know what.”

Sheila said nothing. To speak the man’s name was even beyond her. She could travel no further along the road of sorrow wrought by his hands; her whole soul was given to the sombre present. There was much for her to do, for not only did Helen Crawshaw cling to her, but she had to minister what comfort was possible to Marian ‘Westlake, who, at the first tidings of the disaster, had gone direct to Sheila as to the only one who could help her to fathom and bear the awful thing that had happened. Marian would have gone to join George at Dover had her physical strength permitted her to do this, but the blow that had fallen seemed to have sapped away for the moment all the strong vitality which belonged to Marian, and had prostrated her in a way that was pitiful. Sheila had taken the poor girl to her heart, a room in her small house was given to Marian, and when she was not there to minister to Zillah’s sister, Cynthia took her place.

Sheila was feverishly glad, of anything that came to fill her hands with work and her brain with thought. She was haunted with the horror of the thing. Her imagination pictured only too vividly the pitiful agony that must have overcome Zillah, the yearning the poor creature must have had, in that one or two awful moments of facing death, for a strong human hand to cling to, for a voice to speak encouraging, if futile, words of hope in her ear. Death to all on that Channel boat must have been the same sudden, terrible thing; but Sheila’s pity and grief invested Zillah’s end with a pathos greater than most; her heart was wrung, too, to its uttermost depths when she tried to realise the effect and meaning of such a certainty upon George Thurso. She prayed for him unceasingly, even as she prayed for the merciful repose of that young soul sent so hurriedly to its doom. The half hours she stole from her sorrowful tasks, and which she spent kneeling before the altar of her beloved little chapel close to her home, were the only moments of relief that came to Sheila in this lime of sorrow.

It was in this little sanctuary she was kneeling when Zillah’s body was being carried through the sunlit grounds of Dunstone to be laid to its long, long rest beneath the trees of the old churchyard, and if any human creature’s tears and prayers can he acceptable as an atonement, a sacrifice of regret and repentance for another, then surely was the soul of Zillah washed white of its earthly sins by the tears shed by Sheila that day in the sacred solitude of the house of God!

CHAPTER XXI.

Another year, a long, busy, peaceful, if shadowed year, passed away from Sheila’s life. The one great centre of interest now in this life was Cynthia. The girl’s career shaped itself a little more clearly each week that passed, her talent developed itself more forcibly, and Sheila quickly saw that no amount of repression or objection on her mother’s side could prevent Cynthia from entering the world of public work, and possibly into the world of fame. The girl’s professors saw in her a student of rare abilities, and they did not hide from Lady Thurso their opinion that her sister had a great future before her, not merely as an executant musician, but as a composer, too; there was, in fact, no branch of the academical studies that Cynthia did not embrace, and work marvellously well. A year or two’s continued study abroad after she had passed through her course in England was what the experts told Sheila would be the best thing that could happen to the girl.

Sheila was ready to agree to everything—it was Cynthia who demurred—Cynthia, who, though only a tall slip of a girl not seventeen years of age, had a considerable will of her own. Now, though Cynthia could throw herself, as she did, most completely into the matter of her studies, that did not signify that she had no time to think of other matters. Sheila, indeed, would have been amazed if she could have known how busily her young sister’s brain was occupied with and about her during that long year of enjoyable hard work.

Cynthia began to see and understand something of the nature of life in these months, and she began to comprehend what others had comprehended long before, that her dear and beautiful sister was leading an existence that was in a sense a sacrifice. Being a girl of much thought, Cynthia said nothing to Sheila when this idea first came to her—in fact, she kept most of her ideas locked away securely in her own little heart. But as time passed on and there came this suggestion (which Sheila took up eagerly) that she should go abroad before very long, and, settling herself in some German musical centre, should continue her studies uninterruptedly for a couple of years longer, Cynthia told herself it was time for her to step forward and do something. She cast about a long time in her mind as to what she should do or to whom she should turn. She did not go to Mrs. Crawshaw, for she knew that this friend of Sheila’s had already exhausted all her powers of persuasion. She did think of Marian Westlake, for whom Cynthia had a great affection, hut Marian was not hear at hand; she and her mother were living at Dunstone now. They had gone thither at Sir George’s earnest entreaty immediately after poor Zillah’s death.

Marian would have refused had she been able to do so, but the man’s wish had been so eager, and he had looked such a sad, stricken creature as he stood before her and begged her to go to his home and be a loving friend to his motherless child, that Marian had consented with wet eyes and trembling lips. Her anxiety about her mother had shifted from the old form to a new. With the awful shock of Zillah’s death Mrs. Westlake was a changed woman; it awakened her to the knowledge of her own wasted and foolish life, and the drink craze passed from her, to be followed by the inevitable trouble, disease, and ill health. It was a slowly but sorely dying woman whom Marian carried down to Dunstone and installed in the big, silent house that poor Zillah had hated so much. Surrounded by every sort of comfort and care her mother might linger long, but Marian knew this time would be measured by months, not years. She was passionately grateful to George for his unfailing goodness to the feeble woman, and that strong, deep love of her’s went out wholly in a brief while to the man whom Zillah had married. George Thurso had not done what many had expected he would have done, left England in the months following his wife’s death; instead he had settled himself at Dunstone, and in the care and thought that Mrs. Westlake’s condition entailed, in the delight of his child’s companionship, and the many avocations he had set himself about his property, he lived a life that but for sombre remembrance was full of peace. Marian was the greatest comfort to him; they grew to understand one another completely, and had much in common. Once or twice Cynthia had gone down to Dunstone to spend a few days with Marian, and she had always brought hack a few grains of unconscious comfort to Sheila’s tender, fearing heart. Oh! how she had yearned to know how it fared with him in those first weeks of anguish! The news that Marian was going to make her home at Dunstone had been a gleam of golden consolation, and Cynthia little knew how Sheila’s heart would throb, and how her hands trembled when a letter would reach them in Marian’s handwriting. Every little scrap of intelligence that came to them about the baby, who, despite its blindness, was growing into a sturdy and splendid child, were like dewdrops on Sheila’s parched and yearning heart. She felt so surely now that her prayers would be answered, and that in this child the man would regain all the happiness he had lost or missed. She had never seen him, never had direct intercourse with him all through that long year; she gave herself up wholly to Cynthia’s work and future; her memories were at once her sadness and her joy. Once in that year a letter had come for her from some far-off land; it held but two lines, and they brought tears to her eyes.

“Forgive and pray for me, for I, too, have suffered and repented.”

There was no name, but no name was needed.

She gave the writer her forgiveness and her prayers, and once again she thanked God for the mercy that had shielded the truth of what might have been from George Thurso, and had sent his young wife to her grave an innocent woman, save for those follies and vanities which human nature is prone to—some natures, as in Zillah’s case, to excess.

In Cynthia, and for Cynthia, Sheila now lived, and she was already sketching out for herself a pleasant, industrious share in Cynthia’s studies abroad, while Cynthia was puzzling her young brain as to how she could work so that her sister’s life should have that sunshine and her sister’s beauty should have that place which she had so often heard (without fully understanding) from Mrs. Crawshaw was Sheila’s due. With Marian away, . Cynthia’s thoughts turned at last to her cousin Giles.

She dressed herself one day, and went off down to the office in a spirit of great independence.

“I have come to have a long talk to you, Giles,” she said, importantly, and then she explained, “It is about Sheila.”

“What has Sheila been doing?”

“Everything that is sweet—and wrong.”

Giles Reynolds looked at the girl’s young, serious face with much amusement.

“That is the first time I ever heard that Sheila was capable of doing wrong,” he said.

Cynthia amended her statement.

“Sheila is an angel. It is I who am doing wrong. Oh, don’t pretend you don’t understand what I want to say, Giles. I am quite sure you do!” And then the whole story came out with a rush.

“She is giving up everything for me, just everything, Giles! You don’t know how many invitations she used to have, and she refused them all; now people, I suppose, begin to think it is no use asking her, and if we don’t do something she will he allowed to live in a corner and he forgotten all the rest of her days! After all, Sheila is not so very much older than I am, and she ought to have some fun and enjoyment, instead of living as she does now. She is so quiet and sad at times. I believe unless someone insists she will go on wearing mourning all her life, and oh! Giles, you don’t know how sweet Sheila looks in white or pale pink!”

Giles did not even smile; he noted too clearly the trouble in Cynthia’s voice, and moreover his memory carried him back to those days when he had first gathered how sweet Sheila could look in anything.

“Well, and what are we to do?” he asked.

“That is just what I want you to tell me,” was Cynthia’s retort.

“Sheila is very obstinate, Cynthia.”

“Not obstinate exactly,” Cynthia corrected, “only she thinks too much of other people and not enough of herself! I’ll tell you what I have determined to do. I won’t go to Germany next autumn unless Sheila promises me to have some enjoyment this summer. That’s only fair, isn’t it, Giles ?”

Giles lapsed into thought. Of late things more personal, a strong, new influence had crept into his daily life, and thought of Sheila had not been so constant with him. As yet he had not lighted on the secret she had hidden away in her heart. There was no one to betray this secret. In feet, save for the man who was at the other side of the world, and Helen Crawshaw, no one could betray it, for no one knew it; nevertheless it came to Giles Reynolds in this moment that it might be possible that his cousin Sheila had some powerful motive for living as she did, denying her worth and beauty to the world, and finding her pleasure only in Cynthia’s pleasures. He was touched by instantaneous sympathy for her. Her case in each light was parallel with another that lay very near to his own heart. He felt at a loss to counsel Cynthia.

“Have you spoken to Sheila—have you told her what you have told me?” he asked.

Cynthia shook her head. “No, I wanted to see my way a little more clearly. I should have gone to Marian Westlake and have asked her to help me, only she is so far off, isn’t she?”

Giles coloured faintly. Yes, Marian was very, very far off! A world seemed to lie between her and his heart. Would there ever come a time when he could draw nearer to her—near enough to speak of what lay buried in that heart? He lapsed a long time into silence, and Cynthia waited impatiently for him to speak.

“I think you have grown very stupid, Giles; you don’t seem to be able to do anything,” she remarked at last, with the impertinence of great familiarity, and she rose, with ruffled feelings, to take her departure.

Laughing and colouring (for he was conscious that he was living now in a perpetual day-dream), Giles consoled her with promises.

“Let me think over things, and don’t get so violent, please! I will pnt all my wits to work and see if I can’t help yon.” He paused a moment before the girl went away. “Suppose I ask Miss Westlake to come to our rescue; she is so practical; she loves Sheila very dearly.”

Cynthia approved of this measure warmly. Her cousin’s embarrassment was not visible to her. “I think that would be lovely, and oh, Giles! do let me know when you go. I must send something to that dear little Jack. Now, shall I tell you what I believe would make Sheila as happy as possible?” Cynthia pinched up her lips and looked wise. “She would love to be able to have that poor little blind thing always with her! You can’t think how fond she is of it, and even now she has tears in her eyes when she speaks of its mother. I was very sorry when poor Lady Thurso was drowned, of course, but she was awfully horrid to Sheila—she was jealous of her, I suppose. So I don’t pretend to cry about her very much!”

Then Cynthia impressed secrecy on her cousin, and went away lightly, quite unconscious that she had left a germ of new thought in Giles’s mind, and thought that opened out a pathway in Sheila’s fortune that he had never dreamed of before.

Giles Reynolds’s resolution to go and see Marian Westlake was carried into even quicker effect than he intended, owing to the news that reached him of her mother’s most serious illness. A cold caught in an east wind had developed many dangerous symptoms, and just a year after Zillah’s untimely death her mother followed her to the grave, and Marian was left utterly alone. She turned more naturally to Giles Reynolds in this crisis than to George. She had now to seek another home, greatly to George Thurso’s regret; and though he could offer no objection to Marian’s intention to go hack again to her curious old uncle, he insisted on making her life materially very different to what it had ever been.

“You are my sister; what I have is yours, what you have is mine,” he said to her, gently.

“I have been happy in your house, George,” Marian said, through her tears. “Yes—happy —though not in the way most people are happy. You have been so good to us, dear brother.”

George was grateful to her for her kind words, for all she would have conveyed in these words.

“The house will be so empty without you,” he said, “and baby Jack will miss you, Marian.”

Marian had the child in her arms as she answered him, his little head pressed close to her throat “I will come often and see him, then she paused a moment; her face flushed and paled. “ George,” she said, softly, “you must make it possible for me to come and stay here very often. You must make yourself a new home.”

Only the day previous she and Giles had had their long talk about Cynthia’s wishes for her sister, and woman-like, having a few threads to work with, Marian had weaved out the story of Sheila’s heart, and this was the first result of her weaving.

George had looked into her clear grey eyes a long moment in silence; something of the hope, the eager intent to give happiness that lay in those clear depths passed into his eyes and stole down into his heart. He did not understand the full purport of her words, yet they seemed to lift him upwards from the slough of depression, of sad recollections and regret, in which he had been living this last year. Remembrance of the past was centred all in that miserable time jnst before the end that had severed all his difficulties. He had spoken out freely to Marian about the past, he had laid bare the story of his true life with Zillah, he had endured every sort of remorse a highly-strung, sensitive nature could suffer; and Marian had comforted him in her matter-of-fact yet honest way. She had known that he was sure to have those feelings of pained regret and self-reproach where poor Zillah was concerned; she had done her best to argue them out of his brain. Just as Cynthia was troubled about Sheila, so in her way Marian troubled about George Thurso. She had not been an inmate of his house for a month before she had realised with a pang how more than right her past theories and fears had been, how impossible it would ever have been for such a man to have found a week’s happiness with Zillah. She mourned over Zillah unceasingly, lamenting not merely the sad and painful death, hut the destiny that should have divided her sister’s affection from her, for the nature that had spelt the ruin of Zillah’s life. Marian, like George, had never even surmised the real truth of Zillah’s ill-fated journey abroad. George had repeated faithfully all that had passed between himself and his wife in their last interview; he had hidden nothing from her sister; and though the grave had silenced all Zillah’s follies, Marian had felt it all. The hardship the husband must have had in meeting with such difficulties as Zillah’s insatiable vanity had put upon him. Even months after the death George had been unable to trace from whom, or by what means, Zillah had found the large sum of money to pay her jeweller’s bill. He did not leave any place or person unsought to discover this, hut his search was vain; Zillah’s secret in connection with this was buried in her grave. She had left nothing behind her to give a clue to the person who had befriended her, and Marian alone perhaps knew what torture this matter was to George Thurso’s proud nature. It was at her quiet request he let the search cease.

“Some day you will know; and you can always repay the money then, George,” she had told him. In fact, there was no way in which Marian had not tried to minister to him to help to put a healing covering over his jarred and wounded heart. It was Marian who had first recalled him from his shocked grief, after Zillah had gone, to the possibilities of happiness that existed for him in his child, and so grateful was the girl’s heart to him, not only for his goodness to her mother but for his loyalty to the dead, that she left nothing undone to bring light and sunshine once more into his prematurely aged life. The knowledge of Cynthia’s anxiety about her sister, enforced by Giles’s telling (for he told more than he was aware of), mingled with stray recollections of Sheila in certain moments, all brought to Marian Westlake the conviction that the happiness she desired so eagerly to give to George lay not far apart from him.

“Make yourself a new home, George,” she said to him, earnestly. “I know much, much better than you can tell me, the sort of thoughts and ideas you have had in your mind all this sad time. You must not think in this way any more. I am Zillah’s sister, and I loved her dearly—dearly,” the girl repeated, with tears starting to her grey eyes; she held baby Jack a little closer to her heart for an instant. “Yes, I loved Zillah, though perhaps I did not show this properly; bu$ it was because I loved her that I was so angry when she married you. Your marriage was a mistake, George. You will not say this, hut I do. A great mistake, a terrible mistake! You tried your best to mend the mistake; it was not your fault that you failed. Zillah was the last wife in the world for you. I do not want you to forget her— you are not that sort of man who does forget easily—but I want you to have a restful, sympathetic life with a good woman—some one who will care for little Jack with all her heart, and perhaps love me, too.” Marian put down the child here, and, holding out her hands to George, she kissed him on both cheeks. “Don’t forget what I have said,” she remarked, abruptly, “and if you want to talk over it with me, come to see me at once. If your own heart cannot suggest such a woman as I want to see your wife, well! . . . I think /know where she is to be found, George!”

She whisked away, and was gone before George could wake from the bewildered train of thought, of hope, of comfort she had put into his mind. Suddenly he looked down and saw his boy clinging to his legs in that pathetic way the blind child had. He lifted the little creature to his arms and kissed it passionately. The joy that had come to him in the moment of its birth filled him anew, and as he cradled the small form on his heart, his mind went back to that hot Jane morning when he had walked through the sunshine, a king with a new world before him, and how he had met a certain slender, black-robed figure with a pleadingly beautiful face, and in his rapture had stopped and shared his joy with her.

Sheila’s face was before him again now, as it had been then, but memory brought back its expression with a translation that had been hidden from him at that time. He went slowly back to the library with his child in his arms.

What was this wild thought that had come to him all suddenly? What this curious fantasy that brought the vision of Sheila vividly before him, haunting him with her eyes, and holding out her arms to gather his child to her breast?

He felt his own heart thrill unconsciously to that imagined tenderness, and in this thrill a veil seemed to slip from the past, and he saw the truth.

CHAPTER XXII.

Quits ignorant of the plots and plans that were occupying Cynthia’s brain about the future, Sheila was busying herself in these early May days in arranging all her affaire, so that the migration to Germany should be an easy matter when the autumn came.

“Of course, it will mean farewell to yon dear little house,” she said to herself^ and she did not say it without a pang, for she had grown deeply attached to her cosy little home. But the departure to Dresden demanded this sacrifice. Life would be cheap enough, once they were settled in Germany; but Cynthia’s studies would cost a good deal, on the whole, and Sheila did not consider she would be justified in keeping on the expense of her London rent and taxes in addition to the necessary expenses of a manage abroad. She could, of course, have tried to let the house furnished, but somehow she shrank from the thought of this. The little place was dear to her because it had grown together, as it were, out of the love, and thought, and industry of her sister, and it was, moreover, hallowed to her by the memories of the past two years. Stripped and empty of all their prettiness and economical contrivances, Sheila could turn away from the house, but she could not have suffered the thought of strange people living in the heart of the small home that had been so dear to her. Therefore she resolved to give notice at the June quarter, and to prepare to store her furniture till such time as she and Cynthia should require it again. To carry it over to Dresden would have been much too great an expense.

Sheila had a twofold reason in counting the cost of everything so closely. She had already begun to put aside a certain sum each year, which was destined later on to he a small capital for Cynthia. It did not need much sacrifice on Sheila’s part to save this money. Her own individual expenditure was bo very small. She bought herself nothing save what was absolutely necessary, and since she wore nothing but black, she determined she had enough clothes to last her for some time. Cabs had long ago been a denied luxury to both Sheila and Cynthia, but they had a homely affection for the cheap and faithful ’bus, and in the spring and summer days were wont to mount aloft and get their fresh air from a garden seat.

Helen Crawshaw never grew reconciled to this phase of Sheila’s economy.

“It hurts me!” she said once to Sheila, “it positively hurts me to know you are up on the top of one of those crowded, horrid things.”

And Sheila had only laughed.

“Oh! You are a very prejudiced person, Helen; besides, it is simply lovely up there when the day is fine.” If only Sheila had confessed here frankly, “If only I could get down as well as I can go up, I assure you I should consider the outside of an omnibus the most delightful place in the world!”

Mrs. Crawshaw had fidgeted at this, but had said nothing. Protestation was in truth vanquished at last. She even went so far as to discuss the autumn plans almost genially; and, of course, she put herself and all she possessed at Sheila’s disposal when the time for moving should come.

Her heart had been gladdened, too, by a promise that she might count the sisters among her guests for a few weeks in Scotland at the end of the season.

It had been Cynthia who had accepted the invitation when it had been offered, not with any hope of being accepted.

“Many thanks, dear Mrs. Crawshaw, we shall be delighted to come,” Cynthia had said, quite readily; then, before Sheila could speak, “it will do us both such a lot of good, and I have been longing to go to Scotland.”

“But, Cynthia, you have to arrange that work you were speaking to me about yesterday,” Sheila had remarked, a little bewildered.

“I want space and air for that work,” was Cynthia’s grave reply. “Scotland is just the one place in the world that will suit me.”

When she had parted from Cynthia that day, Mrs. Crawshaw had embraced the girl warmly, and Cynthia had returned the embrace, and had managed to give an almost audible wink at the same time, which conveyed volumes to Helen Crawshaw.

As May came in with a burst of glorious sunshine, and Sheila was, as we have said, very busy making her plans, Cynthia prepared another surprise for her sister.

“Sheila,” she said one day, after luncheon, as she was hurrying hack to the Academy, “Sheila, I want a new frock; please go and choose me something pretty this afternoon, and,’ darling, do get something pretty for yourself at the same time. You can’t think how rusty that old gown is! We look like a very respectable pair of crows in these dingy old clothes!”

Sheila turned her beautiful eyes on her sister for an instant, and then she looked down at herself. Cynthia’s words had startled her.

“Is it so very shabby?” she asked, wistfully. Cynthia nodded her head. “Awfully; and then I am, oh, so tired of seeing nothing but black,” she went on, relentlessly, “and there really is no sense now in your wearing it, is there? Do, like a sweet angel, go and buy something as little like a hearse as you can find. I think I should like you in magenta or orange —anything for a change—” and hurriedly kissing her sister, Cynthia rushed out of the house and banged the door after her.

“I feel about the meanest, nastiest cat in the whole wide world,” she said to herself as she skipped into a ’bus and was bowled along; “but if no one else can or will rouse Sheila, I must Poor darling, she will be sure to buy me the prettiest gown she can find, and I shall have to take it quite calmly. Some day, when things are as they should he, I will confess to her why I was so nasty and sharp to-day.”

Sheila, in fact, was conscious of having been rudely awakened from a peaceful dream, and the knowledge that it should have been Cynthia’s hand that had shaken her gave her a touch of pain. She sat and pondered over things a long while after Cynthia had gone. This unexpected little attack drove her thoughts sharply from their usual groove. It was as difficult to her to disassociate these thoughts from that same groove, as it would be hurtful to her to cast aside the sombre garb she had worn so long, and to blossom out into bright colours. Sheila was so thorough in all she did, so honest with herself, however, that it very quickly came to her that there had been a strong element of common sense in Cynthia’s sudden suggestion. There was, to the world outside at least, no meaning in her wearing perpetual black. Her widowhood was long past, and her sorrow in that widowhood had never been great enough to demand a life of mourning. The secret yearning of her heart She came to anchor at last before a window in Bond Street, where her loving eyes had picked’ out a pretty girlish frock that was the very thing for Cynthia.

“If it does not cost too much I will buy that,” Sheila said to herself, and she moved away from the window hurriedly, with quite a touch of happiness and excitement warming her heart. “ Cynthia would look so sweet and graceful in that frock,” was her thought, and as this thought came she turned and found herself face to face with a man who was standing right in her path. It was George Thurso.

At first the shock was almost painful, but these emotions live but an instant. The next feeling that came was joy—quick, keen, indescribable joy. How long it was since she had seen him—how long!—how long! How had she ever managed to live so long away from the life-giving joy of his presence?

She put her hand out to him, and spoke his name as these thoughts were whirring through her brain.

“You are in town? How strange we should meet!” Her words came falteringly but hurriedly. She was indeed not quite conscious if she were speaking coherently. “You are well, I hope, and Jack—dear little Jack—is he well? Have you brought him with you? Oh, how much I should like to see him, Sir George!” George Woke out of a dream of ecstasy as she drew her little black-gloved hand from his.

“Sheila, I was coming to you—I-—” he broke off. The half-curious glances of the passers-by, the knowledge that though they stood in a world alone, yet that another world circled about them now, brought his mind and senses to an even level. “Look,” he said, drawing her attention to a coupe that was standing close beside them, “the boy is here. I was on my way to pay you a visit when I caught sight of you outside this shop. It was very sweet to see you, for I did not know whether I should find you at home. I came On chance.”

Sheila slipped by him and opened the door of the little carriage.

“I must kiss him,” she said.

She was very pale, and she trembled all over as she sat down in the coup6 and took the little helpless creature in her arms.

George stood sentry at the door, and Sheila lifted her eyes to him; they were full of tears.

“You brought him to see me—-just on purpose to see me—how good of you to think of this!”

Woman-like, even in this moment of thrilling, unspeakable delight, she noted the change that this year of sorrow and absence had worked in him; his face was lined and very thin. He was as pathetic to her as the little blind baby she held in her arms. Tears would come as she looked on him.

“You will drive me home; we will have some tea,” she said, conquering herself with an effort.

“But you were busy,” George said, inquiringly. “I stood behind you quite two minutes before you turned. I was afraid to disturb you.”

Sheila blushed.

“And I did not know you were there!” she said.

Regret at this lost two minutes of happiness rang out unconsciously in her voice; then, as she saw a sudden radiance come into his face as his eyes met her’s and held them for one long instant, she knew all she had confessed in those last few words. Her colour came and went rapidly as she hastened to explain her errand.

“I was choosing a dress for Cynthia,” she said. George’s face had a touch of its lost youth now.

“Let us go in and finish this important business, then,” he said, gaily. “Miss Cynthia must not be disappointed.”

But Sheila shook her head.

“It will do another time. Cynthia would far rather spend half an hour with little Jack than have a dozen new dresses. We will leave a message for her at the Academy that she is to come home as soon as possible, and after that we will drive straight to my little doll’s house. You have never seen my home, Sir George.”

He paused an instant in the doorway.

“Tour home, Sheila! Do you know, I wonder, what a world of sweetness, of peace and beauty the word signifies to me? Sheila, will you give me a place in your home? will you take me and little Jack? We are very desolate in our big, empty home. We love you, Sheila—we want you, Sheila—will you let us come?”

She looked at him with her beautiful eyes drenched in tears, and then, without a word, she stretched her hand out towards him, and he held it for an instant to his heart. Then he repeated her orders to the coachman, seated himself beside her, and they rolled swiftly away through the sunlit street, together for the first time, and happy as only they who have known sorrow can be happy when joy comes.

THE END.