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management of a big house meant power to her mind, and she liked power. She came from a little, over-populated house where the living was hard, and she liked the good cheer of Elton Hall, and to have a comfortable allowance for dress. And if she was further sustained by a secret ambition, who should blame her? great Arthur was two years younger than she. It had been always expected that he should make an imposing marriage; but Mabel argued with herself that her sympathy was appreciated by him, and that his parents denied him nothing. As a boy he had been inclined to bully her and order her about; but as he acquired nice manners he grew polite, even to her, and of late years had given her much of his confidence, and had sometimes taken her counsel. She was a sensible and practical young woman, who had very firm ideas of correct speech and conduct, but who could be tolerant on occasion. In appearance she was rather like her cousin, a substantial person, comfortable to see, not ill-looking, with rather cold grey eyes, and flaxen hair, and rosy cheeks.

Such were the new guests who came down to Mereworth to spend a fortnight there which was to end with a marriage of the old-fashioned, village sort. They came down to Mereworth and looked on its old gracefulness of aspect, and its kindly, careless ways, with eyes of criticism. To tell the truth, a certain strain seemed to be established not long after their arrival. Mr

Fairbrother had no great respect for aristocrats as such, although he was pleased that his son should be allied with them; and Mereworth, a young man who had talked to him about money, he quickly came to patronise. As he walked about the place, and visited the few farms that remained to it, he pointed out mistakes and suggested improvements, and made comparisons with his own larger possessions. Lady Mereworth could have endured downright vulgarity or coarseness with equanimity; but Mrs Fairbrother, who minced her words and said of everything that it was nice, was a sore trial to her. Mabel Simpson smiled and was obliging; but her manner did not entirely conceal, to an acute perception, that she thought Lady Betty "fast," as she would have phrased it, and even shocking, when Lady Betty lapsed ever so little from the weary decorum imposed upon her. Indeed, it was hardly to be expected that Mabel should be enthusiastic about her whom the great Arthur proposed to marry.

So the Flairs had a heavy load on their graceful backs, and they were not a folk to bear one easily. Mereworth began to look overworked and harassed. His mother's pretty speeches a little waned. Sometimes Lady Betty escaped from the house alone, and ran as fast as she could all the way down the path to the sea for relief of her feelings. She would sometimes meet her brother's eyes in the course of a weary dinner, and they looked despair at one another. And sometimes, when

their eternally making out that we have the best of it?"

"Oh-people like that! Cheer up, old girl! Only three more days."

"Oh, it's all very well for you," and so forth.

The Flair women had sometimes been rakes, and had seldom been pious or over-altruistic; but they were not subtle insinuators, and Lady Betty understood neither the attacks nor the defences of the art. Short of an angry retort, which breeding even more than policy denied her in her brother's house, she had no weapon against the mincing mother and the indefatigable cousin.

On the last afternoon but one before the marriage, the post brought an interesting letter for Mabel Simpson. Arthur Fairbrother was a man of his word; but in an unguarded moment he had told Mabelhis confidential and appreciative cousin something of his encounter on the night of the masquerade; and, having excited her curiosity, he thought he had best complete the story, pledging her to secrecy. Mabel was very much interested indeed, but she kept her promise. She saw no way, without breaking it boldly, of leading to the subject. A curiosity she showed about Sir Eustace Flair's portrait fell quite flat. But this letter roused the interest to an intolerable point :

"A very strange thing happened this afternoon. I was going to call on Mrs Ogilvie, when I met, on the steps of her house, a man I could have

fellow who

sworn was the fought with me. I looked hard at him, and felt quite certain. He was just like the portrait, and had just the insolent look the man had that night. You know that I do not easily lose my presence of mind, but I hardly knew what to do. Of course it might have been a coincidence of likeness after all though I feel sure now it was not.

He certainly did not seem to recognise me. However, I stopped him, and said I thought we had met before. He smiled in a most exasperating way, and said he was ashamed not to know who I was. I said 'Fairbrother,' and he said, in a sort of thoughtful way, 'NoFairbrother-I'm afraid I don't know any one of that name. We must have met in a crowd somewhere.' Then he smiled again-I should have liked to kick him!—and strolled away without telling me his name. Mrs Ogilvie began talking politics when I went in; but you know I am rather good at insight into people, and I was certain she was excited about something else. She seemed less friendly, too, than usual, somehow. I asked her who it was had just left the house, and she said: 'Oh, a boy called Mardon. His poor mother was a friend of mine.' I said I thought I'd met him somewhere, and she replied that it was not likely, as he'd been in Australia for years, and had only just returned. Then

I asked if he was a friend of Mereworth's, and she said, 'Why do you ask?' in a quick sort of way. I told her because

he was just like one of the portraits at Mereworth, and she was sarcastic about my want of logic in connecting the two things. However, she told me this Mardon fellow was a distant cousin of Mereworth's, she believed. Then she changed the subject, and began, as usual, to argue about my marriage. I write all this, because somehow it all seems so strange to me, and I feel sure it was the man. You might ask casually about Mardon; but don't let them think I told you about the fight, because I promised not to, and, as you know, I am punctilious about that sort of thing."

Mabel, who would have done anything for her cousin, was quite ready to perform the slight service required of her. That evening at dinner, when the servants had left the room, and there was one of the numerous breaks in the conversation, she remarked that she had received a letter from Arthur.

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And, by the way," she said to Mereworth, "he says he met a cousin of yours, a Mr Mardon." She half expected a sensation, for to her mind the fight was now very well explained, and the light of explanation shone very luridly on Lady Betty. But in the course of a life not remarkably well spent Mereworth had faced many embarrassing remarks and questions, and he answered with perfect composure

"Did he? That must have been Herbert Mardon,-I suppose he is a cousin rather distant, though." He turned

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Lady Mereworth looked up. "Harry Mardon," she said quietly, was a friend of mine his wife was my dearest friend."

It was not pleasant to hear the brilliant Harry Mardon called a socialist fellow by a person like Mr Fairbrother. But this was a subject which touched Mr Fairbrother sorely, and he forgot his mild manners.

"That may be so," he answered; "but the man was a dangerous fellow. He tried to set the working classes against their natural superiors-and their best friends. He had the impudence to put me in a pamphlet "Abominable!"

Mrs Fairbrother said, in her most definitive manner.

"He ought to have been sent to prison. His shooting himself was the best thing he ever did."

"Let us hope he repented first," Mrs Fairbrother thinly interjected.

"I hope his son's not tarred with the same brush." Mr Fairbrother had spoken hotly, and was out of breath.

Lady Mereworth, preventing her son's interposition with a look, waited till the end, and then said, with a touch of ice very unusual with her: "Mr Mardon was a socialist, I sup

pose, as you say; but he was the head of one of the oldest families in England-if one values that sort of thing-and a very brilliant and accomplished man. But I think we won't discuss him he was, as I think I said, a friend of mine."

Mr Fairbrother murmured that he had not meant to say anything against him, and cast a deprecatory glance round the

table. His eyes met those of Lady Betty, who sat flushed and very uprightly, and looked at him quietly until he looked away. So doing, she did not see that Mabel Simpson was looking very keenly at herself ; and when she did look in Mabel's direction, that selfpossessed young woman was peeling a peach, and kept her eyes on her plate.

The day before the marriage arrived, with a still air and a hot sun, and at eleven in the morning there was no sound about Mereworth House. Mereworth had taken Mr Fairbrother in the dogcart to Bellmouth; Lady Mereworth and Mrs Fairbrother, a real and a professed invalid, were in their rooms. Lady Betty sat reading in the little walled garden, and Mabel Simpson had gone to the room which looked on to it to write a letter. But she did not write a letter: she sat at the writing - table by the window and watched Lady Betty, as two mothers had watched the child and her playmate many years ago, but I fear with less kindly thoughts. The picture was pretty enough: all was bright and green and blue, sky and grass and trees and the sea beyond them, all green and blue, but Betty's white dress and the red-covered novel she was reading. But as Mabel sat with her chin resting on her hand, her not uncomely face showed dislike and great suspicion. We do not like those who take what

we would have, and moreover, it is well to be angry if one thinks that a friend is dealt with falsely.

Mabel watched and frowned, and presently she started and leaned forward eagerly. A stone had fallen over the low wall near Lady Betty, and Mabel's sharp eyes observed something white, not a stone, lying near Betty's feet. Betty had started violently, and then looked round her as she looked at the window, Mabel's head was bent, and her hand seemed busily to move a pen. But Mabel saw the other stoop and pick the white thing up, detach it from the stone, and spread it out on her book. Long she bent over it, and must have read it several times, turning it backwards and forwards. And then she shut it in the book, jumped up suddenly, and began to walk up and down the little garden. A sudden thought struck the watcher: whoever brought the letter had probably come up by the path from the sea, which led close up to the gardens, for she had seen nobody cross the