"Quite well, thank you! Blooming like a Rose Celeste! only she frets herself about my uncle. He is breaking up, like frost in an April thaw. Poor Aunt Prudence is very low-spirited too. I wish you would come to-night and cheer us all up, Criff; we are rather doleful occasionally. And bring Mrs. Gray and Maude, and of course Ambrose. Let's have a family party!"

"I have no objection, if I can get my work finished in time; and I know Maude and my mother intended coming up to the Bank to tea. But if I am to be your guest tonight, you cannot be mine this morning. I have lost time already, and my hands are more than full.”

"I won't stop five minutes, Criff. I have only a word to say-a word of importance, too. People tell me that you are going to support this upstart Lewiston!"

People for once tell the truth. I feel that by upholding Lewiston, I am doing my duty. As for my candidate being 'an upstart,' we will discuss that matter in the evening; indeed we will, if you please, leave all our conversation till then."

"That won't do, Criff; you will have compromised your self a dozen times over before the day is done. I say, old fellow, do you know what you are doing?"

"I believe I do. I am simply doing my duty as a Christian citizen. There are just some obligations which it is not in our power to refuse or to evade. But we will discuss the

matter presently.”

"Criff, are you mad? Can't you see the mischief that will arise if you persist in nailing your colours to Lewiston's flag?" "I will try not to provoke anyone into doing me a bad turn; but I cannot do what my conscience and my own judgment tells me to be wrong, whatever be the result. think it right to vote for Lewiston, and nothing that anyone can say will alter my decision."

I

"You will be scouted. You will be sent to Coventry. Worse than that, you will have to resign the editorship of the Chronicle."

Now, the Chronicle had come to be to Christopher Gray as wife and child: he loved it almost as a long childless man loves the one son that after many days is born to him. He had made the Chronicle as it were, for he had altogether altered its tone, he had quadrupled its circulation, he had raised it from a petty country-town journal to a well-established provincial paper, in good repute among metropolitan editors, and he grudged neither time nor labour where his bantling was concerned.

It was almost with a spasm of physical pain that he replied, "I hope not, George; but even that would not deter me from doing the right thing."

"Why - forgive me if I speak plainly losing the Chronicle means losing bread and cheese!"

"Not quite; the cheese would go perhaps, but there would be some crusts of bread remaining. Of course such a contretemps would be most unfortunate; and the paper is more to me than a mere means of livelihood."

"So Ethel says; though what you and she mean by it I can hardly tell."

"Do you

not see how you may come to love your work for its own sake?"

"Not I, indeed! I hate work-such work as mine, at least. If it were purely intellectual now, like yours, or if I were an artist, or a sculptor, or an architect, bent on building myself an everlasting fame, the case might be different."

"There is a great deal of mere matter-of-fact toil in literature as well as in art, George."

"May be there is; but I do not want to take up your time with fruitless dissertations, let us come back to the point. Have you considered what this step may cost you?"

"I have."

"And you are determined to run the risk?"

66

Quite determined. When I see my path straight before me, George, I am not going to turn back, though it may Įresent difficulties and even dangers."

"But if there were a hope of success I would not say so

much—there would be something to battle for; now, unless a miracle is worked expressly for the occasion, your party has not a chance-really, Criff, you haven't the ghost of a chance."

"I know it, George."

"Then what on earth are you going to fight for?"

"For the right, for the principle of the thing. You know as well as I do that Herbert Bevan is not worthy of the honour he seeks."

"He is an empty-headed fool; but he is a Bevan."

"Certainly we ought not to have a fool for our representative; but you know also, George, that this man is something worse than foolish."

"He is not exactly a saint, I confess; rumour says queer things about him. I am not sure that I should like to see him taking Ethel down to dinner.”

“And a man in the position he would take ought to be above suspicion. There should be no aspersions on his character."

"Well," said easy George, who was commonly swayed by the latest speaker, "there is something in what you say, Criff; only I hate being righteous overmuch. It is like you to be different from every one else."

There was a strange bitterness in the tone of the last words, but Christopher took no notice of them; he applied himself to his proofs, saying,

"If I am to come to you to-night, George, I must send you away now, I have so much to complete."

And whistling a popular air, George Trevanion sauntered out of the office, and went home and told his wife that Criff was obstinate as usual, and that nothing less than absolute ruin to his prospects would be the result of his rash and quixotic tilt with the ancient magnates of the county. And Christopher went on quietly with his work ; but once he lapsed into a brown study, from which he roused himself to say aloud, "I am quite sure she will think I am doing that which I ought to do, that which, as a Christian member

of society, I cannot avoid. But I should like to hear her views. I have a great mind to go over to Singlehurst Manor to-morrow afternoon."

CHAPTER XVII.

THE IVORY CROSS.

Ir was four o'clock in the afternoon, and Ethel Trevanion was sitting dreamily by the fire in her own dressing-room. She had been out, calling as usual at Town Head House: she had heard a great deal about the election, and about the merits of the rival candidates, and not a little about Christopher's eccentric proclivities towards the unpopular side of the question; and it was just beginning to dawn upon her mind that for the first time in her experience her hus-. band and her brother would be in direct and avowed antagonism; for George, of course, would go the way of the Trevanions from time immemorial, and vote for Herbert Bevan, as the successor and representative of innumerable Bevans, who had enjoyed the confidence of the county before him!

Ethel was finding out now how very much she loved and honoured her brother Christopher. Of course she loved George better; and-well-did she honour him more? That was a question that Mrs. Trevanion hastily glanced at, and then as hastily put aside, deciding that it would be best left unconsidered, both now and for evermore.

And was Ethel happy in her new home, in her new character, and with the already enlarged experiences of her married life? Yes! she was happy, for she loved George devotedly if now and then he said things she could not endorse-if sometimes she wished he had some bones in his character, and some muscle and sinew in his purposes-if

now and then she was seized with a vague sense of disappointment, a sort of weariness that she could neither shake off nor account for, a longing after the clearer and more bracing atmosphere of her early home, every doubt would be dissipated, every source of dissatisfaction dispelled, every feeling of regret chased away, when George came in, and chatted with her, and smiled upon her with those sunny blue eyes of his, and, sitting by her side, let her twine her fingers in and out among the thick, shining curls of golden brown, in which she took far more pride and delight than in her own dark waves of silky, rippling hair! And when the sweet, irresolute mouth said all sorts of pretty things, and clever things too, though not exactly deep; and when the strong arm was round her, and tender speeches were whispered in her ear-for George was still the lover-husband, and only found fault occasionally-then Ethel felt perfectly satisfied with her lot, and believed herself to be the happiest and most to be envied woman in all the world!

Still, there were times when she felt dull and pensive, when she missed "dear old Criff's" wonderful talks, in which he seemed to stamp upon her own mind all sorts of forcible and ineffaceable impressions; when she longed for Maud's girlish laugh and amusing confidences, and for Ambrose's musical enthusiasm, and for all the careful, painstaking details of economical daily life with which she had been familiar ever since she could remember. And of such was the present hour; so, when she had taken off her cloak and hat, she did not go down to the drawing-room, the air and aspect of which always seemed to oppress her, unless it were filled with company, or, better still, unless George and no one else was her companion. She lingered in her own pretty, cosy boudoir, which had been fitted up for her so beautifully, so tastefully, so luxuriously, wishing the long morning were over, wishing that George and Christopher were not to be opposed in politics, and wishing, above all things, that her husband would come up from the Bank parlour, where she innocently supposed him to be immersed in business, and