the writer's womanly satisfaction that he, Robert Kemball, had at last seen the fatal mistake he had made, before it was too late, if indeed it was not already too late to remedy it. No one but himself, it said, with one of what the Captain used to call Rosanna's characteristic digs, would have thought of bringing up a young lady without some older lady to guide and instruct her. Whatever harm came of it however, her brother Robert must never forget that she, Rosanna Hamley, had lifted up her voice against it from the first-though vainly. As it was, she was glad to see him awakening to a sense of his true position; and she decidedly recommended him to look out for a lady companion forthwith-or rather, she proposed to do so for him herself. There were one or two highly-trained persons at Milltown of whose circumstances she knew something; poor, and for whom a small salary with a comfortable home would suffice; women perfectly well-bred and fitted for the work of reducing an undisciplined young person to the ladylike demeanour demanded by society. She assumed that Patricia was undisciplined; poor girl, how indeed could she be anything else! Then she went on to say, that if her brother and his niece she said "your niece," not "my" nor our "-would like to come over to Abbey Holme for a week or so she would be better able to give advice; and she would be glad to welcome them there. She could not deny, nor would she, that there had been differences between her brother Robert and herself, and this would be a good way of healing them, besides being of use to both himself and his niece. She could say no more. If he would accept her offer, he was to write at once and say when they were coming; if he rejected it, she did not see how she could help farther in the matter, as, on second. thoughts, it would be undesirable to engage a lady so entirely in the dark as she would be were she not made better acquainted with his niece before she looked out. The letter ended with a postscript: "Dear Dora Drummond," it said, "Mr. Hamley's cousin, and the child of my adoption-failing Patricia, whom you refused to me—is the best proof I can give of my fitness for advising on the subject of young ladies' education; also of what my training would have done for your niece. I think, when you see Dora, you will acknowledge that the grace, good breeding, and perfect self-command I have laboured so hard to inculcate have been thoroughly well learnt. Her association will do Patricia good; and her principles are, I am happy to say, too firmly fixed for me to be afraid of undesirable associations on her own account."

This was the elaborately-worded letter that came in answer to the Captain's brief and bluff request for a few words of advice: "Should he get a lady companion for Patricia? She was eighteen now, and he wished her to have the best of everything. What did his sister Rosanna think?"

Patricia read this letter as if it had reference to another life. Her vague disquiet at the idea of the lady companion seemed so childish now in the face of the terrible reality that had come; and so far off! It seemed as if it was months ago, and at the other side of a wide river, since her uncle had called her into the porch to listen to the project over which he had been brooding, and which startled her so much. It was only three days since, but a lifetime lay between. Three days ago she was a happy child; now she was a sorrowful woman. It was like waking up from a dream; or rather, it was like a dream itself as if that happy past was the reality still and this dreadful present a mere vision, a nightmare, from which she would awake in the morning to hear her uncle knocking up the house as usual-his kind old face, framed in its silver hair, beaming with affection and freshened with the morning air, looking up to the window from the lawn as he called out, "Hi, there, lazybones! Past six o'clock, and you still abed! Tumble up, tumble up, or I'll be at you!"

But, ah! it was all too real! He was dead; Gordon was away; there was no return, no escape to the beloved past: she had to realisethe present and to live through it.

Fortunately for her she had no one at this moment on whom she could fall back. She was the sole mistress of all that was left, and she. must exert herself. Men may die, but men must live; and those who are left must be provided for on the day when the beloved lie dead all the same as on other days. The morning breaks and the evening wanes, and there is the uprising and the downsitting, as if no light had gone out and no one's life was the poorer for its loss. But a short time can be spared from active work for the filling in of a grave, let who will lie there. To the young this is impious and horrible; but it must be. Patricia would rather have sat in sackcloth and ashes by the side of the dear dead than have worn her ordinary gown-that very skirt which she had mended in the sunshine on the other side of the gulf, and so many years ago! But sackcloth and ashes and giving oneself up to mute mourning on the floor do not square with the ordinary run of things in daily life, and she had to bestir herself; to enter into consultations with Miss Pritchard and Mother Jose, the one about her mourning, the other about the undertaker at Penrose, to whom word must be sent-to-morrow being Mother Jose's "day in." And when she had read Aunt Hamley'sletter she had to write to Abbey Holme to tell them of the loss that had befallen her. The chances are that without this letter as a reminder she would have forgotten her aunt's existence for the first part,. and would then have shrunk from bringing herself before her notice for the second.

The answer came by telegram-Mother Jose brought it in to

save the expense of the messenger; and before Patricia had read it herself, all Barsands knew of it and half the village had spelt it over. It was short but important:

"Mr. Hamley sets off to-day for Barsands. He will bring you back with him."

Mors janua vitæ. Not only for the beloved dead, but also for her. Through the gate of his grave she walked straight from the old to the new, from the known to the unknown, from joyous security to doubt and dread. Life at Aunt Hamley's! She shivered, and thought how cold the night was and how soon the winter had come this year! But she was not going to mope and give way for a fancy, she thought. She was not of the kind to create spectres for want of a braver resolve to meet cheerfully what was before her. At the worst, Aunt Hamley was her father's sister and her dear dead uncle's; and with two such men for her brothers she could not be all bad. And then the natural buoyancy of youth came in to help her. She had known only love and liberty hitherto; and maybe love and liberty would brighten out on her from the foreboded gloom of Abbey Holme. And, if not, what was the good of her promise to bear all things cheerfully if her strength could not stand a trial? It was easy to be brave in the air; better to prove by deeds and be proved by trial!

With this she dismissed herself and her future from her mind. And if she had thought of either, it had been rather in reference to being and doing as her beloved uncle would have wished, not because she cared much at this moment what would or would not become of her.

The next day, just as the evening was beginning to draw in, a postchaise dashed through the village. It was the smartest chaise to be had in Penrose, with a couple of postilions in rather shabby jackets; but it was a sight not often seen in Barsands, and it brought the people out as if the Queen or Wombwell's wild beasts had been passing through. After stopping at the Lame Duck to inquire where Holdfast Cottage might be found, and being told by a dozen people at once, the full-fleshed dark-haired man who had put his head out of the window to ask said, "Drive on!" authoritatively, and drew it back again, smiling to himself while the carriage dashed on to the cottage, followed by all the children of the place yelling their Io paans in west-country language and with seaside lungs.

Patricia was upstairs in a back room and neither heard nor saw the arrival; but the servant came rushing in to summon her, breathless and jubilant.

"Your aunt's master!" she said. "And as fine a looking gentleman as ever you see!" she added excitedly; quite glad that her young mistress had such a showy piece of humanity for her future protector.

"Mr. Hamley here!" cried Patricia, involuntarily catching her breath. She felt the room go round and the floor slide from her feet, as she afterwards told Miss Pritchard; who put her dynamics right for her. But she could not afford to lose time in noting odd sensations; so, standing up and clearing her eyes, pressing back something at her heart as if with a strong hand, without waiting to arrange herself, to put up her hair or to put on a ribbon-not having the ordinary woman's instinct that way, though she had done it all for Gordonshe ran downstairs to the little parlour, for it could not be called a drawing-room, tumbled, unkempt, disordered as she was.

Mr. Hamley was waiting for her; and, while waiting, he had been examining with a critical eye the extraordinary collection of rubbish and real curiosities intermixed, disposed by way of ornamentation about the chimneypiece and on the side-table. Magnificent bits of coral were flanked by paltry sixpenny figures of lambs and dogs with broom-stick tails; an exquisitely-carved vase in jade-stone had for its pedestal a common seashore pebble worn flat enough for a stand; the oleographs distributed by certain weekly papers were pinned unframed against the walls, but Patricia had hung them round with wreaths of yellowing oak-leaves and fronds and tufts of seaweed, green and scarlet and duller purple; which was an arrangement that betokened taste if it also spoke of poverty. Mr. Hamley, however, did not respect taste if allied with poverty. What he liked was a good, heavy, handsome, gilded frame about a fine strong-coloured oil-painting; not your handful of withered leaves and slimy seaweeds festooned with pins round a twopenny-halfpenny print given away by a weekly.

"Not worth a pound the lot!" he was saying to himself as Patricia opened the door and came in.

She saw a tall, largely-framed man with dark curled hair; a cleanshaven face save for a pair of thick whiskers that met in a frill under his chin; small, deeply-set eyes, bright, black, and keen; a large obtrusive kind of nose; and heavy, clumsy, cracked-looking lips that squared out when he spoke, and showed a close row of sharp rodentshaped teeth and all his upper gums when he smiled. He was a fine-built man, with an unmistakable look of good living and prosperity about him. In the smooth lines of his sleek figure, tending to stoutness, but as yet only sleek; in his showy attitudes and parabolic gestures; in the measured accents of his level artificial voice; in the glitter of the massive gold chain across his ample front, the sparkle of the huge diamonds on his large hands; from the cleanly-drawn parting of his shining hair down to the tips of his shining boots, and in the superb fineness and glossiness of all his clothes, could be read the self-complacency of the man and the success of his life. He was Mr. Hamley of Abbey Holme; and he liked people to know it. He was not ashamed to add, the man who had begun life as an errand

boy on sixpence a day; the son of a brewer's drayman, born in a hovel and bred in a stable; but who by industry, good conduct, tact, and natural ability, had risen to be the rich brewer of Milltown and the husband of Admiral Sir Robert Kemball's daughter. He was a selfmade man, and he gloried in his maker, and asked the world to glorify him too.

He had early decided on his tactics, which were to stick to the p'ace where he had known hunger and had made a colossal fortune, and to force society there to recognise and admit him. The closed paradises of his past were the only ones the gates of which he especially cared to open; and he would rather be received on an equality by the poorest Milltown gentleman whose horse he had once been glad to hold for a few pence, than be courted by people whom he had not known, and who had not known him, in his bare-footed days. Milltown was his world; and that world he had set himself to conquer. And he had succeeded.

He put his face into the proper expression of sympathy as Patricia entered; but in spite of himself a look of surprise took the precedence, and his forced sympathy dropped away like a mask. He had not expected to see anything so beautiful; and he showed that he had not. Not that hers was the kind of beauty he liked best; certainly not. He liked very fair women; gliding, caressing, insinuating women; women who were timid and who screamed easily; women he could protect and dominate, and who confessed his masculine superiority even when they put on pretty airs of social queenhood-he giving up to them this social queenhood in consideration of holding all the other sceptres in a sheaf together; women who were fond of warmth and good living, luxurious seats, fine clothes and sparkling jewelry; women he could buy with gifts and subdue through their senses, as he could make cats purr by pleasant treatment. He hated all enthusiasm in women, save maybe for trivial amusements; all decision of opinion; all power of reasoning or show of learning; and the doctrine of their rights (which however he did not understand) was anathema maranatha. He easily forgave a little graceful deception, especially if in his own favour. Indeed, he used to say that truth was indelicate in women-not that he ever called them anything but ladies-and that nature meant them to fib as she meant canaries to sing. Neither was he severe on their want of honour in love affairs or money matters, provided they did not jilt nor cheat him. He called them little "rascals," when they were found out; but if they were pretty he laughed as at a good joke. He had an idea too that they should take very short steps-pretty pit-a-pat useless kind of steps-in fact, a Chinese woman's walk modified; and that they should carry their heads bent downwarde, looking up from under their eyebrows shyly. And he liked trim, well-buckled figures