"I advised you not to marry that young artist who had nothing to offer you but himself; but indeed, Patty, you shouldn't do anything hasty, you might perhaps do much better than this Mr. Downes."

She turned away as she spoke; something told her she would never influence Patty by contradiction.

Next morning at breakfast an exquisite bouquet came for Patty, and to Patience's surprise Miss Latimer insisted on taking a walk instead of a drive.

Days passed on, the ladies and Mr. Downes met frequently, and Miss Coppock's opposition grew. She did not mean Patty to marry just yet; she was determined she should not marry Mr. Downes. She could maintain a dogged, sullen resistance to the acquaintance, but she had no power to cope openly with Patty; she grew more and more silent and determined: if she could have managed it, she would have carried Miss Latimer away by force.

"We are to visit the old town today," said Patty, one morning. "Mr. Downes will meet us at the Grande Place. Now, Patience, do try and be a little more cheerful-I can't fancy what makes you so dull and quiet."

"I'm tired of Brussels." Patience spoke wearily, and Patty smiled.

"Ah, well, we shan't stay here much longer." "You old goose," she added to herself, "don't you suppose I know what's the matter with you, and don't you suppose he'll follow us wherever we go now?"

When they came home from visiting the old town, Miss Coppock felt strangely tired. She lay down on a sofa, and stayed there till Patty was obliged to rouse her.

Patty rang for the femme de chambre. Miss Latimer had never had an illness in her life, and she was incredulous about the sufferings of others; but when the good-natured Rosalie found she could not rouse Miss Coppock to consciousness, she ran away and fetched her mistress, and Augustine the cook; and when all their united efforts failed to restore the sick lady to her usual state, they went in a body to Miss Latimer. Patty had been pacing up and down the saloon, in much vexation and disturbance of mind, while the trio laboured in Patience's bedroom, and she grew alarmed when she was told she had better send for a doctor.

The doctor came-an Englishman ; he looked hard at Patty.

"I think I saw you in the old town this morning, madam."

"Yes, we were there." Patty spoke haughtily; she thought this man was neglecting his business.

"I had nearly warned you," the doctor said, gravely, "and then I thought a sudden panic might be as harmful to you as the actual risk you ran. The street you were in is full of small-pox cases, and I feel almost sure your friend has taken it."

Patty gave an exclamation of terror, but the doctor signed to her imperatively to control herself.

"I am not sure-I may not be quite sure for two days yet, perhaps longer, but the coincidence is remarkable with some symptoms I have witnessed. Keep yourself quiet," he said, severely. Patty was wringing her hands in a fresh access of despair. "Even if your friend has the disease, she may have it slightly, and you have been wise in sending for me at once."

"But I shall take it, I know I shall!" Patty almost shrieked; and she put her hands up to her lovely face as if to shield it from disfigurement.

The doctor's lip curled; he looked at Patty more attentively.

"You cannot stay here," he said; "if you like, I will take a lodging and procure a sœur to nurse your friend; you will accompany her, I suppose?"

"Me! Oh no, I could not; I know nothing about nursing; I should only be in the way. I will pay you whatever you like for your care, if you will only take her away at once."

She put up both hands beseechingly. "What a lovely creature!" the doctor said to himself; "it would be dreadful if such a face were spoiled; and yet

CHAPTER XXXIV.

MARRIED.

NUNA sat in the old studio expecting her husband. Her needlework had been thrown aside, and then a book which she had taken up by way of passing the time. The words grew to be mere arrangements of senseless letters. Her mind was so full of Paul that she could not take in any outside thought. One day before their marriage he had told her that he was sadly unpunctual, and she had laughed, and had answered she loved him all the better punctual men were formal, like Will Bright. She thought of this at the end of her two hours' expectation.

"Ah! but then I had not realized how dreadful it is to be away from him; it seems as if the room grows

darker when he leaves it. I wonder if the time is as long to him when we are apart."

She gave a slight sigh. There was sorrow on her face, but it had not been brought there only by Paul's absence. She had heard news since he went away -news which she expected, and yet which had troubled her. Her father's marriage with Elizabeth Matthews had taken place two days ago.

Miss Matthews had tried quietly, but steadily, to induce Nuna to listen to Will Bright; but Nuna had proved obstinate, and, to Elizabeth's surprise, Mr. Bright seemed cured of his passion. But if Mr. Beaufort and his daughter took a walk together Elizabeth found her own influence over the Rector weakened, and Miss Matthews' quiet, tortoise-like mind began to perceive that, if she

meant to be mistress at the Rectory, she must call in some aid to get rid of Nuna.

She watched her more closely, and she felt sure that the girl was unhappy. Mr. Beaufort one day commented on his daughter's looks to his cousin.

"I believe she really does care about that good-for-nothing young artist," he said, gloomily.

Miss Matthews acted on this hint. If Nuna would not marry Will, she had better marry Mr. Whitmore. She approached the subject very carefully, but at last she asked Nuna why she had not answered Mr. Whitmore's letter.

"Because I said I would not; " but the tone was sad, not angry, and Miss Matthews hoped on. It would have been against her principles to suggest directly a clandestine correspondence; but her own feelings and wishes were waging war against her principles in a very dangerous manner.

By one of the strange accidents that so often happen in life, and which, if they were duly chronicled, would be far more marvellous than any creation of human fancy, Miss Matthews, coming home from an afternoon's shopping in Guildford, saw Mr. Whitmore on the platform of Ashton station; and as she proceeded to the Rectory in a fly, she saw him walking along the road to the village.

Was he going to see Nuna? At least she could make sure that Nuna should see him. It has been said that Miss Matthews was not naturally intriguing, neither was she quick-witted, so that the part she played this evening came to her piecemeal, instead of as the plan a bolder, shrewder woman would have had time to construct, as she drove homewards. She met Nuna at the garden gate, and the first step seemed to come of itself.

"Did you expect Mr. Whitmore, Nuna? he came down by the same train that I did."

Nuna stood looking at her. Hope and fear grew too strong for the reserve she had maintained towards her cousin.

"If Mr. Whitmore calls here, do you

know whether he is to be admitted, Elizabeth? Am I to be allowed to see him? It was the first time she had owned, openly, that her cousin was deeper in Mr. Beaufort's confidence than she herself was, and she felt a rebellious bitterness to both her father and his adviser.

"No, I believe not; he is not to see you any more; and then Miss Matthews stopped to consider how she could contrive that the lovers should meet. "If you go up the station road you might meet him." She might have spared this suggestion. Nuna had already turned to the gate; if she hesitated now, she gave up her last hope of seeing Paul. Her duty to her father was nothing to her love; and she walked on fast to the turn in the road.

Elizabeth's dull brain cleared as she looked after her.

"Dear me, she is gone to meet him;" and then a half-smile came on her pale lips at the probable result of the meeting. "I ought to tell Mr. Beaufort, at any rate;" and she went to his study and told him.

Now, as Nuna sat waiting for her husband in the old quaint room in St. John Street, it seemed to her that one event had followed so fast on another since that meeting with Paul, that she was only waking up to reality; that which had been happening had been a hurried dream-scarcely a happy one. Mingled with the intense joy of Paul's love came the remembrance of her father's anger when he met her and her lover, or rather when he and Will Bright had come upon them suddenly in Carving's Wood Lane.

Paul had persuaded her to go there with him so as to get out of the high road, and time had gone by till evening came, and still she had stood listening to him.

After that evening all had been storm and strife for a while.

Her father and Elizabeth had said she must marry Paul; Mr. Bright was not the only person who had seen her with him in this strange clandestine manner. And so with little of previous

courtship, with a haste which had a certain chill of foreboding in it, Nuna found herself standing beside Paul at the altar, saying the words that made her his for ever. Outwardly, Elizabeth had been kind: this had been easy when the Rector yielded so easily to her will, but still Nuna cherished anger against her cousin; she had been too simple and too pre-occupied to suspect

the motive that had made Elizabeth befriend Paul's love, and so urge on the marriage, but something told her that it was not any sincere desire for her happiness. She felt bitterly, too, that Miss Matthews had destroyed all confidence between herself and her father. And now only a fortnight ago Mr. Beaufort had written to her announcing his intended marriage with Miss Matthews, and had asked her to be present at it; then Nuna's eyes had opened, and she had burst into a passion of indignant tears.

Paul tried to soothe her and to induce her to go down to Ashton. He had promised to go out sketching for a day or two, so he could not accompany her. But Nuna would not go alone, and her husband let her decide for herself. He was too careless to trouble himself much about Mr. Beaufort's marriage; he knew that her father had never been specially kind to Nuna, so perhaps it was not surprising that she should refuse to go; and then he became absorbed in arranging his little excursion and thought no more about his wife's trouble.

Nuna was very angry still. It was an anger unlikely to die out soon, it had such a root of bitterness. If she had then gone down to that root, and tried to draw up some of its clinging fibres, or at least have washed them free of bitterness with penitent tears, it might have been well for her ; unowned, thrust out of sight, was the consciousness that if she had not neglected her father by her self-indulgent, dreamy ways, he would not have needed Elizabeth, and also that she had, by her own undutiful refusal to be present at his marriage, closed the door on her father's love.

"It is an insult to my own dear

mother's memory," and Nuna hardened herself, as she thought virtuously, against any relenting.

It was a new sensation; her conscience protested, but she would not listen; and so she took the first step in that process which has done so much to mar domestic peace-she wilfully hardened her own heart.

Eight o'clock, and Paul had promised to return at five, and he had been gone three days. Oh, how could he manage to be happy away from her!

A clatter of wheels, then a ringing and a buzz of voices.

Nuna seemed to make one bound to the head of the staircase, the lower rooms were tenanted by strangers, and she was timid about going down into . the hall; but in a minute Paul came rushing upstairs, his hair all ruffled over his eyes, but not enough to hide the gladness in them.

"My own pet!" and he nearly lifted Nuna off the ground.

Oh, it was worth all the long solitary time she had been enduring to feel that she had him once more all to herself, with no one to come between themsurely this was perfect happiness! Even while the thought lingered, she felt herself suddenly released, and Paul drew a step or two away.

"O Stephen, I forgot you, I declare. Nuna! here's Stephen Pritchard, come home at last."

Nuna wished Mr. Pritchard had stayed in Italy, or anywhere away from St. John Street. How mistaken she had been, to fancy she liked this talking, self-asserting man, who positively contradicted Paul himself.

She felt cross with him and with herself for being affected by his presence. Paul looked at her; he was struck by her unusual silence, and Mr. Pritchard saw the look, and smiled.

"The honeymoon is over," he said to himself; "I expect Paul wishes he had not been in such a hurry."

"What made you so late?" Nuna roused herself to speak.

"That's right, Mrs. Whitmore, call him to account."

Paul appeared to be very busy with his gaselier. "Am I late ?" he said. Nuna felt in a moment that he was vexed.

If they had been alone, she would have put her arms round his neck and have kissed him, but she could not do this before Stephen; she looked up quickly, there was a satirical smile on Mr. Pritchard's face.

"He will think Paul and I are not happy together," she thought, in a nervous, vexed way.

"No, indeed, I am not calling Paul to account, only I was afraid some accident had happened to the train."

And suppose I hadn't come home at all?" said Paul, laughing.

Nuna laughed too, she had not the slightest fear that her husband was in earnest.

"Oh, I knew better than that, I knew you would keep your promise."

Paul turned round and looked at her; something in his face troubled Nuna.

"Well," he said, gravely, "it was a very near shave-if we had lost this train, we should have stayed all night." "Then I should have sat up till you came in !"

Paul did not answer; he thought Nuna silly to prolong this talk before Stephen Pritchard.

Nuna felt uncomfortable; she got up and began to clear the table of her work and books, to get out of the range of Mr. Pritchard's watchfulness.

Paul was a genius, but he could be silly sometimes. His artist friends had laughed at his anxiety to get home, and had said he was afraid of a lecture, and he had told himself that nothing he could do or say would ever seem wrong or vexatious to his sweet, loving wife. It was specially vexatious that she should have called him to account before such a watchful scoffer as Stephen Pritchard.

One of his abstracted fits mastered him, and but for Mr. Pritchard, the supper would have been very silent.

"I have heard from Ashton," said Nuna at last.

"From your father?"

"Well, it is a good thing over. Paul spoke carelessly; he was thinking of something else, and Nuna felt wounded.

It is very strange that men and women at any rate till bitter experience has forced them to open their eyes-rarely use the sense of their own peculiarities of disposition in interpreting their neighbours. Some of us are ready enough to decide that because we should not act in such and such a manner, therefore our fellows are incorrect for so acting; but dreamy, unobservant people, like Nuna, are somewhat blind to outward characteristics, and are apt to rouse from their reveries into a timid, frightened belief that the gravity of their companion is caused by displeasure or indifference, instead of its being more frequently the result of a pre-occupation resembling their own.

Nuna tried to talk to Mr. Pritchard, but the fear of having displeased Paul weighed down her spirits.

Her husband noticed her silence. She was tired, he thought.

"Don't you sit up, " and he rose Nuna," and lit her candle. "Stephen and I shall be late, I dare say."

There was no help for it; she had to say good night, without even a word alone to her husband.

"I shall not go to bed," she said decidedly, as soon as she had closed the double doors that shut off her room from the studio; "that hateful man can't stay here all night."

And at the same moment Pritchard was saying to Paul, "I say, old fellow, don't let Mrs. Whitmore sit up; I'm not going to bed this hour or more: come across to my rooms, they are quite close, you know, we shall be snugger there."

Paul hesitated, but he was not going to be laughed at by Pritchard.

"I'll follow you in a minute," he said, and as soon as Mr. Pritchard had departed he went to find Nuna.

"I say, darling, go to bed, and go to

When she saw her husband, Nuna had only thought of asking him not to be angry with her; but this announcement, added to his frank, cheerful manner, changed her in an instant; the only excuse to be made for her is that she had been overwrought by the separation from Paul and sorrow at her father's marriage.

"Oh, Paul," she said, reproachfully, "going away again! and I have not had you a minute to myself."

She had thrown her arms round him while she spoke, but he drew back. Men like Paul are not to be scolded into tenderness. Nuna looked up, and saw the same expression that had troubled her on his first arrival.

"I thought you were different to other women, Nuna-nobler and free from pettiness--but you are all alike; you all make this mistake of supposing that men like to be managed. There, don't be silly." He leant down and kissed the face she had hidden in her hands. "I'm only joking; there never was such a little darling, was there? Good night!" He took her into his arms and whispered tender, loving nonsense. "Get to sleep as fast as you can," he said, and he left the room.

CHAPTER XXXV.
PATIENCE'S STORY.

"GONE away!" and then Patience Coppock murmured to herself, " gone away without caring what became of me, whether I lived or died."

"Yes, mademoiselle," was the calm answer; and Patience shrank from the quiet, observant eyes fixed on her altered face, and passed on up the stairs.

"Mademoiselle will find a letter from Madame on the table in the salon, and if she requires any attendance Mademoiselle will be kind enough to tell me now."

This being a discreet hint that