know, when she has had just a little training; I'll do all I can, you may be sure.

To which Mr. Downes answered

"Thank you; yes, she is so sweettempered, so anxious to do all I wish. I don't suppose any one was ever so fortunate as myself."

"But, then," said Mrs. Winchester, when she reached home and related the foregoing conversation to her quiet, subdued husband, "you know Maurice is such a foolish, self-willed fellow; he has such an idea of his own opinion; I'm quite sure, if one only knew his wife's history, there is something in it he has no cause to be proud of. People ought to have relatives of some sort or other."

CHAPTER XLII.

AT ROGER WESTROPP'S.

MISS COPPOCK had gone up and down in life, not by the gradual turn of Fortune's wheel, but by those swifter risings and fallings of which the child reaps an early experience as he tumbles on the nursery floor, pitches headlong down a flight of stairs, or finds himself at the sudden giddy height of a swing.

Her experience had taken its complexion from these sudden transitions ; and as she had indulged, like most of her sisterhood, in much novel reading, of a highly-spiced sort, she had exaggerated and strongly-coloured opinions.

Patty laughed at her, and called her romantic; it was a profanation of the word, for there was none of the chivalry and freshness of true romance in Patience's forecastings. Intrigue, mystery, an implicit belief in the evil of human nature, composed the foundation of her fears and schemes, and the last of these was very uppermost as she stood looking at the face sketched on the canvas. Patty's daring surprised her.

"How could she have the face and bring that man here, with the risk of his wife finding her out, too? though perhaps Patty has made him promise not to tell she is capable of anything; that I believe."

Miss Coppock stood before the picture with a very dissatisfied face.

"I don't think I ought to let this go on under my eyes without speaking to Mr. Downes-no, how can I talk such nonsense? Speak to him-I'll die first." A curious twist came on the thin lips, a mixture of anger and suffering.

Her thoughts went on. Even if she could overcome her repugnance, what good would come of an appeal to Patty's husband-what chance had she of being believed? She would be dismissed, and so lose the hold which made her dismissal as she thought impossible.

If Patty had married a stranger, Patience would probably have sided with the wife against the husband, but Maurice Downes's claim was older, dearer than Patty's. The poor faded woman had at first wept bitter, scalding tears when she found herself utterly unrecognized, an object of dislike to Patty's husband, but she had learned to rejoice in this. Patty had taught Miss Coppock long ago that she must not live for herself, and now it seemed to her excited notions that she was taking a glorious revenge on her faithless lover in watching over his wife for his sake. She did not want Patty to love Mr. Downes. Patience would have stoutly denied the charge of selfishness in this, but the one drop of balm in her miserable existence lay in thinking how happy she would have made Maurice's life, if he had kept faith with her!

"He might have known, then, what a true wife can be to a husband."

Her life was far more unhappy than it had been before Patty's marriage. In Park Lane Miss Coppock felt herself an upper servant. Patty to her was simply Mrs. Downes, smiling, rarely affording an outlet for the bitter words Patience longed to speak, but as utterly, callously indifferent as though her companion had been a block of senseless wood.

"Why don't I give up; it's killing me?" said Patience, as she still stood before the canvas. "6 'Why do I care how Patty behaves to him when he takes no more notice of me than as if

I were one of the maids?—it's worse than that." She was sobbing unconsciously with intense humiliation. "I know it makes him sick to look at me; I heard him say only yesterday that ugliness was as loathsome as disease: he didn't mean me to hear." She wiped her poor eyes, shining now with tears in place of their departed brightness. "No, his nature's not as changed as all that, though her influence is enough to spoil any goodness, but I heard him say it. I'm such a fool that my ears seem to hunger for every word he speaks, and all the more because I dare not look at him; I daren't: there's no saying, if our eyes met, that he mightn't remember me."

Poor Patience! she had not changed nearly so much as Maurice Downes had. The seamed, scarred skin that masked the form of every feature, the fringeless, dull eyes, could not choke the expression of feeling as the growth of selflove and worldliness had choked the power of repentance and tenderness in the fair whiskered, perfectly dressed husband of Elinor Downes: there was no fear that he could remember Patience Clayton, the love of his youth; he had forgotten the episode altogether.

But there is no blindness in love equal to the blindness of a disappointed

woman.

"No, I can't go away," she went on. "She may not seem to care for what I say, but I am a check upon her for all that; I can keep her from making Maurice miserable, and besides "-a gleam of hope brightened her sad face"if I see things going too far with Mr. Whitmore, I'll speak to Roger Westropp himself. I'd half a mind to say something yesterday: he's neither fear nor favour to keep him back, and I can see he's not best pleased as it is with her for never going to see him. I shan't forget his face in a hurry, when I told him Mrs. Downes wished him to be considered her foster-father; when I think of the lies she must have told her husband to account for her having no relations, it makes me almost hate her."

Here again Patience exaggerated; Patty

had not been truthful, but in some ways she had kept to facts. This was the story Mrs. Downes had told her husband. Her mother had died when she was quite young; her father had not been a kind husband, had always seemed badly off, and she had lost sight of him for years; her fortune had come to her from an uncle, her only surviving relative, and till she went to school in France she had lived under the care of Roger Westropp, an old countryman. She called him her foster-father, as he was husband to the woman who had nursed her when a child. This was her story, with the superadded fact of her own creation, that she had been at a French school from childhood. If Mr. Downes had been less infatuated, if he had been in England even, he might have made a more searching inquiry. The letters of old Mr. Parkins, the Australian lawyer's agent, relative to the marriage settlement, had corroborated Patty's representations. The rank and position of her school friends showed Mr. Downes that his wife was qualified for the position he intended her to fill. The only cloud that ever came across his satisfaction was the possible reappearance of the missing father, Mr. Latimer, whom Mr. Downes imagined to be a gentlemanlike spendthrift. He had soon let Patty discover that he was just as unwilling to see Roger Westropp, the country foster father, at Park Lane, as she was to receive him there. Poverty, misfortune, and ugliness were abhorrent to Mr. Downes; he liked the sunny side of the peach, and he would not be cognizant that both sides were not sunny.

"Well, do you think it will be a likeness? you ought to be able to judge by this time."

Patience started. Mrs. Downes had come into the room, and had been looking at her for some minutes.

"I-oh, I suppose it will be like-" The moving exhortation she had planned to deliver seemed out of place in presence of this smiling, artless creature. In her soul Patience struggled to keep to her harsh estimate of Mrs. Downes, but to-day Patty's eyes were full of sweet affec

tionate sunshine, and the poor unloved woman could not refuse herself the unwonted enjoyment. Distrust in Miss Coppock was universal, not special; she was as eager to snatch at a present gratification as a child is to grasp roses in the hedge he is driven rapidly alongside of.

"As Mr. Downes says," said Patty, musingly, "it won't be easy to imitate my complexion."

Patience was accustomed to hear Mrs. Downes's special charms discussed by their owner as if they were unrivalled. Patty had a way of taking herself to pieces in talk, and appraising each detail.

"I dare say not, and yet that little likeness of your of Mr. Westropp'sgives it perfectly; by the bye," she turned round eagerly from the canvas, "I wanted to tell you I saw him yesterday, and he sent you a message." Mrs. Downes grew so red that Patience thought she was angry.

"What do you mean?"

"I couldn't help seeing him; you sent me to Chancery Lane to make those inquiries for you about old Mr. Parkins, and just as I came out of the lawyer's office I met Mr. Westropp. He caught hold of me before I'd time to turn away."

Why should you turn away from him? I am very glad to hear about him. Is he quite well?"

Patience looked at her; there was a glisten in the deep blue eyes, and the red still glowed hotly on the delicate skin, but Mrs. Downes spoke calmly.

"Either she hasn't any feeling, or she acts as well as if she was downright wicked." To Mrs. Downes she said, bluntly

"No, I don't think he's well at all; he says it is the closeness of London, and this soft change in the weather, but he's as white as a sheet, and he seems so feeble. He says you ought to have gone to see him before this, and he sent you a message, but I don't think you'll like it."

"Nonsense." Mrs. Downes pressed her lips together to keep them still. "Why should I dislike it? What did he say ?"

"Well, only don't blame me afterwards." Patience was half afraid, and yet she secretly rejoiced at the sting which she knew even Patty must feel in listening. "He said, 'You can give my dooty to Madam Downes, and tell her she've got no cause to fear her father 'll be the one to bring shame on her finery. You can tell her too as her mother were a virtuous woman, though she were poor; let Martha have a care she don't do nought to disgrace me.'"

There was a silence. Womanly feeling was still strong enough to keep Patience's eyes turned away. She did not see Mrs. Downes grow white for an instant, and then make a strong effort at indifference.

"Ah," she said, calmly, "he's angry, and he has a right to be angry. I meant to have gone before now. I'll go and see him to-day."

"You'll want me to go with you?" "Yes, I shall only drive to the railway station, and I cannot travel alone by railway."

Even now accustomed as she was to Mrs. Downes's splendour, and the observances she exacted, a remark of this kind brought a smile to the companion's pale lips, and Patty saw it, but she was too wise or too indifferent to take any notice.

Patty did not choose to show her father the style in which she lived; she was only going to see Mr. Westropp, her pensioner; it was unnecessary that her servants should see their mistress calling at such a dirty house.

She drove to the station, and then went on by train with Miss Coppock.

"Stay here till I come back," she said, when they reached the station for Bellamount Terrace; and she set forth alone.

She had dressed very quietly in black silk, with a simple bonnet, and a thick black veil, but it seemed to Patty that everyone she met looked at her.

"And mine is a face sure to be recognized. One comfort is, no one in society could live in such a den as this is."

The house in Bellamount Terrace looked as dingy and squalid as ever,

but Patty scarcely gave it a momentary glance she ran up the little garden-or rather assemblage of weeds-and the steps, and knocked.

Her heart beat in a most unusual fashion while she waited; all her acquired dignity seemed to be slipping away like sand. She felt the old petulance, the old flippancy on her tongue, when at last the door was slowly opened by her father.

"It's you, is it? Go in, will you?" Neither of them made any attempt at greeting. Patty felt, as she passed on into the small squalid room, that none of De Mirancourt's teaching would serve her here. She realized what others have realized before her, that no light is so fierce and searching as that in which we are seen and judged by the eyes of near kindred. No modern gloss will cover or atone for a once known defect of childhood.

Roger pushed a chair forward; he remained standing even after Patty's silk skirts had left off rustling.

She looked up with her irresistible smile; but though the motive that had called it forth was self, though her visit was made quite as much with a view to her own security as from natural yearning to see his face again, there was some feeling yet in the girl's heart, and she saw that in Roger's hollow eyes and sickly hue which drove the glow from her own cheeks, and brought an anxious look to her eyes.

Roger had watched her intently; his pride was soothed, and his stubborn resolve not to show pleasure at the sight of her yielded. He sat down.

"Well, lass, I'm glad to see ye, but you've taken long enough to think whether you should come or not."

"It was too bad of me, wasn't it? but you see in London there certainly is about half the time for everything one gets in the country, but I hope to come often now. Don't you pine after the country, father?"

A deep flush, and a sudden vexed biting of her under-lip, came like a cloud over Patty's sunshine; but the lovely blue eyes smiled still-as eyes will

smile to which the practice is one of habit rather than of feeling.

How easily the familiar word had slipped out; it seemed to her, in the cowed mood which Roger's self-restraint had imposed on her, that she must never risk seeing her father in Mr. Downes's presence-the word would slip out again.

Patty wished herself safe in Park Lane. Roger's smile had faded; and even while it had lasted the halfknowledge she had of her father had made her aware that he had not had his say yet, and that, unless she could fence it off by her own cleverness, she had something to hear to which it would be unpleasant to listen. She detested strife or dispute; if all the world would only keep good-tempered and smile over their disagreements, it would be so much better. It would be too absurd if her father quarrelled with her for disowning him, when it would be so much pleasanter and so much more for his own interest to keep good friends.

"Pine after the country, eh?"-Roger smiled again, but with so much sarcasm that Patty grew nervous-" No, lass, I don't think it-and even so be I was to, I shouldn't turn my back on London; I've too much to look after here."

;

"But I mean for your health." Patty had not felt so shorn of all her strength since she left Ashton. She looked pleadingly in the small restless eyes, but she found no help in them-it seemed as if her father had an intuitive knowledge of her perplexity, and was determined to enjoy it to the uttermost.

If she could only get up and go away; but she dared not do this: it might provoke the very explanation she was determined to escape from.

"My health?"-with a disagreeable laugh," you've grown mighty careful about me all of a sudden. My health is as good as it has been all these months past, Patty-I should say Mrs. Downes -I mind that's more suited to your wishes; ain't it, ma'am?"

A nightmare was pressing on Patty's

new self. Her polish, her easy smiling power of repartee, seemed held back from her by a strength she could not grapple with; but she would not submit: she strove for freedom, and the natural weapon of her childhood, her insolent petulant tongue, made itself once more heard.

"Of course it is,"—with the old toss and the pouted scarlet lips," I don't see why I shouldn't be called by my own name; Patty isn't a name at all, -it's not fit for a Christian."

Her eyes glistened with angry tears.

"Hark ye, lass,"-Roger smiled at her discomfiture; "you may do as you choose, for aught I mind, but I'll not sit here to listen to reproach cast on your dead mother. She named you Patty when you was a little un: you may be ashamed o' me, if you please; but have a care how you let me see you're ashamed o' her."

There was the old sternness in voice and look, and Patty breathed more easily: she knew the end of Roger's angry moods; it was his sarcasm that took away her wits.

"Ashamed! it's too bad to say that; as if it's likely I could be-you seem to think badly enough of me, I must say, father. I mayn't, perhaps, have been as dutiful as some children; I'm sorry; but then you know you've brought me up to hate profession and show of liking-I thought by doing what I thought you wished, I was showing the dutifulness you'd value most. You can't have everything." Her own words sounded so virtuous that Patty felt in a glow. What a good daughter she had been after all to this sordid father, who had refused to change his mean miserable ways even when she gave him means for a very different way of life. Roger looked up sharply through his frowning, shaggy eyebrows.

"Dootifulness you calls it-I don't see much dooty, Madam Downes, in payin' me back some of the hardearned coin I spent first on Watty, and then on you. By rights," he doubled his bony fist and struck his knee with it,-"the money warn't yourn at all; it

must ha' come to me in the natʼral course o' things-Watty havin' no other kin."

"I don't see that,"-Patty was growing cool and composed again,-" such things happen every day; where would be the use of making wills or of lawyers, if people always left their money in the regular way? Besides, it's much better as it is-I use the money, you would only let it rust; why, you don't nearly spend what I allow you."

Roger's pale face flushed, but Patty had no thought of wounding him; she had grown so accustomed to dependants, and also to consider her father as her pensioner, that it could never have occurred to her he might resent the allusion.

"Insolent hussy," he said to himself; "she's worse than I expected, but she shall pay for some of these airs and graces.

"That's as it may be-I spend in my own fashion fast enough: I never spent for show. As to your being ashamed to own me, I don't trouble about it, seeing it's your account, not mine, that 'ull go to-but I have a word or two I may as well say as you're here. One is "-he cleared his throat -"since you speak of what you allow me, that I don't consider the allowance over liberal for a fine lady such as you to give away. Stop"-Patty was eagerly trying to speak-"I want to hear how

you

and your husband gets on together; if you're a good wife, may be it may make up for other shortcomin's."

Roger knew that if he had chosen to change his name to Latimer, and to make himself look respectable, his daughter could not have cast him off; and yet he resented that she should have ventured to choose her own husband for herself.

"Mr. Downes and I live very happily." Patty cast down her eyes. "He is very kind, and he thinks everything I do right."

"More fool he. I tell you your mother was the best wife as breathed; but, maybe, if I'd spoiled her, she'd have turned out different. Well, lass,