attached to it had been taken in advance. There appeared to be nothing for it but to make the best of it in one of the ordinary cars; but on my way forward I fell in with the struggler, dressing-bag in hand. "Hallo, where are you off for?" "The front cars."

"Haven't you a berth? What, all taken?"

"So it seems."

"The cars are abominable places to spend the night in, much worse than our English carriages, where you can stretch your legs at any rate, or lie down if you have luck."

"But my choice lies between staying behind or sitting up in one of them."

"Which would be a good prelude to roughing it in the West. However, through the improvidence-providence you will call it-of the optimist I can help you out of the scrape."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, it seems some friend of his was so strong on the desirability of having a whole section to oneself in a Pullman, that he went days ago-this was before he had handed over the purse, mind, and extravagantly engaged two whole sections for the pair of us. So, you see, you're destined to be comfortable, after all."

"I'm delighted to hear it, but why?"

Why, of course he and I, under the despotism of the darkey bedmaker, Occupy the two berths in one of our sections. So you just stow yourself away in the other. 'All aboard' has been called some minutes since. That's your section, number twelve, centre of the car, you see, least swinging; good night."

So saying, he pitched his bag into an upper shelf, that looked uncomfortably close to the roof of the car, and climbing carefully after it, for fear of planting his foot in the face of the optimist, who was already sound asleep below, disappeared behind the curtain.

Rejoicing at my unexpected luck, I followed my young friend's advice with no little satisfaction, and turned into the spare berth which the recklessness of the optimist had placed at his disposal. I

was awakened in due course by my boots, newly blacked, which were thrust to within an inch or two of my nose by the glossy, dark hand of the negro boy who acted as bed-maker to the car. I relieved him of my property, and peered out of my section. Vague sounds. of stirring humanity were about.

What could be the matter with my young friend in that top berth of his? A narrow opening in my curtains enabled me to contemplate his proceedings unobserved. There were evidently serious difficulties behind the curtain. The side glimpses I caught showed me the unfortunate and wellnamed struggler in the position of the letter S. He was struggling with the problem of induing his nether integuments while lying on his back in that coffin-like crib-not an easy or satisfactory process clearly, as the jerkings and contortions behind the curtain proved. Before long, however, he thrust out a dishevelled head and indignant red face, and, after a stern glance round, emerged feet foremost, and slid down to the floor. "It's too bad, I vow," he growled. "You couldn't sleep?"

"Oh, I slept well enough, thanks, for a novice. But on taking a first peep from behind my curtains just now, my eyes met those of an elderly lady, who, with an amazing disregard of all the proprieties, has been made tenant of the section opposite mine. I was fool enough to undress last night in the dark; but I can tell you, dressing on one's back in one of those confounded upper berths, without daring to protrude so much as an elbow, for fear of outraging a wakeful female's ideas of decency, is a feat that wants practice to do neatly."

"I condole heartily. We must try to get rid of our English squeamishness."

"All the same, it's a barbarous arrangement. Why don't the directors simply keep separate sleeping cars for men and women?"

"Why don't railway directors do a score of simple things? They're much the same all the world over."

CHAPTER XLVII.

COMING HOME.

LONG before Nuna expected she heard the sound of an arrival, and she knew by instinct that her husband had come back,

She made a desperate effort at calmness. "I will not reproach him," she said; "the picture will speak for itself. If I speak out, I shall get passionate and foolish, as I used to be with my father."

But it did not occur to her, in her misery, that she had usually made this same resolution to be calm and reticent before each of those unhappy disputes at the Rectory.

She had made her resolution; but the strange, wild trouble that came on her as she heard Paul's step, kept her eyes from his face as he came in. She had an instinctive dread of betraying herself.

There is no use in attempting to revise life," if I had done this at that moment, then such and such a calamity would have been spared me;" the chief events of our life are already graven for us with an ineffaceable writing. We may modify them; we may hasten or retard their coming; but from all eternity such and such joys and sorrows have been willed to our portion: only when we rail against this blind fate or destiny, or whatsoever else it may please us to name the inexorable law of being, we are apt to forget that freedom is left usfreedom to change thorns to roses, bitter to sweet-if we so strive to submit ourselves to all that is laid upon us, that our trials and griefs become at last the way we would have chosen, had such a choice been possible to poor, weak humanity.

But Nuna was far from such a goal;

and if she could have seen the beaming love in her husband's face, her undisciplined heart would have insisted that it was just that drooping of her eyelids, meant to hide agitation, which began the wretchedness of her life.

Paul was startled that she should sit there motionless. He looked round in utter amazement, and he saw Patty's portrait.

Man is probably a less irritating being than woman is; but he has usually one weakness in which he is unrivalledwhatever mischance happens, he must at once fix blame on somebody.

Paul had come home, his heart brimful of love and resolve to atone to Nuna for all he might have inflicted on her in the way of neglect; and yet, being a man, his first feeling at sight of the picture was that Nuna had been somehow to blame, or that it would not have been there at all.

He was annoyed, and he had that extremely disconcerting sensation to a selfpossessed man-he felt awkward and uncomfortable. It seemed to him that a scene was inevitable; he hated scenes. He walked past Nuna up to the picture.

Nuna's resolution fled away; her selfcontrol seemed flying after it; she felt no power of restraint left in her, and yet she could not begin a quarrel with Paul.

Even then her good angel pleaded. She was shocked by the bitterness of her own voice-the contempt of her words.

"Deceit !" Her manner stung Paul past bearing; it was a spark falling on the tinder vexation had made of his patience. "Don't talk such nonsense, Nuna. Deceit ! One would think I was a child, accountable to you for everything I do!" He had been ready to say that he had meant to tell her everything; but pride stopped the words, and made him say just the

reverse.

All the pride, too, in Nuna's nature stirred; she raised her head haughtily. "You are very unjust. I never have expected you to tell me all you do, though I believe it would not have been unusual if I had expected it; but I must feel deceived when a thing of this kind goes on for weeks without my knowledge."

"A thing of what kind? In Heaven's name what do you mean? Mayn't I paint a woman's portrait without asking your leave first?"

Paul had lost command of his temper, and he knew it; and when he looked at his wife, there was such a new unwonted sternness in her eyes, that he shrunk from her almost with dislike. Nuna saw his movement, and read in it a fresh proof of his want of love for her.

She loved Paul too dearly to think of herself, or she might have known that by standing aloof with that hard proud look she was depriving herself of all power of soothing him. If she had only thrown her arms round his neck; only shown him that, spite of all, she loved. him deeply still, Paul would have softened but Nuna was like us all; she knew her own feelings, and she forgot that Paul could not know that her face was not speaking the language of her heart; each moment her bitterness increased.

:

"Of course," she said calmly, "if you think you have acted rightly, I have nothing more to say; but I don't see that you can expect me to agree with

you, or to feel pleased with what you have done."

She spoke more quietly, but so coldly, that Paul gazed at her in surprise.

"If there's one thing I have dreaded more than another in my life," he thought, "it has been jealousy. If Nuna is turning jealous, she'll drive me mad."

He stretched out his hand as if to impose silence, and Nuna's heart swelled more proudly still.

"You have quite mistaken me”— there was a sadness in his voice that tried her firmness-" and I have still more mistaken you. Will you hear what I have to say now, or will you try and recover yourself first?"

What a curse pride is, and specially when it gets uppermost in a woman! Here were these two poor human souls striving to get closer to each other, and yet, because each mantled itself in its own dignity, getting farther asunder.

"I have nothing to recover from," said Nuna. She kept her eyes away from Paul. "It is because I am so weak he despises me," she said to herself, in the strange hallucination that jealousy will work in the steadiest mind, "and he does despise me, or he would love

me.

He shall not say I am weak now." Weak! Oh, Nuna! At the very moment when your weakness would have been to your husband the perfection of sweetness! What use in strength when you should be weakest?

Paul bowed his head: his thoughts were bitter enough. What a self-delusion he had created! He had longed so ardently for this return home,-hastened it; for what? to find the wife he dreamed that he possessed, cold, jealous, standing on her rights, as unlike the fond, devoted woman he had pictured, as his own feelings were unlike those of last night.

ing it; and next, I believe Mrs. Downes does not wish to be known as Patty Westropp. I don't blame her for this; she's a rich, fashionable woman now. She is not in our way of life, and it seemed to me useless to discuss her at all."

Paul said all this in a cold, lofty way; he felt how lame it sounded, and yet he was vexed at his wife's continued silence.

He waited a few minutes; Nuna neither spoke nor moved; then he muttered something about breakfast, took up his hat, and went out.

"What is life for, I wonder?" he said, as eager now to get away from his home as he had been to come to it. "Surely the existence of Tantalus in the myth was a fair representation of what life has held for me."

And then he told himself it was all his own fault; that life was for men that which each made it for himself; that if he had not believed in women, and invested them with qualities of which they were incapable, he would not have been disappointed; and in the midst of this scepticism as to earthly bliss came the memory of his mother's loving, unselfish nature, and he sighed.

"I did not know what she was while I had her. I knew nothing of women then; they seemed to me far off, like a band of angels, almost too good to be loved even.'

"

CHAPTER XLVIII.

A COMMAND.

THE sittings for the unconscious woeworking picture had spread over a much longer period than they seemed to occupy; possibly, the time had passed more quickly with Paul Whitmore than it had with Mrs. Downes-for Time has a knack of flying with artists; they seem always, to themselves, to progress so slowly.

The last fortnight of June had been singularly oppressive; there had been no rain for weeks, and the clouds were evidently sultry, and hung about of evenings in heavy masses, puffing out

a sulphureous breath, as if they meant shortly to let folks below know what was the sort of storm brewing up behind their shelter.

Roger had grown feebler and feebler; and now he lay on his comfortless bed, awaiting the arrival of Miss Coppock. His face had that unnatural hue which paleness produces on a sun-burnt skin; but there was a blue tinge on his lips, and a sunken extinguished look in his eyes, which told a beholder that the flame of life had got low in that wiry body stretched out on the bed.

He was restless with fever and impatience; yet, true to his restrained nature, he kept still; his long gaunt limbs showing through the scanty bedcovering like those of some recumbent effigy in stone.

"She'll come," he muttered; "I knows the ways of her." He smiled, and the effect was ghastly; for the smile did not go beyond his lips. "I saw that day in the street she'd be willing to do just what she thought Patty might mislike; they've fallen out, I take it. Well, it seldom answers for mistress and maid to change places; and that's about the case with Miss Coppock and Patty."

Here the door was softly opened, and Patience came in.

She came up to the bedside, rustling her silk skirts, and speaking in the highpitched artificial voice which seemed to her to be a sign of breeding; but the ashen face, the faded eyes, the aspect as of a shadow cast by a coming presence, made her words falter as they came, and then cease altogether.

Roger moved his eyes to her face, and kept them fixed there. A strong expression of repugnance came over him as he noticed a new unreal bloom on Miss Coppock's cheeks.

"Old fool!" he muttered, "is she going in to rival Patty in looks? She weren't comely ever, but now she don't look wholesome."

"I'm so sorry," Patience began, finding he made no answer to her first greeting. Roger's eyebrows had lowered, and he looked up at her through the thick grey thatch.

"Are you, ma'am? I ought most like to say, I thank you. Why should you be sorry, Miss Coppock?"

"Dear Mr. Westropp, what a question!" Patience felt nervous at his new tone towards her; her affectation came back, and she had her high voice again. "Surely mere common feeling makes any one sorry to see a fellow-creature suffer; but, besides that, I consider you quite an old friend, and the father of dear Mrs. Downes, too. Why, there are such abundant reasons."

"Be there?" He lay looking at her with a hard inquiry in his eyes; it seemed to Patience he had sent for her only to gibe, and that she had better go

away.

"I'm sure, Mr. Westropp, if I'd known

"Then it were just for love of me and of Martha," he interrupted her, "that you came, eh, ma'am? were it, indeed? I'm afeared I don't feel as thankful as I ought; and did you think I sent for you for the pleasure of looking at you, ma'am?"

"Good gracious, Mr. Westropp !"and then she stopped, frightened into a sort of quailing submission by the unexpected energy of Roger's words, and the kindling of his sunken eyes.

"Listen, if you please, ma'am-for much talking don't suit me, I ain't the strength for it-don't let Patty come a-nigh me; if I go, she'll be glad enough, there'll be no fear left then of my turning up to disgrace her, but I don't want her here beforehand. I sent for you, ma'am, to tell me where Miss Nuna bides in London."

Patience started; she thought he was wandering.

"My dear Mr. Westropp, why should you trouble yourself at such a time about Mrs. Whitmore? I'll do anything for you that is to be done; only tell me, please, what you'd like. I think you ought to have a better nurse than that old woman."

"Very like you do; perhaps I do too; but don't you put trouble on yourself as you've no call to. I put one trust in you, ma'am, and you failed me. I asked you to keep Patty from spendthrift,

wasteful ways, and, instead of that, why you axially help spend my money -yes, my money you know well enough it were mine by honest right. Look at your silks and your flouncins;" he grew more vehement as he felt his strength leaving him; "you've got my property on your back, that's how you kep' faithful to your promise."

His last words were thick and choked; and he lay still, panting and labouring for breath.

Patience had no experience of illness in others; Roger's anger and his exhaustion frightened her equally; she felt he ought not to be left to die there alone, and yet she shrank from staying beside him.

"I shall tell Patty he's ill," she said to herself: "there's no use in listening to his raving; she's his own daughter, and she ought to see after him."

She was not looking at Roger; she thought his eyes were still closed, and she moved like a cat towards the door.

"Stay where you are," he spoke sternly, he knew that fear would keep her stationary; "why do you go before you know what you was wanted for?"

"I beg your pardon,"-Patience was afraid to tell the truth,-"I was only going to tell your nurse you were ill."

Roger lay looking at her curiously, almost with a smile on his face.

"Women 'ull all lie if they can get the chance," he said. "I ain't got a nurse, and you warn't going farther down nor the street-door. Go there, and welcome; but listen to me fust. Find your way to Miss Nuna's house, and tell her I bide here, and I want her,-quick too." He saw refusal in Patience's face, and he raised his hand warningly. "There bean't overmuch that I believes in," he went on, "but I've heerd a dyin' person's curse ain't a safe thing to have laid on I'll lay mine on you if you don't do as I bid ye."

one.

"My goodness!" Miss Coppock was alarmed out of all her gentility. "Whatever are you thinking about? Of course I will. Lor', Mr. Westropp, don't be so dreadful, don't; don't stare at me like that; oh, good heavens! he's dying."