is which. I've got to remember which is which
to-morrow morning. Bless you, the captain
don't shave himself! He had me taught. I
shave him. I do his hair, and cut his nails—
he's awfully particular about his nails. So he is
about his trousers. And his shoes. And his
newspaper in the morning. And his breakfasts,
and lunches, and dinners, and teas——" She
stopped, struck by a sudden recollection, looked
about her, observed the tattered old book on the
floor, and clasped her hands in despair. "I've
lost the place!" she exclaimed, helplessly. "Oh,
mercy, what will become of me! I've lost the
place."

"Never mind," said Magdalen; "I'll soon find
the place for you again."

She picked up the book, looked into the pages,
and found that the object of Mrs. Wragge's
anxiety was nothing more important than an
old-fashioned Treatise on the Art of Cookery,
reduced under the usual heads of Fish, Flesh,
and Fowl, and containing the customary series
of receipts. Turning over the leaves, Magdalen
came to one particular page, thickly studded
with little drops of moisture, half dry.
"Curious!" she said. "If this was anything but a
cookery-book, I should say somebody had been
crying over it."

"Somebody?" echoed Mrs. Wragge, with a
stare of amazement. "It isn't somebody—it's
Me. Thank you kindly, that's the place sure
enough. Bless you, I'm used to crying over it!
You'd cry too, if you had to get the captain's
dinners out of it. As sure as ever I sit down
to this book, the Buzzing in my head begins
again. Who's to make it out? Sometimes, I
think I've got it, and it all goes away from me.
Sometimes, I think I haven't got it, and it all
comes back in a heap. Look here! Here's what
he's ordered for his breakfast to-morrow:—
'Omelette with Herbs. Beat up two eggs with
a little water or milk, salt, pepper, chives, and
parsley. Mince small.'—There! mince small!
How am I to mince small, when it's all mixed up
and running? 'Put a piece of butter the size
of your thumb into the frying-pan.'—Look at
my thumb, and look at yours! whose size does
she mean? 'Boil, but not brown.'—If it mustn't
be brown, what colour must it be? She won't
tell me; she expects me to know, and I don't.
'Pour in the omelette.'—There! I can do that.
'Allow it to set, raise it round the edge; when
done, turn it over to double it.'—Oh, the
numbers of times I turned it over and doubled it in
my head, before you came in to-night! 'Keep it
soft; put the dish on the frying-pan, and turn it
over.' Which am I to turn over—oh mercy, try
the cold towel again, and tell me which—the
dish, or the frying-pan?"

"Put the dish on the frying-pan," said
Magdalen; "and then turn the frying-pan over.
That is what it means, I think."

"Thank you kindly," said Mrs. Wragge. "I
want to get it into my head; please say it
again."

Magdalen said it again.

"And then turn the frying-pan over,"
repeated Mrs. Wragge, with a sudden burst of
energy. "I've got it now! Oh, the lots of
omelettes all frying together in my head; and all
frying wrong. Much obliged, I'm sure. You've
put me all right again: I'm only a little tired
with talking. And then turn the frying-pan,
then turn the frying-pan, then turn the frying-
pan over. It sounds like poetry, don't it?''

Her voice sank, and. she drowsily closed her
eyes. At the same moment, the door of the
room below opened, and the captain's mellifluous
bass notes floated up stairs, charged with the
customary stimulant to his wife's faculties.

"Mrs. Wragge!" cried the captain. "Mrs.
Wragge!"

She started to her feet at that terrible
summons. "Oh, what did he tell me to do?" she
asked distractedly. "Lots of things, and I've
forgotten them all!"

"Say you have done them, when he asks you,"
suggested Magdalen. "They were things for
me—things I don't want. I remember all that
is necessary. My room is the front room, on
the third floor. Go down stairs, and say I am
coming directly."

She took up the candle, and pushed Mrs.
Wragge out on the landing. "Say I am coming
directly," she whispered again—and went
upstairs by herself to the third story.

The room was small, close, and very poorly
furnished. In former days, Miss Garth would
have hesitated to offer such a room to one of the
servants, at Combe-Raven. But it was quiet; it
gave her a few minutes alone; and it was
endurable, even welcome, on that account. She
locked herself in; and walked mechanically,
with a woman's first impulse in a strange
bedroom, to the rickety little table, and the dingy
little looking-glass, She waited there for a
moment, and then turned away again with
weary contempt. "What does it matter how
pale I am?" she thought to herself, "Frank
can't see me—what does it matter now!"

She laid aside her cloak and bonnet, and sat
down to collect herself. But the events of the
day had worn her out. The past, when she tried
to remember it, only made her heart ache. The
future, when she tried to penetrate it, was a
black void. She rose again, and stood by the
uncurtained window—stood looking out, as if
there were some hidden sympathy for her own
desolation in the desolate night.

"Norah!" she said to herself, tenderly; "I
wonder if Norah is thinking of me? Oh, if I
could be as patient as she is! If I could only
forget the debt we owe to Michael Vanstone!"

Her face darkened with a vindictive despair,
and she paced the little cage of a room
backwards and forwards, softly. "No: never till the
debt is paid!" Her thoughts veered back again
to Frank. "Still at sea, poor fellow; farther
and farther away from me; sailing through the