with so much care, poured it out upon the bare
wooden floor, and smeared it about with her foot.

A fortnight later, when no news had come
from Theresa for many weeks, a poor chaise
was seen from the castle windows lumbering
slowly up the carriage road to the gate. No
one thought much of it; perhaps it was some
friend of the housekeeper's; perhaps it was
some humble relation of Mrs. Duke's (for many
such had found out their cousin since her
marriage). No one noticed the shabby carriage
much, until the hall-porter was startled by the
sound of the great bell pealing, and, on opening
wide the hall-doors, saw standing before him the
Mademoiselle Victorine of old days—thinner,
sallower, in mourning. In the carriage sat
Theresa, in the deep widow's weeds of those
days. She looked out of the carriage-window
wistfully, in beyond Joseph, the hall-porter.

"My father!" she cried eagerly, before
Victorine could speak. " Is Sir Mark—well?"
(" alive" was her first thought, but she dared
not give the word utterance.)

"Call Mr. Duke!" said Joseph, speaking to
some one unseen. Then he came forward.
"God bless you, Miss! God bless you! And this
day of all days! Sir Mark is well—leastways
he's sadly changed. Where's Mr. Duke? Call
him! My young lady's fainting!"

And this was Theresa's return home. None
ever knew how much she had suffered since she
had left home. If any one had known, Victorine
would never have stood there dressed in
that mourning. She put it on, sorely against her
will, for the purpose of upholding the lying
fiction of Theresa's having been a happy
prosperous marriage. She was always indignant if
any of the old servants fell back into the once
familiar appellation of Miss Theresa. " The
countess," she would say, in lofty rebuke.

What passed between Theresa and her father
at that first interview no one ever knew.
Whether she told him anything of her married
life, or whether she only soothed the tears he
shed on seeing her again, by sweet repetition
of tender words and caresses—such as are the
sugared pabulum of age as well as of infancy—
no one ever knew. Neither Duke nor his wife
ever heard her allude to the time she had passed
in Paris, except in the most cursory and superficial
manner. Sir Mark was anxious to show her that
all was forgiven, and would fain have displaced
Bessy from her place as lady of the castle, arid
made Theresa take the headship of the house, and
sit at table where the mistress ought to be. And
Bessy would have given up her onerous dignities
without a word; for Duke was always more
jealous for his wife's position than she herself was,
but Theresa declined to assume any such place in
the household, saying, in the languid way which
now seemed habitual to her, that English
housekeeping, and all the domestic arrangements of an
English country house were cumbrous and wearisome
to her; that if Bessy would continue to act
as she had done hitherto, and would so forestal
what must be her natural duties at some future
period, she, Theresa, should be infinitely obliged.

Bessy consented, and in everything tried to
remember what Theresa liked, and how affairs
were ordered in the old Theresa days. She
wished the servants to feel that " the countess"
had equal rights with herself in the management
of the house. But she, to whom the
housekeeper takes her accounts—she in whose
hands the power of conferring favours and
privileges remains de facto—will always be
held by servants as the mistress; and Theresa's
claims soon sank into the background. At first,
she was too broken-spirited, too languid, to care
for anything but quiet rest in her father's
companionship. They sat sometimes for hours hand
in hand; or they sauntered out on the terraces,
hardly speaking, but happy; because they were
once more together, and once more on loving
terms. Theresa grew strong during this time
of gentle brooding peace. The pinched pale
face of anxiety lined with traces of suffering,
relaxed into the soft oval; the light came into
the eyes, the colour came into the cheeks.

But, in the autumn after Theresa's return,
Sir Mark died; it had been a gradual decline of
strength, and his last moments were passed in
her arms. Her new misfortune threw her back
into the wan worn creature she had been when
she first came home, a widow, to Crowley Castle;
she shut herself up in her rooms, and allowed
no one to come near her but Victorine. Neither
Duke nor Bessy was admitted into the darkened
rooms, which she had hung with black cloth
in solemn funereal state.

Victorine's life since her return to the castle
had been anything but peaceable. New powers
had arisen in the housekeeper's room. Madam
Brownlow had her maid, far more exacting than
Madam Brownlow herself; and a new
housekeeper reigned in the place of her who was
formerly but an echo of Victorine's opinions.
Victorine's own temper, too, was not improved
by her four years abroad, and there was a
general disposition among the servants to resist
all her assumption of authority. She felt her
powerlessness after a struggle or two, but
treasured up her vengeance. If she had lost power
over the household, however, there was no
diminution of her influence over her mistress.
It was her device at last that lured the countess
out of her gloomy seclusion.

Almost the only creature Victorine cared for,
besides Theresa, was the little Mary Brownlow.
What there was of softness in her woman's
nature, seemed to come out towards children;
though, if the child had been a boy instead of a
girl, it is probable that Victorine might not have
taken it into her good graces. As it was, the
French nurse and the English child were capital
friends; and when Victorine sent Mary into the
countess's room, and bade her not be afraid,
but ask the lady in her infantine babble to come
out and see Mary's snow-man, she knew that the
little one, for her sake, would put her small hand
into Theresa's, and thus plead with more
success, because with less purpose, than any one
else had been able to plead. Out came Theresa,
colourless and sad, holding Mary by the hand.