But what can you do? Grown up sons, Miss
Manuel, and a little extravagant. Ah, I can't
treat myself to such a pure luxury as feeling."

Miss Manuel was looking at him steadily.
"I was sorry to hear it," she said, "very
sorry. So sudden, too. It must have been a
great trial."

"It was a blow," he said, "a trial to us all.
But, after all, we were prepared for it. She had
been ailing a long time; O dear yes! That is,"
he added, hastily, "when I say a long time, I
mean within a year. You are now in town?
Ah, so glad! After all, poor Eastport; though,
indeed, I know it brought us all our troubles.
Indeed I felt for you. Must go now. Good-
by. Morning, Mr. Speedy!"

With lip that fluttered nervously, the bright
lady looked after him as the heavy door swung
to and fro, as it were, in a rage. For a quarter of
an hour more she and Mr. Speedy talked
together; then the brougham drove away. As she
swept round the corner, she saw the figure of
Major Carter looking about cautiously. Her face
flashed up. "It is beginning. It is coming!"
she said. "In time the Lord will deliver them
all into my hands. It is written on his face."

There was something written on Major Carter's
face—at least, a different writing from the old
light and careless hand familiar to all at
Eastport. There, every day, a hundred gay little
"devices," as airy and nonsensical as the
mottoes in bon-bons, were to be read. Now, there
was a serious, "legend," written in contracted
characters. He turned away hastily when he
saw her.

She went home in a sort of elation. Life was
beginning to have a zest. Often and often there
had come great gaps and blanks, when all hope
and interest, and even consciousness of life,
had left her; when time and life and the gay
things of the gay world round her, seemed
only a long white monotonous reformatory
gallery, with barred grates and windows—as
dreary, as hopeless, as prostrating. She had
nothing to live for. She was oppressed with the
chilling blankness of loneliness. But now she
was beginning to apprehend life, and the scattered
objects of life were striking on her senses, for
she was living, breathing, and moving towards a
purpose.

As she drove up to her own door, she found a
figure standing on the steps. It was Fermor—
the outlawed Fermor, as he almost seemed to be
now. This image fitted harmoniously with all
that was in her mind. He saw her drive up with
one of his bitter "sore" smiles upon his mouth.

"I should have come a little later," he said,
"and been received with the usual answer. The
next thing, I suppose, will be, you will tell me
with your own lips that you are not at home."

"The Lord," thought the inner Miss Manuel
again, "will in full time deliver all into my
hands." But the outer Miss Manuel, leaning on
his arm to get out of her carriage, said, with
bright eyes and soft encouragement, "I can see
you are aggrieved about something. Come in.
No, I know you will not. I must be punished
and made to feel."

Fermor walked up-stairs after her. She was
never looking more dazzling than at that
moment. What she had been thinking of had sent
additional sparkles from her eyes. She was
thinking how fast the fly was coming to the web
—coming, too, of its own wish, not to be kept
out from the web—with a foolish, eagerness to
be caught. To him, this brilliance—a brilliance
set off by dress, and choice of colour in dress—
was almost confounding; and the feeling in his
mind was a secret wonder how this had never
struck him before in the old Eastport days. As
he sat opposite to her on Mr. Romaine's "low
chair," he looked and looked again, and
marvelled at what cloud had been between his eyes
and her.

He was full of his grievances, and ready with
indignant protest: but, as he looked, he began
to soften. They fell into the category of those
little outrages and insults which were a delightful
and welcome little armoury for him in
drawing-rooms.

"I am getting so used," he said, plaintively,
"to hard knocks from all sides, that nothing
comes upon me now as a surprise. I am persecuted
for justice' sake. You, of course, only
follow the crowd."

"Yes," said she, gaily, "I am now of the
world, worldly. It is the only true course.
Sentiment, scruples, delicacy, consideration, and
the rest of it, is all waste of time and unprofitable.
A la guerre, comme à la guerre. In the
world, why not as the world?"

"Just what I thought," he said. "I have
not lost my old power of judgment, though I
suppose people say it is dulled. You are now
sought and courted, and I suppose flattered.
Every one that comes, pays, I suppose, for his
welcome by some coin of this sort. You relish
it every day more and more, and do not care for
those who come unfurnished, or do not care to
furnish themselves. I am not skilled in that
sort of thing. Once, perhaps, I could do it as
well as any of them."

Her eyes fell on the ground. Her voice
became low, and soft, and plaintively musical.
"I thought you understood me. You, who know
the world by heart, should make allowance for
some of that rouge and patches which we must
all put on. Once, indeed, I knew life, and fell
into its ways, but that was long, long ago, down
at poor Eastport."

His eyes fell on the carpet too. "Ah! I
begin to think those were very happy times," he
said, sighing; "happier than will soon come
again." He did not see how she was looking at
him, nor did he know how she was thinking how
much faster Nemesis was walking than she had
calculated. "Yes," he went on, "I often think
of it—I do indeed—of your pleasant home, and
the life we spent together." (He, in fact, often
did, for there had been an excitement and