would disgrace him, let alone any nearer tie!"
said Mrs. Broughton, with strange savageness
of manner, the velvet withdrawn and the claws
out. "Tell him that a drunken dissipated
fellow like that has the right to come to his
house and call his wife 'dear,' and get money
out of her, or out of him, on the threat that he
will claim them as his dear relations some fine
day before all the world? Do you think I am
mad, child?"

"But why did you never tell me about this
uncle before, mamma?— and why did you not tell
Gordon the truth before he married me?" cried
Laura, with growing energy.

"Because, my dear, I have ears of only the
ordinary length, and I am not quite so absurd
as you seem to think me," answered Mrs.
Broughton, quite her old charming self again.
She never kept her passion for long; it did not
pay, she used to say, and self-control was not
difficult to her. "It was too good a chance to
throw away on a quixotic sentiment of that
kind!"

"If I had only known it!" exclaimed the girl,
bursting into tears.

"Ah, yes, if you had; but then, you see, you
didn't, Lal, and I never meant you should; and,
what is more, you never would, if your good-
for-nothing uncle had not so wickedly tracked
me down."

"I will tell Gordon all honestly this very
night, and then he can do as he likes about
living with me any longer," said Laura, with
fresh weeping. "It is only right that he should
know."

"And if you do, young lady," said Mrs.
Broughton, clutching her arm with all the force
of her small bony hand, "I will not kill you,
but I will kill myself. Mind that, Laura! and
you know I never make vague threats, or say
what I don't mean. And not only that, but
Gordon will hate you, and very likely divorce
you, and then you will go about the world without
a home or a character, and with a ruined
husband and a murdered mother on your
conscience."

And poor simple Laura believed her, and did
not tell her husband of the good old Scotch
family that she, his wife, had an uncle who
looked like a half-caste and spoke like a horse-
jockey.

When the week's accounts came to be
overlooked, for Gordon chose to see into all this
kind of thing for himself, wishing to train his
young wife into exactness and care, there was
the deficit of two pounds staring him in the
face. Laura had been too honest to write down
one as "Loan to the laundress man," according
to her mother's suggestion. If, overborne by
fear, she had consented passively to this deception
in chiefest part for her mother's sake, she
could not bring herself to do so actively. Her
partnership with sin should at least be only
negative, she said to herself; as if sin can ever
be merely negative!

"Ah, what is this?" said Gordon. "Two
pounds seventeen and sixpence out of five
pounds, leaves two-two-six to be accounted
for. I see the two-six, but where's the two,
Lalla?"

"I don't know, Gordon," stammered Laura.

"One pound, remember, for the
washerwoman's man," chimed in Mrs. Broughton, from
the sofa, where she was making a scarlet
smoking-cap for her son-in-law.

"Oh yes? well! then that leaves one-two-
six. Now, little one, the one?"

Laura trembled, but did not speak; she only
fumbled in her pockets, and dived into her
purse, looking into the little divisions for postage
stamps and receipt stamps and all manner of
queer corners, with a kind of instinctive
hypocrisy, poor little soul, more to gain time than
anything else.

"Why, you naughty child, do you mean to
say you have actually been losing a whole golden
guinea?" said Mrs. Broughton, getting up from
the sofa and coming to them. "Let me see
the book, dear boy; perhaps I can help in
unravelling this knotty thread. I have been
out shopping with the child every day, and
I flatter myself I have a better memory
than she has, though I am a few years the
elder of the two," laughing and shaking her
curls.

"It is all right in the book, mamma," said
Laura, trying to take it out of her hand; but
her mother pinched her fingers in it, playfully,
and told her to hold her tongue, she was a
naughty bad child, and must be whipped. "Well
now, let me see," she said, in a musing kind of
voice. "Cheesemonger, seven and sixpence;
that's right, I think— is it, though? no, it isn't.
Why, Laura, there's the fowl! You have not
put that down three and sixpence, you know
— so horribly dear at this end of London! shamefully
dear, Gordon!— fowl, three and sixpence
for your book, Laura; that's sixteen and six-
pence only. Oh, I'll make it all right, you'll
see," in a playful kind of triumph.

"But the fowl was got at the cheesemonger's,
and is in the week's amount," said Laura,
interrupting her as she was writing in the house-
book.

"My precious lamb, don't be a goose!" said
Mrs. Broughton, squinting very much. "Why,
don't you remember the young woman with the
scarlet ribbon in her hair, and my saying how
ridiculous of such people?— scarlet ribbons,
indeed, in a shop! The love of dress is getting
quite a national sin, Gordon, quite!— don't you
think so? Now then, what else? Gloves, two
shillings. Why, child, they were three and
threepence! What have you. been dreaming
of? who gets gloves at less than three and
threepence now-a-days? Three and threepence
that is fourteen and threepence, isn't it?"

"No, no, mamma; they were not indeed,"
urged Laura.

"Why, Laura, you would argue me out of
my own existence, I do believe," said Mrs.
Broughton, laving down book and pencil and
looking steadily at her daughter. "Do you
think I don't remember such things better than