didn't matter what—a vent. The worst of it
was, too, that Gabrielle caught the infection,
and, after resisting as long as she could, went
into fits also. Miss Carrington became on the
instant a perfect monument of gravity, and this
made the other two so much worse, that it
seemed as if they would never recover
themselves. It soon became painful to both of them,
but still there was no stopping it. They left
off, and began again. They tried to talk, but
to no purpose. They even, as each confessed
to the other afterwards, thought over all their
troubles and sources of anxiety—of which,
Heaven knows, they had enough—but, strange
to say, even that was of no use, but seemed, if
anything, to make them laugh more than ever.

Now such laughter as this generally, if not
always, occurs at the wrong moment, and the
very feeling that it is so makes it the more
uncontrollable. This was certainly not the right
season for such mirth. Miss Carrington was
sitting by, as has been said, a monument of
gravity, and her colleague was standing behind
her chair erect and solemn. Each fresh burst
of laughter was evidently regarded by both as a
fresh insult, while, so far from being infected by
it, their gravity increased every moment.

At length Miss Carrington condescended to
ask her attendant what Mr. and Mrs. Penmore
were laughing at.

"It is such a preposterous piece of ill luck,"
stammered Gilbert as well as he could, for the
fit was not over. He was now engaged in sawing
off a sort of flake of what is called white
meat from each side of the breast-bone. One
of these, when they were at last amputated, he
sent to his cousin, and the other to his wife.
Then he went to work heroically at a leg on his
own account—a great, stringy, scaly, black leg.

"I cannot possibly cut this," said Miss
Carrington, abandoning her flake after a single
ineffectual attempt to cut a piece off it.

"Don't attempt it, miss," urged the lovely
Cantanker; "you was to partake of nothing,
you know, but what was easy of digestion."

"It is very unfortunate," began Gabrielle,
still twitching a little with suppressed laughter.

"It is, indeed," replied Miss Carrington;
"one gets nothing to eat. There must be some
means of knowing whether a fowl is fit to eat
or not before it comes to table."

"It is very difficult to tell. I thought this
looked quite a fine one; but I don't think I
shall be taken in again."

There was a pause here broken by nothing
but the sound of Penmore's knife coming into
violent collision with his plate, as the weapon
glanced off from impregnable positions in the
neighbourhood of the drumstick.

"Don't you think that it would be possible for
you to get a better cook?" suggested Miss
Carrington, after a time.

"I am afraid we could hardly afford it," said
Gabrielle, and then she added, "just yet," with
an eye to futurity.

There was another pause after this, disturbed
by the same music as before. "When it had
lasted some time, it was once more broken by
Miss Carrington.

"I really—had—no—idea," she said, as if it
had just occurred to her for the first time,
"how poor you were."

"We don't complain," said Gilbert, trying
to speak cheerfully, though he felt rather
indignant. "We don't expect first-rate cookery or
first-rate attendance. We intend to attain to
both in due time, don't we, Gabrielle? and in
the mean while we wait with such patience as we
have at command." Penmore looked across at
his wife, and saw that she was fuming under
his cousin's allusion to their poverty.

"But it really was such a very courageous
thing—in both of you, I mean, of course—to
go and set up a household without the means,
and against everybody's consent. I really quite
admire it. It was romantic, and there is so
little romance now-a-days."

"It was courageous on somebody's part, though
not on mine, that I can see," said Gilbert; and
he looked encouragingly across at his wife, who
was keeping down her indignation at the turn
which the conversation had taken, with difficulty.
She smiled at him, but it was through
her tears.

This determination on the part of Penmore
to stick to his colours, and his entire indifference
to her suggestions, enraged Miss Carrington
to fury pitch.

"Oh, but I hold that it was courageous and
romantic too," she said, still with the same
sneer, " because you might have had all sorts of
opportunities, you know—"

She got no further. Gabrielle had controlled
herself, and fought against herself thus far with
all her might. But this last was too much.
This insinuation, before her too, was more than
she could bear. We have said that there was
West Indian blood in her veins, and that,
although she was so gentle and affectionate, that
blood could at last be roused. It tingled now
in every vein:

"For shame—for shame!" she cried, hastily
rising, and flying to her husband's side. "You
must be wicked, worse than wicked, to say such
words. Such hints come ill from any woman's
lips, and worst of all from yours—yours, that
would have given such a glad assent, if Gilbert
—my Gilbert, had but spoken to you the words
which he spoke to me."

"Hush, Gabrielle—hush, my pet. It is not
worth while—"

"No, Gilbert, my darling, let me speak. You
don't know her, and how she's always trying to
hint at what I've said. It was for you she
came here. I see it all now. You cannot ask
me to bear such infamy, or even to check any
longer the anger which I feel. Oh, she is too
wicked—too wicked to live."

And the girl sank down on her knees beside
her husband, bursting into an agony of tears.

Gilbert drew her towards him, and tried to
quiet her; but the tempest was wild and sudden
as the storms which rage in the seas where the
girl was born, and the calm was still far off.