flagged stone passage, and that lady, eschewing
any preliminary ceremony of knocking at the
door, burst into the little parlour with all her
own peculiar vigour.

For a minute or so she stood stock still, and
stared around her. Mabel was stitching away
placidly, and Dooley remained curled up in the
window-sill, half hidden behind his broad picture-
book.

"How d'ye do, Miss Fluke?" said Mabel,
looking up. "Pray sit down."

"Why, goodness me, Mabel," cried Miss
Fluke, with a gasp occasioned partly by
surprise and partly by the breathlessness
consequent upon the rapid pace she had come at,
"is that you?"

"Yes," said Mabel, rising to bring forward a
chair for Miss Fluke, and then resuming her
own. "Yes, it is I. Won't you sit down?"

Among Miss Fluke's many admirable
qualities, that of a quick and accurate perceptive
faculty could not be counted. She did not
comprehend the situation with the rapid
intuition which would have enabled some women
to see their way at a glance, but continued to
stare about her with an air of bewilderment.
"Where's your mother?" she said at last,
abruptly.

"Mamma is in her own room."

"In her own room? But she must have
been here this minute, for there's her work
with the needle half stuck in it." Miss Fluke
held up a long strip of muslin triumphantly, and
looked at Mabel as though she had just detected
her in some attempt to deceive. Miss Fluke
was very prone to suppose that people uttered
deliberate untruths, and to rejoice openly in
their fancied detection.

"She was here, certainly," rejoined Mabel;
"but Betty saw you coming, and gave us warning,
and then mamma went away to her room."

Miss Fluke stared at Mabel for a second or
two, with eyes so wide open that it seemed
as if she would never be able to shut them
again.

"I said I would tell you," proceeded Mabel,
in the same unmoved voice, "that mamma did
not feel strong enough to see you to-day. She
would be sorry, I know, if you thought her
unkind or discourteous."

"I never heard of such a thing!" said Miss
Fluke, emphatically. "Never! I have come
here, at great inconvenience (leaving Louisa to
take the afternoon practice for next Sabbath's
hymns), expressly to see your mother, and now
your mother shuts herself up in her own room.
I don't understand what your mother means by
it!"

"I'm very sorry, Miss Fluke, but mamma
cannot see you to-day. If you will entrust me
with any message, I will deliver it."

After a pause of consideration, during which
the silence was only broken by the
occasional click of Mabel's thimble as she busily
plied her work, Miss Fluke untied her bonnet-
strings and dropped into the chair with a violent
concussion.

"Well," she said, "since I am here, I will
endeavour to improve the occasion."

"Suppose you begin by having something to
eat after your walk, Miss Fluke," said Mabel,
demurely.

"Not for the world, Mabel," returned Miss
Fluke, with great solemnity. "I am thinking
of matters which concern the soul, and not the
body. And besides:"  with still more impressive
emphasis: "I ain't at all hungry."

Mabel could not for the life of her resist a
smile. "That is an excellent reason for not
eating," she observed.

"Mabel," said Miss Fluke, suddenly; "do
you know what has become of the child
Cordelia?"

"Become of her?"

"Yes; she and her father and her brother
have left New Bridge street, and gone away,
nobody knows where."

"Is that all? You startled me. I feared
that some harm had befallen poor Corda. No;
indeed I do not know where they are. How
should I know?"

"Because you have been in communication
with them; because Mrs. Hutchins knows that
you wrote to the man Trescott, and that he
answered your letter," rejoined Miss Fluke,
with her detective air. "What do you say to
that, Mabel?"

"I say nothing to that, Miss Fluke."

"You say nothing?"

"Nothing."

This reply was so totally unexpected, that
Miss Fluke could do nothing but stare at
Mabel, open-mouthed. Again there was a
long silent pause. But though Miss Fluke
might be astonished, it was not in the power of
any mortal to quell her energy. So, baffled on one
point, she returned to the. attack on another.

"And is it really true," she said, shaking her
head violently, "is it really true, this dreadful,
shocking, awful news that I hear about you,
Mabel?"

The tone of her voice was so loud and
menacing, that Dooley left his place at the window,
and crept up close to Mabel, as if in expectation
of a personal attack on the part of Miss Fluke,
from which he intended to protect his sister.

"I heard something of this from Mrs.
Hutchins, but I could not bring myself to believe
it. I positively could not, so I came to Hazlehurst
the other day to wring the truth from
Mrs. Saxelby. What she is about, or how she
can reconcile it to her conscience to allow such
a thing, / don't know."

"Mamma's dood, an' oo're naughty," said
Dooley. "Oo made mamma c'y."

"She may well hide herself from me,"
pursued Miss Fluke, heedless of the interruption,
and now in the full tide of her angry eloquence.
"She may well be ashamed to look an old friend
in the face:—not to mention the daughter of a
minister of the Gospel."

The colour was mounting to Dooley's forehead,
and he kept his eyes fixed unwinkingly on
Miss Fluke's face.