song after song: her husband listening as he
leaned back in his easy-chair to the sweet voice
which had always seemed to him the perfection of
melody. Then lsott summoned them to supper,
and would allow nobody but herself to wait on
her master and mistress that night.

"This room looks out at the back, of
course," said Mrs. Denbigh, as they returned to
the drawing-room after their meal was over.
"How many years have passed since I was in it
last!" She drew the window-curtain and looked
out."How weird and strange the garden looks!"
she said to her husband, who had not followed
her; "all the bushes standing up like so many
ghosts in their white shrouds! And that is
the Abbot's Pool, I suppose—that dark spot
under the tree? It looks strange to me seen
from here."

She drew the curtain with some exclamation
about the cold, and came to her husband's side,
shivering.

"You have caught cold. You are ill, Elsie.
Do you feel faint?"

"Oh no; something seemed to strike me
cold in a moment. Isott would say that some
one was walking over my grave."

"Sit down," he said, and drew a chair to the
fire, adding, in his quick professional manner,
"never neglect a shiver. Are you warmer?
You are sure? Let me feel your hand again."

"Quite well now. I think the old Abbot's
Pool Ghost must have had some idea of
appearing to me, do you know? I am glad he
thought better of it, and didn't. You can't
think how strange I felt for a moment—quite
suddenly—as I was looking at that gloomy
place."

"It is a gloomy place," he said, still chafing
her hands. "Some of these days we'll leave
it far away, Elsie. There! I've put some
warmth into these poor little chilled fingers at
last."

To hide some vague feeling of discomfort
which still hung about her, she turned to a table
where several wedding presents and other ornaments
were arranged, and took up a basket of
old-fashioned card filagree, in which a number
of rolled papers, pink, blue, and yellow, stood
up like soldiers at drill.

"What a kind old-fashioned thought of old
Miss Ducane's," she said, smiling. "Have you
seen her present to me, Philip—a set of Shakespeare
characters? Shall I draw and try my
fate? Though it is rather late in the day for
that." Laughing, she drew out a pink paper,
but her countenance changed as she read it, and
she handed it to her husband, saying: "I don't
think they should put anything so painful and
horrid as that!"

It was the sentence from Richard the Third:

Have not to do with him: beware of him:
Sin, Death, and Hell have set their marks on him,
And all their ministers attend on him.

"Tear it up," said Philip Denbigh, curtly.

"But they are all arranged in order: it will
spoil the set."

"Then the set must be spoilt. Tear up the
paper."

Elsie had never heard that tone of command
before, and she wondered to see how
his eyebrows were drawn together until they
nearly met, and how he watched her obedient
fingers, as if she could not tear the offending
paper into morsels small enough.

When it was done, he took up the heap of
letters awaiting him, and became buried in their
contents; but while Elsie moved softly about,
accustoming herself to the new room and the
new life, she now and then met his eyes, fixed
on her with a look she could not understand,
and which was instantly withdrawn when their
glances met. She resolved to put the obnoxious
present out of sight next morning: nor did she
feel quite happy until he had finished reading his
letters, and had spoken to her again in his usual
voice and manner.

On the following morning a thaw had set in.
Everything was dripping and dropping, and
when Mr. Denbigh mounted his horse, after
breakfast, to go on his rounds, he recommended
his wife not to set foot outside the door all day.
She promised to obey, unless it should turn
out temptingly fine; and during the morning
was fully occupied; for old Isott seized
upon her, and insisted on her undergoing a
display of the contents of every drawer, closet,
and cupboard, and of the inventories thereunto
belonging. This got over at last, she ate her
solitary luncheon, and after that found plenty
to do in arranging her possessions, so that it
was not until late in the afternoon that she came
into her drawing-room to see that the fire was
bright and ready for her husband's return.
It struck her that the empty flower-vases
looked dreary, and wanted a dash of colour to
set off their whiteness; the sun shining in at
the moment, she hastily put on cloak, and hat,
and clogs, and sallied out to gather some sprays
of holly, of which plenty grew on the banks of
the Abbot's Pool.

Down the slippery garden walk she went
with careful steps, and up the green bank, more
slippery still, which overhung the deep hollow
where the half-frozen waters lay. A shower of
melting snow fell from a bush as she drew a
bough down towards her; and as she bent
forward, shaking off the drops from her cloak and
hair, she saw something glistening in the wet
grass at her feet. She stooped to pick it up,
and it was a ring—a ring of curious
workmanship, with a ruby set in it. The sight was
a strange one to her. Just such a ring had been
one of the few ornaments left her by her mother,
and she had given it to her first husband on the
very evening when they wished each other
that sad long good-bye. The coincidence
was a strange one, she thought, and, with a
thrill of superstitious alarm, she remarked how
exact a resemblance it was; the shape and size
of the stone, the peculiar antique setting; even
a little flaw she remembered in her ruby
was repeated in this stone. She could scarcely
believe that she did not really hold in her hand