fidante of the latter gentleman instead?

She had her money! yes; and now that was made safe, she began to set a high value on her social position and her reputation.

And thus on the first day of her honeymoon Laura found herself in a full ocean of doubt and fear, with a path before her in which she felt as if rocks stood up out of the deep sea.

CHAPTER XLII.

A DRAWING-ROOM CHAPTER.

"DEAR Miss Armine, how glad I am that your picture is getting on so fast. It is really a great success; but don't work too much yet, or the Doldy Doctors will look grave."

"I have got good luck with it, Mrs. Silburn!-it has found a purchaser already."

They were talking in Mrs. Silburn's drawing-room. It was one of her afternoons when her intimate friends gathered, when the writing tables were pushed aside, and Coventry, Mrs. Silburn, and the kittens were all supposed to have nothing to do but to be at the disposal of their visitors.

"I was very much annoyed at losing my model before I had finished," went on Miss Armine; "it was very difficult to complete it. And it really is a pity that such a perfect model should be a convict."

"Poor Anton," said Dorothy, rising as she spoke, for Ernestine was shown in just at that moment.

"Are you speaking of Anton ?" she exclaimed. "Do you know anything about him? Whom do you think I met yesterday in the street ?"

"Who !-how can I tell ?" said Dorothy. "But I should like to know what can have made you so excited. Come, sit down. Why,

person just dead it was Yriarte."

"Oh!" said Dorothy, with a world of meaning. She then went across the room, and, opening a door, said, "Coventry, Yriarte has got out. Didn't I tell you so ?"

Coventry a moment after came into the room. He came and sat down by Ernestine, as he always did when she was present.

'How do you know he is out ?” he asked Dorothy.

"Ernestine has just seen him," she answered.

Ernestine looked from one to the other. "Tell me," she said, "what makes you take it so quietly? How is it possible?”

"All things are possible," said Dorothy oracularly, "where Government officials are concerned. I know a little of the efforts that have been made for him, and a journalist gets to know something of the wheels within wheels."

"It is a strong case," said Coventry; "when bribery for small and influence for large people can be backed by such an argument as that the matter had been manipulated in court, and that the vagabond had been sentenced more severely than he deserved, I don't know what officials are to do but take the shortest way and save all the public fuss and worry which otherwise might ensue. And then there is the consideration of expense. If we find that there is a prisoner in our prisons unjustly condemned, from that point of view

we may well be excused for giving him up. It appears absurd at once that we should burden ourselves with his maintenance when his own Government is willing and anxious to take him off our hands. We have enough tax on the national purse to support our own ignorant criminals behind whom those iron prison gates close so inexorably. When the condemnation of a foreigner appears unjust, Government will surely find some way of saving his porridge."

Ernestine looked in bewilderment from one to another.

"You don't mean to say," she exclaimed, "that he has been knowingly let out?"

no

Dorothy shrugged her shoulders. "You are so straightforward still," she said. "We will make statements about Yriarte; but there was a story known to a few of us a while ago about a man of equally influential connections who had been sentenced for life. He was a man much of Yriarte's sort, quite able to make himself comfortable under adverse circumstances. They gave him oakum to pick and told him to do a little when he liked. He passed the days reading novels. It is said that he read all Dumas' and all Scott's. When he got very bored with reading, he picked a little oakum for a change and to restore his circulation. One day he was fetched out of his cell and taken into the governor's room. governor sent away the gaolers who had brought him, and locked the door on them. He then whispered a word to our friend, and opening a small door pushed him through it and shut it behind him. The man found himself in a court opening upon the street, where two of the aforesaid influential connections awaited him. When they told him he was free, he was angry, and said, Nonsense, it is a trick.'

The

"how strangely things are done in this world! wouldn't it be much simpler and much less trouble if people just did their duty."

Coventry shook his head.

"I am really very doubtful

whether it would," he said, "unless we could all be brought to do it at once. By the way, Minerva Medica, you must read Matthew Arnold's poems; you continually remind me of him in the way in which you refer to this world as a thing outside of yourself, a troublesome thing which you cannot understand. I hail you as one of us poets; I never heard a thoroughly practical man say, 'in this world,' for he could not stand sufficiently outside of the world to use the words with any meaning."

"Now you are laughing at me," said Ernestine, blushing, as she often did, under Coventry's penetrating eye; "don't be hard on me; I am not a poet, but only a poor practical soul myself."

"There you remind me of Matthew Arnold again; he is always posing as the practical man, inspector of schools, making reports on education in foreign countries, and so on; but he is only practical by effort. You will soon see in his poems how he speaks of this world as a prisoner might of his cell. And it is just the same with you. You are perplexed and baffled by forms of life with which you have no sympathy; and yet you want to work and take your place and live your life in the midst of them, and so you call yourself practical."

"She is practical," said Dr. Doldy, who had just come in, and quietly approached them. should like you to see her shaking

" I

He drew a chair up and sat down on the other side of her. The people who called Ernestine cold. would scarcely have known her had they seen her now, her face covered with fleeting emotions as she sat between these two men.

"She says we have too many servants," he went on, speaking in a manner of his own, half humorous and half in earnest; "and she has taught me such a lesson by running away and leaving me to find out what it was like without her, that I believe, if she sends off all the servants, and only allows me a dinner once a week, I shall submit. By the way," he said, more quietly, and opening the subject evidently with the need of some self-control, "has Ernestine told you of her unexpected meeting yesterday?"

"Yes," said Dorothy, "we have been talking about it, and Ernestine is innocently amazed that we think it possible."

woman.

"The leopard cannot change his spots," said Coventry, when the laugh which Ernestine's eagerness and blushes raised had subsided; "but what a lamentable want of originality. Thorough paced scoundrels appear as a rule to lack imagination. They go over the

worn tracks of villainy, and the same vulgar phrase of admiration which they have applied to handsome women since modern slang existed, they will use for our Minerva Medica."

He was interrupted by the entrance of Lewis Lingen, who had constituted himself an occasional visitor at this house, which had the especial charm, for him, of being unlike any other house he entered. The atmosphere mingled purity and Bohemianism which pervaded it made every one feel at his ease; and an hour spent in calling on Mrs. Silburn was generally found to be an hour of rest.

of

"Have you heard anything?" asked Dr. Doldy, immediately.

"Not yet," said Mr. Lingen. They are evidently determined to keep it dark, if it is true. It will be a difficult matter to ascertain anything certain about it."

"Well," said Coventry, with a smile, "our authority here grows the more positive, the more she thinks of it."

Ernestine spoke quickly and gravely. She did not want the fine woman story repeated to Mr. Lingen.

"I could not be mistaken in that man," she said. man," she said. "The dandy was gone certainly, and he looked unshaved, but there were those teeth. And remember," she added, "a doctor is accustomed to see people under different conditions, and to recognise them, and to note changes

of appearance apart from changes of dress."

"Very true," said Dr. Doldy, gravely; "a nightcap or a new Paris bonnet; the difference is marvellous."

"You are profane, Doctor," said Mr. Lingen (who was a little relieved to find his old friend in a less terribly tragic mood to-day). "Mrs. Doldy's remark is a very discerning one. She is quite right; a doctor is much less liable to be deceived by a change in appearance than a person with a less practised eye. I am disposed to think that we may put faith in Mrs. Doldy's recognition of the man."

"I can't think what the House is about," said Dr. Doldy, "when things like this can be done under the rose."

"The younger members would be glad to get hold of such a case," said Coventry; "judicious nursing of it would make the political fortune of a rising Radical. But who is to overlook our great systems of legislation? Who can have an eye upon every corner in the land? Who can ascertain whether every official does his duty? And, more difficult still, who is to check the secret orders of high functionaries? Anyone who has watched the working of a large household will know enough of the difficulty of managing managing human beings by system, to see the impossibility of making any system perfect, or of preventing infringements of

it minor elasticities, informal pieces of jobbery-call them what you will. If we had no private interest in this affair, I should like to hear B asking his question upon it."

"And do you suppose," said Mr. Lingen," that there would be found no one clever enough to answer him? Public matters are, more or less, as they are made to appear."

His thought was, as he spoke, From what I have heard, I should not be too sure that B- has not been among the quiet intriguers for this release. Where there are ladies concerned, a social bramble creeps a long way. "You see," he

went on aloud," when you consider the matter quietly, Yriarte's party would have a very strong case. Not only is there the ordinary power of a foreign Government, which always has great weight and has accomplished more remarkable things than this before now; but, if Yriarte has made the most out of his facts to his supporters, they can put on the screw by saying that a gross injustice has been committed." "How?" asked Dorothy, whose eyes looked very bright.

Only a little collusion," said Lingen in an airy manner, to satisfy Dorothy,-"I must not go into detail." Then turning to Dr. Doldy he said in a low voice, audible to him alone, "They can put it that he was prosecuted for attempting to obtain some money from Miss Doldy for the maintenance of the child which had claims on them both; and it would appear that Yriarte was at the time supporting the child, although of course he has never spent a penny on it himself. Still, he got it cared for; and, as Miss Doldy is well known to be an heiress, and Mr. Yriarte a man now altogether without means, the prosecution would appear in a rather bad light, and there would be a strong case for the Home Secretary."

"And I," ejaculated Dr. Doldy, with a groan so touching that everyone started, " I was the prosecution. A nice affair this. for a man of position."

Dorothy's bright eyes were now explained by a remark of hers. Dr. Doldy had risen from his chair, and was walking about the room in a fume; everybody was silent,

feeling sympathetic and uncomfortable, and her voice dropped quietly into the silence, disturbing it more effectively than the report of a

cannon.

"What a glorious paragraph this will make!"

Mr. Lingen dropped his eyeglass suddenly and sat down very unobtrusively in a chair near. He ad been a little touched and flattered by the earnest regard of Dorothy's unusually bright eyes. Quite true what people say of these female journalists, he thought. Did I not see a review the other day in which Dorothy Silburn was denounced as an unsexed woman? I'm inclined to think that reviewer had some wit: it cannot be right when a woman looks at you so sweetly that you think she has fallen in love, and you find she is only sucking your information for a newspaper paragraph!

"Mrs. Silburn," said Dr. Doldy, "pardon me, but you are not so lost to all sense of everything but journalism that you will betray the confidence of your friends?”

"Oh," she said, waking up from her absorption (in imagination she had already earned an unusually large fee from the Morning Mail), "I suppose you would not like it!"

"How can you ask?" exclaimed Dr. Doldy. "Give me your word

of honour

"Oh, I promise," cried Dorothy; "but it's hard to relinquish early news, especially a spicy bit. But I promise of course; I really did not think."

"A paragraph - spicy" repeated Dr. Doldy; "I'll shoot any editor that prints it. Why, as it is, I am strongly disposed to follow Ernestine's example, and run away from the whole thing. You don't know, I suppose, whether

couple of physicians-married -would find a good field in the

Sandwich Islands or place?'

some such

"Oh, it will all be forgotten soon enough," said Dorothy, "especially if nothing more is told," she added, ruefully.

"The Government will say nothing, you may be sure," said Mr. Lingen. "Go for a holiday; forget it yourself, and you will find it forgotten by others. When Sir Percy and Lady Flaxen return and take their place in society, their friends will not be curious. Yriarte, if escaped, is of course out of the country already; and his connections will look after him in future, we may hope."

Miss Armine, who, being a discreet little lady, had held her peace all this time, now ventured to ask Mr. Lingen a question.

"Do you think," she said, "if Mr. Yriarte has been let out, that Anton will be let out also?"

"I don't know," he answered; "it is doubtful, I should think, as he has no connections. But there will be some efforts made, probably."

"I would like a talk with you about that, Lingen," said Dr. Doldy. "We must find some means of helping that poor fellow."

I hope you will," said Dorothy. "He looked so innocent and puzzled in court; I don't think he half understood what it was all about."

"And I hope so!" cried Miss Armine, enthusiastically. "He was such a handsome creature, with the loveliest grey shadows about his shoulders. And such a model-he never seemed even to breathe. Fancy wasting him on convicts!"

Her wail was so genuine that it created an effectual diversion. Everybody laughed except Ernestine, who was thinking perplexedly

to herself.

"How strange it is," said she to Coventry, "that if you look at the