life. He began to make plans for the future, to think of things that he had not thought of for years, to remember the prayers which his mother had taught him in his boyhood. He had prayed on his knees, he had prayed with tears in his eyes, on the evening of that day when he rode back alone with Lady Baby from the polo-ground. It was next day that he met her in the conservatory and found out that it had all been a game; that, in pursuance of her own private object, she had taken his heart and crushed it in her baby-hand; that he had been a tool where he had thought he was a conqueror.

He had never forgiven himself any more than he had forgiven her. No saint has ever felt such bitter remorse for a sin as Carbury felt for the absurdity of which he had rendered himself guilty. It was not until fate had undertaken to crush his enemies for him that he even, to his own incredulous indignation, became aware that there could be any sort of modification in this bitter hatred to which he was persuaded his love had turned. When he received Maud's note descriptive of that land of exile, and with the brief but suggestive reference to the dismal prisonhouse in which his cruel mistress was doing penance for her sins, Carbury's sentiments were a curious compound of wild triumph and aching compassion. She, who had always appeared to him as the incarnation of all that was joyous and bright and prosperous-she, the spoilt child of fortune,-she to be pining away on that godforsaken spot of earth! Well, was it not only what she deserved A fierce cruel curiosity took possession of him: to see her in her humiliation, what a balm to his mortally stricken vanity! How would he not love to feast his

VOL. CXLVI.NO. DCCCLXXXVII.

eyes upon that picture, which yet, by no stretch of imagination, could he conjure up before his mental vision! To think of Lady Baby amid those sad grey stones, beside those sad sea-waves, was as incongruous as to think of fresh-blown hawthorn in conjunction with a December frost! He could not bend his imagination to the task.

The two days and two nights which had passed since the receipt of Maud's letter, had been one long struggle with this whimsical and ever-growing curiosity,it haunted him like a nightmare, it fastened on him like a torture. How much longer the struggle would have lasted it is hard to say, had not the announcement made by the guileless Bessie with one blow brought matters to a crisis.

The first thing that Carbury did on again reaching his room was to look up a time-table. He knew now that ever since the reading of Maud's letter he had intended to go down to Floundershayle. It was not only that he was worn-out with the struggle of the last two days, but also that a new curiosity was added to the old. He had not forgotten what Maud had told him of that barrier of pride which stood between Lady Baby and her lover, with his own eyes he wanted to convince himself whether that barrier stood firm. Williams? where the deuce was Williams? He must go down to Floundershayle at once-that much he distinctly understood; somewhat more indistinctly he felt that he must get there before Sir Peter did. For what reason? For none that he knew of, or for one moment would have acknowledged to himself.

If a man finds that a chain is dragging him, he may, having satisfied himself that it is not to be broken, end by submitting to

2 A

being dragged, but it is extremely unlikely that he will do so with a good grace. Carbury had given in to his chain, but he hated himself for doing so; and probably it was by way of making up for

this hateful submission that he was so extremely short and sullen in inventing a pretext for his sudden journey, and so ill-tempered with Williams about the packing of his portmanteau.

CHAPTER

"So you have not brought the gloves?" said Maud, as she sank into a chair, all breathless still from her haste, and throbbing with the excitement of the interview that was just past. She did not add: "Then what have you come for?" probably for the reason that Mr Carbury's conduct appeared a great deal more simple and natural to her than it did to himself.

"I happened to be in the neighbourhood," said Carbury, with glib mendacity and a fine disregard for probabilities, "and so I thought I would call upon you, and Gullyscoombe people."

the

"Oh, I see," remarked Maud, her lips twitching in spite of herself. Then she gave him one keen glance. "What has happened?" she inquired shortly.

"Happened?" he repeated. "Yes. Since I S&W you last you have heard something new,-new and probably unpleasant. Let's hear what it is, please. I am rather knocked up this morning, and when I am knocked up I am never very patient."

"I have heard nothing particularly new," said Carbury, in a tone of obviously false lightness, "unless the return of the yacht Fantasca is news to you?"

Mr Carbury had come to the inn with the intention of leading up to this question, but he had not in

"Fantasca!" she repeated; "then Sir Peter is back." But she said it with no appearance of being specially interested in the subject; and pulling off her hat, sank back wearily in her chair and held up her hands to her flushed cheeks, still glowing with the shame and anger that had burnt there within the last hour, and scarcely dry yet from the tears she had shed.

"Is it to give me the latest shipping intelligence that you have come here?" she irritably inquired; and then, as from her recumbent position her gaze rested full on his face, her irritation died suddenly out. Until this moment her own case had been engrossing her thoughts too completely to let his appear of any importance; but now, reading the anguish in his eyes, she was startled, despite herself, into a more wide-awake attention..

Maud was intrinsically goodnatured. She never failed to feel a pang of regret whenever the

necessities of her own position forced her to do an unkind thing; she was glad, therefore, whenever an opportunity offered for being kind without injury to her own interests, and thus, as it were, "taking it out" on the other side of the balance.

"Mr Carbury," she said pensively, only half aware that she was speaking her thought aloud, "I don't quite see that you need despair."

Carbury started bolt - upright. Really, Miss Epperton," he began, with his nose in the air, "I am not aware that I”

"Have taken off my mask Exactly. I know that you are not aware of it; but if you take my advice, you will not go on fumbling any longer to get it fastened on again. Even if you persuade it to stick, it might just as well be off, once I have seen what is under it. If we are to talk at all, we must talk to the point. Personally, I don't care the turn of a hand whether we do talk or not. I am not in a good humour this morning, and the affair isn't any of mine; but, not to put too fine a point upon it, I am sorry for you. Please let us not have another act of the farce which we played in Mrs Fallala's drawing-room the other evening. It amused me then, but it does not bear repetition. You know as well as I do what was the real kernel of that polite talk we then carried on. The thing was not the less there because we tacitly agreed to look the other way."

Carbury cast her a glance of startled inquiry. It is always mortifying to discover that we have been transparent. Had he been quite himself, he would undoubtedly have beaten a haughty and hasty retreat, but he was

Since his ar

not quite himself. rival at the place only two hours ago he had had an experience—a very slight and passing experience

nothing but the distant glimpse of a slight figure, cut with the sharpness of a silhouette between the cliff and the sky-a fair head blown rough by the breeze, the turn of her neck, the curve of her arm as she battled for her hat with the unmannerly wind,—that was all, but it had been enough: the wound was gaping wide again. The last remnant of his icy selfcontrol was broken to the ground, and in its place had sprung up a sudden vehement craving for sympathy-sympathy of any kind, sympathy at any price. For some seconds he stood hesitating, his wounded dignity wrestling to the death with the blind craving of his passion; in the next the struggle was over.

"It is no use," he groaned, sinking sullenly into a chair-" you cannot help me." Yet even as he said, "you cannot help me," his eyes sought hers with a flicker of greedy hope.

"I don't suppose I can help you, but at least I can reassure youup to a certain point. Have you forgotten what I told you of the pledge. Lady Baby has given? Of how she has vowed not to reaccept Sir Peter as long as she is a beggar?"

"No; but you seem to have forgotten how I then remarked that such a pledge is nonsensical, and can bind no one possessed of ordinary common-sense.'

"Is Lady Baby specially remarkable for her ordinary commonsense?" said Maud, impatiently. She was beginning to be rather weary of the subject, and to feel that she had done all that Christian charity demanded of her to do for

Carbury. "Of course she will give way in time; I only meant to point out that there will be a respite; or if she doesn't give way, something is sure to happen to smooth away difficulties." She broke off suddenly and struck her forehead. "What am I talking about Something has happened already. Mr Carbury, I am afraid I must withdraw every bit of consolation I have just been giving you. Things are happening at such a rate that I had forgotten the situation was changed. There is no barrier between Sir Peter and Lady Baby: she is no longer a beggar, since the copper is found, or as good as found." Within the last twenty-four hours events had been marching so fast that it was hard to overtake them. Scarcely was the one combination of circumstances realised than another totally different combination had arisen. In the emotions she had so recently undergone, Maud had, for a short space, lost sight of her great discovery, or rather of some of its consequences. "The copper found?" echoed Carbury, helplessly.

"And Lord Kippendale rich again," said Maud with sudden bitterness. Was it not by Lord Kippendale's son that she had just been spurned? Was it not before Lady Baby's brother that she had just been humbling herself to the dust, only to see him turn away and leave her in the dust alone? She clenched her slender fingers tight. "I might have known that they would come to no great harm. I might have rested assured that Lady Baby would end by being the mistress of Nolesworth Castle; that though Fortune might be sulking with her for the moment, she would not be long before she came to fetch her

spoilt child out of the corner. You've only got to look at her to see that she is destined for all the good things in life."

Maud ended unsteadily, and with averted face rose abruptly from her chair. Walking to the window, she stood there, her forehead pressed against the glass and a wild pain throbbing in her heart. There were tears in her eyes, but they looked a great deal more like fire than like water. Her anger, lulled for a brief space by her compassionate interest in Carbury, was roused anew by the picture which she herself had just painted of Lady Baby's future prosperity. In her better moods, Maud would not have grudged Lady Baby that prosperity, but this was none of Maud's better moods. At that moment, as she stood by the window with the sense of her own desolate loneliness sweeping down full upon her, she hated Lady Baby; she hated her as she hated every one in the wide world who was happy and prosperous, or who was going to be happy and prosperous; every one who did not stand alone, who had sisters to love her or friends to watch over her-who was not forced to plot and plan and tell lies for herself; every one even who had a comfortable bed to lie in, and food enough to eat without begging for it. She hated them all, as a starving wretch may hate the well-fed party he can see sitting round the table through the lighted window. She was wildly jealous of them all; she cried out to be revenged against them all. It was a momentary revolt of her whole being against fate a sudden uprising against the injustice of those hardships which she had borne for so long with so much courage and philosophical patience. A veil seemed

to lift and to show her all her carefully devised and scientifically constructed plans lying in a heap of ruins at her feet. It was borne in upon her that her life was for the moment objectless; that her presence at Floundershayle, at any rate, was absolutely empty of all meaning, since the object that had brought her here lay among that heap of ruins. Everything had failed her. Not one of her aims, not one of her purposes, stood upright.. Which way was she to turn? At whose door was she next to beg her bread? If it was true that Lady Baby bore upon her the mark of good-luck, then surely Maud Epperton was branded with bad-luck's deepest sign. She had lost Germaine. Before losing Germaine, she had lost Sir Peter. Before losing Sir Peter But hold! What was this new light flashing like lightning into Maud's eyes? Why did her angry tears dry up so suddenly on her cheek, and even her breath seem to cease for a moment, as she stood quite still by the window, her lips parted, and her eyes staring wide as though at some wonderful vision of the air Was Sir Peter lost to her? It was the upstarting of this question which had taken her breath away. He was not Lady Baby's yet. He would not be Lady Baby's until all doubts about this new copper were cleared away, for until then would the barrier of pride stand between them. And the fixity of that barrier she all at once realised was in no other keeping than her A hasty backward glance at her interview with Germaine assured her that the secret was not out, that the trump-card was still in her hand, that she was still at liberty to play it in any way she liked.

own.

Mr Carbury, sitting plunged in

his own perplexing thoughts, was startled suddenly by a loud burst of laughter from the window. It was the laugh of the luckless victim of fate, who, while he is crying out for a weapon wherewith to revenge himself against the world in general for being happier than he is, suddenly discovers that he holds the very weapon in his hand. Maud's mind was peculiarly fitted for the taking up of sudden resolutions; in one instant she saw where her chance lay.. Brought up short by the failure of one object, she was already intent on the accomplishment of another. She had, as it were, reversed her engines at full steam. What was passing in her mind now was not at all unlike what had passed in her mind on the evening of the tableaux at Kippendale at the moment that she had met Germaine's first admiring gaze upon her. Then also a resolve had been conceived; on that evening a thread had been broken off, to-day it was to be picked up again. It was but the resuming of an old campaign; and, by the ease with which she fell into the plan, Maud recognised how much the idea had been in her thoughts lately, in defiance of her better self. The train had long been laid; it wanted but the spark to fire it, and the spark had fallen to-day.

Maud was still laughing as she turned from the window, so overcome was she at the change that had come over her prospects within the last two minutes. As her eye fell on Mr Carbury, whose existence she had almost forgotten, she laughed still more. "That man would do anything in the world, if he thought he had the ghost of a chance." Once more her own words recurred to her, and this time they bore a significance she