THE last day had come, as all last days do come at last-the last day at Kippendale.

The resolution announced in Lady Baby's letter to Maud was not many weeks old, and to the eyes of all their horrified friends, to the eyes even of the economyloving Mr Reid, the action of Lord Kippendale and his family appeared precipitate to the verge of folly and yet, upon closer consideration, exactly what was to be expected of these particular people, placed in these particular circumstances. From the moment that Gullyscoombe bad become the "next thing," the old Earl was naturally in a fever to be there. His desire for hurry infected the others; it would be a relief to make the plunge even prematurely, to seize that dreadful GullysCoombe bull by the horns, to step off their worldly pedestal of their own free will, rather than wait till they were knocked off it. Mr Reid, though he might think the move precipitate, was so sincerely thankful to have Kippendale clear of his clients and his clients rid of Kippendale, that he judiciously refrained from throwing so much as a single drop of cold water on the plan. By this time Mr Reid had pretty well made up his mind that "Swan's copper" had never had any existence except in Mr Swan's overheated brain; and he had reached the point of wondering what Kippendale would let for, and whether a suitable tenant was likely to be found, supposing he were wanted. But this idea ex

VOL. CXLV1.-NO. DCCCLXXXV.

isted as yet only in Mr Reid's most secret thoughts. Better far that the ruined family should say farewell to their old home without this additional wrench of agony; ; better far that they should go while they were still in some degree warranted to tell each other that after all it was probably "only for a time."

And now the last day had come, and such a last day! Such a cruelly beautiful last day, intent, it seemned, on turning the beloved Kippendale into the semblance of an earthly paradise from which half-a-dozen poor wretches were about to be expelled. On the October sky not a cloud; on the violet hills in the distance not a speck of mist; in the long-bladed grass the sparkling jewels of a heavy autumn dew; and the trees

oh, surely the trees in their tenderest spring-time youth were never so beautiful as in this golden bravery of their decline! Already their bright leaves have begun to fall; they are scattered broadcast on the lawn like so many picces of curious coloured coins which lie unheeded just now, but which the wind will pick up some day and hoard away in the sheltered glades, and heap together into the narrow crannies of the hills and the secret corners of the valleys. And not only on the lawn do they lie, they have lined the ditches with lining of crimson and orange; they have made the banks yellower than the primroses could make them in April, and redder than they were with the ragged robin

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in June; they have paved the paths in the woods, and have inlaid the very floors of the ponds with a tinted mosaic pavement; they have flung gaudy stripes of colour across the country roads, and the broad grassy margins at the side-on which so many Bevans, past and present, have trotted to cover, on so many hunting-mornings-are turned by the leaves into, paths of beaten gold.

But scant time did there remain for the heartrending contemplation of all these glories. The carriages were at the door (hired carriages), and the luggage had started for the station. When the family had met at the early and hurried breakfast, they had taken much pains to inform each other that they had slept quite well. If they had wept, they had wept in secret, and been at much pains to efface the traces of their tears, for their spirit was high, and not one of them wished to be the cause of the other's breakdown. Those little sad and senseless goodbyes-dumb good-byes to dumb things were, like their tears, transacted in secret, and in mortal terror of each other.

The breakfast was a rather noisy affair, because no one trusted themselves to be silent. Even Agnes talked, and Lady Catherine absolutely rattled. It was some time now since Catherine had hurried to the spot with that mournful alacrity which brings the bird of sad plumage to the scene of a misfortune. But even for Catherine the misfortune was here rather too overwhelming; there was too much of it at once, and it was of too absolute a quality. She was accustomed to take her grief in spoonfuls, not to have it poured down her throat all boiling hot. There are epicures in grief, as in everything else, and the fair-haired

widow had always shown her preference for those delicate morsels of sorrow which require an educated palate in order to be tasted. Her sighs were zephyrs, not hurricanes; her tears fell singly, like precious pearls, they did not stream in vulgar torrents.

When the falsely gay and yet so dreary breakfast was over, Lady Baby flew from the house, and did not stand still until she was within the wooden walls of the big kennels, now empty and deserted of all save Brenda and Fulda the two foxhound puppies, of whom the elder had played so critical a part on Lady Baby's seventeenth birthday. The two dogs came bounding towards her, each describing nothing but one big wriggle from the tip of his tail to the point of his nose, and Lady Baby knelt down on the ground between them, and sobbed at last freely, to the undisguised perplexity of those well-meaning but foolish animals. And presently she was on a further station of her pilgrimage, and stood in the stables, with her hand on the mane of the wary old chestnut, that still paced its loose-box, though the bargain for its sale was already clenched. Ajax was the last of the old friends; even the impudent black pony had been led away with his bright black eyes turned wistfully over his shoulder: nothing but a pair of serviceable carriagehorses was to be taken to Gullyscoombe, and no one but Adam and one stable-boy would remain to represent the once so brilliant equestrian staff. Adam was busy

at this moment in the next loosebox, looking very grim and stony, and hissing with unnecessary loudness, perhaps with some hazy notion of discretion, for Lady Baby was sobbing audibly. The fact was that Adam disapproved of those tears, and was inclined to be sus

picious of the lengthened good-byes accorded to "A Jacks"; for it must be remembered that Adam had been a constant witness of those riding-lessons in early summer, the result of which had been in his eyes so disastrous.

"Where is he now? Where is he now? Will he ever come back again?" Lady Baby was whispering into Ajax's ear, with her cheek against his sleek neck. But Ajax did not care where he was, so he only shook what he still possessed of a mane and snorted with extreme affectation, and Adam hissed the louder, and presently a voice was heard calling for Lady Baby, and she had to pull down her veil over her swollen eyes and hurry off to the house.

"Hurry up!" her father was saying, fussing about uneasily on the doorsteps; "it's the highest time to be off; come along!"

But though he said come along," Lord Kippendale himself went back into the house; and one by one they all went back, telling each other that they had forgotten something. But they had forgotten nothing; they went back only to steal one more, only one more hungry glance at the home they had lost, who knows for how long-who knows whether not for ever? To touch once more some familiar piece of furniture; to sit down again for only one minute on the old window-seat with the tapestry cover. And the end naturally was, that they all stumbled upon each other; and that after Lord Kippendale had made an attempt to say something cheery about the sea air, and after Agnes had faintly suggested that it would be a pleasant day for travelling, the whole thin pretence broke down, and they wept at last openly, with their heads on each other's shoulders, and wept so long and so

violently that they all but succeeded in missing their train.

It was late on the evening of the following day and very dark when they reached their destination. The golden day had been succeeded by a leaden one. Under the doubtful shelter of the shed which served as a station-house Nicky stood ready to receive them; he had been sent down some days previously in order to make the most necessary arrangements for their reception. His hands were in his pockets, his coat-collar turned up to his ears, and his humour was quite as black as the night itself. To Agnes's hurried and fearful inquiry, "What is it like? Is it so very bad?" he replied with the one simple and expressive word, "Beastly."

It was about the only word that was said; for, when once more under way, they were all too tired to talk, and yet too much on the strain of a painful expectation to doze away in their respective corners, even if the strange vehicle in which they, sat had jolted less fearfully, and the heavy leather curtains, which served as windowpanes, had not required constant clutching and setting straight in order to keep out the small insinuating rain which seemed bent on making their more intimate acquaintance. They had been jolting along in this damp darkness for an hour and more, when at a turn of the road there fell a new sound on their ears-a subdued, rolling, thunderous sound which told its own tale. They said nothing, but took fast hold of each other's hands, and one or two corners of the leather curtains were lifted and questioning glances were shot out into the darkness. The rush and fall of the waves sounds clearer now, and the muffled lazy roll is broken now and again by a sharper

dash that dies away in a longdrawn hiss, as the unseen spray scatters over the unseen rocks. A strong whiff of salt air sweeps in along with the drizzle, but to the questioning glances the darkness gives back the vaguest of answers: only dimly through the black night is there something to be guessed of wide horizons and deserted roads; a half-revelation of naked ridges succeeding each other with a sense of endlessness that makes the Bevans' quaking hearts sink do n to the heels of their very damp boots. As they turn from that side shuddering, they are fronted on the other by something low and grey and exceedingly grim, even through the dark. They have entered something that is apparently a yard, for the vehicle bumps

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a cobble-stone pavement; there are more greyish buildings around them. An old woman in tears stands at the door-she is Captain John's widow; two boys in pinafores peep all agape round a corner-they are Captain John's grandchildren.

One by one the travellers descended from the lumbering carriage and followed each other to the room which had hurriedly been arranged as "best parlour " for their reception. They were cramped and chilled, and wellnigh faint with hunger. One or two articles of the Kippendale furniture, which had been sent down the week before, stood there to greet them; but this pang of recognition was almost the hardest thing to bear the well-known

bookstand looked so strangely out of place standing cheek-by-jowl with poor Captain John's ink-spotted writing-desk; the pet tea-table seemed to have changed its expression, decorated as it now was by two symmetrically placed, pink, frosted vases, containing bouquets of dried seaweed which Mrs Captain John had put there by way of making things a bit more comfortable. The fireplace smoked a little, just enough to make one's eyes smart and one's throat itch; and one of the window panes had been broken in the yesterday's window-cleaning, and was now provisionally patched with paper, for which Mrs Captain John tearfully apologised, on the ground that it was such a distance for any workman to come. As for the dinner, she apologised likewise, for it was the work of her own willing but unpractised hands; the new cook (warranted economical), who was due to-day, having backed out of her engagement on account of a panic which had seized her at the want of society which the neighbourhood promised.

Lady Baby, out of sheer weariness of having wept so much, began to laugh at this, and the others followed suit.

"It isn't quite as nice as the old house," said Lord Kippendale, with a ghastly smile, as he offered his arm to his eldest daughter, "but we are not going to give in just yet., Come to dinner, girls-I am famishing; and, upon my word, I think we shall do without dressing for to-day."

The worst of the important moments of life is, that until we have

got well past them they so often look exactly like the unimportant

moments; and the worst of crossroads and turning-points is, that unless the roads are real tangible macadamised roads, and unless the turning-point is painted a is painted a fine showy colour, likely to catch the eye, you are very liable not to find out where you are until you have either taken the wrong turning on the one or broken your head against the other. How could Lady Baby know that when, on a certain even-. ing in October, she sat down to write another letter to Maud. that letter was going to be a crisis in the lives of several people? As it was, the crisis was within a hair'sbreadth of slipping harmlessly by. Had the letter been worded but a trifle differently, or had Maud's mind not been tuned to the exact pitch which caused it to vibrate in response to one tiny note of suggestion that lurked-unknown to the writer-in one stray paragraph of the letter, a great many things would not have happened which afterwards did happen, and soine people would have had fewer lawful complaints against fate.

The pitch to which Maud's mind was tuned the night that letter reached her, was a very low pitch indeed. Five minutes before the knock came at the door, and Lady Euphrosyne's maid, with her hair in curl-papers, had thrust in the letter with a sleepy explanation about its having been overlooked among her ladyship's notes, Maud had been sitting beside her toilettable with the bodice of a dress across her knee, needle and thread beside her, a thimble on her finger, but her arms hanging idly by her sides. The bodice wanted mending, but it did not seem to have very much chance of getting it just then, for Maud was allowing herself the unusual indulgence of an unchecked fit of the dumps. Two distinct causes had brought

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on the attack: the first was that she had found a grey hair in her comb that morning; the second, that Lady Euphrosyne had that afternoon, in the suavest possible manner, announced that she really must tear herself away at last from her beloved London, and fulfil some long-standing engagements to friends in the east of England. Maud was not included in these invitations; the inference was obvious. Of course it had to come to this sooner or later, but it was not the less unpleasant for having been foreseen. Lady Euphrosyne herself was quite genuinely distressed at the necessary parting; nor was there any humbug whatever in the fervour with which she trusted that they were destined soou to meet again. a thousand little ways, each apparently as slight as a gossamer thread, and yet in reality as strong as those fine fibrous roots by which some sort of creeping plants take their hold on the most inhospitable walls of rock, Maud had contrived to gain footing in Lady Euphrosyne's household. Very soon her ladyship was wondering how she ever had been able to answer all the notes she received without the help of that nice, quiet, sensible Miss Epperton. Maud, meanwhile, had early recognised that if these pleasant quarters were to be kept available for her frequent future reception, there were certai dangers to be avoided. To be too clever, for instance, would be to disquiet Lady Euphrosyne's self-complacency; to be too fascinating would be to alarm her stepmotherly vigilance, which might be asleep just at present, fanned into quiescence by the breezes that filled the sails of the good yacht Fantasca, but which wanted only the plunge of the anchor into the waters of a British harbour to