Carbury understood immediately that Sir Peter knew nothing of the catastrophe. "Oh, is it so Then the events to come are as clear as the sun at noonday. He returns, hears of the misfortune, offers himself, and is accepted." "Yes," said Maud, "offers himself, but is rejected."

"What makes you think so?" "Have you forgotten that the Bevans are paupers and that Sir Peter is a millionaire?"

"Oh, I see, scruples about pride and honour, and so on; they' will be overcome."

"Not as easily as you think. I happen to know that Lady Baby has declared her distinct intention of not accepting Sir Peter's addresses his charity she calls it— as long as she is a beggar."

Carbury was listening with strained attention. "But such a declaration is nonsensical. it could bind no one."

"No one perhaps but Lady Baby."

"Are you sure about this?" he Esked quickly.

"Quite sure. In fact "and then Maud broke off abruptly. No, it would undoubtedly be indiscreet to mention to Mr Carbury a certain very much blotted and wildly scrawled little note which, in a sudden fit of confidence, Lady Euphrosyne had shown her only the other day. The fact of its existence would probably be very comforting to this rejected lover; but, though Maud felt very sorry for him, she did not feel justified in administering comfort in exact ly this chapo. She had already said more than she had ever intended to say.

"Then that was not what you meant about the ruin not being irretrievable?" remarked Carbury. "You said something of the sort just now."

"I? Oh, I was speaking in

general, about ruin in the abstract. How should I know anything about the chances of this ruin in particular? Our poor friends are beggars just at present; and for anything I know, they may end by being buried in paupers' graves."

"That would indeed be a come'down for their ladyships," said Carbury, with so cruel a gleam in his eyes, so bitterly hard a smile upon his lips, that Maud looked at him in astonishment.

"Mr Carbury!" she said on an impulse, "I should not like to have you for an enemy. Revenge is almost gone out of fashion, I know, but you look as though you had it in you to be implacable.'

Carbury drew himself up stiffly; his face had frozen back into its habitual listlessness. "Who ever said that I had any cause for anything as melodramatic as revenge?" he inquired distantly. 'It strikes me that we are getting off our subject. When did you say that you make your start?"

"Next week," said Maud, and then there fell another silence between them, filled most conveniently by the shrieks of the three fiddles.

"I suppose," said Mr Caroury slowly, after that silence," I suppose that that village-Floundershayle you called it is nothing but a wretched little fishy hole?"

"Well, it will be provincial, to put it mildly," said Maud, in some surprise.

"And I suppose it hasn't got any shops?"

"Oh, I don't know about that. 1 daresay you will be able to buy fish-hooks, and perhaps even woollen jerseys."

"Then how will you do about getting things books, or paper, or so on on?"

"Write for thein, I suppose." Carbury sat still for a moment,

gnawing his black moustache, and gazing at his crush-hat with an expression of scorn and disgust which seemed quite inapplicable to that most faultless and exquisite article of attire.

"Look here," he broke out in the most ungracious of tones, "I am not at all bad about choosing books, or, in fact, about commissions of any sort even ribbons, you know, and,"-he paused, and seemed to swallow something dry in his throat, something that must have had a bad taste too, to judge from his expression,-"and-hats. And I haven't got anything else special to do just at present. If you like you may drop me a line when you want a thing; I should be very"— another gulp-"glad to get it for you, and I shouldn't mind it much, really."

He broke off fiercely, and glared at Maud for her answer.

She had resumed her examination of the cabinet. Right through the scorn of the tone she had rightly construed the drift of this unlooked-for address, and had understood that it was the part of underground passage which was once more being offered her. She was no longer surprised. She was not quite sure whether she was not a little touched. For Mr Carbury to offer to incommode himself to the point of choosing a book for any one but himself was quite as startling as a three-hundredmile journey undertaken by another. But while she thought thus she was speaking differently. "What a capital idea!" she was saying, quite as calmly as though the proposition just made was of the most ordinary and everyday sort, and as though there was nothing in the least humorous about Mr Carbury choosing her hats. "To tell the truth, I had never thought of that difficulty;

VOL, CXLVI.-NO. DCCCLXXXV.

but now that I come to consider it, I should have been rather put about for a connecting-link with civilisation. You will fill the post admirably."

Maud had no objection at all to being used as underground passage, for, except when her own interest came in the way, she was always good-natured.

"It's a bargain then," Mr Carbury was saying hurriedly, just as the quiet corner was invaded; "and when you send me a line about the thing, whatever it is, you might just as well mention what the place is really like."

"And how it' agrees with our friends?" added Maud, demurely.

"Not quite as well as Kippendale, I fancy," said Carbury, with another of those smiles which had startled Maud a minute ago; and then, meeting her eyes, he turned sharply away, and she saw him no, more that night."

Up to that last moment Maud had, in sheer mercy, avoided his face; but in that one glance she had learnt everything that she wanted to know.

"That child has very much more to answer for than she has any idea of," said Maud to herself, a little awe-stricken perhaps in the depth of her heart, as ono is ever apt to be awe-stricken by a glimpse, however passing, of a genuine human passion unmasked,

of what it can put into a man's eyes, of how pitifully plain it can stand written on even a worldling's face.

"I believe that man would do any mortal thing if he thought he had the ghost of a chance," reflected Maud that night on the homeward drive; -"any mortal thing, though I daresay he is not aware of that himself." And this again was one of those unrecog nised turning-points which we pass

E

blindfolded. It was not till some time afterwards that Maud recalled this reflection of hers. or that its full import and meaning was borne in upon her. Just now her attention was taken up in preparations for the seaside trip. The manner in which this said trip had come to be arranged requires some further explanation. Maud, having once made up her mind that, by fair means or foul, she would transport herself to within reach of the mysterious shoemaker, had been devoting the whole energies of her mind to discovering an answer to that "How?" immersed in the consideration of which she had gone to sleep a few days ago.

"Shall I discover a colony of country cousins in some remote village?" she reflected, seriously turning over the various schemes in her mind; "or shall I get shipwrecked on the coast, and require to spend a fortnight in a fisherman's hut, in order to set up my nerves?" She shook her head; the right thing had not yet been hit on. But Providence helps those that help themselves. you sit all day long with your eyes wide open, and your ten fingers spread ready to catch at the merest rag of a chance, you generally end by finding means to accomplish your object.

If

Little Hal Wyndhurst had recently had a fall from his pony, and had been ailing ever since then, growing rather black about the eyes, and yellow about the throat. "A shock to the nervous system" had been the diagnosis. and "country air" the prescription. Accordingly it had been settled that when Lady Euphrosyne started on her fashionable visits. the five cherubs, with their six attending spirits, should be packed off to Nolesworth.

"Now, just supposing," thought

Maud "just supposing that that dear. delightful. intelligent. goud looking doctor had said 'sea air,' instead of 'country air!' Supposing he could be got to say so still!

When this dear, delightful. intelligent, good-looking person paid his next professional visit, Miss Epperton happened to be in the room. He was undoubtedly goodlooking, and very charming, quite the most charming medical adviser agoing, and not at all like a doctor to look at. Also there was something delightfully unprofessional about his smile and the soft impressionability of his glance. No rigidity of opinion, no rigour of prescription; it was entirely by the happy knack of reading the wishes of his fair patients from out of their blue or black, fiery or languishing eyes, that Sir Anıbrose Cathcart had become Sir Ambrose.

"Go by your own feeling, certainly; the great thing in these cases is to go by your own feeling,” was the smooth formula, ready at any moment to trip from off the extreme point of his tongue, and calculated to make happy the heart of an overworked élégante, whose husband was for dragging her off to the repose of the country, but whose "own feeling" was that she would die for want of the London season.

"Change of air?" said Maud, in the course of this professional visit, "but is that enough? Ought there not also to be a complete change of scene? I know nothing about it at all, Sir Ambrose,"with a little naïve laugh which helped to bewilder him with a flash of white teeth," but I always fancied that unfamiliar surroundings were nowadays considered the thing for shattered nerves: and Nolesworth can't exactly be described as unfamiliar to poor little Hal."

"Ah, I know what you going to say," broke in Maud; 'go to the seaside. Was not that it, Sir Ambrose? I know that you always prescribe salt air for nerves."

"Your observation is just," said Sir Ambrose Cathcart, glibly, wincing just a little under the volley of "Epperton glances" which Maud was firing down upon him. "My usual prescription of course; and if the feeling of the patient

"Hal," said Maud, gaily, drawing the pale boy towards her, "what is your feeling about going to the seaside?"

The patient thus consulted, aged eight, confessed to feelings which entirely favoured the seaside plan. How could it be otherwise, after all the delightful things about starfish and cockle-shells, and pink-andlilac sea anemone which he had heard of last night when "Cousin Eppy"-as the little Wyndhursts playfully called Maud-had come to sit on the side of his bed, and put him to sleep with stories?

As the great thing was to go by one's own feeling, the matter was here clenched. Lady Euphrosyne looked rather perplexed when she heard of the doctor's decision. She had been out during the visit. What was she to do? Give up her visits in order to take Hal to the seaside? Send down the whole colony of eleven to eat their heads off at Brighton at a ruinous expense ? Send Hal down alone with a nurse? No nurse was to be trusted at a place of that sort; at Nolesworth it was a different thing. What on earth was to be done?

It was then that Maud stepped in and offered to play Providence to Hal and his nurse. She had no special engagements for the next fortnight; would Lady Euphrosyne trust her? Lady Euphrosyne not only trusted her, but took her in her arms and kissed her, so delighted was she at her own escape; and she ended by leaving the arrangements for the expedition, and even the choice of the place, entirely in Maud's hands. For two days Maud appeared to be studying this question, and then she spoke to Lady Euphrosyne about a delightful little village on the sea-coast which she had heard of. "Quite a simple, lovely little fish ing village, you know; not at all a fashionable place, but so free and healthy and retired. Does it not sound charming?"

Lady Euphrosyne thought it sounded very dull; but, after all, it was not she who was expected to go there. She was very fond of little Hal, but she was not fond of tiresome details. In fact she did not clearly understand where exactly was situated this romantic fishing village to which her youngest cherub was to be taken ; but she left everything to Miss Epperton, Miss Epperton was so sensible.

Maud felt pleased with herself. It was, in fact, a masterly coup. It was killing two very pretty birds with one neat little stone. It was gaining the object she had just then at heart, and it was at the same time retaining, nay, even improving, her position in Lady Euphrosyne's household a circumstance which, considering the uncertainty of that object, was not to be despised. For Maud never for a moment forgot that her theory had yet to be proved, and she had no mind whatever to fall between two stools.