the many jewel-cases on Lady Forest's dressing-table might have awakened, Emmie was invited to follow her cousins down-stairs.

"Have I ever seen Sir John Forest?" she whispered nervously to Alma, on her way to the drawing-room. "Was he at your Christmas party last year? Will he recognize me, and wonder how I come to be wearing one of Connie's dresses?"

she had made at the last moment occupied | dulge in if she hoped for her cousins' good her thoughts a good deal while she was opinion. With this judicious extinguisher to dressing. Mr. Änstice was expected at any latent love of finery which the sight of dinner, and somehow or other the notion of appearing before him in her unwonted magnificence did not quite please Emmie. She had been wearing her oldest linsey dress, the ugly gray one, yesterday evening when he called, and only this afternoon she had pleased herself by thinking that on the occasion of the next visit the new purple would be less offensive to eyes accustomed to look at better-dressed people. Such an improvement as that would call for no remark, it might be felt almost without being seen; but how should she keep herself from crimsoning with consciousness if he should look even slightly surprised at recognizing the shabby little daw of yesterday in such manifest jay's feathers. Emmie felt a little wonder at herself that she should think so much more of Mr. Anstice's possible surprise (he might never so much as look at her) than of her uncle's, who was very likely indeed to come out with some mal à propos comment on her looks, but then

The sound of a gong echoing through the house made Emmie start just as she was tying the ribbon Alma had chosen into her hair, and prevented her finding the good reason for this strangeness which she knew there was, and before her fingers had finished their task Alma came in to look her over before taking her down to the drawing-room to be introduced to Sir John Forest. There was no fault to be found. The soft, pale green dress Emmie had chosen fitted her well, and with its puffings of white silk and bunches of snowdrops set off her pink and white complexion to perfection. A clever maid would have done more with the thick crop of dark brown hair, which Emmie had wound in soft coils round and round her head; but Alma pronounced that after all a more elaborate arrangement would have spoiled the shape of the head, which, left to nature, looked just the right size for the slender neck to uphold, and crowned her person as a delicately colored Japanese lily crowns its stalk. Emmie had a style that would not bear much decoration, Alma decided, considering her critically. It really was quite as well that her small ears had never been pierced. Earrings would only interfere with the right effect. Constance, who had now joined them, pronounced this a fortunate arrangement of Providence, since Emmie was never likely to possess handsome jewels, and tawdry earrings were horrors she must never in

"No fear of his claiming acquaintance either with you or the dress," said Alma, laughing. "We did not know him ourselves last Christmas. Connie and he were caught in a thunderstorm together last August, on the Righi, and fell in love, let us say, under an umbrella. We only knew the Forests by reputation as belonging to the most exclusive set in London, till love caught Constance up among them. Now you have the whole story. Romantic, is it not? and a conquest to be proud of?"

a

Emmie was not sure whether the tone in which the last words were spoken was mocking or really triumphant, but as she entered the room behind her cousins she conjured up an imposing, aristocratic-looking hero for Constance's mountain adventure, and was proportionally taken aback when a stout, middle-aged man, with grave, fat face, and grey whiskers of a very formal cut, came forward to meet the entering group of ladies; and Constance presented her to him as "Miss West, who has been spending the afternoon with Alma and me." "Miss West," not "My cousin Emmie." There was not a word to bespeak better acquaintance, only as Emmie was quick to feel an anxious deprecatory glance, which seemed to beseech forgiveness for her being there at all, and beg for as indulgent a scrutiny as was possible from the cold, severe eyes which seemed to Emmie to be the only feature in the empty face that had anything like life in it. Constance's husband! For an instant Emmie could not believe she had heard aright, and looked eagerly towards two other figures near the fire, hoping that further investigation would show the mistake. No; they turned round, her uncle and Mr. Anstice, and Emmie felt glad that her host's greeting had detained her such an instant merely, for she would have been sorry to miss seeing the equally silent hand-shake that passed between Mr. Anstice and Alma when they met close to the hearth-rug. It was as good to look at as

one of Christabel Moore's pictures, if only | certain that her first attempt at entertainthere had been a little bit of letter-pressing her own people was not proving a sucunderneath to explain the meaning of the cess. She had meant to take a private looks exchanged, that did not tell a straightforward story to Emmie. The pleading in his eyes that rested a second or two on her face, as if taking in a long draught of sunlight, and the slight quiver of her lip, and the visible effort with which she emptied her eyes of meaning, when after a second of hesitation she lifted her drooping lids, and saw how she was being looked atwhat did it mean? Emmie had long had her own little theories, which she believed and rejected by turns, of Alma's and Mr. Anstice's relations to each other; but she could not quite make these looks, or the long silence that followed, fit in with any

one of them.

opportunity of begging her father not to slide into professional talk with Mr. Anstice, but the little excitement of fetching Emmie had put it out of her head; and now it seemed to her that she read in her husband's sullen face the fate of all her future efforts to bring her family about her. All the little devices for giving herself the relief of congenial, familiar companionship, with which she had comforted herself during the dreary tête-à-têtes of the last six weeks, her father was blowing them all away with his voluble legal talk, thinking all the while, too, that he was doing her good service, and keeping the conversation up to the point of brilliancy The party at dinner was not a talkative he prided himself on always maintaining one. Emmie, sitting opposite her uncle, at his own table. Lady Forest saw bewhose alternate fits of absence of mind fore her long, long vistas of dinners and inconvenient talkativeness made him whole years of them during which she a formidable vis-à-vis for her, had time to should sit looking at that sullen face opdiscover that other causes than scantiness posite, depending on its more or less of provisions might give uneasiness to of gloom for her comfort or discomfort host and hostess. It might be natural through the evening; and her heart sank enough that Constance should feel a little at the prospect. Even the old family plate, nervous while entertaining her father for in such much better taste than the heavy the first time in her own house, but it did modern épergnes and salvers than were the seem strange to Emmie, who thought her- joy of her mother's heart, failed to cheer self versed in graver troubles than any her her greatly; for what satisfaction could one cousins knew, to see Constance turn pale get from the most perfect and unique poswhen Sir John addressed a whispered sessions, if one were not allowed to display question to a gentlemanly man behind his them before those whose pride in one's dig chair, and frowned over the answer; as nity seemed now the only thing that made pale as her mother turned, when Mary it much worth having. Ah, there was her Anne brought breathless news of a catas- father launched on one of the stock anectrophe in the kitchen, which meant a bread- dotes he always had recourse to at home and-tea dinner for everybody in their house when he felt suddenly self-convicted of that day. Could anything go very seri- having neglected the weaker intellects ously wrong in a household where dinner among his audience. Constance looked seemed to be an august ceremony almost across at her husband: would he say like a religious service? If so, was it "Exactly," at the end of the story about good-nature or inadventure which just at the Irish advocate who apostrophized a this crisis made her uncle wake up from prisoner in the dock as "a serpent in a absorbed enjoyment of an entrée, and ad-tail-coat, shedding crocodile tears, with a dress a question to Mr. Anstice, which presently drew the two lawyers into an eager discussion of a legal topic that no one seemed disposed to share with them? The effort might be well-meant, but it did not answer the purpose of bringing goodhumor and ease to the top and bottom of the table.

hat upon his head;" or would he condescend to smile at this grand tour de force of her father's comicality? It seemed the turning-point; and when the inevitable word in the usual dull tone came out, she felt as if it were a sentence to gloom for all the remaining evenings of her life, and she made a great effort to swallow a piece of ice-pudding to keep down a sob that threatened to rise in her throat.

Sir John's face grew more and more wooden, and the tone in which he said "Exactly" more and more unmeaning at Emmie wished she could help thinking every attempt to draw an opinion from everything handed to her so nice, that she him; while Constance leant back in her longed to transport each dish as it passed chair, and played with the contents of her to the dinner-table at home, or to Air plate, instead of eating her dinner, very | Throne, where the boys and Mildie were

The gentlemen entered from the dining. room while the final chords were sounding, and Mr. Anstice stopped by the piano and began to talk to Emmie, inquiring after Katharine Moore, and referring to the night of the accident, and to one or two late visits to Saville Street, where, as it seemed to Alma, who kept her seat on the music-stool, and heard every word that passed, he had made himself very familiar in a very short time. It was always his way, and always with the wrong sort of people, she thought disapprovingly. After a while she found an opportunity for interrupting the conversation to ask a question she had intended all the evening to put to Wynyard, though she had kept it till nearly the end, not to seem too eager on the subject.

"Have you heard of the great doings we are to have at Golden Mount for Christmas and the New Year?" "Golden Mount do I know the place?"

probably just then feasting on stale buns | some hints to Mildie that might aid that with Katharine Moore. Otherwise, she ambitious young person in her determinafelt she could conscientiously tell Kath- tion to become a first-rate pianist among a arine next day that she agreed with her few other things. about the inanity of polite society, and truly preferred the noisiest and scrambliest tea at home to the grandeur in which she was sitting silent and unnoticed. Before and after the "crocodile in a hat" anecdote, which diverted her, if no one else, she had time to hatch a good many private anxieties in her brain; as to whether she must have a cab to take her home which would have to be paid from the slender emergency purse she and her mother watched over so anxiously whether Constance would remember to tell her maid to put up the purple linsey dress for her to take home, and whether she should have courage to ask any servant in the house to bring it down-stairs and put it in the cab. The longer she thought, and the oftener she glanced up at the grave faces and decorous figures that flitted noiselessly about the room on the service of the table, the more mountainous did this difficulty loom before her. There was some relief when the move to the drawing-room came. Emmie felt the glamor of pleasure in pretty things and luxury steal over her, as she sat by the fire sipping coffee from Sèvres china cups, that were curiosities worthy of a museum, and listened to Alma playing dreamy music on the grand piano, and afterwards, when, seeing Constance's eyes closed, she grew courageous enough to wander about the room full of pleasant lights and shadows, with little tripping steps in time to Alma's music, fancying all sorts of things. If one were a princess, for example, living in this house, and if its owner were a prince with a face majestic and kind, like the one that had looked at her over a deep lace collar from its frame on the opposite wall during dinner, and if by some painless process, that one need not think of, all the quivering heartstrings that linked one to the anxieties of the slender purse and the thickening trouble at home were severed, so as to leave room for pleasure and delight to flow in, then to be sure - but no, Emmie's heart was too tender and loyal to allow her to take more than a minute's pleasure in even a fancy that cut her off from sharing the family pain. A vision of her mother's face, looking sad when she was not near to comfort her, pulled down her castle in Spain before it was half built, and sent her back humbly to the piano, to watch Alma's hands during her skilful playing, for the chance of carrying home

"Yes, yes; you do perfectly well; and what is more, I happen to know that you have had, or soon will have, an invitation to spend Christmas week there. Golden Mount is the country house in Kent, close to Longhurst, that the Kirkmans have lately bought, and almost rebuilt in a splendid style. Mrs. Kirkman knew mamma long ago, and since their rise in the world, and their becoming our neighbors in the country, they have rather thrown themselves on us for advice. They have asked mamma to manage their housewarming for them, and it is to be on a scale of magnificence, such as only suddenlymade millionaires ever think of indulging in. I can't help being curious about it, for people say that the house, and above all the new conservatories and winter gardens are curiosities of perfection. Mamma is closeted with Mrs. Kirkman to-day, writing invitations and making plans, and we have promised to stay on throughout a whole fortnight of fêtes."

66

I hope you will enjoy it."

"You will have the opportunity of judging how far we succeed in making it enjoyable; but you must not flatter yourself that you owe your invitation, when you receive it, to our suggestion. Mr. Kirkman wrote down your name himself, and it is due to his admiration of your talents, of which it seems he has had proof in some way or another."

"Admiration, indeed! The scoundrel! | the third of a series I am writing to expose

He must be more vulnerable, however, than I supposed, if he thinks it worth his while to try to stop a small growl like mine, by throwing a bribe at me.

"You are not at liberty to call my friends names, if you please."

"You don't know what you are doing when you call such a man as that your friend. You don't know what he is, as I happen to do. You have no idea of how he has made this money you talk of helping him to spend."

"Of course I have not; it is no business of yours or mine. His wife is a kind, motherly old woman, who is fond of mamma, and since this fabulous fortune has, one way or another, got into the hands of people who don't know how to enjoy it, I consider we are doing good service to society by showing them how to make it useful. There are plenty of people, I can tell you, with more right to be fastidious than you or I, who will keep us in countenance only too gladly."

"What do you consider gives one a right to be fastidious in such a matter more or less honesty, more or less dislike to divide the spoil with the spoiler, or what?"

"I won't have you wax eloquent; there is no occasion for it. It is quite a simple question. If one is never to share in entertainments unless one can account to one's own satisfaction for the money that pays for them, we shall have to keep pretty well out of the world."

"Exactly!" This was said with a playful smile and a slight imitation of the tone so often heard at dinner, and was meant to atone for the over-gravity of his last speech; but when Alma's face did not relax, Wynyard added, "Yes, it is exactly as you said, one has to keep pretty well

out of that world."

the sort of dishonest speculations by which Mr. Kirkman, among others, has gained his sudden wealth. His name is not mentioned in it, but I had him in my mind at every sentence, and it was some private knowledge of a shady proceeding of his which set me on to write as I am doing. How should I feel, do you think, reading this in proof next week at his breakfasttable? About as honest as I consider my would-be host, or indeed rather less So."

"If that is all, give the letter to me instead of posting it; I suppose a writer can't be expected to burn his own manuscript; but he would not feel any sympathetic agony, would he, while another person put it into the fire? You can write three or four of these things in a month, I suppose; one cannot be of so much importance to you, can it, as, I don't say the pleasure of spending a week with old friends, but as abstaining from giving papa another reason for thinking you impracticable? He has no scruple about visiting Mr. Kirkman, why should you?

Alma rose from her low seat as she spoke, and approaching Wynyard, held out her hand to take the letter.

Emmie had been listening anxiously ever since Mr. Kirkman's name - which carried painful home associations with it - came into the talk, and now a strange fear of seeing the paper move to meet Alma's fingers, possessed her. In her eagerness, she felt as if some momentous result, involving the triumph of the man who had ruined her father over new victims, hung on Alma's getting her way, and she only just restrained herself from putting her hand on Mr. Anstice's arm to hold it back.

"Don't, Alma," she cried vehemently. "Let the letter go. I have heard mamma say that Mr. Kirkman deceived papa, and helped to ruin him long ago. It is only right people should know and be warned time. Let the letter go, Alma.”

"But I have told you mamma and I are going into it, and that you may spend a week with us there if you like. Not that we shall be in any want of pleasant com-in pany."

There was a little pause, and then Wynyard said,

"I am glad to know that I shall not owe my invitation to a kind suggestion from any one belonging to you. In that case I should have found it very difficult to refuse."

Both Alma and Wynyard, who had forgotten Emmie's near neighborhood altogether by this time, were startled by the interruption, and surprised at the eagerness of the blushing face on which they turned to look at the same moment.

Émmie would be overwhelmed with shy. ness at the mere recollection of the part she had acted by-and-by, but for the present shyness was burnt out by a stronger feeling.

"Ask mamma about Mr. Kirkman," she went on eagerly, "or Harry; he knows,