should have made the most prosperous cousins in the world other than proud of her company. Constance noticed the approving glance and was so much taken up in wondering whether any amount of perfect dressing would ever win her such a look from her husband, that for once the weak part of Emmie's attire, the gloves that were several shades too dark to match her dress, and a good deal worn at the fingers as well, escaped her critical eyes. Emmie was perfectly aware of the deficiency herself, and but for thoughts of Katherine Moore would have tried to hide her hands under the flaps of her jacket when she found herself seated in the carriage opposite two fur-lined cloaks and two perfect Paris bonnets, and two pair of fresh innumerable-button gloves. But then, as Katherine Moore frequently observed, gloves are such a constantly-recurring problem to people who must wear them, and can rarely afford to buy them, that the only chance of peace of mind is to resign one's hands to reprobation without a struggle. When Emmie forgot the ends of her fingers, the rapid drive through the brightly lighted streets was a piece of ecstasy for her.

Alma and Constance exchanged glances of amusement when by and by her happiness bubbled over in snatches of more confidential talk than they were usually regaled with by members of the West family-praises of Harry, jokes about Mrs. Urquhart's encounters with Casabianca, anecdotes of Katherine Moore.

66

Ah," remarked Alma, "a friend of mine heard her speak at some queer public meeting and told me about it. I thought it an odd proceeding."

"But he did not," said Emmie, quickly. "He admired her speech. He did not think there was any harm."

"He! who, my dear?" asked Alma, a little coldly. "How do you know anything about it?"

"He told me himself, Mr. Anstice," answered Emmie, drawing a little back into the shade of her corner of the

carriage to hide her face, that had grown stupidly red in a moment. "Did not you know he had been to our house several times lately to inquire after Katherine Moore? He was with us yesterday evening and stayed an hour. Did not you know?"

"How should I know? What business is it of mine?" said Alma, indifferently; but she leaned back in silence during the rest of the drive, while Constance catechised Emmie about Katherine Moore's street adventure and the previous life of the sisters, and ended by giving her an emphatic warning against turning out emancipated woman on their

an

hands.

Emmie's talk was like a peep into a new world to Alma-a topsy-turvy world, repugnant to all her tastes and prejudices and though she was not jealous (she had too much confidence in her own power for that), it annoyed and chilled her to discover that her lover had chosen to thrust himself into such an alien region, and could apparently find himself so much at home there. Yet at the end of the drive Emmie had become a more important personage in Alma's eyes than she had ever been before. She was now in the way of hearing and seeing what Alma would give a great deal to hear and see, and she might drop a word of news sometimes when her heart hungered for it, and she dare not ask it from any one who understood her better. Emmie was no longer an ignorant child, whose company by a great stretch of good nature could be tolerated for a little while now and then; they two might possibly have something in common henceforth worth talking' about.

The change in Alma's manner which this instinct, it was hardly a thought, brought about was not lost on Emmie's quick sensitiveness, and it lessened her embarrassment when the question of the evening dress was brought forward and Constance offered her present.

Her hopes of being able to carry

off the plainness of her linsey dress by a judicious disposition of Mrs. Urquhart's scarf round her shoulders were dashed by a sight of the evening costumes laid out in Lady Forrest's dressing-room, to which her cousins took her as soon as they got into the house; and, in spite of independence and Katherine Moore, she could not help being thankful to hear that they intended to make her look like other people. Harry's spirit might take fire at the notion of her consenting to be dressed up in cast-off finery; he might call her a toady for being willing to accept a present from relations who looked down on the family, that would have to be argued out in the back-room assembly to-morrow night, but meanwhile Emmie could not but warm up to interest and gratitude when she was told to choose for herself from a pile of treasures all the items of a thoroughly satisfactory evening attire: shoes, gloves, ribbons, all the little niceties of dress which she had never allowed herself to hope for in perfection hitherto. Her pleasure was complete when Alma herself condescended to take an interest in the momentous choice, holding ribbons against her hair to find out the most becoming shades, and bringing out the daintiest of Constance's kid boots to suit the slim feet, at which even the disdainful maid could not help exclaiming.

At length Emmie retired to old Lady Forrest's deserted bedroom to array herself in her borrowed plumes. A discovery she had made at the last moment occupied her thoughts a good deal while she was dressing. Mr. Anstice was expected at 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 recognising 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 àpropos 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 Forrest. 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 a delicately coloured 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

as

must never indulge in if she hoped for her cousins' good opinion. With this judicious extinguisher to any latent love of finery which the sight of the many jewel-cases on Lady Forrest's dressing-table might have awakened Emmie was invited to follow her cousins down stairs.

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

"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 We only knew the Forrests 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?”

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 a 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 there had been a little bit of letter-press underneath to explain the meaning of the 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 at— what 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.

The party at dinner was not a talkative one. Emmie, sitting opposite her uncle, whose alternate fits of absence of mind and inconvenient talkativeness made him a formidable vis-àvis for her, had time to discover that other causes than scantiness of provisions might give uneasiness to host and hostess. It might be natural enough that Constance should feel a little nervous while entertaining her father for the first time in her own house, but it did seem strange to Emmie, who thought herself versed in graver troubles than any her cousins knew, to see Constance turn pale when Sir John addressed a whis

pered question to a gentlemanly man behind his chair, and frowned over the answer; as pale as her mother turned, when Mary Anne brought breathless news of a catastrophe in the kitchen, which meant a bread-andtea dinner for everybody in their house that day. Could anything go very seriously wrong in a household where dinner seemed to be an august ceremony almost like a religious service? If so, was it good-nature or inadvertence which just at this crisis made her uncle wake up from absorbed enjoyment of an entrée, and address 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 good-humour and ease to the top and bottom of the table.

Sir John's face grew more and more wooden, and the tone in which he said "exactly," more and more unmeaning, at every attempt to draw an opinion from him; while Constance leant back in her chair, and played with the contents of her plate, instead of eating her dinner, very certain that her first attempt at entertaining her own people was not proving a success. She had meant to take a private 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 têtesà-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 he prided himself on always maintaining at his own table. Lady Forrest saw before No. 227.-VOL. XXXVIII.

her long, long vistas of dinners whole years of them-during which she should sit looking at that sullen face opposite, depending on its more or less of gloom for her comfort or discomfort through the evening; and her heart sank at the prospect. Even the old family plate, in such much better taste than the heavy modern épergnes and salvers that were the joy of her mother's heart, failed to cheer her greatly; for what satisfaction could one get from the most perfect and unique possessions, if one were not allowed to display them before those whose pride in one's dignity seemed now the only thing that made it much worth having. Ah, there was her father launched on one of the stock anecdotes he always had recourse to at home when he felt suddenly self-convicted of having neglected the weaker intellects among his audience. Constance looked across at her husband: would he say "exactly" at the end of the story about the Irish advocate who apostrophised a prisoner in the dock as "a serpent in a tail-coat, shedding crocodile tears, with a hat upon his head;" or would he condescend to smile at this grand tour de force of her father's comicality? It seemed a 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.

Emmie wished she could help thinking everything handed to her so nice, that she longed to transport each dish as it passed to the dinner-table at home, or to Air-throne, where the boys and Mildie were probably just then feasting on stale buns with Katherine Moore. Otherwise she felt she could conscientiously tell Katherine next day that she agreed with her 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.

A A

Before and after the "crocodile-in-ahat " 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 downstairs 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 glamour 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 surebut 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 some hints to Mildie that might aid that ambitious young person in her determination to become a first-rate pianist among a few other things.

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 Katherine 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?"

"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 neighbours in the country, they have rather thrown themselves on us for advice. They have asked mamma to manage their house-warming for them, and it is to be on a scale of magnificence, such as only suddenly made millionaires