Being lady of all she surveyed, Ethelberta crossed the leafy sward, and knocked at the door. She was interested in knowing the purpose of the peculiar little edifice.

The door was opened by a woman wearing a clean apron upon a not very clean gown. Ethelberta asked who lived in so pretty a place. "Miss Gruchette," the servant replied. "But she is not here now." "Does she live here alone?"

"Yes-excepting myself and a fellow-servant."

"Oh."

"She lives here to attend to the pheasants and poultry, because she is so clever in managing them. They are brought here from the keeper's over the hill. Her father was a fancier."

"Miss Gruchette attends to the birds, and two servants attend to Miss Gruchette?"

"Well, to tell the truth, m'm, the servants do most of all of it. Still, that's what Miss Gruchette is here for. Would you like to see the house? it is pretty." The woman spoke with hesitation, as if in doubt between the desire of earning a shilling and the fear that Ethelberta was not a stranger. That Ethelberta was Lady Mountclere she plainly did not dream.

"I fear I can scarcely stay long enough; yet I will just look in," said Ethelberta. And as soon as they had crossed the threshold she was glad of having done so.

The cottage internally may be described as a sort of boudoir extracted from the bulk of a mansion and deposited in a wood. The front room was filled with nicknacks, curious work-tables, filigree baskets, twisted brackets supporting statuettes, in which the grotesque in every case ruled the design; love-birds, in gilt cages; French bronzes, wonderful boxes, needlework of strange patterns, and other attractive objects. The apartment was one of those which seem to laugh in a visitor's face, and on closer examination express frivolity more distinctly than by words.

"Miss Gruchette is here to keep the fowls?" said Ethelberta in a puzzled tone, after a survey.

"Yes. But they don't keep her."

Etholberta did not attempt to understand, and ceased to occupy her mind with the matter. They came from the cottage to the door, where she gave the woman a trifle, and turned to leave. But footsteps were at that moment to be heard beating among the leaves on the other side of the hollies, and Ethelberta waited till the walkers should have passed. The voices of two men reached herself and the woman as they stood. They were close to the house, yet screened from it by the holly-bushes, when one could be heard to say distinctly, as if with his face turned to the cottage

The speakers passed on, their backs becoming visible through the opening. They appeared to be woodmen.

"What Lady Mountclere do they mean?" said Ethelberta.

The woman blushed.

"Oh—a nickname."

"Yes."

"They meant Miss Gruchette."

"Why?"

The woman whispered why in a story of about two minutes' length. Ethelberta turned pale.

"Is she going to return?" she inquired in a thin hard voice.

"Yes; next week. You know her, m'm?"

"No. I am a stranger."

"So much the better. I may tell you, then, that an odd tale is flying about the neighbourhood-that Lord Mountclere was privately married to another woman, at Knollsea, this morning early. Can it be true?

"I believe it to be true."

"And that she's of no family?"

"Of no family."

"Indeed. Then the Lord only knows what will become of the poor thing. There will be murder between 'em!"

"Between whom?"

"Her and the lady who lives here. She won't budge an inch-not she!"

Ethelberta moved aside. A shade seemed to overspread the world, the sky, the trees, and the objects in the foreground. She kept her face away from the woman, and whispering a reply to her Good-morning, passed through the hollies into the leaf-strewn path. As soon as she came to a large trunk she placed her hands against it and rested her face upon them. She drew herself lower down, lower, lower, till she crouched upon the leaves. "Ay-'tis what father and Sol meant. Oh, heaven!" she whispered.

She soon arose, and went on her way to the house. Her fair features were firmly set, and she scarcely heeded the path in the concentration which had followed her paroxysm. When she reached the park proper she became aware of an excitement that was in progress there.

Ethelberta's absence had beccine unaccountable to Lord Mountclere, who could hardly permit her 1 etirement from his sight for a minute. But at first he had made due allowance for her eccentricity as a woman of genius, and would not take notice of the half-hour's desertion, unpardonable as it might have been in other classes of wives. Then he had inquired, searched, been alarmed: he had finally sent men-servants in all directions about the park to look for her. He feared she had fallen out of a window, down a well, or into the lake. The next stage of search was to have been drags and grapnels; but Ethelberta entered the house.

Lord Mountc!ere rushed forward to meet her, and such was her contrivance that he noticed no change. The searchers were called in,

Ethelberta explaining that she had merely obeyed the wish of her brother in going out to meet him. Picotee, who had returned from her walk with Sol, was upstairs in one of the rooms which had been allotted to her. Ethelberta managed to run in there on her way upstairs to her own chamber.

"Picotee, put your things on again," she said. "You are the only friend I have in this house, and I want one badly. Go to Sol, and deliver this message to him-that I want to see him at once. You must overtake him, if you walk all the way to Anglebury. But the train does not leave till four, so that there is plenty of time."

"What is the matter?" said Picotee. "I cannot walk all the way." "I don't think you will have to do that--I hope not."

"He is going to stop at Coomb to have a bit of lunch: I might overtake him there."

Wait

"Yes. And tell him to come to the east passage door. It is that door next to the entrance to the stable-yard. There is a little yew-tree outside it. On second thoughts you, dear, must not come back. at Coomb in the little inn parlour till Sol comes to you again. You will probably then have to go home to London alone; but do not mind it. The worst part for you will be in going from the station to the Crescent; but nobody will molest you in a four-wheel cab: you have done it before. However, he will tell you if this is necessary when he gets back. I can best fight my battles alone. You shall have a letter from me the day after to-morrow, stating where I am. I shall not be here." "But what is it so dreadful?"

"Nothing to frighten you." But she spoke with a breathlessness that completely nullified the assurance. "It is merely that I find I must come to an explanation with Lord Mountclere before I can live here permanently, and I cannot stipulate with him while I am here in his power. Till I write, good-by. Your things are not unpacked, so let them remain here for the present-they can be sent for."

Poor Picotee, more agitated than her sister, but never questioning her orders, went downstairs and out of the house. She ran across the shrubberies, into the park, and to the gate whereby Sol bad emerged some half-hour earlier. She trotted along upon the turnpike-road like a lost doe, crying as she went at the new trouble which had come upon Berta, whatever that trouble might be. Behind her she heard wheels and the stepping of a horse, but she was too concerned to turn her head. The pace of the vehicle slackened, however, when it was abreast of Picotee, and she looked up to see Christopher as the driver.

"Miss Chickerel !" he said, with surprise.

Picotee had quickly looked down again, and she murmured, "Yes." Christopher asked, what he could not help asking under the cireumstances, "Would you like to ride?"

"I should be glad," said she, overcoming her flurry. "I am anxiou to overtake my brother So!."

"I have arranged to pick him up at Coomb," said Christopher.

He descended, assisted her to mount beside him, and drove on again, almost in silence. He was inclined to believe that some supernatural legerdemain had to do with these periodic impacts of Picotee on his path. She sat mute and melancholy till they were within half a mile of Coomb.

is

"Thank you," she said then, perceiving Sol upon the road. my brother: I will get down now."

"There

"He was going to ride on to Anglebury with me," said Julian. Picotee did not reply, and Sol turned round. Seeing her he instantly exclaimed," What's the matter, Picotee?"

She explained to him that he was to go back immediately, and meet her sister at the door by the yew, as Ethelberta had charged her. Christopher, knowing them so well, was too much an interested member of the group to be left out of confidence, and she included him in her audience.

"And what are you to do?" said Sol to her.

"I am to wait at Coomb till you come to me."

"I can't understand it," Sol muttered, with a gloomy face. "There's something wrong; and it was only to be expected; that's what I say, Mr. Julian."

"If necessary I can take care of Miss Chickerel till you come," said Christopher.

"Thank you," said Sol. "Then I will return to you as soon as I can, at the Castle Inn, just ahead. 'Tis very awkward for you to be so burdened by us, Mr. Julian; but we are in a trouble that I don't yet see the bottom of."

"I know," said Christopher, kindly. "We will wait for you."

He then drove on with Picotee to the inn, which was not far off, and Sol returned again to Lychworth. Feeling somewhat like a thief in the night, he zigzagged through the park, behind belts and knots of trees, until he saw the yew, dark and clear, as if drawn in ink upon the fair face of the mansion. The way up to it was in a little cutting between shrubs, the door being a private entrance, sunk below the surface of the lawn, and invisible from other parts of the same front. As soon as he reached it, Ethelberta opened it at once, as if she had listened for his footsteps.

She took him along a passage in the basement, up a flight of steps, and into a huge, solitary, chill apartment. It was the ball-room. Spacious mirrors in gilt frames formed panels in the lower part of the walls, the remainder being toned in sage-green. In a recess between each mirror was a statue. The ceiling rose in a segmental curve, and bore sprawling upon its face gilt figures of wanton goddesses, cupids, satyrs with tambourines, drums, and trumpets, the whole ceiling seeming alive with them. But the room was very gloomy now, there being little light admitted from without, and the reflections from the mirrors gave

a depressing coldness to the scene. It was a place intended to look joyous by night, and whatever it chose to look by day.

"We are safe here," said she. "But we must listen for footsteps. I have only five minutes: Lord Mountclere is waiting for me. I mean to leave this place, come what may."

"I cannot tell you-something has occurred. God has got me in his power at last, and is going to scourge me for my bad doings-that's what it seems like. Sol, listen to me, and do exactly what I say. Go to Anglebury, hire a brougham, bring it on as far as Lower Lychworth: you will have to meet me with it at one of the park gates later in the evening-probably the west, at half-past seven. Leave it at the village with the man, come on here on foot, and stay under the trees till just before six: it will then be quite dark, and you must stand under the projecting balustrade a little further on than the door you came in by. I will just step upon the balcony over it, and tell you more exactly than I can now the precise time that I shall be able to slip out, and where the carriage is to be waiting. But it may not be safe to speak on account of his closeness to me-I will hand down a note. I find it is impossible to leave the house by daylight-I am certain to be pursued he already suspects something. Now I must be going, or he will be here, for he watches my movements because of some accidental words that escaped me."

"Berta, I sha'n't have anything to do with this," said Sol. "It is not right!"

"I am only going to Rouen, to Aunt Charlotte!" she implored. "I want to get to Southampton, to be in time for the midnight steamer. When I am at Rouen I can negotiate with Lord Mountclere the terms on which I will return to him. It is the only chance I have of rooting out a scandal and a disgrace which threatens the beginning of my life here! My letters to him, and his to me, can be forwarded through you or through father, and he will not know where I am. Any woman is justified in adopting such a course to bring her husband to a sense of her dignity. If I don't go away now, it will end in a permanent separation. If I leave at once, and stipulate that he gets rid of her, we may be reconciled."

"I can't help you: you must stick to your husband. I don't like them, or any of their sort, barring about three or four, for the reason that they despise me, and all my sort. But, Ethelberta, for all that, I'll play fair with them. No half-and-half trimming business. You have joined 'em, and 'rayed yourself against us; and there you'd better bide. You have married your man, and your duty is towards him. I know what he is, and so does father; but if I were to help you to run away now, I should scorn myself more than I scorn him."

"I don't care for that, or for any such politics! The Mountclere line is noble, and how was I to know that this member was not noble,