after paying such attentions" (he paused to gather up his indignation into proper terms), "he ought to have had them, that's all I can say. It's easy to talk of no intentions. I call it a scoundrelly thing to do. How would the doctor have liked his own daughter to be treated that way, though he could talk so coolly of the poor T's? I should like to have asked him to put that in his pipe and smoke it!"

Then he sought Captain Wellwood.

"What do you say, Phil? Is he off, or has she refused him?"

"I don't think she has refused him."

"You think he's off?"

"What in the world is at the bottom of it?"

Philip was silent.

"Have you any idea?"

"Yes, I think it's Aytoun."

Sauffrenden's eyes were opened.

Colonel Aytoun had kept very quiet during the past week, and had never repeated his call at Freelands, but he had been working out his plan of making friends with Sir George Lorrimer, and had at length attained his object in doing so.

Sir George, easy and unsuspecting, had not hesitated in exposing Miss Tolleton's tactics, and only that afternoon had put Colonel Aytoun in possession of them.

The affair had rather amused him. He could never think of the passage of arms at Sauffrenden without an inner laugh. He had even gone so far as to remember it two months afterwards.

But now the play had come to an end. It had collapsed rather flatly; and he related the circumstances with something of the shamefacedness of a narrator embarked upon an anecdote which he suddenly perceives is deficient in point.

Not so did it appear to his auditor.

For him the point was not only sharp, but poisoned. Mr Smith and Helen! The conjunction had never once occurred to him. Mr Smith and Helen! Horrible! On her account, and on his, equally unbearable.

At that moment his new anger against her exceeded and

almost eclipsed his old anger against him. The one was fresh, warm, and bubbling, the other stagnant.

Mr Smith had dared to love Emmeline, and dared still to pity and regard her. He would not be duped beyond a certain point. He was a popular man. He was high in favour with those who shirked his, Colonel Aytoun's, society, and try as he might, he could not do him a mischief. Consequently he hated him.

But Helen was still worse.

She had charmed him. She had had the enviable lot of attracting his notice, and instead of being grateful she had laughed in his face!

He was neither a magnet to attract, nor a chain to bind. He was no bar to the end she had in view.

The man he had once supplanted he had no chance of supplanting again; and she might accomplish her desire, and he his, without let or hindrance.

No one could say nay. He might be made happy even yet, with a wife still more beautiful than Emmeline had been, and now, Emmeline was paled and faded. Youth, lustre, enchantment, might all again be his, while only the old, battered, dusty end of life remained for Egerton Aytoun.

It was this which made him stamp his foot under the table, as his fingers clutched the wine-cup above.

Sir George had pronounced the matter to have no further interest; it had come to nothing after all. But Sir George had nothing at stake. Colonel Aytoun could not so easily dispose of it.

He was enraged with his own stupidity. What had he been about, not to have discovered this which was so much to him, when it had been plain to a heedless bystander?

If the mischief was done, it was done now. There was no hope of putting a spoke in the wheel, had Fortune once begun to turn it. Despite all assurances, he felt a sinking presentiment that it was too late.

Mr Smith away, Helen in bed, what could be done? There was no possibility of getting at either of them.

Sauffrenden was not to be borne any longer; and, disgusted with everything and everybody about it, he quitted the neighbourhood next day, dragging with him his illfated wife.

CHAPTER XXIX.

HELEN'S REFLECTIONS.

THE relief experienced by those left behind was great. There was no more bolting out of doors the instant meals were over; no stumbling over each other in the hurry of escape. No more whispered entreaties, "You take him to-day," and conditional promises, "If you will to-morrow."

Sauffrenden once more yawned, and idled, and lounged about the passages as he loved to do; and Philip was to be found, as of yore, hanging about the terrace and conservatory, instead of hiding in the coverts of his own

room.

The house was itself again.

Sauffrenden, however, had his grief. He mourned for the Tolletons.

He looked at his own camellias, his own forcing beds, and longed to send something to the sick-room. He worried Philip with constant and fidgety inquiries, and dared his wife by talking before her face of the accident and its serious results.

Mrs Aytoun's account of Helen had certainly not been such as to change Lady Sauffrenden's former opinion of her. Emmeline had grown confidential since the days when she attempted to picture the Abbey a happy home. She spoke openly, and, alas! truly.

Her story needed not any colouring from the spite of a malicious husband, or the trampled-turning-again of a desperate wife; it was the plain, unvarnished statement of the girl's mad folly.

Every one about the Abbey could have told the same. Emmeline did not exaggerate when she affirmed that it had been the talk of the neighbourhood.

All this had been duly retailed into Sauffrenden's ear, and it must be confessed that he found it very delightful.

He loved to know the worst of people, but then, tenderly as he inclined his ear to the tale, it found him as tender, as merciful a judge. It was the very interest he

R

took in his brother men, the very sympathy he felt in their concerns, which made him first yearn to know their failings, and then filled him with compassion for them. There was this divine in the man's nature, he did not love sin and he did love the sinner.

It would have filled his eyes with tears had he been able to look now into Helen's sick-chamber.

There she lies, forbidden to move, yet unable to be still. Tossing over and over, wearying and wounding herself, wondering that she gets no better. Night is worse than day to her. She has nothing then to divert her thoughts, and they fly about, and buzz hither and thither, and sting her whenever they can, like angry, frightened wasps. The more she tries to drive them away, the more irritated and venomous they become.

Why do they all turn against her so suddenly? How is it that everything she has ever done seems all at once to be wrong? Do other girls vex and chafe over their lives as she does?

There was that young Lance, and Buckley, and Gordon, and hosts of others besides poor Walter, who really cared for her more than half the rest put together-how she had gone on with them all!

Some had her hair; some, flowers she had worn; some had gloves; one or two even letters. How foolish she had been to write those letters! Painfully clear rose some of the expressions in them before her now. Theirs she would burn that precious packet which had often caused her a secret thrill of exultation; it too stood up and condemned her.

It was their fault, of course. They would fall in love with her, and how was she to help that? She had only flirted a little in return, and with some it had answered, and with some it had not-exactly.

They had made themselves, and her too, rather ridiculous.

Ha ha ha! All of a sudden she would burst out laughing in the midst of her penitence.

Visions of doleful visages saying farewell over faultless neckties and unimpeachable shirt-fronts, rose before her. The pushing forward, the hustling each other for her smiles. The gloomy sighs breathed in the background;

the jealous looks; the little mean insinuations; the open frown of the Colonel; the weak sneer of the subaltern.

Of these were the sparkles in her cup of pleasure composed. And now, how good she had been going to be! She had intended to put away the whole cup, sparkles and all, and take another in her hand.

She had made up her mind to astonish the world by marrying Mr Smith, and to astonish it still more by making him a good wife.

Her old life she had meant to have done with. There were other kinds of pleasures to be enjoyed, and of them she would have had the full benefit.

Mr Smith's character had given ample hope of this; and in return she would have been a model of graceful accommodation to his wishes.

He was a religious man, that was certain; therefore she had resolved to be, if not exactly religious, yet seriously inclined. A regular church-goer, and a teacher at Sundayschools. (An ivory prayer-book and fan in summer, furs in winter.) He was so nice, so kind, and so pleasant withal, that it had seemed a perfect Providence his being thrown in her way, and her having taken to him from the very first, as she had done.

He was not at all the sort of man she would have expected herself to take to. It was the veriest epicureanism in coquetry which had set her on. Then she thought he might do. Then she began to like him.

She took credit to herself for the whole proceeding. She was sorry for the past; she wished to do better. She desired to be out of temptation-safe, happy, and respectable. This way she had carved out for herself, and a glow of self-approval within her pronounced it a good one.

Oh, why was she not to tread the way? It was too hard, too discouraging, to be thus stopped short upon the threshold. It was enough to make her turn her back on goodness altogether, to have it making itself so very disagreeable.

Her sisters thought her changed, and she was proud of it. She had baffled Colonel Aytoun by her honesty, and disarmed Mrs Hunt by her prudence. She was certainly turning over a new leaf.

But these consolatory reflections had all their dark side.