wrong by you would turn me against him. But the servants all say he's in love with Miss Lyon."

"I wish it were true, Denner," said Mrs. Transome, energetically. "I wish he were in love with her, so that she could master him, and make him do what she pleased."

"Then it is not true, what they say?"

"Not true that she will ever master him. No woman ever will. He will make her fond of him, and afraid of him. That's one of the things you have never gone through, Denner. A woman's love is always freezing into fear. She wants everything, she is secure of nothing. This girl has a fine spirit, — plenty of fire and pride and wit. Men like such captives, as they like horses that champ the bit and paw the ground; they feel more triumph in their mastery. What is the use of a woman's will?- if she tries, she does n't get it, and she ceases to be loved. God was cruel when he made women." Denner was used to such outbursts as this. Her mistress's rhetoric and temper belonged to her superior rank, her grand person, and her piercing black eyes. Mrs. Transome had a sense of impiety in her words which made them all the more tempting to her impotent anger. The waiting-woman had none of that awe which could be turned into defiance; the Sacred Grove was a common thicket to her.

"It may n't be good luck to be a woman," she said. "But one begins with it from a baby; one gets used to it. And I should n't like to be a man, -to cough so loud, and stand straddling about on a wet day, and be so wasteful with meat and drink. They're a coarse lot, I think. Then I need n't

make a trouble of this young lady, madam," she

added, after a moment's pause.

"No, Denner. I like her. If that were all, I should like Harold to marry her. It would be the best thing. If the truth were known, — and it will be known soon, the estate is hers by law, - such law as it is. It's a strange story; she's a Bycliffe really."

Denner did not look amazed, but went on fastening her mistress's dress, as she said,

"Well, madam, I was sure there was something wonderful at the bottom of it. And turning the old lawsuits and everything else over in my mind, I thought the law might have something to do with it. Then she is a born lady?"

'Yes; she has good blood in her veins."

"We talked that over in the housekeeper's room, what a hand and an instep she has, and how her head is set on her shoulders, - almost like your own, madam. But her lightish complexion spoils her, to my thinking. And Dominic said Mr. Harold never admired that sort of woman before. There's nothing that smooth fellow could n't tell you if he would he knows the answers to riddles before they're made. However, he knows how to hold his tongue; I'll say that for him. And so do I, madam."

"Yes, yes; you will not talk of it till other people are talking of it."

"And so, if Mr. Harold married her, it would save all fuss and mischief?"

"And he seems inclined; and she 'll not refuse him, I'll answer for it. And you like her, madam. There's everything to set your mind at rest.”

Denner was putting the finishing-touch to Mrs. Transome's dress by throwing an Indian scarf over her shoulders, and so completing the contrast between the majestic lady in costume and the dishevelled Hecuba-like woman whom she had found half an hour before.

“I am not at rest!" Mrs. Transome said, with slow distinctness, moving from the mirror to the window, where the blind was not drawn down, and she could see the chill white landscape and the faroff unheeding stars.

Denner, more distressed by her mistress's suffering than she could have been by anything else, took up with the instinct of affection a gold vinaigrette which Mrs. Transome often liked to carry with her, and going up to her, put it into her hand gently. Mrs. Transome grasped the little woman's hand hard, and held it so.

"Denner," she said in a low tone, "if I could choose at this moment, I would choose that Harold should never have been born."

"Nay, my dear" (Denner had only once before in her life said" my dear" to her mistress), "it was a happiness to you then."

"I don't believe I felt the happiness then as I feel the misery now. It is foolish to say people can't feel much when they are getting old. Not pleasure, perhaps, little comes. But they can feel they are forsaken, why, every fibre in me seems to be a memory that makes a pang. They can feel that all the love in their lives is turned to hatred

or contempt."

"Not mine, madam, not mine. Let what would be, I should want to live for your sake, for fear you. should have nobody to do for you as I would.”

Ah, then, you are a happy woman, Denner; you have loved somebody for forty years who is old and weak now, and can't do without you."

The sound of the dinner-gong resounded below, and Mrs. Transome let the faithful hand fall again.

CHAPTER XVII.

She's beautiful; and therefore to be wooed :
She is a woman; therefore to be won.

Henry VI.

IF Denner had had a suspicion that Esther's presence at Transome Court was not agreeable to her mistress, it was impossible to entertain such a suspicion with regard to the other members of the family. Between her and little Harry there was an extraordinary fascination. This creature, with the soft broad brown cheeks, low forehead, great black eyes, tiny well-defined nose, fierce biting tricks towards every person and thing he disliked, and insistence on entirely occupying those he liked, was a human specimen such as Esther had never seen before, and she seemed to be equally original in Harry's experience. At first sight her light complexion and her blue gown, probably also her sunny smile and her hands stretched out towards him, seemed to make a show for him as of a new sort of bird; he threw himself backward against his Gappa," as he called old Mr. Transome, and stared at this new-comer with the gravity of a wild animal. But she had no sooner sat down on the sofa in the library than he climbed up to her, and began to treat her as an attractive object in natural history, snatched up her curls with his brown fist, and, discovering that there was a little ear under

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