She remained so long in her room that finally Bertha came to see if she was sick. "Mother and I are so anxious about you," she said. Scotia impulsively opened the door and drew her sister into the room. Her grasp was so firm that Bertha said: "You hurt me, Scotia.

door for ?"

What are you locking the

"You have hurt me a thousand times more cruelly. I have locked the door to make you listen to me. Sit down-or stand up. I care not."

"Scotia, you are ill-you have lost your senses. Mother! Mother! Mother!"

"Be quiet. I am not going to kill you, though you deserve it. Now tell me who you got to personate me last Friday night?"

"Scotia, you have the fever-you are crazy. If you do not open the door, I will jump out of the window." "I shall not allow you. Who were the persons representing Captain Forres and myself? You had better tell me, Bertha."

Then Bertha saw that she had come to a corner in life which she could only turn with a lie, and she said promptly-"It was the new gardener and his wife. You know he has been a soldier. Scotia, upon my honor! I did it for your sake. I thought if Angus were made jealous, he would behave better to you."

"Did I ever meddle with your affairs? What right had you to trifle with mine? You have broken my heart. You have ruined my life. Oh, I know now how easy it was for Aunt Yarrow not to speak to mother for so many years!"

"Let me go to mother. She is very sick. I think it is a great shame of you to take Aunt Yarrow's part against your own dear mother! Poor mother!"

"When father comes back, I shall tell him all. The new gardener must go. As for you, Bertha, keep out of my sight, and do not trouble yourself to speak to me."

"I am sure, Scotia, it has not been pleasant to be with you lately; and as for speaking to you, I do not want to until you get into a better temper. If Angus Bruce were here, I dare say you would be as sweet as an angel. I suppose you are trying to imitate Aunt Yarrow. I think she is a very poor creature, neglecting her own flesh and blood, and adopting strange people. I hope I have some human nature in me. You ought to thank me for my interest in your suffering, and not threaten to kill me."

"What folly you are talking! Do not think you deceive me by it. Are you sure that it was the new gardener and his wife?"

"I will not say another word about it."

"You must answer me."

"Open the door, Scotia."

"Are you sure it was the gardener and his wife?" "Open the door."

"Not till you tell me."

"Well then-I am sure."

"What a mean little creature you are, Bertha! You may go."

Bertha fled and told her mother that Scotia had a fever, and was raving, she thought; and with this assertion Scotia entered, and there was a stormy scene, in which Bertha denied all she had affirmed about the gardener; declaring that she had only blamed him in order to get out of the locked room.

"I was really terrified, mother!" and she crept close to Mrs. Rodney, and while she wept copiously,

begged her to remember how sick she was on Friday, and how impossible and unlikely she would do such things as she was accused of.

Mrs. Rodney believed her. She blamed Angus. She was sure either that jealousy of Captain Forres had made him temporarily unfit to judge of people; or else that his severe attack of headache had been preceded by some mental hallucination, which, combining with his jealousy, had made him see the thing he feared.

So Scotia had little comfort in her sorrow. Mrs. Rodney wished her husband would come back! She began to cry at the trouble around her, and to feel as if she was deserted, and when Bertha said:

"I think it is wicked to annoy mother about our selfish little affairs just when she is coming back from the very grave; let us be friends, Scotia."

Mrs. Rodney thought what a good child Bertha was, and how unreasonably Scotia behaved in refusing to answer her sister's gentle overtures.

"Scotia is my sister Jemima over again," said the convalescing mother; "and, oh, dear! what heartaches Jemima did give me!"

As for Angus, he suffered as strong men suffer when they bend their affections and their desires to their sense of duty. He was jealous, unreasonably jealous, miserably jealous, and in such case

"Fancies are

Just as valid as affidavits ;

And the vaguest illusions quite
As much evidence, as testimony
Taken upon oath."

But he had one loving, sympathetic consoler. His mother believed all he said. She pitied him; she

advised him; she approved all he proposed; she encouraged him to write out his grief, and she partially believed him when he asserted his life to be blighted by Scotia's treachery. "He had been so happy," he said. "He had been dwelling in the land of sunshine and love, and hope. Suddenly he had been deserted. Over all his prospects had come

A mist and a blinding rain,
And life could never be happy again.""

HE plaintive desire of Mrs. Rodney for the return

of the Colonel found an earnest echo in Scotia's heart. And yet neither would hurry him by any complaint. Mrs. Rodney had forbidden all mention of her illness, and Scotia wrote her usual pleasant letters, though she felt as if her heart was breaking for his sympathy. All in vain this year came the joy and beauty of April and May to Scotia. The blackbird whistled his tattoo about the garden paths very early for her, but she did not throw open her casement to answer him. The soft, still, melancholy dawns could not woo her into their sweetness; the trees, misty with buds and plumes, with tufts and tassels, no longer heard her light, firm step beneath them. The primroses nestling amid the undergrowth-the sweet wood