born until ten years after the time men- | into another, and extended over half the tioned. Well, all the same, this book be- house. Thatched eaves projected a long longed to him. I turned the leaves over way, the windows were close under the with a sad sort of interest, and I think I eaves, little frames to exquisite views of must have sighed. I am not sure, but I hills in the distance and dark sky; swalknow that I heard two sighs, one close to lows were darting inside the eaves to their me, and one behind me in the doorway. nests. I remember these things, the outWithout looking I knew who was there, side setting of the shadows. At the end and I got up to meet my grandmother. of our travel we came to a closed door, She came in running, with her hands which grandmother did not attempt to stretched out towards me- little thin, open. I found afterwards that it was the white hands, almost covered by the ruffles | door of Eleanor's room. of her black dress. She wore the headdress and dark band I had seen her in before, and I noticed slippers and white stockings showing under her skirts. She drew a little shawl crookedly over her shoulders, and sitting down on a box, mo- | tioned me to do the same. The old Latin grammar lay in my lap as I sat beside her, and she saw it, took it from me, turned to the name in the cover, and then threw it with all her force into a corner of the attic, and looked at me and laughed. "We mustn't show that to him," she said, "it would remind him of the old days, so I throw it quite away, you see, because he is coming back to-morrow." "Coming back?" I said, not knowing what else to say. "Yes," she answered; "he sent to tell me. If only our beautiful Antoinette had been at home to welcome him! He won't recognize you, my dear, I am afraid." "Who, grandmother?" I asked. Then she gave me a long, puzzled stare, and it seemed to me as if years of recollection must be wandering through her brain. I have never been able to understand the world that grandmother lives in, but I know a little of the history of it, and how she got there. She was expecting the admiral when she came to me in my attic. Who was the admiral? Gladys pointed out to me in the church a small white tablet amongst the family monuments, which bore the following record: “To the memory of Llewellyn, only child of Llewellyn and Gabrielle Colwyn, aged 10 years, ," and then came the date. I thought of the Latin grammar I had seen in the attic, whose inscription tallied with the time when such a Llewellyn Colwyn might have lived. There had been two Llewellyns then - Gabrielle's and Antoinette's! By degrees I fitted the pieces of the four histories together. Our grandmother was the daughter of a Frenchman and a Welsh lady, both well born (this fact was instilled into me in every conversation I ever held with our grandmother). She had been left an orphan early, and sent to the house of a relation of her mother's to be brought up. This lady kept a school in a town "The admiral," she explained at last; of Montgomeryshire, and there Gabrielle "Admiral Colwyn. Didn't you know that lived. When she was sixteen she had he was made an admiral? So you see,' ," been married to her cousin, our grandshe added, chuckling in her laughter, "it's father, Llewellyn Colwyn, a man double time to throw the Latin grammar away.' her own age. What a curious shut-up life she must have had coming straight from school to this out-of-the-way place, where everything had gone on just the same for generation after generation of Colwyns, an old family wearing itself out by intermarriages and continual lapses into vice! Of course she had never loved her husband was it likely? though he had been a handsome enough man in his youth, I could well believe. Perhaps she had never loved any one very much until her little boy was born, and then what an unfolding must have come to her of the joy that life holds for some people! I can fancy that "the mother of a little baby" was just the whole expression of the young girl Gabrielle. She had no other child for as long as the first Llewellyn lived, and that was ten years. I found that my attic, as I had already begun to call it in my thoughts, was one of grandmother's suite of rooms. She took me into one after another that evening in the twilight. I never saw any of them again, for though grandmother often haunted Gladys and me after that in other parts of the house, she gave us no encouragement to visit her where she lived. The vision of her rooms flickers before me as I try to recall it. I cannot recall it; places only seen once do not form pictures in the mind, and then the strange things she said to me, the puzzle I felt about what was real to her (everything that seemed to be real to her was unreal to me), kept me busy crossing and recrossing the border line between us all the time we were together. The rooms opened one It was during the few months that intervened between the loss of her little boy and the birth of the twins that grandmother's fancies began to show. She made up odd stories, Eleanor said. Grandmother herself thought that she then began to hear voices, to see visions, to receive messages, and to find out strange facts. I suppose both she and Eleanor were partly right. Then she was made a mother again most miserable instead of most happy-and could not bear the touch of baby-fingers upon her breasts. This was the crisis of her illness. She came out of it into a different life into two lives, I should say which crossed one another. I wish I had a clearer notion of what | dreadful one to the father too, we thought, the first Llewellyn was like. I have two Gladys and I, whenever we looked at the pictures of him in my mind, drawn from tablet on Sundays. Hot Sunday aftertalks with our grandmother. One is of a noons, when the light and heat came in at bright, impetuous little child flashing in the open church door whilst the service and out amongst the trees and flowers of was being wound up by the singing of the the sweet place - Colwyn had been sweet evening hymn, exactly as it used to be, no and orderly in Gabrielle's young days, doubt, when the little drowned Llewellyn a child loving his child-mother with pretty sat in his place in the family pew, and clinging ways. "Mammy's little sweet- afterwards when the second Llewellyn sat heart" was his pet name for himself. there. The Colwyns will come to an end How often grandmother has told me that when grandfather dies, I often say to myin drawing the baby-portraiture! In her self, and I am glad of it. most reasonable moods she recurs to him then; she even admits when she speaks thus that the young life may have been taken up higher that her boy did slip through the seen into the unseen during a storm which wrecked a little vessel off the Isle of Man some forty years ago. The second picture I have is of a delicatelooking lad, a schoolboy, but a mere child still (he had been taken away from her, so young Gabrielle complained, to be sent to school, and he hated leaving her)- a little lad clinging to his mother's knees one miserable afternoon, with his face buried in her lap, sobbing out his story to her; soiled and tired with a journey taken on foot, all alone taken in fear of perils of many kinds, which he was explaining to The little white flag floating from grandher, telling her why he had run away and mother's window-sill was a sign of the come to her for refuge - why he was tipmost point of her madness. It seemed obliged to come, why there was nothing as if some fiend caught her up then and else that he could do when - they forced put her upon a pinnacle, just for the pleas. bim away from her. "Who, grandmoth-ure of throwing her down. It was her er?" I asked, when she drew this picture happiest, freest, most reckless mood, when for me; and I know my face must have she believed that her little drowned boy shown the indignation that I felt, because had never been drowned at all, but had for the only time during our intercourse my grown up and won his way in the world, grandmother kissed me. Little Llewellyn and was coming home to his mother. She was sent back to school without being heard the wind in the sails of his ship, a allowed to see his mother again. He had messenger had come to tell her of the day not remained there; either in strength or and hour of his arrival. She could almost in weakness he took his life into his own persuade me of the truth of her story hands a second time and ran off, but not sometimes, it seemed so clear and sure to again to his home, and it was that which her. But the hour and the day passed, broke his mother's heart and blurred her and grandmother climbed up to her attic whole life. Her boy had wanted her and rooms, and at night I used to fancy I had not come to her. Her grief rose up heard the storm at sea, and the gurgling continually against this fact, which stood sound that water makes when it closes out like a rock that waves break upon, over something it takes for itself. and cannot wash away or hide. The child he was only ten years old when all this happened — managed to get taken on board a little vessel at Carnarvon, which had been wrecked almost immediately after he joined her. The whole story was too sad a one for there to have been any record of it put upon the stone in the parish church "Sacred to the memory of Llewellyn." The memory must be a "You seem much better than you are, my dear," grandmother said to me once. I was drawing the outline of a yellow lily in the summer-house, and grandmother had sauntered in. Gladys was entertaining friends indoors that afternoon, and I had been listening vaguely to the sound of their talk, undecided whether I would join them or stay at my work. Gladys was too fond of having people about, I to leave our old home. Looking at her thought. It interrupted everything why that morning, I saw drawn together in her should I go? Besides, nobody wanted the beauty of her childhood, the charm she me; I should not be missed. When next inherited from mother, and the breaking I looked up at the lily, after grandmoth- open of her own ripeness—a full-blown er's speech, I saw that a large beetle had June rose, with morning dew upon the crept from the inside of the flower on to petals. It was her birthday, and she had one of the petals. In my disgust and been in the garden before I came down to haste to get rid of the creature, I threw breakfast, standing at the gate, my favorite over the йower-vase and soaked my draw-dreaming place, which led from the garden ing. Grandmother was delighted at the little misadventure, and laughed the hard, false laugh that always irritated Gladys. It had never jarred upon me so much as it did just then. "Now perhaps you will go and pour out tea for your sister," my grandmother said. "I saw a picture of your heart this morning, Madeleine, and there was a black devil inside it." Was it true? Yes, it was true. I had been envying Gladys's beauty, not that morning only, alas!-but that grandmother should have known about it! How could she know? It was good for grandmother having us at Colwyn, I soon found out. Her thoughts were occupied with us, she could talk freely to us, which relieved her so that her bad fits were less frequent; to me I should say she talked, for though grandmother worshipped Gladys, Gladys could not bear her presence. There was an old-fashioned cottage barometer in the entrance hall, with a quaint figure of a woman that went in or came out with change for rain and fair weather. I found our grandmother study. ing it one day; the little figure had just gone into the house and the door was shut. "So we may expect rain," I said, as I joined her. Then she looked up at me with the wistful, helpless look that I had got to know as a sort of bridge between her moods. "Shut up alone," she said, "in a little house," and then she clenched her hands, and wandered away from me. My life is like a faded leaf, My harvest dwindled to a husk; My life is like a broken bowl, CHAPTER VI. IN thought I draw a circle round Gladys's most beautiful day. It was the day on which we were told that we were into the meadow; some one had met her there, she told me afterwards. When we were quite little things, all three of us together, there was one household in our neighborhood which gave us a good deal of food for gossip. Mr. Treherne was an invalided master from one of the Yorkshire grammar schools, who had established himself in a farmhouse about a mile from our village, near one of the highroads along which we oftenest took our walks. There was a Mrs. Treherne, and a grown-up Miss Treherne; but these members of the family did not excite our curiosity. Mr. Treherne had pupils, young men and boys. Why anybody should have sent their sons to such an out-of-the-way place to be taught, I don't know. Perhaps Mr. Treherne was a very learned man, or perhaps he charged little for teaching. His household attended our church on Sundays. Mr. and Mrs. and Miss Treherne sat in a pew by themselves, four or five slim boys in the next behind. Certainly we missed these last very much at holiday times. I recall the flat look the church had to me when, after kneeling before the service, I raised my eyes and saw the pew empty behind Mr. and Mrs. Treherne. Gladys was never taken aback as I used to be, having calculated beforehand when the first Sunday of the holidays would occur. "You silly," she used to whisper when she noticed my blank face. Why, of course." The ages of Mr. Treherne's pupils ranged from twelve to fifteen. When I was about eleven years old - how funny it is to look back upon this!-I came out of church one Sunday a quite different person from the one I had been when we went in. "I say, Madeleine," Gladys began saying to me on our way through the churchyard, "hasn't the new boy got a beautiful face? Don't you wonder what his name is?" At first her voice came to me like some one talking in a dream; but when I understood what she said, I felt my face become covered with blushes, and I didn't know which way to look. For some time after, in talking to one another, | Gladys and with Miss Treherne, and with "God made thee good as thou art beautiful," none In so young youth was ever made a knight had. We saw a good deal of Trelawny after that for about a year, and then he went away, only coming now and then for short visits to the Trehernes, who were rela tions of his. That was how I spoke of him to myself. And one there was among us ever moved in I murmured to myself, and then I looked "Gladys," I said, stooping to tie a shoe- "Trelawny's his name, Jim Trelawny, if you mean him," Gladys answered crossly. We were really too young then to take part in the tennis; but visitors generally made a great deal of us to please our mother. So it happened that Gladys played in one game; Trelawny was her partner. As for me, I never once spoke to Sir Galahad, but I was near him many times, and I heard some of his talk with 6 "Are you talking about Mr. Trelawny, Gladys?" I asked, going on with a sketch I was trying to get by looking out of the window on a wet October afternoon. Gladys kicked with impatience. "You always were mad, you child!" she screamed at me. "Can't you put down that thing for a minute and listen? He's so silly, and I don't know what to say. Oh!" I came from the window then, and sat down by Gladys on a footstool, facing her. I saw that she had an open letter in her hand, which she was flapping up and down. May I look, dear?" I asked. Could that letter contain Gladys's first offer of marriage? The suggestion made my heart leap, and the color come into my face, but Gladys was only just as rosy as usual, and she looked more annoyed than anything else. 66 "Yes, you may read it, but you won't understand that by itself," she said, and then she pulled a letter out of her pocket in a torn envelope, and gave me that as well. "Read that one first," Gladys said. Then she drew a cushion from under her head, and crushed it over her face, and didn't turn about or kick any more.until I had finished reading letter No. I. Lovely!" Gladys cried out, pulling the cushion down from her face. "Well, that one doesn't matter so much - read the other;" and so saying, she pulled the cushion up again over her face. From letter No. 2 I saw what Gladys's answer to No. I had been. I cried over letter No. 2, actually came to a little sob at the end. "Madeleine, what a flat you are!" Gladys was staring at me. "What is there to cry about? He's a donkey, that's all." "Then what are you going to do now? You won't let him come at Christmas, if you mean to go on saying no?" I asked. "But oh, Gladys dear!" I exclaimed | Gladys on account of her great beauty, and when I came to the concluding words - had often thought, in a dreamy sort of way, 'Whatever answer you may send me, I about its being a key that would open all shall never be able to give up loving you' hearts to her. That day I understood that Gladys, why did you never tell me be- for a woman the possession of beauty is fore? What a lovely letter!" the key to life itself. However many years may roll over my head, I shall never know man-nature as Gladys knew it before she was seventeen. That sounds as if I thought that to know men was the whole of life. Well, if one goes through the world knowing only one-half of human nature, one cannot be said to have lived fully. Most women, married and unmarried, know one or two men perfectly of course; but unless a woman is beautiful, she cannot have the chance of knowing many or various kinds. Only those who are attracted to her by affinity of mind or character come very near, into her sphere; whereas, Gladys had the opportunity of knowing all sorts of men stupid and clever, young and old, idle or busy. No traveller through life passing her way was unwilling to stop before the sign of a beautiful face, and once there, at the Maiden's Hostel, the frank spirit of the girl made all feel themselves welcome; then encumbering conventionalities were soon thrown off, and rest and refreshment gained through easy comradeship. "It was all very well when we were kids," Gladys said. “He was quite grown up to us. But, oh dear me! he's such a boy to me now." 66 I think he writes just like a man," I answered, "and he does not expect you to marry him yet." 66 Marry why, he's at college, child! Now, Madeleine, it's just this," said Gladys, sitting up on the sofa, "I can't love a boy." 66 "He loves you tremendously Gladys." No, he doesn't; bless you, child, they all talk like that!" Gladys was an old hand at this sort of thing then, and there wasn't any romantic history going on; no first love dream suddenly becoming real, nothing startling and beautiful and new. This was the second autumn of our stay at Colwyn and Gladys had been away on visits. She had paid visits at intervals more or less during all the time since we left our old home, some to friends of our early days, and some to the new friends she had made in Montgomeryshire. For the whole of July, August, and September of this, our second year, she had been away. I remembered suddenly, during the little silence that followed Gladys's remark, that I had said to myself on her return from the last visit, “Gladys is not exactly the June rose now, not the rose opened in the morning with dew upon it." Best days do not stay with us longer than any others. Every February we have our day of spring promise, and by and by the day of spring come, and after that beauty strides over the year. It is so with the beauty of women; yet it was during the talk we had that afternoon of the letter that I began to realize what the beauty of a woman really means. I had always envied He al "Oh, he was awfully nice, Madeleine! you can't think how kind he was. ways knows exactly what to say, just the sort of thing to do you good. Look here, I'll show you a letter I got from So-and-so. Isn't it a jolly one? I'm certain he's good. You should hear how he talks about his mother; says he'll never marry till he finds a girl like her. He meant I was like her, you know." Gladys talked away of one and another to me when I began to question her. She had lived half-a-dozen lives whilst I had been sticking at Colwyn. Trelawny was not the first of her friends who had offered his love to Gladys. I took it into my head that he was the best of them, and loved her best; but Gladys wouldn't allow that. After we had talked for a long time, I began to unravel the threads that had become wound round Gladys's life; but it was only during the last five minutes of the time that a ray shot through the web, and showed me the single pale clue that reached from the circumference to her heart. The last of the letters she let me read —she gave it to me rather as an afterthought—had a different ring about it from the rest. It wasn't the letter of a lover, I fancied, and it wasn't the letter of a boy. It was less |