If so, Sir Sandy's belief was that she learnt it by heart, so long did she keep the paper.

The chocolate taken up again and finished, she lay back in the chair, her eyes looking into vacancy, her listless hands folded before her. Grace, sitting opposite, ostensibly occupied with some work, for she was rarely idle, had leisure to note her sister's countenance. It was much changed. Worn, wan and weary it looked, but there was no special appearance now of ill health.

"You are much better, are you not, Adela ?"
"Oh, I am very well," was the languid rejoinder.
"Do you like Scotland ?"

"I don't know."

Grace thought she was tired after the night journey, and resolved to leave her to silence; but an interruption occurred. Frances came in. And, that Frances Chenevix could put her face into a mournful form for more than a minute at any time, was not to be expected. In spite of Adela's evidently low state of mind, she, after a few staid sentences, ran off at a gay tangent.

"What do you think, Gracie?" she began. "We had very nearly lost our party to-night-one, Adela, that your whilom husband gives. He and his sister have been telegraphed for this afternoon to Netherleigh. Poor Mrs. Dalrymple has met with some serious accident; there has been an operation, and the result is, I suppose, uncertain. They have both started by train, and therefore cannot be at home to receive the people."

"Is the party put off, then?" questioned Grace,

"No, there was not time: how could he send round to all the world and his wife? It is to take place without him, mamma playing host in his absence."

"I wonder what Mrs. Dalrymple could want with him ?"

"Just what I wondered, Grace. Mamma thinks it must be to speak to him about her affairs. He is her executor, I believe: not, poor woman, that she has much to leave."

Adela had lifted her head, listening to this in silence: an eager look was dawning on her face.

"Do you mean to say, Frances, that he-that my husband-will not be there at all?-in his own house ?"

"Of course I mean it, Adela. He cannot be in two places at once, here and at Netherleigh. He and Mary Lynn have but now started on their way thither. I tell mamma that while she plays host I shall play hostess. Won't it be fun!

A

Little did Frances Chenevix dream of the fruit these words were to bear-of the trouble they would bring forth. A small, passing trouble, it is true, nothing more, and one that left no consequences behind it. "Grace," began Adela very quietly, after her sisters had left, for Lady Sarah, thinking better of it, came up to see her for a moment, "I shall go with you to-night."

"Go-where did you say?" questioned Grace, in doubt.

"To my husband's house."

Grace dropped her work in consternation.

Adela."

"I do mean it. I shall go."

"You cannot mean it,

"Oh, Adela, pray consider what you are saying. Go there! Why, you know that you must not."

"It was my house once," said Adela in agitation.

"But it is yours no longer. Pray consider. Of all people in the world, you must not attempt to enter it. It would not be seemly." Adela burst into tears. "If you knew-if you knew how I long for a sight of it, Gracie," she gasped, her tone one of imploring prayer, "you would not deny me. Only just one little look at it, Gracie dear! What can it matter? He is not there."

How Grace, who had a tender heart, would have contrived to combat this wish, cannot be told: but Lady Acorn came in. In answer to her quick questioning of what Adela was crying about now, Grace deemed it well to tell her.

"Oh," said the Countess, taking up the affair lightly; nay, rather jocosely, for truly she did not suppose Adela could be in earnest. "Go there, would you! What would the world say, I wonder, if they met Lady Adela Netherleigh at that house? Don't be silly, child."

What indeed! Adela sighed and said no more. But yet, she did so want to go. Lying back in her chair, her thoughts busy with the past and present, the longing took a terrible hold upon her.

She dressed, but did not go down to dinner, refusing that meal as she had refused luncheon: she could not eat any if she went down, was all she said. But that Lord Acorn was away from home for a few days, Grace might have thought she shrank from sitting at table with her father.

Lady Acorn went straight from the dinner-table to Grosvenor Square, calling on her way at Colonel Hope's for her daughter Frances, as had been arranged. Grace, who did not care to leave Adela alone for too long an evening, would go later with Sir Sandy. She hastened to dress, not having done so for the party before dinner, and then went to her sister's room to remain with her to the last moment.

But when Grace got there, she found, to her dismay, that Adela was prepared to go also. Her fan lay on the table, her gloves beside it. Adela, indeed you must not!" decisively spoke Grace. "Only think how-how-I said it this afternoon-unseemly it will be."

"If you only knew how I am yearning for it," came the piteous answer, and Adela entwined her wasted arms entreatingly about her sister. "My own home once, Gracie, my own home once! I seem to be dying for a sight of it."

Never had Grace felt so perplexed, rarely so distressed. "Adela,

I dare not sanction it; dare not take you. What would be said and thought? Mamma

"You need not take me; I don't wish to get you into trouble with mamma. Davvy can tell them to get a cab. Grace, you have no right to oppose me," went on Adela in a low, firm tone: "what right can you have? My husband will not be there, and I must see my old home. It may be the last time I shall have the chance of it."

He

Sir Sandy's step was heard outside in the corridor, passing to his chamber. Grace opened the door, and told him of the trouble. put his little head inside and said a few words to Adela in his mild way, begging her not to attempt to go; and then went on, to his

room.

"I must go, Gracie; I must go! Oh, Gracie, don't look harshly at me, for I am very miserable."

What was Grace to do? She had rarely been in such perplexity. A little more coaxing and combatting, and she yielded in very helplessness. How could she help it? The conviction lay upon her that if she refused to the end, Adela would certainly go alone. When an ardent desire, such as this, takes possession of one weakened in spirit and in health, it assumes the form of a fever that must have its

course.

The contention delayed them, and it was late when they went down to the carriage. Little Sir Sandy took his seat in it opposite Grace and Adela.

"I wash my hands of it," he said, amiably. "Please do not let your mother put the blame of it upon me, Lady Adela, and tell me I ought not to have brought you."

A few minutes, and the carriage stopped in Grosvenor Square. Other guests were entering the house at the same time. Adela shrank behind Grace and Sir Sandy and was not observed in the crowd. Her dress was black net, as it had been at Mr. Blunt's, though she was not in mourning now; she kept her thin black burnous cloak on and held it up to her face. She passed close to Hilson. The man stepped back in astonishment, recollected himself, and saluted her with an impassive face.

Keeping in the shade as much as was possible, shrinking into corners to avoid observation, Adela lost the others. She heard their names shouted out in a louder voice than Hilson's, "Lady Grace Chenevix and Sir Sandy MacIvor," and she lingered behind looking about her.

How painful to her was the sight of the old familiar spots! turned into a small niche and halted there; her heart beating too painfully to go on. No, she should not be able to carry this expedition out; she saw now how wrong and foolish it was to attempt it: she had put herself into a false position, and she felt it in every tingling vein.

Just one peep she would give at the drawing-rooms above. Nobody

would notice her.

Amid the crowds pressing in, for the people were in the full flow of arrival, she should escape observation. Just one yearning look, and then she would turn back and escape the way she came.

This was a favourable moment. Three or four people in a group, strangers to her, were passing upwards. Adela glided on behind them. Their names were shouted out as her sister's and Sir Sandy's had been; as others were; and she stole after them within the portals. But only to steal back again. Nay, to start back. For a too wellremembered voice had greeted the visitors. "I am so glad to see you," and a tall, distinguished form stood there with outstretched hands the voice and form of her husband. Later, she knew how it was. The faintness succeeding to the operation (a very slight one), which had alarmed Mrs. Dalrymple herself and also in a degree the surgeon and the Rector, had passed off, and she was really in no danger. So that when Sir Francis learnt this on his arrival at Netherleigh, he found himself at liberty to return.

Feeling as if she must die in her agony of shame, shame at her unwarrantable intrusion, which the unexpected sight of her husband brought home to her, Adela got down the stairs again unseen and unnoticed, and encountered Hilson in the hall.

"Can I do anything for you, my lady ?-can I get you anything?" he asked, his tone betraying his compassion for her evident sickness.

"Yes," she said, "yes:" and she absolutely put her hand on his arm for momentary support, feeling that she must faint and fall. "I want to go home; I find I am not well enough to stay: perhaps one of the carriages outside would take me?"

"Can I assist you, Lady Adela?" said a voice at her side, from one who was then entering and had overheard the colloquy: and Adela turned to behold Gerard Hope.

"Is it you?" she faintly cried.

"I thought you were abroad, Gerard. Are you making one of the crowd here to-night ?"

"Not as a guest. These grand things no longer belong to me. I am in England again and at work—a clerk in your husband's house, Lady Adela; and I have come here to-night to see him on a matter of pressing business."

Hilson managed it all. An obliging coachman, then setting down his freight, was only too willing to take home a sick lady. Gerard Hope and Hilson both went out with her.

"Don't say to-to anyone—that I came, Hilson," she whispered as she shrank into a corner of the carriage: and Hilson discerned that by "anyone" she must especially mean Sir Francis Netherleigh.

"You may depend upon me, my lady. Chenevix House," he added to the friendly coachman: and closed the door on the unhappy woman who was once his master's indulged and idolized wife.

"How sadly she is changed!" thought Gerard, gazing after the carriage as it bowled away. "Hilson," he said, turning to the butler,

"I must see your master for a minute or two.

that you can put me into, away from this crowd?”

Have you any room

"There's the housekeeper's room, sir: if you don't mind going there. It's quite empty, I believe."

"All right. Tell Sir Francis I bring a note from Mr. Howard. Something important, I believe."

Sir Francis Netherleigh had encountered Gerard Hope in Calais, when passing through it the last time he came down from the French capital. Gerard then convinced him, and with truth, that he was totally innocent of the offence which his uncle, the Colonel, believed him guilty of, and which, combined with a few debts, had been keeping him in exile. Sir Francis, ever considerate and generous, paved the way for Gerard's return; that is, he advanced money for the most pressing of the creditors, and offered Gerard a post in his house in Leadenhall Street.

And when Colonel Hope got to know of this, he grew desperately angry, and accused Sir Francis of turning himself into a refuge for the ill-doing destitute.

CHAPTER XXXII.

VISITORS AT MOAT GRANGE.

THE time went on: autumn weather came in and we must pay a visit to Netherleigh.

Things were almost coming to a revolt: never were poor tenantfarmers so ground down and oppressed as those on the estate of Moat Grange. Rents were raised, fines imposed, expenses, properly falling on landlords, refused to be paid or allowed for. Oscar Dalrymple, the present owner, was ruling with a hand of iron, hard and cruel.

At least, Oscar got the credit of it. In point of fact he was perhaps a little ashamed of the existing state of things, and would have somewhat altered it if he could. A year ago Oscar had let the whole estate to a sort of agent, a man named Pinnett, and Pinnett was playing Old Gooseberry with everything.

That was the expressive phrase the indignant people used. They refused to lay the blame on Pinnett, utterly refused to recognise him in the matter; arguing, perhaps rightly, that unless he had Mr. Dalrymple's sanction to harsh measures he could not exercise them, and that Mr. Dalrymple was, therefore, alone to blame. Most likely Oscar had no resource but to sanction it all, tacitly at any rate.

As to the Grange itself, the mansion, it was now the dreariest of the dreary. That not having been let with the estate, Oscar and his wife still lived in it. Two maids were kept, and a man for out-door work-the garden and the poultry. Most of the rooms were locked up. Selina would unlock the doors sometimes and open the shutters; and pace about the lonely floors, and wish she had not