Charlie, who had been pursuing her own train of thought, did not reply to this; but stepping through the little doorway, half turned to Hugh, and spoke again.

'This room really wouldn't be so bad if it were not so crowded. Why shouldn't we get rid of that great ugly centre table? I daresay we could sell it. There would be some space to sit in then, and there would be a reason for putting away those absurd little ornaments which cover it.'

'Just so,' said Hugh rather absently; 'why shouldn't we?' Truth to tell, he felt like working, and was meditating a retreat to the sanctuary of his studio, which, though it was only a converted barn, was the one place within his demesne, except the lawn, where he felt as if he had light and air enough. Why shouldn't we, baby? You are a clever child,' he said, thinking all the time of the picture on his easel. 'I am going to work for an hour or so before dinner,' he added, 'so you must amuse yourself somehow.'

She had already discovered that the sacredness of the studio was a very needful thing, he was so easily distracted. She had insisted upon staying there with him one day, and the result was he scarcely touched his canvas. After that she was very willing to have the key of the studio-door turned upon her; for every one of the unfinished pictures, of which there were plenty in that studio, seemed to her to be just so much money not ready for use; and, apart from a natural love of money which she possessed, it was easy to see that it was by no means abundant in that house. So she let Hugh go when he spoke of working, and looked about her for some occupation. Her mind being full of ideas of change and improvement, she began to look round the tiny room.

VOL. XXV.

'Plenty to be done,' she said to herself, and one of the very first things is to move this table. Well, that is easy, and it will be delightful to see how the place looks without it. . . . It could go into the outhouse, and stand there. . . . I'll set about it.' So saying to herself, she began to gather up the things upon the table and put them aside.

She was busy and amused over her first piece of innovation in the bandbox-like little house. In the mean time Millicent, who had all this time been sitting still and silent in the next room, her floury hands in her lap, rose and approached the door into the little drawing-room. Her cheeks were very hot, her heart was beating very fast. She knew this, and tried her best to steady herself, and command her voice. The result was nothing to boast of. Her voice did not tremble, but it sounded very unnatural when she spoke to Charlie.

'What are you going to do?' was all she said.

Charlie drew herself up, and turned upon her with an expression in her eyes which Millicent had never seen there before. It almost frightened her. The fact was that Charlie was really very angry, and, as she thought, justifiably so. She had carefully avoided as yet interfering personally with Millicent's housekeeping authority. She felt that this matter of rearranging a room was surely within her rights as wife of the master of the house.

'I'm going to turn out this rickety old table,' said she, as you are so-curious.' She would have liked to have said inquisitive, but changed her mind at the last mo

ment.

'O, but you mustn't cried Millicent hastily.

And pray why not?' asked Charlie, the dangerous look growing stronger in her gray eyes.

She had cleared the table now,

G

and with a quick action she caught up the heavy cloth which covered it, and drew it off. Millicent seized it with both hands, and just held it half on the table.

Charlie stood too amazed at this resistance to speak for a second, but gazed at Millicent like a cat prepared to spring. If Hugh had walked in at that moment he would have been astonished at the scene before him; fortunately for himself he was safely at work in his studio. 'What do you mean by this?' exclaimed Charlie.

'Only that the table's mine,' said Millicent, and—I'd rather it wasn't moved.'

'Yours?' Charlie ejaculated, in unmeasured astonishment. on earth do you mean?'

What

The dangerous look went out of her eyes, and an expression of alarm came into them instead. Millicent unconsciously gained courage from this. She dropped the tablecloth, drew back, and spoke more coolly.

'I mean,' she answered, 'what I have already said; the table is mine, and so is the rest of the furniture. Of course, I thought you knew that. I must go and look after my cooking.'

And so saying, Millicent very quietly walked away to the kitchen, leaving Charlie absolutely thunderstruck. For a short time she stood quite still, as if absorbed in the effort of taking Millicent's words into her mind. Then suddenly she roused, and started off in search of that young lady. She had not far to seek; Millicent's voice was plainly audible through the kitchendoor; she was scolding the small maid for having allowed some pastry to burn during her absence. Charlie opened the kitchen-door and looked around it.

'Millicent,' she said, in her most ingratiating way, 'mayn't I speak to you a moment?'

'Of course,' said Millicent, but I can't possibly leave these pies just now; they are in the last agonies of cooking.'

In the last agonies, are they? said Charlie, advancing boldly into the kitchen, a region which as yet she had treated with the greatest respect. They look very nice. But, Millicent, about what you said just now, I want to understand better. You know I never thought that the furniture wasn't Hugh's, or of course I would not have moved anything.'

'Ann,' said Millicent to the little handmaid, 'go and set the table for dinner.'

This slight difficulty in the way of free discussion being removed, Millicent sat down upon a kitchenchair, keeping her eyes upon her pastry; Charlie began to walk about the kitchen, beating her hands together and trying to hide her distress and her disgust. But this was not easy to do. Millicent's tale was a long weary one of debt and inconvenience, and the paltry contrivances of an insufficiently supported home. She had given up her little year's income over and over again to help Hugh out of some small difficulties, and the only return she had was a bill of sale upon the cottage, full of rickety old furniture. This was given partly as a matter of recompense to her, and partly to prevent any inconvenient seizure of said furniture, which, by the way, was worth next to nothing; but Millicent valued it, for it had been her mother's, and was full of associations, to her mind. To Charlie, who had no associations with it except some of recent disgust, the whole thing appeared preposterous. Why could not Hugh have a place of his own, with new furniture, and, therefore, no bondage to Millicent? Only because he had never had any one to manage his affairs, and he was incapable of doing it

himself. It was plain she must take it in hand. If Millicent had not these rights in the house there would be no reason for her to live with them. All this was passing through her mind as she put pertinent questions, walking about the little hot kitchen, and beating her hands together. Her cheeks were as hot as Millicent's by the time the little maid came back, and by her presence put a stop to the conversation. Charlie went up to her room to put on one of her dinner-dresses. She arranged some flowers in her hair, making herself as charming as she could, and effacing, as far as possible, the signs of disturbance from her face. She certainly did not look, as she swept down the small stairway in her blue-silk dress, like a member of a poverty-stricken household. She was so large and full in her person, her manner, her notions of living, that she seemed a thing quite outside the pale of Millicent's poor little sacrifices and long-suffering economies. Millicent felt this herself as she sat at the side of the table, while Charlie took the head, and presided with as much largeness of manner as if Francatelli himself had cooked the dinner, instead of the little lady in the demure black frock. Charlie was peculiarly gracious and charming towards both her companions throughout that evening. She was full, all the time, of inward meditations.

CHAPTER VIII.

Casar, casar, e que do governo? Marry, marry, and what about the housekeeping?-Portuguese Proverb.

By the middle of the next day Charlie had formed some kind of idea as to the course she would pursue. She said to Hugh as he was leaving the lunch-table,

'Shall I have some plants for the greenhouse?'

'Why, yes, of course,' said Hugh; 'we decided that yesterday, didn't we, baby?'

When he had gone to his studio, Charlie sat down and wrote an order to a florist in the nearest town, and despatched a small boy with it whom she found on the village green, and who, for a trifling sum, was quite willing to walk to the town and back again. She said nothing more about the flowers; and at dinner she asked whether they might have some salmon the next day.

'O, it's too dear, yet!' cried Millicent, with a scared face. 'Nonsense,' said Hugh; 'we'll have some. I'll tell them to send us a nice piece.'

The ice thus broken, Charlie informed him in the course of a private talk between them later in the evening, that without champagne and oysters at least twice a week she should die of starvation. Hugh looked at her sorrowfully.

'What a shame to starve such a baby as this! and 'pon my soul, I'd like some oysters, too. I declare I haven't stayed at home so long as this for a year, and little Millicent always half starves a fellow. Let's have a barrel of oysters in; and I'll send to town for some fizz.'

In the morning Hugh and Charlie ordered the oysters and salmon of the only fishmonger in the neighbourhood, who lived about a mile from the cottage. At the same time Hugh posted an order to a wine-merchant whom he knew in town, and whom he described as the best fellow in the world; a gentlemanly fellow, you know, who doesn't dun for his money.'

This was Saturday. They had been at home exactly a week. Charlie thought, as they were walking back to the cottage, how changed

her ideas of that home had become since the last Saturday, when first she entered it.

In the afternoon she looked out for her flowers. There was a kind of unexplained coolness between herself and Millicent to-day. Charlie, of course, knew very well that she had put her foot upon Millicent's special ground in interfering in the housekeeping; she thought Millicent was piqued. Millicent was piqued; but she was moreshe was frightened, and that not selfishly. She had been too often insulted by tradesmen not to have a wholesome fear of the whole class. She had learned to order only small necessities which she knew she could pay for. She did not know what Charlie's object was in taking the orders into her own hands, and she was afraid to speak to her about it. Thus the afternoon was dull enough, when Hugh had gone to his studio, which now he did every afternoon. The announcement of the flowers would have amused Charlie, but they did not come until late in the evening, when it was quite dark. They were just placed in the greenhouse, without any care as to arrangement; Hugh and Charlie looking on in great delight. The man handed a bill to Hugh, which he put in his pocket. He really never thought of it, the beauty of the flowers so delighted him. Millicent, startled by this unexpected arrival, turned hot and cold by turns, sitting still and silent in her accustomed chair in the dining-room window.

'That will do,' she heard Charlie say to the man. 'I can arrange them myself to-morrow.' It is no imagination to say that these words sent a kind of thrill through Millicent's whole frame. To-morrow was Sunday-Sunday which, from her earliest babyhood, had meant Sunday-schools, church services, cold dinner, and idle hands to Mil

licent. Anything but this seemed to her the most terrible invasion of religious order. Millicent had never been out of this village for some four years. She had always lived in a village much like it. If she was very narrow in her views upon small matters, she must be excused on the score of utter inexperience.

Charlie and Hugh were enjoying themselves this evening. They had had an unusually good dinner, thanks to their own exertions; they were both charmed at the beautiful flowers, which made the greenhouse full of scent and colour; their only regret was that the champagne could not arrive till next week. But they made up for its absence by an additional bottle of claret. This was a pleasure from which Millicent was altogether excluded. She could not learn to understand wine, being one of those people whose palate seems constructed without reference to the existence of the grape. Thus she would implore with tears in her eyes to be spared the infliction of drinking a glass of wine. Charlie regarded her as a natural curiosity in this respect, and called her, behind her back, 'a little fool.'

Charlie had not been to church on the last Sunday; but then she had so recently arrived that weariness was allowable as a fair excuse. Millicent much wondered whether she would go on this Sunday. But she had not made her appearance at all when Millicent, in her black dress and her little black bonnet, with her prayer-book under her arm, started off to the Sundayschool; the breakfast was still waiting, much to the orderly little housekeeper's disgust. She did not return home until after the morning church service, when she walked down the road to the cottage by the side of the lady who played the organ, and who occupied, in the

village estimation, a position similar to that of a curate-if not rather a higher one than some curates, inasmuch as she not only was unimpeachably pious, but also belonged to a county family. Millicent was somewhat puzzled, as she neared home, by observing that some of the congregation, who had had to pass the cottage-gate, still lingered about them.

Among this group was a certain Captain Linnet, the one fast man of the village society. That is, the one fast man pure and simple. Hugh Wastrell himself was talked vaguely of as being very fast in London; but he was also known to be a genius, and, therefore, mad; besides, he was not addicted to making brazen love to every pretty girl of every rank that he came in contact with, after Captain Linnet's fashion; and, moreover, he was not in the society of the county families, having never taken the trouble to ingratiate himself with them. Thus Captain Linnet's character was a much simpler one, and he had the honour of being the fast man of the neighbourhood. He was the only one of the group who remained by the cottage-gate as the two ladies approached. He did this because it amused him to stare at the demure Millicent with his bold eyes until she blushed painfully; and because it also amused him to talk now and then to the lady who played the organ, whose efforts to treat him, whom she regarded as the black sheep of the flock, with Christian amiability and social politeness afforded him great diversion. Seeing that this wicked gentleman was intending to wait for them, Millicent very quickly shook hands with her companion, and went in at the cottagegate. But she was so startled at the very sight which had interested Captain Linnet, that she stood still a moment inside the gate before

she had the courage to advance any further. The door of the little greenhouse stood open; a number of flower-pots were standing upon the path, evidently in a transition stage. Charlie, in her velvet dress, was busily sweeping out the greenhouse floor with a long-handled broom. Her hair was ruffled, certainly, and she looked as if the exertion was making her very warm; but the picture was pretty enough as a whole; and no one who has not lived in the narrow circle of a village society, where certain actions are considered respectable, and certain others disreputable, can even imagine what an effect this sight had upon our poor Millicent. She could feel within her all the remarks which must have been made by the people-the respectable people who had passed that gate on their way from church. She felt as if herself, her family, her life, were really disgraced by this simple action of Charlie's, who was busily working, quite unconscious of her own wickedness; indeed, rather thinking that she was perhaps too good to do all this for herself, instead of summoning Millicent's little hand

maid to do it for her.

Millicent could never have dreamed that this was Charlie's state of mind. She regarded her

a wilful outrager of public opinion and the decencies of society. She rushed to her room and cried desperately for a little while; then she went down to lunch with red eyes and burning cheeks. Charlie came in, warm, pleased, and happy.

There was a scene over that lunch-table which astonished Hugh Wastrell beyond measure.

'I did my very best for you,' cried Millicent furiously, when at last they came to plain speaking. 'I called on people and told them you had been engaged to Hugh