quietly, and that I had known it. I tried to make them suppose I knew you quite well, when I had never set eyes on you.'

'Well,' interrupted Charlie fiercely, 'I think it's worse to tell lies than to sweep a greenhouse on Sunday.'

'I didn't tell lies,' cried Millicent, but I tried to screen you. What do you suppose they would have thought if they heard of the wild way in which you got married? I confess it's more than I can understand myself, so I shouldn't expect them to understand. But, for Hugh's sake, I pretended to know all about it; and if you had behaved quietly, the people would have called on you. I don't suppose they will now-not any one respectable.'

'I

What do you suppose I care for your village respectabilities?' asked Charlie, in great wrath. know more of good society than any of them; and, as the wife of a man of genius, I consider it quite unnecessary to truckle to their small opinions.'

This was a position which Millicent was so entirely unable to grasp, that she did not know how to reply. She was very proud of her brother's genius; but she had always had a feeling that that very genius somehow led him into being different from other people, and into being not 'respectable;' and the long-drawn effort of her life had been to conquer this balance in the direction of Bohemianism, and make the household wear as much as possible the appearance of other households. She was completely puzzled by Charlie's defiance, and her pause ended the scene. Hugh, who up to this had sat in the silence of utter amazement, looking from one to the other, now got up from his seat and walked out into the garden, his head very high in the air, and a frown of angry perplexity on his

forehead. Charlie immediately followed him, while Millicent sat alone at the deserted table, and wept afresh in a kind of bewildered misery. How real that misery was would scarcely be believed by an outsider, or one who could not realise how a small circle of emotions may be full as vivid as a large

one.

Hugh and Charlie entered upon a discussion, standing upon the lawn in the sunshine. Millicent could see them from where she sat. Charlie's angry movements were followed by her eyes. What the two said to each other must remain unknown. But the interview made Hugh a 'sadder and wiser' man. It was to some extent made plain to his 'primeval intellect' how two women can worry each other; and he also began to make the discovery that Charlie, babyish as she could be in many ways, and easily led through her enjoyment-faculties, was a young woman of very decided will-power. He was not likely to follow his own path in undisturbed ease for the future; and this he began dimly to apprehend. Charlie insisted that Millicent should be sent away; but about this, Hugh shook his head. He had promised his mother that unless Millicent married she should live with him, and that he would take care of her. had a conscience in such matters, and although his taking care of his sister was oddly interpreted into using her little income, and letting her keep him out of debt by eternal small sacrifices and self-denials, still he could not bring himself to think of sending her away.

He

'Well,' said Charlie viciously, 'if she chooses to go, you can't prevent her; and I mean to be mistress in my own house, whether she is here or not.'

With which sentiment Charlie betook herself to her greenhouse,

But he

where she spent the Sunday afternoon in arranging and rearranging her new plants. Hugh tried to paint a little, but his mind was too unhinged and disordered by the revelation of domestic discords. He kept walking from his studio round to the greenhouse, and looking in upon Charlie, in the hope of extracting from her a cheerful smile. For when people would not be sweet to him, he was disconsolate, like a dog whose master is out of temper and will not notice its continual advances. He could not live without some sort of affection; and had it not been that he was a coward, and afraid to have his ears filled with a fresh account of the difficulties between the two women, he would have gone for sympathy to Millicent, who now sat alone in the little dining-room, a good book in her hands and her eyes fixed on vacancy. dared not. And thus the Sunday wore dully away, for there were barriers between all three. Millicent went again to school and church in the afternoon, and came home to sit silent at a meal which could hardly be called dinner, but with which they must needs be satisfied, the head cook having been to church instead of in the kitchen. Indescribably dreary was this repast. Millicent sipped tea and pretended to eat; Charlie ate cold beef and salad with an air of subdued melancholy, as though she were starving on a desert island and were reduced to ship's biscuits; Hugh ate and drank with a boisterous hilarity, every now and then making a cheerful remark to one or other of the women, which they replied to in monosyllables, carefully ignoring each other's existence.

Hugh got a little confused, and repeated himself. Did you have a good sermon, Milly?' came at last for the third time; and Milli

cent, who could not have smiled to save her life, answered with as much gravity, 'Yes, very good,' as if it were the first time of asking.

At last Hugh pushed his chair back rather loudly and went out into the garden. He was beginning to want air.

Charlie instantly went to her greenhouse, and Millicent went to her own room, where she remained all the evening. Later on, Hugh and Charlie came in, and sat as usual in the little drawing-room. And now Charlie began to exhibit her real resources. She was not only a woman of the greatest pertinacity and determination in obtaining her own way; but she had that inestimable gift, a great belief in herself, and that her way must be the right way. These are grand qualities for warfare; and in addition Charlie possessed a weapon which probably only a woman ever wields to perfectionthe power of nagging.' A woman who really has this power may indeed remove mountains, on the same principle that dropping water will wear away a stone. She developed her views and feelings about her position and Millicent's in the house; about her disappointment in finding the poverty-stricken cottage instead of a fine country house; about the necessity of making some change, of ordering Hugh's money matters, of inaugurating a better style of living. This was not all done on that evening; these various branches of the subject occupied something like the whole of the following week. During that week the two women scarcely interchanged two words; but Charlie by decisive action had produced a very decided difference in the arrangement of the queer little household. Millicent still spent her afternoons over the kitchenfire concocting delicacies; but it was Charlie who gave the orders,

CHAPTER I. 'QUITE AN ACQUISITION.' 'THE refined and musical circle' (see advertisement in all the daily papers) of ladies and gentlemen who are received and entertained on highly remunerative terms by Mrs. Withers, in her hospitable and handsome home, are awaiting impatiently the announcement of dinner and the advent of a stranger, when first we meet them.

Mrs. Withers is the daughter of a naval and the widow of an army officer, facts which are kept well before the minds of the several members of the aforesaid refined and musical circle. For among her many other excellent qualities, Mrs. Withers has this one of never forgetting anything that redounds to her own credit. Her dear papa' has been dragged from his watery grave afresh for the benefit of every new-comer. And it her lamented husband was half as much fatigued by the performance of the numerous deeds of valour which she ascribes to him, as her 'circle' is by her recital of them, it is no wonder that he died of sheer exhaustion many a year ago. She is a plump and comely dame, of unblemished respectability and unsurpassable powers of management. Nothing is ever cold, hurried, late, or otherwise disorderly, in her establishment. The elderly gentlemen and middle-aged ladies who reside with her, on what she calls 'terms of mutual accommo

dation,' have little or nothing to find fault with; that for which they have bargained, they have. She gives them their pound of flesh, and does it with so much hospitable grace that they almost forget that they pay her handsomely for it at times.

Her circle is without reproach, and above suspicion. The elderly gentlemen are colonels and majors, with their names in the Army List; members of good clubs, or, if not members themselves, on terms of intimacy with men who are. They do not as a rule mingle freely with fashion's gay throng; but they make it to be clearly understood that they could do so if they wished. The sole exception to the military rule is Mr. Powell; and he is a brilliant exception, one of whom any hostess in the position of Mrs. Withers may well be proud; for he has a 'place' in the country, and his sister is the Marchioness of Claymore, ' a good old Scotch title, which strikes awe to the stoutest hearts over the Border,' Mr. Powell affirms.

It is only for three months in the season that Mr. Powell honours and elevates the circle at 10 Darlington-crescent, by making one of its links. Our friend, the Marchioness's brother, will soon be with us again,' Mrs. Withers is in the habit of saying, in her most languid tones and with her sweetest smile, about the end of April; and the others stir themselves up at the tidings, and begin to read the

Court Circular with eager interest, and to zealously look up every bit of intelligence the weekly journals may be good enough to give about the Claymores and other members of the aristocracy.

He has been with them for a fortnight now, and his frequent allusions to what the Queen said to my sister the other day,' and his deep regret that 'Claymore had not been able to go to Hurlingham with the Prince on Friday, as the latter had made up his mind he (Claymore) should do,' imparts quite an aristocratic bouquet to the atmosphere. Personally he is not imposing, being low in stature and lean in habit. But these facts are not clearly discerned by those around him here, for the halo of his sister's rank is about him, glorifying and beautifying him exceedingly. In manner he is what those about him make him-insufferably haughty whenever he is not insolently condescending; but withal intensely popular with the majority, who pronounce him to be 'so extremely aristocratic, quite an ornament to the circle!' in loving remembrance of his sister the Marchioness.

'I ought to have told you that we are expecting an addition to our party to-night,' Mrs. Withers says to him softly, as she sees that he is looking at his watch. She always speaks softly to him, as if he were made of fine porcelain, and might break if roughly jarred by tones with reality in them.

'Indeed!' he says, adjusting his eye-glass, without betraying a shadow of interest in either tone or look. To him Mrs. Withers's remark is not nearly as exciting in its nature and import as one made by his cook, to the effect 'that she had engaged a new scullery-maid,' would be. These people' about him here, though as well born and better bred than himself, hardly

exist for the man whose whole nature is leavened and defiled by his self-glorification. He esteems himself more highly for being the brother-in-law of the Marquis of Claymore than that nobleman esteems himself, his race, his title, and everything else that he pos

sesses.

'I believe the title was given to my people some centuries ago, in order that that miserable little brother of yours might make an ass of himself about us in these degenerate modern days,' Lord Claymore says to his wife sometimes; and her ladyship laughs and replies,

He's so infinitely small, my dear, that he can't take a good generous pleasure, even in that. I am good for him to talk about; but he can't forgive me for having married you; whereas he has never succeeded in getting a decentlooking girl of our own class to look at him, much less to marry him.'

'A very charming addition too, I think we shall find her,' Mrs. Withers goes on; 'she has written some books, which are, I'm told, very clever indeed; and she writes some of those scathing articles on society, in some of the weekly journals; she will be quite an acquisition, I think.'

Mrs. Withers speaks quite timidly, and her deprecating manner meets with its due and just reward.

'I hope to Heaven the woman won't bore us at dinner with any of her literary jargon,' Mr. Powell says, in those flat metallic tones which have about as much warmth and feeling in them as a toad has. 'Numbers of women who come from Heaven-knows-where, and live the devil-knows-how, have the impertinence in these days to call themselves novelists and journalists, and to write about society. Why, they never even come in con