"Thanks awfully. You are very kind."

"I shall be very glad to help you if you get into a real difficulty." Mona paused. "As I said before, I have no right to exact a promise from you-but I can't tell you how much more highly I should think of you if you did worry on

to the end."

The conclusion of this sentence took Matilda by surprise. She had imagined that Mona was going back to the subject of the drawing-master, but Mona seemed to have forgotten the existence of everything but German books.

"And may I come here sometimes in the afternoon, and talk to you? I often see you go down to the beach."

"I never know beforehand when I shall be able to come; but, if you care to take the chance, I shall always be glad to see you."

"The new Adam will," she said to herself, with a halfamused, half-rueful smile, when her visitor had gone, "but the old Adam will have a tussle for his rights."

A moment later Matilda reappeared, shy and awkward. "Would you mind telling me again that thing you said about the martyrs?"

Mona smiled. "If you wait a moment, I will write it down for you;" and, tearing a leaf from her note-book, she wrote out the whole verse

"No, no, by all the martyrs and the dear dead Christ;
By the long bright roll of those whom joy enticed
With her myriad blandishments, but could not win,
Who would fight for victory, but would not sin."

Matilda read it through, and then carefully folded the paper. In doing so she noticed some writing on the back, and read aloud

Lady Munro, Poste Restante, Cannes." "Who is Lady Munro ?" she asked, with unintentional rudeness.

"She is my aunt. I did not know her address was written there." Mona tore off the name, and handed back the slip of paper.

"Lady Munro your aunt, and you live with Miss Simpson?"

"Why not? Miss Simpson is my cousin."

"Miss Maclean, if I had a 'Lady' for my aunt, everybody should know it. I don't believe I should even travel in a railway carriage, without the other passengers finding it out."

Mona laughed. "I have already told you that I don't mean to take you at your own valuation. In point of fact, I had much rather the people here knew nothing about Lady Munro. I should not like others to draw comparisons between her and Miss Simpson."

It was my

"I beg your pardon. I did not mean"Oh, I know you did not mean any harm. own stupidity; but, as I say, I should not like others to talk of it. Auf Wiedersehen!"

Alone once more, Mona clasped her hands behind her head, and looked out over the sea.

"Well, playfellow," she said, "have I done good or harm At the present moment, as she walks home, she does not know whether to venerate or to detest me. It is an even chance which way the scale will turn. And is it all an affair of infinite importance, or does it not matter one whit?"

This estimate of Matilda's state of mind was a shrewd one, except for one neglected item. Now that the moment of impulse was over, the balance might have been even; but Lady Munro's name had turned the scale, and Matilda 'venerated' her new friend. Mona's strong and vivid personality would have made any one forget in her presence that she was only a shop-girl'; but no power on earth could prevent the recollection from returning-perhaps with renewed force-when her immediate influence was withdrawn. If a man of culture like Dr Dudley could not wholly ignore the fact of her social inferiority, how much less was it possible to an empty little soul like Matilda Cookson? for she was one of those people to whose moral and spiritual

progress an earthly crutch is absolutely essential. She never forgot that conversation at Castle Maclean; but the two things that in after years stood out most clearly in her memory were the quotation about the martyrs, and Mona's relationship to Lady Munro. And surely this is not so strange? Do not even the best of us stand with one foot on the eternal rock, and the other on the shifting sands of time? "How odd that she should be struck by that quotation!" mused Mona. "I wonder what Dr Dudley would say if he knew that the notes of the Pilgrims' Chorus, rising clear, steady, and unvarying above all the noises of the world, appealed even to the stupid little ears of Matilda Cookson. If the mother is no more than he says, there must be some good stuff in the father. Ex nihilo, nihil fit."

CHAPTER XXVIII.

THE COLONEL'S YARN.

The next morning brought Mona a budget of letters on the subject of Lucy's visit to the Riviera. Lady Munro had risen to the occasion magnificently. "If your friend is in the least like you," she wrote, "I shall be only too glad to have her as a companion for Evelyn. I have written to ask her to be my guest for a month, and the sooner she comes the better."

"I have only known you for a few years," wrote Lucy, "and I seem to have grown tired of saying that I don't know how to thank you. It will be nuts for me to go to Cannes, without feeling that my father is living on hasty-pudding at home; and it will be a great thing to be with people like the Munros; but if they expect that I am going to live up to your level, I shall simply give up the ghost at once. I have

written to assure them that I am an utter and unmitigated fraud; but do you tell them the same, in case there should be bloodshed on my arrival.

"As for your dear letter and enclosure, I handed them straight over to Father, and asked him what I was to do. He read the letter twice through carefully, and then gave me back the bank-note only! 'Keep it,' he said briefly; and I fancied-I say I fancied-that there was a suspicious dimness about his eyes. You have indeed made straight tracks for the Pater's heart, Mistress Mona, if he allows his daughter to accept twenty pounds from you.

"Allowing for all the expenses of the journey, I find I can afford two gowns and a hat, and much anxious thought the selection has given me, I assure you. One thing I have absolutely settled on,-a pale sea-green Liberty silk, with suggestions of foam; and when I decided on that, I came simultaneously to another decision, that life is worth living after all.

"I only wish I felt perfectly sure that you could afford it, darling. You told me you were getting nothing new for yourself this winter, &c., &c."

Finally, there was a little note from Mr Reynolds to his "elder daughter,"-a note in no way remarkable for originality, yet full of that personal, life-giving influence which is worth a thousand brilliant aphorisms.

Mona was very busy in the shop that morning, but in her spare minutes she contrived to write a letter to Lucy.

"I do not wish to put you in an awkward position," she wrote, "but I think you have sufficient ingenuity and resource to keep me out of difficulties also. You know that when I promised to go to my cousin, I had not even seen the Munros. I met them immediately afterwards; and our intimacy has ripened so rapidly that I should not now think it right to take an important step in life without at least letting them know. I mean to tell them ultimately about my winter in Borrowness; but nothing they could say would alter my opinion of my obligation to remain here, and

I think I am justified in wishing to avoid useless friction in the meantime. You can imagine what the situation would be, if Sir Douglas were to appear in the shop some fine morning, and demand my instant return to civilised life. He is quite capable of doing it, and I am very anxious if pos sible to avoid such a clumsy dénouement. You will see at a glance how inartistic it would be.

"You will tell me that it is absolutely impossible to conceal the truth, but I do not think you will find it so when you get to Cannes. It is very doubtful whether you will see Sir Douglas at all, he is looking forward so much to the pheasant-shooting; and Lady Munro is not the person to ask questions except in a general sort of way. She exists far too gracefully for that. You can honestly say, if needful, that I am very busy, but that I have not yet returned to town; I don't think you will find it necessary to say even that.

"But show me up a thousand times over rather than sail nearer the wind than your conscience approves. I merely state the position, and I know you will appreciate my difficulty quite as fully as I do myself.

"Please don't have the smallest scruple about accepting the money. When I told you I was on the rocks,' I did not mean it in the sense in which a young man about town would use the expression. My debts did not amount to more than twenty or thirty pounds. All things in life are relative, you see. I spent nothing in Norway, and my cousin will not hear of my paying for my board here. She is kind enough to say that, even pecuniarily, she is richer since I came. Of course I do not want any more gowns; I go nowhere, and see no one. Doris tells me she is studying medicine by proxy. I am glad to think that I shall be shining in society this winter-also by proxy. I hope I may have the good fortune to see you in your new rôle of mermaid before the run is over. I am sure it will be a very successful one.

"Please give your father my most dutiful love, and tell him that I will answer his kind note in a day or two."