from Dudley's cultured face to his long nervous hands, "you ought to know-given a woman, pure, and good, and strong, could she go through it all unharmed?”

"Pure, and good, and strong," repeated Dudley reflectively. "Given a woman like that, you may safely send her through hell itself. I think the fundamental mistake of our civilisation has been educating women as if they were all run in one mould. She will get her eyes opened, of course, if she studies medicine, but some women never attain the possibilities of their nature in the shadow of convent walls. Frankly, I have no great fancy for artificially reared purity."

"Artificially reared!" exclaimed the other.

"My dear sir, there are a few intermediate stages between the hothouse and the dunghill! If it were only art, or literature, or politics, or even science, but anatomy-the dissectingroom!"

"Well," said Dudley rather indignantly, his views developing as he spoke, "even anatomy, like most things, is as you make it. Many men take possession of a 'little city I should think a pure and good woman might chance to find herself in the 'temple of the Holy Ghost.""

of sewers,' but

His visitor was somewhat startled by this forcible language, and he did not answer for a moment. He seemed to be attentively studying the pattern of the carpet. Presently he looked full at Dudley, and spoke somewhat sharply.

"Knowing all you do, you think that possible?"

Knowing all I do, I think that more than possible." The man of the world sat for some time in silence, tapping his boot with a ruler he had taken from the writingtable.

"I'll tell you what I can do for you," said Dudley suddenly. "I can give you the address of the Women's Medical School. Your niece is probably there."

"Oh Lord, no! I am a brave man, but I am not equal to that. I would rather face a tiger in the jungle any day.

Well, sir, I am sure I am infinitely obliged to you. I wish I could ask you to dine at my club, but I hope I shall see you when I am next in London. That is my card. Where's the little chap? Look here, my man! There is a Christmasbox for you, but if you ever get under my horses' feet again, I will drive right on; do you hear?"

He shook hands cordially with Dudley, slipped a couple of guineas into his hand, and in another minute the impatient bays were dashing down the street.

"Sir Douglas Munro," said Dudley, examining the card. "A magnificent specimen of the fine old Anglo-Indian type. I should like to see this wonderful niece of his!"

CHAPTER XXXIV.

PALM-TREES AND PINES.

A world of palm-trees and pines, of aloes and eucalyptus, of luxuriant hedges all nodding and laughing with gay red roses, of white villas gleaming out from a misty background. of olives, of cloudless sky looking down on the deep blue sea-a vivid sunshiny world, and in the midst of it all, Miss Lucy, to all appearance as gay and as light-hearted as if she had never dissected the pterygo-maxillary region, nor pored over the pages of Quain.

The band was playing waltzes in the garden below, and Lucy, as she dressed, was dancing and swaying to and fro, like the roses in the wind.

"Entrez !" she cried, without moderating her steps, as she heard a knock at the door.

It was Evelyn, fair, tall, and somewhat severe.

"You are not very like a medical student," she said gravely.

"I should take that for an unmixed compliment, if I did not know what it meant."

"What does it mean?"

"That I am not in the least like Mona."

'Well, you are not, you know."

"True, ma belle. It was you who fitted on the lion's skin, not I. But did you come into my room just to tell me that?"

"I came to say that if you can be ready in ten minutes, Father will take us all to Monte Carlo."

"Ten minutes! Oh, Evelyn, and you have wasted one! What are you going to wear?"

"This, of course. What should I wear?"

Lucy selected a gown from her wardrobe.

"But is not

Sir Douglas still awfully tired with the journey?" she asked, looking over her shoulder to get a back view of her pretty skirt in the pier-glass.

"He has rested more or less for two days, and he is anxious to see the Monteiths before they go on to Florence."

She did not add, "I told him you were pining to see Monte Carlo before you go home."

"The Monteiths," repeated Lucy involuntarily. And as she heard the name on her own lips, the healthy flush on her cheek deepened almost imperceptibly.

Evelyn seated herself on a hat-box.

"I don't believe you will ever be a doctor," she remarked calmly.

"What do you bet?" Lucy did not look up from the arduous task of fastening her bodice.

"I don't bet; but if you ever are, I'll-consult you!" And having solemnly discharged this Parthian dart, she left the room.

excellent friends, although Evelyn considered Lucy an "learned women," but she

In truth, the two girls were they were continually sparring. absolute fraud in the capacity of did not on that account find the light-hearted medical student any the less desirable as a companion. As to com

paring her with Mona, Evelyn would have laughed at the bare idea; and loyal little Lucy would have been the first to join in the laugh: she had never allowed any one even to suspect that she had passed an examination in which Mona had failed. Mona was the centre of the system in which she was a satellite; she was bitterly jealous of all the other satellites in their relation to the centre, but who would be jealous of the sun?

Lady Munro had taken a great fancy to her visitor. She would not have owned to the heresy for the world, but she certainly was much more at her ease in Lucy's society than she ever had been in Mona's, and how Sir Douglas could find his niece more piquante than Lucy Reynolds, she could not even imagine. She knew exactly where she had Lucy, but even when Mona agreed with her most warmly, she had an uncomfortable feeling that a glance into her niece's mind might prove a little startling. She met Lucy on common ground, but Mona seemed to be on a different plane, and Lady Munro found it extremely difficult to tell when that plane was above, and when below, her own.

She would have been not a little surprised, and her opinion of the relative attractions of the two friends might have been somewhat altered, had any one told her that Mona admired and idealised her much more even than Lucy did. If any one of us were unfortunate enough to receive the "giftie" of which the poet has sung, it is probable that the principal result of such insight would be a complete readjustment of our friendships.

But now Sir Douglas had appeared upon the scene, and of course Lucy was much more anxious to "succeed with him than with either of the others. She had seen very little of him as yet, and she had done her best, but so far the result had been somewhat disappointing. It was almost a principle with Sir Douglas never to pay much attention to a pretty young girl. He had seen so many of them in his day, and they were all so much alike. Even this saucy little Esculapia militans was no exception. As the scien

tist traces an organism through "an alternation of generations," and learns by close observation that two or three names have been given to one and the same being, so Sir Douglas fancied he saw in Lucy Reynolds only an old and familiar type in a new stage of its life-history.

He had gone through much trouble and perplexity on the subject of Mona's life-work; and Dudley's somewhat fanciful words had for the first time given expression to a vague idea that had floated formless in his own mind ever since he first met his niece at Gloucester Place. It would be ridiculous to apply such an explanation to Lucy's choice, but Sir Douglas had no intention of opening up the problem afresh. He took for granted that Lucy had undertaken the work "for the fun of the thing," because it was novel, startling, outré; and he confided to his wife that "that old Reynolds must be a chuckle-headed noodle in his dotage to allow such a piece of nonsense."

In a very short time after Evelyn's summons to Lucy, the whole party were rattling down the hill to the station, in the crisp, cold, dewy morning air. Evelyn was calm and dignified as usual, but Lucy was wild with excitement. Everything was a luxury to her to be with a man of the world like Sir Douglas, to travel in a luxurious firstclass carriage, to see a little bit more of this wonderful world.

They left Nice behind them, and then the scenery became gradually grander and more severe, till the train had to tunnel its way through the mighty battlements of rock that towered above the sea, and afforded a scanty nourishment to the scattered pines, all tossed and bent and twisted by the wind in the enervating climate of the south. At last, jutting out above the water, at the foot of the rugged heights, as though it too, forsooth, had the rights of eternal nature, Monte Carlo came in view,-gay, vulgar, beautiful, tawdry, irresistible Monte Carlo!

"Is that really the Casino?" said Lucy, in an eager hushed voice.