Lascelles was gone; "but I hope she will tell me what is the matter. Poor little soul!"

It was pretty late in the evening when Lucy arrived, pale and tired. "I have kept you waiting for dinner," she said; "I am so sorry. A fractured skull came in just as I was leaving, and I waited to see them trephine. They don't think it will be successful, and-it made me rather faint. But it's an awfully neat operation."

Mona went to the table and poured out a glass of wine. "Drink that," she said, "and then come to my bedroom and have a good splash. I will do all the talking during dinner; and when you are quite rested, you shall tell me the news. "Life will be a different thing, now you are back," Lucy said, as they seated themselves at the table. "What lovely

flowers!"

"You ought to admire them. Aunt Maud sent them from your beloved Cannes. I do so admire that Frisia. It is white and virginal, like Doris."

The last remark was added hastily, for at the mention of Cannes, Lucy had blushed violently and incomprehensibly. "I was at the School to-day," Mona went on.

"Were you really? It must have been horrid going back."

"It was very horrid to find the organic solutions in the chemical laboratory at such a low ebb. But I suppose they will be filled up again for the summer term."

"Oh, you know all those stupid old tests!"

"It is precisely the part of the examination that I am most afraid of. I have not your luck-or power of divination. Why don't they ask us to find whether a hydroxyl group is present in a solution, or something of that kind?" "Thank heaven, they don't!"

"I wonder what a scientific chemist would say, if he were asked to identify two organic mixtures in an hour and a half!"

"I did it in half an hour."

"Yes, but how? By tasting, and guessing, and adding I in KI, or perchloride of iron."

Lucy helped herself to more potato.

"I seem to have heard these sentiments before," she said. Mona laughed. "Yes; and you are in a fair way to hear them pretty frequently again, unless you keep out of my way for the next four months."

"Did you go into the dissecting-room?"

"Yes; and what do you think I found them dissecting?" "Anything new?"

"Quite, I hope, in that connection-my unworthy self," and Mona told the story of her little adventure.

"Well, really," said Lucy indignantly, "those juniors want a good setting down. I never heard such a piece of barefaced impudence in my life. What on earth do they know about you, except that you are one of the best students in the School?"

"There, there, firebrand!" said Mona, much relieved to see the old Lucy again, "I think you and I have been known to say as much as that of our betters. In truth, it did me a world of good. I was very morbid about going back to the anatomy-room-partly because I had got out of tune with the work, partly because I knew nobody would know what to say to me, and there would be an awkward choice between constrained remarks and more constrained silences. It was a great relief to find myself and my failures taken frankly for granted. How I wish people could learn that, unless they can be superlatively tactful, it is better not to be tactful at all; for of tact it is more true than of anything else, that ars est celare artem. But, to return to the point we started from, there is a great deal of truth in what Miss Lascelles said. For the next four months I am going to spend my life driving in nails."

Lucy shivered.

gested.

"Couldn't you screw them in?" she sug

"It would make so much less noise."

Mona reflected for a moment. "No," she said, "there is something in the idea of a good sharp rap with the hammer

that gives relief to my injured feelings." And she brought her closed fist on the table with a force that sent a ruddy glow across her white knuckles.

"And now," she said, "it is your innings. I want to know so many things. How do you like hospital?"

"Oh, it is awfully interesting;" but Lucy's manner was not enthusiastic. "I spotted a presystolic murmur yesterday."

"H'm. Who said it was a presystolic? Did not you find it very cold coming back to London from the sunny South?"

Lucy shivered again. "It was horrid," she said.

"And you really had a good, gay, light-hearted time?" It was a full minute before the girl answered. "Oh yes,"

she said hurriedly and emphatically. "It was delightful. I-I was not thinking."

"That is just what you were doing. A penny for your thoughts."

Again there was a silence. Evidently Lucy was strongly tempted to make a clean breast of it.

"I am in my father's black books," she said at last.

Mona locked at her searchingly. That the statement was true, she did not doubt; but that this was the sole cause of Lucy's evident depression, she did not believe for a moment. "How have you contrived to get there?" she asked.

"It is not such a remarkable feat as you think. I went to Monte Carlo with the Munros."

"Did he object?"

"Awfully! You see, when I came to write about it, I thought I would wait and tell them when I got home; but Mr Wilson, one of the churchwardens, saw me there, and the story leaked out."

"But you did not play?"

"No-not to call playing. Evelyn was so slow-I pushed her money into place with the cue. But my father does not think so much of that. It is my being there at all that he objects to."

He said you would not have gone."

"That is a profound mistake. I want very much to see a gambling-saloon, and I certainly should have gone. I will tell him so the first time I see him."

"Oh, Mona, don't! What is the use? Two blacks don't make a white."

"Truly; but, on the other hand, you can't make a black white by painting it. Your father thinks me so much better than I am, that he binds me over to be honest with him. Besides, I want to defend my point. Of course, I should not go if I thought it wrong. But, Lucy, that is not a thing to worry about. It can't be undone now, even if you wished it; and your father would be the last man in the world to want you to distress yourself fruitlessly. Of all the men I know, he is the most godlike, in his readiness to say, 'Come now, and let us reason together.''

"I am not distressing myself," Lucy said, brightening up with an evident effort. "Did I ever tell you, Mona, about the boy we met at Monte Carlo? He had got into a fix and was nearly frantic. We begged Lady Munro to speak to him, and she invited him to Cannes, and ultimately she and Sir Douglas sent him home. But it was such fun! He proved to be a medical student, a St Kunigonde's man. was alone in the sitting-room when he called,—such a pretty sunny room it was, with a sort of general creamy-yellow tone that made my peacock dress simply lovely! Of course we fell to comparing notes. He goes in for his second examination at the Colleges in July, and you should have seen his face when I told him I had passed my Intermediate M.B. Lond.! I really believe it had never occurred to him that any woman under thirty, and devoid of spectacles, could go in for her Intermediate. He is coming to see me at the Hall."

A poorer counterfeit of Lucy's racy way of telling a story could scarcely have been imagined. Mona wondered much, but she knew now that nothing more was to be got out of her friend that night.

CHAPTER XLVIIL

CONFIDENCES.

It was a hot day in June, and "blessed Bloomsbury" was converted into one great bakehouse. The flags in Gower Street radiated out a burning glow; the flower-sellers had much ado to preserve the semblance of freshness in their dainty wares; and those of the inhabitants who were the proud possessors of outside blinds were an object of envy to all their neighbours.

Mona was sitting at her writing-table, pen in hand, and with a formidable blue schedule before her. She was looking out of the window, but in her mind's eye the dusty, glaring street had given place to the breezy ramparts of Castle Maclean; and, instead of the noise of the traffic, she heard the soft plash of the waves. Presently she laid down her pen, and leaned against the scorching window-sill, with a smile, not on her lips, but in her eyes.

"My spirit and my God shall be

My seaward hill, my boundless sea,"

she quoted softly.

"What, Mona, caught poetising!" said Lucy unceremoniously entering the room.

"Far from it," said Mona drily. "I was engaged on the most prosaic work it is possible to conceive, filling in the schedule for my Intermediate. It seems to me that I have spent the greater part of my life filling in the schedule for my Intermediate. If I fail again I shall employ an amanuensis for the sole purpose. Come and help me. Full Christian name and surname?"

"Mona Margaret Maclean."

"Oh, drop the Margaret! I am prepared to take the chance of there being another Mona Maclean. Age, last birthday ?"