be the wife of the Deputy-Commissioner, will be able to do far more than an average doctor?"

"Especially when the Deputy-Commissioner is as much. of an enthusiast as his wife," Doris answered with a very pretty blush.

"And I think it is worth living for to be able to show that a woman can be an enthusiast and a reformer, and at the same time a help meet for her husband."

Mona watched her friend rather anxiously as she said this, but Doris answered quite simply, "How often I shall long for you to talk to! The Sahib, as you call him, says that most of the women he meets out there have gone off on a wrong line, and want a little judicious backing before one can safely preach advancement to them; but it seems to me that the great majority of women only need to have things put before them in their true light. Don't you think so?"

"I don't know, dear," Mona said thoughtfully. "I am afraid I never try to influence my sex. I live a frightfully irresponsible life. Let me give you another cup of tea!" "No, thank you. I shall have to drink a cup with my aunt, if I go to pay my respects to her. In fact, I ought to be there now.'

She hurried away, and Mona was left alone. She did not rise from her chair, and half an hour later she was roused from a deep reverie by a well-known knock at the door.

"Come in!" she cried. "Oh Ralph, how delightful! Let me make you some fresh tea."

"No, thank you, my queen. It was my day out, and I could not settle to work till I had had a glimpse of you."

"I don't need to confess that I have been doing nothing," she said, holding out her empty hands. "The fact is, I am horribly depressed."

"Having a reaction?"

"I should think I was-a prussian-blue reaction, as Lucy would say."

"Examination fever?"

"Far worse than that. You see, dear, it's a great respon

sibility to become a registered practitioner, and it's a great responsibility to be married; and the thought of undertaking the two responsibilities at once is simply appalling."

"But we are going away for a good holiday in the first instance; and even when we come back, brilliant as we both are, I don't suppose we shall burst into busy practice all at once."

"I am not afraid of feeling pulses and taking temperatures," said Mona gravely, "nor even of putting your slippers to the fire. The thought that appals me is, that one must hold one's self up and look wise, and have an opinion about everything. No more glorious Bohemian irresponsibility: no more airy-Bother women's rights!' One must have a hand to show, and show it. Ralph, do sit down!-No, on the other side of the fire-and let us discuss the Franchise." "With all my heart. Shall we toss for sides?"

"If you like. I went once to a Women's Suffrage conversazione, and-well, I left without signing a petition. But the next day I heard two young women discussing it, chin in air.

"I am interested in no cause,' said one, 'that excludes the half of humanity.'

"As long as I live,' said the other, 'I prefer that men should open the door for me when I leave a room, or shut the window when I feel a draught.'

"I said nothing, but I put on my hat and set out to sign the petition."

"And did you do it?"

"Sagely asked! No, I did not. I reflected that I had a student's inherent right to be undecided; but that suit is. played out now. Seriously, dear, it seems to me sometimes in my ignorance as if we women had gone half-way across a yawning chasm on a slender bridge. The farther shore, as we see it now, is not all that our fancy pictured; but it still seems on the whole more attractive than the one we have left behind. Que faire? We know that in life there is no going back; nor can we stand on the bridge for ever. I could not even advise, if I were asked. My attitude of mind

on the subject would be best represented by one great point of interrogation. Only the future can show how the woman question is going to turn out, and in the meantime the making of the future lies in our own hands. There is a situation for you!"

She had opened the subject half in jest, but now her face wore the expression of intense earnestness, which in Dudley's eyes was one of her greatest charms. It interested him profoundly to watch the workings of her mind, and to see her opinions in the making. Perhaps it interested him the more, because it was the only form of intimacy she allowed. "You must bear in mind," he said, "that every cause has to go through its hobbledehoy stage. The vocal cords give out dissonant sounds enough, when they are in the act of lengthening out to make broader vibrations; but we would not on that account have men speak all their lives in the shrill treble of boyhood."

"True," said Mona, "true;" and she smiled across at him. Presently she sighed, and clasped her hands behind her head. "It must be a grand thing to lead a forlorn hope, Ralph," she said. "It must be so easy to say, 'Here I stand,' if one feels indeed that one cannot do otherwise. It would be a terrible thing for the leaders of any movement to lose faith in the middle of the bridge, and, if we cannot strengthen their hands, we are bound at least not to weaken them. A negative office, no doubt, and more liable than any partisanship to persecution; but, fortunately, here as everywhere, there is the duty next to hand. If we try to make the girls over whom we have any influence stronger and sweeter and sounder, we cannot at least be retarding the cause of women."

"Scarcely," said Ralph with a peculiar smile. "So, to return to the point we started from, we are not called upon to show our hand, after all."

Mona laughed. "In other words, don't let us take stock of our conclusions, Ralph," she said, "for that is intellectual death."

CHAPTER LXII.

IN ARCADIA.

It was a December afternoon. The sun shone down from a cloudless sky on the olive-woods of Bordighera, and Ralph lay stretched on a mossy terrace, looking up at the foliage overhead. It filled him with keen delight, that wonderful green canopy, shading here, as it did, into softest grey, glowing there into gold, or sparkling into diamonds. The air was soft and fragrant, and, away beyond the little town, he felt, though he could not see, the blue stretch of the Mediterranean. It seemed to him as though the stormy river of his life had merged into an ocean of infinite content. For the moment, ambition and struggle were dead within him, and he looked neither behind nor before.

The crackling of a dry twig made him turn round. "Come along, sweetheart," he said; "I have been lazily listening for your step for the last half-hour."

"Then you began to listen far too soon," she said, seating herself beside him, and putting her hand in his. "But I am a few minutes late. The post came in just as I was starting."

"No letters, I hope ?"

"Two for me from Doris and Auntie Bell. I suppose you don't care to read them?"

He shook his head.

for me."

"Not if you will boil them down

"They had a delightful passage, and seem to be as happy as two human beings can be."

"Nay, that we know is impossible.”

"Well, nearly as happy, let us say. Doris found my letter awaiting her at Bombay,-not the one that told of your 'Double First'; but she was delighted to hear that we had all passed. She did not in the least believe that Lucy would."

"Trust Miss Reynolds not to fail! One would as soon expect her to do brilliantly."

"Doris says I am not to forget to tell her whether Maggie's soups and sauces satisfy my lord and master." He laughed. "I seem to recognise Miss Colquhoun in that last expression. What does Auntie Bell say?"

"She would dearly like to come and visit us in London; but her husband seems to be breaking up, and she has everything to superintend on the farm; so she 'maun e'en pit her mind past it, in the meantime.' You will be interested to hear that Matilda Cookson has carried her point. She goes up for her Preliminary Examination in July; and, if she passes, she is to join the Edinburgh School in October." "You are a wonderful woman."

"Oh, by the way, Ralph, they are having an impromptu dance at the hotel to-night."

His face clouded. "Do you like dancing?" he asked. "Very much indeed. Why don't you claim me for the first waltz?"

"Because I can't dance a little bit. You would lose every atom of respect you have for the creature, if you saw him being 'led through a quadrille,' as they call it."

"Would I? Try me!"

What a wonderful face it was, when she let it say all that it would! Ralph took it very tenderly between his hands, and greedily drank in its love and loyalty. Then he turned away. How he loathed the thought of this dance! There were one or two men in the house whom Mona had met repeatedly in London, and the thought of her dancing with them gave him positive torture.

"Come, friend!" he said to himself roughly. "We are not going to enact the part of the jealous husband at this time of day;" but when he entered the salon that evening, some time after the dance had begun, and morbidly noted the impression made by Mona's appearance there, he would gladly have given two years of his life to be able to waltz.

Of course he must look as if he enjoyed it, so he moved