march drowned by the mournful strain of a funeral dirge. If only she had clung to Love and had abjured fear and the future! If only she had! And yet; she had done for the best. She had plucked her own breast bare and bleeding that her child might be kept safe and warm. It had turned out ill; but ever and ever she came round to that one constant point -she had done for the best. And she would not marry the Colonel.

When Colonel Moneypenny came back from that troublesome bit of magisterial business which had taken him to the room he called his Justice's-room, and the constable waiting for that magical bit of paper duly signed and delivered, he was made to feel, he did not know how, that the favourable moment had passed, that the fire had burned down into ashes, that the vane of the pretty widow's humour was set to another wind, and that everything was changed.

She was her old self again—clear, candid and inscrutable; soft to the touch and unyielding at the core; sweet, sympathetic, womanly, pure womanly in manner, but, when probed, apparently destitute of all feeling, all romance, all passion, all pleasant feminine weakness; eminently her old reasonable, well-controlled

self, whom no one could soften or warm or deflect beyond the limits which she had marked out for herself. The tender darkness had gone out of her eyes; the drooping curve had left her lips; her face showed no gentle indecision, her figure no yielding lines of graceful selfabandonment. She had gone back to her old shape of waxen smoothness and adamantine hardness-of crystalline clearness and crystalline inflexibility.

She was still standing by the window as he came in, but she had laid the paper on the table-the page doubled inward where she

had read about Sandro Kemp.

"I think the storm is passing now," she said cheerily, her voice as clear as a silver bell and about as soulless.

"I hope not," said Colonel Moneypenny, making an attempt to return to his interrupted gallantries.

He spoke with a grave kind of tenderness sufficiently obvious. She laughed in her pleasant, light, superficial way.

"We shall all be snowed up if it lasts much longer!" she said.

66

There might be a worse fate in store for me than to be snowed up with you as my guest," said the Colonel.

She gave an affected little shiver and looked at him with eyes exasperatingly clear.

"What an awful idea!" she said with well

acted gaiety. "As that would never do, and may be possible, I think I had better set out at once. The wind has quite fallen, and a quiet snow-shower bursts soon."

She gave a pull at her bonnet-strings which were not untied, and smoothed down her gloves which she had not withdrawn. These actions were "survivals," and expressed her feeling of "dressing to go out."

"You cannot go out while this lasts," said Colonel Moneypenny as gravely as before, but with a certain latent heat and eagerness which he had not the power to control, though he felt that it was bad policy to show too much feeling at the moment. 66 Why this sudden haste? he asked, forcing a smile. "Come back to the

fire and make yourself comfortable again." "It is getting late," she said, glancing at the clock. "It will soon be quite dusk."

“You have a full half-hour of daylight yet, and I will see that you are taken care of," said the Colonel. "Come! It really is too bad for you to think of going yet!"

As he spoke the door-bell rang sharply. A trampling of feet in the hall; a sound as of

many huge dogs shaking themselves and of at least half a dozen men stamping themselves clear of something that would cling; bursts of loud laughter; shrill cries of high-pitched voices; all these were heard. And then the librarydoor was flung open and Georgie and Pattie Pennefather, in light drab coachman's coats, with soft felt unornamented hats and blue bird'seye neckties came streaming into the room; the two multiplied into a small crowd by the noise and tumult and "go" of their entrance.

CHAPTER II.

TESTED FOR TRUTH.

"UPON my word!" shouted Pip as they came into the room and took in the situation at a glance the two easy-chairs drawn close up to the fire; the wine and cake on the table; the look of home and domesticity in the whole arrangements. "Well I never!-upon my word!" she repeated.

"Oh, you sly-boots, Augusta!" vociferated Gip.

"And who would have thought it?" cried both these chartered tormentors in a breath.

"Who would have thought what, girls?" asked the widow, with smiling unconsciousness of possible evil.

"Oh, I say, that is coming it too strong! 'Who would have thought what?' when we find you sitting here like Darby and Joan, you