HE year declines towards its mirk close. Every day a little more

is taken from the light and added to the dark. London is full and cheerful; with a pleasanter, friendlier, more leisurely social stir than the overpowering June one. Two or three good pieces are running at the theatres, and the shopwindows are warm with furs. Round the Churchills a crop of small dinners and dances has sprung up.

Mrs.

The time nears mid-December. Churchill's wish as to the non-repetition of Professor Forth's visit has met with the usual fate of wishes. He has come again repeatedly; so repeatedly that the dogs

have ceased barking at him, though they are not so hypocritical as to wag their tails on his approach; nor, indeed, does he ever, by kind pats or well-chosen civilities, give them any cause to do so. Even the obtuse Tommy has learned that he is to be shown, not into the drawing-room, but into the little back litter-room, which has been arbitrarily cleared of Sarah's paintpots, and the promiscuous rubbish in which her soul delights; has been furnished with pens, ink, and dictionaries, and raised and dignified by the name of study. For Belinda's fervour for learning rages with a feverish heat that might make a thoughtful looker-on inclined to question its solidity or its continuance.

She is learning Latin Syntax; she is being taught Greek; she has undertaken a course of Universal History; she devotes her spare moments to the Elements of Algebra. Very seldom now does she join her family in the evening. Mostly she remains downstairs, writing Latin Exercises, learning Irregular Greek Verbs;

working, working on until late into the night. She would like never to stop; to leave no single chink or cranny by which memory may enter.

Is the

And is the charm working? remedy beginning to make its healing virtue felt? This is the question that she never dares ask herself. Sometimes, indeed, it thrusts itself upon her in the sadness of the night. Sometimes the pen drops from her stiffened fingers, or her tired brain relaxes its hold upon the hardconned page, and she groans out to herself-she alone awake, with her melancholy gas-jet burning above her in the silence of the sleeping house-" Of what use? what use?" Has it given back to life its sweet and wholesome taste? Has it helped her to dominate that terrible irritability which makes no person and no moment safe from some senseless outbreak of her temper? Has it conquered that gloom which renders. her the kill-joy of her little circle. There is not one of these questions that she can honestly answer in the affirmative.

But perhaps there has not yet been time enough to test the efficacy of this cure. Its action will doubtless be slow, but all the more lasting and solid for that. She must persevere; it would be madness not to persevere. She passes her hand across her weary, throbbing temples, and catches up the pen again.

The clocks strike two, and she still writes. It is not night now; it is afternoon. Mrs. Churchill and Sarah, furred and feathered, with their bonnets nicely tied on, and their faces alight with placid good-humour, have set off in the brougham on their daily career of calls and shops.

Belinda remains behind in the little dingy back room, with her copy-books. Not once to-day has she tasted the wholesome outside air-wholesome with all its blacks, and fog-charged as it is. She has been alone here the whole day, except for a couple of ten minutes grudgingly snatched for breakfast and luncheon.

She has been alone, but she is so no longer. Professor Forth has just been