hostesses I did not know. I had money enough, and wits enough to make a success of it if that had been my miserable ambition. But I let my child follow her bent. If she had been a little timid unenterprising thing, clinging to me and to her home, then also I would have let her follow her bent. My relatives were naturally shocked. It is the normal attitude of relations. They think it a duty and feel it a pleasure to find fault. But it is not in my nature to be influenced by anyone's opinion but my own,' she remarked, with equal truth and candour. Besides, these were the lineal descendants of our great-grandparents, who were scandalised because their daughters took to wearing jackets instead of shawls. The back numbers of Punch are very edifying. They show you that people are always shocked at the wrong things.'

She leaned back breathless, with glittering eyes, and a bright rose flush on her small delicate face.

They all drive me mad with their suggestions now. They know so exactly how a widowed mother ought to behave. I am to go and make a home for Humphrey at Clode! Poor darling! a nice home I should make! He is dying to start a thousand innovations, and the fear of hurting my feelings would hamper him at every turn. Besides, I always hated his wife.'

'His wife !' Michael was startled.

'I mean his wife that will be, of course,' said Mrs. Roath, drawing her finely-pencilled inky brows together, as she always did when the dulness of male perception irritated her. 'I don't know in the least who she will be; but I don't pretend to like the thought of some odious chit getting hold of my boy, and making him do what she chooses and turning my home of twenty-seven years upside down to suit her horrid taste.'

'I see.'

'Then my uncle

'I can quite see that wouldn't do,' Michael said, hastily.

'Did you ever see such an impatient, fierce creature as he is? Always mad about something, and never satisfied with anybody. I would as soon live over a volcano,' she said, with a vehemence that oddly resembled the impatience she denounced. 'But when I speak of taking a little flat in London, he becomes rabid; pointing out the number of empty bedrooms in this house. And poor Tom rushed here to beg me to share his rooms.'

'Why not?'

Why not! Because he is very well as he is. And because, as

you know very well, a bachelor likes his rooms to himself. He is surely past the age of mothering,' she retorted. And now that Frank has joined his regiment-Besides, they are all well off. It's not as though they needed help from me, or as if we should live more comfortably if we all clubbed together. Quite the contrary. We should be far more comfortable apart. When they were children and needed me, did I ever fail them?' she said pathetically, though Heaven knows whether I was ever particularly suited to be the mother of a family.'

Michael was willing to agree that she looked less like the mother of a family than almost anyone he had ever seen; but he left these words unspoken; nor did she give him time to utter any opinion on the subject, being gifted, as she was, with a fair share of her uncle's eloquence.

'So I have decided that my flat shall be in Paris. Some old nook, probably, with a winding staircase, and corner cupboards, and a concierge delightful if heavily bribed; and lace-curtained windows through which I shall peep at the Champs Elysées; and white lilac in tall jars standing in sunny corners. I can see it all, and even smell the faint aroma of delicious coffee, and bread made with yeast and baked in wood ashes. And I will have my stout Marie or Céline in the kitchen bending over her pot-au-feu, and always ready to laugh and talk. Don't you feel sometimes that nostalgia of Paris? He nodded sympathetically.

'I was at home, on the other side, in my childhood,' she said softly, that one never forgets. And because the people with whom I had to associate were wholly unsympathetic to me, so much the more I learned to take great pleasure in my surroundings. For instance, one of the clearest memories of my childhood is a laburnum covered with golden bloom. It can't have been always in flower, even in Paris, can it? But one looked in at the window of the room where a fool made learning distasteful to me through the bright spring mornings. As for the flowering ribes, the pungent odour of it even now brings me back an almost sick yearning for the days when I saw only the landscape, and dismissed from my mind's eye the tiresome figures that dragged me by the hand for walks. ... What have I to do with London fogs? I will have my pied-à-terre in Paris, and from thence travel wherever I choose. I shall fill my empty days. I shall wander at will. Even when one is unhappy there is a certain consolation in being free, don't you think?' she said appealingly.

'I have never been anything else since I left college,' said Michael.

' And I have never known the sensation before in my life. But it is just beginning to dawn upon me, what it would be to get away from all these.' She stretched out her little hand towards a pile of black-edged envelopes, stamped and ready for posting, which Edith had presumably forgotten; and the gesture seemed to comprehend also her desire to fly from her uncle's kindness and overbearing personality, and the uncongenial atmosphere of his abode.

'But you can't go off quite alone. You need someone to take care of you,' he cried, with that chivalrous desire to protect her which she never failed to evoke in mankind.

'Only a slave, and I have one,' she said indifferently. An honest devoted old thing, very energetic, and full of the kind of common sense I never had. A maid of the good old-fashioned upperclass type. She loves tiresome details like luggage and tickets, and packing and nursing one when one's ill. She'd follow me to the end of the world-and that is where I shall probably take her,' she added, with the sudden irradiating smile that made her look like a tiny elfin edition of Edith. I pine and burn for sunshine. I shall go to the East. Always I have longed to go, and always I have been restless. Who knows what influences of heredity may be working in my blood? Perhaps when I get there my wanderfever may be healed.'

Michael looked at her, and saw that the dreaming and desire of years, though apparently slain by grief, were already springing to life again. Hers was not a spirit to be crushed permanently.

She seemed, with her curious characteristic quickness, to divine his thoughts.

'Ah, you think I forget! Is it possible? Don't you know that always-always-his presence will be with me?' she said, under her breath. There in that world of the invisible with which you say you have no affinity, but which is close-close to me-he stands beside me, on guard. If it were a thousand years, he would wait. If I committed a thousand sins, he would forgive. If I were loathsome in the sight of others, he would yet see me always as beautiful and wonderful. His love was inarticulate; he had no trick of words; but none the less I knew it obsessed him, and that it will for ever blind the eyes of his soul to my faults. His love remained silent, deep, unchanging, through all my restlessness, and the years of my discontent,' she said, weeping. 'But VOL. XXXV. NO. 199, N.S.

2

you, you saw him perhaps only as a dull old-fashioned narrowminded man

'I!' cried Michael, warmly, 'I saw in him a type of all that is best and noblest in manhood. A man of character; a worker, and simple, honest as the day, faithful to the best traditions he knew.'

'Faithful-yes,' she said, clasping her little frail hands. Faithful for ever and ever. He was all you say—and God bless you for saying it—to those who surrounded him. But to me he is something more. A soul awful in its very simplicity and truth and purity.' She looked wistfully at Michael. Even to think of him now brings me peace as the thought of him never did when he was living; for then the fact that in mind and brain he was slower than I made me impatient; even sometimes he bored me a little. Oh, why do I put it into words?' She writhed back among the cushions. 'But it is only to tell you how acutely, acutely, I realise now the difference between the mortal brain and the human soul. Yet there are those so dull of perception that they can see no difference; those who must therefore be blind to the beautiful forgiving dumb soul that gazes bewildered and beseeching from the eyes of a fool who is mocked, or a child that does not understand why it is punished. But, thank God, I always knew that his soul was greater than mine; just as I know now that his spirit is nearer mine than ever before.'

Michael uttered a sound of understanding and sympathy. 'It is when I am alone that I feel it most,' she said; so bid me God-speed on my journey. I have wanted to go to the East, you know, ever since I was a little girl; and now that I am all alone I feel curiously-don't laugh at me,' she said imploringly, like the little girl I used to be, though I am not any more even young. Yet, oddly, I know I shouldn't enjoy my wanderings half so much if I didn't know I had prepared and furnished a nest to fly home to whenever I was tired; full of my own old treasures and the rubbish that a woman loves, and which to her make home wherever they may be. It is strange, strange, that in my sorrow, even in my remorse, I am also nearer happiness than I have been ever since I was the little girl I used to be; though I have not touched it yet— though I may say I have never touched it—which makes me sometimes wonder if there can really be a just God.'

Michael stooped his head, and kissed the frail hand, and bade her God-speed with all his heart; and she touched his dark hair lightly and tenderly, as though he had been one of her own boys.

'You too,' she said, ' God speed you too on your quest. Something will wake in you presently, I think.'

As he went downstairs he met Edith.

'I did not go out; I am going now. I wanted so much to ask you what you thought of her?'

'Much, much better; calmer; and best of all, with her interest in life re-awakening sooner than one would have dared to hope.' Edith smiled.

'Whatever she did would be done quickly. The old vicar came from Clode to see her yesterday. He is so very gentle, and so very venerable and good, and looked up to my father so sincerely that nothing he said could jar. Poor old man, he has always been at her feet, an unconscious worshipper, and none the less sincere. He is much distressed that she will not return to Clode, but unshaken in the conviction that whatever she decides must be for the best." 'She has an intensely attractive personality, something spiritual seems to emanate from her,' said Michael, hesitating.

Edith nodded.

'Whatever it is, and lonely,' she said, simply; but once, are her friends. forth on her travels, even with old Alison to take care of her. seems so small and fragile to wander forth alone into the wide world; accustomed as she is to be so surrounded by my father's care and love.'

wherever she goes, she will never be

those who meet her, even though it be Yet I can't bear to think of her setting

She

'Tell me,' said Michael, with a sudden impulse. Given the continued existence of the individual soul after death, which would you say was the greater-that of your mother with her vivid personality or

'My father's,' said Edith instantly, because he was so steadfast. So free from all that was little or vain or self-conscious. So utterly sincere; immovably upright; even though he was not clever as she is clever. Her spirit is restless, changeable-his must be the greater. Then she has spoken to you of her fancy that he is with her always?'

'Rather of her intense conviction.'

'Call it what you will,' said Edith, sighing, this I know, and this only-that if it were possible-if he could he would have chosen to be with her, watching over her until the hour of her death.'

(To be continued.)