be, if I'd spoiled her, she'd have turned out different. Well, lass, you've chosen for yourself: I wish you luck of your choice. If your husband's all you say, you can't make too much of him; maybe I'll see him one day."

Pat

"I'll bring him here some day." ty's voice shook, though she tried hard to steady it. "Don't come to Park Lane; it would make everything tiresome, and I'll see about what you said just now at once; I will indeed; I mean about money. I must go now, or I shall miss my train."

She looked at herself in the little smeared mirror, and her father looked too; -he sneered; but there was sadness in his face. Patty's action had taken him back to Ashton, and his cottage, and his daily life ;-he had been happier in those old days.

"I saw Miss Nuna, a while ago," he said; "she didn't see me; she was too aken up with her husband, and he was ooking into her face as if she'd been his sweetheart instead of his wife. That's a pleasant marriage, I warrant. Maybe you've happened to come across them, :h?"

"No, I haven't." Patty tossed her head and gathered up her skirts in sudden inger. Well, good-by, father; I really must go now.'

She was out of the room, in the road urrying along to the station before she ealized what she was doing.

The snort of an engine overhead, as he passed under the railway arch, steadied ier wits.

"What a child I am!" she smiled with contempt at herself. "Doesn't a man often smile down into a woman's eyes vithout caring a bit about her? Most ikely she's got a temper, and Paul's.smile would sweeten a vixen. Poor fellow! what a mistake he made."

CHAPTER XLIII.

MRS. BRIGHT'S MISGIVINGS.

MRS. DOWNES held the creed that no person who could use his or her wits ver allowed anything to worry. There were two courses open-either dismiss the ubjects altogether by the substitution of omething pleasant and flattering, or else ecide at once on some plan which conerts worry itself into a means of gratification.

NEW SERIES.-VOL. XIV., No. 4.

She only answered Miss Coppock's questions respecting her. father by "yes" and "no ;" and by the time she reached Park Lane she had determined to try whether Paul still loved her, or if he really cared for his wife.

"There is no harm in it whatever I could tell Maurice the whole story with the greatest ease if Paul were not an artist, and if it would not bring out things I don't want talked of. I do not mean to encourage Paul; I only mean to amuse myself, and to be satisfied father is mistaken. Maurice always says he dislikes prudery, and he thinks it ill-bred. Of course I'm not going to flirt; that would not suit my position."

A slight triumphant smile curved her lovely lips; she was thinking how utterly needless it was for her to seek any man's admiration; she could never remember the time when she had not known she was beautiful.

"Paul must look at me while he paints, and if he looks-well, I can't help his admiring me. I'm not going to fall in love with him, or any such nonsense; I should be as silly as Patience if I thought of it." She glanced scornfully at Miss Coppock.. "I shall let her be present at the next sitting; she'll see her folly then; and, besides, I think it is more what is done, and it will shut her mouth."

Paul came next morning, and Mrs.. Downes carefully abstained from address-ing her companion; Miss Coppock's. name was not spoken in his presence.

Paul Whitmore was amused at this fresh evidence of Patty's fine ladyism; but he never suspected the plain, gaunt woman,. who watched him so intently, to be an ancient acquaintance of Patty's Ashton days; he looked on the companion as a. total stranger; and as Mrs. Downes was careful to avoid any mention of Nuna, there was no chance of a recurrence to old times.

The picture progressed marvellously this morning; yet Paul went home irritable, and disposed to find fault with him-self and everyone else.

Patty was happy then, after all, with that dolt of a husband. She had actually smiled when she said Mr. Downes was satisfied with the picture.

"As if I care what he thinks or says! She must love him; she's much too clever to value his opinion a straw-unless Love:

29

has made the fool of her that he makes of the most sensible women after marriage. I suppose it's all right; but a married woman in love with her husband is fifty times more foolish than when she's a girl. I've heard that married happiness is bad for the intellect." He went on presently "I suppose that's why I'm such a consummate ass as to plague myself with all this trash. And yet I don't feel over happy just now, any way."

He was vexed with himself; and he hurried home, determined to be pleased with Nuna; but when he reached the studio, he gave a sigh of relief that she was not at home.

He remembered that she had settled to go out shopping with Mrs. Bright, and would not be back till tea-time.

"I shall stay in till she comes."

He took up a book lying on the table, but it was one he had had with him at Ashton; and by that strange power of localization which haunts inanimate objects, its very cover took him back to Carving's Wood Lane, and Patty-Patty, as he had seen her blushing under her sun-bonnet in the honey-suckle porch Patty, as he had thought her, guileless and loving.

What a blissful dream that had been! Had he ever felt anything like its intensity, its intoxication of happiness?

By some process which he made no effort to check, thought took him through the months and weeks of his married life. Just now he had said, great happiness was fatal to intellectual power. Had he been so happy? was he always quite content, quite satisfied? He clasped his hands over his eyes, and then he got up and went to his easel, and began to scrape a half-finished study with a knife.

"If I'm not happy, I ought to be." He turned resolutely from the whisper which had made itself heard when he clasped his head so firmly just now. The whisper had said that intense happiness, even if it were not lasting, was preferable to a tranquil, contented state of life.

began to think that if he stayed till Nom came in, he should be cross or sulky, and damp the enjoyment she would be full

"She will expect me to enter into al she has been doing with that old noodk and I can't. I feel bored by anything to lating to those Brights; and I know wh: I can be when I'm thoroughly savage Nuna doesn't, and there's no need siz ever should."

He sighed. Just then it seemed to his as if his wife knew very little indeed his real self; but he checked the though:

"I've got a headache, and I'm out of sorts: I'll go down to those two fellows again and see what they are at."

Nuna came home earlier than he ha expected, and her heart sank when st found she had missed Paul; but she key a smiling face before Mrs. Bright.

"Dear me! I am disappointed not t see your husband; but never mind, dear we can have a longer chat. You wos! forget my two messages to him, will y Nuna dear, about getting rid of the sme of paint,-it is horrid, isn't it? I wonder you're not bilious,--and about coming t see us? I've set my heart upon it. Ye don't look at all as you ought. I'm s it's the nasty paint; and, besides oth things, there is such a thing as stiffnecke ness, my dear. I don't mean rheumat you know"-for Nuna had begun smile-"you're too young for that. mean your father's wife. I don't deftr him; don't think it, my love. Only S pose I'd gone and set up a stepfathe over Will! There's one thing. W would have held his own against any father; but I wouldn't let this estrang ment go on if I were you; and you shut Mrs. Beaufort's mouth, too, wh would be best on all accounts."

Nuna grew crimson.

Ste

"I don't want to stop Mrs. Beaufor she can't say anything against me."

"Ah! my dear; don't now! I sorry I said a word; it's nothing ag you, of course, only she sneers at arts and speaks of you as 'poor Nuna,' 2as if you had quite fallen in position; course, dear now don't excite your there's a dear creature, don't ;" and Bright's plump hands stretched ou wards the flushed face and frowning o "We who know Mr. Whitmore don't [] any heed, of course, not likely, but just

Nuna could hold herself in no longer; she got up with flashing eyes.

"And you expect me to make friends with a woman who speaks against_Paul ! I'm glad you have told me; if ever I do go to see you, it shall only be on the condition that Elizabeth never sets foot in your house while I am there. She is a wicked, false woman-I feel wicked when I think of her." The quick, impulsive anger was spent already; the tender heart suffered for the pain on Mrs. Bright's face. "Don't let us quarrel about her, my dear, kind friend."

She kissed and hugged Mrs. Bright mpetuously, and the talk ended; but still her visitor was not satisfied. She could no longer believe Mrs. Beaufort's insinutions as to Nuna's want of affection. she had never seen her so warmly demontrative as she had proved during their isit to London; but there was something nheard of in a woman refusing to sanction er own father's marriage. But Mrs. Bright went back to Gray's Farm more anxious, n some ways, about Nuna's future than when she left it.

"I hope Nuna won't come to harm." The good, plump, easy-natured woman sat inking it all out when she got back to he quiet of her home; thought, she verred, being impossible in London: here was only time there to see, and to at, drink, and sleep; and far too little for e last, which in Mrs. Bright's estimation as the chief necessary of life. nything unusual must be wrong; and it such a pity to be unlike other people, specially in a woman; it's my belief omen are always safest when they copy mebody else—Eve couldn't, of course; ere was no pattern to follow, and I pect that's why she got into mischief."

CHAPTER XLIV.

A DISCUSSION.

"But

NUNA had not borne with her old friend's liness; she had peremptorily stopped any ther outpouring on the hateful topic of rs. Beaufort: but silly words have often much root in them as those which are ser; they grow in memory as rank eds grow on a dry, stony, roadside heap. ey were to be despised so far as they ached herself. She cared little for ciety, and she had as much as she nted;-a few tried friends among her

husband's acquaintances would have been glad to see her more frequently; but she shrank from invitations.

"I don't get half as much as I want of Paul now," she thought; "and, if we go out often, we shall get farther and farther apart."

The Brights had departed a fortnight, and Nuna thought something in their visit must have vexed her husband, he had grown so very silent.

"Are you painting anything specially interesting now?" she said to Paul. They were sitting at breakfast.

Paul flushed, frowned, and turned over his newspaper quickly, as if he were eager for the next column.

"Generally I know what you are doing," she said, "but you have not told me any thing these three weeks."

"That was all very well while it was new to you; but it would be nonsense to go on with it; what possible interest can you take in the mere painting of portraits ?"

He spoke coldly; he did not even look at her, and tears were in Nuna's eyes in an instant.

"Oh, Paul! as if everything you do is not interesting to me. You are painting a portrait, then?"

She made her voice cheerful; she saw that at her first words he had plunged yet more deeply into his paper. Nuna would have liked at that moment to have made a bonfire of all the newspapers in London.

"Yes." Paul had not been reading; he had been thinking how he could best stop his wife's inquiries without giving her pain-he looked at her and smiled. "You are sure to hear about work that is interesting; but don't ask questions about portraits, there's a dear girl-they are distasteful enough to paint.'

"Ah," said Nuna simply, "you poor darling, and you are sacrificed and have to paint them just because you married a wife who hadn't any money!

She went round to her husband and kissed him, and, glad of the excuse for standing there with her arms round his neck, she bent down over his shoulder and looked at the paper.

"What are you reading, darling? Why, here are nothing but ships for Melbourne and all sorts of far-off places!--why Paul !"

She looked laughingly in his face.

Paul was vexed: it came into his head that Nuna was watching him; and he felt

"It's only from Mrs. Bright;" but she sat down and read her letter.

"Oh, Paul!"-her face was full of delight.

Paul had got interested at last in a corner of the paper which he was ashamed of looking at. He was in the midst of a description of a dinner and ball in Park Lane, given by Mrs. Downes the night before. He read the list of distinguished names; among them were some artists of various kinds.

"She might have asked me." There was an angry glow in his eyes as he looked up at Nuna.

"Well what?"

She

"But you'll go too, dearest ? could not believe that Paul could wish her to go away and leave him alone.

"Me--fancy my leaving town just when I'm so busy! I don't know how to get daylight enough! besides I want to go away myself on Saturday."

"Then let me go with you instead," said Nuna beseechingly. "I would much "I would much rather go away alone with you, than be at Gray's Farm together even."

"Well, I can't exactly. Pritchard's coming back, I hear-you need not look miserable, Nuna-he's not coming to London, he's going to Scotland; and some of us have settled to go down and meet him at Harwick, and hear what he's been doing all this time."

"But don't artists' wives ever go about Iwith their husbands?" Nuna felt very miserable spite of all her efforts.

"Sometimes, of course; but I don't fancy you would care to be the only woman of the party. If it were only Pritchard, it would be different; but there are some fellows going I should not like

you to know-you would not understard each other at all."

"Oh!" she wondered why Paul should care to associate with companions he could not introduce to his wife--she only said. "How long shall you be away?"

"A day or two; I shall be back long before you come home." Something in her face pricked his conscience. "I'm st glad you should have this change, my darling."

"Oh, Paul!”—she was thrown off he balance by his unusual tenderness; “you don't suppose I'm going there without you; what pleasure could I find away from you ?"

"You'd much better go," but he kissed her and told her she was a dear little goose, and that when she got down to Gray's Farm she would be as blithe as a bird.

And then he hurried off to Park Lane. Patty sat to him every day now, and he had grown to feel a restless impatience till the time for the sitting came. He hardly knew why this was; he was not in love again with Mrs. Downes; he had neve said a word to her which he would not have said to any others of his sitters; bu she had become to him like a story, and each day he seemed to turn over some yet more interesting page.

"She is unhappy, I am sure of it," he said to himself, "and yet she never com plains. I expect that fellow Downes is a fastidious, carping idiot; those smal minded men are always tyrants; she's too good for him by half."

Too good for him! At first, fresh from a purer, more natural atmosphere, Pa Whitmore had gone away disgusted with what seemed to him Patty's deceit an artificial character. He told himself that she had the power of being exactly that which she thought most sure to please the human being she had resolved to fast ate; he acknowledged her power, but he shrank from it, and, as we know, he re solved not to see her again.

People write and often realize in thes intercourse with other people, that scales fall from their eyes; that in an hour, a may be in an instant, a sudden revelation will come by means of a word or lookrevelation which will dethrone an idol and destroy implicit trust. And this case b enacted inversely only by a different pr cess just as the enchantress bound

Thalaba, not by one firm chain but by a continuous, unnumbered succession of silken threads, so will persons, and things too, from which at the outset there has been an instinctive shrinking, become even attractive when keen perceptive powers have become deadened by the familiarity of constant sight or use. In Paul Whitmore's case this deadening had not been left only to mere negative influence; Patty had first studied him with call her skill, sharpened by the keenness with which jealousy aids a woman's insight, and then she had thrown herself at once into the character which, according to her conception of it, must surely fascinate Paul. She was gentle, often silent, with a pensiveness bordering on melancholy; and then she would sparkle into one of those glimpses of smiling sunshine which brought back to him a vision of the honeysuckle porch in the lane. And after the first, Patty was not a conscious deceiver during the long interviews between them. To her, acting was more natural than simplicity; she was carried away by her part and by the interest she found in it.

She did not often surprise admiration in those long, all embracing glances that seemed to come direct from the artist's soul; but when she did surprise it, was it not something quite different to Maurice's ncessant, complacent satisfaction?

"The very approval of a man like Paul," she thought, "makes one prouder of oneself; what does one care for praise when those who give it don't know the eal value of what they are admiring?"

And yet it is possible that if Mrs. Downes had felt as sure of Paul Whitnore's admiration as she did of her husand's, their position in her eyes would ave been reversed.

Lately, the sittings had become less ineresting to her than they were to the rtist. She had been presented; she was lready talked about as beautiful; and she as impatient to see her picture framed, nd to enjoy the homage paid to the lovemess it represented. It had taught her o set a yet higher value on her beauty; st at present she was very much in love ith herself.

With a strange inconsistency she reiced when the last sitting came.

"How soon shall we have the picture ack framed, and ready to hang up?" she id eagerly.

Paul was looking at her while she spoke, and he became conscious of her supreme vanity. He felt wounded; and then he smiled at himself for being harsh.

"You are glad the whole business is over; I've no doubt it has been a great bore," he said. The smile was on his lips, but there was a wistful look in his eyes, and Patty answered

"You like me to be glad, don't you, that you have made such a success? you like me, too, to glory in the appreciation others must give to your skill,"-here her eyes drooped; "but you know that is all I rejoice in-no, not quite all." He looked up suddenly; there was the bright, artless glance that had so bewitched him long ago at Ashton; her voice was so low that no syllable reached even the strained ears of Miss Coppock, as she sat pretend. ing to read at the other end of the room. "What else, then ?" said Paul, forced out of all self-restraint.

"Must I tell? I thought without words you would have known what these hours have been to me,”-she sighed : "but then I forget that sympathy is not as unknown to you as it is to me."

Her blue eyes had tears in them, and she again looked up at Paul.

Miss Coppock could not hear, but she could see; and her eyes told her that Mrs. Downes had said something which confused and agitated Mr. Whitmore.

Patience put down her book, and came close up to the artist, as he stood beside the picture, silent, but with a flush which mounted to the forehead.

"Is it quite finished?" she said; " dear me, how very nice it looks."

Patty never moved, but she could cheerfully have boxed Miss Coppock's ears.

Paul felt suddenly disappointed, as if a draught had been snatched from his lips yet with a deep hidden away knowledge that the draught was unwholesome. turned, so as to face Miss Coppock.

He

"It is not quite finished, but I shall not touch it again till I see it in the frame, and that will not be till Saturday. I am going away for a day or two; I shall look at it with fresh eyes when I come back.

"Miss Coppock, will you be good enough to ask Mr. Downes to come upstairs ?"

Patty knew that her husband was out, but she was determined to know, before Paul left her, the impression he had of her.