cheated. But they had not been playing for money. So Claude had told her. And he had told her the cheque was all right. That was all there was nothing more to be thought of with regard to this.

:

Yet she still lingered on the threshold of the thought of it. Jim had got cleaned out' (his own phrase) in the Derby week, had pledged the quarter's rent of Grote in advance to pay his Derby debts. And somebody had told her that Jim had lost heavily at Newmarket afterwards, and he had told her that he had paid and was upright before the world in the matter of debts of honour.

She had passed the threshold of that thought and was inside again. Where had he got the money from? Well, anyhow not by forgery. Claude had said that the mistake was his. But how odd that he should not have been able to recollect about a cheque for five hundred pounds, drawn only ten days before!

Dora still lingered in the precincts of that thought, though she beckoned, so to speak, another thought to distract her. What a wonderful thing, how triumphant and beautiful was the love of which she had seen a glimpse to-day. It was all the more wonderful because it seemed to be common, to be concerned with biscuits and coffee. A hundred times she had seen Lady Osborne wrapped up in such infinitesimal cares as these, and had thought only that her mind and her soul were altogether concerned with serving, that the provision for the comfortable house and the good dinner was aspiration sufficient for her spiritual capacity. Yet there had always been a little more than that: there had been the moment in church when the sermon was to her taste, and the hymn a favourite, and she and her husband had tunelessly sung out of one book. That had touched Dora a little, but she had then dismissed it as a banal affair of goody-goody combined with a melodious tune, when she saw the great lunch that they both ate immediately afterwards.

But now these details, these Martha-cares, had taken a different value. This morning Lady Osborne had been in great pain, had broken down in her endeavour to carry on somehow, and was face to face with a medical interview which she dreaded. But still she could think with meticulous care of her husband's milk, of his slippers, of his tendency towards strong coffee. What if below the Martha was Mary, if it was Mary's love that made Martha so sedulous in serving?

All that she had overlooked, not caring to see below a surface

which she said was commonplace and prosperous. The surface was transparent enough, too: it was not opaque. She could have seen down into the depths at any time if she had taken the trouble to look.

Before her marriage, and for a few months after it, she had thought she knew what 'depths' meant. She thought she knew what it was to be absorbed in another. Then had come her disillusionment. She had worshipped surface only: she knew no more of Claude than that. She had loved his beauty, she had got accustomed to it. She had at first disregarded what she had grown to call his vulgarity, and had not got accustomed to it. She had known he was honest and true and safe, but she had grown to take all that for granted. She had never studied him, looked for what was himself, she had but had glimpses of him, no more than she had had of his mother. But to-day she felt that with regard to her these glimpses were fused together: they made a view, a prospect of a very beautiful country. But as yet there had no fusing like that come with regard to her husband. Now that she saw,' even the country, the country of the grey-business was beautiful. And at present in her own warm country, her young country, beauty was lacking.

Perhaps here the third subject came in-perhaps, even in the trouble that she felt threatened them, there were elements that might be alchemised. She was willing, at least, to attempt to find gold, to transform what she had thought was common into the fine metal. Some alchemy of the sort had already taken place before her eyes; she no longer thought common those little pathetic anxieties which she had heard this morning. For days and months the same anxieties, the same care had been manifest. There was no day, no hour in which Lady Osborne had not been concerned with the material comfort of those whom she loved. She was always wondering if her husband had got his lunch at the House, and what they gave him; whether the motor had got there in time, and if he remembered to put his coat on. Nor had her care embraced him alone. One day she had come up to Dora's sitting-room and found that there was a draught round the door, and so had changed her seat. But next day there was a screen placed correctly. Or Claude had sneezed at dinner, and a mysterious phial had appeared on his dressing-table with the legend that directed its administration. He had come in to Dora to ask if she had any explanation of the bottle. But she had none, and they concluded Mrs. Osborne had put it

there, fussily no doubt, for a sneeze was only a sneeze, but with what loving intent! She remembered everything of that sort. Per liked kidneys: his wife liked cocoa. It was all attended to. Martha was in evidence. But Mary was there.

Supposing Lady

Dora's thoughts had strayed again. She had meant to think about the trouble that she felt was threatening, and to see if by some alchemy it might be transformed into a healing of hurt. She did not believe that she was fanciful in expecting bad news: she wished to contemplate the effect of it, if it came. Osborne was found to be suffering from something serious, how was she herself to behave? She had to make things easier for her fatherin-law she had to be of some use. That was not so difficult: a little affection meant so much to him. He glowed with pleasure when she was kind. But for Claude? That was more difficult. She had to be all to him. It was much harder there to meet the needs she ought to meet, and should instinctively meet without thought. Once, if she had said, 'Oh, Claude!' all would have bea said because the simple words were a symbol. But now she could not say, 'Oh, Claude!' like that. She could be Martha, that was But it was not Martha who was wanted.

easy.

The door from his dressing-room opened, and he came in, shielding with his hand the light of his candle, so that it should not fall on her face. The outline of his fingers even to her half-shut eyes was drawn in luminous red, where the light shone through the flesh. He had often come in like that, fearing to awaken her. Often she had been awake, as she was now.

To-night she feigned sleep. And she heard the soft breath that quenched the candle; she heard a whisper of voice close to her words of one who thought that none heard.

'Good night, my darling!' he said.

(To be continued.)

THE

CORNHILL MAGAZINE.

MAY 1910.

CANADIAN BORN1

BY MRS. HUMPHRY WARD.

EPILOGUE.

ABOUT nine months later than the events told in the last chapter, the August sun, as it descended upon a lake in that middle region of the northern Rockies which is known as yet only to the Indian trapper, and-on certain tracks-to a handful of white explorers, shone on a boat containing two persons-Anderson and Elizabeth. It was but twenty-four hours since they had reached the lake, in the course of a long camping expedition involving the company of two guides, a couple of half-breed voyageurs, and a string of sixteen horses. No white foot had ever before trodden the slender beaches of the lake; its beauty of forest and water, of peak and crag, of sun and shadow, the terror of its storms, the loveliness of its summer, only some stray Indian hunter, once or twice in a century perhaps, throughout all the sons of human history, had ever beheld them.

But now, here were Anderson and Elizabeth!-first invaders of an inviolate Nature, pioneers of a long future line of travellers and worshippers.

They had spent the day of summer sunshine in canoeing on the broad waters, exploring the green bays, and venturing a long way up a beautiful winding arm which seemed to lose itself in the bosom of superb forest-skirted mountains, whence glaciers descended, and cataracts leapt sheer into the glistening water. Now they were

1

Copyright, 1910, by Mrs. Humphry Ward, in the United States of America. VOL. XXVIII.-NO. 167, N.S.

39

floating slowly towards the little promontory where their two guides had raised a couple of white tents, and the smoke of a fire was rising into the evening air.

Sunset was on the jagged and snow-clad heights that shut in the lake to the eastward. The rose of the sky had been caught by the water and interwoven with its own lustrous browns and cool blues; while fathom-deep beneath the shining web of colour gleamed the reflected snows and the forest slopes sliding downwards to infinity. A few bird-notes were in the air,—the scream of an eagle, the note of a whip-poor-will, and far away across the lake a dense flight of wild duck rose above a reedy river-mouth, black against a pale band of sky.

They were close now to the shore, and to a spot where lightning and storm had ravaged the pines and left a few open spaces wherein the sun might work. Elizabeth, in delight, pointed to the beds of wild strawberries crimsoning the slopes, intermingled with stretches of bilberry, and streaks of blue and purple asters. But a wilder le was there. Far away the antlers of a swimming moose could be seen above the quiet lake. Anderson, sweeping the lake side with his field glass, pointed to the ripped tree-trunks, which showed where the brown bear or the grizzly had been, and to the tracks of lynx or fox on the firm yellow sand. And as they rounded the point of a little cove they came upon a group of deer who had come down to drink.

The gentle creatures were not alarmed at their approach; they raised their heads in the red light, seeing man perhaps for the first time, but they did not fly. Anderson stayed the boat, and he and Elizabeth watched them with enchantment-their slender bodies and proud necks, the bright sand at their feet, the brown water in front, the forest behind.

Elizabeth drew a long breath of joy,-looking back again at the dying glory of the lake, and the great thunder-clouds piled above the forest.

'Where are we exactly?' she said. 'Give me our bearings.' 'We are about seventy miles north of the main line of the C.P.R. and about forty or fifty miles from the projected line of the Grand Trunk Pacific,' said Anderson. Make haste, dearest, and name your lake!-for where we come, others will follow.'

So Elizabeth named it-Lake George-after her husband: seeing that it was his topographical divination, his tracking of the lake through the ingenious unravelling of a score of Indian clues