of feeling she ran up to him, with outstretched hands. "Where have you been? Mrs. Myles did not know, and I came back for Dulcie. We shall miss the train. Oh, where am I to go?"

Mrs. Trevithic, nervous, fluttered, bewildered, for perhaps the second time in her life, seemed scarcely to know what she was saying she held up her cheek to be kissed; she looked about quite scared, and shrunk away again. "It's no use, you will be too angry to forgive me," she said; "but about these trains

“What do you mean by the trains, Anne?" her husband said. "Dulcie wants something to eat. Get into the carriage again."

It is difficult to believe-Trevithic himself could not understand it-Anne obeyed without a word. He asked no questions when she burst out with an incoherent, "Oh, John, Oh, John, they were so strange and unkind!" and then began to cry and cry and tremble from head to foot.

It was not till they got to the hotel that Mrs. Trevithic regained her usual composure, and ordered some rooms and lunch off the carte for the whole party. Trevithic never asked what had happened, though he guessed well enough, and when Hambledon told him afterwards that Mrs. Trevithic had burst in upon them in the garden, it was no news to poor John.

They had finished their dinner on the ground-floor room of the quiet old inn. Little Dulcie was perched at the window watching the people as they crossed and

recrossed the wire-blind. A distant church clock struck some quarters, the sound came down the street, and Trevithic smiled, saying, “I think you will be too late for your train, Anne, to-day." Anne's heart gave a throb as he spoke. She always thought people in earnest, and she looked up wistfully and tried to speak; but the words somehow stuck in her throat. Meanwhile Trevithic looked at his watch, and jumped up in a sudden fluster. It was later than he imagined. He had his afternoon service at the workhouse to attend to. It was Friday, and he must go. He had not a moment to lose, so he told his wife in a word as he seized his hat, and set off as hard as he could. He had not even a moment to respond to little Dulcie's signals of affection, and waves and capers behind the wire-blind.

Anne, who had been in a curious maze all this time, sitting in her place at the table and watching him, and scarcely realizing the relief of his presence as he busied himself in the old way for her comfort and Dulcie's, carving the chicken and waiting on them both, understood all at once how great the comfort of his presence had been. In her dull, sleepy way, she had been basking in sunshine for the last two hours, after the storm of the day before. She had untied her bonnet, and thrown it down upon a chair, and forgotten to smooth her sleek hair; her collar and ribbons were awry; her very face had lost its usual placidity,—it was altered and disturbed, and yet Jack thought he had

never liked her looks so well, though he had never seen her so ruffled and self-forgetful in all the course of his married life.

For the moment Mrs. Trevithic was strangely happy in this odd reunion. She had almost forgotten at the instant the morning's jealousy and mad expedition-Colonel Hambledon's look of scorn and Mary Myles' words-in this new unknown happiness. It seemed to her that she had never in her life before realized what the comfort might be of some one to love, to hold, to live for. She watched the quick clever hands dispensing the food for which, to tell the truth, she had no very great appetite, though she took all that her husband gave her. Had some scales fallen from her pale wondering eyes? As he left the room she asked herself in her stupid way, what he had meant.

Was

this one little glimpse of home the last that she would ever know? was it all over, all over? Anne tied her bonnet on again, and telling the maid to take care of little Dulcie, went out into the street again and walked off in the direction of the chapel. She had a vague wish to be there. She did not know that they would admit her; but no difficulties were made, and she passed for the second time under the big arch. Some one pointed out the way, and she pushed open a greenbaize door and went in; and so Anne knelt in the bare little temple where the paupers' prayers were offered up --humble prayers and whitewash, that answer their purpose as well perhaps as Gothic, and iron castings,

and flamboyant windows, as the beautiful clear notes of the choristers answering each other and bursting into triumphal utterance. The paupers were praying for their daily bread, hard, and dry, and butterless; for forgiveness for trespasses grosser and blacker perhaps than ours; for deliverance from evil of which Anne. and others perhaps have never realized; and ending with words of praise and adoration which we all use in truth, but which mean far, far more when uttered from that darkness upon which the divine light beams most splendidly. Anne for the first time in her life. was kneeling a pauper in spirit, ashamed and touched, and repentant.

There was no sermon, and Mrs. Trevithic got up from her knees and came away with her fellowpetitioners and waited in the courtyard for John. The afternoon sun of this long eventful day was shining on the stones and casting the shadows of the bars and bolts, and brightening sad faces of the old men and women, and the happy faces of two people who had also attended the service, and who now advanced arm-in-arm to where Anne was standing. She started back as she first saw them: they had been behind her in the chapel, and she had not known that they were there.

The sight of the two had brought back with it all the old feeling of hatred, and shame, and mistrust; all the good that was in her seemed to shrink and shrivel away for an instant at their approach, and at the same

time came a pang of envious longing. They seemed so happy together; so one, as, with a glance at one another, they both came forward. Was she all alone when others were happy? had she not of her own doing put her husband away from her, and only come to him to reproach and leave him again? For a woman of such obstinacy and limited perception as Mrs. Trevithic to have settled that a thing was to be, was reason enough for it to happen; only a longing, passionate longing, came, that it might be otherwise than she had settled; that she might be allowed to stay—and a rush of the better feelings that had overcome her of late kept her there waiting to speak to these two who had scorned her. It was they who made the first advance.

"I want to ask you to forgive me," said Mary, blushing, “anything I may have said. Your husband has done us both such service, that I can't help asking you for his sake to forget my hastiness."

"You see we were taken aback," said the Colonel, not unkindly. "Shake hands, please, Mrs. Trevithic, in token that you forgive us, and wish us joy. I assure you we are heartily sorry if we pained you." Anne flushed and flushed and didn't speak, but put out her hand, not without an effort. "Are you going back directly, or are you going to stay with your husband?" said the Colonel, shaking her heartily by the hand.

Poor Anne looked up, scared, and shrank back