«It has to be all thought out again,» he said, looking at her appealingly. «I took marriage as carelessly as I took everything else. I must try and do better with it.»>

She was silent, but the inner voice was saying bitter, self-accusing things. Betty's light words about the wife came back to her, and her heart was sore with a vain repentance. If the wife cared nothing for the husband, Tressady's relation to herself had made estrangement easier; and if she cared, «why, then she hates me and she has the right!» A sudden perception leaped in Marcella, revealing strange worlds. How she could have hated-with what fierceness, what flame-the woman who taught ideal truths to Maxwell! But her pride, her noble pride as Maxwell's wife, could not bring a word of this to speech. She sat in dumb sadness and perplexity, thinking of a hundred things and not venturing to say them.

He remained standing by her till suddenly he became aware of her grief. The sight of her drooped head brought the color flashing back into his cheeks.

He took up his gloves and struck one of them against his hand. « What a coward I have been to come to you this morning! If I had gone away without a word I might still have taken some joy->>

He wrestled with himself.

"It was mad selfishness,» he said at last, in a low, dry voice. «Mad it must have been, or I could never have come here to give you pain. Yet this morning some demon drove me. Oh, forgive me! Good-by! I shall always bless you. You must never think of me again.»>

She felt his grasp upon her fingers. He stooped, passionately kissed her hand and a fold of her dress, then walked quickly and decidedly away. She rose hurriedly, but the door had closed upon him before she had found her voice or choked down the sob in her throat. She could only drop back into her chair, weeping silently, her mind lost in a maze of remorseful memory.

A few minutes passed. There was a step outside. She sprang up and listened, ready to fly to the window and hide herself among the curtains. Then the color flooded into her cheek. She waited. Maxwell came in. He too looked disturbed, and as he entered the room he thrust a letter into his pocket almost with violence. But when his eyes fell on his wife a pang seized him. He hurried to her, and she leaned against him, saying in a sobbing voice: "George Tressady has been here. I seem to have done him a wrong-and his wife. I am not fit to help you, Aldous. I do such

rushing, blind, foolish things; and all that one hoped and worked for turns to mere selfishness and misery. Whom shall I hurt next? You, perhaps-you!»

And she clung to him in despair.

A FEW minutes later the husband and wife were in conference together, Marcella sitting, Maxwell standing beside her. Marcella's tears had ceased; but Maxwell had hardly ever seen her look so sad, and he felt half ashamed of his own burning irritation and annoyance with the whole matter.

Clearly, what he had dimly foreseen on the night of her return from the Mile End meeting had happened. This young man, ill balanced, ill mated, yet all the time full of ability, had fallen in love with her; and Maxwell owed his political salvation to his wife's charm.

The more he loved her, the more odious the situation was to him. That any rational being should have even the shred of an excuse for regarding her as the political coquette, using her beauty for a personal end, struck him as a kind of sacrilege, and made him rage inwardly. Nevertheless, the idea struck him-struck and kindled him all at oncethat the very perfectness of this tie that bound them together weakened her somewhat as a woman in her dealing with the outside world. It withdrew from her some of a woman's ordinary perception with regard to the men about her. The heart had no wants, and therefore no fears. To any man she liked she was always ready, as she came to know him, to show her true self with a freedom and loveliness that were like the freedom and loveliness of a noble child. To have supposed that such a man could have any feelings toward her other than those she gave to her friends would have seemed to her a piece of ill-bred vanity. Such contingencies lay outside her ken; she would have brushed them away with a laughing contempt had they been presented to her. Her life was at once too happy and too busy for such things. How could any one fall in love with Aldous's wife? To ask the simplest question of allwhy should one?

Yet Maxwell, as he stood looking down upon her, aware of a certain letter in his inner pocket, felt, with growing yet most unwilling determination, that he must somehow try to make her turn her eyes upon this dingy world and see it as it is.

For it was not the case merely of a spiritual drama in which a few souls, all equally sincere and void of offense, were concerned.

That, in Maxwell's eyes, would have been already disagreeable and tragic enough. But here was this keen, spiteful crowd of London society watching for what it might devourthose hateful newspapers, not to speak of the ordinary fool of every-day life. The whole course of the previous day's debate, the hour of Tressady's speech, while Maxwell sat listening and bent forward in the Speaker's gallery overhead, had been-for her, toopoisoned by a growing uneasiness, a growing distaste for the triumph laid at their feet. She had come down to him from the ladies' gallery pale and nervous, shrinking almost from the grasp of his hand.

« What will happen? Has he made his position in Parliament impossible?» she had said to him, as they stood together for a moment in the Home Secretary's room; and he understood of course that she was speaking of Tressady. In the throng that presently overwhelmed them he had no time to answer her; but he believed that she too had been aware of the peculiar note in some of the congratulations showered upon them on their way through the crowded corridors and lobbies. On the steps of St. Stephen's entrance an old white-haired gentleman, the friend and connection of Maxwell's father, had clapped the successful minister on the back, with a laughing word in his ear: «Upon my word, Aldous, your beautiful lady is a wife to conjure with! I hear she has done the whole thing-educated the young man, brought him to his bearings, spoiled all Fontenoy's plans, broken up the group, in fact. Glorious!» And the old man looked, with eyes half sarcastic, half admiring, at the form of Lady Maxwell standing beside the carriage door.

<<I imagine the group has broken itself up," said Maxwell, shortly, shaking off his tormentor. But as he glanced back from the carriage window to the crowded doorway, and the faces looking after them, the thought of the talk that was probably passing amid the throng set every nerve on edge.

For deep and strong at the heart of him lay all the instincts of the English gentleman of high place-those instincts which prompt even the man of loose character to draw a haughty screen between his womenkind and the prattle of an ill-bred world. Maxwell's marriage had masked or beaten them down, but they were still there.

Meanwhile she sat beside him, unconsciously a little more stately than usual, but curiously silent, till at last, as they were nearing Trafalgar Square, she threw out her hand to him almost timidly:

«You do rejoice?»>

«I do," he said, with a long breath, pressing the hand. «I suppose nothing ever happens as one has foreseen it. How strange, when one looks back to that Sunday!»

She made no reply, and during their further conversation it might have been observed that they avoided any intimate discussion of Tressady's motives and procedure.

And now this visit!-this incredible declaration!-this eagerness for his reward! Maxwell's contempt and indignation were rising fast. Mere chivalry, mere decent manners even, he thought, might have deterred a man from such an act. Meanwhile, in rapid flashes of thought, he began to debate with himself how he should use this letter in his pocketthis besmirching, degrading letter.

But Marcella had much more to say. Presently she roused herself from her trance, and looked at her husband.

« Aldous!» She touched him on the arm, and he turned to her gravely. «There was only one moment when-when I tried to bribe him. He came down to Mile End on Thursday night. I told you. I saw he was unhappy-unhappy at home. He wanted sympathy desperately. I gave it him. I let him talk-about his loneliness sometimessometimes about the House. I tried to attach him, to get hold of him politically through his private feelings. That is quite true; I did.»

«You probably did it without being conscious you were doing it,» he said unwillingly. «Of course, if any man chooses to misinterpret kindness->

"No," she said steadily; «I knew. I was really saying to myself all the time, If I make myself delightful to him, he may change the look of things-he might avert failure from us after all; who knows? And I did make myself delightful. It was quite different from any other time. There! it is quite true.»>

He could not withdraw his eyes from hers -from the mingling of pride, humility, passion, under the dark lashes.

« And if you did, do you suppose that I can blame you?» he said slowly.

He saw that she was holding an inquisition in her own heart, and looking to him as judge. How could he judge-whatever there might be to judge? He adored her.

For the moment she did not answer him. She clasped her hands round her knees, thinking aloud.

«From the beginning, I remember, I thought of him as somebody quite new and fresh to what he was doing-somebody who would

certainly be influenced, who ought to be influenced. And then»-she raised her eyes again, half shrinking-«there was the feeling, I suppose, of personal antagonism to Lord Fontenoy. One could not be sorry to detach one of his chief men. Besides, after Castle Luton, George Tressady was so attractive! You did not know him, Aldous; but to talk to him stirred all one's energies. It was like a mental contest; one took it up again and again, enjoying it always. As we got deeper in the fight, I tried never to think of him as a member of Parliament; often I stopped myself from saying things that might have persuaded him as far as the House was concerned. And yet, of course,» -her face, in its nobility, took a curious look of hardness,— «I did know all the time that he was coming to think more and more of me to depend on me. He disliked me at first; afterward he seemed to avoid me; then I felt a change. Now I see I thought of him all along just in one capacity,-in relation to what I wanted,-whether I tried to persuade him or no. And all the time->>

A cloud of pain effaced the frown. She leaned her head against her husband's arm.

«Aldous!» Her voice was low and miserable. «What can his wife have felt toward me? I scarcely thought of her after Castle Luton; she seemed to me such a vulgar, common little being. And now to-day-in what he said- But surely, if they are unhappy, it is not-not my doing; there was cause enough->> Nothing could have been more piteous than the tone. It was laden with the remorse that only such a nature could feel for such a cause. Maxwell's hand touched her head tenderly. A variety of expressions crossed his face, then a sharp flash of decision.

"Dear, I think you ought to know-she has written to me.»

Marcella sprang up. Face and neck flushed crimson. She threw him an uncertain look, her nostrils quivering.

"Will you show me the letter? »

He hesitated. On his first reading of it he had vowed to himself that she should never see it; but since her confessions had begun to make the matter clearer to him, a moral weight had pressed upon him. They two, with conscience and good sense to guide them, must find way out of this matter. He did not feel that he could hide the letter from her if there was to be common action and common understanding.

So he gave it to her.

She read it, pacing up and down, unconscious sounds of pain and protest forcing themselves to her lips from time to time, which made it very difficult for him to stand quietly where he was. On that effusion of gall and bitterness poor Letty had spent her sleepless night. Every charge that malice. could bring; every distortion that jealousy could apply to the simplest incident; every insinuation that, judged by her own standard, had seemed to her most likely to work upon a husband-Letty had crowded them all into the mean, ill-written letter-the letter of a shop-girl trying to rescue her young man from the clutches of a rival.

But every sentence in it was a stab to Marcella. When she had finished it she stood with it in her hand beside her writing-table, looking absently through the window, pale and deep in thought. Maxwell watched her. When her moment of consideration broke, her look swept round to him.

«I shall go to her,» she said simply. «I must see her! >>

Maxwell pondered.

"I think," he said reluctantly, «she would only repulse and insult you.»

«Then it must be borne. It cannot end so.» She walked up to him, and let him draw his arm about her. They stood in silence for a minute or two. When she raised her head again her smile had come back.

"Aldous, help me! If we cannot repair this mischief-you and I-what are we worth? I will tell you my plan.»

There was a sound at the door. Husband and wife moved away from each other as the butler entered.

«My lord, Mrs. Allison and Lord Fontenoy are in the library. They asked me to say that they wish to consult your lordship on something very urgent. I told them I thought your lordship was engaged, but I would come and see.»

Marcella and Maxwell looked at each other. Ancoats! No doubt the catastrophe so long staved off had at last arrived. Maxwell's stifled exclamation was the groan of the overworked man who hardly knows how to find mind enough for another anxiety. But a new and sudden light shone in his wife's eyes. She turned to the servant almost with eagerness:

«Please tell Mrs. Allison and Lord Fontenoy to come up.»

Mary A. Ward.

N the first of the two articles which have already appeared in this magazine regarding South Africa, the physical character and aspects of the country were described, these being the permanent and the most potent factors in its economic condition and its industrial future. In the second a brief sketch of its history was given, explaining what have been the relations in the past of the three native and the four European races which originally inhabited, or have subsequently settled in, it. It is now time to pass on to consider the country as it now stands, and to attempt to convey to the reader some general impressions of the nature and value of the resources of the country, of the character of the population, and of the problems, social and political, which confront and occupy them. These are large topics, too large to be adequately dealt with in eight or ten pages. It becomes necessary to select from among them those which are most likely to have interest for readers in the United States. I must therefore pass very lightly over the economical resources and industrial prospects of South Africa, in order to find space for discussing a little more fully the relations of the natives to the white race; the relations of the two European races to each other in the two British colonies and the two Dutch republics; and the political questions the urgency of which has fixed the eyes of Europe and America upon South Africa.

There are three sources of wealth and three kinds of employment for labor in South Africa-agriculture, stock-raising, and mining. Timber is so scarce and so poor as to be hardly worth mention, and manufactures, for reasons to be presently stated, have as yet hardly come into existence.

Agriculture is pursued on a scale very small in proportion to the immense area of the country. Much of it is a desert, sandy in some regions, stony in others. Much of it is

mountainous. Of the comparatively level districts, a great part, probably four fifths of the whole, is too arid to be cultivable without irrigation; that is to say, the rainfall is either too small in total volume, or too ill distributed through the year, to permit good crops to be raised without artificial aid. That large tracts, both in Cape Colony and in Natal, which might be brought under the plow still lie untilled is due partly to the tendency of the European settlers to prefer cattlefarming to agriculture; partly to the inferiority of native labor; partly also to the fact that plenty of arable land is still occupied by Kafir tribes, who make but little use of it. The introduction of irrigation would make a vast difference, for some of the regions which are now untilled for want of rain, such as the Karroo desert, have a soil of surprising fertility, which produces luxuriant crops when water is led on to it. The price of cereals has, however, sunk so low all over the world that it is seldom worth while to go to the expense of irrigation, nor will irrigation become profitable until a larger population has created a better market in South Africa itself. At present Cape Colony and the Transvaal import not only wheat, but maize also, although a protective tariff has been imposed on all food-stuffs. The chief agricultural development of late years has been in the direction of fruit, large quantities of which now go to the English market in the months of January, February, and March, the midsummer and autumn of the southern hemisphere.

The main industry of South Africa, for the last two centuries, has been the rearing of cattle and sheep. All the country, except the very barest parts of the deserts, is fit for some kind of live stock. Even the Karroo, which looks like a desert as one crosses it in the train, produces small, succulent shrubs much relished by sheep, while great stretches of wild-bush country, covered with a dense scrub, are turned to account as ostrich farms, whence great quantities of feathers are sent to Europe and America. Owing, however, to

the thinness of the pasture in the drier regions, and to the occasional droughts even in those which are better watered, as well as to the destruction of the herbage by locusts in the years when those pests appear, the stockfarms are of great size, and the number of cattle small when compared with the area over which they range. Still, the country, and especially the newly opened regions of Bechuanaland and Matabeleland, will carry many more live stock than have yet been placed upon it. South Africa will doubtless become in time one of the great ranching countries of the world.

Till within the last thirty years nobody thought of these regions as possessed of mineral wealth; for, though iron had been found in some places and copper in others, neither was largely worked, and the belief in the existence of the precious metals rested on nothing more than a Portuguese tradition. In 1867 the first diamond ever found in South Africa was picked up by a hunter out of a heap of shining river-pebbles. This was near the banks of the Orange River, a little above its confluence with the Vaal River. Then a diligent search for diamonds began in all the surrounding districts. In 1870 diamonds were discovered in considerable quantities near where the town of Kimberley now stands. A rush of miners soon filled the neighborhood, and from that time onward Kimberley has been the center of the diamond-getting industry, though there are other mines scattered here and there to the west and south of it. The total value of the diamonds exported from South Africa up to the present year has been roughly estimated at nearly one hundred millions sterling, and the value of the present annual output, which is kept down in order to prevent the price from falling, since the demand is of course a limited one, at between four millions and four and a quarter millions.

One result of the diamond finds has been to create a considerable population in what was formerly an arid wilderness, so little prized that it had remained doubtful whether the British crown or the Orange Free State was entitled to its ownership. Another has been to accelerate the development of the gold-mines which were discovered some fifteen years later in the Transvaal Republic; for the men who had made fortunes out of the diamond diggings were near the spot, and eager to turn their capital to account in fresh enterprises. To describe the gold-fields of South Africa would need more pages than I have lines to give. One fact, however, must

be mentioned and emphasized. These goldfields are of three kinds. One kind consists of alluvial deposits, from which the gold is extracted by washing. Such alluvial deposits are found in many parts of the world, notably on a great scale in California; and those of South Africa present no peculiar features, and are neither of great extent nor of conspicuous wealth. The second kind is the quartz reefs. These also occur in other parts of the world, as, for instance, in California, in several parts of Australia, in the Ural Mountains, in South America, and in southern India. In South Africa such reefs have been found in Natal and Zululand, in the mountains along the eastern border of the Transvaal Republic, and in many parts of Matabeleland and Mashonaland. Their value has been still very imperfectly ascertained, but it seems probable that in the three lastmentioned districts some of the workings will turn out to be rich. The third kind, however, is peculiar not only to South Africa, but to one particular region (called the Witwatersrand, or «Rand Basin ») in the Transvaal Republic. Here the metal is found pretty equally distributed through beds of hard, conglomerate rock, which come to the surface over an area about 130 miles long by 30 miles wide. The gold occurs in very small flakes seldom visible to the eye, and is often so entangled with other minerals, especially iron pyrites, as to require elaborate and costly chemical processes for its extraction. But the remarkable feature, and the one which makes mining in the Rand so much less uncertain and speculative an undertaking than gold-mining has everywhere else proved to be, is that the conglomerate beds (called by the Dutch banket) contain through great part of their length, and, so far as has yet been ascertained, through their depth also, down toward the center of the earth, a proportion of gold to rock which varies but little, and which enables the yield of metal to the ton to be pretty accurately estimated beforehand. This yield is greater in some mines, less in others; but its aggregate is so large that South Africa has now become the third gold-producing country of the world, and may probably become before long the second. The total value of the gold extracted annually is now about eight millions sterling. The richest workings are near the center of the northern edge of the Rand Basin, about the town of Johannesburg, which, first laid out in 1886, has now a population of about 60,000 people. The total number of inhabitants in the central Rand district can hardly