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voice, "whom you care for, whom you would send for now to advise and help you? »

<<Thank you," said Letty, calmly, leaning against the little writing-table, and beating the ground lightly with her foot. «I don't want anyone. And I don't know why you should trouble yourself about it.»>

But for the first time, and against its owner's will, the hard tone wavered.

Marcella rose impetuously again, and came toward her.

« When one thinks of all the long years of married life," she said, still trembling, «of the children that may come->

Letty lifted her eyebrows.

<<< If one happened to wish for them. But I don't happen to wish for them-never did. I dare say it sounds horrid. Anyway, one need n't take that into consideration.>>

« And your husband-your husband, who must be miserable, whose great gifts will be all spoiled unless you will somehow give up your anger and make peace? And instead of that you are only thinking of revenging yourself, of making more ruin and pain. It breaks one's heart! And it would need such a little effort on your part-only a few words written or spoken-to bring him back, to end all this unhappiness!»

«Oh, George can take care of himself,» said Letty, provokingly; «so can I. Besides, you have sent him away.»

Marcella looked at her in despair. Then silently she turned away, and Letty saw that she was searching for the gloves and handkerchief she had been carrying in her hand when she came in.

Letty watched her take them up; then said suddenly, «Are you going away? »

« It is best, I think. I can do nothing.»> << I wish I knew why you came to see me at all! They say, of course, you are very much in love with Lord Maxwell. Perhaps that made you sorry for me?»

Marcella's pride leaped at the mention by those lips of her own married life. Then she drove her pride down.

«You have put it better than I have been able to do all the time.» Her mouth parted in a slight, sad smile. «Good night.»

Letty took no notice. She sat down on the arm of a chair near her. Her eyes suddenly blazed, her face grew dead white.

"Well, if you want to know,» she said, « no, don't go; I don't mean to let you go just yet, I am about the most miserable wretch going! There; you may take it or leave it; it's true. I don't suppose I cared much about George when I married him; plenty of girls

don't. But as soon as he began to care about you just contrariness, I suppose-I began to feel that I could kill anybody that took him from me, and kill myself afterward! Oh, good gracious! there was plenty of reason for his getting tired of me. I'm not the sort of person to let any one get the whip-hand of me, and I would spend his money as I liked, and I would ask the persons I chose to the house; and, above all, I was n't going to be pestered with looking after and giving up to his dreadful mother, who made my life a burden to me. Oh! why do you look so white? Well, I dare say it does sound atrocious. I don't care. Perhaps you'll be still more horrified when you know that they came round this afternoon, when I was out and George was gone, to tell me that Lady Tressady was frightfully ill-dying, I think my maid said. And I have n't given it another thought since-not one-till now»-she struck one hand against the other-«because directly afterward the butler told me of your visit this afternoon, and that you were coming again, and I was n't going to think of anything else in the world but you and George. No; don't look like that, don't come near me-I'm not mad. I assure you I'm not mad! But that's all by the way. What was I saying? Oh! that George had cause enough to stop caring about me. Of course he had; but if he 's lost to me I shall give him a good deal more cause before we 've done. That other man-you know him, Cathedine-gave me a kiss this afternoon when we were in a wood together »- the same involuntary shudder overtook her, while she still held her companion at arm's length. «Oh, he is a brute-a brute! But what do I care what happens to me? It's so strange I don't,rather creditable, I think,-for, after all, I like parties, and being asked about. But now George hates me, and let you send him away from me, why, of course it's all simple enough! I-don't-don't come-Ishall never, never forgive-it 's just being tired-»

But Marcella sprang forward. Mercifully, there is a limit to nerve endurance, and Letty in her raving had overpassed it. She sank gasping on a sofa, still putting out her hand as though to protect herself. But Marcella knelt beside her, the tears running down her cheeks. She put her arms-arms formed for tenderness, for motherliness-round the girl's slight frame. «Don't-don't repulse me!» she said, with trembling lips, and suddenly Letty yielded. She found herself sobbing in Lady Maxwell's embrace, while all the healing, all the remorse, all the comfort that self-abandonment and pity can pour out on such a

plight as hers, descended upon her from Marcella's clinging touch, her hurried, fragmentary words. Assurances that all could be made right, entreaties for gentleness and patience, revelations of her own inmost heart as a wife far too sacred for the ears of Letty Tressady, little phrases and snatches of autobiography steeped in an exquisite experience -the nature Letty had rained her blows upon kept nothing back, gave her all its best. How irrelevant much of it was!-checkered throughout by those oblivions and optimisms and foolish hopes by which such a nature as Marcella's protects itself from the hard facts of the world. By the time she had ranged through every note of entreaty and consolation, Marcella had almost persuaded herself and Letty that George Tressady had never said a word to her beyond the commonplaces of an ordinary friendship; she had passionately determined that this blurred and spoiled marriage could and should be mended, and that it lay with her to do it; and in the spirit of her audacious youth she had taken upon herself the burden of Letty's character and fate, vowing herself to a moral mission, to a long patience. The quality of her own nature, perhaps, made her bear Letty's violences and frenzies more patiently than would have been possible to a woman of another type; generous remorse and regret, combined with her ignorance of Letty's history and the details of Letty's life, led her even to look upon these violences as the effects of love perverted, the anguish of a jealous heart. Imagination keen and loving drew the situation for her in rapid strokes, draped Letty in the subtleties and powers of her own heart, and made forbearance easy.

As for Letty, her whole being surrendered itself to a mere ebb and flow of sensations. That she had been able thus to break down the barriers of Marcella's stateliness filled her all through, in her passion as in her yielding, with a kind of exultation. A vision of a tall figure in a white-and-silver dress, sitting stiff and unapproachable beside her in the Castle Luton drawing-room, fled through her mind now and then, only to make the wonder of this pleading voice, these confidences, this pity, the more wonderful. But there was more than this and better than this. Strange upwellings of feelings long trampled on and suppressed; momentary awakenings of conscience, of repentance, of regret; sharp realizations of an envy that was no longer ignoble, but moral; softer thoughts of George; the suffocating, unwilling recognition of what love meant in another's woman's life-these

messengers and forerunners of diviner things passed and repassed through the spaces of Letty's soul as she lay white and passive under Marcella's yearning look. There was a marvelous relief, besides,―much of it a physical relief,-in this mere silence, this mere ceasing from angry railing and offense.

Marcella was still sitting beside her, holding her hands, and talking in the same low voice, when suddenly the loud sound of a bell clanged through the house. Letty sprang up, white and startled.

<<<What can it be? It 's past ten o'clock. It can't be a telegram.»

Then a guilty remembrance struck her. She hurried to the door as Kenrick entered.

«Lady Tressady's maid would like to see you, my lady. They want Sir George's address. The doctors think she will hardly live over to-morrow.»>

And behind Kenrick, Justine, the French maid, pushed her way in, weeping and exclaiming. Lady Tressady, it seemed, had been in frightful pain all the afternoon. She was now easier for the moment, though dangerously exhausted. But if the heart attacks returned during the next twenty-four hours nothing could save her. The probability was that they would return, and she was asking piteously for her son, who had seen her, Justine believed, the day before these seizures began, just before his departure for Paris, and had written. «Et la pauvre âme!» cried the Frenchwoman at last, not caring what she said to this amazing daughter-in-law. «Elle est là toujours, quand les douleurs s'apaisent un peu, écoutant, espérant-et personne ne vient-personne! Voulez-vous bien, madame, me dire où on peut trouver Sir George?»>

«Poste restante, Trouville," said Letty, sullenly. It is the only address that I know of.>>

But she stood there irresolute and frowning, while the French girl, hardly able to contain herself, stared at the disfigured face, demanding by her quick-breathing silence, by her whole attitude, something else, something more than Sir George's address.

Meanwhile Marcella waited in the background, obliged to hear what passed, and struck with amazement. It is, perhaps, truer of the moral world than of the social that one half of it never conceives how the other half lives. George Tressady's mother, alone, dying, in her son's absence, and Letty Tressady knew nothing of her illness till it had become a question of life and death, and had then actually refused to go-forgotten the summons even!

When Letty, feverish and bewildered, turned back to the companion whose heart had been poured out before her during this past hour of high emotion, she saw a new expression in Lady Maxwell's eyes from which she shrank.

"Ought I to go?» she said fretfully, almost like a peevish child, putting her hand to her brow.

My carriage is down-stairs,» said Marcella, quickly. I can take you there at once. Is there a nurse?» she asked, turning to the maid.

Oh, yes; there was an excellent nurse, just installed, or Justine could not have left her mistress; and the doctor close by could be got at a moment's notice. But the poor lady wanted her son, or at least some one of the family,- Justine bit her lip, and threw a nervous side-glance at Letty,-and it went to the heart to see her. The girl found relief in describing her mistress's state to this grave and friendly lady, and showed more feeling and sincerity in speaking of it then than might have been expected from her affected dress and manner.

Meanwhile Letty seemed to be wandering aimlessly about the room. Marcella went up to her.

«Your hat is here on this chair. I have a shawl in the carriage. Won't you come at once, and leave word to your maid to bring after you what you want? Then I can go on, if you wish it, and send your telegram to Sir George.»

"But you wanted him to do something?» said Letty, looking at her uncertainly.

«Mothers come first, I think,» said Marcella, with a smile of wonder. «It is best to write it before we go. Will you tell me what to say?»

She went to the writing-table, and had to write the telegram with small help from Letty, who, in her dazed, miserable soul, was still fighting some demonic resistance or other to the step asked of her. Instinctively and gradually, however, Marcella took command of her. A few quiet words to Justine sent her to make arrangements with Grier. Then Letty found a cloak that had been sent for being drawn round her shoulders, and was coaxed to put on her hat. In another minute she was in the Maxwells' brougham, with her hand clasped in Marcella's.

"They will want me to sit up,» she said, dashing an irrelevant tear from her eyes, as they drove away. «I am so tired—and I hate illness!»

"Very likely they won't let you see her toVOL. LII.-66.

night. But you will be there if the illness comes on again. You would feel it terribly if-if she died all alone, with Sir George away.»

«Died!» Letty repeated half angrily. «<But that would be so horrible; what could I do?» Marcella looked at her with a strange smile. «Only be kind, only forget everything but her!»

The softness of her voice had yet a severity beneath it that Letty felt, but had no spirit to resent. Rather it awakened an uneasy and painful sense that, after all, it was not she who had come off conqueror in this great encounter. The incidents of the last half-hour seemed in some curious way to have reversed their positions. Letty, smarting, felt that her relation to George's dying mother had revealed her to Lady Maxwell far more than any wild and half-sincere confessions could have done. Her vanity felt a deep, inner wound, yet of a new sort. At any rate, Marcella's self-abasement was over, and Letty instinctively realized that she would never see it again, while at the same time a new and clinging need had arisen in herself. The very neighborhood of the personality beside her had begun to thrill and subjugate her. She had been sufficiently aware before-enviously, hatefully aware-of all the attributes and possessions that made Maxwell's wife a great person in the world of London. What was stealing upon her now was glamour and rank and influence of another kind, not unmixed, no doubt, with more mundane thoughts. No ordinary preacher, no middleclass eloquence, perhaps, would have sufficed

nothing less dramatic and distinguished than the scene which had actually passed, than a Marcella at her feet. Well, there are many modes and grades of conversion. Whether by what was worst in her or what was best; whether the same weaknesses of character that had originally inflamed her had now helped to subdue her or no, what matter? So much stood-that one short hour had been enough to draw this vain, selfish nature within a moral grasp she was never again to shake off.

Meanwhile, as they drove toward Warwick Square, Marcella's only thought was how to hand her over safe to her husband. A sense of agonized responsibility awoke in the elder woman at the thought of Cathedine; but no more emotion, only common sense and gentleness.

As they neared Warwick Square Letty withdrew her hand.

<< I don't suppose you will ever want to see

me again," she said huskily, turning her head

away.

«Do you think that very possible between two people who have gone through such a time as you and I have?» said Marcella, pale but smiling. «When may I come to see you to-morrow? I shall send to inquire, of course, very early.»>

Some thought made Letty's breath come quickly. «Will you come in the afternoonabout four?» she said hastily. «I suppose I shall be here.» They were just stopping at the door in Warwick Square. «You said you would tell me-->

«I have a great deal to tell you. I will come, then, and see if you can be spared. Good night. I trust she will be better. I will go on and send the telegram.>>

Letty felt her hand gravely pressed, the footman helped her out, and in another minute she was mounting the stairs leading to Lady Tressady's room, having sent a servant on before her to warn the nurse of her arrival.

THE nurse came out, finger on lip. She was very glad to see Lady Tressady, but the doctor had left word that nothing whatever was to be allowed to disturb or excite his patient. Of course if the attack returned-but just now there was hope. Only it was so difficult to keep her quiet. Instead of trying to sleep, she was now asking for Justine, declaring that Justine must read French novels aloud to her, and bring out two of her evening dresses that she might decide on some alteration in the trimmings. «I dare n't fight with her,» said the nurse, evidently in much perplexity. But if she only raises herself in bed she may kill herself.>>

She hurried back to her patient, promising to inform the daughter-in-law at once if there was a change for the worse; and Letty, in

finitely relieved, made her way to the spare room of the house, where Grier was already unpacking for her.

After a hasty undressing she threw herself into bed, longing for sleep; but from a short nightmare dream she woke up with a start. Where was she? In her mother-in-law's house, she could actually hear the shrill, affected voice laughing and talking in the room next door,-and brought there by Marcella Maxwell! The strangeness of these two facts kept her tossing restlessly from side to side. And where was George? Just arrived at Paris, perhaps. She thought of the glare and noise of the Gare du Nord; she heard his cab rattling over the long, stone-paved street outside. In the darkness she felt a miserable sinking of heart at the thought of his going with every minute farther, farther away from her. Would he ever forgive her that letter to Lord Maxwell when he knew of it? Did she want him to forgive her?

A mood that was at once soft and desolate stole upon her and made her cry a little. It sprang, perhaps, from a sense of the many barriers she had heaped up between herself and happiness. The waves of feeling, half self-assertive, half repentant, ebbed and flowed. One moment she yearned for the hour when Marcella was to come to her; the next she hated the notion of it. So between dream and misery, amid a maze of thought without a clue, Letty's night passed away. By the time the morning dawned the sharp conviction had shaped itself within her that she had grown older, that life had passed into another stage, and could never again be as it had been the day before. Two emotions, at least, or excitements, had emerged from all the rest and filled her mind-the memory of the scene with Marcella, and the thought of George's return.

(To be continued.)

Mary A. Ward.

THE VIOLIN.

QUIVERING strings, wherefrom the bow Braws forth such heavenly sounds, I know Your pain. Thus human hearts are strung, And from their tense chords music wrung.

Julie M. Lippmann.

W

THE CRUEL THOUSAND YEARS.

BY THE AUTHOR OF THE CAT AND THE CHERUB.»

'HEN the grim ancestral joss of the Hoos led the family in an exit to a different domicile, the years of the Infant Hoo Chee were yet five. It was true that now he had the pride of silken strings to lengthen out his cue; but since the time when he had toddled away in pursuit of a lovely American girl, with whom he had wished to dwell forever in her home, which he called the House of Glittering Things, and since the moment when Hoo King had torn him from her whom the Infant called the Lady of Cakes and Tea, Hoo Chee had been more circumscribed than ever. Many a vision of that house and of that lady had been his as he seemed to be wistfully watching the humming world from the lofty flower-pot balcony And no one but his meditative cat One-Two was in the Infant's confidence or knew the weight of his

woe.

But on that day when the joss came down from the wall the few old smoky rooms were left as memories, and the father Hoo King and the mother and the amah walked away in the clear air, with Hoo Chee bearing the doubtful One-Two in his arms. Soon the Infant found himself in a second story, whence he looked upon a yard impossibly great, he thought a yard as long as a cloud. It dissolved in the gloaming as he gazed in awe, with his chin just over the window-sill, and he waked in the morning denying it. But when he found it true he rushed shouting down the stairs, one step at a time, and shouting into its vast freedom, where OneTwo scampered in giddy circles, with his tail in mirthful curves. Here was a roaming ground for all duration, and earth to dig, and straggling weeds, and sticks and stones! It mattered not what castles lay beyond; here was a park that equaled the House of Glittering Things.

There was one restriction: he must never have aught to do with the women who lived on the other side of the fence, commanded Hoo King, for reasons of his own. They were Sum Chow's women-Sum Chow, who had the curio shop, and opposed the traffic in women slaves by the Tong which Hoo King ruled.

But women whom the Infant neither feared nor loved did not concern him in his hours in the yard. The marvel of his liberty filled his mind; it lost him his appetite and some of his sleep for quite two days, whereafter he ate like a knight returned, and slept as hard as a horse can gallop, to be up and out, with One-Two at his heels, catching the dew and the dawn. In the other place, on the balcony, never a smallest finger might be laid on the stalk of a lily, nor a feather be drawn across one smooth green leaf, without discovery; here, first of all, he pulled up a tuft of grass, and saw its little white legs that walked in the soil; and this was a secret in his bosom. Then behind the shed, which he called the Gruesome Go-down, after the place where the doughty little Quong Sam, of a story he knew, had been impounded by a Sarcastic Turtle that stood between Quong Sam and the House of Glittering Things-behind the Gruesome Godown was a spot where One-Two suggested by scratches that they dig, which they did. The Infant made mountains and valleys with an iron spoon, so clever was he, and he threw a pasteboard bridge across a river-bed, and by it built an Important Town, where the avenues were shaded by cabbage-leaf trees, and where One-Two drilled wilful worms and rebellious bugs as citizens.

From a window in Sum Chow's the learned Dr. Wing Shee, that soothsayer whom all Chinatown respected, occasionally observed the Infant's serious labors, and grew to like Hoo Chee. The industry which now was seen to thrive near the Important Town was mining-in a pile of débris as high as the Infant's self; and surely, in all the vast precincts of the House of Glittering Things, no more absorbing, dignifying occupation might be found. With One-Two's artful nasal divination they brought forth varied bits of crockery that, when polished with One-Two's ear, became as brilliant as other gems; and they drew out many an odd fabric and buried relic that told of bygone times and the domestic economies of extinct houses. The Infant could not stuff them all in the pocket that ran across the chest of his bib. The choicest was a big green ring, like those the grown folks wore, which the Infant squeezed as a love token over

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