CHAPTER VIII.

INTERVIEW any of the leading families of Wooroona at this day, and they will tell you that Mrs. Primrose, even as Mrs. Primrose, was an angel in human shape. But in the days that followed the Darriwell ball, and all through the summer and autumn until the middle of the winter afterwards, they regarded her as a near connection of the Evil One, and treated her accordingly.

This was the only dark patch-other than the shadow of death, which falls upon us all-on the web of that bright life. Ever afterwards it stood out upon the piece like a blot of ink on pink satin. For Nancy's enemies did not leave her in doubt as to the nature of the charges they preferred against her; and, though she was very dull of comprehension at first, when she did understand the meaning of their dark hints and strange actions, she was stricken with shame and pain to her heart's core. She was punished as completely as they could have desired. They would have had some mercy, being

fairly good-natured women when their better feelings were appealed to, had she shown how deeply she felt her hurt-had she humbled herself, in short, to admit defeat; but this she would not do, by any means. She was a little person of spirit and temper, and she behaved as such. She gave pieces of her mind to them as occasion offered; she contemned their vulgarity, their coarseness, their small-mindedness, all the unladylike vices that they were certain they did not possess, in terse and vigorous language that was not easily forgotten, and that could not be remembered without a sting. She walked about disdainfully, with her head in the air; she still came to church in the most charming dresses-as winter approached, in a real and lovely sealskin jacket; and, while she coolly regarded the ladies between the eyes or over the tops of their bonnets, she smiled-gravely, it is true, but with unabated friendliness-full in the faces of the men when they took off their hats to her. Consequently the ladies hated her without scruple, and persecuted her without remorse. Nothing else was to be expected.

But, though she kept so brave a front to the foe, she bled inwardly, in a way they had no idea of. She could have borne some of the affronts that were put upon her without serious suffering.

The story that she "took too much"-originated by Mrs. Brown in the Darriwell ball-room, but nevermore to die out while the name of Primrose was remembered-made her angry enough, but also amused her mightily; and the accusation of being irreligious she considered, or said she considered, rather a compliment than otherwise, coming from a lot of such self-righteous Pharisees. But the scandal that was more peculiarly scandalous-the deadly arrow that a woman's hand can speed so well, and which always makes its worst wou..d in the healthiest flesh-went home to the quick, and festered and rankled night and day, poisoning all her peace. She was a little flirt, no doubt, but was made so by Nature and not by art, and meant no harm by her conscious fascinations and unconscious blandishments; she now. tasted the fruit of the tree of vicious knowledge for the first time in her life, and it disagreed with her terribly. Not only was she overwhelmed with the wrong that was done her; she had no wholesome trust in herself any more. Men were no longer the pleasant comrades they had been; she smiled at them still, because she could not help it, but she shrank from them too. All her intercourse with them and with the world was spoiled, and the flavour of life was taken away.

Added to this trouble, which fretted the colour from her cheeks and the flesh from her bones, was another, no less active in its ill effects. She did not suffer alone; her dear Jack was a vicarious victim, in spite of her assertion that he could never be made accountable for her misdeeds. When she said that, she didn't know what she was talking about. He was as devoted to her as ever, and as inordinately proud of her; he never saw a fault in her, nor supposed that any one else did or could, and Nancy was incapable of the cruelty of opening his dull eyes merely to have the comfort of his sympathetic indignation. His reading of the situation was, that colonial people were different from English people, the two being unfitted to get on together, and that Mrs. Brown was a more than ordinarily pronounced specimen of the typical incumbent's wife. If he had any clearer insight into the state of things, he did not acknowledge it. But it was plain to him, and to everybody, that he did not "get on." Nobody fraternised with him, nobody courted him; he plodded through his work without encouragement and without enthusiasm, and every time he sought change and preferment he was unsuccessful churchwardens and vestrymen and leading families declining him with thanks on behalf of their respective parishes. They did

not give the reason publicly, but everybody knew it except himself. Nancy knew it, for there were plenty of hints in the air which she could understand, if he could not; and she suffered accordingly, sometimes raging in futile wrath against her and her dear Jack's enemies, and sometimes blaming herself heartbrokenly for not being what a minister's wife should be, and having thereby caused all their joint misfortunes.

In short, she fell upon evil days-largely by her own fault, as the virtuous reader will not fail to point out; they lasted in grey uniformity through nearly all her first year of married life, and then it seemed to her that the last gleam of light was quenched out of the world, and that she and happiness bade good-bye forever.

Jack got wet through one stormy Sunday night, when riding home, fagged and weary, from his bush services; caught a severe cold that he could not get rid of; was laid up for a few weeks; and suddenly, just when Nancy thought he was beginning to get over it, took a bad turn, and died. People had grown accustomed to his fragile looks and his constant cough; they regarded his frequent colds -for he always called them colds-as incidental to winter weather and the habits of his profession. Seeing him constantly, they did not mark the grad