He heard no more than half the cry, as she sprang up from her seat, and covered her eyes with her hands-trembling, as if a ghost had suddenly appeared before her. The waltz went on, wildly and joyfully. None noticed her who was learning for the first time that the brother, for whose sake she lived, had died.

Yes-Walter Gray knew well enough where he had seen her now. But he did not wonder how or why he had not known her again. He did not remember faces; and the passing of many events had made those two meetings vague things of long ago. There was but little left of the girl with whom he had been shut up in the belfry; little indeed of her who had crushed him with her scorn in the churchyard. Even had she been less changed in her whole self, it would have been hard enough to associate this lady in black velvet in the drawing-room of a Mr. Aristides with one's memories of Helen Reid of Copleston-Mrs. Gideon Skull. How had such a thing as that come to pass? Walter Gray would as soon have thought of discovering a likeness in the royal wife of King Cophetua to Penelophon the beggar-maid. But now he knew that it was she.

But then, how was it she had never known of her brother's death till now? It had happened long ago. Even if Mr. Crowder had been too sublimely above trifles which could not affect the interests of the Argus to let her and her mother hear of it, still it must have been a scrap of public news for its hour. He had ample time to think and feel all this, and to swear at himself for the accident which had told her all without preparation, in such a place and in such a way, for he had not a word to say, and no living man could have found a fit one.

But suddenly she left off trembling, took her hands from her face, and looked at him with a strange, hard look, in which he could recall no sign of Helen Reid.

"He was my only brother," she said, in a voice that was like her look. "And I thought he was still living-strange as it must seem to you. You must forgive me for having seemed a little sorry. It was very bad taste, and quite out of place; but I assure you it was not because I don't know how absurd and contemptible such things as feelings, and all that sort of rubbish, are. As a matter of curiosity, I should like to know when my only brother died."

"Good God! Don't speak-don't look like that, Miss Reid. Forgive me-no, not that; only"

"I assure you I would not for a moment think of putting the music out by screaming or fainting-perfect calmness is one's first duty to society. I think you ought to be obliged to me for not

Tang sat a disagreeable thing as a scene. Tell me, if you please, When my brather died”

Ees DX por now; and men don't have friends.”

4He vas stack down on the street, almost at my side, on the For God's sake, Miss Reid, take my arm, and

Let me see you home."

+ I en gong-bone. But please do not leave the room. I am not the less land I un walk alone to my-my husband's carmage perfectly well. Forgive me if I have been-seemed impolite to you. I dare say you were his friend-I dare say he had nothing that you wanted—and be-Good

She let him suddenly and hurriedly, as if she were not quite so much mistress of herself as she had been trying, with ill success enough to make him believe. He had not learned a single word of her real story, that wis der Helen Reid the wife of Gideon Skull! He did not let her see that be followed her, but he took care not to lose sight of her until she was in her carriage; and then he watched the carriage till he could follow it with his eyes no longer.

“Well, Gray,” said Dr. Dale, “how did you get on with Mrs. Skull? Rather heavy to lift, isn't she?”

“You never told me she is the sister of poor young Reid."

“Is she? I'm sure I didn't know. Poor young fellow! I suppose that's why she's always in mourning. Then it's true Skull married without a penny, for Reid hadn't any money, I'll swear. But, do you know, I fancy there's something about to-night out of the common. There's a sort of a feeling of thunder in the financial air. Stock has gone up or down. I hope you're not interested in that sort of thing?"

"Is Mrs. Skull a patient of yours?”

"No. I wish she were. But what makes you so desperately interested in Mrs. Skull? She's neither a stock nor a share, but another man's wife, you know."

"Yes-Gideon Skull's wife, and Alan Reid's sister. It's a queer world this; so I'll wish it good-night-till to-morrow."

CHAPTER XXIV.

She's mine-mine-mine !-her heart, her life, her soul:
She's mine, from head to foot, and through and through.
Have I not won the guerdon of the game?
Are not its forfeit tokens, coin by coin,
Obverse and reverse, image, legend, mine-

By code and compact mine-mine, mine alone?
Call me no cheat, if losers will not pay.

"HOME!" said Helen to her coachman, and then threw herself back into the corner of her carriage, and sobbed terribly. She was not struck to such utter stone by the news she had heard as to have lost the relief of tears. Whatever had happened, she could never forget how to weep, as a child might, for him who stood for the whole of her childhood and for all the happiness she had ever known. It was the Helen Reid of long ago, not Mrs. Gideon Skull, who was weeping for Alan.

But there was hardly a trace of tears left when she reached home. She did not even wait to collect herself or her thoughts, but walked straight into the room where her husband used to smoke and plan whenever he was at home-work, one can hardly call it, for the greater part of Gideon's Skull's occupation, like that of Mr. Aristides, consisted in thinking about the work of others. But even that is very hard work sometimes; and if Helen had not been so full of her own thoughts she must have noticed that this evening, which he had spent at home and in solitude, had been unusually severe. He was not, as usual, lounging in an arm-chair, and apparently letting the smoke of his cigar do his thinking for him. Though there was neither book nor paper upon his writing-table, and though his hands were empty, he was seated at it in the attitude of a man who is deep in some absorbing labour, with his eyes fixed on the spot where one would have expected to find at least a sheet of note-paper. He was not even smoking, for, though he held a cigar between his lips, it had burned out without his noticing the change of flavour.

But Helen noticed nothing of all this. "Gideon!" she said, suddenly and sharply. He turned round on his seat as abruptly; and, without rising to welcome her home, looked heavily, almost stupidly, at his wife—or rather, as it would seem, at some indifferent woman, or a still more indifferent bulk of black velvet, that happened to fill the doorway. He did not remove his forgotten cigar-stump even then. The contrast between them did not need strengthening by that between her black robes and pearls and his

shabby sucking-jacket,

tumbled hair.

buttoned waistcoat, loosened collar, and

"Gideon!" she said again, as she closed the door behind her; "why did you marry me?”

"What the-what on earth do you mean ?”

“I want to know. Why did you marry me?"

“Do you want me to tell you again?" A sort of change, though equally unnoticed by Helen, came over both his voice and his eyes. Both were still heavy and sullen; but, if it be lawful to rival Walter Gray in the art of look- and voice-reading, it was rather the passive sullenness which comes of weariness and long waiting, and there was an under-note of pleading in his voice, and an under-glow of admiration in his eyes. "Well-I will tell you again, and a thousand times again. It was because I loved you-more fool I, I suppose. I only wished to God it was one of the follies that can be cured. You know as well as I do that if I was free again I would marry you again. Put it, if you like, that I married you because I was a fool. And, if you like it better, put it that I am one still. That's why."

"I have never thought you a fool, Gideon."

“You think a great many things about me, I know, that are not true. I had another reason."

“Well?”

"I thought I loved you so much," he said, slowly and still more heavily, “that I should be able to make you give me some of it back-in time. Why shouldn't I do what hundreds of men, as unlikely as I am, have done? One must invest the principal before one can look for the interest-love is very like the rest of life, I suppose. I thought that when a man loved a woman as I loved you-like a man, and not like a boy, or an idiot, or a poet, or a slave-he couldn't manage to throw his whole life away even if he tried. I didn't think it possible that a man could care about a stone as I did for you: I thought that when a man loved, it stood to reason that what he loved was a woman."

"Have I been a bad wife to you? Have I

"You have been just the worst wife, Helen, that a man could find if he were to search the whole world round. I'm not angry with for it: I'm not quite such an imbecile as to be angry with facts; but it's true."

you

"I have not meant to be a bad wife. God knows, I have meant to be a good one. I meant it from that terrible day when I married you. Till to-night, I have meant it always. What one thing have I done or left undone that

"No thing-no thing except one. Only, that happens to be the only one that matters. I'm less to you even than I was on that day which you call terrible, and when I didn't even dream that you cared for me. I didn't marry you to be my partner, or my housekeeper, or my nurse if I chanced to fall ill—did I?—or my representative at calls and crushes. I shouldn't call you a bad wife if you hated me—as wives go. Hating is being one's wife, in a way. But you don't eyen do that

"Did I ever promise to love you, except in the form which you agreed with me, when it was made, should bind me no more than I might feel myself bound? I never pretended to give you more than just my hand and my duty-my duty to you only in the second place. You freed me from my formal promise in church before it was given, so that it meant-nothing. I have fulfilled my whole bargain, every jot and every tittle. And now-why did I marry you?"

"Because

"You know what people say—because you were rich and I was poor. You don't believe that, I know. You know that I married you for the sake of my brother-Alan. Of my mother, too; but even on our wedding-day it became for his sake alone."

"By Heaven, Helen, you must be mad yourself, or trying to make me so. Have I not done for him all that one man can do for another? Can I give him brains and eyes, and hands and eyes? I have given him every chance of using them all, but I can't use them for him. We don't even know if he is not using them. If he is, he will come back a millionaire. With his chances, I-he is doing well, because he must be doing well. Nobody, even without brains, can help doing well in-in Arizona. If he had been my own son, as well

as my brother, I would have sent him there."

"It is so strange that he never writes to me. For aught I know, he thinks his mother still alive."

"Why strange? He is a young man."

"He is Alan."

"That is to say, a very young man-younger than most young men. That's always the way with women. They think nobody is ever to change, and that if a thing has ever been done once, it has got to be done always. He got out of the way of letter-writing at the siege. Are you cold, Helen? Put on your shawl.-It is a habit soon lost and never recovered. He did not write before he left for Arizona, for the very good reason that he had to leave Brest at an hour's notice, and— But he telegraphed when he reached the