that some genuine impulse had made Miss Sarah Skull throw open her arms to her when she first arrived. The impulse might be over now, but it had been there.

Half through dinner, in spite of all Gideon could do to change the topic, so as to remove it from the atmosphere of a family council, the talk ran upon the misdeeds of Victor Waldron and upon the duties attaching to the ownership of a great place like Copleston, more especially upon such duties as referred to the relation between the great house and the Vicarage. Of course, urged both Miss Sarah and Miss Anne, nobody could possibly be expected to understand Hillswick and how to deal with it half so well as the Curate-inCharge, whose advice must therefore be taken and followed in all matters, both temporal and spiritual. Gideon was reminded by his aunts some ten times that Helen's father had always held the business qualities of the Rev. Christopher Skull in the very highest regard, and had considered the reversion of the living to be no more than the Curate's due. And then Helen would be fortunate in having the faithful counsel and experienced co-operation of two aunts who knew all the affairs of the parish, from the highest to the lowest, through and through. She might trust to them blindly and implicitly until she learned to walk alone; and even then there were details of social and parochial duty which the great lady of Copleston must needs leave to subordinate hands. Helen's heart sank deeper and deeper through all the dreary table-talk which always came back to one refrain-that she was to live at Copleston in order that her aunts by marriage might rule the parish in her name. She could not help sympathising with the usurper, who had at least taken his own business into his own hands. Would she be able to find the spirit to rebel?

To her surprise it was Gideon himself who came to her rescue.

"Don't make too sure you're going to change King Stork for Queen Log, Aunt Sarah," said he bluntly. "There isn't one single thing in the whole parish that I approve of, and don't mean to change. There's nothing like putting one's foot down at once, you see. Perhaps you won't find your experience of broth and blankets go very far when you've got to deal with navvies and pitmen."

"Navvies-pitmen!" cried Aunt Sarah. "Gideon !"

"If Copleston doesn't cover a coal-pit, then Nature's a liar. And you can't get coal without pitmen, nor carry it without a railway line. Take my word for it, you won't know Hillswick in less than two years."

The threat fell among them like a thunderbolt. Waldron had

been at worst a sentimental and even excessively conservative reformer compared with a man who talked of coalpits and railways in connection with Hillswick and Copleston before he was in possession. Waldron had been but re-arranging the letters: Gideon-their nephew Gideon-was going to change the whole word.

"Don't you think, Uncle Christopher," he asked, "that Hillswick ought to be opened up? It's so much like an oyster that there must be something worth eating inside."

་

"Oh, yes; of course, of course, Gideon," stammered his uncle. "Of course; nothing could possibly be more proper. Only we must be cautious, and not do everything at once. Things come, you know, if one waits for them.” "Even livings," he thought, with a sigh. "You are aware," he said, turning to his sisters, "that we live in times of progress, and that there are movements and remarkable social developments in many directions which I, as a man of ordinary education and intelligence, ought not to-nay, cannot be the last to recognise."

"You have heard, of course, Mrs. Gideon, of your old friend's marriage?" said Miss Sarah stiffly. When her brother began to talk like a Radical there was nothing left to be said on that score. "No," said Helen, answering almost at random. friend?"

"What

"You mean to say you have not heard of Bertha Meyrick's marriage? I should have thought you would have been the first to know. Why, it was quite an event. I used to fancy your poor brother was rather tender in that quarter. But marriages are written in heaven, you see. Yes; she married Sir Wilfred Lexmere, who has a splendid place in Devonshire. So she's done quite as well, on the whole, as if he had been your brother. She's Lady Lexmere now."

Helen hung her head with new shame. She had long given up corresponding with her girl friend, because she believed herself to have ceased to be worthy to touch Bertha's hand-Bertha's, whom she had assumed to be devoted to maiden widowhood for the sake of the one man whom she loved and who loved her. And now even Bertha had forgotten Alan, and had given herself to a stranger even before she could possibly have learned that her old lover was not alive. “That even I could not have done," thought Helen. “And Bertha-how could she have done that, for very shame? I am glad Alan has not lived death is better than a broken heart, after all.” And so she swallowed camels and strained at gnats, in more sympathy with the common world about her than she knew.

"Well, Uncle Christopher," began Gideon, as soon as the ladies, with all proper formalities, had left the uncle and nephew to their wine-for, on this special occasion, not even wine had been lacking— "No, you needn't trouble to pass the-h'm-Liquid. With your leave, I'll smoke a dry cigar. You see, war's in the enemy's country now, and the fighting's begun.”

"I wish," began Uncle Christopher, filling his own glass-"I wish" He broke off abruptly, and sighed. "What do you wish? with things as they are. must take what I can get,

I think you ought to be very well content I wish a good many things, too. But I and let the rest slide."

"It does seem so strange you should have found that will." Stories about wills are always strange

"Of course it was strange.

-nearly as strange as wills are themselves."

You

"I ought to have had more caution, Gideon." "Nonsense! How could you have had more caution? make an affidavit that you put old Harry's will away, wrapped in a blue cover, initialed by yourself, in a certain place. I, on a second search, find the very document in the very place where it had been put by you. There's no doubt about the will, or about what the contents were and are. I don't know what you mean by more caution, Uncle Christopher. I don't, indeed."

"It has occurred to me that--just as a mere matter of form, of course I ought to have seen the will."

:

"In the name of absurdity, why? You have made your affidavit in the only way you could you have sworn to the receipt, to the contents, to the identity. Had you done more, you would have seemed most unnaturally suspicious, I may say. I may have had very good reasons for your not seeing the will. I don't often do things without exceedingly good reason. Perhaps you want me to explain why, instead of putting the business into a lawyer's hands, I am come down to arrange it privately with Waldron. Perhaps you would prefer the chance of a public scandal, from which you would come out as guilty of the crime-the punishable crime-of suppressing and concealing a will. Well, as you please. I should say that, on the whole, the less you see and the less you say the better for you."

"Well, Gideon, you know best. I know that. I never intended to imply the contrary."

"Yes; and whatever is done, is done now."

The two had no further talk on hand. The Curate collapsed into his glass of port; Gideon thought over the best way for having his

interview with Waldron so as to make his triumph as complete as possible.

Honestly-in a higher and deeper sense than his own-it was no longer mostly for Copleston's sake that he hungered for Copleston. He had to crush and trample under foot the enemy who had robbed him of what had become to him worth a million Coplestons. He must let Helen see with her eyes the full extent of her lover's weakness and meanness and of her husband's power. It was therefor that he had brought her with him, not only that he might crush her spirit, put to the test her true relation with her former enemy, and prevent her communicating with Waldron by letter while his back was turned. He felt as if he hardly knew whether he most hated her or most loved her. With some men, and some women, too, Love and Hate are terribly akin.

Waldron, in a gossiping place like Hillswick, would be safe to hear of the arrival at the Vicarage. But he could not possibly suspect that mischief was brewing unless Helen herself contrived to give him warning. To guard himself from the effects of her feminine cunning, he would call on Waldron and see him the first thing tomorrow morning. Nothing would tell so well as a sharp and sudden blow. Helen's mere presence in Copleston, had it not been so important for other reasons, would cause fresh talk that would give éclat to the triumphant return of the rightful heir; and her popularity as a Reid would remove the edge from the public disgust which he knew would follow upon the discovery that Copleston had become the property of Gideon Skull.

So he laid his plans, anticipating his coming interview, and even the very words that would pass between himself and Waldron, who would be compelled, in the face of such incontrovertible evidence as the very will of old Harry Reid, to quit the field. And then Helen, with nothing to gain from Waldron, would at any rate go with the Copleston estate; and, if only to baulk Waldron, she was worth the keeping. When she was utterly crushed, so he argued from his experience of womankind, she would be reduced into being to him whatever he pleased: utterly dependent upon him, and so thankful for tenderness that she would become his slave. So absorbed was he in all these forecasts that he did not even see the door open. But he heard Aunt Sarah's voice, as she burst in with

"Christopher! Are you asleep? Wake up, for goodness' sake! Here's Mr. Waldron himself. I've had him put into the study, and he wants to see you! What can it be for?"

"Mr. Waldron !-In the study!-To see me!" The Curate

could only answer his sister with exclamatory echoes, look at Gideon,

and ask, "Shall I see him?

What shall I do?"

But Gideon was awake now, and a brilliant thought came into his mind. How if he dealt his blow now, with Helen herself standing by to see? Nothing less than an outburst of hitherto latent dramatic genius could have inspired him with such a stroke of victory and

vengeance, all in one.

"Yes, Uncle Christopher," he said very gently—almost absently. "See him by all means: see him now. We will see him together, you and I. . . . . And will you be so very kind, Aunt Sarah, as to tell Helen to come into the study at once? She must see him,

too."

(To be concluded.)