If he had said with the Emperor of Tartary, it would have meant the same to her. Since Alan was dead, it was as likely as not that Gideon Skull, or anybody else, should be mentioned to her by Mr. Crowder.

"I thank you," she said again. leave me, I shall be much obliged.

"I am not alone. If you will Miss Reid will be home soon

He had to leave her there was a spasm about her lips while she spoke which showed that a strange presence was becoming more than she could bear. But, even when he was gone, she did not give way. She only went back to the sofa, and turned her face to the wall.

What must be done, must at times be done in haste, for fear lest the strength we have to do it should fail.

Alan's mother was not thinking of her daughter, God knows. If she had been-now-she would only have thought herself lost in another dream.

She would have seen the interior of a strange church, twice as large as that of Hillswick, nearly as worn out, and three times as dark and dusty-a wilderness of huge galleries and baize-lined pews, into which the sun, unsoftened by colour, seemed to stare sullenly and only because he was obliged. At the east end she would have seen a communion table fenced in by thick wooden railings like dwarfed bed-posts; and, flanked on the right by a well-dressed young gentleman and on the left by a clerk and a pew-opener, she would have seen, standing before a surpliced clergyman, Gideon Skull and Helen. It might have seemed natural to her-in a dream. She would have seen the giving of the ring that was to transform Alan Reid of Copleston into the brother of Gideon Skull.

Helen and her husband parted at the church door. She was certain she had done what was right, and indeed it was needful for her to be certain, henceforth and for ever. The door for compunction and regret had been closed for her-she could fancy, without the help of her own hands. She had certainly driven an excellent bargain; for so long as she allowed him to be her husband, Gideon had been perfectly ready to give way to her in all things, even in what he must have thought her idlest whims. Not only had he been made clearly to understand that it was for her brother's sake alone that she had brought herself to allow him to marry her-she was not even to be asked to leave her mother until she pleased; and her dread of having to make her confession met with such complete sympathy and acquiescence from Gideon, that she had resolved to put it off until

to-morrow. It did seem strange to her that doing right should always seem so hard-first the doing and then the telling. Well: it was all for Alan, and her mother would understand.

So-half wondering that she felt in no wise stronger or better than half an hour ago-she first kept Gideon to his promise by bidding him good-bye till at least to-morrow, and, as soon as she could, got rid of Lord Ovoca, who had been Gideon's best man, and who insisted on seeing the bride at least part of the way home. The young man never saw anything odd in anything that was out of the common; his own life ran so much out of the groove, that he had no surprise left for any but common ways. The secret marriage, and the parting at the church door, must needs be right, because they tasted in his mouth like sawdust flavoured with orange-peel. He was rather obtrusive in his attentions to Helen, but his brogue and his general easiness of going always saved him from offending anybody; but even he was made to feel at last that the bride wanted to be left alone on her wedding-day. His chief reflection on the whole matter was, "Fancy the feelings of a girl who's had a decent name of her own when she hears herself called for the first time-Mrs. Gideon Skull !”

But neither to-day nor to-morrow-that day which never comes ! -was Helen to tell her mother her new name. By the time she reached home, her mother had died, without moving from where she had lain down.

CHAPTER XXII.

I read it in a strange old book,

When hours were long and sunny,

How some one from a Fairy took
A purse for making money.
No more than half a pair of shakes
Would bid a bag of leather

Snow down, like Mother Carey's flakes,
Ten thousand pounds together.

How oft I wish, nor wonder why,

That fairies still were common,
Nor bade each girl and boy Good-bye
Who turns to man or woman!

For, just as clearly as I see

The cock on parish steeple,

I know they'd give that purse to me,
And not to common people.

MR. DEMETRIUS ARISTIDES, who represented the respectable side of his firm, lived at Bayswater in very good style, and, out of business

hours, held very little social communication with his junior partner, Mr. Sinon. Many people, judging by the very different view of their house presented by the two partners, both in business and society, mistook it for two different houses, whereas it was in reality entirely the same, and scarcely differed from a hundred others in having two different doors. Mr. Sinon, his partner himself felt compelled to confess, was far too much of a roué and a gambler for a merchant of the City of London. On the other hand, Mr. Sinon was exceedingly fond, behind his partner's back, of girding at him as a pedant, a miser, and a humbug, who, though born in the Levant, was no better than a common Englishman. Mr. Sinon seemed to throw away, with both hands, all the profits that Mr. Aristides made. But one advantage they had, which presumably worked well. The foes of one were the natural friends of the other, so that either partner could afford to lose a personal friend without necessarily costing the firm a client or customer. And then, their divergence of character enabled them to carry on many very opposite forms of business which greater harmony of nature must have made impossible. In short, Mr. Sinon was the sharp, dashing, bachelor partner; Mr. Aristides the honest, respectable, domestic one. And they were of perfect accord in considering each other indispensable. They were seldom seen together, even at their joint office in the City, and Mr. Sinon did not pay his partner's family more than one visit a year— that is to say, when he brought Madame Aristides an offering of sugar-plums on Old New Year's day. But they had never been known to have a dispute, except very publicly indeed, and when it was a matter of policy as well as of temper to hurl at one another those magnificently resonant epithets of Eastern Greece which are to our noisiest Billingsgate what thundering rocks are to clattering pebbles. And they never bore malice, but forgave one another instantly as soon as they were alone.

Mr. Demetrius Aristides was really, and without the faintest tinge of sarcasm at the expense of a most respectable word, a highly respectable man. He was even a good Christian, of the orthodox Levantine school, and hated Jews like poison. So orthodox was he, that this was the second, if not the very first, article in his creed. He felt it his duty to attack them in business at every turn, and almost always came off the winner. He was a cosmopolitan steeped in national prejudices. Thus he objected to Scotchmen, on principle, because it wastes time and ruins temper to deal with people who will consider, one by one, every one of the four hundred thousand sixpences in ten thousand pounds. He was cynically indifferent to

Irish wrongs, as affecting a country which has more to gain than to lose; but he liked England, and he adored America as the land of a spending, speculating, and, above all, impulsive and confiding people who gave him a great deal of pleasure and no trouble at all. Ten Yankees to beat one Jew, ten Jews to beat one Scotchman, ten Scotchmen to beat one Genoese, ten Genoese to beat one Greek, ten Greeks to beat one Demetrius Aristides, was one of his multiplication tables, and he found it fairly accurate on the whole. The match for ten of himself he had not yet found-not even in Mr. Sinon, who had many genuine weaknesses, while his own armour had proved hitherto without a flaw.

His wife, Madame Aristides, with splendid black eyes that had once made her beautiful, but with a degree of stoutness that no longer allowed her to be graceful, and with an imperfect knowledge of English that happily concealed her nearly perfect ignorance of everything, was an ex-ballet-dancer whose father had been a brigand of some note in his day; but she passed very well in London as a foreign lady. He was an art patron-especially in the matter of paintings, which are always worth money, while a song, once sung and heard, is as unprofitable as a cab that has once been ridden in. However, he by no means bought pictures and bric-à-brac merely to sell again. He liked his house in Bayswater, overlooking the gardens, to be one of the aesthetic show-places of London, and spent hundreds of cards a year upon enthusiasts who were told it was the wrong thing not to have seen some Brown or Jones in the possession of Mr. Aristides. He spent little upon feasting, because that was in his partner's department; but whenever he gave dinners they were at least as great works of art as his paintings, and invitations to Madame's occasional receptions, where people were always allowed plenty of room to dance in, were things to be fought for. And all this came out of that little back office in where nobody ever seemed to do anything, or to have anything to do, but consume sherry and cigars.

It was one of Madame's receptions to-night. It would have been easy to find more distinguished company under much humbler roofs; but there were quite enough good people with good reason for being there to attract still better people there also. And, at any rate, it had the merit of variety, for Mr. Aristides had the good sense to mix his guests well, without caring in the least who might meet whom. He might lose a few exceptionally strait-laced people that way, but not many, and hardly any worth keeping; and, for the rest, the more mixed the company, the more safe they are to enjoy them

selves in their hearts, whatever they may think it right to say when the time comes for talking things over. Lord Ovoca, for instance, would not have enjoyed himself very much in the society of his peers, nor many of them very much in his; while by bringing him together with half-a-dozen æsthetic republicans, seven people were equally pleased. Fine ladies were enabled to flatter themselves that they might be mistaken for foreign singers, while they in their turn made the haute noblesse of Bohemia feel charitable towards those poor creatures of whom no stories can be told. For the true Bohemian longs in his or her inmost soul for the Philistine plains far more truly and honestly than the adventurous Philistine for the imaginary charms of Bohemia. Whenever you hear Bohemia praised and glorified, be sure that the praiser has never been really and truly there—unless, indeed, he be a Philistine fox who has lost his tail.

It was good of Mr. Aristides to amuse and interest his titled and moneyed friends by giving his artistic clientèle a respectable holiday. It was easy to account for the presence of most of the company. The connection of Mr. Aristides with many kinds of speculation, and his patronage of almost every branch of art-save only that of the ballet, which was strictly in the department of Mr. Sinon-were amply sufficient reasons for an infinite number of individual cases. But, still, there were a few flies in amber even there-people whom nobody knew, who interested nobody, and perhaps could hardly themselves have given an account of how or why they were there.

There was, at any rate, one man who seemed to be in this position. He was near the door, looking about him as a mere stranger would, and without joining in the confused chatter, perpetually rising higher and higher in pitch, which on such an occasion reminds a cynical listener of nothing so much as his last visit to a collection of cockatoos and macaws. He was a tall man, made lean and strong, with a grave, straight-featured, sun-browned face, and a large brown beard. Nothing about him told of what he was, or in what part of the world he was born, except that he was certainly not a countryman of Mr. Aristides. He looked as much, or as little, like one of the artists there, or one of the stockbrokers, as like a soldier, which is giving a tolerably wide margin. Without looking particularly interested or at all amused, he seemed entirely and unaffectedly at his ease, and quite content to be talking to nobody. But in that house it was next to impossible for anybody who had ever known anybody in his life—even if he was a stranger to London-to get through a whole evening without being run across by somebody whom he had