"Yes, because it is tragic and picturesque," said Miss Morrison gently. "Something in that case grips you at the heartstrings. But if I asked you to go

and see an ugly, dirty old woman who has to work to keep a bedridden husband, and is attacked with ulcers herself, on both legs? Ah"-with a swift smile—“ I am asking you to become like Francis of Assisi all at once, am I not? And it is very ungrateful of me. Please don't misunderstand. I shall be most thankful for help in clothing the twins, but I have to make a small petition to you, out of the depths of a long experience. Don't go and buy them sumptuous and beautiful clothes, and make a heroine and martyr out of their faulty young mother. It is bad for the village."

"But many of them do things that are just as wrong, even more wrong than she has done, without being found out!" cried Vernon indignantly.

"Yes, very likely. But how many sins will you find that do as much harm to others as this one? Olive has been her mother's darling all her life. She might have married a good fellow of her own class. She had an excellent place; and she comes home disgraced, and the scorn of the village where the Fletchers have always been respected. I think her mother did right to take her in and help her through her trouble. But don't let us make a special pet of her. I know of at least two young girls in the village in as hard a plight as hers-one whose husband was tragically killed, before they had been six months married, and the other who has four little ones, is expecting a fifth, and is found to have cataract on both eyes."

"Oh!” cried Vernon, in an agony of sympathy. "If you are, as I guess, well off and rather lonely, and if you would help me a little," said her new friend, "I would say to you-help with the babies. But don't single out the pitiful Fletcher twins for special distinction. I assure you that there are some very attractive wee things besides them."

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Help with the babies!"

seductive ring for Vernon.

The words had a most

"I will! I will! I

If you will will be quite I feel sure

should love to help you. I think I am going to like you," she said, "and I have no friend. teach me what to do for these folks, I obedient, and try not to be headlong! that my aunt will not object; she was speaking to me of the Wishfield Mission at lunch to-day, very kindly."

"Perhaps you would come to tea with me tomorrow, and let us talk things over," suggested Evelyn.

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"I want to go to Yeominster to-morrow, and buy things for the twins.'

"It might be better to do that after we have held our consultation.”

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Why yes, perhaps but I would not like to disappoint

You have left

"I'll explain to the Fletchers. them, if I may say so, more money than is quite prudent. The exact amount will be all over the village to-morrow, and I shall be told right and left that one's daughter has only to go wrong for all the ladies to lavish money and sympathy upon her! Believe me, the right bestowal of alms is a difficult business."

(page 122 miring

There was something so winning in the archness with which this was said, that Vernon could not resent it.

"I expect you have your beautiful horse here," said Evelyn. "I will fetch my bicycle, and if I may, I will show you where I live."

Vernon was very willing, and when she had retrieved the Sultana from her shed, she rode off, following Evelyn's bicycle, down a lane, past a farm or two, until there appeared a quaint, three-cornered green, with an old inn, and a few red cottages scattered round it. One of the cottages had a garden full of exquisite flowers-peony bushes, clumps of daffodils, wallflowers of incredibly glowing red, and budding tulips and purple daphnes and pink ribes. On one side of the tiny house, along the terrace walk, was a stable, in which there was room for Sultana and the bicycle too, as Evelyn proceeded to show. Then she led her visitor into what she called her summer parlor.

It was low and oak-beamed, with casement windows and the staircase running up at one corner. It was very comfortable, and furnished with taste and simplicity, most of the things in it being old.

"I have an inner den, for the really cold weather, or for escape to do special work," said Evelyn; "but this is where I live."

“Well, nominally alone," said Miss Morrison, with a quaint smile. "But I used to live in London once, and I find that most of my friends like to come down here for a rest. I do happen to be by myself just now, but in summer time that does not happen often."

"Some one was speaking of her the other day," she said, "I cannot remember who it was somebody lunching at Lady Bunbury's, I think. They were saying how beautiful she was, and that there was a tragic love-story connected with her, but I do not think I heard any details."

"She looks as if she might be the heroine of a tragic love-story," said Vernon. "Oh dear, I think most love

stories are tragic!"

This was said with so deep a sigh that Aunt Emma looked keenly at the vivid, changeful face.

"I do hope and pray that yours is in the future, my dear, and not in the past," she gravely remarked.

Vernon colored up in a way for which her aunt had not been prepared. "I suppose," she said hurriedly, scraping the remains of her dinner-roll into a little pile beside her plate, "that many girls have fancies, don't they? Little ballons d'essai, before they send up the big one?"

"Certainly," said Mrs. Bardsley. "The trouble is lest we should think the first time our senses are moved, that our destiny is fixed."

"What is it the Germans call it?" said Vernon dreamily. "The Probepfeil-that's it! The trialarrow!—The difficulty seems to be lest the other person should really be shot by the Probepfeil, so that what is just practice for one might be grim earnest for the other."

"Our modern fashion of allowing young people complete liberty to fix up their own affairs, opens the door to many such complications," replied the elder woman. They are risks which one has to take. But it is better to make a man unhappy for a few weeks or

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months, than to make him unhappy for the rest of his life, which is what you would very likely do if you married him when the main part of you was still untouched."

"I expect that is true," said Vernon: and when dinner was over, she went upstairs to the cosey sittingroom which her aunt had given her, and to which Jem had helped to carry the piano. There, upon the mantelpiece, stood the silver frame containing the photo of Lionel.

His soft, kind brown eyes looked wistfully at her. Did he know how fast she was forgetting him? Or rather, how fast she was escaping from his hold?

Life was still so new to Vernon, she was so inexperienced, that she did not know her own heart at all. She accused herself of being fickle when she was in fact merely becoming conscious of herself. She felt that she now wanted things that Lionel could not give her. But she did not know that she felt so. All she knew was that she was ashamed of being changeable, that her tender heart reproached her as Lionel's eyes seemed to do, with lack of love for her happy childhood and the good-hearted fellow who had done so much to make it happy.

Her eyes filled with tears though she jeered at herself, too, as she recalled her ridiculous behavior when, out on the moor alone with the Sultana, she had waded in the Magic Pool, and trusted herself to the spirits of the Waste and Weald. They had led her to Evelynand to the Mission of the Resurrection. And by so doing had woven about her a chain of a new kind. For in the chapel she had awakened to a new life; a life in which Lionel, so far as she knew, had no part.