the east wind than for the vagaries, and violence, and suspicion of some people: it is in their nature, and there's an end of it. Nevertheless, if I suffered, I could pity my Torment (her name was Mercy), because of what lay at the root of both her wretchedness and mine.

She had lost her boy, whom she idolized. He was a good clever lad, and his mother's dream had long been to see him grow up to be a great English gentleman : thinking that his handsome looks, and his cleverness, and her money, would make a judge or a bishop of him in no time. Her money, I say (and she loved it next to her child), for this was the bargain between us on our marriage—she bringing about twenty-five thousand pounds to my four and a half. As long as her son lived, she was to have absolute control, for his benefit, of all our income over six hundred a year; meantime, her consent was to be necessary in matters of investment and so forth; but if the boy died, then the whole property was to remain between us, and, at the death of one, to go intact to the survivor. And I daresay she never thought it possible the boy would die.

But he did. He died before he saw England, which he was mad to see. The country was hateful to his mother at once.

She was not young, and in seven days she was seven years older; the future she had counted on totally changed; her money was only so much mockery; there were no more children for her; and by-and-by she fell to hating me, because she had got it into her head that one of these days I should marry again, and another boy succeed to her property, and the wonderful fortune it was to lave brought to her son ! This was the secret. She kept the bitter idea to herself as long as she could, I believe; but it came out at last.

One day she asked me whether I had any objection to her dyeing her hair, which had got rather grey.

“Not at all!” said I. “ In fact, I wish you would."

“Do you ?" cried she, turning round upon me in what I may venture to call a cat-hurricane-(it was then I first suspected she took drams) “Do you? Don't tell lies! You know you delight in seeing me grow old! You watch for every grey hair that comes, and grin to yourself, because you think your time's near ! I saw you laughing at me while I dressed, this morning, in the glass !"

“ It was only because you had that funny little pigtail sticking out behind," says I.

“ That was your excuse for grinning, I know !" she screamed. you think it deceived me? But I see through your castle-building! You know I shall soon be dead, and then you'll have a fine new miss for a wife, and a son who'll take the inheritance of the angel I murdered, bringing him to this odious country after you ! But do not think it shall happen! I'll live for ever! I'll come from my grave to strangle the brat!"

I told her I believed ghosts could do no such thing as strangle anybody; and went away staggered at the violence of an infatuation I did not

Do

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understand. But the idea once got into my wife's head, it took deep hold of her, showing itself in a hundred vexing ways: as I have said, it was at the bottom of all our wretchedness. It led to that jealousy without love which is the most monstrous of all passions, I should say; and here you see how the habit of keeping a foul temper alive with drams began. These two things made my misery; and quarrels bred quarrels, and hate bred hate, till what was the cause of it or the beginning of it was all the same to me.

But there it was : and now I think I have shown why I could not acknowledge Margaret as mine by adoption—though at first the very fact of the boy dying gave me a notion that that might easily be arranged. I

I said to myself, “ Here, again, we see the finger of Providence ! I find my poor little maid just as the boy dies” (strange to say, the two things happened on the same morning !) “ and by-and-by she can take his place. I'll wait a little while till Mercy's grief subsides, and then mention I've a daughter for her!" I even thought that my finding Margaret, in bad hands, on the very day that Mercy's son went to a better world, would be a recommendation ! This comes of knowing nothing about women!

And one day, when my wife was in a good humour, I broached the subject. I said, simply, that I had once seen running wild, near one of the hamlets of the New Forest, a very lovely little girl, and how sorry I had been that she was doomed to a peasant's life; that in our childless condition—and so forth. Mercy asked me how long since was that. I told her less than a year; and went on more boldly. “ Think," says I, “ of a child like I'describe " (and I did describe her)—" delicate, full of pretty sense, handsome as any lady, growing up to weed onions and feed pigs ! while here" "And think," says she, dashing down her needlework and walking out of the room, “ of your daring to insult me in this shameful manner !” “I spoke too soon,” I thought to myself. But then came the explosion above mentioned, which settled the question altogether; and I have doubted since whether it was not that hint of mine about Margaret (of course I did it clumsily) which started my wife's bugbear into existence. Certain it is the hint was never forgotten ; and it led, at last, to what we shall see.

I can't write like Margaret; I am not so interesting as her narrative, of course; but it is only fair to myself to explain. This long note shows wbat my part in Margaret's history was to this date; and why I kept my charge secret (which has been misconstrued—cruelly); moreover, it will explain much that is to come. And now we'll carry on from the point we broke off at.

It was six months since I had seen Margaret, and these six months had been particularly anxious ones. She could not remain at school very much longer, and I was puzzled what to do with her—what to propose for her future. And then the conviction came in that I should probably soon lose her altogether; and though it is true we met seldom,

still I knew she was grateful and good; I was proud of her; and my only pleasure was the pretty little letter she used to send me now and then. Now the prospect of losing her—by which I mean of her forming close ties with strangers before she had learned to look on me as anybody but a person who had kindly paid for her education—I did not at all like. I thought how different it might have been with our home if my idea had been carried out, if Margaret could have been to us like a daughter from the beginning ; and how she would sweeten the house now when she was coming into womanhood, if it was only for a year or two before she planted herself in a home of her own.

At this juncture Madame Lamont's letter arrived--a made-up sort of letter, with a good deal about the sea breeze and recruited health which was never meant to mean anything, and a sentence about the unexpected arrival of her son, put in a way that meant a good deal. “My son," said she," has lately left the army. Would it be agreeable to you to spend a day with us here, so as to see, on the spot, how bravely your ward has improved during her holiday ?” I felt sure it would not be agreeable, but determined to go all the more for that.

What son was this? I had heard of no son before-still less of a son“ in the army." How long had he been at Brighton ? And was he permitted to spend his days lounging, reading, sailing, chattering with my dear little girl ? These questions vexed me till I was downright angry. What I imagined was a fine foolish young fellow, with dainty manners, and overflowing with small talk, who was probably amusing himself by " laying siege” to Margaret's heart, as their slang is; and “Confound him!” I cried out amidst the rattle of the railway train that carried me too slowly to Brighton, “I know he can't have sixpence to spare for pomatum unless he is richer than his mother ! ”

Another confession: it was the thought of this gentleman and his " attentions " which made me go and buy that bouquet! It was a little ridiculous, I know; but I could not bear the notion of being disrated in my dear's estimation by the airs of a gentleman in the army, all in a single week.

I bought the bouquet-sheepishly ; and then I dined before walking out to Madame Lamont's lodgings. But I hadn't to go beyond the door of the hotel to see Margaret. While I stood there, she passed in earnest conversation with Lamont. Earnest !-I had never yet seen her look as she did then, listening. At a glance I detected the wonderful change in herself which she has described; what is more, I knew they were talking confidences !

This was worse than I expected. I followed them, with a perfectly new sickness of heart, such as I did not suppose myself capable of. I was not angry at them, but at my own ill fortune; disappointed, distempered, with savage flashes of thought about my miserable home, and (here's the confession—there's no harm in it I) conscious at last of how much my heart clung to my dear Margaret.

They went on: I followed. They stopped to bid each other good night : I passed them, and heard him say, “Margaret," and her, “ Arthur.” They parted like lovers too : so I tossed my nosegay into the road, and went back to the hotel.

A sudden idea struck me : a suspicion which certainly made me angry, though at the bottom of my heart I only wished it might prove true. Madame Lamont was poor. She was not ignorant of my affection for Margaret, or that I had a certain command of money: this, then, was a scheme to provide for madame's son, who was doubtless in difficulties and sold out of the army. Lamont was to gain Margaret's affections in time, marry her, and throw himself on my generosity !

Pleased with the suspicion—for you see it assumed that Lamont ought to be sent to the rightabout forthwith— I went into the Cotřee-room, and there was my man, with his half-bottle before him already. I sat at his table. I had my half-bottle too; wanting to hear him talk, that I might measure hiin. He did talk, greatly excited. Touch and go, glib and clever, on a dozen topics—I wondering how a man could reel off such speech as his without a thought for what he was talking about. For he was thinking of something else—that I could see from first to last. And so was I. And there we two men sathe in a fever which made him speak, I in the dumps which made me all but dumb, and nearly the same thoughts simmering in our minds all the while. The end of it was, I learned that Lamont was no schemer, and that he was going to leave Brighton next morning very early. He said something about a commission he had to sulfil in England, and then he meant to leave the country for ever. That satisfied me. I rose from the table happier-happier in the half-stupefied way a man feels who is picked up at sea after drifting about alone for a day or two.

The rest Margaret has written. She has shown, for me, that my satisfaction did not last long; though I made the most of it-lying awake a long hour, my cogitations undisturbed by footsteps which paced up and down, up and down, in the room above my head. A light footstep-a woman's. But (to say no more of that just now) Margaret did not quite know how startled I was to meet her abroad so early next morning. I had no doubt she had appointed a meeting with Lamont-(which looked desperately clandestine)—and for aught I could tell, meant to run away with him! This was an error I first discovered by her very innocence. Next, that confounded flower! I did not at all like its coming back to me; but when, five minutes after flinging it over the cliff, I found it grasped in Lamont's hand, I seriously felt the superstition which only came on him like a fancy. To him it said “omen," as one reads it in poetry books; to me it was like the tolling of the ship’s bell with no hand upon it. Willingly would I have got the flower out of his clutch, but the grasp was too strong for me; which was unpleasant too. I had to leave the blossom there; and then I had to leave Margaret with him; and when I came back the hand was open, the flower was gone, and since it was not to be

a

seen anywhere on the beach, I had to conclude that it had got into his bosom-or hers!

But if I could not get possession of that particular item in the luckless nosegay, I soon afterwards had all the rest. Yes! I may as well note it here that late in the evening a little parcel was left for me at the hotel ; and this little parcel contained the broken, battered bouquet just as Margaret says she found it. There was a note too: here it lies before me, scrawled in the wretchedest of writing, but not so badly put together, it will be observed :

" The gentleman who the young lady give the chamelier to this morning would probably like to have the rest of the charmin bookay whitch it was taken from, out of the guter. The lady who sends this wiches him joy."

Startling, this, for a plain man. To be sure, it might have been nothing but the impudence of some early-rising maid-servant, who had seen too much, and liked what they call a bit of fun. But, somehow, I was not satisfied with that idea, for other ideas came in which made me hot to contemplate. Once more I wished I had never seen my dear little girl, though when I thought of what might have become of her if I hadn't, my mind changed. Still, would it not be well if she did get a sweetheart, and marry out of hand ?—somebody who was worthy of her, though not a man like Lamont, with whom she would certainly live in poverty to the end of her days. Meantime, who had sent that note? Who had been watching ? The questions were not easy to answer, and from that moment I felt more like a thief than ever.

Well, the hand of my Torment was in it, though the actual writer of the note was Mrs. Forster—Margaret's mother. Margaret herself might have told us that, when she wrote about the “two women loitering ;" though of course she knew no more who they were at the time than I knew my Torment had followed me to this hotel ; that it was she whom I heard tramping overhead; and that here she had fallen in with Mrs. Forster (her husband dead) who was now chambermaid in the place ! This woman kept herself out of my way, but when Mrs. Denzil cane and asked a thousand questions about a certain gentleman, behold what happens ! But I am afraid I am aliead of the story.-J. D.]

CHAPTER XII.

THE LITTLE BLACK Book.

A Hair awaited Mr. Lamont near the beach ; there were few idlers abroad at that hour, and he was drawn to the hotel with little observation. We followed, anxious to learn precisely what had happened to