striking songs; none of Claribel's sweet, tender prettinesses, but pulsethrilling ballads called "Clear and Cool," and "The Irish King's Ride." As I sat and listened to and looked at her, I did not at all regret the accident which had caused me to give up my day's shooting. For once I felt amply compensated for having missed a capital preserve and a perfect brace of pointers. "Better he loved each golden curl On the brow of that fair Hibernian

girl,"

she sang, repeating two lines of the last-named song as she rose from the piano. 66 Ay di me, the Irish king wouldn't have cut his Rose of the Isles short in order to enrich a Driver and a Coxe, after telling her at the altar that with all his worldly goods he her endowed,' would he, Mr. Dysart?"

I replied that I really couldn't undertake to say how the monarch in question would have conducted himself under the circumstances. And then Mrs. Wallrond staggered me by asking,

"But, judging by yourself, how would you act?"

"I should do whatever you wished me," I said hurriedly and unguardedly, and I saw that Mrs. Wallrond was making the natural and feminine mistake of attributing my transient admiration to a deeper feeling. She blushed brightly through her pomegranate - hued, charmingly

rounded cheeks, and then changed the conversation abruptly.

"Do mark those men at dinner," she said laughingly; "see how the bagman crops up in all they do and say; they jerk their thumbs in the direction of what they want, and aid the butler in his endeavours to give them the wine they like best, by winking appreciatively at him; and Coxe drops his h's rather; I am inclined to believe an h never came near him to be dropped."

So she went on talking about

them, sometimes speaking fiercely on the subject of their influence over her husband, sometimes contenting herself with piercing them with that sharp weapon her woman's tongue, which her woman's wit well whetted on this occasion.

The hours went by. I, Arundel Dysart, am free to confess, in spite of all that has happened since to make the confession a painful one, that they went by very pleasantly for me. She was one of a very different order to the "tongueless, mindless" women, whom she had described as constituting her present social feminine circle. She had read a good deal and thought a good deal, and mixed with various people. I began to feel that even without the beauty the dark-glowing, sparkling beauty which she did undoubtedly possess even without this she would have been a very charming woman. Perhaps my appreci ation of her was heightened by her appreciation of me. Perhaps it was pleasant to my self-love to be recog nised as one of her own order of thought on such things, as this lovely woman did recognise me when she was laughing at the inferiority of other men. Whatever it was, it caused me to have a delightful day alone with Mrs. Wallrond.

My host came home about six, and grew earnest with his butler about his wine directly. Whatever the occasion of this dinner, he evidently deemed it an important one. He spoke to Mrs. Wallrond, still lounging by the fire in her walkingdress. My dear Kate," he said, "are you aware that time is slipping away ?"

66

"We dine at eight-I don't take two hours to dress," she said curtly. However, she got up and left the room, and I saw her no more till I went into the drawing-room just as dinner was announced.

Mrs. Wallrond really looked magnificent enough to be justified in any

number of great expectations which she might have formed, however unreasonable these might appear to people who are not won by beauty. She carried out the "one-coloured" artistic idea charmingly in her toilette. She had pearls about her neck and arms-royal-looking pearls they were too and a double string of them hooked up some lace which was arranged as scarf and tunic all in one, over her inimitable shoulders and train. All the colour and relief that was given to the silver shade of her costume was given by her flashing eyes and rich darkbrown hair, and the clear, glorious crimson that kept mantling up into her face. Old Mr. Wallrond was very proud of his superb wife that night-proud of her beauty, and of the way he enabled her to set off that beauty. And well he might have been, for she put out all the other women, and made them look the pale, uninteresting creatures they were, even in the eyes of their own men. She gave me one glance as I entered, and then her gaze went like lightning round the room, as if she was bidding me observe that this was what she had to endure in the present, and these were the men for whom she was to be shorn in the future. I read her glance aright; following it, my own lighted on Mr. Driver and Mr. Coxe.

The former was a plump, liquideyed, amiable-looking man, with a florid face and a turn-up nose and fat hands. He wore a great deal of waistcoat and embroidered shirtfront, and seemed to feel depressed and motiveless. The other was a little thin-faced fellow, with straggling hair and whiskers of the same gingery hue. The young ladies to whom they were respectively to be allied were seated near them, giggling a good deal whenever they looked at each other, and endeavouring to convey disparagement of Mrs. Wallrond in their inexpressive

looks towards their future husbands. There were additionally four or five married couples, men and women so much alike that nothing of them need be traced here, and a small bevy of young men who had strengthened themselves for this part of the ordeal by coming primed with the latest telegrams.

I made my way to my hostess at once, and she inclined her head towards me and murmured

"Mr. Dysart, you are to take me in," and though I regarded this as my right only, I being of a higher order than these men of money, still there was something in her cool way of putting me, the younger man, to the fore, that made me flush. Could it be that I was falling in love with my beautiful antipathy, and she with me? I hoped not, and felt guilty.

We went into dinner, and good as it was, I need not dwell upon it long here. The viands were admirable, the attendance perfect, the wine worth speaking about (and a great deal was spoken about it), and the women were speechless. Mrs. Wallrond did not put her imperiallybeautiful self out in the endeavour to entertain them. She kept on leading me to look at the many solecisms which were perpetrated by Mr. Driver and Mr. Coxe. This she did intentionally; what she did unintentionally was to lead me to look at the anxiety she could not conceal when the wine went round freely, and Mr. Wallrond drank freely of it. I remembered what she had said about his life being valuable to her, and I gathered from her anxiety that wine was not good for him.

By and by it transpired, I don't know how exactly, that this was a celebration dinner. It was in honour of the recently-ratified engagement, and the speedily-approaching marriage, of Mr. Coxe with one of the undesirable young ladies at the table. Mr. Wallrond spoke of the event with emotion. The gist

of his observations was to the effect that he should make it his care that his young friends should not in their early married days have to struggle to make two ends meet in the same exhausting way in which the first Mrs. Wallrond and himself had been compelled to struggle. This was the marrow and fatness of a vast amount of effusive and enthusiastic talk. Mr. Coxe tried to look as if he only expected a small legacy; and only succeeded in making every gingercoloured hair on his head and face express his firm belief in having a large fortune. And Mr. Driver tried not to look sulky at there being no public demonstration in his honour this day, and failed in his attempt as signally as did his junior partner.

In time Mrs. Wallrond swept the ladies away before her. In time the sitting over the wine, and the even drearier time in the drawing-room, came to an end. Mrs. Wallrond would not sing. "It's not my vocation to sing and amuse people I don't like," she said when I asked her; "let them do it; they'll murder something, and then ask each other if they don't remember that Patti sang that when she was here last, or Titiens sang it the time before. O dear! delightful evening, isn't it?"

I could not say that it was, and I was honestly glad when it ended. I went to bed tired out with the dinner and the guests, and the pain in my hand, which was beginning to develop signs of inflammation. My fatigue soon sent me to sleep, and I fell into confused dreams, from which I constantly started broad awake and frightened. I accounted for these satisfactorily in my own mind by telling myself that I had lately been reading a most perplexing number of a recent "sensation" novel. But though the cause was obvious enough, the effect was annoying. This feverish restlessness

caused by my hand would react savagely upon my hand, and prevent my going out shooting the following day, when old Wallrond, or someone else, had arranged a capital battue-party to meet on the shivering sands. Here I lost the thread utterly, and must have fallen asleep.

For how long I do not know. I was roused up by an ejaculation of terror, and by the bursting open of my door. My lamp was burning dimly; still, by its light I made out the outline of the intruder, and recognised Mrs. Wallrond.

แ

"Get up at once!" she shouted, my husband is dying. I've roused the house. Come quickly."

I followed her without delay as she turned and fled through the corridor and the serried ranks of frightened servants to her own bedroom. We went in. Mr. Wallrond, supported by the old butler, was on the bed.

"Send for doctors," I said, as I walked up and put my hand on his heart. Then I knew that the doctors would be of no avail, let them come when they would. Mr. Wallrond was dead.

Her grief was supreme. It was not only the loss of a husband who had been generous and kind to her that she mourned, but it was the loss of the wealth and luxury she loved which nearly distracted her. Mr. Wallrond had died in a fit snddenly a fit that had been brought on by over-excitement, they said; but one of the medical men told me privately, that "it was the portwine did it."

I saw her the next day, and perceived that she was burnt up with fever and anxiety.

"He made a will some time ago," she began; "and his own lawyer saw that it was properly witnessed. He would draw it up himself. How has he left things, I wonder? O, I wish I knew! O, I wish I had

She was not a woman to be consoled by condolences or by æsthetic talk. Knowing this, I did not attempt either, but just suffered her to rage herself tired, which she shortly did. I left her sobbing bitterly amongst the sofa-cushions, declaring that "life wouldn't be worth having if he had done as he often said he would, namely, not put temptation in a woman's path by leaving too much wealth in her power."

I did not see her again for a few days. When we met, I was enchanted to find how much better and calmer she appeared. "I have spent several hours daily in the room by my husband's dead body, Mr. Dysart," she said solemnly; "and I believe I'm a better and a happier woman for having done so." But even as she avowed herself to be a better and a happier woman, she shuddered and turned paler than I had thought it possible the brilliantfaced Mrs. Wallrond could ever look.

I gathered from other sources that she had had her fancies, poor bereft creature," about the coffin. She had insisted on having a large plate-glass cross let into the top of it; and she declared that it should not be fastened down until a few minutes before it was taken out of the house. "They all think me mad about it, I believe," she said to me when the day came and the funeral guests. "But I must be in that room alone for a little time, Mr. Dysart, and then I shall stay there while they fasten him out of my sight for ever; see, I have made this cross to lay on his breast under the glass." As Mrs. Wallrond spoke, she called my attention to a very exquisitely-made cross of dark purple, crimson, and white flowers, which she had executed

herself. "After all, she did love him," I thought, as she disappeared within the chamber of death.

I went into the room where those who were to attend the funeral were assembled. Mr. Driver and Mr. Coxe were there, trying to look humble and unhappy, and failing wholly. "We are a little behind time," Mr. Coxe said to me as I approached them, "a little behind time already," he repeated impatiently; and I snubbed him by my manner as I answered:

"The widow must not be disturbed; she is mistress here, you must remember."

Presently the undertaker's men were summoned, and they went in, and put on and fastened down the coffin-lid, and then put it into an outer and stronger coffin, and soldered that down securely, she standing by and seeing it all done; "the brave creature" I called her then. Then she came out, and I met her and conducted her to her own sittingroom. The colour had come back to her face, and the light was living in her eyes again.

"O Mr. Dysart," she said, as she sat down, "it was hard to do it, but I am so glad that I conquered my feelings and stayed there with him to the last. I feel strong enough to bear whatever there is for me to hear when the will is read. If I am left a pauper, I am resigned."

When the funeral was over, we all came back to hear the will read; and as soon as we were assembled, Mr. Clay, the lawyer, who evidently thought he had an unpleasant task before him, asked if someone would • summon the widow. I went and fetched her. She came in leaning on my arm, and I was glad. to see, in proof of her spirit being chastened, that she did not glare at Messrs. Driver and Coxe. She sat down while Mr. Clay explained "that after the sudden death-the awfully-sudden death of his friend

and client, he, Mr. Clay, had searched for the will unsuccessfully for three days. At the end of that time he had found it in a drawer in deceased's bedroom, and had recognised it as the same one he had seen executed (not drawn up) some short time since. At least, he had recognised its exterior aspect. Of its contents he was as ignorant as everyone else present." Here Mr. Driver and Mr. Coxe looked more humble and unhappy than ever; but I was delighted to see that she had sufficient self-command and self-respect not to notice them. Amidst the most profound silence Mr. Clay opened the will. Amidst the rustle of a faint movement and faint mutterings among us, he dropped it, picked it up again, and tried to read it. Only Mrs. Wallrond watched him with steady eyes.

"Tell him I am not afraid to hear the worst," she said to me; and then Mr. Clay stammered out in concise, but perfectly legal phraseology, the fact that Mr. Wallrond had devised everything he possessed in the world to his beloved wife Catherine unconditionally. It was very differently expected by Messrs. Driver and Coxe, and Mr. Clay. The disappointed men gazed at the attesting signatures, and could not dispute the validity of the will. I was heartily glad when at length the house was cleared of them all, and I was left alone with the lady.

She was so grandly glad that it had all "turned out so," as she phrased it; "it was a reward," she said, "for the way she had devoted herself to her husband, even after he was dead and unconscious of such devotion." And I believed her; and condemned myself for that lack of faith in her which had made me

distrust the wisdom of the step my old friend had taken in marrying her.

I soon did more than believe her and condemn myself. I loved her; and vainly tried absence, change of scene and society, and other certain cures which short-sighted mortals who hadn't seen her suggested to me. Finally, about seven months after the events recorded, I went back to Wallrond Court, determined to win my widow without delay. I saw at once that she knew what had brought me the clever creatureand that she was glad of the cause. A good deal of the brightness of her beauty and spirits was gone, and it seemed to me that she was still unreasonably restless and unhappy.

"And do you know what they say, and what we all believe is the cause?" Coxe, that evil genius of hers, whispered to me the night before the day I intended taking the plunge. "We can't prove it, of course -the coffin can't be opened on mere suspicion, especially as the will proved bears what we can't swear aren't genuine signatures—"

"Get on, man," I hastily interrupted, "what do they say' and you hint ?"

'Why, that she wasn't in that room so many hours for nothing, and that the real will lies buried in our old friend's coffin, unless she took the more obvious course and burnt it," he said, straightening himself and looking at me.

I did not marry her, for I could not help recalling sundry ghastly evidences of guilt. She was not surprised when I bade her farewell after Coxe's conversation; and we parted and shall never meet again. But judgment, and power to cause this mystery to be cleared, are sorely needed.