'Everything is changed, you know, by your illness. I need not make up my mind to anything.'

'Make up your mind, dear, and keep to it. I am too sleepy and tired to talk any more, but I'm not afraid now. I shall not be here when he comes; my mind is at rest; no harm can come to you now, and there's a happy life before you. May God and man be as good to you as you have been to me! I am glad that I shall have a grave after all.' Almost with the last words Mrs. Wynn fell into a doze. Mavis continued for some time to kneel by her side, lost in thought. At length the sleeper awoke with a deep sigh and made an attempt to turn towards the wall. Mavis aided her, arranging the pillows and coverlet afresh, and giving her some water which she drank with ease, holding the glass herself. Then Mavis took her seat in a wicker chair for her long watch, to be relieved by the nurse at five in the morning.

The stillness deepened, and as it grew the watchfulness of Mavis increased. There was nothing to be done; the patient was tranquil, free from suffering to all appearance; time and circumstance combined to make the solemn time one of reflection and memory. Of all the thoughts that oppressed Mavis in those hours, the saddest one was the impossibility of feeling regret. The woman dying in the middle term of life, who loved her and whom she loved, was so absolutely tired of existence, that Mavis could not be sorry for her. There was natural awe, a natural shrinking from the sight of death, the fear that when the deliverer came there might be a struggle; but there was no regret. Mavis felt what she had said to herself about her own young mother: 'David Wynn's wife could only be glad to die.'

There was a letter to Jack, half written, in a table drawer near at hand, and finding the night so quiet, the patient continuing to sleep, Mavis, carefully shading the light, added a sheet to the record of her life which she had been keeping from day to day. An occasional murmur and twitch of the limbs broke the quiet of the patient, but more and more rarely; and at each Mavis would closely observe her and soothe her with a word and a touch. The dawn was breaking when, after a long interval during which there was perfect quiet, she put away her writing and extinguished the candle. Mrs. Wynn was always anxious to have the daylight let into her room as early as possible, so Mavis drew up the window blinds, and looked out with a shiver at the new day. It was coming up, golden, and red, and glorious, over the commonplace scene; the silent houses in the steep, grey, middle-class street had a roseate glow upon them, and there was a twittering of unseen birds in the air.

Presently she went round to the side of the bed near the wall, and looked intently at the sleeper. Surely there was a change in the worn and sunken face! The familiar look of exhaustion was no longer there; an indescribable aspect of peace and restored youth had replaced it. The half-closed eyelids and the slightlyinclined brow were smooth; the thin white cheek rested easily upon one hand. Mavis bent hastily and touched the other; it was chilly and made no answering pressure. In an instant she had flown across the passage and called Jane and the nurse.

'She's gone off very quiet, poor dear,' said the latter; and what a good thing that is, for it isn't often so, I do assure you.'

It was over. Over, the life of obscure martyrdom, with no crown, no palm branch, and no chance of enrolment in the ranks of any glorious army. Over, the reign and rule of the tyrant whom there was none to punish and few to condemn. Over, the mean misery that has its counterpart in the lives of many women.

CHAPTER XIII.

A CRISIS.

FARMER WYNN was perfectly free from sentimental regrets on taking leave of Fieldflower Farm. He had made a tolerably good thing of it; he intended to make a much better thing of the years that lay before him. As for any one part of the world having a superior claim over any other on the consideration of a sensible. man, except upon the plea that there was more money to be made in it, he would with equal sincerity have scouted such an idea and despised the promulgator of it. His personal preparations were made. The round car was to perform its last journey in his service on the day after that on which this story returns to Fieldflower Farm. The beady eyes of Reuben were rounder, blacker, and brighter than ever with the double satisfaction of getting rid for good of his old master, and being himself retained on the establishment under the new one. Everything was going exactly as David Wynn desired. He had heard nothing of the women; but that did not trouble him; he was sure of their obedience to his orders; they would be all right.

The old house and its surroundings had probably never looked more picturesque and peaceful than on the last day its former owner was to pass under its roof. The sunshine, the scents, the sounds of the May-time all made the scene beautiful.

There was an unusual stir about the place; a coming and going of workmen; and Mr. Reckitts-presently to be known as Farmer

Reckitts-was out with his late entertainer, now his guest, for the greater part of the afternoon, superintending certain proceedings which would have astonished Mavis not a little. A large covered van drawn by two sturdy horses had twice made its appearance at the Farm during the day, and its contents, consisting of household furniture, had been conveyed from the Farm side to the Dame's Parlour side. For several days previously the ancient rooms had been in the hands of cleaners, and fires had been burning on the hearths.

What besides a new master was coming to the old house? The movement was external as well as internal. The green sward on the Dame's Parlour side, with its islands of flower bed stretching down to the river, and its narrow gravel path, bordered by sweet herbs backed with rich iris plants, and marked here and there by strange foreign shells and honeycombed stones from far-off seacoasts, was also in the hands of strangers. Two gardeners and a weeding woman were at work at different points of the venerable expanse that replaced the ancient moat, and in a shady corner was a trim cart drawn by a prosperous donkey, no other than the Squire's own Jacob.

What did all these things portend? Only a further development of the era of change that had set in at peaceful Bassett. The Squire, forced by circumstances to leave his ancestral home, had decided against separating himself from all his old friends and associations also, as a man of less proud simplicity of character might have done. He would stay in the place where he could still see the soulless things he had loved so well, and the humble people among whom his later life had been passed, and to which his son might one day return, to fill the position that he himself had imperilled and lost. The project formed by Wynn, and imparted by him to Mr. Bassett on the morrow of Mr. Dexter's mission of evil tidings, adapted itself admirably to the Squire's plan. This latter had been formed in his mind before Jack's departure, but he had not given his son a hint of it. The Squire's new tenant at the Fieldflower Farm was a single man, whose small household might be as separate from that of his landlord, resident on the premises, as the Dame's Parlour side from the Farm side. The strange, solemn, sunny old rooms, with their traditional memories of his own family, had always had an attraction for the Squire.

The bargain, which was an advantageous one for Reckitts, was readily made, and the approaching departure of Farmer Wynn was a signal of preparation for the installation of Squire Bassett and Miss Nestle.

How often had the thoughts of Mavis turned to those deserted

rooms, and her memory faithfully rehearsed the scenes that they had witnessed! How often had her fancy retrodden the river-side path, and renewed her vain promise to her lover that every day she would there recall to mind that she was his, while the river ran and the wind blew. She had thought of the rooms in solitude, dismantled, shut up, neglected, and of the river-side path trodden by strangers; but of the thing that was going to happen she had not the most distant idea, while, tossed on a sea of conflicting emotion, with her head and heart full of the past, she awaited, by the side of the dead woman-who looked so unspeakably peaceful-the dreaded coming of her father.

Magnetic messages (the word telegram was of later use) were rare in country parts in 1854, and when one arrived at Fieldflower Farm for Wynn, he swore at the bearer and the expense before he opened the despatch. For a moment he did not seize the sense of the laconic contents: My sister died this morning.' Whose sister? What was this to him? He twisted the large flimsy sheet impatiently in his hands, but the uncertainty was over almost with the thought. It was Jane Price's sister, his sickly, tiresome, cowardly wife, who was dead. He was alone when the message was brought to him by Reuben, and though the boy was bursting with curiosity, and ardent hope that, like most intelligence which costs money to send, the news was bad, he did not dare to linger or watch his former master. With a black frown, but no other sign of emotion, Wynn turned away from the house and took the path towards the weir.

The same black frown was on David Wynn's face when on the following day he entered the room in which his daughter and Jane Price were sitting side by side on the hard little sofa, with the blinds drawn down. Mavis stood up, trembling, but Jane Price kept her seat and also her unmoved countenance. She did not care (to use her professional phrase) 'a button' for Farmer Wynn, and she meant to let him see that. It might do him good, she argued, charitably, even so late in the day as it was now, to be brought in contact with one woman whom he could not bully. 'Father!'

Mavis had advanced to him, but he put her aside, strode up to the sofa, and said insolently-

You are Jane Price, I suppose? Is this your message? Is it true?'

It is my message, and it is quite true that my sister, your unfortunate wife, is dead. If you want to know anything more from me, you will have to keep a civil tongue in your head, and to mend your manners.'

As Wynn glared at her, in mingled rage and amazement, Jane Price calmly went on with the running together of two lengths of black crape; her face was serious, as befitted the circumstances, but bore no signs of acute grief. The sincerity of the woman was as marked as her self-possession. Mavis, ghastly with fatigue and agitation, shrank into a corner by the chimneypiece, and hid her face in her hands.

'What did she die of? Why was I not told she was ill ?'

The doctor who attended her will tell you in Latin what she died of,' answered Jane Price sternly, and looking him straight in the face, but I will tell you in English. She died of your illtreatment of her, of fear, of misery, of the life you had led her, and what you threatened her with. You were not told because she earnestly begged that we would not tell you, and because I was determined she should die in peace, out of sight and hearing of you. She has died in peace, and my concern in the matter is ended.'

'Who is this doctor?' demanded Wynn, with an oath; 'he shall answer for this. As for you, you jade—

Father! father!' entreated Mavis, 'pray, pray don't say such things! Think of her lying there, so close to us, so white and quiet, and do not insult her in death.'

Her appeal did not touch Wynn's heart, but it shook his nerves. He had a dread of death, and the image of it, brought by the words of Mavis to his coarse material mind, in the person of the poor woman whom he had ill-treated and despised, was abhorrent to him.

'Come here,' he said, seizing Mavis roughly by her right arm, forcing her to stand before him, but sinking his voice almost to a whisper (as though the closed ears could catch its tones), while conscious of the cold contempt with which Jane marked that he did so, tell me, if you can, without any of your cursed rigmarole, how this has happened?'

Mavis, striving with her sobs, and quivering under the cruel grasp of his hand, was trying to answer him, when the door was noiselessly opened, and Dr. Chad entered the room. Jane rose instantly, and Wynn instinctively loosed his hold of Mavis.

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This is Doctor Chad,' said Jane; he will tell you anything you want to know, and you can make what arrangements you please. Come, Mavis.'

'One moment,' said Dr. Chad, following Jane to the door, 'you had better give me that key.'

She reluctantly placed the key of the adjoining room in his hand, and took Mavis away.

The interview between Wynn and Dr. Chad was a very brief