devotion to the bottle, he had been disgusted, had lacked the patience and resolution to work it up again, had thrown it up, had tried art, failed in that, and then had rushed away to the Californian goldfields, where he had indeed found some nuggets, and raked together some gold dust, but he had allowed himself to be robbed of his nuggets, and had let the gold dust run away between his fingers till nothing remained but fingers.

Then he returned to England in worse predicament than when he went out; for he went out a single man, but returned a widower with a son. Consequently he had to feed two mouths and clothe two backs instead of one.

Happily for him, his return to England coincided with the accession of his cousin Lambert to Curgenven. The cousins had been friends and playfellows as boys, and Lambert was determined to secure the presence in his neighbourhood of a man of his own kidney, who had knocked about the world, and was not starched and heavy like the country squires of the district, men who had hardly left their paternal acres, and cared for little beyond board and bench business. In the exuberance of his pleasure at seeing his cousin again, he undertook to provide him with an income of an hundred and fifty pounds per annum during his own life, on the sole condition that Percival should live within nine miles of him. Lambert had kept his word; he had not been very punctual in his quarterly payments, because he lacked the faculty of punctuality. If a month elapsed after quarter-day and no cheque had been received, Percival wrote and reminded him that he had been. forgotten, and in most cases Lambert expressed his penitence at the oversight by adding five or ten pounds to the sum due. On one occasion, with his customary carelessness, he sent the cheque twice over, and when Percival returned the second, Lambert refused to receive it back. He had made a mistake, he said, and must abide by the consequences. The only way in which he could teach himself business habits, he said, was by making himself suffer for his errors. On a hundred and fifty pounds, Mr. Percival was able to make both ends meet. He had not expensive tastes and his boy's education made no great hole in the 150l., for his boy was given next to none. On the evening on which our story opens this son, Justinian, was engaged in letting off a fire-balloon just as the dog-cart approached. He had summoned his father from the smoking-room to witness the exhibition. The balloon had been caught by the wind and swept over the garden wall, into

the highway, just as the dog-cart came up. The wind had turned the globe over, the silver paper had ignited, and the whole flaming mass had been carried against the head of Mr. Physic's cob. It was enough to have frightened a beast with cart-horse nerve; it would have sent a shiver down the back of even an earthworm.

The unconscious woman was taken into the house, and laid on the sofa in the diminutive parlour.

Mr. Percival with promptitude and skill examined her, and then said, turning his head to Physic, who had thrown himself into an easy chair to recover the effects of his fall and shaking, 'The collar-bone is broken, and there is a slight congestion of the brain.'

'Indeed!' said the agent, who was groping about his own limbs to discover if he were sound in every member. I suppose I'm all right-but I don't know.'

'Oh! you are not hurt. Where does she live? She must be taken home.'

'Live? Lord, how am I to know?'

'Who is she?'

Mr. Physic remained silent. To tell who she was would entail too long a story. He was not sure whether Mr. Percival had been taken into confidence by the squire relative to the first marriage.

'You know, Physic, I can't lodge her in the Pill-box. For one thing there isn't room; for another, 't wouldn't be proper. Where does she hang out?'

I'm blessed if I know!'

'And you don't know who she is? That's awkward.'

'I picked her up on the road. She was walking from Curgenven. I gave her a lift.'

'And that is all you know about her? By George! this is awkward. How can she be accommodated in the Pill-box? I'd do anything right and kind to a poor devil-a she one no less than a he-but I can't, I haven't the space in which to be kind. There ain't a spare bedroom in the box. I can't turn Justin out, and send him to sleep in the pig-sty, for there isn't a pig-sty to the place. I can't go out myself and let her have my room-not very easily; and as for that old beldame Bathsheba, she'd make such a to-do if I proposed that the poor creature should have her room, and that she should go elsewhere, that I wouldn't risk it. It's a confounded nuisance. We must find out something about her, and where she lives. You don't even know her name?'

Physic hesitated; then said, 'It wouldn't do, would it, to ask a lady who and what she was when you offered her a lift?' I've seen her somewhere

Is she a lady? Well, I suppose so. before, but, bless me-I don't know when.'

He took the lamp in his hand and went over to the prostrate woman on the couch, and let the light fall on her face.

do

At this moment she opened her eyes.

'Bless me!' exclaimed Percival, 'it's La Lamberta! Signora, you remember me?'

The lady, still dazed, and without the light of intelligence in her large dark eyes, dropped her feet from the sofa and sat upright. She tried to move her arm, and failed. This seemed to puzzle her.

6

'No, my dear,' said Mr. Percival, very sorry, but you cannot use that hand. I must strap you up; you have got broken bones, and must be put in such a condition that they shall splice themselves. You will have to keep that arm screwed to your bosom for some time to come. You've had a bad spill, Signorina, and the road was hard. But you are in good hands; I won't forget old times. Bless me! don't you remember me at Frisko, eh?'

The large dark eyes of the lady rested on the speaker with some inquiry in them, but not much. She was not sufficiently recovered from the jar of the fall to have her senses at command.

She, however, made no opposition to being treated by the skilful hands of Mr. Percival.

'Now look here, Physic, and you too, Justin. There is no surgery in this little house. There isn't room for one if I wanted it. One passage, one sitting-room, one dining-room, that serves also as smoking-room, as we give no dinner parties. That's all the accommodation we have on the first floor. So, as I have to attend to this lady, you make yourselves scarce. You, Physic, can pick up the chips of your dog-cart, they are worth saving, they will make excellent kindling for the fires at home, and Justinian shall run into the town and find out what has become of the horse. I shan't be long.'

'Why do you call her La Lamberta?' asked Physic inquisitively as he stood in the doorway.

'Because I knew her at Frisko as La Lamberta. Is not that good reason? Come, I'm not going to answer questions now, I must attend to my patient. Look sharp, or all the chips will be carried off to light other fires than your own.'

When the room was clear of the agent and Justin, Mr. Percival

Curgenven bound the lady's arm and strapped it to her so that she could not move it.

'Now tell me, where are you staying?'

'At the milliner's, Miss Treise's.'

'Then, as soon as you can walk I will escort you thither. If you cannot walk, I will run for a cab.'

She stood up, took a step or two forward, turned giddy, and was caught and led back to the sofa.

'No-you cannot manage it. What is more, you must remain here an hour or so till you have recovered the fall that has shaken you. Sit down; I will give you tea—I'll make it directly. Do you remember me?'

The dreamy eyes of the lady rested again upon him. Her lips parted, but she did not speak.

'Well,' said Mr. Percival, 'you see my memory is better than yours; or, perhaps, I may flatter myself with thinking that the spill has confused you, so that you do not remember me just at this present moment.'

Mr. Percival Curgenven rang the bell. An old woman with a grim face answered it.

'Bathsheba,' said he, tea, at once! This lady is faint and ill -thrown out of a carriage.'

The servant retired, muttering to herself.

Do you We were

'That's her way,' said Mr. Curgenven. 'She's a good old soul, nursed me when a baby, and takes advantage of this now to be crusty and rude. But she means no harm, she loves me as my soul, and Justinian a thousand times better than me. recollect the little Justinian ? What, not at Frisko? in the same little hotel. Down on my luck there, the poor wife ill, and how good and kind you were to her! Now do you recollect? You were La Lamberta then-what are you now?'

Her eyes were intently fixed on him; she was making an effort to collect her scattered senses and recall the past.

'Do you not remember?' he continued, 'you took my dear wife's place in the theatre at San Francisco when she was ill. You were staying in the same hotel with us. You laughed when you heard what was the name of my boy. I don't believe my wife ever properly recovered his birth, though he was born two years before her last illness. But she battled on, brave soul that she was, she would not give in, and I-I was an ass, and earned nothing. You were so kind when she was sick and worried and weak because

unable to fulfil her engagement. Poor dear! she was always hoping she would pull through-she hoped to the end of the chapter. Do you remember you said Justinian was too much of a name for such a little chap as my boy. I said it was a family name, and that was true. We called you Signora, or Signorina Lamberta, but of course I knew you were no Italian. You were posted all over the town as La Lamberta. Now, surely, you remember! What are you now? I mean, what is your real, not your professional name. Not La Lamberta at Liskeard, I take it.'

Then she said-'I am Mrs. Curgenven.'

Mr. Percival stared, drew back a step, and studied her with astonishment. He supposed that his patient had gone off her head.

Then suddenly she clasped her hand-the only one she could use, over her eyes, burst into tears, and sobbed: 'I am very miserable. After nineteen years I see my husband-and he shoots himself.'

'My dear Signora,' said Mr. Percival, 'here comes the tea. You are gone clean crazed. Take that, and I will compound something that shall compose your nerves. Mrs. CurgenvenMrs. Fiddlesticks!'

CHAPTER VII.

AT THE MILLINER'S.

A FEW days later, Theresa was seated in a little parlour above the dressmaker's shop in Liskeard, where were her lodgings.

This parlour of Miss Treise's was small, but the pattern on the wall paper was large and pretentious, one of those self-assertive papers that cannot be kept in the background and obscured by any amount of furniture and of decoration in a room. There is effrontery in designs on paper and cretonne, as there is in certain human faces. Two large body-coloured pictures, one of Vesuvius quiescent, the other of Vesuvius in eruption, were hung upon the walls. Neapolitan skies and Mediterranean seas were exaggerated in blueness on the first, and the artist had done his utmost with vermilion and lemon-yellow to produce an effect of fire in the second; but these pictures were modest and harmonious in tone compared with the wall paper, which seemed to jostle frames and pictures in insolent self-assertion.