playing a more or less ridiculous part. She hated to be laughed at, and hated herself for caring whether people laughed at her or not; so that when at length she started for Paris, shaking off the dust of her Fatherland from her feet, she was by no means as happy as she pretended to be. She loved Douglas Colborne and was willing to sacrifice everything for his sake; still she could not but be conscious that she was sacrificing a great deal. Expatriation, which she had voluntarily incurred ever since she had been her own mistress as a thing desirable in itself, assumed quite another aspect from the moment that she realised how impossible it would be for her to reside even for a short time in Vienna after her marriage her marriage also must needs deprive her of all the prestige which she had previously enjoyed, save that belonging to wealth. She had been a prominent and interesting figure in Europe; she was going to be nothing, except the very rich wife of an unknown English country gentleman. Europe would soon forget her, and the homage of London-if, indeed, she should obtain that could hardly be accepted as a sufficient compensation. She regretted nothing, only she felt that sufficient compensation of some kind was her due; and she went near to saying as much when the month of November brought her and her lover together once more in the Avenue Friedland.

But Douglas only laughed, as soon as he understood the drift of her remarks. 'Do you remember warning me at Luchon that we should have some quarrels ?' he asked. 'Well, we shall have one now if you go on reminding me in this unhandsome way of all that I owe you. As if I didn't know that you deserve to have everything I can give you! And as if I didn't mean to give you everything that I have it in my power to give!'

That was not quite the spirit in which she had expected to be met; and she was refreshed as well as amused by his sensible, practical view of a somewhat complicated situation. You are altogether a man, and altogether an Englishman,' said she. "You are, perhaps, right to be both, and to quarrel seriously when you do quarrel; only you rather tempt me, who am a woman, and not in the least English, to show you how easily differences may be provoked and composed. Suppose, for example, I were to complain-as surely I have a right to do that your family are hardly treating me with common civility by declining to be present at our wedding?'

'Oh, but my mother is coming, after all,' answered Douglas.

OCT 25 1892

LIBRARY.

THERESA started for the station an hour before the train was due. This was because the one omnibus which the town entertained had to ramble about the place picking up such persons as had notified their desire to be picked up and conveyed to meet the express up-train. Liskeard is not a town in which the pulse of life beats furiously, nor the whirr of commerce turns heads giddy. Except on market day there is very little business done in the shops, and except when the one omnibus jaunts about seeking travellers, very few persons are visible in the street.

But when that lumbering conveyance travels about the town, everyone rushes to the window or to the door to see who is going to leave Liskeard, and to conjecture the reason and the duration of absence. The draper is outside growling because such and such ladies are obviously going into Plymouth for a day's shopping, instead of accepting and being thankful for such bad matches in colour, such short lengths of material, such antiquated patterns, as he had in stock; and the grocer in his apron is on his doorstep, objurgating because certain customers are going into Plymouth to bring home real oysters and salmon, instead of resting content with his tinned preparations. The omnibus halts at the vicarage to receive a deputation from some missionary society, and to lay on the roof his portmanteau, one compartment

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of which is stuffed with scalps, idols, and tomahawks, that have been exhibited the preceding evening at a great meeting in aid of foreign missions, in the schoolroom, and then bounces off to one of the inferior inns to pick up some professionals who have been giving a nigger concert in the townhall, and who have their costumes and musical instruments with them, all to be accommodated on the roof. Then the omnibus rolls away into a suburb to take up a lady who is going out of her mind, and is attended by a keeper. Next it rambles off in an opposite direction into another suburb to collect some children who are returning to school, and sob in the omnibus when they do not howl. Finally, it picks up commercial travellers here and there, with their familiar boxes of samples. At last, when the hour is nearly expended, the omnibus directs its way towards the station.

Theresa had been able out of the ten pounds given her by Mr. Physic to satisfy Miss Treise, to fee the servant, Bessie, and to extinguish the trifling accounts against her in one or two of the shops. There remained sufficient money to carry her to Scotland,—sufficient, not too much, though possibly there might be a few shillings over, when she reached Drumduskie, the residence of Mrs. Boxholder.

An inexplicable sense of regret came over Theresa as she left Liskeard. There was no reason why she should regard it as a home, and yet she felt that it was the only place in the world with which she was at all linked, the only place to which she was not absolutely indifferent. It was the town to which Curgenven looked as its headquarters. The only person who had belonged to her-Captain Lambert-was buried near there. Mr. Percival had been attentive and kind to her, he was the cousin of her dead husband, and he lived in Liskeard. She had passed through an epoch of her life there-great pain and anxiety of mind, and the place where one has suffered does somehow exercise a hold over the feelings. She was going to Scotland-entirely strange to her, and to persons whom she knew by name only. She was sorry not to have seen Mr. Percival and thanked him for what he had done for her, but he had not been to see her for the last two or three days, he had been busy at Curgenven. She resolved to write to him from Drumduskie, and express to him her sense of obligation.

She had taken her ticket for London, by Plymouth and Exeter, and had seen her box labelled. She was making her way into a second-class carriage of the express, avoiding equally that into

Under those circumstances,' rejoined the bridegroom, 'I dare say I may venture to assume that you won't leave me without good cause.'

That she would never have good cause for repenting of her bargain he felt very confident, and the experiences of his first month of married life were of a nature to justify that confidence in every respect. The newly married pair wandered through Italy without ostentation, and with a modest retinue of only two servants. They penetrated as far south as Sorrento; after which they retraced their steps and loitered along the Riviera, meeting nobody whom they knew (for none of the people whom they knew were at all likely to be in those parts before the month of January), and enjoying to the full their freedom from all social trammels. For the Countess Radna so quiet a mode of life had the charm of complete novelty: perhaps also her husband possessed something of the same attraction in her eyes. Be that as it may, she was perfectly happy and contented during her honeymoon, and did not fail to apprise him of a state of things which was without precedent in her recollection.

'What a good thing it is that we can't spend the whole winter dawdling about sunny places,' she exclaimed one morning. 'If we could, we might end by having enough of laziness-which would be a thousand pities.'

Whether that result would or would not have followed, it was at all events certain that the experiment could not be made. Calls of various kinds rendered Douglas Colborne's return to Stoke Leighton before Christmas imperative, and in the second week of December his tenantry had the privilege of meeting him with a congratulatory address, as well as that of gazing upon the beautiful and richly attired lady who (having espoused an untitled gentleman) was still known as the Countess Radna. They admired her, it is to be feared, rather more than she admired them. She had been accustomed to a somewhat greater degree of subserviency on the part of her inferiors than is usually manifested in the county of Bucks, and she was a little taken aback when her husband intimated to her that she would be expected to place her delicately gloved hand within the huge sunburnt palms of various stalwart sons of the soil. She was, however, delighted with the aspect of her future home, which, although by no means a magnificent place, presented that trim and well-kept appearance common to all English country homes.

'This is perfect!' she exclaimed, after a cursory survey of the reception-rooms; 'nothing is wanting, except a certain number of guests, and an occupation of some sort.'

'We'll ask some people down to stay as soon as you like,' answered Douglas. As for occupation-well, there will be shooting for the next two months and hunting until spring.'

'Only, for my misfortune, I don't either shoot or hunt.'

'Very few ladies shoot, even in England,' Douglas observed, 'but lots of them hunt, and there's no difficulty about it, so long as you are well mounted and have the average amount of pluck. It won't take me many weeks to initiate you into the mysteries of fox-bunting.'

'Oh, you mean me to hunt with you, then? All this is very new and very diverting; it looks quite like the commencement of a fresh existence. I must warn you, though, that I have already tried many fresh departures, and have always found that plus ça change plus c'est la même chose.'

CHAPTER XI.

FAILURES AND SUCCESSES.

ANYBODY who has ever tried to teach his fellow-creatures anything must have discovered that it is not the stupid ones who give the most trouble. With patience and perseverance on the part of teacher and learner, mere stupidity, against which a great poet has told us that the gods themselves fight in vain, will seldom be found a barrier to moderate proficiency; but of the people who know a little and think they know a good deal nothing satisfactory can be made, and that, in all probability, was why Douglas Colborne failed to imbue his wife with either taste or capacity for following the hounds. She was a very fair horsewoman, but she rode without judgment and was apt to turn restive under instruction; hence she not only gave herself several falls which were absolutely uncalled for, and might have had serious results, but speedily acquired a reputation in the hunting-field which was not of a nature to render her popular amongst her neighbours. Moreover, she did not take to those hunting neighbours of hers, whose manners appeared to her to be stiff and chilling at some moments and far too familiar at others, so that she ended by