After he had gone Lady Humphrey's eyes went back to her little black cloud, which had spread and increased as the sunset faded. Lady Humphrey's eyes now carried and added to it that last little fume of her son about Hester. So in that moment Hester's future was overcast with and wrapped up in the shadow of that cloud, which was one day to burst on Lady Humphrey's enemies.

"But I will win fortune for you yet, you wrong-headed simpleton!" she said, addressing her absent son, “and I will lay it at your feet when you are least expecting it. And you shall walk over those who scorned your mother before you were born." And then Lady Humphrey remembered who was waiting up-stairs; and she thought about her plum-coloured satin.

"Well, Hester!" said Lady Humphrey, and gave the girl the tips of her fingers to touch. And this was all her greeting after the lapse of three years.

"I hope you have made the most of your time at Mrs. Gossamer's," she went on, while Hester was busy producing her scissors and her pins, and choking down a lump in her throat. The girl did not know what it was she had hoped for, hardly knew that she had hoped for anything at all; only now she felt the aching at heart of a disappointment.

"I expect you will take pains with this dress," said Lady Humphrey. "It costs more money than I can afford to pay for it. I think it was not very considerate of Mrs. Gossamer to trust the fitting on to an apprentice."

Hester knew her place by this time.

"If you will please to step this way to the mirror," she said, "you can watch what I do, and make your own suggestions. But I believe I know my business pretty well."

Lady Humphrey in her mirror watched the face that flitted over her shoulder, behind her back, beneath her arm, as Hester pinned, and snipped, and ripped, and stitched again; and she saw and recognized that it was a rare face, in which all the changes of expression followed one another in as perfect a harmony as do full chords of music when they are following out the method of a tune; with great sweetness and delicacy about the mouth and chin, great breadth and earnestness about the eyes and forehead, and much childlike grace in the little waving locks of warm golden hair that lay within the shelter of her bonnet. Passion and poetry, courage and simplicity, all were in that face, and Lady Humphrey knew it. And as the serious eyes criticised the fall of the satin on her shoulder, and the steady fingers plied here and there about her waist with pin and needle,

the woman felt the same antagonistic spirit rise within her against the girl that had risen once before against the child, when it had whispered, "Come out, Mary Stuart, and hear the nightingales.'

Hester, having finished her work, was not asked to take off her bonnet, nor invited to any refreshment. That it was cruel treatment, Lady Humphrey knew, for the girl looked fatigued, and decidedly not robust; but Lady Humphrey's mood was to be cruel on that evening. Her son had made her angry and disappointed. She had hinted to him of things that lay next her heart, and he had turned from her in disgust. She could no longer dare to think of him as an ally. He had left her at last in anger on account of this Hester. And now here was this Hester, at her mercy. She could give her meat and wine, and lay her to rest upon her softest bed? No; she would send her out alone, in the rain that was beginning to fall, and let her find her way back, unprotected, to London. A girl whose pure, spiritual face, shining unconscious over her shoulders in a lookingglass, could make her feel gross, and cunning, and wicked, deserved no better treatment at her hands.

"How do you purpose returning to town?" asked Lady Humphrey, as the large summer rain-drops came sliding down the pane. Hester was tying up her parcel, and the room was growing dark. Lady Humphrey expected terror, tears, and a prayer to be allowed to remain in shelter till morning. After all, perhaps she hoped for such a scene. It gratified her at the moment to be harsh, but it would have suited her plans to be obliged to relent.

But Hester, nothing daunted, explained. She had been turning this matter over in her mind while she worked, and had hit upon a means of getting home.

"Mrs. Gossamer's laundress lives in Richmond," she said; "and to-morrow will be her morning for starting at daybreak for London. She will take me in her cart, I daresay."

"But where will you pass the night in the meantime ?" said Lady Humphrey, unwillingly.

"Oh, she will let me sleep in the crib with Baby Johnny. Baby Johnny and I are great friends."

And so Hester went upon her way. "Oh dear! oh dear! she wept as she went along; "I will never come back to Hampton Court again!"

And yet it would have suited Lady Humphrey to have taken her by the hand, kept her by her side, affected an interest in her, kissed and made friends. Within the last few hours, even, while her son Pierce had been talking to her, while she

had mused alone after his departure, and again while Hester's head had gleamed over her shoulder in the looking-glass, a light had shone upon her difficulties which had shown her the necessity of withdrawing this girl from her wholesome distance and independence, to fill a gap in the plan that was daily taking shape within her brain. She had wrapped her up in that cloud no bigger than a man's hand, which had risen in the western sky. She had found a place for her in the economy of the scheme that lay at her heart. She had work marked out for her to do, with her innocence, her truthfulness, her beauty, and that well-remembered fervour of her nature, which had made her hostile, but might make her useful. She had had this arranged, and yet she had lost an opportunity, increasing the difficulties of the task that lay before her; and all for the gratification of an impulse of ill-will.

"I have been silly!" said Lady Humphrey; "but it is not yet too late." And she sent off a messenger to Richmond.

Hester was supping on bread and milk, with Baby Johnny in her arms. The cottage door was open, and the summer rain was falling, falling, pattering over the broad freckled faces of the laurel leaves, beating the fragrant breath out of the musk, filling the pink cups of the sweet-brier roses upon the gable, till their golden hearts were drowning in refreshment. The laundress was packing up her snowy linens and muslins in their baskets, and Baby Johnny was falling asleep with his face buried in Hester's yellow hair, when Lady Humphrey's page arrived, and looked in at the open door.

The boy brought a note. Lady Humphrey desired earnestly that Hester should return and stay the night. The morning would be wet, and a drive in the cart not pleasant. And a nice soft shawl had been sent for muffling, and an umbrella to protect her. Hester could not choose but go. She looked round the homely cottage with regret, kissed Baby Johnny, and set out.

The night was not dark, and the gardens of the palace were delicious with the genial rain. Falling, falling, it quenched the fire at the earth's heart. So had melted that little cloud in the evening sky, that had spread and increased, and saddened the fierce glory of the sunset. Farmers in simple homesteads looked out from under the thirsty eaves, and blessed Heaven for the relief of the parched fields. Was there no one to pray that that other cloud which was growing and darkening within Lady Humphrey's secret ken, might also come to earth in timely tears of repentance and benediction?

But Hester, tripping along the wet lawns, through those

whispering showers, and all the fragrant breathing of the newly awakened perfumes, felt only that some echo of her childish raptures had come back to her for the hour.

CHAPTER V

HOW SHALL IT BE DONE?

AFTER Lady Humphrey had sent away her messenger, she found it very warm in her solitary drawingroom. The air seemed thick and feverish with the atmosphere of her own thoughts. She put aside the curtains from her window with both hands, threw open the sash, and looked out upon the grey twilight, creeping mistily over the dripping, silent, satisfied world. And then she began to walk slowly up and down the room, getting so dark that she could just see the path that she marked out for herself, up to a grimly beautiful little statue of Nemesis, on its pedestal in the farthest corner, and back again; there and back again. The cool rain was blowing in, and there was not a sound to disturb, but the dabbling of the drops among the little pools upon the window sill. So Lady Humphrey, having taken her first step towards a cherished end, delivered herself up to an hour's reflection. It was not so much that she was taken possession of by thoughts, at the first, as that she set herself determinedly to think some matters out.

Her face, as she moved through the shadows, with its grey hue, its knitted brows, and hard-set mouth, might have matched some of those other faces of bygone plotters and spoilers of the peace of the innocent, which were hanging up on high walls, only the breadth of a few chambers removed from her, fixed for ever under the gaze of all time, with the story of their secret misdeeds written in the open daylight on their brows. But there was no observant dreamer present-no Hester, with straight open eyes, to take notes, and draw comparisons; the statue of Nemesis looked on to its own goal, and knew nothing about the matter; and the rain was busy gossipping to the window-sill; and Lady Humphrey's thoughts were as far from the subject of the musty legends and faded pictures of foolish people who were found out, as any lover of fresh air and fair dealing could desire.

Lady Humphrey's thoughts surrounded her with brilliant scenes, as sweet and peaceful, as fresh and wholesome, as ever memory undertook to furnish. Mountains lying in an atmosphere of summer light, serene and magnificent; crags covered with heather; mighty ravines with the clouds dipping into them,

and the slight ash lifting its tasselled head to meet the sky, shaking its scarlet berries against the blue. A stream, perpetually descending, swift and flashing, like a sword dividing two hills, falling into the valley with foam and thunder, slackening, flowing, smooth, silvery, musical, taking all sweet things with it to the sea; children's voices, lilies, sedges, echoes of the blessings that arise from and return upon the valley homesteads, like the pigeons that soar from and alight upon the

thatches.

For there is also a bay of the sea in Lady Humphrey's picture, with a village sitting at its feet, and the brown sails of fishing craft floating to and fro in its harbour; and there is a castle, away up hillwards, half mossed over, and ivied up to its chimneys with nestling there for so many centuries in its hollow among the mountains. In this castle there are venerable chambers, and ancient household gods. And there is plenty of life about, faces coming and going, in the light and in the shade; and there is a great peace and dignity about the place.

It is many a day since Lady Humphrey has seen this castle, and the date of her intimate acquaintance with it is thirty years back. So it is not to be expected that the faces which her memory beholds set in its atmosphere should bear the same features, or at least wear the same look, as those which at this actual moment inhabit it. The old may be expected to have passed away, and the young to have grown old. No one can know this better than Lady Humphrey, with those thirty years of life lying behind her; and yet they are the faces of thirty years ago that she sees with her mental vision.

One is the face of an elderly woman, proud, keen, benevolent. Though a good face, and long since vanished from the earth, it is hateful and lifelike to Lady Humphrey at this moment. Then there are the faces of two girls; one, with pale satin-like braided hair and severely handsome features, is surely the very image of Lady Humphrey in her youth. She looks with envy and jealousy towards the other, who, with dreamy eyes, sensitive mouth, and aristocratic mien, stands slightly aloof, fearing a little, and pitying, and wondering, and sheltering herself by the elder woman's side. And there is a man's face, too, sometimes of the group, and sometimes not of it, a genial, laughing, manly face; and this also has left the earth long ago; but its memory is not hateful to Lady Humphrey.

These are not the people whom she has to deal with at this day, and with a stern shake of the head she dismisses them to the past to which they belong. They disappear, and others spring up and take their place. Lady Humphrey's eyes