came to me or not, when the time arrived; that she was, however, still able and anxious to work, and that their only reason for wanting to part with the woman was that the rest of their household was banded together in arms against her, and the retreat of one side of the battle was necessary for the general peace and comfort. Obviously the retreat of the numerically smaller, if not the weaker, side would cause less inconvenience, SO Mrs. Smith should come to me.

"Now, don't argue about it," Lady Colesden said. "You know I wouldn't send you any one I didn't think would really suit you, and the old soul is honest as daylight and as sober as a judge, and I'll send her down to-morrow to see you. If you are very nice to her and make the best of the place, perhaps I'll be able to drive her out of my house and into yours by next week, and then we shall both be happy ever after. If you find her intolerable, let me know at once and I'll take her away and send her to the country in some capacity or other, but I really believe she is exactly what you want."

So Mrs. Smith came, and my material comfort was assured from that moment. We didn't, however, take very readily to one another. It occurred to me that perhaps she thought I was more deeply concerned in the plot to eject her from Lady Colesden's than was the case; and I doubted her remaining with me long. But she was an excellent cook, never plagued me to order dinner or anything else, and she kept the weekly bills down to a figure that the most critical of my female acquaintances were fain to admit was miraculous.

And I couldn't help feeling an interest in the woman. She was remarkable to look at. She was very tall, spare, and muscular. And her face had evidently been of remarkable

beauty in youth. Even now in her old age her chiselled features and dark eyes would have attracted attention in a woman of any rank in life, and had a look of breeding that is rare in the humbler walks. Age and hard work had furrowed her features; the fire in the woman's eyes, one could see, would be unquenchable. Her thick gray hair was hidden away in a servant's cap. She was illiterate: her house accounts were miracles of laborious illspelling. Clarke hated her. He complained bitterly to me of the wrongs he suffered at her hands; but, whenever I investigated a complaint, it turned out Mrs. Smith was in the right and Clarke was in fault. So he soon gave up complaining to me.

It was during the investigation of some of these indictments that I came to know the woman better and to like her more. Her rigid devotion to my interests became apparent, as well as her loyalty to a fellow-servant, even under pretty difficult conditions. And I took occasion to tell Clarke that I thought him a poor-spirited individual, and that if he didn't work amicably with my housekeeper there were plenty of other valets who would. He wasn't a bad sort of fellow in his way, and he responded to treatment and got on better. But he was afraid of Mrs. Smith.

Now, in order to show the extraordinary character of Mrs. Smith and the influence she has had upon my affairs, I must go back to earlier years and relate certain circumstances that I have never cared to speak of to any one since they occurred.

And the three beloved people for whom alone I am writing this must understand that the whole course of events which followed my engagement of Mrs. Smith only became known to me afterwards: at the time of their occurrence I was kept in ignorance of them, and, as far as Mrs. Smith was

concerned, I should have remained in ignorance of them to this day.

We had played together as children, Helen and I: our homes were within a couple of miles of one another: our parents were intimate friends. My father was master of foxhounds and friend of all the county. Helen's father was in the diplomatic service, and only came home from abroad at rare intervals during her childhood. After her mother died, the little girl of four or five was sent home and lived there entirely during the five years of her father's widowhood and until his second wife-a cousin of Lady Colesden, mentioned before in this chroniclecame to take charge of her. During those five years my mother had had the child a great deal with her, and when I was at home for my school holidays we had hunted together on our ponies and together enjoyed all the fun and amusement that boys and girls can devise in an English country home. And Helen was happy on the whole-lonely at times, but with an intense joy in life and activity and the human sympathy of those she knew and loved; shy and reserved with strangers, afraid of her grave and silent father, whose caress was a cold handshake, whose vision was too short to see the love and longing drowning in the child's great brown eyes just for lack of a touch, a word, to draw them to him from those depths.

Then for six or seven years Helen lived nearly altogether abroad. I don't think I saw her more than once or twice during that time. I was grown to manhood; she was growing to womanhood. My father died, and our old home was broken up, and I only went back to its neighborhood when I could find time from my work to pay visits. Whenever I rode through Alderholt its blinds were down, its chimneys smokeless.

Rumor told that Helen had

grown into a beautiful and gracious woman, tall and grave, but with a sweet smile, people said, that charmed all and sundry. It was reported that all the under-secretaries were her willing slaves, that foreign nobles risked their lives and limbs freely at the "chasse au wild-fox" when Helen rode and negotiated her fences as neatly as my father had taught her. En amazone she was irresistible; and the Marquis de Gallifet-Perpignan, who had never been on a horse in his life, but attended every "rendezvous" in a "mail," had a scarlet dress-coat faced with blue made at his tailor's, and gilt buttons adorned with his own coronet, and wore the thing at the Embassy ball, to his own intense satisfaction, feeling certain that the subjection of mademoiselle was then only a matter of moments to any one so killing and so altogether sporting in appearance.

Helen wrote to my mother an amusing account of it and of the poor little man's afterdoubts as to whether he shouldn't have worn spurs to complete the effect.

That Christmas she came to London, and stayed a little while with my mother, and I saw her again.

She was as cordial and friendly with me as ever, and we talked over all our old adventures and jaunts together, and laughed over our happy days, our rides, our long, cold waitings under the fir-trees for wood pigeons, when Helen had the chilly satisfaction of holding the next two cartridges for my gun, and hung between joy on the one hand and horror at the sight of the killed on the other, a wounded bird was more than she could bear without protesting tears. But to my wondering delight she was no longer the child whose moods were as open to me as the air. She was a shy and lovely woman, trained in the ways of society to a savoir faire perfect for her youth and

position. With her gracious friendliness there was a serene and womanly reserve that seemed to compel courtesy and chivalry wherever she went.

My mother was charmed by her; the girl's attention to the elder woman was beautiful in its unostentatious and natural kindness and simplicity. When she went abroad again my mother openly lamented. She said she wished she had a daughter like Helen to comfort her in her old age. I didn't answer that rather wistful remark.

Helen was gone, and life seemed rather drab and work rather more than usually dry and uninteresting for a long time after.

Some few months later we heard of her stepmother's death. Helen wrote that her father was much broken, and had thoughts of retiring from the service and coming home, but she almost hoped he would not do so; she could not think what he would make of life alone with her at Alderholt. After some hesitation he chose, we heard, to remain in the service; and Helen did not come home that winter. Her father asked my mother if she would have her to stay in London during the following season, when her mourning might be mitigated, and she might see something of society in London; and my mother accepted the plan with pleasure.

Her father wrote again: he was infinitely relieved he had of late been deeply concerned about Helen's future and prospects. He had the greatest anxiety as to her proper chaperonage and care. Situated as he was, he scarcely knew whether it was right she should be abroad with him at all with no other lady in the house. My mother smiled a contemptuous smile, and gave a little snort of impatience at the man's stupidity. "But he always was a selfish toad," she muttered with apparent irrelevance.

Helen's coming to my mother at the

earliest date that could be arranged was the most satisfactory way out of his "anxieties and difficulties," as he called them, as to his child, and he thanked her sincerely.

It was April before she reached London, and she came rather sad and troubled. Her father had decided to break up his household altogether and dismiss all his English servants to their homes. Helen foresaw that she would hardly prevail on him to let her collect an establishment again later in the year, and it meant either his coming home to England then, or living abroad without her, or without a settled home for her to share with him. Above all, she deplored losing her own especial Catherine, who had been her particular and attached guardian and body-servant since her childhood, ever since Helen's stepmother had brought her to the house. I believe Catherine was what is called a school-room maid. Anyhow, Helen loved the woman and valued her. She was to have a lady'smaid with all the accomplishments requisite in such a person, and Catherine was to return to Larks Lacey to her dead mistress's family-with whom she had lived many years. Helen was especially sad the day she parted with her Catherine in London. She came downstairs with her eyes very bright, and my mother gave her a watch on a little chain for her birthday soon afterwards, since from that afternoon Helen wore no watch.

Well, the season wore on and Helen enjoyed it. My mother, I think, enjoyed her own rejuvenation as she called it, as keenly as the beautiful girl. It was a delight to the elder woman to have so striking and altogether charming a companion to take about, to present to her Sovereign— Helen's high-bred beauty shone resplendent that day,-to talk to of all the womanly things that women love to discuss. My mother was womanly

to the core, though she took a masculine, and never a feminine, view of all questions, if there were such a choice of views.

I was never much of a ball-goer, but I went to balls that year just to see Helen dance and to help her, if I could, to enjoy them. We rarely stayed late. She liked her morning canter in the Park, and my mother made me get the most perfect hack I could procure for her to ride. I enjoyed taking her to the Row more than going with her to balls, and I think, on the whole, I preferred the young men who wanted to ride alongside her to the young men who crowded round her in the ballroom praying for dances. There were plenty of them in both places. There was one who rarely failed to appear both at the balls and in the Row, and I know I didn't like him to be near her in either place. He was the handsomest man in his way I have ever seen, and a born actor. Of an old ennobled family, he was the eldest of a large number of sons, every one of whom was wild and ungoverned. He alone of them preserved a show of respectability and decorum, and did it very well.

His pose was respectabil

ity and decorum under difficulties. Не had the art of living in public with the appearance of wishing to be obscure and retired-of showing that he knew all his family's shortcomings while seeming to strive to hide them from the world. He belonged to good clubs, but had no intimate men friends. I had been at Eton with him and remembered him at Oxford too. Well, I wasn't his intimate friend at either place.

It was only after he had left those seats of learning that the actor's art had been brought to such perfection, though it had served him well with masters and others in authority in his boyhood. But then he had over-acted, and we, his contemporaries in age,

were perhaps more disgusted with his attempts to conceal his misdeeds than with his iniquities themselves. Youth will forgive most things to the ingenuous and sincere.

Now Helen liked him, and it worried me to see him about her.

Early in July she had a telegram from her father and was called abroad. He had had a severe accident, and Helen left us in haste in charge of a suitable chaperone for the journey.

Her accounts of her father were not reassuring. My mother wanted to go out to her, but Helen wrote they were up in the hills where her father had met with his accident, and there was no accommodation except for the necessary nurses and the doctor, and that she was well and was well looked after. Should need arise she would telegraph.

By degrees the injured man mended, and at last they were able to move him down to the sea at Bordighera, and there it was proposed they should winter.

My mother went to them in November and sent me news from time to time. Helen was well-her father very much failed. That man whose presence near Helen had troubled me was at Bordighera too, and they saw a great deal of him. He was kindness itself to the sick man; and his musical genius-as real as his facility in foreign languages-was a constant solace and pleasure to them all.

Well, it all ended as I knew from that moment it would end. Helen loved him, and in March, before her father died, she married this man.

For four years I never saw her at all, nor was she in England for more than fleeting visits, and I only heard of them when she had gone. And then I saw her again.

We met in Curzon Street by chance as she was turning to go into a house: and, after warmly greeting her, I

asked if I might come in and see her. I have never paid so sad a visit as this. Helen looked twenty years older than when she left us-a sad, broken woman, careworn and tired. I could scarcely believe it was our Helen. She opened the door of the room on the first floor, evidently a sitting-room in a private hotel, and seemed nervous and anxious on entering. But no one was there. We talked long about my mother and her recent death, and Helen's tears fell when she deplored her loss and recalled her friendship and affection.

"I am a good deal alone in the world now," she said-and I dared not reply. "You see I have lived so much abroad and seen so little of people here, and my relations are all gone: I never had many. Still, I mustn't groan, for those friends I have are near and dear." And she smiled very sadly, I thought, and half rose, as if she must be alone. So I left her. It was more than I could do to remain longer without speaking out and asking what was killing her. And all the time I was certain I knew the answer. I could have shot that man then.

I had a letter from her next evening telling me they were leaving London. They were to take a house there later on and live in England. She didn't know if she was glad or sorry. hoped to see me when they came.

She

I could do nothing: I went to Lady Colesden and heard from time to time where they were, and where the house was they had taken, and when they were coming. I wouldn't ask Lady Colesden about Helen or what was wrong, and she said little, but enough to confirm what I felt before.

When they came to London I wrote and asked Helen if I should come and see her, and she replied I must come, and often, but I should not find the house very lively. She was not very well, and had lost the art of cheerful

ness. I went as often as I could, but it was a misery and a torture to see my dear companion of the past so changed and ill. It seemed to do her good at first, and then later on I could see she was more wretched still. She kept a brave and smiling face, you must remember, and it was terrible to us both when one day I was shown into her drawing-room and found her whiter than a ghost, shivering and cold, though it was July, while on the parquet of the long inner room I heard a man's step-I knew it was her husband's-retreating towards the stair

To return to my bachelor home. I was away on a shooting visit for three nights. It was freezing hard and five o'clock in the evening. Mrs. Smith was alone in the house at tea in her tidy little kitchen and my old dog was comfortably curled up in front of the fire. Suddenly he lifted his head and a moment later the front-door bell rang. Mrs. Smith went to the door and opened it.

"Catherine, is it you?" said a trembling voice, and a trembling hand caught her arm; "but are you alone? Is this your house? Oh, surely I have made some mistake."