Let him who thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall. Norah was soon to experience how much needed is this warning from the Scriptures.

A few days before the dishonest Martha left Mrs. Lowndes's service, as Norah was returning home after making some little purchases for her mistress, on turning a corner she came suddenly upon an old friend, and gave an exclamation of pleasure at a meeting so unexpected and so pleasant.

"Milly—Oh, I'm so delighted to see you!" cried Norah, shaking her friend by both hands. Had they not been in a street, she would have warmly embraced her. For had not Milly, when housemaid to Mrs. Lane, shown her kindness in many ways; had she not helped her to nurse Norah's dying mother, and sat up all night with Mrs. Peele when the girl's strength had given way? There were very few indeed whom Norah regarded with so much affection as she did the kind-hearted Milly.

"Who would have thought of seeing you here in London!" continued Norah, whose face was beaming with pleasure. "I have not met you since your marriage. What has brought you and your husband up to town?"

"My husband,—don't talk of him!" cried Milly, in a tone of anguish which startled Norah. Then looking closer into the face of her friend, Norah could see a sad change there. The features of Milly Bligh had grown sharper and thinner; there were furrows on her brow which Norah had never seen there before. She observed now, also, what in the excitement of first meeting her friend she had not noticed, that the dress of Milly looked shabby: though it was winter-time, she wore a thin shawl, which was quite insufficient to protect her from the cold.

"Why—what—has he"—a feeling of delicacy prevented Norah from finishing the sentence.

"Deserted me!" moaned Milly, as if to utter these two words was to wring blood from her heart. "O Norah, if you knew what I've had to bear! But it's all over now,—I don't know where he is,—I'm never like to see him again!"

The street chanced to be very quiet; Milly turned, and, as she walked by the side of her friend, in low earnest tones they went on with their conversation.

"Then what will you do, my poor dear Milly?" asked Norah, with heartfelt sympathy and pity.

"I must go into service again. I've come up to London to look out for a situation. My difficulty is that Mrs. Lane, with whom I lived all my years of service, is somewhere abroad, I don't know where, and, as I left her to be married, I did not so much as secure a written character from her."

"Oh, I'm so glad!" exclaimed Norah, suddenly.

"What,—glad that I've not a corner to turn to?" asked Milly.

"Oh, no, not glad of that, but glad that I may be able to help you. Mrs. Lowndes—she's my mistress—asked me only this morning if I knew of any nice housemaid who could take Martha's place. My lady had nearly fixed on one yesterday, but the character did not suit, so she's in a hurry to find another."

"Mrs. Lowndes is not likely to take a servant on your recommendation, I should fear."

"You don't know what confidence she has in me, what trust she puts in my word," said Norah, with a little natural pride. "If I tell her that you have been five years in one place, and that I have known you all the time, and that I'm certain that if your mistress were not abroad, she would give you a first-rate character, I'm sure—at least I'm almost sure that she'll take you."

"O Norah, you're like a comforting angel!" cried poor Milly; "if you only knew what a service you're going to do me! I've been almost in despair; half of my clothes are in pawn; I thought that I'd never succeed in getting a respectable place!"

"And this is such a good one!" cried Norah, quite excited with pleasure; "and how delightful it will be for us both to be always together! A companion whom I could love as a friend was the only thing wanting to make me perfectly happy, and there is no one on earth whom I should so gladly have as my Milly." Norah could hardly refrain from skipping for joy as she walked.

A thought, however, occurred to her mind, which somewhat damped her pleasure. "The only thing that makes me afraid that you may not get the place," she said, "is that I know that Mrs. Lowndes objects to married servants. I have heard her say myself that she will never engage one, the husbands give so much trouble."

"I do not even know where mine is," sighed Milly; "but I don't see why anything at all need be said about my being married."

Norah became very grave. "Would it be right to hide such a fact?" she said; "would it not be like deceiving my mistress?"

"Well, if you're going to let out a poor friend's secrets, and deprive her of her best chance of earning her bread in an honest way, you're not the girl that I took you for," said Milly, with bitterness.

There is no need to relate all the conversation that passed, nor to tell how Milly tried to persuade Norah, and how Norah tried to persuade herself, that to suppress the truth was no falsehood; that it was not in the least necessary that Mrs. Lowndes should ever know that her housemaid was married. Norah promised to do all that she could to procure the situation for Milly, and on reaching home at once went to her lady, and pleaded the cause of her friend.

"Five years in one place,—that looks well," observed Mrs. Lowndes; "there would at any rate be no harm in my seeing the girl. You have known her, you say, all your life. You may tell her to call this evening, and I will judge for myself. It's hard for good servants when they lose their places by a mistress going abroad."

Norah knew that Milly had not lost her place on account of Mrs. Lane's going abroad, but she was only too glad that her lady should think so. We may always suspect that we are in danger of striking against the iceberg of deceit, when we allow ourselves to wish something to be believed which we know to be quite untrue.

"Stay," said Mrs. Lowndes, as the eager Norah was about to retire from the room; "of course your friend is not married?"

Norah was taken by surprise; in an unguarded moment the false "no" slipped from her tongue, and she passed through the doorway biting her lip, and wishing—fervently wishing that she had not been betrayed, even by friendship, into uttering a lie. "But I cannot go back now. Oh, no!" thought the conscience-stricken girl.

Mrs. Lowndes saw Milly that evening, liked her appearance and manner, and engaged her as housemaid at once. Norah could not feel as happy as she would have done had her mind been at rest, but dared not confess her fault, as she deemed that to do so would be cruelly wronging Milly. She resolved to be more careful in future; she hoped that this would be the very last time on which she would be guilty of speaking untruth. Alas! lies link themselves on one to another like the rings of a chain; and who that harbors one unconfessed, unforgiven sin dare hope that it will be the last?

Months passed quietly over. Norah now seldom thought of her falsehood. If she was colder in prayer, if she was less able to lift up her heart to God, if she took less pleasure in recalling the counsels of her uncle, she hardly traced these effects to their real cause,—peace of conscience forfeited by sin.

One morning Norah found Milly in her room weeping violently, and trembling with agitation. An open letter lay on her knee.

"What has happened?" cried Norah, anxiously.

"He's found,—my poor, poor lost one is found!" sobbed Milly; "but he's in the hospital dying; he wants to see me at once. O Norah, I must go to him this day! Ask mistress to give me leave for an hour; she's kind, she'll not have the heart to refuse it!"

"Do you wish me to ask her to let you go to the hospital to see your husband, when she does not know that you have one?" asked Norah, feeling extremely uneasy at the idea of her falsehood being found out at last.

"No, no; that would never do, that would get us both into trouble, and, oh, I've trouble enough already! Go and ask her to let me go to the hospital to visit a dying mother."

Norah found herself now in a position of greater temptation than ever. Milly was in such a state of misery and excitement that Norah dreaded that any opposition might throw her into a nervous fever. The poor, anxious wife would listen to no objection, had patience for no scruple, and was almost wild when Norah showed hesitation about doing her bidding. Miserable, and hating herself for the deceit into which she was drawn, Norah went to her mistress and told the falsehood put into her mouth by Milly.

Mrs. Lowndes was all kindness. Day after day the housemaid was permitted to go and see her sick mother, carrying sometimes little delicacies sent from her mistress's table. When Milly, from the effect of distress and excitement, herself fell ill, Mrs. Lowndes sent Norah instead of her to the hospital two or three times to see "the poor old lady," and questioned her on her return as to the sufferer's state. Thus Norah was led deeper and deeper into deceit. She had to speak of her illness, her danger, her thanks, when coming from the death-bed of a young man, and she felt that her whole character was becoming gradually lowered and degraded. Never since she had first sought the Lord had Norah been in so low a spiritual state; even to speak of religion to little Selina appeared to her to be an act of hypocrisy now. Norah had sometimes a terrible doubt as to whether she had ever been a Christian at all!

Happily for Norah she was suddenly to be stopped in this downward path. It was a mercy to be arrested even by a blow.

One afternoon in April the bell summoned Norah to the presence of her mistress. She went down the stairs with a sinking at the heart, a feeling of misgiving from which she now very frequently suffered. What was her alarm, on opening the drawing-room door, to see, seated near her mistress, the chaplain of the hospital, whom she had met before on one of her visits to Doyle! Norah dared not even glance at her lady, but the sound of that terrible, deep-toned voice, so expressive of subdued indignation, made the wretched Norah guess but too well what was coming.

"Mr. Chancie has called to ask me to break to my housemaid the news of the death of her husband." There was a marked emphasis on the last word. "Am I to understand that this is the person whom she, and whom you have visited again and again, and spoken of repeatedly to me under the name of her mother?"

Norah pressed the nails of her right hand so tightly into the flesh of the left that traces were left for days!

"Am I to understand," continued the lady, speaking in the same low, terrible tone, "that you and Milly have deliberately conspired together for months to deceive the mistress who trusted you?"

Norah wished that she could sink down anywhere out of sight, into the cellar, or into the grave.

"You leave this house to-morrow," said the lady, who could not but read confession in the silence of her maid, and her aspect of misery and shame. "If your family were in London, you should not stay here for another hour. To think that I should have entrusted my child to the care of such a"—Norah could not catch the concluding word, perhaps none was uttered, but her own conscience supplied the blank with "viper." "Of course you can expect no character from me; your vile deceit has done much to shake my faith in all my kind; I shall never trust a servant again as you were trusted by me. I could no more answer for your honesty now, wretched girl, than I could for your truth. She who could deliberately carry on such a course of deceit would be capable of taking my money."

Norah was utterly unable to speak a word in her own defence; she was miserable, crushed, almost in despair. Milly was, of course, involved in the same disgrace as herself, though not so hastily sent out of the house. Mrs. Lowndes found it more easy to show some indulgence to her, because she had never placed in her the same absolute trust; she had never given to Milly the charge of an only, a much-loved child.

Norah wrote off a hasty note to her uncle at Colme, and made her preparations for leaving her place with an almost bursting heart. One of her keenest pangs was that caused by the distress of little Selina, who could not at first be persuaded to believe her dear Norah to be capable of speaking an untruth.

"You never did tell a story. Oh, I'm sure that you could not! Say, only say that it's all a dreadful mistake!" cried the child, bursting into tears.

Norah was too wretched to weep; she did not close her eyes all that night; the house in which she had once been so happy had become to her now like a stifling prison. Yet she dreaded returning to her native village; she shrank from meeting the clear blue eye of her uncle; she felt herself unworthy of any kindness,—she who had sinned against light, she who had stained her soul with falsehood! Norah's only comfort was in the thought that at least her course of deception was over; she need play the hypocrite no longer; prayer was not now a mockery as it had seemed lately to be. Sin is in itself a thing more dreadful than the sharpest punishment for sin.