"Wonderful—charming! A polished actress!" "Would make her fortune on the London boards, by Jove!" "Talk of Mrs. Langtry—she's a stick to Miss Lefroy!" "As to looks, who would compare them?" "Who indeed?"

"Your sister was charming—perfect, Mrs. Armstrong. I congratulate you most sincerely on her success. She is the feature of the evening, the center of all attraction. By Jove, I never thought I could sit out an hour and a half of amateuring until now—she chained me to my seat! A perfect Pauline!"

Addie listens to it all with a triumphant smile, and her eyes follow her beautiful sister, sailing through the ball-room in her gay theatrical feathers, with glowing eyes, her hair piled high over her forehead, powdered to perfection, blazing in diamonds.

"She is lovely, isn't she, Tom? You liked her acting, didn't you?"

"Her looks and her graces would carry almost any acting through," he answers temperately; "and we Nutshire notabilities are not subtle dramatic critics. It is a case of Venus Victrix with Pauline to-night. Yes, Addie, yes; I do think her lovely."

"Lovely?" echoes a harsh voice in Addie's ear which makes her start uncomfortably. "Yes, Armstrong, a good few share your opinion."

"Mr. Everard, I never saw you coming up. Allow me to congratulate you. Your Melnotte was so affecting; there were two old ladies near me almost in hysterics during the cottage scene. The comedy too was capital! What is the matter with you? Do you intend to play the tragedian all night, or have you come to ask me to dance at last?" she says gayly, her heart sinking at the sight of the lad's woe-begone face and the cold fire of his blue eyes.

"No, Mrs. Armstrong, I haven't come to ask you to dance, but to say good-by to you; I am going home."

"Going home, and the ball only beginning? Oh, nonsense, Jack!" she says, unconsciously using the familiar name, and laying her hand on his arm with a sisterly gesture.

"Yes," he says, a quiver in his voice, "I am going to follow your advice at last, Mrs. Armstrong. I am throwing up the game; she gave me the last straw five minutes ago."

"What did she do?"

"She would promise me only one dance; and, when I went up for it a minute ago, that fellow she is dancing with now—that hulking Guardsman—"

"Sir Arthur Saunderson?"

"Yes—claimed it too. She decided in his favor. She met him only a week ago, and I—I have followed her like a dog for the last five months, have anticipated her slightest wish, have obeyed her every wanton whim, have put my neck under her foot, let her trample me as she would!"

"Oh, why, why did you not do as I told you, Jack? I warned you in time. I told you Pauline was too young, too careless, too high-spirited to be touched by love as yet; she told you so herself."

"Oh, yes!" he laughs bitterly. "She told me, she gave me a few yards to gambol in; but, when she saw me two or three times at the end of my tether, jibbing to get away, to be free, she gave me a little chuck that brought me back to her side in double-quick time. Oh, she did not use me well—your sister! I know I was warned; I don't mean to reproach any one or anything but my own besotted infatuation. I didn't expect her to fall in love with me. Oh, no, no! And I don't want any quarter now; I wouldn't take it, in fact. What chance should I have competing against Saunderson's sodden face, his fine leaden eye, his baronetcy, his twelve thousand a year? What chance indeed! I'm not going to try—not I! I'm off the day after to-morrow. Any commission for Norway, Mrs. Armstrong?"

"Norway? Are you going there?"

"Yes, in my cousin Archie Cleveland's yacht. We sail from Cowes next week—a jolly bachelor party."

"I wish you bon voyage, and a speedy cure," she says earnestly, pressing his hot hand.

"Thanks; awfully—Oh, yes. I'm sure I shall get over it fast enough! I feel I shall, in fact; I've a strong constitution. Good-by, Mrs. Armstrong, good-by, Armstrong! Thanks, old fellow, for all your good wishes, your kindness to me, et cÆtera. I'll not forget them, though I will her—ay, fast enough, Heaven helping me!"

He takes a long hungry look at the girl whom he loves flying past him in his rival's arms, his heavy tow-colored mustache almost brushing her lovely glowing face, upturned to his.

The poor boy turns aside to hide the unmanly moisture clouding his bright eyes, and finds Addie's pitying little palm still imprisoned in his grasp.

"Oh, Ad—Mrs. Armstrong," he cries with a sob in his voice, "if—if Heaven had only given her your tender heart, your sweet nature—"

"And her own face and figure," puts in Addie quickly, with a soft laugh. "But, Jack, what would my poor husband have left then? Not a very promising patchwork—eh?"

"Your husband? Oh, he is a lucky fellow!"

"Is he?" says Addie, wheeling round and looking up into her husband's face with a bright, eager, questioning look. "Is he, Tom?"

Years after Everard remembered the look, the attitude of husband, of wife, as they stood thus gazing at each other under the big magnolia shrub—remembered the tune of the waltz that pursued him as he walked down the avenue, his brain on fire, his heart bursting with wrath, love, and despair.

"There, Tom—look! What a disgraceful state your table is in! All the letters that arrived while you were in New York higgledy-piggledy all over the place! When are you going to settle them?"

"When I have time; they are not of much importance—only bills, prospectuses, begging-letters, receipts—"

"May I settle them for you? Do let me; I'll do it so nicely. All the receipts in one drawer, bills in another, prospectuses in another, and begging-letters in the waste-paper basket—"

"Bravo, Addie, bravo! I see you know how to set to work."

"Then I may do it? You do not mind my opening them? You have no secrets?"—running her hand lightly through the pile. "What is this large square envelope, crested and monogrammed, addressed in a lady's writing, kissing the face of the income-tax? You look guilty, Tom! Am I touching pitch?"

"You are touching an invite to a dinner-party—a gentleman's dinner-party at the Challice's on Friday week," he says, laughing.

"Would you like it answered? I'll answer it for you. You can not go, Tom, for I've written to Aunt Jo to come next week; and the chances are ten to one she'll arrive on that very day, and it would look very bad if you were absent, wouldn't it? You were always such a favorite of hers, you know."

"I won't be absent then. I'm not sorry for the excuse; those aldermanic feasts are becoming rather too much for my digestion of late. I'm afraid I'm getting old, Addie, and feeble—"

"Old and feeble!" she retorts. "I never saw a stronger-looking man than you; you have a grasp of iron. Taunt me with being like Hebe indeed! You are a mixture of Vulcan and Samson."

"Samson's days were short on earth; you may be a widow before you are thirty, Addie."

She looks at him with startled eyes; but his face is careless and unconscious. She moves away hurriedly.

"I may be a widow before I am thirty! The very words they used a year ago; and I—I—actually laughed—yes, I remember, I laughed. What a wretch I was! And now—now I can not bear to hear them, even in jest, not even in jest, my dear, my dear!"

It is a week after the theatricals. An unusual spell of quiet and peace has followed the excitement and racket of the preceding month, for Robert and the "Royal Nutshire" have left the soil for their annual month's picnicking in the Long Valley, and Miss Wynyard, not able to bear the reaction of dullness, has taken flight likewise, and is enjoying herself in town, while Pauline, in deserted Nutsgrove, pores greedily over the accounts of her gay doings, and valiantly determines that her sister shall have a comfortable pied-À-terre in the neighborhood of Eaton Square or Park Lane next season.

Meanwhile Addie is working briskly at clearing the study-table. The waste-paper bag is filling rapidly with the fluent literature of professional beggary, when suddenly a long sheet of paper bearing Madame Armine's address on the top, closely covered with scratchy French writing, drops in dismay from her hands. It is Miss Lefroy's account for goods supplied from the sixteenth of January to the first of May, and three figures represent the total. Poor Addie stares at them stupidly, rubs her eyes, even goes to the window for a moment to take breath and clear the cobwebs from her brain; but when she comes back they confront her still. One hundred and eighty-four pounds! Pounds—not pence, not shillings even, but pounds, sterling pounds!

"What do they mean?" she asks aloud. "It must—it must be a stupendous mistake. How could any girl wear or order one hundred and eighty-four pounds' worth of clothes in less than six months? Impossible! She has been remarkably well-dressed of late, I have noticed, and—and I remember Lady Crawford telling me that she is considered one of the best got-up girls in Nutshire. Her last ball-dress was very handsome; but—but, all the same, this bill is simply incredible. It's a mistake—of course it's a mistake! It's an account of some large family—the Douglases or the Hawksbys probably—and they have got hers; that's it, of course. I'll just run my eyes down the items to make sure. How hard they are to make out! Let me see—let me see. Costume of white satin merveilleuse, and gauze and flounces of Cluny lace, sixteenth of January—forty-five pounds. That sounds like the dress she got for the Arkwrights'—satin gauze and Cluny lace; but—but forty-five pounds! I thought it would be ten at the outside. To be sure, I never ordered a dress for myself, so—so I don't know; but forty-five pounds! It's awful, awful!"

With head down-bent she goes slowly and laboriously through each item; when she reaches the total, her face is crimson with shame and bewilderment. She pushes the document from her, walks feverishly up and down the room, then takes up the account again.

"Sortie du bal of silver plush trimmed in blue fox-fur—twenty-eight pounds ten shillings. That can't—can't mean that simple little dolman she wore going to the theatricals the other night? Impossible! I'll go and ask her about this at once."

She rushes off, scared and excited, calling her sister's name loudly. No answer comes to her in the house. She passes out, the ominous document trembling in her hands.

"Here I am, under the ash in the tennis-ground! What's the matter? What has happened? Any one hurt?"

"No," pants Addie, "no; it's a bill of yours, an awful bill, from Armine—since last January. I can't make it out; it must be wrong. I got such a shock when I saw the total."

She parts the drooping boughs of the ash, and finds herself confronted by her sister, crimson with confusion and anger, and Sir Arthur Saunderson, caressing his tawny mustache, an amused smile stealing over his insolent dissipated face.

"Oh, is that you, Sir Arthur?" she exclaims, with scant courtesy, knowing that her husband has a strong personal objection to that gentleman. "I did not know you were here."

"Came half-hour 'go. Pleasure a-finding Miss Lefroy in the grounds; did not go the house," he answers languidly. "Lovely aft'noon, ain't it?"

"Lovely," she answers shortly, sitting down beside Pauline, with an irritated gesture that says as plainly as words could say, "You're in the way, sir; your departure would be acceptable."

But he takes not the slightest notice; and presently, after a few half whispered sentences, he and Pauline rise together for the ostensible purpose of examining some early rose-blooms in the pleasure-ground, leaving her alone.

"Horrid man!" she mutters indignantly. "How can Pauline stand him? She knows perfectly well too that Tom objects to his coming here. If his morals are as bad as his manners, I don't wonder he does, I'm sure! And, oh dear me, I remember the days when I used to imagine a Guardsman an angel of fascination and manly grace, something every girl must fall down before and worship at the first glance, not an insolent goat-faced clown like—Well, I am getting bitter! I hope he'll go soon, in time for me to go over that bill with Pauline before Tom returns. I wonder has he seen it yet? If he has, I shall not be able to look him in the face. One hundred and eighty-four pounds! More than the whole six of us had to live on for two years! One hundred and eighty-four pounds! It grows bigger every time I think of it. One—"

"Addie, Addie, my love!"

She starts, and then leans forward in an attitude of breathless, puzzled expectancy, her hands clasped. Was she dreaming? Did her senses deceive her? Surely a voice whispered her name, a voice that takes her back with a thrill of reluctant pain to a summer night four years ago.

She turns and finds herself clasped in a man's arms, feels a shower of kisses falling on her scared and shrinking face.