She heard from Sir John regularly; she had prayed that she might go and see him at the office, but he would not hear of it.

'Some day,' he wrote, I will explain everything, but when that day arrives I shall lose you.'

'NEVER,' she wrote back. You will always be to me my own dear father, as I shall be to you your own loving child.'

What a stab was there! what a cruel game of cross-purposes it all seemed what weary days those were! what a time of terrible suspense, of cruel uncertainty !

Rachel,'-it was Lady Moffat who spoke, standing in her daughter's room, and looking with wistful eyes that yet saw nothing of the landscape over the yews in Kensin ton that had grown so sadly familiar to her daughter's sight, if I asked you to do something for me, I wonder whether you would refuse my request?

You wonder, mamma!' repeat ed the girl, surprised. Surely you know there is nothing in the world you could ask me I would not do.'

'Do you mean that, Rachel? for I have not been a good mother to you; I never cared for you; I never loved you.'

'I know that,' answered the tender heart, with a little sob of pain; 'but it makes no difference. I would do anything I could, as though you loved me as much as you love Edwina and the boys.'

Lady Moffat stopped short. She was walking with a slow swinging movement, not habitual to her, up and down the room. There was a rest in Rachel's presence she did not feel elsewhere; a repose about her which, at the moment, seemed grateful to the stormy violent nature which had come to grief at last on a cruel iron-bound coast.

'I am not certain,' she answered, I ever loved Edwina or the boys. I don't think, Rachel, it is in me to love anything.'

In a moment the girl was beside her mother, had drawn her to a seat, and lay weeping on her breast.

'What can I do for you? she asked after a little time. Only tell me only try me. Do you want me to go to papa? Yes, whether he is angry or not-0, he would not be long angry with me-I will go. What do you wish me to say? You will let me try to help you, won't you?'

Yes, Lady Moffat had no argument to urge against so laudable a desire. But she could not tell her yet, she said-not just yet; and so for a time they talked together, while the twilight deepened and the shadows crept on, and the figures of both became indistinct in the gathering darkness; and Winter wondered what on earth her ladyship was doing in Miss Rachel's room.

'What I want you to do for me one day-some day very soon, perhaps,' said the elder woman at last deliberately, and yet as if the words were wrung from her, 'is to go to your father-to stand between me and your father. When I ask you, will you?'

'Of course, dear mamma,' the girl answered, all unconscious of her mother's meaning; 'how could you think otherwise?'

That evening Simonds remarked at dinner her ladyship appeared in excellent spirits.

'I daresay she has good news from Sir John, and that he may pull through yet,' considered the butler. I hear he has gone to France again. Getting help, perhaps, from some of those foreign bankers.'

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

FOR BETTER, for worse.

'Pur down your work, aunt, and give me all your attention; I want to speak to you seriously;' and Mr. Palthorpe laid aside his book, and, crossing his arms upon the table near which he sat, answered with a grave wistful smile Miss Aggles' look of apprehension.

'All speaking has been serious. lately,' she said, folding up her knitting and sticking the needles carefully in it, as though her very soul were concentrated in the operation.

'Yes; but I have now made up my mind,' he answered. 'I have been a long time about it, certainly; still-"

'It was right for you to weigh the matter fully,' she replied firmly, though her voice trembled a little at first. 'I, for one, can see no reason why you should hesitate to free yourself at last from a trouble which has burdened all the best years of your life.'

He did not say anything for a minute; he only glanced round the pleasant cosy-looking room with an expression of quiet con

tent.

Save for the servants, he and Miss Aggles were alone in the house. General Graham and his daughter had been gone for some time to stay with friends in the country; and it was tacitly understood amongst those who, till so recently, deemed they were always to make their pleasant home together, that when Mr. Palthorpe left Palace Gardens for good, as he meant to do ere long, the Grahams would return to the house and take up their abode in London.

Very little was said on the subject between General Graham and

To Ravelsmede! What in the wide world induced you to go there?'

'I wanted to see the old place. The Hall is to be sold.'

'Sold!' repeated Miss Aggles. 'How does that happen?'

'I do not know; but there the boards were up, and I asked leave to view the house and went through the familiar rooms. How small they looked! but O, how inexpressibly dear they seemed! I wandered among the plantations, and climbed the hill from which I used to watch the ships passing down the Channel; and then I walked slowly, not with the eager haste of former days,' he added, with a sad smile, 'down the path which led to the old orchard, where I used to see her with the sunlight glancing on her lovely face, that I thought once was the most beautiful in all the land.'

'It is beautiful still,' said Miss Aggles; but he put the remark aside with a gesture which proved that between the past and the present there was, for him, a gulf fixed as broad and deep as that

described in the parable as stretching, in the next world, between the rich man and the poor.

If the joy and the sorrow, the harvest of love I thought I was reaping, the worldly loss I actually sustained, were matters only of yesterday instead of twenty and odd long years, they could not have seemed more present with me than was the case. I thought the whole affair over, considered my own part in it and hers, and I have determined,' he drew a quick gasping breath ere he added, to let her and her sin both rest; I shall not sue for a divorce.' Keep

'Not sue for a divorce! yourself tied to a woman who has been more cruelly false to you than woman ever was before!'

'Even so,' he answered quietly. 'I have made up my mind; I feel no uncertainty on the subject now. I took her for better or worse; out of my own headstrong will I married her; and though it all turned out worse, I am not going to shrink from my part of the punishment. Look you,' he went on, the last time I saw the Hall the trees were green about it and the flowers in bloom, and the blue sky overhead and the bees humming amongst the ivy; now driving clouds made both sea and land look bleak and cold and gray. There was not a flower to be seen; the trees were bare, the birds silent; down in your old orchard not a bud, not a ruddy apple or a golden plum; no waving corn, no grass knee-deep in the meadows; but still it was the same place, and she-God help us both!-is the same woman she was.'

There ensued a long silence. Then said Miss Aggles, 'You ought to think most seriously about all this. The day may

come-'

'No,' he answered, the day

may not come; the day shall not come. What I say I have decided, and I now know a rest and a peace I never experienced since last I returned to England. If I were to sue for a divorce, now I know very well why I should strive for it, and that I should never afterwards experience one easy moment. Nothing I could do would help her; even if Sir John now married her, that could not undo the scandal caused by a public trial. And then there is Rachel to consider also.'

'Yes; what are you going to do about her ?

'I must have my daughter,' was the answer. 'I will tell you all my plans, though I can scarcely say yet how I mean to carry them out. To-morrow I will see Dilton, and get him to settle matters with Sir John; I could not do that myself-I could not; and there is no need to take the lawyers into our confidence. I mean to buy the Hall. O, I forgot to mention, it turns out by some curious twist of fortune that old Nelfield's eighty thousand reverts to me. His direct heirs are dead, and my mother, it seems, if she had survived would now have been the nearest of kin. I shall make a handsome settlement on Madge, and see what can be done for Lassils; but I do not intend to give up the whole amount. And now I want you to do something for me. Before I see Dilton to-morrow I wish to put the matter beyond the power of recall. I want you to go and tell her so far as I am concerned she need fear no exposure. She may rely upon my promise. For his own sake and his children's Sir John will keep matters quiet. There will be a separation, but the world need not know why they separated. I have thought it all over; the greatest difficulty

I see is how we are ever to explain things to Rachel.'

'And we know nothing about how she has grown up,' said Miss Aggles helplessly. People say she is a sweet nice girl; but it is hard to tell. I have so wished to see her, and never yet succeeded, though I often pass the house half a dozen times a day.'

'I have seen her often,' he answered, with a dreamy look of satisfaction in the eyes which were so like her own. 'How? Aggles eagerly.

when?' asked Miss

Many places,' he replied; 'followed her as she went on her little errands of charity; walked behind her and her sister in Kensington; seen her on the terrace behind Holyrood House; and watched her wandering thoughtfully round the paths in Sir John's garden. Many and many a time I have stood behind the tree growing close beside the fence dividing Kensington from Palace Gardens, and seen her looking out of the window of her own room, with a sad troubled look on her young face. O, yes! I know my daughter well; I wish she had half or quarter as much acquaintance with me.'

Loyal, faithful, unselfish, time had not changed his nature, years had wrought no difference in his reluctance to give pain-in his ability to suffer silently.

Beyond all other perplexity this seemed greatest, how to hint to his child a word of her mother's shame. If he could have left that as it was, he would even have given up his daughter. But there is a point beyond which a man cannot go; and with him this point seemed reached when he thought of Rachel living on with the woman who had spoiled his whole existence-believing herself the daughter of the man whose

blood could not have washed out the wrong committed.

'I will go if you wish,' said Miss Aggles, after a moment's pause, reverting to their previous subject of conversation; ‘but I certainly do think you ought not to decide such an important question in a hurry.'

'I have not decided it in a hurry,' he answered. 'Day and night it has never been absent from my mind for months past. I have tossed on seas of doubt, and temptation, and passion, and revenge; but I know now what I ought to do, and I shall not draw back. When will you see herto-night?'

'Not to-night,' said Miss Aggles, shrinking a little from the proposal.

Then write to her,' he persisted; 'write that you will call to-morrow morning early. Say also you can take her good news; otherwise she may, perhaps, refuse to see you.'

'But why,' asked Miss Aggles, 'should I write at all?'

'Because,' he answered, 'I want to feel, before I sleep, one step is taken on a road I know to be right.'

Reluctantly, because she believed in this last concession to his worthless wife Thomas Palthorpe was putting away all hope he might ever possess of a happy home, of domestic felicity, in the years to come; and yet thankfully, because her own heart still yearned over the woman she had taken to her arms when her own mother forsook her-and she would have spared her open shame and disgraceful exposure at any cost to herself-Miss Aggles drew writing materials towards her and finished a note, which she handed across to her companion.

"Thank you,' he said, folding it up; I will see it is sent immediately.'

'O,' she entreated, 'just think over the matter for another hour ---only one hour.'

'Not one minute!' he answered

firmly, and, leaving the room, despatched a messenger to Holyrood House.

Ere long a verbal reply was returned:

'Her ladyship was much obliged, and would be glad to see Miss Aggles at the hour mentioned.'

As the door closed behind the servant who delivered this message Mr. Palthorpe and Miss Aggles looked at each other and smiled, in spite almost of their own inclination.

'Her ladyship, indeed!' said Miss Aggles indignantly. Her ladyship!'

But Mr. Palthorpe made no remark, only sat for a little time gazing intently at the fire.

Not, perhaps, with the best will in the world, but still with as good a grace as she could assume, Miss Aggles, after breakfast next morning, tied the strings of her oldfashioned bonnet which she called her 'old woman's bonnet'in an elaborate bow under the chin, and betook herself to Holyrood House.

been sleeping very badly, and the doctors laid great stress upon her getting sleep, if possible.

While Winter was delivering herself of these various statements Edwina came in.

'You are the lady mamma was expecting to call this morning, I suppose?' she said. 'I am so sorry she is not up. Won't you have a cup of tea or coffee?'

No; Miss Aggles had breakfasted, but expressed a desire to know at what hour Lady Moffat's awaking might generally be looked for.

Edwina did not know. Sometimes she rose at six, and sometimes not till one.

If you think it in the slightest degree likely she won't get up until one to-day, I am sure I shall not stop,' observed Miss Aggles, rising. rising. I had an appointment with her, and I think she ought to have kept it.'

There was that in the visitor's manner which, taken in connection with her mother's manifest pleasure on the arrival of Miss Aggles' note the previous evening, impressed Edwina considerably.

She turned to the maid.

'Do you think we might venture for once?' she asked dubiously.

'O dear, no, miss,' answered Winter; 'I would not dare to do such a thing. I did once at Scarborough, if you remember, and her ladyship was very angry with me, very angry indeed.'

'Well, I'll risk that,' said Edwina determinedly. If you kindly wait a few minutes longer,' she added, speaking to Miss Aggles, 'I will tell mamma you are here;' and she left the room, followed by Winter, who whispered as they were crossing the hall,

'I would not do it, Miss Edwina, I would not, indeed. The lady lives close by here, and we