glance; they are prepared to think and do for you whatever is kindest and best. They do not assume that you are their natural enemy until they know the contrary, but accept you at once in a brotherly and sympathetic way.

And all this is founded on principle-clear, deep, thoroughly defined principle. They are attuned to listen to the still small music of humanity.' They think with the wise old heathen: 'Homo sum; nihil humani a me alienum puto.' They have obtained some measure of insight and sympathy. They are sure that the story of their own lives is repeated in some sort of way in the lives of those around us. Whenever there is any frankness, generosity, or breadth of nature, if the years bring the proper lessons of maturity, those who

have learned to comprehend human life will have arrived at some such fixed rule of life as this. Before some also there will ever be present the divine portraiture of love, the portraiture of the perfect gentleman, in which, methinks, the element of cantankerousness seems to find no place. 'Love suffereth long, and is kind; love envieth not; love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.' Perhaps the very reverse of all these would best describe the character of the really cantankerous

man.

It was but one word, yet it rent the stillness of the silent house as a flash of lightning cleaves the darkness of night.

There was not a living creature within the walls but heard that cry.

'Lord bless and save us, what's that said Mrs. Larrup in the kitchen.

Simonds, meditating in his pantry concerning the shortcomings of all gentry, ran up, actually ran up, into the hall, wondering what had happened. Maids left off making beds, Winter threw down her mending, Miss Aggles opened the door of the library, Rachel ran down the stairs from her room like a lapwing, to find her sister at the bottom of the flight.

'Wina,' she asked, 'what is the matter?

'Mamma!' gasped the girl hoarsely, 'mamma!'

The door stood open, and Rachel passed in. She just looked at the bed, looked at the quiet figure lying there, and then, with an exceeding bitter cry, fell on her knees beside all that remained of the mother who had never loved her.

By this time the whole household was either gathered in the room or assembled on the landing. Some of the women screamed, others uttered exclamations. The only person who retained his

VOL. XXXVII. NO. CCXXVIII.

presence of mind was Mr. Simonds.

'Don't stand there with your mouth wide open,' he said severely to the page-boy, but run for the doctor. Be off, now!'

The lad, needed no second bidding; he sped down the front staircase like an arrow, and was rushing across the hall, when he encountered a severe - looking elderly lady, who asked,

What has happened?'

'Her ladyship,' answered the boy; they say she is dead in her bed.'

Dead! For a moment hall and garden and staircase seemed to reel before her sight; then Miss Aggles walked straight up to the next floor, and entered the chamber filled with wondering and frightened women.

No one took any notice of her, no one seemed to think her appearance an intrusion. If the greatest stranger passing along the road had walked in at that moment, not even Mr. Simonds could sufficiently have recollected himself to bar his progress.

Edwina was lying on a sofa, face downwards, sobbing hysterically. Rachel was kneeling beside the bed, holding one of the cold hands that would never feel warmth more. The girl seemed

stunned.

'Come away, dear,' said Miss Aggles, raising her almost by force. 'Come with me;' and led her unresisting out of the room, and through the first open door they came to.

NN

'You are Rachel? went on Miss Aggles gently.

'Yes, I am Rachel;' and then she began to cry-cry as if her very heart would break.

The old lady gathered her in her arms. She laid the young head on her bosom, and stroked her hair, and tried to soothe her grief.

'Poor child,' she said, 'poor child; don't try to stop your grief; lie there, and let it have its way. Your first tears were shed on my breast. Many and many a night I have rocked you to sleep. You don't remember me, but

Rachel lifted her tear-stained face.

'No; I don't remember you,' she answered. 'Have I ever seen you before?'

For the first four years of your life, I was going to say, you saw nobody else,' was the reply. 'I nursed you when you were a baby; my hands kept you from falling when first you tried to walk; you were my own very child; after me everywhere, with little tireless pattering feet; and then you were taken away, and I lost you. Lay your head down again, and cry; there, dear, see, I am crying too.'

'I must go to Edwina,' said the girl, who apparently heard little or nothing of Miss Aggles' speech; she will want me.'

6

Stay here; I will fetch her; and Miss Aggles, disappearing softly, shortly after returned with Edwina, her face sunken with weeping and distorted by grief.

'O Rachel, Rachel !' she cried; and, clasped in each other's arms, the sisters' tears burst forth afresh.

They will be better alone together,' murmured Miss Aggles; 'they don't know me;' and she passed out of the room and closed the door behind her.

She went back again to the chamber where the woman, who had so rarely been still in life, now lay so strangely quiet amongst the stir and buzz of excitement around her.

'The doctor has been sent for, I think,' said Miss Aggles, standing on the threshold, and speaking to Simonds.

Mr. Simonds, with whom had originated this idea, intimated that such indeed was the fact.

'Don't you think, then, that some of these women had better go down-stairs again? asked Miss Aggles.

It was a speech calculated to hurt his spirits; but Mr. Simonds felt nothing in Holyrood House had of late been very much worth taking notice of;' so he merely motioned to the cock, who, after a few whispered words, in her turn beckoned to the housemaids, and then they all proceeded to the basement, where spirits were shortly produced, and each one incited the other to drink, if it was only a teaspoonful, to try and get over the shock.' They stood in a group and talked about the matter. They rang the changes upon the turn it had given them.' Singly they had to tell how they heard Miss Edwina's scream, and the particular way the sound affected them; also the point of view from which they first caught sight of 'her ladyship.'

Mrs. Larrup declared a baby could not look more peaceful and beautiful.

The upper housemaid differed from this opinion, and said it was the most terrible sight she ever

saw.

The kitchenmaid thought the poor dear lady was like nothing so much as a mask of stone;' while the under-housemaid struck horror into the hearts of her

hearers by wondering whether there would be an inquest.

Mr. Simonds was disgusted. 'I am astonished at you,' he said indignantly; 'to talk of such things as inquests in respectable houses! I wonder what Sir John would think if he knew the word had even been so much as mentioned under his roof.'

'I am ashamed of you, Marianne,' said her senior both in age and rank.

'And I'm sure you have given me quite another turn,' exclaimed the cook. Yes, Mr. Simonds; please just the least drop more; that gal has shook me all over with her inquests.'

Well, one can only talk about what a person knows,' retorted Marianne. "There was my own cousin fell off a scaffold and broke his neck; and they had an inquest on him, though it was plain enough what he died of.'

"That was different, quite different,' remarked Mr. Simonds loftily.

'I don't see it,' said Marianne defiantly.

'Well, let's have an end of this, at any rate,' entreated Mr. Simonds; we don't want none of your inquests here.'

'No; and we won't have none of them,' added the cook.

'It's such a low way of talking,' remarked the upper-housemaid, with her nose well in the air.

anything more suitable to say, you had better hold your tongue. A hard thing, indeed, if a lady of title can't die in her bed without having such comparisons institooted; and in high dudgeon Mr. Simonds betook himself to his pantry, all the more angry because, in his inmost heart, he thought there might be some reason in Marianne's remark.

It is bad enough as it is,' he considered; but an inquest! I can't well imagine what Sir John would feel about that.'

Meantime, up- stairs, Miss Aggles, seated near the bed, waited patiently for the coming

of the doctor.

Winter, who alone remained in the room, went through all the pantomime she considered only decent and regular, but which Miss Aggles so improperly omitted.

She took sips of water; she breathed deep sighs; she averted her head from the quiet figure lying so motionless; she sobbed in a demonstrative, though subdued, manner; she swallowed with difficulty, having apparently to contend with a great ball in her throat; she fidgeted from place to place, and at length attracted Miss Aggles' attention.

6

Are you ill asked that lady, in the low tone which already pervaded the whole house.

'It's my 'art, ma'am. I have such a weak 'art; and the least thing gives me such palpitations. O, to think of my lady-'

'If you would rather not remain here, I will stay with her till the doctor comes; perhaps you had better go.'

'And leave you, ma'am?' said Winter reproachfully; 'I couldn't think of doing that.'

'You need not mind me,' said Miss Aggles; 'you had better go.'

But Winter would not go. 'My lady's rings and brooches were lying all about,' she explained afterwards, and of course it was my place to stay.'

Miss Aggles turned her chair a little so as to screen her face from the maid, and sat looking on the dead. It seemed to her like a dream, save that the horror which lives in dreams was absent.

She felt almost as though she must shortly waken; as though the room, the place, the bed, its still occupant, were all mere parts and parcels of a night vision a moment might dispel.

She knew she was not shocked, or sorry, or touched. She could not forget. If she had found her niece in a mean garret, her face worn, her surroundings sordid, the fount of pity might have been unsealed, and refreshing waters rushed through her soul; but, as it was, everything in the room, every article on which her eye rested, reminded her how sordid had been her sin-the price she had counted upon receiving for ruining two lives.

In death her brow was not more marble than her heart had been in life; her cheek had not lost its roundness; grief had not mingled gray with her dark hair; for twenty-one years and more she had led a life of sin; and remorse had not stamped a wrinkle on her face, had not marred the beauty of her features.

For others the pain and the trouble, for her the ease and the joy; for them struggle and misery, for her victory and happiness. She had lain soft; she had eaten of the best; she had been clad in fine raiment; she had walked delicately; the world had been made smooth for her; she had never loved any one; never suffered a loss from any one; she was selfish to the inmost core, and

'Miss Aggles, you here?' It was Doctor Dilton who spoke; he had come so softly into the room that she did not hear his ap proach.

The spinster got up, and, still with that numbed sensation of unreality on her face, gave him her hand.

He looked at the quiet figure. 'Dead,' he said softly, as though any word might waken her from the sleep into which she had fallen; and he laid his hand upon her forehead, and then upon her heart.

'Quite dead.'

Miss Aggles did not answer him. She stood, her fingers clutching the back of her chair, a spasm seeming to contract her throat.

'What do you know about it? he asked.

'Nothing,' she struggled to reply. I came to see her this morning by appointment; the youngest daughter said she would tell her I had come-and-she-found her as you see.'

'Was your mistress complaining last night?' said the doctor, turning to the maid.

'No, sir; on the contrary; her ladyship,' with a marked emphasis on the word, 'observed she did not know when she had felt so well.'

tor.

Humph!' commented the doc

Between the bed and the fireplace stood a small table. He walked round to it and lifted a little bottle, looked at the label, held the vial up to the light, took out the cork, and smelt the contents.

'Sleeping drops,' explained Winter, seeing the doctor was looking at her. Her ladyship latterly took them often.'

'Last night he inquired.
'No, sir; not last night. She