prepare with her own hand a basin of arrowroot
for the supper of Lady Tallis, who
was not looking strong, she said. " My
arrowroot is excellent, I assure you," said
Mrs. Lockwood to Maud." Her ladyship
will give me a certificate. I am a very
fair cook, am I not, my lady?"

"Indeed, then, I don't know the thing
you can not do, if you try!" said Lady
Tallis, enthusiastically. And, when Mrs.
Lockwood was gone, she descanted to
Maud on their landlady's talents and good
qualities in a strain of unmixed eulogy.

"Now, are ye not enchanted with her?"
she asked of her niece.

"I—yes; I like her very much. She is
very clever, I think."

"Oh, clever's no word for it. She is an
extraordinary little creature; quite
extraordinary. You don't know all that's in
that head of hers yet, I can assure you."

"I should imagine that she has known
much sorrow and trouble," said Maud,
musingly. " I wonder what her history
is!"

"Oh, as to that," rejoined her ladyship,
to whom the suggestion appeared to be a
new one, " I don't suppose she has much
of a history at all. How would she?
She and her husband were quite humble
people."

"But, aunt, she has evidently received
a good education, and she has the manners
of a lady, moreover. Did you notice, too,
in reading the title of that French book
that lay on the table, how admirably she
pronounced it?"

"My dear child, for that matter, we had
a dancing-mistress once, who spoke French
beautifully! And she was quite an ignorant
person. Her father was a Parisian
barber, we were told; but she called herself
Mademoiselle de Something or other.
I forget the name now. Any way, Mrs.
Lockwood is vastly superior to her!"

The incoherence of these remarks, and
the impossibility of conjecturing what it was
they were intended to prove, silenced Maud.

Presently Lady Tallis exclaimed, in a
sudden, pouncing way, which her physical
delicacy alone prevented from being
absolutely violent: " And ye haven't told me
yet how you like my little Queen of the
Fairies!"

"Yes, aunt, I said that I liked Mrs.
Lockwood very much: only—- "

"Only what?"

"Well, it seems rather a pity that she
should take such a gloomy view of things,
does it not?"

"Gloomy! Now upon my word and
honour a cheerfuller little creature I never
saw or heard of! That is my notion, my
dear girl."

"Gloomy is not the right word, either."

"Very much the wrong word, I should
say."

"Yes; but what I mean is, that—
that—-. It is rather difficult to explain.
Mrs. Lockwood is cheerful, but it is not
because she finds things to be good, Aunt
Hilda."

"Well, then, all the more credit to her
for being cheerful."

"I think she would be more likely to
be credulous of an evil report than a good
report; not because she is ill-natured, but
because she expects evil to happen, and
thinks it likely. I am sure that she must
have had some great trouble in her life."

At the beginning of the following week
Hugh Lockwood returned home.

He had, of course, already learned from
his mother the fact that Lady Tallis and
her niece were inmates of the house in
Gower-street.

He was able to inform his mother of
many particulars of the blow which had
fallen on the family at the vicarage. The
whole country was ringing with the story.
Hugh had heard it discussed in all sorts of
tones, by all sorts of people. A great
number were inclined to blame Mr. Levincourt
severely, for having been culpably
negligent in regard to his daughter's
association with a man like Sir John Gale.
On the other hand, many persons (especially
matrons of Mrs. Begbie's stamp) declared
that bolts and bars would not have
sufficed to keep Veronica Levincourt in
respectable obscurity; that they had always
known, always seen, always prophesied,
how it would end; that the girl's
vanity and coquetry had long made them
cautious of permitting her to associate with
their daughters; and that it was all very
well to blame the man—of course he was a
wretch! no doubt of it!—but he must
have been regularly hunted down, you
know, by that artful, abandoned, dreadful,
dreadful girl!

"There's nothing so cruel as the cruelty
of one woman to another!" said Hugh,
after recounting some of these sayings to
his mother.

"Is there not?" said Mrs. Lockwood,
composedly. " And Mrs. Sheardown," she
pursued after a moment's pause, " is she
too among the number of the cruel?"

"No; Mrs. Sheardown could not be