been. However, she would return at once, and find out the truth of the matter.

Thus it came about that two days after Maurice's remand, and two days before that appointed for his wedding, Mrs. Wyndham unexpectedly returned to Clonard.

'Miles, is it you or Wingfield?' she asked, even before she had got off the car.

'What?' asked Miles impatiently, for her return was most inopportune.

it ?'

'That all this in the papers is about?'

'Wingfield? What on earth could Wingfield have to do with

'But you never were in India,' she said tearfully, as he helped her off the car. Miles neither expressed nor felt the least curiosity about the meaning of this mysterious importation of Wingfield and India into the case. He was silent, not from any discourtesy, but from the certainty of the explanation of one difficulty leading to the creation of two in Mrs. Wyndham's mind. Invariably, in trying to find a clue in that tangle, he tugged at the wrong threads, and had to leave it more hopelessly inextricable than he found it.

'But you never were, Miles?' persisted his wife as she entered the house, half fearing from his silence that he had been.

'Not that I remember; and certainly not the day before yesterday when I did this thing the papers abuse me about, if that's what you mean.'

'You did it!' she exclaimed aghast, sinking into a chair in the hall.

'Pooh! it's nothing, Bridget,' he said, concerned at sight of her concern, and at the thought of what she would suffer and make him suffer when the impending storm-to which this was as nothing-broke upon him.

'Miles, what is it?' she gasped in the tone of an adjuration. 'Tell me the worst; I can bear it.'

'Bridget, don't make a scene out of nothing,' Miles replied irritably. Come into the breakfast-room, and I shall try to explain the little there is to explain to you.'

In the breakfast-room Miles tried patiently to explain the precise relative positions of Norah, Maurice, and himself in the case which excited such furious comment in the newspapers; but Mrs. Wyndham's mind stopped dead short at the introduction into it of Norah in the bewildering character of a witness against Maurice.

I couldn't have believed it!' she exclaimed., 'It was Maurice

this, and Maurice that, and always Maurice, as if he could say or do nothing wrong; and then to turn round like this against him!'

'She's compelled to give evidence against him, if you mean Norah. She can't help herself.'

'Can't help saying what's not true! Now, Miles, you said it wasn't true.'

'What she has to say is true; it's the construction which will be put upon it that's not true.'

Miles then proceeded to explain once more that Maurice meant by his words to Norah he was on his way to convey Land League relief to the Moronys, but that he would be understood to mean he was on his way to pay the price promised by the League to the assassins of Mr. Estcourt. While Miles was plodding painfully again over this ground, Mrs. Wyndham's mind was away on a voyage of discovery. She disliked Maurice almost as much as Miles and Norah liked him; for he not only paid her no pretty attentions, but avoided, ignored, and ventured once or twice even to snub her. In truth, Maurice resented the slights and snubs which Mrs. Wyndham delighted to inflict on Norah in the presence of gentlemen generally, and particularly in that of such a pronounced admirer of her daughter as Maurice himself. There was no love lost then between these two. Hence it happened that Mrs. Wyndham abused Maurice as heartily as Miles and Norah defended and praised him.

Now, if, speaking generally, men think with their heads and women with their hearts, the organ of ratiocination, in such girlish persons of either sex as Mrs. Wyndham, is their vanity. Anyone capable of the crime of Lèse-majesté to their vanity is, in their eyes, capable of every atrocity. Therefore, when Mrs. Wyndham did at last get an inkling of the case, she perceived that Norah's evidence, so far from being false, was but too, too true. There was not the shadow of a shade of doubt in her mind that Maurice was guilty of whatever this thing was wherewith he was charged. It's only fair to allow to Mrs. Wyndham's womanly intuition the credit of having arrived at this conclusion without any aid whatever from the evidence by which the press had reached it. Maurice, then, was certainly guilty; but of course her husband and daughter defended him. They always did. This was bad enough; but that they should involve themselves in his infamy, and even attract the slow, unmoving finger of scorn to the house of Barrythis was monstrous. Was it for this she had wept sore, and packed in a hurry, and flown home with a heart full of sympathy? She did well to be angry. Miles!' she cried, breaking in upon his

VOL, LIV. NO. CCXVI.

KK

explanation, Miles, I shall not permit my family to be disgraced by this disgraceful case. I shall not permit it!'

'But what can we do, my dear?' remonstrated Miles, in pursuance of his usual Machiavellian policy of guiding her, as a ship is guided, by turning the rudder in the opposite direction to that in which she is to be moved. But what can we do, my dear? Norah must give evidence, if she's called upon, in court.'

Unfortunately, however, Mrs. Wyndham meant by her family,' not Norah, but the Barrys of Castle Barry.

'But not false evidence, Miles; she's not forced to give false evidence to shield this Mr. Studdert.'

This was rather bewildering, since but now she had charged Norah with the intention of giving false evidence to convict Maurice. Mrs. Wyndham had, however, gathered dimly from Miles' last explanation that Norah meant to mislead people by her evidence into putting an innocent construction on a conversation which, if honestly reported, would convict Maurice.

'I wish you'd make up your mind, Bridget, on which side you expect Norah to commit perjury-for, or against, Maurice-as I might be able to clear up that point to-day,' said Miles with the resigned despondency of an obstructed Premier in his tone.

'Of course I never can understand anything.'

'If you only understood that, my dear, we might get on,' retorted Miles ungallantly, fretful through a world of worries; but he added immediately and apologetically:

'Now, Bridget, it's all nonsense to talk about understanding, or not understanding, when you can master the whole case in a moment, if you'll only do me the favour to listen to me. If Norah appears in court she will have to repeat precisely the words Maurice said to her that night; and if she so repeats them, he will be convicted of being an accessory to the assassination of Mr. Estcourt. If we can prevent her appearing against him, the case will most probably break down.'

'Prevent her telling the truth!' exclaimed Mrs. Wyndham with virtuous indignation.

It's truth, and it isn't truth, you see,' replied Miles, determined to get this point into her head. It's misleading,' and he proceeded once more to show how fatally it must be misconstrued. But, as Mrs. Wyndham wouldn't at all beg the question of Maurice's innocence, Miles had at length to give up the hope of making good even this first step towards her conversion to Norah's plan for securing Maurice against a conviction. In fact, Mrs. Wyndham was at no pains to conceal her satisfaction at the prospect of Maurice's conviction; since it would prove to demonstration that

she had been always right, and her husband and daughter always wrong, about this cavalier young gentleman.

Poor Miles, already harassed on all sides, was much depressed and perplexed by this new difficulty. Norah hardly would or could be married now without her mother's knowledge-a knowledge which meant furious disapproval. How deeply this disapproval would sink into the girl's heart and double the gloom of her sad wedding, Miles knew well, and was wretched in the knowledge. He was not prone to thinking of himself first in any matter; but in this matter-notwithstanding the foretaste the newspapers had given him of the disastrous consequences of this wedding to himself nearly all his thoughts and doubts and fears were about Norah. He had kept the newspapers from her, and forbidden Maurice, who was staying with them, from communicating to her their contents; but here was a trouble from which there was no shielding her.

Giving up at last all hope of bringing his wife to a reasonable frame of mind, he went out to seek Norah and Maurice in the grounds.

'Your mother's returned, dear,' he said, when at length he came upon them seated together in a summer-house. Norah started up nervously and the crimson died out of her face. 'You've told her, father,' for Miles looked his wretchedness.

'No, dear; she's not in a very reasonable mood at present.' 'But we must tell her now.'

'I don't know what to say about it, dear. She will be more bitterly opposed to it even than I feared.'

'Oh, but I must tell her,' looking anxiously up into Maurice's face.

Maurice was wakened from a delicious dream of love to the thoughts which had tormented him before he became lost in it. He couldn't from the first shake off the feeling that he was doing a base thing in allowing Miles and Norah to sacrifice themselves to his safety.

Against this feeling, so far as Norah was concerned, was to beset the certainty-for it was a certainty-that if she had to give her evidence and he was convicted, she would accuse herself of his conviction and be infinitely more wretched than any conceivable consequences of their hurried marriage could make her. But there was Miles also to consider, and Maurice knew that the storm which had already broken upon him was nothing to the tempest that would assail him when Norah's marriage became known, and when the reason for it became something more than suspected. Maurice, in the lucid intervals of love, was miserable about the

disgrace in which Miles' generous adhesion to Norah's plan would inevitably involve him. He had again and again spoken of this to Miles, who, however, pooh-poohed the papers. Sure it's only the crackling of thorns under a pot, my boy. Pot-boilers' pots boil over now and then, and there's a deal of scum and froth and bubble, but nobody's a penny the worse for it all.' Nevertheless, Maurice knew well that Miles was worried and wounded by these bitter and almost universal attacks, all the more because he felt that he was about to do something that would in some degree justify them.

Such were the thoughts to which Maurice was now awakened out of his dream of love. When Norah appealed to him by her look as to what was to be done now that her mother had appeared, it was a relief to his conscience to say, 'I think she should be told.' He knew that Mrs. Wyndham would throw her whole weight into the scale against him, but he felt it to be only fair-now that the newspapers had opened cry, and given Miles a foretaste of the consequences of his consent to their marriage-that the case should be reopened.

"And if she disapproves?' asked Miles.

'I think if it was explained' Norah began very doubtfully and hesitatingly.

'There isn't time to explain it,' interrupted Miles with some impatience, remembering how little progress he had been able to make so far in trying to convey to Mrs. Wyndham all the points of the situation. 'But even if there was, it wouldn't make the least difference. There is not the slightest hope of persuading your mother to consent, dear.'

'But, father, when she's here-what shall I do?' she cried, looking in distress from one to the other.

'It comes to this, dear,' said her father gently; you must do it either without her knowledge, or without her consent.'

Norah remained silent for some moments, revolving these alternatives in her mind in painful perplexity. I think, father, I ought to tell her,' she said at last-so deciding, because Maurice had so decided.

Then, dear, I should do it to-morrow evening,' Miles said decidedly. He wished the disclosure postponed to the eve of the wedding-in part, in the hope of being able to prepare his wife fairly for it before then; and, in part, in the fear of her noising it abroad.

Very well, father,' Norah replied faintly, quailing already before the dread duty she had accepted.

'You'd better go in now to see her, dear; you'll find her