“Candid, at any rate.  But I wish you clearly to understand that whatever obligation you may feel yourself under to me for what is past and gone, you have no claim of any kind upon me for the future.  The tie between us can be severed by me at any moment.”

“Seven years ago your ladyship impressed that fact so strongly on my mind that I have never forgotten it.  I have never felt myself to be other than a dependent on your bounty.”

“A very praiseworthy feeling, young lady, and one which I trust you will continue to cherish.  Not that I wish other people to look upon you as a dependent.  I wish—­” She broke off abruptly, and stared helplessly round the room.  Suddenly her head began to shake.  “Heaven help me! what do I wish?” she exclaimed; and with that she began to cry, and seemed all in a moment to have grown older by twenty years.

Janet, in her surprise, made a step or two forward, but Lady Chillington waved her fiercely back.  “Fool! fool! why don’t you go away?” she cried.  “Why do you stare at me so?  Go away, and send Dance to me.  You have spoilt my complexion for the day.”

Janet left the room and sent Dance to her mistress, and then went off for a ramble in the grounds.  The seal of desolation and decay was set upon everything.  The garden, no longer the choice home of choice flowers, was weed-grown and neglected.  The greenhouses were empty, and falling to pieces for lack of a few simple repairs.  The shrubs and evergreens had all run wild for want of pruning, and in several places the dividing hedges were broken down, and through the breaches sheep had intruded themselves into the private grounds.  Even the house itself had a shabby out-at-elbows air, like a gentleman fallen upon evil days.  Several of the upper windows were shuttered, some of the others showed a broken pane or two.  Here and there a shutter had fallen away, or was hanging by a solitary hinge, suggesting thoughts of ghostly flappings to and fro in the rough wind on winter nights.  Doors and window frames were blistering and splitting for want of paint.  Close by the sacred terrace itself lay the fragments of a broken chimney-pot, blown down during the last equinoctial gales and suffered to lie where it had fallen.  Everywhere were visible tokens of that miserly thrift which, carried to excess, degenerates into unthrift of the worst and meanest kind, from which the transition to absolute ruin is both easy and certain.

For a full hour Janet trod the weed-grown walks with clasped hands and saddened eyes.  At the end of that time Dance came in search of her.  Lady Chillington wanted to see her again.

(To be continued.)

SPES.

    “When we meet,” she said.  We never
      Met again—­the world is wide: 
    Leagues of sea, then Death did sever
      Me from my betrothed Bride. 
    When we parted, long ago—­