anybody for anything, he doesn't even send round a collection plate."

"No-I noticed that!-awfully jolly!"-said a good-natured looking man who had been walking beside Julian Adderley, a certain Lord Charlemont whose one joy in life was motoring-" Awfully game! Ought to make him quite famous!"

"It ought,-it ought indeed!" agreed Adderley-"I do not suppose there is another clergyman in England who obliterates the plate from the worship of the Almighty! It is so remote so very remote!"

"I think he's a funny sort of parson altogether," said Cicely meditatively-"He doesn't beg, borrow or steal,-he isn't a toady, he isn't a hypocrite, and he speaks his mind, Queer, isn't it?"

"Very!" laughed Lord Charlemont-"I don't know another like him, give you my word!"

"Well, he can't preach," said Lady Beaulyon, decisively— "I never heard quite such a stupid sermon."

All the members of the house-party glanced at one another to see if this verdict were generally endorsed. Apparently some differed in opinion.

"Didn't you like it, Eva?" asked Maryllia.

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"My dear child! Who could like it! Such transcendental stuff! And all that nonsense about the Soul! In these scientific days too!"

"Ah science, science!" sighed Mr. Bludlip Courtenay, dropping his monocle with a sharp click against his top waistcoat button-" Where will it end?"

Nobody volunteered a reply to this profound proposition. "Souls' are noted for something else than being saved for heaven nowadays, aren't they, Lady Beaulyon?" queried Lord Charlemont, with a knowing smile.

Lady Beaulyon's small, rather hard mouth tightened into a thin line.

6

"I really don't know!"-she said carelessly-"If you mean the social Souls,' they are rather unconventional certainly, and not always discreet. But they are generally interestingmuch more so, I should think, than such 'Souls' as the parson preached about just now."

"Indeed, yes!" agreed Mrs. Bludlip Courtenay-"I can imagine nothing more tiresome than to be a Soul without a Body, climbing from height to height of a heaven where there is no night, no sleep, no rest for ever and ever. Simply

dreadful! But there!-one only goes to church for form's sake just as an example to one's servants-and when it's done, don't you think it's best to forget it as soon as possible?"

She raised her baby eyes appealingly as she put the question. Everybody laughed, or rather sniggered. Real honest laughter is not considered 'good form' by certain sections of society. A gentle imitation of the nanny-goat's bleat is the most seemly way for cultured persons to give vent to the expression of mirth. Maryllia alone was grave and preoccupied. The conversation of her guests annoyed her, though in London she had been quite well accustomed to hear people talk lightly and callously of religion and all religious subjects. Yet here, in the quiet country, things were different, somehow. God seemed nearer,—it was more difficult to blaspheme and ignore Him. And there was a greater sense of regret and humiliation in one's self for one's own lack of faith. Though, at the same time, it has to be reluctantly conceded that in no quarter of the world is religious hypocrisy and sham so openly manifested as in the English provinces, and especially in the small towns, where, notwithstanding the fact that all the Sundays are passed in persistent church and chapel going, the result of this strenuous sham piety is seen in the most unchristian back-biting and mischief-making on every week-day.

But St. Rest was not a town. It was a tiny village apart,— utterly free from the petty pretensions of its nearest neighbour, Riversford, which considered itself almost 'metropolitan' on account of its modern red-brick and stucco villas into which its trades-people 'retired' as soon as they had made enough money to be able to pretend that they had never stood behind a counter in their lives. St. Rest, on the contrary, was simple in its tastes, so simple as to be almost primitive, particularly in its religious sentiments, which the ministry of John Walden had, so far, kept faithful and pure. Its atmosphere was therefore utterly at variance with the cheap atheism of the modern world, and it was this discordancy which struck so sharply on Maryllia's emotional nature and gave her such a sense of unaccustomed pain.

At the Manor there were a few other visitors who had not attended church,-none of them important, except to themselves and the society paragraphist,-none of them distinguished as ever having done anything particularly good, or useful in the world,--and none of them possessing any very

6

unconventional characteristics, with the exception of two very quaint old ladies, who were known somewhat irreverently among their acquaintances as the 'Sisters Gemini.' They were of good birth and connection, but, being cast adrift as wrecks on the shores of Time,-the one as a widow, the other as a spinster, had sworn eternal friendship on the altar of their several disillusioned and immolated affections. In the present day we are not overtroubled by any scruples of reverence for either old widowhood or old spinsterhood; and the Sisters Gemini' had become a standing joke with the selfstyled 'wise and witty' of London restaurants and late suppers. Lady Wicketts and Miss Fosby were their actual names, and they were happily unconscious of the unfeeling sobriquet bestowed upon them when they were out of hearing. Lady Wicketts had once been a reigning 'beauty,' and she lived on the reputation of that glorious past. Miss Fosby aided and abetted her in this harmless self-deception. Lady Wicketts had been painted by all the famous artists of her era, from the time of her seventeeth birthday to her thirtieth. She had been represented as a Shepherdess,' a 'Madonna,' a 'Girl with Lilies,' a 'Lady with a Greyhound,' a 'Nymph Sleeping,' and more briefly and to the purpose, as 'Portrait of Lady Wicketts,' in every exhibition of pictures that had been held during her youth and prime. Miss Fosby carried prints and photographs of these works of art everywhere about with her. She would surprise people by casually taking one of them out of her album and saying softly "Isn't that beautiful?"

And then, if the beholders fell into the trap and uttered exclamations of rapture at the Shepherdess' or the 'Madonna,' or whatever allegorical subject it happened to be, she would smile triumphantly and say-Lady Wicketts!'—to all appearance enjoying the violent shock of incredulous amazement which her announcement invariably inflicted on all those who received it.

"Not possible!" they would murmur-"Lady Wicketts

"Yes,-Lady Wicketts when she was young,"-Miss Fosby would say mildly-"She was very beautiful when she was twenty. She is sixty-seven now. But she is still beautiful,don't you think so? She has such an angelic expression! And she is so good-ah!-so very good! There is no one like Lady Wicketts!"

All this was very sweet and touching on the part of Miss Fosby, so far as Miss Fosby alone was concerned. To her

there was but one woman in the world, and that was Lady Wicketts. But the majority of people saw Lady Wicketts in quite another light. They knew she had been, in her time, as unprincipled as beautiful, and that she had gone the pace' more openly than most of her class. They beheld her now without spectacles, an enormously fat woman, with a large round flaccid face, scarred all over by Time's ploughshare with such deep furrows that one might have sown seed in them and expected it to grow.

But Miss Fosby still recognised the 'Shepherdess,' the 'Madonna' and the Girl with Lilies,' in the decaying composition of her friend, and Miss Fosby was something of a bore in consequence, though the constancy of her devotion to a totally unworthy object was quaintly pathetic in its way. The poor soul herself was nearer seventy than sixty, and she was quite as lean as her idol was fat, she had never been loved by anyone in all her life, but,-in her palmy days, she had loved. And the necessity of loving had apparently remained a part of her nature, otherwise it would have been a sheer impossibility for her to have selected so strange a fetish as Lady Wicketts for her adoration. Lady Wicketts did not, in any marked way, respond to Miss Fosby's tenderness,-she merely allowed herself to be worshipped, just as in her youth she had allowed scores of young bloods to kiss her hand and murmur soft nothings in her then 'shell-like' ear. The young bloods were gone, but Miss Fosby remained. Better the worship of Miss Fosby than no worship at all. Maryllia had met these two old ladies frequently at various Continental resorts, when she had travelled about with her aunt,—and she had found something amusing and interesting in them both, especially in Miss Fosby, who was really a good creature,and when in consultation with Cicely as to who, among the various people she knew, should be asked down to the Manor and who should not, she had selected them as a set-off to the younger, more flippant and casual of her list, and also because they were likely to be convenient personages to play chaperones if necessary.

For the rest, the people were of the usual type one has got accustomed to in what is termed 'smart' society nowadays,listless, lazy, more or less hypocritical and malicious,-apathetic and indifferent to most things and most persons, save and except those with whom unsavoury intrigues might or would be possible,-sneering and salacious in conversation, bitter and carping of criticism, generally blasé, and suffering

from the incurable ennui of utter selfishness, the men concentrating their thoughts chiefly on racing, gaming, and Other Men's Wives, the women dividing all their stock of emotions between Bridge, Dress, and Other Women's Husbands. And when Julian Adderley, as an author in embryo, found himself seated at luncheon with this particular set of persons, all of whom were more or less well known in the small orbit wherein they moved, he felt considerably enlivened and exhilarated. Life was worth living, he said to himself, when one might study at leisure the little tell-tale lines of vice and animalism on the exquisite features of Lady Beaulyon, and at the same time note admiringly how completely the united forces of massage and self-complacency had eradicated every wrinkle from the expressionless countenance of Mrs. Bludlip Courtenay. These two women were, in a way, notorious as 'leaders' of their own special coteries of social scandalmongers and political brokers; Lady Beaulyon was known best among Jew financiers; Mrs. Courtenay among American 'Kings' of oil and steel. Each was in her own line a 'power,'-each could coax large advances of money out of the pockets of millionaires to further certain schemes' which were vaguely talked about, but which never came to fruition,-each had a little bevy of young journalists in attendance,-press boys whom they petted and flattered, and persuaded to write paragraphs concerning their wit, wisdom and beauty, and how they 'looked radiant in pink' or 'dazzling in pea green.' Contemplating first one and then the other of these ladies, Julian almost resolved to compose a poem about them, entitled 'The Sirens' and, dividing it into Two Cantos, to dedicate the First Canto to Lady Beaulyon and the Second to Mrs. Courte

nay.

"It would be so new-so fresh!" he mused, with a bland anticipation of the flutter such a work might possibly cause among society dove-cots-" And if all the truth were told, so much more risqué than 'Don Juan'!"

Glancing up and down, and across the hospitable board, exquisitely arranged with the loveliest flowers and fruit, and the most priceless old silver, he noticed that every woman of the party was painted and powdered except Maryllia, and her young protégée, Cicely. The dining-room of Abbot's Manor was not a light apartment,-its oak-panelled walls and raftered ceiling created shadow rather than luminance,-and though the windows were large and lofty, rising from the floor to the cornice, their topmost panes were of very old