to believe in her theories of food. She won't make you a martyr to them. She measures every half-ounce of what she eats; but she won't starve you, and I am glad to think, Sheila, that you have brought a remarkably good and sensible appetite with you from Lewis. Oh, by the way, take care you say nothing against Marcus Aurelius."

"I don't know who he was, dear," observed Sheila, meekly.

"He was a Roman Emperor, and a philosopher. I suppose it was because he was an Emperor that he found it easy to be a philosopher. However, my aunt is awful nuts on Marcus Aurelius-I beg your pardon, you don't know the phrase. My aunt makes Marcus Aurelius her Bible, and she is sure to read you bits from him, which you must believe, you know."

"I will try," said Sheila, doubtfully, "but if

"Oh, it has nothing to do with religion. I don't think anybody knows what Marcus Aurelius means, so you may as well believe it. Ingram swears by him, but he is always full of odd crotchets."

"Does Mr. Ingram believe in Marcus Aurelius ?" said Sheila, with some accession of interest.

"Why, he gave my aunt the book years ago confound him!—and ever since she has been a nuisance to her friends. For my own part, you know, I don't believe that Marcus Aurelius was quite such an ass as Plato. He talks the same sort of perpetual commonplaces, but it isn't about the True, and the Good, and the Beautiful. Would you like me to repeat to you one of the Dialogues of Plato-about the immortality of Mr. Cole, and the moral effect of the South Kensington Museum?"

"No, dear, I shouldn't," said Sheila. "You deprive yourself of a treat, but never mind. Here we are at my aunt's house."

Sheila timidly glanced at the place, while her husband paid the cabman. It was a tall, narrow, dingy-looking house of dark brick, with some black

green ivy at the foot of the walls, and with crimson curtains formally arranged in every one of the windows. If Mrs. Lavender was a rich old lady, why did she live in such a gloomy building? Sheila had seen beautiful white houses in all parts of London-her own house, for example, was ever so much more cheerful than this one; and yet she had heard with awe of the value of this depressing little mansion in Kensington Gore.

The door was opened by a man, who showed them upstairs, and announced their names. Sheila's heart beat quickly. She entered the drawing-room with a sort of mist before her eyes; and found herself going forward to a lady who sat at the further end. She had a strangely vivid impression, amid all her alarm, that this old lady looked like the withered kernel of a nut. Or was she not like a cockatoo? It was through no anticipation of dislike to Mrs. Lavender that the imagination of the girl got hold of that notion. But the little old lady held her head like a cockatoo. She had the hard, staring, observant and unimpressionable eyes of a cockatoo. What was there, moreover, about the decorations of her head that reminded one of a cockatoo when it puts up its crest and causes its feathers to look like sticks of celery?

"Aunt Lavender, this is my wife."

"I am glad to see you, dear," said the old lady, giving her hand, but not rising. "Sit down. When you are a little nervous, you ought to sit down. Frank, give me that ammonia from the mantelpiece."

It was in a small glass phial, and labelled "Poison." She smelt the stopper, and then handed it to Sheila, telling her to do the same.

"Oh, I say, aunt," cried Lavender, with a fine show of carelessness, "you mustn't go and spoil her hair. I think it is very pretty as it is; and that woman of yours would simply go and make a mop of it. You'd think the girls nowa-days dressed their hair by shoving their head into a furze-bush and giving it a couple of turns."

She paid no heed to him; but turned to Sheila, and said—

"You are an only child."

"Yes."

"Why did you leave your father?" The question was rather a cruel one ; and it stung Sheila into answering bravely

"Because my husband wished me.' "Oh. You think your husband is

to be the first law of your life?" “Yes, I do.”"

"Even when he is only silly Frank Lavender !"

Sheila rose. There was a quivering of her lips, but no weakness in the proud, indignant look of her eyes.

"What you may say of me, that I do not care. But I will not remain to

hear my husband insulted.”

"Sheila," said Lavender, vexed and anxious and yet pleased at the same time by the courage of the girl. "Sheila, it is only a joke-you must not mindit is only a bit of fun

"I do not understand such jests," she said, calmly.

"Sit down, like a good girl," said the old lady, with an air of absolute indifference. "I did not mean to offend you. Sit down, and be quiet. You will destroy your nervous system if you give way to such impulses. I think you are healthy; I like the look of you; but you will never reach a good age, as I hope to do, except by moderating your passions. That is well; now take the ammonia again, and give it to You don't wish to die young, I

me.

Sheila rose, with a great swelling in her throat. All her courage had ebbed away. She had reflected how pained her husband would be if she did not please this old lady; and she was now prepared to do anything she was told, to receive meekly any remarks that might be made to her, to be quite obedient, and gentle, and submissive. But what was this tall and terrible woman going to do to her? Did she really mean to cut away those great masses of hair to which Mrs. Lavender had objected? Sheila would have let her hair be cut willingly, for her husband's sake; but, as she went to the door, some wild and despairing notion came into her head of what her husband might think of her, when once she was shorn of this beautiful personal feature. Would he look at her with surpriseperhaps even with disappointment?

"Mind you don't keep luncheon late,” he said to her, as she passed him.

She but indistinctly heard him, so great was the trembling within her. Her father would scarcely know his altered Sheila, when she went back to Borva; and what would Mairi sayMairi who had many a time helped her to arrange those long tresses, and who was as 'proud of them as if they were her own? She followed Mrs. Lavender's tall maid up-stairs. She entered a small dressing-room, and glanced nervously round. Then she suddenly turned, looked for a moment at the woman, and said, with tears rushing up into her eyes

"Does Mrs. Lavender wish me to cut my hair?”

The woman regarded her with astonishment.

"Cut, miss?-ma'am, I beg your

pardon. No, ma'am, not at all. I suppose it is only some difference in the arrangement, ma'am. Mrs. Lavender is very particular about the hair; and she has asked me to show several ladies how to dress their hair in the way she likes. But perhaps you would prefer letting it remain as it is, ma'am?"

"Oh no, not at all!" said Sheila. "I should like to have it just as Mrs. Lavender wishes-in every way just as she wishes. Only, it will not be necessary to cut any?"

"Oh no, miss-ma'am ; and it would be a great pity, if I may say so, to cut your hair."

Sheila was pleased to hear that. Here was a woman who had a large experience in such matters, among those very ladies of her husband's social circle whom she had been a little afraid to meet. Mrs. Paterson seemed to admire her hair as much as the simple Mairi had done; and Sheila soon began to have less fear of this terrible tiringwoman, who forthwith proceeded with her task.

The young wife went down-stairs with a tower upon her head. She was very uncomfortable. She had seen, it is true, that this method of dressing the hair really became her-or, rather, would become her in certain circumstances. It was grand, imposing, statuesque; but then she did not feel statuesque just at this moment. She I could have dressed herself to suit this style of hair; she could have worn it with confidence if she had got it up herself; but here she was the victim of an experiment-she felt like a schoolgirl about for the first time to appear in public in a long dress-and she was terribly afraid her husband would laugh at her. If he had any such inclination, he courteously suppressed it. He said the ma-sive simplicity of this dressing of the hair suited her admirably. Mrs. Lavender said that Paterson was an invaluable woman; and then they went down to the dining-room on the groundfloor, where luncheon had been laid.

The man who had opened the door waited on the two strangers; the in

valuable Paterson acted as a sort of henchwoman to her mistress, standing by her chair, and supplying her wants. She also had the management of a small pair of silver scales, in which pretty nearly everything that Mrs. Lavender took in the way of solid food was carefully and accurately weighed. The conversation was chiefly alimentary; and Sheila listened with a growing wonder to the description of the devices by which the ladies of Mrs. Lavender's acquaintance were wont to cheat fatigue, or win an appetite, or preserve their colour. When, by accident, the girl herself was appealed to, she had to confess to an astonishing ignorance of all such resources. She knew nothing of the relative strengths and effects of wines; though she was frankly ready to make any experiment her husband recommended. She knew what camphor was, but had never heard of bismuth. cross-examination, she had to admit that eau-de-Cologne did not likely to be a pleasant liquor before going to a ball. Did she not know the effect on brown hair of washing it in soda-water every night? She was equably confessing her ignorance on all such points, when she was startled by a sudden question from Mrs. Lavender. Did she know what she was doing?

On

seem to her

She looked at her plate; there was on it a piece of cheese to which she had thoughtlessly helped herself. Somebody had called it Roquefort-that was all she knew.

"You have as much there, child, as would kill a ploughman; and I suppose you would not have had the sense to leave it."

"Is it poison?" said Sheila, regarding her plate with horror.

"All cheese is. l'aterson, my scales." She had Sheila's plate brought to her, and the proper modicum of cheese cut, weighed, and sent back.

"Remember, whatever house you are at, never to have more Roquefort than that."

"It would be simpler to do without it," said Sheila.

"It would be simple enough to do

without a great many things," said Mrs. Lavender, severely. "But the wisdom of living is to enjoy as many different things as possible, so long as you do so in moderation, and preserve your health. You are young-you don't think of such things. You think, because you have good teeth and a clear complexion, you can eat anything. But that won't last. A time will come. Do you not know what the great Emperor, Marcus Antoninus, says?' In a little while thou wilt be nobody and nowhere, like Hadrianus and Augustus.""

"Yes," said Sheila.

She had not enjoyed her luncheon much-she would rather have had a ham sandwich and a glass of spring water on the side of a Highland hill than this varied and fastidious repast accompanied by a good deal of physiology-but it was too bad that, having successfully got through it, she should be threatened with annihilation immediately afterwards. It was no sort of consolation to her to know that she would be in the same plight with two emperors.

"Frank, you can go and smoke a cigar in the conservatory, if you please. Your wife will come upstairs with me and have a talk."

Sheila would much rather have gone into the conservatory also; but she obediently followed Mrs. Lavender upstairs and into the drawing-room. It was rather a melancholy chamber-the curtains shutting out most of the daylight, and leaving you in a semi-darkness that made the place look big, and vague, and spectral. The little, shrivelled woman, with the hard and staring eyes, and silver-grey hair, bade Sheila sit down beside her. She herself sat by a small table, on which there were a tiny pair of scales, a bottle of ammonia, a fan, and a book bound in an old-fashioned binding of scarlet morocco and gold. Sheila wished this old woman would not look at her so. She wished there was a window open, or a glint of sunlight coming in somewhere. But she was glad that her husband was enjoying himself in the conservatory; and that for two reasons. One of them was that No. 165.-VOL. XXVIII.

she did not like the tone of his talk while he and his aunt had been conversing together about cosmetics and such matters. Not only did he betray a marvellous acquaintance with such things, but he seemed to take an odd sort of pleasure in exhibiting his knowledge. He talked in a mocking way about the tricks of fashionable women that Sheila did not quite like; and of course she naturally threw the blame on Mrs. Lavender. It was only when this old lady exerted a godless influence. over him that her good boy talked in such a fashion. There was nothing of that about him up in Lewis, nor yet at home, in a certain snug little smokingroom which these two had come to consider the most comfortable corner in the house. Sheila began to hate women who used lip-salve, and silently recorded a vow that never, never, never would she wear anybody's hair but her

own.

"Do you suffer from headaches?" said Mrs. Lavender, abruptly. "Sometimes," said Sheila. "How often? What is an average? Two a week?"

"Oh, sometimes I have not a headache for three or four months at a time." "No toothache?"

"No."

"What did your mother die of?"

"It was a fever," said Sheila, in a low voice, "and she caught it while she was helping a family that was very bad with the fever."

"Does your father ever suffer from rheumatism?"

"No," said Sheila. "My papa is the strongest man in the Lewis, I am sure of that."

"But the strongest of us, you know," said Mrs. Lavender, looking hardly at the girl, "the strongest of us will die and go into the general order of the universe; and it is a good thing for you that, as you say, you are not afraid. Why should you be afraid? Listen to this passage.'

She opened the red book, and guided herself to a certain page by one of a series of coloured ribbons.

P

"He who fears death either fears the loss of sensation or a different kind of sensation. But if thou shalt have no sensation, neither wilt thou feel any harm; and if thou shalt acquire another kind of sensation, thou wilt be a different kind of living being, and thou wilt not cease to live.' Do you perceive the wisdom of that?"

"Yes," said Sheila, and her own voice seemed hollow and strange to her in this big and dimly-lit chamber. Mrs. Lavender turned over a few more pages, and proceeded to read again; and as she did so, in a slow, unsympathetic, monotonous voice, a spell came over the girl, the weight at her heart grew more and more intolerable, and the room seemed to grow darker.

"Short then is the time which every man lives, and small the nook of the earth where he lives; and short too the longest posthumous fame, and even this only continued by a succession of poor human beings, who will very soon die, and who know not even themselves, much less him who died long ago.' You cannot do better than ask your husband to buy you a copy of this book, and give it special study. It will comfort you in affliction, and reconcile you to whatever may happen to you. Listen. Soon will the earth cover us all; then the earth, too, will change, and the things also which result from change will continue to change for ever, and these again for ever. if a man reflects on the changes and transformations which follow one another like wave after wave and their rapidity, he will despise every thing which is perishable.' Do you understand that?"

For

"Yes," said Sheila; and it seemed to her that she was being suffocated. Would not the grey walls burst asunder and show her one glimpse of the blue sky before she sank into unconsciousness? The monotonous tones of this old woman's voice sounded like the repetition of a psalm over a coffin. It was as if she was already shut out from life, and could only hear in a vague way the dismal words being chanted over her by the people in the other world. She rose, steadied herself for a moment by

placing her hand on the back of the chair, and managed to say

"Mrs. Lavender, forgive me for one moment; I wish to speak to my husband."

She went to the door-Mrs. Lavender being too surprised to follow her-and made her way down-stairs. She had seen the conservatory at the end of a certain passage. She reached it; and then she scarcely knew any more, except that her husband caught her in his arms as she cried

"Oh, Frank, Frank, take me away from this house-I am afraid it terrifies me!"

66

:

Sheila, what on earth is the matter? Here, come out to the fresh air. By Jove, how pale you are! Will you have some water?"

He could not get to understand thoroughly what had occurred. What he clearly did learn from Sheila's disjointed and timid explanations was that there had been another "scene," and be knew that of all things in the world his aunt hated 66 scenes" the worst. As soon as he saw that there was little the matter with Sheila beyond considerable mental perturbation, he could not help addressing some little remonstrance to her, and reminding her how necessary it was that she should not offend the old lady upstairs.

And

"You should not be so excitable, Sheila," he said. "You take such exaggerated notions about things. I am sure my aunt meant nothing unkind. what did you say when you came away?" "I said I wanted to see you. Are you angry with me?”

moment

"No, of course not. But then, you see, it is a little vexing-just at this Well, let us go upstairs at once, and try and make up some excuse, like a good girl-say you felt faint-anything-"

"And you will come with me?"

"Yes.

Now do try, Sheila, to make friends with my aunt. She's not such a bad sort of creature as you seem to think. She's been very kind to me-she'll be very kind to you when she knows you more."