exclamation of horror, and her startled cry of "Ah, it cannot be, Netta."

"What?" asked Janetta, evenly, not very much astonished, for Miss Lisle was rather prone to interjections in a general kind of way.

But there was something worthy of a note of exclamation this time evidently, for Mabel's pretty pink and white face was growing very white, and was full of terror and distress, that she, feeling she ought to control herself before her companion, tried vainly to check.

"What is it?" asked Janetta again, putting her hand out to take the paper. "Any of our friends dead, Mabel?"

Mabel however held the paper tightly, saying confusedly, Nothing, nothing, Netta, you must not see-I mean-how foolish I am. Let me pour you out some more chocolate, dear, shall I?"

This, of course, excited Lady Marchmont's curiosity still more; not her fears, only her curiosity, for there was but one person in the world that she loved, and very few that she cared. for, out of her own immediate circle. The death of her husband never entered her head, it was too terrible to think of. Besides, was he not coming back some day-some day. And would she not, when he did, forget all the past? When the glamour of that woman's eyes was gone and he was himself, would she not sweep all remembrance of these lonely days away for ever? Yes, she meant to do this. At the bottom of her heart there lay this hope that he would come back, would come back to her, and if he offered her the tiniest morsel of dear, true love, she would take it and be thankful, would take it, and tend it, and watch it so tenderly, that it would not be able to help growing up strong and earnest, like her own. She hardly knew this little root of hope was flourishing in its hidden nook, but it was, and flourishing vigorously too.

"Yes, you may pour me out some more chocolate, dear,"

she answered, laughingly, as she got up and prepared for a playful struggle for the possession of the paper, "whilst I look for this news myself, since you will not tell it me.”

Mabel sat down helplessly. Janetta had the paper now, and was running her finger rapidly down the column in question. There was no help for it, she would see it directly. The frightened girl would have liked to run from the room, but the truth was, she felt sure she could not manage to walk, even just then. So she waited, her head turned away, waited for the shriek she thought would follow Janetta's reading of the dreadful intelligence, much as a sinning school-boy would wait for the stroke of the master's cane upon his hand. But it did not come, and the seconds of intervening time until she again ventured to look at Janetta, seemed hours to her.

The paper was almost hiding the latter's face when Mabel did look round, and she could not tell whether she had seen the tidings or not. Still, straight, immovable as a statue, the forsaken wife stood seeing, with stiff, fixed eyes, the words that told her she might now call herself widow in reality, for she was a wife no longer. Over and over again, her eyes saw these words, without taking in their full meaning, and there were but a few of them to tell it.

"Suddenly, Sir Gilbert Marchmont, Bart., of Marchmount Hall, Sussex, England."

Not a date, not a syllable, as to the place of his death, nor the malady he died of.

She put her arm

Unable to endure the suspense a moment longer, for she felt as though, if there were to be any shrieks, they would certainly come from herself, Mabel got up and went round to Janetta, so that she could see her face. tenderly round the stricken woman's waist and called her softly by her name, but she might have spoken to the dead for the symptoms of recognition that were given her. Janetta never moved her eyes from those terrible words eating her

heart, and even digging, digging, digging, so pitilessly at the root of that little tree of hope so firmly planted there.

She was not thinking of anything, her senses were stunned, numbed. That something awful had come to her, she knew; but there were no memories, nor regrets, nor hopes, crowding closely up as yet: they were to come. The blow had been struck, the agony was unfelt in its intensity.

"Netta, Netta," cried Mabel, almost beside herself with terror and grief, "speak, darling, don't look so, Netta, you frighten me; oh, that somebody would come."

Mabel's frantic prayer was heard quickly. Jack Barton, Mr. Lisle, and her lover, were already at the door. Reluctant as most men are at such crises, neither was brave enough to undertake the painful mission they had come upon, himself, and so they came together.

Janetta looked up as they entered, much to poor Mabel's relief. She took in at a glance the object of their visit to her at this hour, they carried it so plainly on their faces. Their faces were full of sympathy, and she felt she could not bear even a word from them now. She let her father take the paper from her hand and put it out of her sight, and a strange feeling of pity for him came over her. He was striving to find fitting words of comfort, something soothing to say, to tell her, but could find none, it was such a terrible ordeal this, for his newly-found child to pass through. Janetta saw it; saw it as though she was looking at a sorrowful painting, could take notice of it, and feel for it, but with her own woe beside it, too deep to mingle with other.

"Don't look so."

This was all Jack Barton could find to say, but he took his daughter in his arms and laid her head upon his breast. She let him do this passively, and her father was happier, he thought she took comfort from it.

The other three went silently out of the room. Mabel

crying softly, John Lisle with moist eyes, and Charies Auster with his fiancée's hand in his, yet wondering what kind of a man was this Gilbert Marchmont that his deserted wife should love and mourn for him. Wondering why that he could love the fair little girl beside him, with no character at all to speak of, when he had once loved so passionately, so truly, Janetta, Lady Marchmont.

But he did, and the ashes of his passion for his old love had sprung up into an unutterable pity for her disappointed life.

"Father."

Janetta was the first to speak, and Jack Barton drew a great breath of thankfulness.

It was coming to her now, the avalanche of sorrow had fallen upon her, and she was feeling its chillness, the tree in her heart was broken, crushed, trampled under foot, but the root was there still-still, for there is nothing so full of life, so ready to bear, so able to hold up as hope.

"It does not say where, father.'

How grateful was Jack Barton that his daughter was not given to shrieking and hysterics, he could have pardoned hysterics under such circumstances as these, but none came, and he was grateful. He did not know that the little figure in his arms was enduring quietly almost the bitterness of death, and that but for that unquenchable hope she clung to, she would most likely have been a raving mad woman.

"No," said Mr. Barton, " and that is strange."

He did not say so, but he was thinking, had thought immediately he read the guardedly worded announcement, that the omissions were purposely made, so that no clue should be obtained to the dead man's former place of residence.

No, it is not strange," said Janetta, the stony look coming back to her face for a moment.

Mr. Barton did not reply; Janetta's words troubled him, they

were strange, at all events. He had found out that she loved her husband, and he had an idea that now she hardly knew what she was saying, grief had unhinged her somewhat, and no wonder.

"Perhaps not," he said, willing to give in to her, whatever direction her mood took.

Janetta saw his thoughts again. He did not know that, knowing what she did, her words were rational enough. How was he to guess that there existed somebody else who claimed her husband living and dead too?

And with her mind, travelled thus far along the road of her sorrow, Janetta's yearning for "the touch of the vanished hand" grew so hard to bear, that the pitying, helpful tears, came to her aid at last.

She burst into weeping; terribly quiet weeping.

"He is mine, you know, he is mine," she said.

"Yes, hush, hush, dear." Jack Barton talked as though Janetta was a little child that needed comforting, and it rather irritated her. She had kept him in the dark about her suspicions-more than suspicions—but his ignorance was rather trying at this moment. Running along the course of the widow's grief was a thread of indignation and of resentment mingled, not towards the dead man, but towards that other, and it made her moods curiously changeful.

"He is mine,” she said again; "and, father, I will see him, I have a right to see him. I will see the place, she, they have

put him.”

Jack Barton did not say, "Hush, hush," to this, he was beginning to find a fragment or two of "something to take hold of" in this Marchmont mystery. That there was a significant meaning attached to that hastily recalled “she,” was plain to him, there was another woman in the matter somewhere. But whom? John Lisle and he had talked it over many a time, and not the shadow of a woman could possibly be