 is not she?"

"Yes; is not she?" assents the mother eagerly. "Oh, I cannot say how grateful I am to you for having cheered her up as you have done! Oh," with a low sigh that seems to bear away on its slow wings the last echoes of her late mirth, "if it could only last!"

"Why should not it last?"

"If nothing fresh would happen!"

"Why should anything fresh happen?"

She answers only indirectly;

"'Fear at my heart, as at a cup,
The life-blood seemed to sip.'
"Sometimes I think that Coleridge wrote those lines expressly for me." After a pause, in a voice of anxious asking: "She has not mentioned him to you lately, has she?"

"No."

"That is a good sign. Do not you think that that is a good sign? I think that she is getting better; do not you?"

For a moment he cannot answer, both because he is deeply touched by the confidence in him and his sympathy evidenced by her appeal, and for a yet more potent reason. Little she guesses how often, and with what heart-searchings and spirit-sinkings, he has put that question to himself.

"I do not know," he replies at last, with difficulty; "it is hard to judge."

"You have not told him that we are here?" in a quick, panic-struck tone, as of one smitten with a new and sharp apprehension.

"Oh no!"

"You do not think that he is at all likely to join you here?"

"Not in the least!" with an almost angry energy, which reveals to himself how deeply distasteful the mere suggestion of Byng's reappearance on the scene is to him.

Mrs. Le Marchant heaves a second sigh. This time it is one of relief.

"Then I do not see," with a sudden bound upwards into sanguineness which reminds him of her daughter, "why we should not all be very comfortable."

Jim is pondering in his mind upon the significance of this "all," whether it is meant to include only Mr. Le Marchant, or whether, under its shelter, he himself may creep into that promised comfort, when she of whom they have been speaking re-enters. She has a packet of photographs, presumably suitable for amputation, in her hand, in which is also held a telegram, which she extends to
