why He gave me no others,-He saw that I was not fit for the care of children. I, who ought to have been bright and merry to teach Tina to be happy, was sad. It was a wonder that she should care to be with me as she did. Children like merriment, not sadness.

It must
She

have been the sweetness of her nature. saw I was solitary and sad, and she tried to be something to me. That must have been it." "It gave her pleasure to be with you," Nollath said, consolingly. "I've seen you

together, and I know."

She did not reply, and the silence of the room was broken only by the monotonous moan of the sea, and the howling of the wind which had risen. The subdued light of the small lamp did not penetrate the corners, which were in a soft shadow. The firelight flickered on the bright brass fender, on the bead eyes of a stuffed gull, on a small bookcase, and sent dancing shadows on the floor, on the red curtains drawn before the windows, on the low whitewashed ceiling. Very cosy and peaceful the small interior looked, and its reposeful appearance was accentuated by the howling and moaning outside it.

Yet to some tempers the quiet would have been an inducement to restlessness rather than peace, and the battle of the elements outside preferable to the calm negation within. Nollath, had it not been for his interest in the woman before him, would have found idleness in the small confined area irksome; would have experienced a feeling similar to that which sometimes overtook Olive when unable to go out of doors. As it was, he was content to remain in the quiet little room, finding his apparent inaction bearable.

The silence was broken by Mrs. Metcalf's tap on the door. She had come to tell Nollath that his horse would be at the door in a few minutes. Olive's back was to Mrs. Metcalf, and Olive did not take any notice of her entrance. Mrs. Metcalf was a sedate little woman, with a quiet voice and quiet movements. When she left the room, Nollath, looking at Olive, saw that there were tears on her thin cheeks.

She was not sobbing, but the tears were coming quickly. In her physical weakness she was unable to restrain them if anything called them forth, and she who had been so keenly

ashamed of her tears in the Cathedral was not ashamed of them now, was as indifferent to them as to all else.

Her train of thought had not been disturbed by Mrs. Metcalf's entrance, and she took up the conversation at the point at which it had been left the idea which in a more healthy frame of mind would never have come to her, that Tina's death had been sent as a punishment to her mother.

"If He would only have given me a little longer trial I was going to be different. Didn't He know it, do you think?" her voice trembling piteously. He must have known, being omniscient. Perhaps He knew I couldn't do it, or perhaps He only wished to punish me for what I had been."

A vague speculation as to her conception of God fleeted across Nollath's mind as he rose to go. She looked up at him. "Going?" she said, "so soon."

"I hope to come earlier to-morrow," he said. She held out her hand. As he took it he told her that he would rather not have left her in tears. She withdrew her hand, and pulling out her handkerchief dashed it across her eyes.

"I shall not weep any more to-night," she said, letting him see her eyes, into which no more tears were coming. "I am always less morbid and foolish after you have talked to me. Good-night, and thank you. I won't cry any more to-night, silly, hysterical creature though I am."

CHAPTER II.

It had been wet all day, a wild windy day, the wind dashing madly over the long high cliffs, the rain pouring in torrents and washing away every vestige of the week-old snow. Towards evening the rain ceased, the sky cleared of its thick cloud, and the stars came out.

Olive was alone to-night, and in a wild unsettled frame of mind. For the first time since coming to Sorsby she had passed a day without seeing Nollath. Business had called him to London the previous evening, and he would not return to Parltown until too late to come over to see her that day.

She had not been out of doors, morning or afternoon. The morning she had spent in a dull occupation to which she was prone, staring out of the window on to cliff and sea; the afternoon in looking over some magazines and papers that Nollath had brought her. He had