was by nature a restless creature, she remained sitting quietly for a couple of hours, crushed apparently by the weight of some heavy blow.

'You will not think of going back to London to-day, Mira,' Miss Aggles had said when she took the breakfast-tray up to her niece; and for answer Mrs. Palthorpe said wearily, 'Thank you, aunt.'

Towards midday, shaking off the weakness which had overpowered her, she rose, and after laving her face and hands, and bathing her head till her hair was soaked with wet, put on her bonnet and a light shawl, and proceeding down-stairs, told her aunt she thought of going for a little walk.

trod the oaken floor of the hall and crossed the threshold once so familiar; she passed through the orchard, where the Jeannetton apples had gathered a richer colour since the previous day, and walked straight to the field where her grandfather stood watching the labours of the reapers, who that morning had come up the lane talking cheerily in the early sunshine as they strode onward to their work.

It seemed to her as though years instead of hours had passed since she heard their voices. Life had changed for her totally, completely, since she listened to the song of the thrushes and the matins of the larks. It could not be that it was only that morning she had walked up to the Hall,

'Keep under the shade of the trees, then,' advised Miss Aggles, 'for the sun is very powerful.'

'Don't wait dinner for me,' went on Mrs. Palthorpe ; 'I could not eat anything.'

'You can have a morsel when you come in,' said Miss Aggles; there is some trout Betty shall cook for you if you could fancy that.'

'Thank you, aunt.' Mrs. Palthorpe was strangely subdued and quiet.

And, Mira, if there is aught it would be an ease to your mind to tell me, don't be afraid to speak.' Miss Aggles pretended to be looking in her work-basket for a needle as she said this, and did not even glance at her niece.

'You are very good,' Mrs. Palthorpe answered; but she did not add that she had a weight on her mind, or that if there were she meant to tell it.

She went slowly out of the room, turning at the door to give one wistful look around it; she

and Madam's flower-garden, and the closed blinds in the bedrooms, when no one was awake.

In the fields they were reaping the rich brown grain; the seed she had scattered she was yet to farm. Dreamily she went on, dreamily, yet with the step of one who is going forward to an end determined upon previously.

Are you better, Miry?' asked her grandfather, coming to meet her with an anxious look on his furrowed face. 'Your aunt said you had been taken with a faintness.'

I am better, grandfather,' she answered, still with that unaccustomed gentleness influencing voice and manner. 'It was the heat, I suppose.'

You don't look strong, as you used to do,' said the old man, with a jealous ring in his voice. You have lost your colour and your spirits. Ah, they may talk as they like about London, but there is no air like Hampshire air.'

There is not, indeed, grandfather,' she answered, humouring his fancy.

'Well, I won't, then, my girl; only don't you talk that way about being let stop and suchlike. Stop altogether would be best; but there, I must not say any more, I suppose.'

She touched his hard brown hand for an instant, and then, after speaking about other matters for a few minutes, walked slowly away.

She did not return to dinner; but then she had said she should not do so.

The afternoon passed by, the long sultry afternoon with clouds coming up betokening a thunderstorm. Tea-time arrived; still no Mira.

'I wonder where she can have gone,' marvelled Miss Aggles musingly.

'I suppose she hasn't taken the notion and flown off all of a sudden,' suggested the farmer.

'She would not do that,' said his daughter positively; and yet when tea was over she went up-stairs to see if her niece's belongings were still there.

Yes, still there; her little bag, her cloak, her umbrella, her brush and comb, her night-clothing.

'I wonder where she is,' thought Miss Aggles.

Shortly afterwards, having occasion to go to the desk where all her papers and accounts were kept, she chanced to notice, first, that the letter written at Mrs. Palthorpe's request, and which had been left sealed up just inside the top division, was missing; and second, that another letter that had come to the farm for Mr. Palthorpe, and which of course had never been delivered to him, was absent also.

Miss Aggles looked carefully for both, but could not find them.

6

'It is not once in six months I leave the key in the lock,' she considered meditatively; but I did leave the desk open to anybody to-day.' She went up-stairs again and looked in Mrs. Palthorpe's bag; the letters were not there. Then she put on her bonnet, and saying to her father, 'I am going down to Ravelsmede, and I will call and bring Rachel back with me,' set out along the dusty road.

It was a birthday of one of the children at the rectory, and Rachel had been asked to join in the festivities.

Miss Aggles walked fast, and ere half an hour appeared at the rectory door.

'I have come for Miss Rachel,' she said to the servant who opened the door.

'She went home long ago, miss,' answered the man. 'Her ma came and fetched her before luncheon.'

Miss Aggles fell back against one of the pillars supporting the verandah.

'There must be some mistake,' she was beginning, all of a tremble, when good Mr. Frants sud

denly appeared and drew her into the library.

'Don't keep me, I must go,' she implored; but he soothed her, and she told him what she feared.

All that evening, and all the next day, they searched for traces of Mrs. Palthorpe and her child. They telegraphed to. London; they put the matter in the hands of the police; they offered rewards; but all in vain. If the mother and daughter had vanished off the face of the earth they could not have disappeared more completely.

Most of the money put aside so carefully in the bank was spent in prosecuting the fruitless search; and, a goodly sum for people so situated, fifty pounds was at length, through the columns of the Times, offered to 'any one who should give such information,' &c.

This elicited a response.

A few lines arrived from Mrs. Palthorpe, telling them the child was well and happy; and the letter bore the postmark of a town in a foreign country very far away.

'I'll never see her more, then,' sobbed the poor old farmer when he heard the words read out; 'never. The little lass that was always at my heels like a dog, and had her father's honest blue eyes, and was the last of the old stock, and brought me my slippers, and said she was "ganfader's tessure"-I'll never see her more.'

He was right; till they meet in The Kingdom he will never see the 'little lass,' grown to womanhood, again.

CHAPTER XVII.

AFTER LONG YEARS.

EMPTY no longer. The house in Palace Gardens became all at once the scene of frantic activity, a field for speculation of every

description. People who did not know the Moffats in the least, who were never likely to know them, talked concerning the new tenants as though the occupancy of Holyrood House were certain to prove a matter of considerable importance to the speakers.

Given that a man in London be rich enough or notorious enough, and it is a mistake to suppose his outgoings and his incomings are regarded with no curiosity by his neighbours. Why, not only one half of all the idle folks living round and about the neighbourhood of Palace Gardens, but more than half of all the busy householders also, had something to say on the subject. Shopkeepers stood on the tip-toe of expectation. To serve such a family, say with prime joints; to wait upon them for orders; to send in groceries and butter and cheese and vegetables, would be delightful occupations. Saddlers considered how much they would tip the coachman; plumbers left their cards with a hopeful eye to severe winters and hard frosts. Corn-dealers wondered whether Sir John would patronise local tradesmen, or whether he had his oats direct from Mark-lane. Even undertakers sent circulars embellished and illustrated in a ghastly manner; and a man in the statuary way of business enclosed a descriptive pamphlet containing designs of every sort of hideous monument that could be erected to the memory of any dear departed.

These various tributes of respect and evidences of confidence in his solvency accumulated upon the marble slab in Sir John's hall, as orders to view had formerly done. Finally there came a day when they too were swept into the dustheap, to make way for cards of a different description, which fell

upon Holyrood House thick as hail. Many desirable' people had visited the Seatons; but many more were desirous of visiting the Moffats. If a man wanted to hide his light under a bushel, Palace Gardens was a bad place to select for the operation; and the house in the locality that Sir John Moffat had bought the worst he could have chosen with a view to isolation.

A mansion attached to which is 'a story' should never be purchased by a man solicitous of privacy. Some portion of the notoriety compassed by his predecessors is sure to descend to him; and ere long this retiring unobtrusive gentleman found that a large amount of notoriety had been, so to speak, capitalised about the place, and the interest accumulated for him. Further, in a great town, where a plain Mister may be anybody, a Sireven if he be only a knight-is regarded by the outside world as somebody.

There were many people-hundreds, thousands-who thought even a vague Sir John a very great person indeed; how much greater, then, did he seem when it was known he had actually bought the house Mr. Seaton had decamped from! that he had money to buy it, money to furnish it, money to keep it up as such an establishment ought to be kep,' to quote the words of one of the 'purveyors' who rushed to deliver cards!

Such a parading in and out of workpeople, such measuring, such critical contemplation on the part of the British artisan, such a running to and fro of a boy from the nearest public, such rearing of ladders and wheeling in of handcarts, and hurried visits on the parts of master tradesmen, such an invasion of all the rooms, such

smoking in solemn conclave when the heat and burden of a couple of hours' work had grown beyond endurance to the skilled labourers, who, if their own account might be trusted, were only too conscientious as regards their time.

It was, indeed, a sight to behold them at the breakfast-hour. When the clock began to strike the tools were laid down as though work had been arrested by the wand of a magician; and ere the last stroke of eight died away not a man was left on the premises save one, who elected to warm his tea over a fire in the library.

Ah!' said Mrs. Hemans, looking in at the gate on one occasion when a body of workmen were sauntering leisurely up the drive, ah!' and the old lady shook her head solemnly.

No doubt she thought the place had been more like a place' while it stood dark and empty and silent, and she was 'in residence.'

There were others who said 'Ah!' and added other remarks to that exclamation.

Old ladies of Conservative tendencies, who wondered why 'City people' did not live over their shops; smart clerks, who lodged in less desirable neighbourhoods than Palace Gardens, but who still put themselves to an enormous amount of inconvenience in order to be able to head their notepaper with a grand address, stopped on Sunday afternoons to look at the residence, and wondered audibly how long that would last.'

There was the man of modest tastes, who, in a shockingly bad hat and shabby coat and frayed collar and trousers carefully turned up, said,

That is not the sort of house I would have taken had I been Sir John Moffat. A nice place up the river, now, with a boathouse and lawn sloping to the water's edge-that style of thing, eh ?'

There were the envious of all ranks and classes and parties, who thought things were very unfairly distributed. Let parsons say what they like, why should one man be able to buy a house in Palace Gardens, and another live in dread of his life because of the coming man in possession in Angelicaterrace, though he only stood at eight-and-twenty, and precious dear for all he got for the money, too?'

There were the cynical, who fancied Sir John had made a mistake if he thought the mere fact of living in Palace Gardens would pass him free into 'society,' meaning theirs; but, as a rule, it was felt that if a City man must live in Palace Gardens, a better than Sir John Moffat could not be found.

'He is more than a merchant prince, my dear,' said one lady effusively. He is a philanthropist.'

And might have been a baronet,' capped her friend, in a tone which implied she considered that would have been much better.

It is a remarkable fact that, no matter how admirable the order in which a house may be when vacated, the incoming occupant always finds it necessary to put the place in substantial and ornamental repair from garret to

cellar.

The Compulsory Act, under which these operations have to be

performed, seems to imply a promise to the victim that any further outlay and trouble will thus be avoided after he is once in occupation. It is a vain delusion, and perhaps Sir John knew this when he positively refused to allow the master spirits, whose aid had been invoked, to work their sweet will on every apartment in the house.

What they desired was totally to destroy, and then cheerfully to create. In a light and airy manner they sketched out a plot, and assured him of their capability to fill in. Nothing about the place. met with their approval. If they could have been permitted to pull down and rebuild the mansion, they would have been perfectly happy; but as matters stood they could do a great deal-they could so improve Holyrood House, that if Sir John wished to sell again he could get double the money he had paid for it. Precisely the same remark was made to Mr. Seaton when he took counsel with similar ministering angels.

'You'll repent it, Sir John,' said one enthusiastic individual, who had been revelling in parquet and frescoes and marbles, and rolling and unrolling some of the most hideous paper-hangings that were ever evolved out of the inner consciousness of perverted taste. 'You'll excuse me saying so; but you might reproach me in your own mind hereafter if, being accustomed to such matters, I did not give you warning now. This sort of thing'-and he contemptuously indicated the barbaric decorations of the room in which they happened to be standing at the moment'was very well in its way, no doubt, thought very fine once; but it won't do for you, Sir John; it won't, indeed!'

'It did for Mr. Seaton, and it will do for me,' answered Sir