thought it a sweet place; now she shivered suddenly in the warm haze, as though the churchyard might yet have some personal significance for her who hitherto had been too much concerned with life and its interests to feel greatly concerned with death.

Mrs. Weston herself opened the door to her and drew her within the clean, arid parlor, with its wax fruits under a glass shade, its white antimacassars, its shavings in the grate, its mirror with the gilt frame swathed in yellow gauze.

"I'm afraid, your Ladyship," she said, and her voice faltered, "that you'll find a great change in poor Miss Hyland. Indeed, I've done my best. There never was a sweeter young lady, nor one more easily pleased. 'Tisn't likely I wouldn't do everything I could rather than let her slip our fingers, not if I was ever so busy."

"Slip our fingers!" The phrase, disentangled from the involved sentence, struck Lady Anne's heart with cold dismay. "Slip our fingers!" Was it possible that something was going to happen now which she would have no power to prevent? Hitherto she had felt her power enormous for the good or ill of others. Happily she had used it for good. But, now, what was it that was coming near, creeping out of the shadows, before which she would be as powerless as the meanest of mankind? Was it possible that her power had found its limitations and its end?

"Has she seen a doctor?" she asked, with a catch of her breath.

"No, your Ladyship; she said that your Ladyship's doctor had told her what was best to be done, and it was no use troubling any one else. But, as I said to Weston this morning, this very day I'll call in Dr. Burleigh, whether she likes it or not. A pretty thing it will be if her Ladyship comes home,' I says, 'and finds that her she left in our charge has slipped our fingers?' Weston he quite agreed. I was expecting the doctor when your Ladyship drove up. Weston had business in the village and took a message to him.".

"Let me see her."

Lady Anne took a step or two towards the door, then stopped and looked at Mrs. Weston's disturbed and tearful face.

"I am sure you did all you could," she said gently; "but tell me, when did Miss Hyland begin to be ill? Her first let

ters were full of her happiness here and the good it had done her."

"She picked up wonderful at first. Then we had it very hot in July. We couldn't seem to get a breath of air nohow. She failed then and she never seemed able to make it up again. I'd ha' written to your Ladyship, but she always said she was writing herself. I see the letters go, too."

July! It was the time when Lady Anne had promised to take her to the mountains or the sea, to life-giving air away from the sweltering summer in the low-lying river valley. She had not kept her promise. To be sure, she had not known how far the girl's precious health was involved, yet she could not forgive herself. She had never broken a promise before. Was her first failure to have such cruel results? Her heart cried out against the retribution as too great, too cruel.

She went up the steep, narrow stairs, lifted the old-fashioned latch of the bedroom door and went in. Mary from her pillows turned a gaze on her in which delight and dismay Before the sudden accidental color came she had time

Mary had never had Now what flesh there Even under the bedthinness of the body.

to see the lamentable change in the girl. much flesh or much strength to lose. was had fallen away from the bones. clothes one could discern the extreme She breathed painfully and her hands extended outside the coverlet were mere masses of bones and veins covered with the skin.

"What have you been doing to yourself?" Lady Anne asked with a groan. She could not keep her dismay, her grief, her repentance from revealing themselves. "Oh, Mary, why didn't you let me know? Why did you write those letters in which you pretended to be well?"

"Sure, I couldn't be frightening you, nor bringing you home before your time. Many a time I've been hungry for a sight of your face and Hugh's. It would have interfered with his work for your Ladyship if he'd known I wasn't well. Maybe he'd have come home. He was always so kind to me, poor Hugh."

"Child, why do you talk about my work? Don't you know that I'd rather the work went all wrong than that I should find you like this, Mary? I really think we have cause to be very angry with you."

"Ah, don't be angry." The flickering brightness of Mary's face suddenly went out. "I've been feeling so happy now you're come. And Hugh will be here very soon. Don't be angry with me. It isn't worth while."

The door opened and the little bearded, bright-eyed, local doctor came in. He had a reassuring manner and was kind, was evidently greatly impressed too by Lady Anne Chute and the interest she took in his patient.

When he left Lady Anne followed him down the stairs, went before him into the little parlor.

"Well?" she said, hanging on his words. "Well?"

"I'm afraid there is not much hope of her. She is far gone in consumption !"

"How long will it be?"

"Not very long. She must have been always very delicate. It is consumption in its rapid form."

"How long?"

"Perhaps a matter of six weeks."

"Will nothing save her?"

Nothing short of a miracle."

"Miracles are sometimes wrought," Lady Anne said, but there was little hope in her voice. "I want my own doctor to see her-Dr. Sturgis, of Walpole Street. You will meet him in consultation ?"

The little doctor bowed. To meet so distinguished a man as Dr. Sturgis would be an experience. And a nurse; yes, he had one fortunately at this moment disengaged.

"She has all the virtues of her profession and none of its faults," he said with a sudden enthusiasm. "Cool and steady in an emergency, and yet so full of sympathy with her patient. that it exhausts herself. I tell her she gives too much, far too much. She is an angel, this little Nurse Gill, as cheerful as a robin and as tender as a mother. If we could always find nurses like her."

Nurse Gill was installed within a few hours. The same evening Dr. Sturgis met Dr. Burleigh in consultation.

dict was the same, there was nothing to be done for Mary but to make things easier for her while she stayed.

"I want you to do one thing for me," Mary said, as Lady Anne sat by her after the visit of the doctors. "Promise me you won't refuse."

"I shall love to do anything you wish, if I possibly can." "Don't send for Hugh. He's coming back in a week's time. I shouldn't like him to have the shock of sudden news. When he comes your Ladyship could break it to him. You're the sun in his sky. If you were there to help him he could bear anything."

The question of whether she should or should not cable to Hugh had been in Lady Anne's mind. Oddly enough she had had the same compunction for him that was in Mary's heart. She had shrunk from the thought of the bad news reaching him so far away, of his long journey home with the trouble always beside him. He was due to sail in five days. And Dr. Sturgis had given Mary a longer day than Dr. Burleigh. She might live two or three months, he had said.

"Very well, then, I will not cable. I will meet him at Queenstown. But it is you who are the sun in his sky, Mary."

"He has always been very good to me," Mary said, with the strange, light smile which seemed to put her worlds away from Lady Anne. "He would always have been very good to But I couldn't fancy myself as the sun in his sky, and I'm as glad now, since it's falling out of it I'd have been. Sure, you are that to all of us, my Lady."

me.

It was quite plain that Mary knew, and had no great desire to stay. She talked so cheerfully, so brightly, so almost coldly about the little time she had to stay, that Lady Anne, who found this aloofness something intolerable, reproached her one day.

"You don't care about us, Mary," she said.

"Indeed then I do, your Ladyship. The first day I looked up from my desk in the shop at Ardnagowan and saw you there in your dress the color of lilac, I loved you. But it has been brought home to me that I've done all I could for you. I used to think no one could look after the shop for you as well as I could, but I can trust Katty now, and she's stronger than I'd ever have been. Poor Hugh will feel it, kind boy. But lying here alone, before your Ladyship came, I thought a deal, and I thought that perhaps I'd never have made Hugh happy. His mother was right; I wasn't good enough for him."

"He would say you were a thousand times too good for him," Lady Anne said in passionate protest, "and he would be right."

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"He mightn't have thought so always, if I'd been his wife," Mary said placidly. "He wanted some one cleverer than me. I never had much brains, and Hugh is very clever. Your Ladyship will be good to him when I am gone?"

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"He will never want for a friend."

"Ah, that's right; I know he'll always remember me and be fond of me, even when he's found the wife that is fit for him."

The little brown-faced nurse came and went during these conversations, and never interfered unless it were to do some little thing for Mary's comfort. Mary was very happy with her nurse. It was Nurse Gill who, off duty for an hour while Lady Anne sat by the patient, went over the hill into the avenues of red-brick houses and brought back a delightfully human and gracious Benedictine priest to comfort his spiritual daughter. Afterwards he came almost daily, and day by day the unearthly brightness grew and widened on Mary's face, like a light falling from far away through opening doors, invisible to those yet tethered to earth.

"I can leave her safely to you and Nurse Gill," Lady Anne said to Father Benedict one crisp October morning, "while I go to prepare the poor fellow she was to have married."

"Ah!" The priest's face was full of a wise compassion. "I often think, Lady Anne, how much the best of it we celibates have. That terrible breaking of ties. We escape all that, or most of it, having given up the world. Yet I had a mother. When I lost her it was as though every possible tie had been snapped at once."

Lady Anne had been at the farm now for a fortnight. She occupied another of Mrs. Weston's bedrooms, and had hardly left the house during those days. She had written an explanatory letter to Lord Dunlaverock at the Kilkee hotel, one to Miss 'Stasia, another to Ida Massey. For the present she must leave everything. Mary was slipping through her hands indeed. There were days when she felt that she was clinging to the skirts of one who was being drawn up into heaven.

October had come in dry and crisp after the heats of the summer. There was a light frost at nights. The briars turned scarlet and yellow. The mornings were cool, with blue autumnal mists in all the distances.