not half packed, and as I am to be married to-morrow, I must think of myself first."

"You've been thinking of yourself 'first' all your life," he shouts; "to my certain knowledge and cost, you have been ordering and packing your wedding outfit for the last three months. The bills that have come in from Millsom Street would have turned my hair grey if I hadn't fortunately come into-I mean, if Providence had not thought fit to remove your grandfather. Have you thought of your sister once while you've been gratifying your own extravagant tastes, or has all the money gone to adorn yourself?"

Florence's grey eyes flash ominously. Her father's habit of scolding about trifles has never been so irksome to her as it is to-day, when she is on the brink of freedom. Detestable as the prospect of her marriage had suddenly become to her, she contemplates it with a sense of relief now, as his jarring tones fall upon her ears in unreasonable fault-finding.

"If I am selfish, I am not silly enough to show it to all the world, papa. I have taken care that Jane shall have a lovely costume to wear at my wedding. I went without a tea-gowna lovely, pale, sea-green plush tea-gown, trimmed with lace that looks like foam-in order to get Jane a pretty costume. And now you call me selfish!"

Jane's colour has been rising, and her violet eyes have become full, nearly to overflowing, during this altercation between her father and sister.

"I am not worth all this trouble that you are taking about me, now when you are both so busy and have so many more important things to think of. Don't scold Flo, papa; poor dear,. it's bad enough that she'll have no breakfast, and such a little quiet wedding

"You're a little fool, but a good-hearted one," her father interrupts, looking up at her curiously; and Florence gives her head an impatient toss as she puts in:

"It is easy to be 'good-hearted' when you are going to have everything that heart can desire. Oh! I hear Geoffrey; why on earth couldn't he have left us in peace for to-day?"

The next moment the study door is thrown open with violence, and an utter disregard of the state of the new Lord Roydmore's nerves, and a tall, well-grown, fair, clean-shaven

young man of seven or eight-and-twenty comes breezily into the room. He tries to look distressed as he takes his future father-in-law's proffered hand, but his eyes gleam with joy as they light on Florence.

"You won't let this-this sad event put off our marriage for a time, will you, sir?" he asks anxiously; and as he hears the answer, "Most certainly not," he turns, takes the unwilling Florence in his arms, and kisses her rapturously.

"It was never going to be anything very grand, but it will be a hole-and-corner sort of wedding now," Florence grumbles, but her lover is too much enchanted at the prospect of getting her at once to be depressed by her lack of enthusiasm.

"My darling," he murmurs, "what does it matter how it is done, so long as you are made mine, my very own, at once?"

CHAPTER II.

THE HONEYMOON.

WHEN Lord Roydmore returned from town after making all needful preparations for his father's funeral, on the night before Florence's wedding, he called his two daughters to him, and distributed between them a fair quantity of valuable jewellery that had belonged to his mother.

"The Roydmores' diamonds and the rest of the family jewels will, of course, descend in due course of time to your brother for his wife, if he ever has one. But these were your grandmother's private ornaments, and I will divide them between you as justly as I can," he explained, with more feeling than he usually displayed. Upon which Florence had hung round his neck fondly, and whispered an entreaty that she, “as the eldest, might have first choice."

"No, no, nothing of the sort," he said sharply; "I have done them in parcels of equal value. Without seeing the contents of these parcels, you shall draw for them."

"Jane is very young to wear handsome jewellery," Florence remarked disapprovingly; "besides, she is sure to come in for a lot more when mamma's aunt dies."

"Flo is quite welcome to my share, papa," Jane interposed. "I can't fancy myself in necklaces and bracelets and rings."

"You'll fancy' yourself in them fast enough," Florence said

petulantly; "and please don't be so ultra-humble and generous, Jane; it won't do me any good."

"Now draw, draw lots and get this over," their father put in with the well-known Herries frown and asperity. Whereupon they obeyed him without delay, with the result that Florence became the possessor of a ruby necklet with a diamond pendant, while to Jane's lot there fell an exquisite necklace of perfectly matched pearls.

With a brief" Thank you, papa," Florence turned to leave the room, but paused at the door to say:

"Before you wear your pearls, you had better protect your neck from the sun for a summer or two."

"Let her have them, papa," Jane begged, as soon as the door had closed behind her sister, but he checked her and closed the subject by saying:

"I ought to have crushed the cursed selfishness out of her before this. It will be her ruin if Geoffrey is not firm. Now leave me, my child. I must write to your brother. You are growing very like your mother, Jane; and those pearls were always meant for her by my mother. I am glad they are

The words were precisely the same as those spoken by Florence, but there was a world more meaning in them. Jane's voice trembled with affectionate gratitude-because her father had spoken to her in accents of unprecedented kindness, not because he had given her a valuable pearl necklace. The girl had been so repressed by him during the long years of his embittering strife with poverty and his futile efforts to keep up a position that was always in danger of being buried beneath bankruptcy, that she had always striven to efface herself. Florence, on the other hand, had always brought herself well to the fore, and had invariably given her father to understand that he owed her a great deal for having brought her into such an extremely uncongenial position in the world. Accordingly, Jane had got all the kicks, and Florence all the ha'pence (they had been very few), with this result, that now, when he was able to do something tangibly good for his daughters, Jane was grateful for the goodness, while Florence took it merely as her due.

The day of the Honourable Florence's marriage was a weari

ness and disappointment to her from beginning to end. There had never been much of a function contemplated—the finances of the half-pay Major would not have stood the strain. Still, she had looked forward to wearing a rich white satin Duchesse dress, trimmed with real old point, the gift of Geoffrey's mother, before the envious eyes of many of her dear Bath girl friends, who had hitherto cut her down in the matter of costumes. She had also looked forward to seeing several disappointed mammas and daughters, who had more or less artlessly tried to secure Geoffrey Graves for themselves, at the wedding breakfast. But now she was shorn of these joys through her grandfather's death. There was no bridal dress, there were no wedding guests or wedding breakfast, and it seemed to the few who witnessed the ceremony that the bridegroom's expression of triumphant happiness was singularly out of place on the face of a man who stood at the altar with such a discontented-looking bride.

"I had ten times rather be going up to town with papa and you, and seeing about getting the town house in order," the newly-made Mrs. Graves said, as they lingered for a few minutes in the bedroom of the latter, waiting for the carriage that was to take them on the first stage of their honeymoon journey.

"There is a country house too? Papa won't always stay in London, will he?" Jane asked anxiously.

"Of course there's a country house. You've heard of Roydmore often enough, haven't you? But papa doesn't like Roydmore. Now, take my advice, Jane; when you begin to entertain, have plenty of awfully attractive young married women about. Cultivate them, and keep clear of widows and girls, or one of them will marry papa, and then where will you be?" "Marry! Papa marry again! Absurd."

"Not at all. Now he's Lord Roydmore, hundreds of girls would rather marry him than-than Geoffrey for instance," Geoffrey's bride added with a laugh.

Jane was conscious of receiving a shock both to her heart and delicacy as her sister said this. But whether it was at the possibility of her father's marrying again, or at the lack of anything like loving pride in the newly-made wife's mention of her husband, the girl could not determine for the moment. Then there came hurried leave-takings, a hearty kiss from her new brother-in-law, and the married pair were whirled away, leaving

Jane feeling very bewildered and lonely at the loss of the lovely sister who had always tyrannized over her.

The house in which the Herries had lived in Bath for the last sixteen years had grown woefully shabby in the course of their occupation. The houses even of the best-intentioned people are apt to do this when their current needs absorb the whole of their incomes. The tables and chairs had grown ricketty, and had never been either mended or replaced. The carpets had gone threadbare in some rooms, and completely worn themselves off the floors in others. The wall-papers had faded and became damp-stained. Neglect, the frequent offspring of poverty, had set its unattractive seal on every nook and corner of the house. Still, to Jane every nook and corner was dear, partly from association, and partly because she had never known any other home.

To Florence, every nook and corner had been hateful, and so some months ago she had gladly hailed the prospect of getting away from them to become the mistress of one of the most picturesque and best-kept places in Somersetshire, "The Court," Geoffrey Graves's very delightful, very aristocratic, but perhaps rather dull and secluded old home.

She had hailed the prospect gladly, but not with any profession of love or gratitude to the man who had opened it up to her. With a frankness that would have galled a less infatuated lover than Geoffrey Graves, she had permitted him to see that she took him merely as an appendage to his place, and that, could she have detached him from The Court and retained the latter, she would have done so delightedly. However he had resolutely shut his eyes to her unflattering method of treating him, and had pursued his wcoing with as much-perhaps with more-zeal and energy than is ordinarily displayed even by warmly encouraged lovers.

To his mother, who had herself been an affectionately adoring as well as a dutiful wife, and to his sisters, who were good, plain, and the reverse of fascinating, Florence and her insolently exercised witcheries had been hateful from the first. With more blunt honesty than tact or discretion, they had pointed out to him her vanity, her selfishness, the greed with which she always monopolised the loaves and fishes, leaving little or nothing for her younger sister, and her utter unsuitability in every way to