No letter came from Alan. But his mother had at last cultivated obstinate faith in her own opinions into a severe system of selfdefence. If she gave up one inch of her system, she must give up her whole plan. She had determined that nothing which Alan could possibly do or leave undone could possibly be wrong. It was part of her system that he was very much too tender-natured; and if she was wrong in one least point, she might just as well own that she had been mistaken from the beginning. And she had certainly not gone through all this for nothing.

And so it happened that her resolute satisfaction with things as they ought not to be relieved Helen's mind from the weight of knowing that all was well with Alan, without being able to share her knowledge with her mother. She did once or twice summon up courage to mention Gideon's name, but it would have been the height of folly to mention it a third time. To escape from Gideon was also part of the system, or at any rate had become so. Helen knew that her mother, with her proud Welsh blood stung and sharpened by Pride's twin-sister, Poverty, would far rather see her in her grave than the wife of Gideon Skull. To inflame monomania by argument is worse than absurd. It was not good to go against her mother in so great a thing; but obedience would be worse and more selfish still, and whatever had to be done for Alan must be done. It must even be without Alan's knowledge; for she much feared that he would be one with his mother in this matter. They must be able to reap the harvest without the shame and labour of having had to sow the seed for themselves. All the labour and all the shame must be hers alone. They would forgive her when it was too late for anything but pardon; and, even if they could not, she would be able to help them in spitę

of their pride. And as for Alan, if his pride could stand against her, it would surely melt before Bertha.

But how, in ten books, can one trace Helen's whole heart and mind? Sense and folly, heroism and weakness, pride and self-scorn, recklessness and duty, cowardice and courage, romance and necessity-who may end such an infinite catalogue ?-were all confused and tangled into a kind of chaos infinitely beyond her own comprehending. And, then, things were getting worse and worse at home. She could not make out how it was that they had not reached the end of their resources long ago. Literally, there was only one thing left, and that must be done without any of the helpless, and worse than useless, talk which only disturbs decision, and hinders and defeats action.

It must not be supposed that, with all her confusion about the rights and wrongs of life, she could go on, day after day, in an atmosphere of the wretched little secrets which are the detestable spawn of great ones, without the consciousness, deformed and distorted as it was, that she was doing something heroic, and was only doing and bearing evil that good might come to him for whom she had bound herself to do and to bear all things. But she could not always keep herself up to the needful pitch of heroic zeal. Often and often she felt very unlike a heroine, and very like a very mean sort of schoolgirl who is trying to act a novel. On such occasions, she had often written half a letter to Gideon to tell him that she was too weak to do even thus much for Alan, and to ask him to forget that there was a Helen Reid in the world. But the letter never got finished. Even for so much as that she was too weak or else too strong. She could not write, "There is something that I cannot do for Alan." And her will had become sadly weakened, which was certainly not the case with Gideon's. She knew well enough that he did not mean to let her go. If she could make the only man who loved her happy enough with a tenth part of a heart, she could do so much, at least, for somebody in the world.

But at last came one morning when she never felt less like a heroine, and never more miserable. It was a fine, bright day, too, such as girls and girls' friends like to have for a wedding day. Between Helen and the weather there was generally a very close sympathy. It was mostly on dull days that she had written those half-letters to Gideon. But to-day, it was as if there were thunder in some inner air. She came down purposely late to breakfast, for she dreaded to meet her mother and to talk about everyday things. There was as

little sympathy between Helen and her mother as between Helen and the sunshine. Mrs. Reid had already looked at the two empty plates, on which no letter was ever laid, and, for the first time, she saw something in her daughter's pale cheeks and heavy eyes that obliged her, at last, to think of somebody besides Alan. No doubt, Helen's want of courage and patience had terribly disappointed her. But she had not reckoned upon the chance of illness for one who had never been really ill since she was born, and to whom headaches were things unknown.

"Don't you feel well, Helen?" she asked, half gently, half reproachfully. "What has made you so late? And you are not eating, I see

Helen gathered her strength together. "I am well-quite well. There, mother—”

"Well, Helen ?"

Nothing could be more discouraging than Mrs. Reid's way of saying "Well, Helen?" It was especially discouraging to-day.

"If there were any great thing I could do for Alan, something very great indeed

"You can do something-something very great indeed; the greatest thing in the world."

"What is that?"

"You know."

"Oh, to be patient-and brave. Of course-I try to be that; but I'm not patient for him; and I'm not brave like you. I don't mean those things. I mean something real-something that one can do"

"Helen, I will not hear one word of your governess scheme again. That is not being patient-nor brave. When Alan becomes what he will become--"

"You still think he would be ashamed of my having to do something while he was poor?"

"It is not what he would feel, but what you ought to do. Don't speak of it again.”

"Suppose I found some man-some very rich man-who would marry me for myself, and help Alan for my sake”

Are you mad, Helen? Is it such a chance as that that makes to leave home? And if there was such a man, is it like er to

se there were such a man, who could, and would, do

such a question? If you loved him, and if he

loved you, and if, as well as rich, he was well born and a gentleman, and if he was a good man besides, and not in trade, and one of whom Alan and I could approve—well, I suppose you ought to marry him for your own sake, and not for Alan's. But if you married him only for Alan's sake and without loving him, or if he was of birth and rank lower than you would have looked for when we were at home, or if he was not a good man, or not religious, or not moral, or if he was a tradesman-why, you might as well talk of marrying -Gideon Skull! I should have thought you would know that as well as I."

Helen flushed crimson. Why should her mother have dragged in the name of Gideon as the type of the man whom she ought not to marry? No-it was clear that she might as well try to make a confidante of a rock as of her mother. Apart as they were, Helen telt as if they must be living in different worlds. There was something her mother loved better than Alan, after all-her own pride. And then, that wretched prejudice against Gideon for being Gideon, and against trade for being trade-she could only sigh and say no

more.

But Mrs. Reid had seen the blush, and had by no means spoken at hazard when she mentioned Gideon. Could it be possible that the walk of long ago had meant even more than she had dreaded at the time?

"Never let me hear that man's name again," she said.

"It was you mentioned him, mamma-not I."

"Then, I will not mention him again."

It was quite clear that Helen must find sense and strength for both, and must turn heroine at last-once for all.

Helen might look ill, and even feel ill but Mrs. Reid, without showing a single sign of illness, had become conscious of certain symptoms which not alarmed her-but troubled her. Nothing had gone as she wished thus far, and her suppressed anxiety about Alan's silence was amply enough to bring about one kind of heart-sickness. Her sudden change of life and her self-imprisonment at her time of life, in what to her was the unnatural atmosphere of London lodgings, was as bad for her health as anything could be: and the bare fact of her sharing the same roof and the same table with Helen did not save her from living absolutely alone. She was living for her secret : and who can live for a secret without being worn out by inches? In short, she was torturing herself by a prolonged martyrdom: and nothing but its hardness prevented her from giving way. She still

believed that she had done what was right, and was the last woman on earth to let herself be turned aside by any trouble or suffering which it might bring to her. In Helen's place she would not have doubted, even for an instant, whether she ought to marry Gideon : the two were, after all, far more fully mother and daughter than she and Alan were mother and son. But none of these things wholly accounted for the exact manner in which her health, or at any rate her strength, was beginning to fail her. She had never been active in her ways, like her husband and her children; but still it was a new thing to her to feel it needful to sit down and rest after going up or down stairs, and she had become subject to alternate numbness and burning of the feet and hands, which often extended nearly to the shoulders, and was sometimes accompanied by a sense of general oppression and pain. She was certainly not nervous about herself; and the Hoels of Pontargraig had always been a tough race, and famous, within their narrow circle, for length of life in a country where life runs longer than in any other country in the world. Besides, it was out of the question that anything should go seriously wrong with her before the end of the seven years. Nobody is ever permitted to die—she had read on high authority—until his or her allotted task on earth is fulfilled. It was only just and rational that it should be so: and certainly the most sceptical may be defied to find any convincing evidence to the contrary. But, without wanting either faith or courage, one may be prudent. that on this very day she had planned to get hour or two in the morning, so that she without letting her errand be suspected. would have been a very noteworthy event Helen led in London.

And it so happened rid of Helen for an might consult a physician For her going out alone in such a life as she and

And it so happened that Helen was so anxious to leave the house alone that morning, that no common excuse or errand seemed good enough to suit her. They had become shy of one another, indeed, when Helen and her mother sat lingering over the breakfast-table; Helen vainly seeking a good reason for going out alone, her mother trying to think of an errand upon which to send her—both anxious for the same thing, both for a secret reason, and neither able to think of an open and commonplace one.

But,

"You are ill, Helen," said Mrs. Reid, at last. "If you have no headache now, you will have you seem all nervous and unstrung. I cannot afford to have you ill. It is such a fine morning -go and take a walk in the air. It is the best thing you can do." "Yes," said Helen. "I suppose it is the best thing I can do