Jacob looked a little puzzled. "Earning your bread' is only a way of speaking with you, Mrs. Herbert; to me it means more than you can understand, perhaps. I-I am living upon charity now."

He flushed slightly as he uttered the last words, and Hope, to relieve him, said: "That was just my own position. My father lost all his money at the time of his death, and it was quite necessary that I should do something to support myself. It is all over now, and I don't mind talking about it; but it was a dreadful grief to me when I was told that I should never succeed."

"How could anybody know that?”

"I suppose there are not many people who could have known it, or who would have liked to say so if they had; but it was a great artist who told me, and I am sure he was not mistaken. He knew how it would hurt me to hear the truth, and that made it all the more kind of him to speak honestly."

Jacob was standing with one foot upon a chair, his elbow resting on his knee and his hand supporting his chin. He looked down with curious, compassionate eyes at Hope, who was seated near him. "Was this long ago?" he asked.

"Oh, no; only a few months-although it seems like years." She did not know what a quick-witted observer she had to deal with; but in truth a far duller fellow than Jacob would have divined the history of Mrs. Herbert's engagement and marriage after that. She herself felt that she had been a little too communicative, and changed the subject.

Jacob was very willing to talk about art and pleased to be talked to; but she did not succeed in breaking down his reticence, or in inducing him to give her any information about himself. She went away at last, feeling sorry for the poor young man, although she could have given no definite reason for her pity, and was horrified to find that she had taken up rather more than an hour of his valuable time. "What a nuisance I must have been to him!" she thought.

She would have been very much astonished had she been told that that hour of conversation had earned her a friend whose gratitude and devotion would cease only with his life. Just so a vagrant dog, acquainted with the rough usage of the streets and the kicks of the passers-by, will attach himself to some kindhearted person who stoops unthinkingly to pat him on the head, and will never leave that kind-hearted person again. And this is one reason why kind-hearted persons and others—especially others -should beware of noticing stray dogs.

CHAPTER XVIII.

HOPE RECEIVES VISITORS.

If Hope did not as yet feel any such attachment for Jacob Stiles: as he felt for her, she was nevertheless greatly interested in him and anxious to hear a little more of his antecedents, because he seemed to require interpretation in more ways than one. Dick, when interrogated, was apt to become so hopelessly monosyllabic that she did not think it worth while to pursue him to the stables and attack him with questions; but, happening to find her sisterin-law in the drawing-room, she was able to glean a part of the information that she desired from that quarter.

"I look upon Jack Stiles," Miss Herbert remarked, "as a living example of the folly of heedless benevolence. For reasons best known to himself, my brother picked him up when he was a child, brought him into the house, and gave him what I suppose you might call the education of a gentleman. The natural consequence is that he is now about as miserable a being as you will meet with anywhere. At all events, he looks so. He is neither fish, flesh, nor good red herring."

"He is an artist," said Hope.

"Is he? I can't pretend to your knowledge of such subjects; but even if he is, I should imagine it was not much consolation to him to be an artist, when nature evidently meant him to be a groom, or possibly a huntsman. Personally I don't like Stiles; his manners are not engaging, and he always gives me the impression that he would be insolent if he dared; but, to do him justice, he is a fine rider, and though he doesn't appear to have much pluck at ordinary times, he has plenty of it on horseback. I have a mare in the stables that I wanted to get rid of two years ago, because she frightened me by the way she touched timber. Stiles asked to be allowed to take her in hand, and now I wouldn't part with her for any money. His system was to cram her at the biggest fence he could find, and give her a rattling fall; and threeor four lessons were enough for her. It was a rather more heroic remedy than most people would like to adopt, but it was completely successful."

"And you allowed him to risk his life in that way?" exclaimed. Hope.

Carry laughed. "He did it to please himself, I presume; apparently he doesn't set much store by his life. As for me, I really didn't care whether I kept the mare or not, and I can't say that I cared very much whether Stiles broke his neck or not

either. You must try not to be shocked by my brutal frankness of speech; it's a family failing."

Hope thought she would let that observation pass without comment. "But I don't yet understand," she said, "why Mr. Stiles should be miserable-if he is miserable."

"You had better not have called him Mr. Stiles: he is not accustomed to it. I don't think there can be much doubt about his being miserable; and the reason is what I told you. He won't do for the drawing-room, and he won't do for the servants' hall so he has to live in a sort of no-man's-land and eat his dinner in his studio, which, when you come to think of it, must be dull work."

"Of course it must be, and it seems very cruel to deprive the poor young man of any kind of company. Why should he not dine with us?"

"I dare say he would like that very much; but, unfortunately, it is not practicable. Humble as I am, I can't say that I should enjoy being taken in to dinner by Jacob Stiles, and we certainly could not ask our friends to sit down beside him. It is all Dick's fault. He ought to have handed him over to the stud-groom in the first instance, instead of sending him to an expensive school." "But as he did not do that" began Hope.

"As he did not do that, the hapless Stiles must get what comfort he can out of painting pictures and occasionally being rolled upon by refractory mares, or plunging into ponds to rescue ladies who have managed to get adrift. It is bad luck for Stiles; but it can't be helped."

This sounded a little peremptory, considering that Miss Herbert was not the mistress of the house; and, in spite of her wise resolutions, Hope could not refrain from arguing the point. "My father always used to say that talent has the same privileges as birth," she remarked. Besides, when a man has been brought up as a gentleman and behaves like one, that ought to be sufficient. I will ask Dick what he thinks about it."

66

Two vertical lines appeared on Miss Herbert's forehead, and it looked very much as if her teeth were set behind her rather thin lips; but she, too, had formed certain resolutions, and when she opened her mouth it was only to say, "I had been wondering what line you would take up with regard to Stiles. I warned him that you would very likely wish to turn him out, neck and crop; but he had the happy inspiration of rushing into the water after you, and now his position is assured. At the same time, I doubt whether Dick will be prepared to receive him as a member of the family."

And, considerably to Hope's surprise and mortification, it turned out that Dick was not so prepared. She took the first opportunity of speaking to him upon the subject, and he answered without any hesitation that it wouldn't do.

"Jake used to dine with me when he was younger, and before Carry came to live here," he said; "but that was another affair altogether. Things are best as they are for the present, and if he goes on as he has begun, he will have a home of his own before very long."

"I think," said Hope," that he has been rather unfairly treated." "Do you? Well, perhaps he has in some ways; and yet I hardly see what else could have been done. Anyhow, it wouldn't be either for his comfort or for ours to make a change at this time of day."

"It might help the conversation out a little," said Hope; for up to now her husband had gratified all her wishes, when he had not anticipated them, and it was grievous to think of Carry's triumph.

Dick rubbed his ear and looked contrite. "This sort of thing must be awfully slow work for you, of course," he said. "We must get some people down here to amuse you. Couldn't you ask a lot of your friends?"

"I could, no doubt, if I possessed a lot of friends," answered Hope; "but as I have none, I must submit to the slowness." After this disagreeable speech her conscience smote her, and she added humbly, "I am sorry I spoke so crossly, Dick; I don't really find it slow here at all."

"My dear girl," answered Dick good-humouredly, "you weren't a bit cross; and as for your finding it slow, you must-you can't help it. I know that if I were in your place I should perfectly detest being shut up in a country house with-with"With whom?" inquired Hope.

"I was going to say with nothing particular to do. I'll get Francis and one or two other fellows to come down and shoot next week. They will be better than nobody."

Hope turned away, without replying. The matter-of-course and perfectly philosophical way in which Dick took it for granted that his society would not be acceptable to her vexed her, and made her angry with him. She and he were not lovers, it was true; but they were friends-at least, that was what he averred when he proposed to her-and friends ought surely to be able to live together without feeling the need of constant excitement. "It is one word for me and two for himself," she thought, rather ungratefully. In truth, to ask a party of men down to shoot

seemed rather a roundabout way of providing her with a change of company.

Possibly this aspect of the case may have presented itself also to Dick; for when, before the post went out, he requested Hope to write the necessary invitations, these proved to be for the most part addressed to ladies whose husbands were shooting men, and who were begged to put up with a few quiet days at Farndon for their husbands' sake. With most of these ladies Hope was already more or less acquainted, and she neither liked nor disliked any of them. Mr. Francis she did rather dislike, yet was prepared to extend to him the welcome due to Dick's most intimate friend.

Everybody accepted, and everybody came. It seemed not unlikely that the alacrity of these good people was stimulated by a desire to see and criticise the bride, and it is certain that, when they assembled, the eyes of all of them were fixed upon her with a curiosity of which she was fully conscious. This she did not object to, thinking it natural enough, if a trifle embarrassing; and it ceased to be perceptible after the first evening. But she could not help resenting the closeness with which Mr. Francis watched her throughout his stay, because she felt sure that he was busily taking notes the whole time of the many particulars in which she failed to come up to his notion of what Dick Herbert's wife ought to be. Also, she fancied that he communicated his impressions to Carry, with whom he appeared to be upon exceedingly friendly terms.

On the evening before his departure she committed the indiscretion of asking him whether he remembered a certain conversation which she had had with him a few months before in Eaton Square.

He made gestures to simulate the rending of his clothes and the heaping of ashes on his head. "Mrs. Herbert," he said, "the memory of that dreadful conversation will remain with me to my dying day. I would ask you to forgive me, only I know that that would be useless."

"I will forgive you," said Hope, "if you will withdraw what you said on that occasion."

"I

Francis made a grimace. "The condition is a hard one to swallow," he remarked. don't think recantations are much good, as a general rule. Galileo recanted, and was sent to prison all the same; Cranmer recanted, and had to recant his recantation at the stake. You see, the worst of it is that I meant what I said. Only you might bear in mind that I didn't mean it to apply to you."