Aunt Anne was delighted, and consented at once.

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"I shall never forget your putting this confidence in me. You have proved your affection for me most truly," she said. My dear Florence, your children shall have the most loving care that it is in my power to give them. I will look after everything till you come; more zealously than you yourself could. Tell me, love, where do you say the cottage is situated?"

"It is near Witley, it is on the direct Portsmouth road; a sweet little cottage with a garden, and fir woods stretching on either side."

"And how far is it from Portsmouth, my love?" Mrs. Baines asked eagerly. Florence divined the meaning of the question instantly.

"Oh, I don't know, Aunt Anne; after Witley comes Hindhead, and then Liphook, and then Petersfield, and then then I don't know. Liphook is the place where Mr. Wimple"- the old lady winked to herself "has friends and sometimes goes to stay."

"And how far is that?"

"About six miles, I think-six or seven."

"Thank you, my love; and now if you will allow me I will retire. I must make preparations for my journey, which is indeed a delightful anticipation."

Florence never forgot the October morning on which she took Aunt Anne and the children to Witley. They went from Waterloo. She thought of Walter and the day they had spent at Windsor, and of that last one on which they had gone together to Southampton, and she had returned alone. "Oh, my darling," she said to herself, "may you grow well and strong, and come back to us soon again."

Mrs. Baines, too, seemed full of memories. She looked up and down the plat form; she stood for a moment dreamily by the book-stall before it occurred to her to buy a cheap illustrated paper to amuse Catty and Monty on the journey.

"My love," she said to Florence, with a little sigh, "a railway station is fraught with many recollections of meeting and parting"

"And meeting again," said Florence, longingly thinking of Walter.

"Yes, my love," the old lady answered tenderly, "and may yours with your dear

one be soon."

There were three miles to drive from Witley to the cottage. A long white road,

with fir woods on either side. Gaps in the firs, and glimpses of the Surrey hills. distant and blue, of hanging woods and deep valleys. The firs came to an end; and there were cliffs of gravel full of the holes of sand-martins. More woods, then hedges of blackberry bushes, bare enough now; gorse full of late bloom, heather faded and turning from russet to black. Here and there a solitary house, masses of oak and larch and fir; patches of sunshine; long wastes of shade, and the road going on and on.

"Here we are at last," Florence said, as they stopped before a red-brick cottage that stood only a few yards back from the road. On either side of it was a fir plantation. There was a gravel pathway round the house, but the other paths were covered with tan. Behind stretched a wilderness of garden almost entirely uncultivated. There was a little footway that wound through it in and out among beeches and larches and firs and oaks, and stopped at last on the ridge of a dip that could hardly be called a valley.

"Sometimes," said Florence, as they walked about, half an hour later, while the servants were busy within, “we go down the dip and up the other side, and so get over to Hindhead. It is nearer than going there by the road."

"Our house is over there," the children said.

"Their house," explained Florence, "is a little, lonely, thatched shed, half a mile away. We don't know who made it. It is in a lovely part on the other side of the dip, among the straggling trees. Perhaps some one tethered a cow in it once. The children call it their house now, because one day they had tea there. After I return next week, we must try to walk

across to it."

But the old lady's eyes were turned towards the distance.

“And the road in front of the house," she asked, "where does that go to?"

"It winds round the Devil's Punch Bowl, and over Hindhead, and on through Liphook and Petersfield to Portsmouth."

Aunt Anne did not answer, she looked still more intently into the distance, and gave a long sigh.

"It is most exhilarating to be out of London again, my dear Florence," she said. "I sincerely trust it will prove beneficial to your dear ones. I was born in the country, and I hope that some day I shall die in it. London is most oppressive after a time."

"I like London," Florence answered;

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And the rows and rows of houses are the prison bars, my love. May we enter the cottage?" she asked suddenly. She was evidently tired; she stooped, and looked older and more worn than usual.

"Poor old dear!" Florence thought. "I hope she is not worrying about Madame Celestine's bill, and that she will soon hear from Sir William Rammage. Then she will be happier."

It was a little house, simple inside as well as out, with tiny rooms, plainly furnished. The dining-room had been newly done up, with cretonne curtairs and a dado, | and a buttery-hatch in which Florence took a certain pride as something rather grand for so small a place. The drawingroom was old-fashioned; a stiff, roomy sofa with hard, flat cushions at one end; at the other a sweet, jangling piano. There were corner cupboards with china bowls of pot-pourri on them; on either side of the fireplace a gaunt, high-backed easy-chair, and on the left of each chair an old-fashioned screen on which was worked a peacock. Aunt Anne stopped on the threshold.

It seemed to Florence as if the room recognized the old lady, as if it had been waiting knowing that she would come. There was something about it that said more plainly than any words could have said that the hands were still that had first arranged it, and many footsteps had gone out from its doorway that would never come in at it more.

present."

"I think you ought to sleep in the best room, Aunt Anne.'

"No, my love," the old lady interrupted, "let me have this little one which is next it. When you require the other, if I am still with you, I can lock the door between. The best one is too grand for me; but sometimes while it is empty I will go in, if you have no objection, and look out at the fir-trees and the road that stretches right and left — "

"I like doing that," Florence interrupted. "It always sets me thinkingthe road from the city to the sea."

"From the city to the sea," the old lady repeated, "from the voices to the silences."

"Aunt Anne, we mustn't grow sentimental" - Florence began. There was the sound of a tinkling bell. It seemed to come at an opportune moment. "Oh, happy sound!" she laughed; "it means that our meal is ready. Catty, darling," she called, "Monty, my son, roast chicken is waiting down-stairs. Auntie and mummy are quite ready; come, dear babes "-and patter, patter, came the sound of the little feet, and together they all went down.

An hour later the fly came to the door; it was time for Florence to start on her way back to town.

The bedrooms were all small too, save one in front, that seemed to match the drawing-room. It looked like a room to die in. A quaint four-post bedstead with dark chintz curtains, a worm-eaten bureau, a sampler worked in Berlin wool and framed in black cherry-wood hanging over the fireplace.

"This is the best room," Florence said, "and we keep it for visitors. There is a little one, meant to be a dressing-room I suppose, leading out of it," and she went to a bright little nook with a bed in it. "I always feel that the best bedroom and the drawing-room belong to a past world, and the rest of the house to the present one."

"It is like your life and mine, my dar

"Dear child, you do, indeed, put confidence in me," Mrs. Baines answered quaintly.

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And, Aunt Anne, I have ordered most things in, but the tradespeople come every day if there is anything more you want, and here is some money. Four pounds, I think, will carry you through; and here is a little book in which to put down your expenses. I always keep a most careful account, you don't mind doing so either, do you?

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My love, anything you wish will be a pleasure to me.'

"If you please, ma'am," said Jane, entering," the driver says you must start at once if you want to catch this train."

"Then good-bye dear Aunt Anne; goodbye, dear dickie-birds; be happy together. You shall see me very soon again; send me a letter every other day;" and with many embraces Florence was allowed to

"But you have a husband."

"Yes, I have a husband, too; a funny old husband, a long way off "- Florence hated her" and no children. I amused myself with the old lady Mrs. Baines till she fled from me. Now I try other

things. Good-bye."

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--

Good-bye," Florence said.

"I thought you had," she answered. "I have none; I don't want them. Goodbye."

It was nearly dark, and the one servant left to help Florence get the house ready had neglected to light the gas on the staircase. Mrs. North groped her way down.

"I want to tell you something," she said. "You said just now that I was clever. I don't think I am, but I can divine people's thoughts pretty easily. You are very good, I think; but consider this, your goodness is of no use if you are not good to others; good to women especially. The good of goodness is that you can wrap others inside it. It ought to be like a big cloak that you have on a cold night, while the shivering person next to you has none. If you don't make use of your goodness," she went on with a catch in her breath, "what is the good of it? I seem to be talking paradoxes-you prove how beautiful it is perhaps, but that is all-you make it like the swan that sings its own death-song. One listens and watches, and goes away to think of things more comprehensible, and to do them. Good-bye, Mrs. Hibbert," she said gently, and almost as if she were afraid she held out her hand. Florence took it, a little wonder-struck. "You are like a Madonna, very like one, as I said just now, but though you are older than I am, I think I know more about some things than you VOL. LXXIX. 4070

LIVING AGE.

But the next minute there were two flashing lamps before the house; there was the banging of a door, and Mrs. North was driven away.

Florence went slowly back to the diningroom and the inventory. Ethel Dunlop had gone. She was glad of it, for she wanted to think over her strange visitor.

"I don't understand her," she said to herself. "She is unlike any one I ever met; she fascinated and repelled me. I felt as if I wanted to kiss her, and yet the touch of her hand made me shiver." Then she thought of Madame Celestine's bill, and of Aunt Anne, and wished that the dress had not been bought, especially for the dinner-party; it made her feel as if she had been the unwitting cause of Mrs. Baines's extravagance. She looked into the fire, and remembered the events of that wonderful evening, and thought of Walter away, and the bills at home that would have to be paid at Christmas. And she thought of her winter cloak that was three years old and shabby, and of the things she had longed to buy for the children. Above all she thought of the visions she had had of saving little by little, and putting her savings away in a very safe place, until she had a cosy sum with which some day to give Walter a pleasant surprise, and suggest that they should go off together for "a little spree," as he would call it, to Paris or Switzerland. The fire burnt low, the red coals grew dull, the light from the street lamp outside seemed to come searching into the room as though it were looking for some one who was not there. She thought of Walter's letter safe in her pocket. He himself was probably at Malta by this time-getting stronger and stronger in the sunshine. Dear Walter, how generous he was; he, too, was a little bit reckless sometimes. She wondered if he inherited this last quality from Aunt Anne. She thought of her children at Witley having tea, most likely with cakes and jam in abundance; and of Aunt Anne in her glory. She wondered if Mr. Wimple had turned up. "Poor Aunt Anne," she sighed, and there was a long bill in her mind. Presently she rose,