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comfort." The smooth contempt of her words did not match with the awful terror in her eyes.

She dared not open the window; she feared to attract notice; but she longed intensely to know what Patience was saying to her husband.

Miss Coppock had kept much out of sight of late, and Patty had grown to be less on her guard. She knew that her husband watched her, but she did not fear him.

This morning had brought a terrible awakening. They had slept at a small town about three hours' journey from Bourges. Miss Coppock had left the breakfast-table before the others; and when a few minutes later Mrs. Downes had entered her own bedroom with her usual gliding, quiet step, she found her companion there reading a note. Patty knew at once what had happened. In an instant she snatched the note from

Miss Coppock. It was from Lord Charles Seton-a note of silly, boyish nonsense, but still of warmer nonsense than she would have liked Maurice to see addressed to her.

A sharp dispute ensued. Patience lost all self-control, and upbraided Mrs. Downes with her conduct during the journey.

"You can leave me," Patty said in a cold contemptuous tone. "You can go as far as Bourges with us, and then I will pay you your wages."

Patience had not answered; she had only scowled; and Patty had decided that Miss Coppock was too much a woman of the world to let herself be turned adrift in the middle of France "without any character to speak of."

She had grown so used to the idea of Patience's entire dependence on her, that she tried to forget the quarrel and the misgivings it had roused.

But now she could do this no longer. On reaching the inn at Bourges, she had asked to be shown to her bedroom, and her first glance into the court-yard had shown her Patience and her husband in earnest talk. Patty felt as if the ground shook beneath her: how could she escape? And yet she did not dream

that Patience would wholly betray her. She only feared that her husband would ask to see Lord Charles Seton's note.

The court-yard was still empty; there was no one within hearing. Patience knew that there were no other English staying at the Croix d'Or; and she spoke loudly, and so fearlessly, that for a few moments Mr. Downes was kept dumb by surprise.

He had been very angry with his wife, with what seemed to him her unpardonable vanity in regard to Lord Charles Seton. He had shown his dislike to it openly, and he resolved to part company at the first opportunity; but he loved Patty as much as ever, and when Miss Coppock asked him to listen to her, and began to express her grave suspicion of his wife's misconduct, he stopped her angrily.

"Hush! Miss Coppock; I cannot listen. I don't know why I have listened at all. listened at all. You have no right to speak against my wife. I suppose you have quarrelled with Mrs. Downes; but I cannot see that that gives you a right to speak against her in this way it is most ungrateful and offensive. I am competent to manage my own affairs, and after the way in which you have thought fit to speak of Mrs. Downes, it will be pleasanter in all ways for you to leave us such a thing is unpardonable."

He tried to press down his indignation, and his lip curled in the effort.

Miss Coppock's dull eyes kindled. As she stood there once more alone with Maurice Downes, it seemed as if that long-ago street scene was being acted out again he was again thrusting her away from him.

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She was getting beyond her fear of self-betrayal; his contempt goaded her out of herself. "Do you think it was for simple revenge on her that I've told you of her doings with that young lord? Why, the best revenge I could have had would have been to let her go on to disgrace; but you care for her, and I care enough for you and your credit to know that you're much too good for her, and I'm sick of seeing you deceived through thick and thin. If you want to keep her, look after her."

Again Mr. Downes held his breath while he listened. What change had come over this silent, cowed woman !—a creature who had seemed always to be trying to shrink out of sight. What could she mean by this special interest in him? It seemed as if she pitied him; he began to think she was crazy.

"You may set your mind at rest" -his voice had softened a little. "I am quite satisfied with my wife, Miss Coppock, and I am not, as you imagine, blind to her faults; if she were faultless, she would be an angel, and I'm not aware any woman ever was an angel. You are angry now. You have said several very foolish, most unjustifiable things; but we won't talk about them. Now, be reasonable. Your interest for me shows itself in a strange way; I still think you had better leave us, but I should like you to beg Mrs. Downes's pardon, and get right with her, before you go away; it will be so much better, you know, for you to go on to Paris with us, and you can leave us there; I am sure, even if you have made Mrs. Downes angry, she will allow you to go on to Paris with us."

Mr. Downes shrank from a scandal, and he thought if Miss Coppock went off in her present over-wrought excited state, she might do mischief.

Miss Coppock's smile was more ghastly than her anger had been; she had grown pale while Mr. Downes spoke

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"I said I'd do anything for you." She looked into his eyes with starved hope that even yet he might recognize her; "but I'll not ask her pardon, even for you. Her pardon!

if you only knew who and what she is!" She threw up her eyes, and clasped her hands with a violence that made Mr. Downes shrink away with disgust and dislike.

"The woman is either mad, or it is all acting and rhodomontade," he thought; "Elinor has offended her, and she'll say anything to poison me against her; her very pretence of liking me when she has taken every opportunity she could find of avoiding me, is enough to show that she'll say anything to serve her purpose."

"Miss Coppock, I must put an end to this," he said, firmly; "I should much prefer that you should control yourself, and stay until we reach Paris; but, of course, as you refuse to acknowledge yourself wrong, and persist in your offensive behaviour, this cannot be. Now remember," there was severe warning in his voice, "I can't permit another word about Mrs. Downes. Tell me what there is due to you, or, if you prefer it, I will send a cheque to any address you like; then you can go. Don't attempt to see Mrs. Downes again. I can't permit it; she is not used to vehemence like yours."

"How do you know what she's used to? What do you know about her at all? I've known her as many years as you've known her months." He put up his hand in protest, but no power of his could stop Patience now; she was roused to fury. "Did she tell you how she made my acquaintance, Mr. Downes? Did she say I wanted a new apprentice to the dressmaking, and her pretty face took my fancy as I passed by her father's cottage? Her father, too-ask him if you like, ask Roger Westropp if my story's true or false; he told me once if she wasn't a good wife to you he'd go up to Park Lane himself, and tell you the truth, for all he'd promised her not. Ask her lover, Mr. Whitmore—ah! yes, Mr. Whitmore's best of all-ask him, he can tell you plenty about her. When I think of the lies she must have told you, I've hardly patience to speak at all."

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A FRIEND IN NEED.

PATIENCE COPPOCK stood looking after him. All decision had left her face; her passion had gained such mastery, that it swayed her out of any set purpose.

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Money, money; yes, money is the salve for everything, isn't it? he offered me money that time in London. No, Maurice, no money shall buy my revenge now."

She stood there, white and trembling.

After a little she grew quiet; she went back into that part of the court-yard appropriated to the rougher vehiclesa kind of open shed. She was out of sight here, and thought came back with the freedom from restraint.

"I'm glad he didn't listen. I'll be calm next time I tell that story. I'll tell it in Park Lane, too, when there are others by to hear-Mrs. Winchester and plenty more, and I'll have old Roger by, that I will. I believe he'd do that much, to punish Patty when he finds it was her doing that took Mr. Whitmore away from his wife-and it was; I've listened and listened, and I'm sure of it; and she did it first from spite, for it's plain he don't care for her. No, I'll have my way; she shan't have everything, and me nothing."

She had spoken almost the same words at the news of Patty's marriage; but then, they had been sorrowfully

spoken; she said them now with hatred marked on her face.

Hatred had grown silently, until every thought had become subservient to the one resolve of revenging all her wrongs on Patty. Miss Coppock had watched quietly all through the journey for some pretext which would give her a right to speak to Mr. Downes, and now she had found it.

"I have ruined myself!"-The despair in her voice seemed exaggerated. "I am thrown on the world again, and I've done her no harm. As to going away from her, it's like leaving hell; but for him to have sneered at meand oh! it was worse than sneering." She hid her face in her hands; the disgust and dislike she had seen in Mr. Downes's face burned in her brain.

A man in a blouse came up to where she was standing; he looked curiously at her.

Patience recovered herself at once.
The luggage still stood in the court-

yard.
"I want you to bring this trunk to
the railway station," she said.
"Come
as fast as you can."
She went out
through the grey-arched entrance of the
court-yard.

The man scratched his head, but he did not touch the trunk.

"Dame, what extraordinary people are these English! see this one, she arrive, and she depart and all in half-anhour; she is, perhaps, crazy."

He resolved to await further orders before he followed this very extraordinary English woman.

Patience walked fast along the narrow street; she had no eyes for the quaint town with its Middle-age palaces of the wealthy burghers of Bourges. The rapid movement brought back all her passion.

"I wish I had struck her when she

talked about my wages. She hasn't got the natural feelings of a woman; she's a smiling, sneering devil; she said her husband wouldn't listen, whatever I might say, and she was right. What a fool he is to love her! Well, he'll suffer for it by-and-by."

Again a torrent of rage and despair

swept over her; she had suffered all this defeat and bitter mortification to leave Bourges in disgrace, and Patty victorious.

She soon reached the station. She asked for a train for Paris; but she heard that there would not be one for two hours. A train from Paris was due, and, as she stood on the platform blind to all that passed round her, it rolled slowly up amid the vociferations of the porters.

The noise roused Patience. Mechanically she watched the passengers alight; some of them were trying to gain information from the guard, as he passed rapidly along the line of carriages.

Miss Coppock started at the sound of an English voice.

"Is there no cross road from here to Clermont ?"

Miss Coppock turned round-it was Nuna Whitmore; she was still in the railway carriage, but she got out hastily when she recognized Patience. It seemed to her that she had found Paul, and that all her anxiety was

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from Mr. Downes; he is not likely to be still at Clermont, but you will be sure to find him.

This came in answer to the sudden sadness in the large dark eyes fixed so wistfully on her face.

Nuna's heart sank-like lead in

water.

"I don't understand; I thought you would be all together; how was it you came to the station to meet me? did you know I was coming? who told you to come?"

Patience had grown quiet; she was thinking how she could best make use of this strange chance; she smiled.

"I'll tell you that another time; I want to say several things to you before we get to the inn."

Spite of the confusion in her brain, Miss Coppock was too wary, too much controlled by the pure truthful face that looked so trustingly into hers, to tell Nuna at once the purpose for which she had interrupted her journey; she went off into a rambling narrative of Patty's conduct with Lord Charles Seton, and the deceit she had practised on Mr. Downes. Nuna begged her to keep silence.

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I can't listen to you if you talk in this way."

"You're mighty merciful!"- they had just rattled into the inn court-yard, "yet I don't think you've much to thank Mrs. Downes for, somehow."

Nuna shuddered, and shrank from the bitterness with which she spoke; where was Paul? she asked herself, and how was her journey going to end?

CHAPTER LXV.

A HARD FIGHT.

PATTY knew that her husband would come to her when Patience left him; she knew, too, that she must have a hard battle to retain her hold on his love; but even then her self-reliance did not desert her. She saw Mr. Downe leave Patience abruptly, she thought angrily; and the terror which had mastered her vanished Surel

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she was a match for Maurice. smoothed the frown on her forehead, and went up to the looking-glass. She soon removed the look of fatigue from her hair and complexion, and then she gazed earnestly at the reflection of her fair face.

"Who can look at Patience, and then at me, and doubt which of us speaks the truth?" There was triumph in her voice; but still she was not quite at ease. Patience had been gone some time. Why did not Maurice come upstairs?

"The thing I have got to guard against is fear," Patty said, thoughtfully. "It hasn't often come to me in my life, but when it has I know I am the worst of cowards. If I go giving way to it, and pretending to be fond of Maurice and SO on, he'll suspect directly, and then he'll never believe me again. I must be the injured person. I shan't forget that time when he told me he'd written to an artist of the name of Whitmore to paint my picture. Maurice looked quite puzzled at the fright I was in."

At last she heard steps coming slowly along the gallery.

"Now for it!" An uncontrollable spasm passed over her, and then she was outwardly calm. She sat down on the sofa just opposite the door.

Mr. Downes came in; he thought he was quite composed outwardly; but Patty saw that his face twitched.

"Elinor!" she made room for him beside her, but he stood erect; "perhaps you saw who was talking to me just now in the court-yard? I may as well say at once that you have chosen a most unfortunate time to quarrel with your companion. I don't say you are altogether to blame, for she certami is a most violent woman; but I cannot imagine what has occurred to cause such a disturbance."

He had looked sternly at his wife as he began, but he seemed unable to sustain the frank, fearless glance of her blue eyes; but Patty trembled, spite of her unconscious looks. Maurice would not speak in that stern voice, with his eyes on the ground, if he had

not something much more unpleasant still to say.

Her knees began to shake as she sat. "If I don't do something desperate it's all over with me." She threw back her head with the old saucy toss.

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Well, I don't know, Maurice. I had been thinking, while I looked out of window and saw how long you listened to Miss Coppock, that I had cause for complaint."

"I don't understand you, Elinor;" he looked at her in evident surprise.

"I don't see how you can understand till you know what has happened." Patty looked indignant-"that woman was very insolent just now, and I gave her her discharge. When she left me, she said she would have her revenge. As to quarrelling with her, really Maurice if you knew all I've had to bear, you would be quite vexed with me for submitting so long to her illtemper." Her husband had given her her cue when he spoke of Patience's violence-" she said she could make Mr. Downes believe what she liked, and she muttered something that a woman who had no relatives to vouch for her might find it hard to contradict what was said: she did indeed, Maurice"-her husband was looking at her steadily now, and she affected to think he was taking Miss Coppock's part "surely when a woman hints in that dreadful way, and then goes and talks privately to you for ever so long, I may feel hurt and shocked to see you listening. I shall be very glad to know what she really has been telling you."

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She had talked tears into her eyes: she wiped them away as if she scorned to show them.

"If you watched me, Elinor, I'm sure you must have seen I listened against my will, and that I was very much displeased: certainly I will tell you; I never have kept anything from you, and I will be quite frank now. Miss Coppock spoke of a note from Lord Charles Seton to you."

Patty's eyes drooped, spite of her efforts.

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