of meditating in one's garden in India," she said, laughing, and they went back to the house quite merrily, Arthur forgetting his puzzle as she smiled. Ida quite determined

to play out her part, but with a sickening consciousness that she had learnt some dreadful things that day which might make her life wear a different colour henceforth and for ever.

VOL. I.

C

CHAPTER XIII.

HUGH.

IDA's discovery was some time in getting into shape. At first it was a surprise that merely frightened and saddened her; but it gradually became a conviction, and had to be recognised as one of the facts of life, for her, indeed, one of the most important. It was this that there was something in Mrs. Maxwell's life that was wanting in her own, a sort of love that she had never felt nor seemed likely to feel, that made Mary to her husband true wife and friend, while lacking that, the utmost she could attain to was the position of loyal and faithful slave.

It was a terrible fall to Ida after her visions of being a perfect wife to Arthur; and like a stunning fall it sobered her.

It made her humble, more reasonable.

She had fretted under the feeling of vague discontent, but now that she knew what the mischief really was, the knowledge steadied her.

Mrs. Maxwell noticed a change and tried to draw her out, but Ida quietly baffled this. The consciousness of something that must not be said was strong upon her. It did a good deal to turn the child into a woman. She acknowledged to herself that this was a fact, and a sad one, and must be made the best of; but as to make any change in this fact by any effort of will, as well expect word or will to cause the acacias to produce bunches of lilac-blosTo Arthur she was more womanly and self-contained than of old, watchful and dutiful as ever, but with a certain calm and steadiness which was as far as possible from the nonsense to which he had felt it his duty to put a stop, that he congratulated himself on the somewhat unsatisfactory interview in the garden, as a real success.

som.

He had, he thought, been comprehended, though he had not been explanatory. He had not said what he wanted to say; indeed had blundered, and behaved, so he acknowledged, stupidly; yet here was before his eyes the very result he had contemplated.

Hence Arthur was most unduly puffed up at the brilliant success of his first serious effort at training his wife; his wife; while the merciful law of nature, without which no life on this earth would be tolerable, that gives power to each to guard their own thoughts, even from the nearest eye, was saving him from the sorest pain that could have reached him then.

He was very gracious, at first watching her closely with a certain air of approval that Ida felt to be thoroughly inappropriate to the occasion; but yet she took it, not knowing whether there was a better life before them, or a horrid break of some kind. This new knowledge seemed a heavy responsibility,

but yet she felt it much better that it should be knowledge, not ignorance; and feeling that there was danger in the air she was most steady. Arthur was desperately busy at the time, so that was a help to her.

What Hugh Linwood had to do with this discovery, it is not easy to say, but I am inclined to think little or nothing. Ida in her preoccupation forgot all about him, and when he called one morning when she and Mary were sitting with work and little Hugh playing at their feet, she welcomed him quite naturally, talked of past and present, called him Mr. Linwood unhesitatingly, and was so thoroughly unembarrassed that Mary, who had been on the watch, came to the conclusion that all was right there. She could not quite understand Ida, but she was most heartily glad to be convinced that her friend was standing on the brink of no such pitfall as that might have been.

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