seen nothing, nor the shadow of anything-until one night, by the merest chance, happening to enter his wife's drawing-room, he caught a peculiar glance between Sepia and a young man-not very young, who had just entered, and whom he had not seen before.

To not a few it seemed strange that, with her unquestioned powers of fascination, she had not yet married; but London is not the only place in which poverty is as repellent as beauty is attractive. At the same time

it must be confessed there was something about her which made not a few men shy of her. Some found that if her eyes drew them within a certain distance, there they began to repel them, they could not tell why. Others felt strangely uncomfortable in her presence from the first. Not only much that a person has done, but much of what a person is capable of, is, I suspect, written on the bodily presence; and although no human eye is capable of reading more than here and there a scattered hint of the twilight of history, which is the aurora of prophecy, the soul may yet shudder with an instinctive foreboding it cannot explain, and feel the presence, without cognizing the nature of the hostile.

re

Sepia's eyes were her great power. She knew the laws of mortar-practice in that kind as well as any officer of engineers those of projectiles. There was something about her engines which it were vain to attempt to describe. Their lightest glance was a thing not to be trifled with, and their gaze a thing hardly to be withstood. Sustained and without hurt defied, it could hardly be by man of woman born. They were large, but no fool would be taken with mere size. They were as dark as ever eyes of woman, but our older poets delighted in eyes as grey as glass: certainly not in their darkness lay their peculiar witchery. They were grandly proportioned, neither

almond-shaped nor round, neither prominent nor deep-set; but even shape by itself is not much. If I go on to say they were luminous, plainly there the danger begins. Sepia's eyes, I confess, were not lords of the deepest light-for she was not true; but neither was theirs a surface light, generated of merely physical causes: through them, concentrating her will upon their utterance, she could establish a psychical contact with almost any man she chose. Their power was an evil selfish shadow of original, universal love. By them she could produce at once in the man on whom she turned their play, a sense as it were of some primordial, fatal affinity between her and him of an aboriginal understanding, the rare possession of but a few of the pairs made male and female. Into those eyes she would call up her soul, and there make it sit, flashing light, in gleams and sparkles, shoots and coruscations-not from great black pupils alone-to whose size there were who said the suicidal belladonna lent its aid-but from great dark irids as well;-nay, from eye-balls, eye-lashes, and eye-lids, as from spiritual catapult or culverin, would she dart the lightnings of her present soul, invading with influence as irresistible as subtle, the soul of the man she chose to assail, who, thenceforward, for a season, if he were such as she took him for, scarce had choice but be her slave. She seldom exerted their full force, however, without some further motive than mere desire to captivate. There are women who fly their falcons at any game, little birds and all; but Sepia did not so waste herself: her quarry must be worth her hunt: she must either love him, or need him. Love! did I say? Alas, if ever holy word was put to unholy use, love is that word! When Diana goes to hell, her name changes to Hecate, but love among the devils is called love still!

In more than one other country, whatever might be the cause, Sepia had found the men less shy of her than here; and she had almost begun to think her style was not generally pleasing to English eyes. Whether this had anything to do with the fact that now in London she began to amuse herself with Tom Helmer, I cannot say with certainty; but almost if not quite the first time they met, that morning, namely, when first he called, and they sat in the bay window of the drawing-room in Glammis Square, she brought her eyes to play upon him; and although he addressed the Firefly poem to Hesper in the hope of pleasing her, it was for the sake of Sepia chiefly that he desired the door of her house to be an open one to him. Whether at that time she knew he was a married man, it is hardly necessary to inquire, seeing it would have made no difference whatever to one like her, whose design was only to amuse herself with the youth, and possibly to make of him a screen. She went so far, however, as to allow him, when there was opportunity, to draw her into quiet corners, and even to linger when the other guests were gone, and he had had his full share of champagne. Once indeed they remained together so long in the little conservatory, lighted only by an alabaster lamp, pale as the moon in the dawning, that she had to unbolt the door to let him out. This did not take place without coming to the knowledge of both Mr. and Mrs. Redmain; but the former was only afraid there was nothing in it, and was far from any wish to control her; and Sepia herself was the informant of the latter. To her she would make game of her foolish admirer, telling how, on this and that occasion, it was all she could do to get rid of him.

CHAPTER V.

HONOUR.

HAVING now gained a partial insight into Letty's new position, Mary pondered what she could do to make life more of life to her. Not many knew better than she that the only true way to help a human heart is to lift it up; but she knew also that every kind of loving aid tends more or less to that uplifting; and that, if we cannot do the great thing, we must be ready to do the small: if we do not help in little things, how shall we be judged fit to help in greater? We must help where we can, that we may help where we cannot. The first, and the only thing she could for a time think of, was, to secure for Letty, if possible, a share in her husband's pleasures.

Quietly, yet swiftly, a certain peaceful familiarity had established itself between Hesper and Mary, to which the perfect balance of the latter, and her, sense of the only true foundation of her position, contributed far more than the undefined partiality of the former. The possibility of such a conversation as I am now going to set down, was one of the results.

"Do you like Mr. Helmer, ma'am?" asked Mary one morning, as she was brushing her hair.

"Very well. How do you know anything of him?" "Not many people within ten miles of Testbridge do not know Mr. Helmer," answered Mary.

"Yes, yes, I remember," said Hesper. "He used to ride about on a long-legged horse, and talk to anybody

that would listen to him. But there was always something pleasing about him, and he is much improved. Do you know he is considered really very clever?”

"I am not surprised," rejoined Mary. "He used to be rather foolish, and that is a sign of cleverness—at least many clever people are foolish, I think."

"You can't have had much opportunity for making the observation, Mary!"

"Clever people think as much of themselves in the country as they do in London, and that is what makes them foolish," returned Mary. "But I used to think Mr. Helmer had very good points, and was worth doing something for-if one only knew what."

"He does not seem to want anything done for him," said Hesper.

"I know one thing you could do for him, and it would be no trouble," said Mary.

"I will do anything for anybody that is no trouble," answered Hesper. "I should like to know something

that is no trouble."

"It is only, the next time you ask him, to ask his wife," said Mary.

"He is married then?" returned Hesper with indifference. "Is the woman presentable? Some shopkeeper's daughter, I suppose!"

Mary laughed.

"You don't imagine the son of a lawyer would be likely to marry a shopkeeper's daughter!" she said.

"Why not?" returned Hesper, with a look of non-intelligence.

"Because a professional man is so far above a tradesman."

"Oh!" said Hesper. 66 -But he should have told me if he wanted to bring his wife with him. I don't care