he evening's entertainment to
its close.

Mr. Moggridge blamed the bad ventilation, as he tenderly helped Jenny
along the few yards to home.

"No," said Jenny, with a big tearing sigh, "I don't think it was that.
It was that last poem, I think. It seemed so terrible to think of two
people having to part like that; don't you think so, Mr. Moggridge?"

Mr. Moggridge did. "And then," he said, "Miss Strange has such a way of
giving it out, it's almost more than human nature can bear."

"Yes; her voice," said Jenny, "seemed like a stream of tears."

When Theophil and Isabel returned from Zion, they seemed so full of real
anxiety, as indeed they were, that Jenny's poor heart felt just a
passing ray of warmth, a little less cast out into eternal loneliness.
She gave the same explanation as to Mr. Moggridge, not significantly,
but half intending a kind veiled message to them. "It seemed so terrible
to think of two people having to part like that," she said again.

And presently she pleaded weariness to go to bed earlier than usual.

"But don't you hurry, Isabel," said Jenny. "You and Theophil will not
see each other for a long time again."

"Sleep well," said Isabel, kissing her; and as she did so, she thought
there was a curious convulsiveness in Jenny's embrace.

When she had gone, the two looked at each other. "She seemed strange,"
said Isabel.

"I think I will go and see her for a moment," said Theophil.

So it was that, tapping at Jenny's door, he found her lying across her
bed with the gas still down. "Crying, dear!" he exclaimed.

"O Theophil dear, don't come," she said; "it's only silly nerves. Go
back to Isabel; I shall be better when I've had a sleep. Do go, dear,
like a kind boy. I'm better by myself. No ... it is nothing,--nothing
but nerves. Do go, dear. Good-night."

And with a foreboding heart Theophil went back to Isabel. Yet, as Jenny
had said, they were not to see each other for a long time again; and if
presently Theophil forgot Jenny crying upstairs, was it not because he
did not know the reason of her tears?

On the morrow Jenny pleaded weariness and stayed in bed, so that
Theophil saw Isabel off to London alone, and he did not see Jenny again
till the evening.

CHAPTER XX

IN WHICH JENNY CRIES

Jenny was not at the door that evening to welcome Theophil home, as she
usually was, and she made some excuse not to join him at dinner; but at
last, when the quiet secure hour which had