o conceal.

This afternoon, one of many that Barbara has given up to duty, finds her
as usual in Lady Monkton's drawing room listening to her mother-in-law's
comments on this and that, and trying to keep up her temper, for
Frederic's sake, when the old lady finds fault with her management of
the children.

The latter (that is, Tommy and Mabel) have been sent to the pantomime by
Sir George, and Barbara with her husband have dropped in towards the
close of the day to see Lady Monkton, with a view to recovering the
children there, and taking them home with them, Sir George having
expressed a wish to see the little ones after the play, and hear Tommy's
criticisms on it, which he promised himself would be lively. He had
already a great belief in the powers of Tommy's descriptions.

In the meantime the children have not returned, and conversation, it
must be confessed, languishes. Miss L'Estrange, who is present in a cap
of enormous dimensions and a temper calculated to make life hideous to
her neighbors, scarcely helps to render more bearable the dullness of
everything. Sir George in a corner is buttonholing Frederic and
saddening him with last accounts of the Scapegrace.

Barbara has come to her final pretty speech--silence seems
imminent--when suddenly Lady Monkton flings into it a bombshell that
explodes, and carries away with it all fear of commonplace dullness at
all events.

"You have a sister, I believe," says she to Barbara in a tone she fondly
but erroneously imagines gracious.

"Yes," says Barbara, softly but curtly. The fact that Joyce's existence
has never hitherto been alluded to by Lady Monkton renders her manner
even colder than usual, which is saying everything.

"She lives with you?"

"Yes," says Barbara again.

Lady Monkton, as if a little put out by the determined taciturnity of
her manner, moves forward on her seat, and pulls the lace lappets of her
dove-gray cap more over to the front impatiently. Long, soft lappets
they are, falling from a gem of a little cap, made of priceless lace,
and with a beautiful old face beneath to frame. A face like an old
miniature; and as stern as most of them, but charming for all that and
perfect in every line.

"Makes herself useful, no doubt," growls Miss L'Estrange from the
opposite lounge, her evil old countenance glowing with the desire to
offend. "That's why one harbors one's poor relations--to get something
out of them."

This is a double-barrelled ex