ws and her feet thumping restlessly on the quilt.

"What is the matter, my love?"

"Oh, Stacy, dear, such a sudden take-down! My old neuralgia. Matthew!
Matthew! don't leave me! I feel as if I was just a goin'!"

"Oh, nonsense, dear. All you want is plenty of quiet. A good, long sleep
would bring you around in no time. Just snuggle down in the pillows, and
take yourself off to sleep till I come back."

"Are you going? and me like this? Oh, Matthew!"

"You can't feel it more than I do, Harriet, dear; but I must go down to
the bankers with this bill of exchange. Ten thousand dollars isn't to be
carried round in a man's pocket safely. Besides, there is a special
messenger just come up from the bank; so I must go, you see. But it
breaks my heart to leave you so--indeed it does!"

"Oh, if it's about money, I do not mind. That is a thing which must be
attended to. But Stacy, dear, don't let them keep you long; but go at
onst, and right back."

"The moment those rich old fellows will let me off--the very moment,
dear!" cried the model husband, waving his hand airily toward the bed,
and taking up both hat and cane; "so try and sleep."

CHAPTER XXVIII.

JUST FIFTY POUNDS.

Mrs. Stacy, thus reminded of her own needs, began to moan softly among
her pillows, and called out to the walls and windows that she wished, if
that pain was going to keep on so, that she never had been born. If it
wasn't that she had the very best husband that ever drew breath, she
would just give up, and want to die; but for his sake she would try and
worry through.

Stacy was far out of reach both of the moans and this conjugal tribute
to his goodness, for he had hastened to join that bank messenger who,
somehow, took the form of his old sweetheart, and shaded him now and
then with a coquettish bend of her parasol.

"Found your cane," observed Maggie, glancing at the ponderous
gold-headed affair in the hand of her old lover.

"Oh, yes; no trouble; had just stood it up in a corner of the parlor."

Maggie laughed a little under the cover of her parasol, but kept a
discreet silence about the locked door until she was snugly seated in
the park, with Stacy crowded close to her side.

"Ah," he said, heaving a sigh that lifted the white vest like a
snow-bank, "this is something like happiness! If you could only know
what your haughtiness has driven me to--but it is no use trying to make
you understand! Look at me, Miss Maggie! _Am_ I the