e a snort of irrepressible exasperation, and,
evidently renouncing her mistress as beyond hope, forthwith departed in
search of the missing property. I accompanied her, and, with the aid of
the guard, we speedily found and secured both bag and umbrella, and, as
the train steamed off, returned with these treasures to Mrs. de Noel,
still on the same spot and in the same attitude as we had left her, and
all that she said was--

"It was so stupid, so forgetful, so just like me not to have asked her
more about it. She had been ill; the journey itself was more than she
could stand; and then to have to carry the baby! She said it was not
far, but perhaps she only said that to please me. Poor people are so
afraid of distressing one; they often make themselves out better off
than they really are, don't they?"

I was embarrassed by this question, to which my own experience did not
authorise me to answer yes; but I evaded the difficulty by consulting a
porter, who fortunately knew the woman, and was able to assure us that
her cottage was barely a stone's throw from the station. When I had
conveyed to Mrs. de Noel this information, which she received with an
eager gratitude that the recovery of her bag and umbrella had failed to
rouse, we left the station to go to the carriage, and then it was that,
pausing suddenly, she cried out in dismay--

"Ah, you are hurt! you--"

She stopped abruptly; she had divined the truth, and her eyes grew
softer with such tender pity as not yet had shone for me--motherless,
sisterless--on any woman's face. As we drove home that evening she heard
the story that never had been told before.

"You may have your faults, Cissy," said Atherley, "but I will say this
for you--for smoothing people down when they have been rubbed the wrong
way, you never had your equal."

He lay back in a comfortable chair looking at his cousin, who, sitting
on a low seat opposite the drawing-room fire, shaded her eyes from the
glare with a little hand-screen.

"Mrs. Molyneux, I hear, has gone to sleep," he went on; "and Mrs. Mallet
is unpacking her boxes. The only person who does not seem altogether
happy is my old friend Parkins. When I inquired after her health a few
minutes ago her manner to me was barely civil."

"Poor Parkins is rather put out," said Mrs. de Noel in her slow gentle
way. "It is all my fault. I forgot to pack up the bodice of my best
evening gown, and Parkins says it is the only one I look fit to be