pted, as will be guessed, the grateful theory of Mrs.
Sand, that she had only changed the sphere of her ministrations. She had
several times felt, seated beside Celine, how grateful she ought to
be that her spiritual paths for the future would be paths of such
pleasantness, though Celine herself seemed to stand rather far from
their border, probably because she was a Catholic. Mrs. Sand came
occasionally to upbuild her, and after that Laura had always a fresh
remembrance of how much she had done in giving so generous a friend
as Duff Lindsay to the Army in Calcutta. It was reasonable enough that
there should be a falling off in Mr. Lindsay's attendance just now in
Laura's absence, but when they were united, Mrs. Sand hoped there would
be very few evening services when she, the Ensign, would miss their
bright faces.

Lindsay himself came every afternoon, and Laura made tea, and pressed
upon him, solicitously, everything there was to eat. He found her
submissive and wishful to be pleasant. She sat up straight, and said
it was much hotter than they had it this time of year up-country,
but nothing at all to complain of yet. He also discovered her to be
practical; she showed him the bills for the muslins, and explained one
or two bargains. She seemed to wish to make it clear to him that it need
not be, after all, so very expensive to take a wife. In the course of a
few days one of the costumes was completed, and when he came she had it
on, appearing before him for the first time in secular dress. The stays
insisted a little cruelly on the lines of her figure, and the tight
bodice betrayed her narrow-chested. Above its frills her throat
protruded unusually, with a curve outward like that of some wading
bird's, and her arms, in their unaccustomed sleeves, hung straight
at her sides. She had put on the hat that matched; it was the kind of
pretty disorderly hat with waving flowers that demands the shadow of
short hair along the forehead, and she had not thought of that way of
making it becoming. Among these accessories the significance of her
face retreated to a point vague and distant, its lightly-pencilled lines
seemed half erased.

She made no demand for admiration on this occasion, she seemed
sufficiently satisfied with herself; but after a time when they were
sitting together on the sofa, and he still pursued the lines of her
garment with questioning eyes, she recalled him to the conventionalities
of the situation.

"Yo