to be on the Archdeacon's side," said Mrs Chiley, putting her handkerchief to her eyes; "but I am an old woman, and I like my old friends best. Oh, Lucilla, it is not kind of you to keep up appearances with me. I wish you would give way a little. It would do you good, my darling; and you know I might be both your grandmothers, Lucilla," she cried, putting her arm round her favourite. As for Miss Marjoribanks, she gave her old friend a close embrace, which was the only thing that even her genius could suggest to do.

"I have always you," said Lucilla, with touching eloquence; and then she freed herself a little from Mrs Chiley's arms. "I don't say, perhaps, that everybody will receive her; but I mean to make an effort, for my part; and I shall certainly tell Mr Cavendish so if he ever speaks of it to me. As for Mr Beverley,

Did not you hear?

he is going to be married too. He told me all about it himself one day," said Miss Marjoribanks; "and I will ask him to-night if I may not tell you who the lady is. It is quite a little romance, and I hope we shall have two marriages, and it will make it quite gay for the winter. When you know all about it," Lucilla added, tenderly, by way of breaking the shock, "I am sure you will be pleased." But instead of being pleased, Mrs Chiley was speechless for the moment. Her fresh old cheeks grew ashy

with dismay and horror.

"The Archdeacon too!" she

cried, gasping for breath. "Oh, Lucilla, my dear!— and you?" Then the kind old lady held Miss Marjoribanks fast, and sobbed over her in the despair of the moment. To think, after all the pains that had been taken, and all the hopes and all the speculations, that neither the one nor the other was coming to anything! "If it should be that General, after all-and I cannot abide him," sobbed Lucilla's anxious friend. But Miss Marjoribanks's genius carried her through this trial, as well as through all the others which she had yet encountered on her way.

Dear Mrs Chiley!" said Lucilla, "it is so good of you to care; but if it had been that I was thinking of, I need never have come home at all, you know; and my object in life is just what it has always been, to be a comfort to papa."

Upon which Mrs Chiley kissed her young friend once more with lingering meaning. "My dear, I don't know what They mean," she said, with indignation ;

everybody knows men are great fools where women are concerned-but I never knew what idiots they were till now; and you are too good for them, my darling!" said Mrs Chiley, with indignant tenderness. Perhaps Miss Marjoribanks was in some respects of the same way of thinking. She conducted her sympathetic friend to the garden door, when it came to be time for everybody to go and dress, with a certain pathetic ele

vation in her own person, which was not out of accord with Mrs Chiley's virtuous wrath. To have Mrs Mortimer and Barbara Lake preferred to her did not wound Lucilla's pride-one can be wounded in that way only by one's equals. She thought of it with a certain mild pity and charitable contempt. Both these two men had had the chance of having her, and this was how they had chosen! And there can be little wonder if Miss Marjoribanks's compassion for them was mingled with a little friendly and condescending disdain.

It was, however, an ease to Lucilla's mind that she had let Mrs Chiley know, and was so far free to work out her plans without any fear of misconception. And on the whole, her old friend's tender indignation was not disagreeable to her. Thus it was, without any interval of repose to speak of, that her lofty energies went on unwearied to overrule and guide the crisis which was to decide so many people's fate.

CHAPTER XXXII.

DR MARJORIBANKS was not a man to take very much notice of trivial external changes; and he knew Lucilla and her constitution, and, being a medical man, was not perhaps so liable to parental anxieties as an unprofessional father might have been; but even he was a little struck by Miss Marjoribanks's appearance when he came into the drawing-room. He said, "You are flushed, Lucilla? is anything going to happen?" with the calmness of a man who knew there was not much the matter-but yet he did observe that her colour was not exactly what it always was. "I am quite well, papa, thank you," said Lucilla, which, to be sure, was a fact the Doctor had never doubted; and then the people began to come in, and there was no more to be said.

But there could be no doubt that Lucilla had more colour than usual. Her pulse was quite steady, and her heart going on at its ordinary rate; but her

admirable circulation was nevertheless so far affected, that the ordinary rose-tints of her complexion were all deepened. It was not so distinctly an improvement as it would have been had she been habitually pale; but still the flush was moderate, and did Miss Marjoribanks no harm. And then it was a larger party than usual. The Centums were there, who were General Travers's chaperons, and so were the Woodburns, and of course Mrs Chiley, which made up the number of ladies beyond what was general at Dr Marjoribanks's table. Lucilla received all her guests with the sweetest smiles and all her ordinary ease and self-possession, but at the same time her mind was not free from some excitement. She was on the eve of a crisis which would be the greatest failure or the greatest success of her public life, and naturally she anticipated it with a certain emotion.

Mr Cavendish, for his part, had sufficient sense to come very early, and to get into a dark corner and keep himself out of the way; for though he was screwed up to the emergency, his self-possession was nothing to that of Lucilla. But on the whole, it was perhaps Mrs Woodburn who suffered the most. Her heightened colour was more conspicuous than that of Miss Marjoribanks, because as a general rule she was pale. She was pale, almost white, and had dark eyes and dark hair, and possessed precisely