exceeding treacherous," she understood that he
meant to condemn her.

"So it is, Mr Maguire, but that is no reason why Mrs Stumfold should
scold me."

Then he got up and left her, and did not speak to her again that
evening, but he called on her the next day, and was very affectionate
in his manner. In Mr Stumfold's mode of treating her she had found no
difference.

With Miss Todd, whom she met constantly in the street, and who always
nodded to her very kindly, she had had one very remarkable interview.

"I think we had better give it up, my dear," Miss Todd had said to
her. This had been in Miss Baker's drawing-room.

"Give what up?" Miss Mackenzie had asked.

"Any idea of our knowing each other. I'm sure it never can come to
anything, though for my part I should have been so glad. You see you
can't serve God and Mammon, and it is settled beyond all doubt that
I'm Mammon. Isn't it, Mary?"

Miss Baker, to whom this appeal was made, answered it only by a sigh.

"You see," continued Miss Todd, "that Miss Baker is allowed to know
me, though I am Mammon, for the sake of auld lang syne. There have
been so many things between us that it wouldn't do for us to drop
each other. We have had the same lovers; and you know, Mary, that
you've been very near coming over to Mammon yourself. There's a sort
of understanding that Miss Baker is not to be required to cut me.
But they would not allow that sort of liberty to a new comer; they
wouldn't, indeed."

"I don't know that anybody would be likely to interfere with me,"
said Miss Mackenzie.

"Yes, they would, my dear. You didn't quite know yourself which way
it was to be when you first came here, and if it had been my way,
I should have been most happy to have made myself civil. You have
chosen now, and I don't doubt but what you have chosen right. I
always tell Mary Baker that it does very well for her, and I dare say
it will do very well for you too. There's a great deal in it, and
only that some of them do tell such lies I think I should have tried
it myself. But, my dear Miss Mackenzie, you can't do both."

After this Miss Mackenzie used to nod to Miss Todd in the street, but
beyond that there was no friendly intercourse between those ladies.

At the beginning of December there came an invitation to Miss
Mackenzie to spend the Christmas holidays away from Littlebath, and
as she accepted this invitation, and as we must follow her to the
house of her friends, we will