ust chosen?
Did you feel as if you could have jumped over the moon, when the Czarina
had a son?"

"I--I was very glad."

"Well, I wasn't! I cried with joy, and said my prayers all day long,
and thought of her lying there, and hugged the thought of her happiness,
the poor, beautiful, tragic thing! What _do_ you do, may I ask, if one
of your own friends is in trouble, and doesn't see the way out?"

"I--er,--well, if I can help him, I invariably do. For my own sake, as
well as his. I like helping. Take it all round, it is the most
agreeable sensation one can have. If the other fellow feels as
light-hearted and generally bucked up afterwards as I do myself, he is
jolly well off. But if I can't--"

"Yes?"

"Well! I don't worry. What's the use? It would do him no good for me
to be miserable as well as himself."

"The thought of him doesn't follow you wherever you go, like a
nightmare, squeezing up your heart?"

"Don't mix your metaphors, darling. That squeezes. Certainly not. I
should call it weakness. I dismiss it from my mind."

"Well, I think you are a callous wretch, and I like my own disposition a
million times better than yours."

"There is no discussion on that point is there? because I most heartily
agree."

"There you are, then!" cried Grizel triumphantly. "But you _will_
argue."

She shook out the damp ball of a handkerchief, and held it flag-ways to
the breeze, tilting her head to look into her husband's face. "Do I
look very plain?"

"Comparatively speaking--yes!" replied Martin, seizing on his revenge,
whereupon Grizel proceeded to declaim in a loud, artificial voice:

... "`Teardrops still lingered on the long eyelashes; the lovely,
mutinous face was wasted and ravaged with grief, yet never in her most
queenly moments had she appeared to him more alluring and sweet. For
weal or woe his life was in her hands.' ... Another fine instalment to
be given in our next number!" She waved her hand and turned back to the
house, while Martin, laughing, walked across the lawn to join the
Squire.

Meantime Peignton and Teresa had reached the station, and he was
unhappily facing a two hours' journey which might easily devolve itself
into a _tete-a-tete_, since considerate travellers have a habit of
avoiding carriages occupied by interesting-looking young couples. He
was divided between a horror of a repetition of the scene in the garden
the day before, and an overpowering sympathy for t