ive it or
anything peculiar in his voice.

"Ha!" she cried vaingloriously, "I have! I let her know what I thought
of her--mean little cat."

"Jane!" said her husband warningly.

"Oh, you needn't stand up for her," she said airily. "I'm not going to
stand by and see my brother treated so. But what's a talking-to with
a brazen hussy like that? Wait a bit, I haven't thought how to do it
yet, but I'm going to pay her out. Trust me!"

And then Jim did what he had never done in his life before,--he took
his wife by the shoulders and forcibly marched her into the bedroom
and shut the door upon her.

"Come, Tom!" he said touching him gently on the shoulder, "we've had
enough of this."

They passed down the stairs together, but on the landing below Tom
stopped, and covering his face with his hands, leaned against the
wall.

"Oh Pattie, Pattie," he moaned, "that's my last chance gone. And my
own sister too."

Jim said nothing. He was not good at words, but he waited till Tom
had recovered himself, and then he went right to his home with him and
made a cup of tea for him and sat and chatted till past midnight.

"Don't be downhearted, old fellow," he said when he parted from him.

But as he went home again he muttered to himself and frowned.

"I wonder what Jane means to do? I wonder what she _could_ do?"

CHAPTER XVI.

LINKS IN A CHAIN.

Gertrude had never had such a summer of gaieties.

She had not long returned from Whitecliff when a young American,
cousin to Pauline Stacey, with a long purse and unlimited ideas of
enjoying himself, made his appearance in Old Keston.

He had "done" England, and wished to stay with his Aunt Stacey "for
a few days" before going on to Switzerland, and with his cousin
Pauline's very ready help, he inaugurated a series of boating
excursions, moonlight strolls, tennis matches and picnics, which
lengthened his visit into weeks instead of days, and in which
Gertrude, to her great delight, found herself involved from the very
first. Pauline Stacey had long ago found Gertrude a far more congenial
spirit than her first friend, Denys, had ever been, so that though
Denys was occasionally invited to the American's festivities, it
generally fell out that Gertrude and Willie or Gertrude and Conway,
but always Gertrude, helped to make up the large parties, without
which the American could not be satisfied and which stirred up and
drew together the social side of Old Keston in an unp