lost its usual outline."
And he gave her a complimentary little bow.

"Oh! there you are wrong," cried the sufferer. "My face is very much
swollen on one side."

But she did not mention on which side the disfigurement was to be seen,
and she ate an excellent dinner and talked very brightly to her host,
who could not think why his wife had taken an evident dislike to the
little woman. Edmund teased her several times, and would not let her
settle down into her usual state of self-content, but after dinner she
wisely took refuge with the merciful Rose.

Lady Groombridge meanwhile gave Molly a dose of good advice, kindly, if
a little roughly, administered.

"I was pretty and an orphan myself, and it is not very easy work; then
you have money, which makes it both better and worse. Be with wise
people as much as you can; if they are a little dull it is worth while.
If you take up with any bright, amusing woman you meet, you will find
yourself more worried in the long run;" and she glanced significantly at
Mrs. Delaport Green.

The obvious nature of the advice, of which this remark is a sample, did
not spoil it. Sometimes it is a comfort to have the thing said to us
that we quite see for ourselves. In to-day's unwonted mood Molly was
ready to receive very ordinary wisdom as golden.

And then Lady Groombridge discovered that Molly was musical, and the
older woman loved music, finding in it some of the romance which was
shut out by her own limitations and by a life of over great bustle and
worry.

So Molly found in her music expression for her joy in the spring, and
her wistful, undefined sense of hope in life.

Lady Groombridge, sitting near her, listened almost hungrily, and asked
for more. She was utterly sad to-night with the "might have been" of a
childless woman. The news of the final sacrifice on the part of the heir
to Groombridge, of all that meant so much to herself and her husband,
had made so keen to her the sense of emptiness in their old age. And the
music soothed her into a deeper feeling of submission that in reality
underlay the outward unrest and discontent of to-day. Submission was, at
one time, the most marked virtue of every class in our country, and it
may be found sometimes in those who, having lost all other conscious
religion, will still say, "He knows best," revealing thereby the
bed-rock of faith as the foundation of their lives. Lady Groombridge had
not lost her religious beliefs, but she wa