es, her offers of marriage, and her
self-made occupations, Mildred Carr was essentially "a weary woman,
sunk deep in ease, and sated with her life." Within that little frame
of hers, there beat a great active heart, ever urging her onwards
towards an unknown end. She would describe herself as an "ill-
regulated woman," and the description was not without justice, for she
did not possess that placid, even mind which is so necessary to the
comfort of English ladies, and which enables many of them to bury a
husband or a lover as composedly as they take him. She would have
given worlds to be able to fall in love with some one, to fill up the
daily emptiness of her existence with another's joys and griefs, but
she _could_ not. Men passed before her in endless procession, all
sorts and conditions of them, and for the most part were anxious to
marry her, but they might as well have been a string of wax dolls for
aught she could care about them. To her eyes, they were nothing more
than a succession of frock-coats and tall hats, full of shine and
emptiness, signifying nothing. For their opinion, too, and that of the
society which they helped to form, she had a most complete and wrong-
headed contempt. She cared nothing for the ordinary laws of social
life, and was prepared to break through them on emergency, as a wasp
breaks through a spider's web. Perhaps she guessed that a good deal of
breaking would be forgiven to the owner of such a lovely face, and
more than twenty thousand a year. With all this, she was extremely
observant, and possessed, unknown to herself, great powers of mind,
and great, though dormant, capacities for passion. In short, this
little woman, with the baby face, smiling and serene as the blue sky
that hides the gathering hurricane, was rather odder than the majority
of her sex, which is perhaps saying a great deal.

One day, about a week before Arthur departed from the Abbey House,
Agatha Terry was sitting in the blue drawing-room in the house in
Grosvenor Square, when Mrs. Carr came in, almost at a run, slammed the
door behind her, and plumped herself down in a chair with a sigh of
relief.

"Agatha, give orders to pack up. We will go to Madeira by the next
boat."

"Goodness gracious, Mildred! across that dreadful bay again; and just
think how hot it will be, and the beginning of the season too."

"Now, Agatha, I'm going, and there's an end of it, so it is no use
arguing. You can stay here, and give a