wisely.

As to Meta, she was Ethel's chief consolation, by the redoubled
assurances, directed to Ethel's unexpressed dread, lest Flora should be
rejecting the chastening Hand. Meta had the most absolute certainty that
Flora's apparent cheerfulness was all for George's sake, and that it was
a most painful exertion. "If Ethel could only see how she let herself
sink together, as it were, and her whole countenance relax, as soon as
he was out of sight," Meta said, "she could not doubt what misery these
efforts were to her."

"Why does she go on with them?" said Ethel.

"George," said Meta. "What would become of him without her? If he misses
her for ten minutes he roams about lost, and he cannot enjoy anything
without her. I cannot think how he can help seeing what hard work it is,
and how he can be contented with those dreadful sham smiles; but as long
as she can give him pleasure, poor Flora will toil for him."

"It is very selfish," Ethel caught herself saying.

"No, no, it is not," cried Meta. "It is not that he will not see, but
that he cannot see. Good honest fellow, he really thinks it does her
good and pleases her. I was so sorry one evening when I tried to take
her place at that perpetual ecarte, and told him it teased her; he went
so wistfully to her, and asked whether it did, and she exerted herself
into such painful enjoyment to persuade him to the contrary; and
afterwards she said to me, 'Let me alone, dearest--it is the only thing
left me.'"

"There is something in being husband and wife that one cannot
understand," slowly said Ethel, so much in her quaint way that Meta
laughed.

Had it not been for Norman's absence, Ethel would, in the warm sympathy
and accustomed manner of Meta Rivers, have forgotten all about the hopes
and fears that, in brighter days, had centred on that small personage;
until one day, as she came home from Cocksmoor, she found "Sir Henry
Walkinghame's" card on the drawing-room table. "I should like to bite
you! Coming here, are you?" was her amiable reflection.

Meta, in her riding-habit, peeped out of Margaret's room. "Oh, Ethel,
there you are! It is such a boon that you did not come home sooner, or
we should have had to ride home with him! I heard him asking for the
Miss Mays! And now I am in hopes that he will go home without falling in
with Flora and George."

"I did not know he was in these parts."

"He came to Drydale last week, but the place is forlorn, and George gave