unded an age ago, and
father is in the drawing-room. What have you been doing with yourself
all these hours?'

'I had forgotten you were going out,' he returned, parrying her
question. 'How nice you look, Audrey! I thought white silk was bridal
finery. Cinderella turned into a princess was nothing to you.'

'I feel like a princess with my roses and diamonds;' but she looked at
Cyril, not at Michael, as she spoke. Cyril was standing beside her with
one arm against the carved mantelpiece; he was looking handsomer than
ever. Just then there was the sound of carriage-wheels, and he took up
the furred cloak that lay on the settee beside him, and put it gently
round her shoulders.

'You must not take cold,' Michael heard him say. There was nothing in
the words, but the glance that accompanied this simple remark spoke
volumes. Michael drew a deep heavy sigh as he went upstairs. 'Poor
fellow! how he worships her!' he thought;' what will be the end of this
tangle?' And then he dressed himself hastily and took his place at the
table to eat his dinner with what appetite he might, while Mrs. Ross
discoursed to him placidly on the baby's beauty and on dear Geraldine's
merits as a mother and hostess.

CHAPTER XXXIV

'I MUST THINK OF MY CHILD, MIKE'

'Ah! the problem of grief and evil is, and will be always, the
greatest enigma of being, only second to the existence of being
itself.'--AMIEL.

Michael listened in a sort of dream. He was telling himself all the time
that his opportunity was come, and that it was incumbent on him not to
sleep another night under his cousin's roof until he had made known to
him this grievous thing.

As soon as they rose from the table, and Dr. Ross was preparing as usual
to follow his wife into the drawing-room until the prayer-bell summoned
him into the schoolroom, Michael said, a little more seriously than
usual:

'Dr. Ross, would you mind giving me half an hour in the study after
prayers? I want your advice about something;' for he wished to secure
this quiet time before Audrey returned from her party.

The Doctor was an observant man, in spite of his occasional absence of
mind, and he saw at once that something was amiss.

'Shall you be able to do without us this evening, Emmie?' he said, with
his usual old-fashioned politeness, that his wife and daughters thought
the very model of perfection: 'it is too bad to leave you alone when
Audrey is not here to keep you c