much more smooth and comfortable for you if you could," answered Mrs. Scarth, not in the least disconcerted. "Your position, as it stands, looks rather perplexing, doesn't it?"

Nigel, with a deep sigh, agreed that it did. "I must make the best I can of it, that's all," he remarked.

"Do you hunt?" asked Bessie, in her abrupt way.

He shook his head smilingly. "I have had so few opportunities. Every now and then, while I was at Oxford, I managed a day with the hounds on a hired horse; but I am afraid you would hardly dignify that sort of thing by the name of hunting."

"Well, you will have horses of your own now. Do you shoot?"

Once more he had to plead absence of opportunity and experience. He was, however, fond of shooting, and hoped that, when the season came, he might not too conspicuously disgrace himself.

"Oh, you'll be all right," Bessie consolingly assured him-for, indeed, she had taken a fancy to his rather pathetic face and his stag-like eyes and his modest demeanour "I can see that you are going to be all right. Really, when you come to think of it, not much more is required of you than that you should keep up the shooting and take care to have a few foxes in your coverts. You won't allow difference of religion to make you unjust to your tenants or anything of that sort, I'm

sure."

"How can you be sure?" the young man made bold to inquire.

She laughed and replied that one could generally tell pretty well by looking at people. "Moreover," she added, "you belong to the family, and although it must be admitted that we are all of us a little cranky, we are at least just."

That was in truth what her father and her late uncle, and indeed every Scarth that ever lived, would have said. Their neighbours would scarcely have pronounced justice to be the distinguishing characteristic of the race; yet it may be that the love of it was, after some queer, distorted fashion, in them. At all events, both this young lady and her mother seemed disposed to be not only just but generous to their kinsman, and his shyness soon wore off under the influence of their kindly familiarity.

"Wasn't Cuthbert Gretton rather a friend of yours at Oxford?" Mrs. Scarth asked, after a time. "Cuthbert, as he must have told you, is almost the same as a son of our own-and a dear, good fellow he has always been too."

"One of the very best fellows in the world," Nigel assented. "Yes, we used to be great friends in those days, he and I. Afterwards "-he hesitated for a moment—" afterwards we didn't see quite so much of one another."

"There isn't very much to be seen of anybody except monks in a monastery, I presume," observed Bessie. "Wasn't Cuthbert horrified when he heard that you had determined to enter one?”

"I-I don't know," Nigel confessed, with an uneasy, look; "we had ceased to meet before that time."

His face clouded over, as it always did when he thought of that brief period of debauchery which his nature and his subsequent training had caused him to magnify into something more heinous than it really was. Had these good people heard about it? Did they know that Cuthbert had been compelled to drop him because a respectable young barrister could hardly afford to be seen in his company? So simple and so conscientious was he, despite what he imagined to be his exhaustive

acquaintance with a wicked world, that he was seriously debating with himself whether they ought not to be told when the door opened, and the entrance of an elderly, portly personage in clerical attire preserved him from making needless admissions.

This was Monsignor Nolan, domestic chaplain to Lord Lannowe, and a popular personage in the neighbourhood, to which he had returned in the above capacity after an absence of some years. He had already made acquaintance with Nigel, to whom he had been helpful in sundry small ways and who welcomed him with a certain sense of relief, saying

"I am not sure whether you know my aunt and my cousin."

"It would be a queer day when I needed an introduction to Mrs. Scarth," answered Monsignor Nolan, holding out a plump hand to that lady, who got up and grasped it. "As for Miss Scarth, I am afraid she can't remember me as well as I remember her. There's no difference worth mentioning between fifty-five and fiftynine; but it takes four of the longest years in life to grow from fifteen to nineteen."

"I was twenty last birthday," said Bessie, "and I have a very good memory. I remember who didn't often miss a meet of the hounds and who sometimes couldn't pull his cob up until he had seen the end of a run. Do you still take snuff?"

"Indeed I do, my dear young lady," answered the priest, seating himself and suiting the action to the word; "would you have me perfect-like yourself?"

He beamed at her through his gold-rimmed spectacles and rubbed his hands contentedly.

"Well, here we all are again!" he went on. "That is, here we shall all be in a day or two, when his lordship comes home for good and all, I hope. There's one

absentce, to be sure, rest his soul! Confess now, Mrs. Scarth; isn't it pain and grief to you to see a Papist in your brother-in-law's house?"

"Nothing of the sort!" Mrs. Scarth declared; "I have just been telling Nigel how much rather we would see him here than some stranger of our own faith. I should be glad, for his own sake, if he could manage to revert to the religion of his fathers; but I dare say you will take good care that he doesn't."

Monsignor Nolan took another pinch of snuff, without smiling. He was an easy-going person, but a cautious one, and there were subjects upon which he did not consider it prudent to jest. He adopted the safer course of remarking how glad he was to think that under the new régime there was likely to be an end of those family bickerings which, during the late Mr. Thomas Scarth's lifetime, had rendered it difficult for lovers of peace to maintain a friendly attitude all round.

"I take it for granted," he added, "that that is what your visit means, and that you represent Knaresby."

"Oh yes," answered Mrs. Scarth, laughing, "I hope I may say that I do. Naturally, I don't presume to represent my husband, who has never in his life been represented by anybody except himself."

"And cruelly misrepresented even then, as a rule," observed the priest, with a chuckle.

"Just so; his bark is worse than his bite. Only some people, you know, would rather be bitten than barked at, and poor Tom was one of them. Now tell me about Lord Lannowe. How odd it will seem to see little Monica taking her place at the head of his table!"

Under cover of the conversation which followed between Mrs. Scarth and Monsignor Nolan, the two younger people made mutual advances. They got on together better than might have been expected,

considering how little they had in common, and Bessie wound up by saying, in the plain language which it was her custom to employ

"I shouldn't wonder if you were to turn out quite an acquisition. It is a mere question of showing yourself a good sportsman and spending money freely."

"I shall try to be as good a sportsman as I can," the young man promised, with his slow, rather wistful smile; "but I don't know so much about spending money. Don't you think that, under all the circumstances, it may rather behove me to save it?"

Bessie pursed up her lips and nodded. "Perhaps it may; yet, according to what my father says, Uncle Tom has left a very large fortune. I should think, in spite of death duties, you might contrive to do as much as Uncle Tom did and still lay by something out of income. Don't give people a chance to call you close-fisted, that's all."

She had further words of admonition at his service, to which he listened with amusement and not without edification. When she and her mother had taken their leave, after begging him to go over to Knaresby as soon and as often as he could find time, he turned to the burly priest, whose counsel was of far more importance to him than Miss Bessie's, and said—

"They evidently want to be kind. Do you think I had better respond or not?"

"Dear me, why not?" Monsignor Nolan returned. "You'll find them very decent people, and you may even manage to avoid quarrelling with your uncle; though it will be next door to a miracle if you do."

"Does he quarrel with everybody?" Nigel asked.

"No; there's one exception and, I believe, only one. By the way, has Mr. Trenchard called upon you yet?" Nigel shook his head. "Who is Mr. Trenchard ?