Her little hands

could hardly eat anything for excitement. trembled, two red little roses came and went in the thin cheeks, the faded eyes brightened and dimmed.

"Do you know, my dear?" she said to Lady Anne afterwards, "I feel as if I must have died in my sleep and wakened up in heaven. It is so deliciously warm and comforting, I'm afraid it was a little cold at Mrs. Cronin's."

"In that other life?" Lady Anne said, with her tich smile. "It was piercingly cold, my dear cousin. You are going to be warm henceforth."

Miss 'Stasia sat before a glowing fire in the bed-room, wrapped about in a soft, fleecy shawl which Lady Anne had paused a moment as they left the shop to purchase and take with her.

Presently there came a deft young woman from Messrs. Brown & Thomas's, accompanied by a great many boxes of all sizes and shapes, and Miss 'Stasia had to be fitted on and to select all manner of things. The young woman's manners were excellent. If she thought it an odd thing to have to fit out an elderly lady with everything she could possibly require, down even to the trunks to contain the outfit, there was no indication of it in her manner. To be sure she was accustomed to dire poverty among aristocrats; and the explanation she found for herself, and imparted to the other young ladies when she returned to the shop, was that Miss 'Stasia had been discovered by a rich relative in one of the houses for distressed ladies which were usually filled by those who had suffered during the land agitation. Some one suggested that the old lady had come into money, but that was an embroidery which did not find acceptance. It was quite easy to see that Lady Anne Chute was a benefactress and the Honorable Miss Chevenix the benefitted. The shop knew by this time that the pretty, faded, ringleted old lady in the shabby garments was the Honorable Miss, and its interest went up accordingly.

Intimacy and affection grew so rapidly between the twoLady Anne was one to love where she benefitted, and Miss 'Stasia had given up her poor starved, frozen heart to this glorious young kinswoman at first sight-that in the evening. after dinner, while they sat in the drawing-room at the hotel, Miss 'Stasia transmogrified in a gray poplin dress with a collar

of rich lace, she told Lady Anne all about Mrs. De Montmorency De Renzy and the Misses Burke Vandaleur. Unless Miss 'Stasia were to repay that tea party in kind she would feel guilty about it forever afterwards. Not that she hinted such a thing to Lady Anne; but the latter, for a big, young, unhurt, energetic creature, had delicate intuitions.

Supposing we ask your friends to tea and keep them to dinner?" she said. "Would they come on a short invitation, do you think? It will have to be in the nature of a farewell dinner, for we shan't be in Dublin for a long time again. Papa would never keep a Dublin house and I should have no earthly use for such a thing. Do you think they will come?" "If you ask them, Anne."

Miss 'Stasia said the monosyllabic name softly, as though the sound of it were very pleasant to her ear. She had never called anybody by their name before on so short an acquaintance, but Lady Anne had made questions of time and space as though they were not-to think she had not known her yesterday had swept all timidities, all old-fashioned reserves, away as a spring freshet might sweep little twigs and straws.

It took all Mrs. Cronin's tradition of good manners, from having lived with the best people, to keep her silent when Lady Anne came to No. 9 Wharton Street with the transformed Miss 'Stasia the next day. Miss 'Stasia was very sensible of the transformation and very shy about it, and she was grateful to Mrs. Cronin for her gaze of aloofness when she opened the door. Mrs. Cronin made up later when she had Miss 'Stasia to herself for a minute and whispered to her rapturously that she reminded her of the first day she ever saw her at the Abbey, in the white satin, coming down the stairs. She was shyer still of, facing her fellow-lodgers, and she went in meekly in the wake of Lady Anne, as though she would conceal herself behind her. She was aware of Mrs. De Renzy's one glance which took in all the difference in her looks from yesterday and was quickly withdrawn. She could hear Mrs. De Renzy say in her authoritative voice as soon as they should be gone: "Alaska sealskin, lined with lavender brocade. It never cost a penny under forty pounds." And so on through her various garments.

Not that she felt any sense of shame about receiving so much from Lady Anne. When one had a dear younger sis

ter-that was how Lady Anne had put the distant relationship-very rich and generous and loving, and one was poor and chilled and lonely, why wouldn't one accept the love and the gifts as one would give them if the cases were reversed?

As the little woman sat there, her eyes downcast, while Lady Anne made captive the hearts of the other poor lonely elderly women, who must go on living in Wharton Street, though she saw the spring begin in the exquisite country, her heart was full of a humble wonder and thanksgiving. How kind they were too! They seemed quite sorry to lose her, and yet quite glad that such wonderful, unexpected, blessed things should have befallen her.

Oh, there was Lady Anne-it was just like her-she was hoping that they would all visit Mount Shandon in the summer, and Mrs. De Renzy was saying for herself and the others how very pleased they would be to come.

"For a long visit," said her Ladyship, radiating light and warmth. "Mount Shandon is such a big house, and it will be a kindness. I believe it's rather dull when there's no hunting, at least so my English cousins say. They must be always killing something if it's only Time. And I think Time. is the last thing in the world to be killed, because he kills himself before we want him to."

The ladies were quite captivated. They accepted with gracious readiness that distant invitation for the summer; and the nearer one for the following afternoon at the Shelbourne. How long it was since any of them had been at the Shelbourne, and with what glorious things and days the name was associated!

Lady Anne herself took an interest in the Shelbourne dinner on the following day, and indeed consulted with the manager as to the dishes to be served to her party. They had a special table set near the fire, and it was a surprise to find in January such items on the menu as salmon trout and new potatoes and milk-fed lamb and green peas. The giver of the feast delighted in the dainties which she had caused to be spread for the poor ladies, and the good wine which warmed their thin blood.

Then when the wonderful evening was over, and they were cloaked and hooded and pattened to venture out in the piercing wind and wait at an arctic street corner for a tram, there

was a comfortable carriage at the door to take Lady Anne's guests home.

The stay in town extended to a week. Lady Anne seemed to have many people to see, not only lawyers and men of business generally, but also various public men and others interested in movements for helping the people by putting them in the way of helping themselves.

But at last Miss 'Stasia, still in a dream-like state, found herself in a first-class carriage at the King's Bridge, wrapped in a rug of the warmest and fleeciest, with a heap of books and magazines beside her, and a luncheon-basket looking at her from the opposite seat, out of which peeped the gold foil of the neck of a champagne bottle. A bunch of violets lay on her lap.

Opposite to her Lady Anne sat smiling at her like a big, beneficent young goddess. Lady Anne's rug was flung carelessly to one side. She had Mr. Benjamin Kidd's Social Evolution on her knee. When the time came to open the luncheon-basket she would eat her food heartily, but very much as though one kind of food was the same as another. All the dainty bits would be for Miss 'Stasia, and the champagne would be for her. Beyond the requirements of a healthy appetite Lady Anne was ascetic in her tastes. She was never cold; she never needed the stimulation of wine; she didn't care about novels. But she liked other people to have those softer things of life which she disdained for herself.

I

"It is nice to be getting home," she said with her kind smile. "You are sure your foot-warmer is really hot? must get it changed at Maryborough. It is very cold."

Her own foot-warmer was under the seat, pushed there by her own foot.

"Oh, my dear," said Miss 'Stasia, "you heavenly-kind creature, I can't tell you what it is like to be going-home! I used to think I would rather die in the Hospice for the Dying than in another hospital, or the poorhouse."

Her head began to tremble and her tears began to flow. "Hush, hush!" said Lady Anne. "You are going home, to live, to be happy, to make me happy."

CHAPTER VI.

THE SERIOUS COUSIN.

"I am expecting my Cousin Dunlaverock to stay," Lady Anne mentioned casually to Colonel Leonard some time after she had come back bringing the new addition to her household. "Alone ?"

"Yes, alone; I am going to have what visitors I like, Uncle Hugh, now that my Cousin Anastasia does duty for propriety. I am very glad I found her, the dear, but if I hadn't, I believe I should still have had what visitors I liked. You needn't frown. You represent propriety to me, Uncle Hugh, and I am very glad to propitiate you."

"Ah, thank you, my dear," Colonel Leonard said grimly. He was still a little sore about his ward's readiness to whistle him and his co-trustee down the wind.

He reported the interview afterwards to his wife.

"She says quite frankly that, if she hadn't found Miss Chevenix, she'd have done without a chaperon," he said. "We may be grateful that she did find Miss Chevenix. What do you make of Dunlaverock's coming over so soon again?"

"I might know what to make of it on his side. What I make of it on Anne's is not what you make, my poor Hugh. Anne is very good friends with her one serious cousin. But she has no intention of abdicating in favor of a husband just yet."

"I was hoping I saw a glimmer of sense in her," the Colonel replied sorrowfully.

The present Lord Dunlaverock was a nephew of the late peer. He had succeeded to the title and very little else, and it was with no great willingness that he gave up the life in a Highland regiment, in which he was profoundly interested, to assume the management of the property that went with the title.

He was a tactiturn, humorless, proud young man, with great ideas of what devolved on him as head of the house. If he were serious, he was also amiable, and that explained how he was at once laughed at, looked up to, and loved by his frivolous army of cousins. It was whispered about in the family that he had begun by being in love with Amy Hilton, Lady