"Have the Thornes come back for good?" questioned Anne, " and is Percy at home?

"Mister Percy is at home," corrected Miss Maria, "but we've not yet had the honour of seeing him, though his mother did say he was going to step in upon us next time he rode into the village. And they say some fine folk have taken the Lodge, which has been empty so long. We're beginning to look up in Seaford, my dear."

"That reminds me," cried Molly, "that I came to bid you good-bye. I'm going away on a visit for a short time. I don't know the time; and I thought you'd wonder if I didn't run in and tell you."

"And where may you be going, dear?" curiously asked Miss Sally.

"I'm going to the Lodge," said Molly, a sly note of triumph ringing in the merry voice. "Lor!" ejaculated Miss Sally, astonished beyond measure.

"I wish you wouldn't use that objectionable word, sister," remonstrated Miss Maria, drawing herself up. "I'm glad to hear," turning towards Molly, "that you 're going to be among great folk, and I hope you'll enjoy

yourself, and not let your head be turned by the finery and grandeur you'll possibly see. It will be very different to Blatchington, I daresay. You must come and tell us all about it when you get home again."

"Yes, we'd like to hear how they live, and know something of all the new London fashions," spoke Miss Sally, quite eagerly, looking at Molly with sparkling eyes.

"What should we want to know London fashions for?" said Miss Maria, who, for all her assumed indifference, would be the very first person to listen with open ears to all the stories. Molly might amass for their amusement and edification. "Bring us word, my dear, how their establishment is regulated; and if you can get the receipts of a few new puddings, I'd be obliged."

"I'll ask the cook," said Molly, little guessing she would never set eyes on this august member of the Thorold household. "I'm so sorry, though, to leave my little Anne."

"Little Anne!" smiled the girl thus apostrophised; "I can't spare you long, Molly. What, by the by, do you think of Molly in her new dress, Miss Perkins?"

"It is very nice and very well made,” replied Miss Maria, who had been silently criticising it ever since the girls had entered the room. "I should say that was Miss Jenkins' cut."

Right you are," laughed Molly, pleased.

"Now, Anne, you know I've to pack and to do all kinds of things-iron my frills, and so on -therefore we had better depart."

"It's a pretty soft material," said Miss Sally, feeling the stuff between her fingers, "and the colour is most genteel."

"You must come and see us often when Molly is away," Miss Maria urged upon Anne as they exchanged adieux. "They're nice good girls, poor little motherless things!" she added, watching the two young spinsters from behind her flower-pots, as they passed along the street, kissing their hands in farewell; "and I shouldn't wonder, amongst ourselves, Sally, if that pretty Molly picked up some fine gent of a husband at the Lodge. Here's Mr Ogden crossing the road, and I think he's making for our door. Hide your stocking, sister."

CHAPTER IV.

MOLLY FREQUENTS THE COMPANY OF HER

BETTERS.

MISS SELINA THOROLD was inclined to be just a little strong-minded. She had been born with too strong a will, and too marked an individuality of her own, to be otherwise. She disdained the feminine accomplishments of "twiddling at the piano, and flourishing a paint-brush, and lisping Italian," as she roughly and scornfully termed these branches. of study. She learnt and mastered German and French, because, she said, one could make use of them; and the use she made of the soacquired languages was to dip into Comte and Hegel, and to bother her brain with a variety of metaphysical subjects that have puzzled astuter intellects before now. Horrid woman! you say, perhaps. Did she hand about womanhood-suffrage papers, and wax eloquent on the used-up theme of woman's rights? No, she

did not do this, simply because she couldn't. She was a general's daughter, you see, and a baronet's daughter into the bargain. Gentlemen whose names are inscribed in the pages of Burke's "Peerage" or Hart's "Army List" don't, as a rule, study these questions. Toryism, or the remnant of it that has come down to our day, clings affectionately to coronets and mitres, and shells and griffins, and to the military couleur de rose. General Thorold never heard of Mr Mill or Mr Congreve, or Mr Anybody-else of the metaphysical clique, until he was enlightened as to their existence on the face of the globe by continually stumbling across volumes of the Fortnightly, and deeply-scored copies of "Liberty," and "The Subjection of Women," and so forth, with corners turned down, and with his daughter's name written, always in a defiantly legible hand, on the fly-leaf. But she was very far from being a horrid woman with it all. She had a gruff deep voice, and abrupt manner, but she had also a woman's heart, capable of strong love as well as of strong resentment (the weakest woman can resent); capable of generosity and self-abnegation and large charity. She sat, this afternoon, cutting the pages of