But Algernon's note was not all of complaint. There were occasional intervals in which he spoke of the brightness of his prospects ultimately, when once he should have tided over his present difficulties and had got out of Whitford. And there were a few flourishes about his social successes in town last year. In the indulgence of his all-absorbing egotism, he seemed to forget that the girl beside him had ever been--or had ever had either expectation or right to be--anything more to him than the patient, admiring, sisterly, humble confidante on whom he had relied for praise and sympathy from the time of his earliest recollections, and who supplied him with the most delicious food for his vanity, because unmingled with any doubt of its genuineness. No thought of her feelings (save that they were kindly and admiring towards himself) crossed his mind whilst he talked to her, bending down his head and gesticulating slightly with his white, handsome hands. But when his mother called to her, "Come, Rhoda, I think, we must be going; I heard the carriage at the gate, child. You and Algy have been having a famous long chat! Reminded you of old times, didn't it?" When I say Algernon heard these words, a spark of manhood made his cheeks tingle and his tongue stammer as he said, "I--I'm afraid I must have been--boring you dreadfully, Rhoda?" In truth he was surprised to find that he had spent the whole evening in talking to Rhoda about himself. He glanced quickly at his wife, but she was occupied with the Misses McDougall. So occupied was she that she hardly returned Mrs. Errington's "Good night," which negligence, however, little ruffled that lady's equanimity. But when Rhoda approached to take leave of Castalia, the latter moved aside so suddenly that the movement might almost be called a start, and facing round, came opposite to her own image in the mirror above the chimney-piece, with Rhoda's fair image looking over its shoulder. For one second, perhaps--it could scarcely have been more--the smooth surface of the glass gave back the two women's faces: one youthful, lily-hued, innocently surprised, with chestnut eyebrows and shining chestnut curls, and tender rosy lips parted like those of a child; the other yellow, worn full of fretful creases, with glittering eager eyes, and a thin mouth set into a straight line, and yet over all the undefinable pathos of a suffering spirit; behind the two, Algernon looking into his wife's dark eyes and recognising something there that he had never seen in them before. In no longer time than it would take for a breath to dim the mirror all these images were gone, and the cold shiny glass indifferently showed a confusion of cloaks and shoulders and the back of a huge bonnet crowning Mrs. Errington's majestic figure. * * * * *