looking in the other direction, and at the same time, with an almost convulsion of laughter, which to himself was horrible, perceived the double play of curiosity and repugnance in his hostess with a fierce amusement. He had to make some sort of poor jest, he did not know what, to account for the laugh which tore him asunder, which he could not keep in. What the joke was he did not know, but it had an unmerited success, and the carriage rattled along past the garden wall in a perfect riot of laughter from the fine lungs of the rector and Flo and Georgie and all the little ones. If any one had but known! The tragedy was horrible, but the laughter was fresh and innocent on all lips but his own. Coming back he laughed no more. The gates were being opened; a sound of horses' hoofs and the jingle of their furniture was audible. The inhabitants were about to drive out. "If you look back you may catch a glimpse of--those people," the rector whispered. But Dick did not look back. The danger made him pale. Had they met face to face, what would have happened? Could he have sat there safe among the innocent children, and made no sign? But when the evening came, and it was time for the dinner at the Warren, he had regained his composure, which, so far as his companions were aware, had never been lost. In the Warren there were strong emotions, perhaps passions, which he did not understand, but which gave him a sort of fellow-feeling more sympathetic than the well-being of the rector and his wife. Nothing is more pleasant to see than the calm happiness of a wedded pair, who suit each other, who have passed the youthful period of commotion, and have not reached that which so often comes when the children in their turn tempt the angry billows. But there is something in that self-satisfied and self-concentrated happiness which jars upon those who in the turmoil of existence have not much prospect of anything so peaceful. And then domestic comfort is often so sure that nothing but its own virtue could have purchased such an exemption from the ills of life. The Warren had been a few months ago a pattern of humdrum peacefulness. The impatience that sometimes lit up a little fire in Mrs. Warrender's eyes was so out of character, so improbable, that any one who suspected it believed himself to have been deceived; for who could suppose the mother to be tired of her quiet existence? And the girls were not impatient; they lived their half-vegetable life with the serenest and most complacent calm. Now, however, new emotions were at work. The young master of the house was full of abstraction and dreams, wrapped in some pursuit, some hope, some absorbing preoccupation of his own. His mother was straining at her bonds like a greyhound in a leash. Minnie, who had been the chief example of absolute self-satisfaction and certainty that everything was right, had developed a keenness of curiosity and censure which betrayed her conviction that something had gone wrong.