deal in stocks, and kept her eyes on the money market. The girl sat and watched her with a sort of fascination as her pen ran lightly over sheet after sheet. Sometimes Lady Markham was full of tenderness and generosity, and had the look of understanding everybody’s feelings. She was never unkind. She never took a bad view of any one, or suggested evil or interested motives, as even Frances perceived, in her limited experience, so many people to do. But, on the other hand, there would come into her face sometimes a look--which seemed to say that she might be inexorable, if once she had made up her mind: a look before which it seemed to Frances that flight like that of Constance would be the easiest way. Frances was not sufficiently instructed in human nature to know that anomalies of this kind are common enough; and that nobody is always and in all matters good, any more than anybody is in all things ill. It troubled her to perceive the junction of these different qualities in her mother; and still more it troubled her to think what, in case of coming to some point of conflict, she should do? How would she get out of it? Would it be only by succumbing wholly, or had she the courage in her to fight it out? “Little un,” said Markham, coming up to her suddenly, “why do you look at the mother so? Are you measuring yourself against her, to see how things would stand if it came to a fight?” “Markham!” Frances started with a great blush of guilt. “I did not know you were here. I--never heard you come in.” “You were so lost in thought. I have been here these five minutes, waiting for an opportunity to put in a word. Don’t you know I’m a thought-reader, like those fellows that find pins? Take my advice, Fan, and never let it come to a fight.” “I don’t know how to fight,” she said, crimsoning more and more; “and besides, I was not thinking--there is nothing to fight about.” “Fibs, these last,” he said. “Come out and take a little walk with me,--you are looking pale; and I will tell you a thing or two. Mother, I am going to take her out for a walk; she wants air.”