was not as if he had died at home, where they would have felt the loss every day. This last speech had a sting in it, which was little intentional, and yet gave Miss Cherry a sense of remorse after it was said; for though she had a certain desire to give pain, momentary, and the result of much provocation, yet the moment the pain was given, it was herself who suffered most. This is what it is to have a soft nature; most people have at least a temporary satisfaction in the result when they have been able to inflict a wound. ‘Oh, yes, my dear, she feels it, I suppose,’ Miss Cherry said, when she returned. ‘She was sitting over the fire, and the room much too warm for the season; for it is really like spring to-day. Of course a woman must feel it more or less when she has lost her husband. I have never been in these circumstances, but I don’t see how one could help that--however little one cared for the man.’ ‘Did she care little for the man?’ Cara was at the age when most things are taken for granted. She had not entered into any peculiarities in the position of Mrs. Meredith with her husband. She was like Hamlet, recognising more and more, as she realised her own position, the quagmires and unsafe footing round her--was this another? There was a sinking sensation in Cara’s youthful mind, and a doubt and faltering wherever she thought to place her foot. ‘My dear child,’ said Miss Cherry, ‘when a woman spends years after years away from her husband, never making any effort to join him, quite satisfied with a letter now and then, receiving her own friends, making a circle, going into society--while the poor man is toiling to keep it up, thousands and thousands of miles away’--here Miss Cherry paused, a little frightened by the blackness of the picture which she had herself drawn. ‘I hope I am not doing anyone injustice,’ she faltered. ‘Oh, my dear, you may be sure I don’t mean that. And I believe poor Mrs. Meredith could not stand the climate, and of course there was the boys’ education to think of--children always must come home. Indeed, how anyone can settle in India knowing that their children must be sent away----’ ‘Aunt Cherry, no one is to be trusted,’ said the girl, tears coming to her eyes; ‘there is no truth anywhere. We are all making a pretence one way or another; pretending to care for people who are living, pretending to mourn for people who are dead; pretending that one thing is our object, while we are trying for another; pretending to be merry, pretending to be sad. Ah! it makes my heart sick!’ ‘Cara, Cara! What do you know about such things? They say it is so in the world, but you and I have very little to do with the world, dear. You must not think--indeed, indeed, you must not think that it is so with us.’ ‘I don’t know anything of the world,’ said Cara. ‘I only know what is round me. If Mrs. Meredith is false, and papa false, and other people----’