humdrum, if highly intellectual routine into which she had dropped with him. Helena, herself now and then, had a confused and giddy consciousness that ministering to a man’s comforts, who was not at all a demi-god, and attending lectures at the Royal Society was a very odd and sudden downfall from all her dreams of social amelioration and “a great work;” but fortunately she was happy, a thing which deadens the moral perception. Ada was happy, too, in her different way; but Gussy was not happy. She had not the tranquil soul of her elder sister, nor that curious mixture of sense and talent, and self-confidence and absence of humour which made Helena what she was. She had not “given up,” as in various ways both of them had done. She was dissatisfied, for life as yet had lost none of its possibilities, neither by fulfilment nor renunciation. All clouds might yet be cleared away from her sky, and what she considered perfect happiness might yet be waiting for her somewhere. This remnant of possibility that the soul may still have all it craves, ought, you might think, to have kept Gussy’s heart alive, and given her a secret support; but it was in fact a very fire of restlessness within her. The first step towards attaining the secondary happinesses of life, is to have given up and recognised as impossible the primary and greater happiness. Gussy had been compelled to occupy herself closely, in order to save herself from becoming discontented, morbid, sour, and miserable, by reason of this sense within her, that everything might yet come right. “Why should you say it was injudicious?” she said to her sister, when they at length discussed the subject, “why should not they help him, since he wants it, because of the chance of meeting me? I heard what mamma said as I came in. If he does meet me, I dare say he has forgotten all about me by this time, or at least remembers me only as a friend. It would be hard indeed if any ghost of me, after all these years, were to come in his way.” “And you,” said her sister, “could you meet him as a friend whom you remembered? Would that be all?” Gussy’s lip quivered in spite of herself. “I hope I could do--whatever was necessary,” she said proudly. But in the midst of uttering these two or three words, a sudden tear fell unexpectedly out of her eye and betrayed her. “How silly!” she said, dashing it away; “you forget I did see him. Oh, Ada, fancy travelling with him all those hours, and never saying a word! It was as if we were in two different worlds--like looking into another existence, and seeing those whom one has lost, without any power to communicate with them.” “Ah! but we are not permitted to do even that,” said Ada; “do you think he did not recognise you? Not at all? That is so strange to me.”