of their slow progress at lessons that she would beat her foot on the ground in a kind of agonised impatience. She knew that she was clever, and she wondered sometimes why her cleverness did not give her more advantage. Why, for instance, should Helen's good looks be noticed at once by every visitor and her own cleverness be unnoticed? Certainly, on occasions, her mother would say: “And Mary? I don't think you've met Mary. Come and say, how do you do, Mary. Mary is the clever one of the family!” but it was always said in a deprecating, apologetic tone, which made Mary hang her head and hate both herself and her mother. She told herself stories of the times when Jeremy would have to depend entirely upon the splendour of her brains for his delivery from some horror--death, torture or disgrace. At present those times were, she was bound to confess to herself, very distant. He depended upon no one for anything; he could not be said to need Mary's assistance in any particular. And with this burning desire of hers came, of course, jealousy. There are some happy, easy natures to whom jealousy is, through life, unknown. They are to be envied. Jealousy in a grown-up human being is bad; in a child it is terrible. Had you told Mrs. Cole--good mother though she was--that her daughter Mary, aged seven, suffered tortures through jealousy, she would have assured you that it was not, in reality, jealousy, but rather indigestion, and that a little medicine would put it right. Mary was quite helpless. What is a child to do if she is jealous? Other children do not understand her, her elders laugh at her. Mary, with a wisdom greatly beyond her years, realised very quickly that this was some sort of horrible disease, with which she must wrestle alone. Above all, she must never allow Jeremy to know anything about it. He was, of course, sublimely unaware of the matter; he knew that Mary was silly sometimes, but he attributed that to her sex; he went on his way, happily indifferent whether anyone cared for him or no... Mary suffered agonies when, as sometimes happened, Jeremy sat with his arm round Helen's neck and his cheek up against hers. She suffered when, in a mood of tempestuous affection to the whole world, he kissed Miss Jones. She even suffered when he sat at his mother's feet whilst she read “The Dove in the Eagle's Nest,” or “Engel the Fearless.”