It was a relief when Miss Mewlstone came trotting into the room with her cap-strings awry. "Dear, dear! have we kept you waiting for your tea, Magdalene?" she exclaimed, in a flurried tone, as she bustled up to the table. "Miss Challoner had a little business, and she thought I might help her. Yes; just so! I have brought her in, for she is tired, poor thing! and I knew she would be welcome." "It seems to me that you are both tired. You are as hot as though you had walked for miles, Barby. Oh, you have your secrets too. But it is not for me to meddle with mysteries." And then she laughed again, and threw herself back on her couch, with a full understanding of the discomfort of the two people before her. Phillis saw directly she was in a hard, cynical mood. "You shall know our business by and by," she said, very quietly. "Dear Miss Mewlstone, I am so thirsty, I must ask you for another cup of tea." But, as Miss Mewlstone took the cup from her, the poor lady's hand shook so with suppressed agitation that the saucer slipped from her grasp, and the next moment the costly china lay in fragments at her feet. "Dear! dear!--how dreadfully careless of me!" fumed Miss Mewlstone. But Mrs. Cheyne made no observation. She only rang the bell, and ordered another cup. But, when the servant had withdrawn, she said, coldly,-- "Your hand is not as steady as usual this evening, Barby;" and somehow the sharp incisive tone cut so keenly that, to Phillis's alarm, Miss Mewlstone became very pale, and then suddenly burst into tears. "This is too much!" observed Mrs. Cheyne, rising in serious displeasure. She had almost a masculine abhorrence to tears of late years; the very sight of them excited her strangely. "Miss Challoner may keep her mysteries to herself if she likes, but I insist on knowing what has upset you like this." "Oh dear! oh, dear!" sobbed the simple woman, wringing her hands helplessly. "This is just too much for me! Poor soul, how am I to tell her?" And then she looked at Phillis in affright at her own words, which revealed so much and so little. Mrs. Cheyne turned exceedingly pale, and a shadow passed over her face. "'Poor soul!' does she mean me? Is it of me you are speaking, Barby? Is there something for me to know, that you dread to tell me? Poor soul, indeed!" And then her features contracted and grew pinched. "But you need not be afraid. Is it not the Psalmist who says, 'All thy waves and thy billows have gone over me'? Drowned people have nothing to fear: there is no fresh trouble for them." And her eyes took an awful stony look that terrified Phillis. "Oh, it is no fresh trouble!" stammered the girl. "People are not tormented like that: they have not to suffer more than they can bear." But Mrs. Cheyne turned upon her fiercely: