the offer of the housekeeper as a guide. This he felt as a new grievance, this staff of servants, whom he and even Nouna had had no hand in choosing, Mr. Angelo, with his customary strange officiousness, having undertaken that and many other details of the new household. On this point, however, George could console himself; as soon as he and his wife were installed, he should make a bold demonstration of the fact that, however weak he might be in the dainty little hands of his wife, he was not to be ruled by anybody else, and intended, with that one important exception perhaps, to be master in his own house. Even while he made these reflections, he was the unseen witness to a little scene which, in his irritable frame of mind, filled him with anger and suspicions. He was standing on the ground floor, at a bend in the hall, screened from view by a mass of the tall tropical plants with which it was a canon of taste with Nouna to fill every available nook, when his attention was attracted by a peculiar soft treble knock on the panels of the door of an apartment which he had not seen, but which he had been told was the housekeeper’s room. Looking through the great leaves, which he separated with his hand, he saw Mrs. Benfield, the housekeeper, standing at the door. The next moment a key was turned and the door opened from inside, another woman let her in, and immediately the door was re-locked. George, already not in the best of humours, would not stand these mysteries in a place which, as long as he chose to live in it, he was determined should be his own house. He crossed the hall, and knocked sharply on the panels. “Who is it?” asked Mrs. Benfield’s voice. “It is I, your master.” There was a pause of a few seconds, and George could hear the rustling of women’s gowns. Then the door was unlocked and thrown wide with much appearance of deferential haste by Mrs. Benfield. “I am sorry to have kept you so long, sir; but the locks are new and a little stiff just at first, and I----” George did not hear the rest of her explanation. He was looking at the woman whom the housekeeper introduced as a friend of hers, avowing that she had been afraid it would be considered a liberty to have a visitor so soon; but she was so anxious to have a sight of the young master and mistress that---- George interrupted. “Of my wife? Pray come with me then, she will be quite pleased to find herself an object of so much interest.” He spoke courteously and with suppressed excitement, making a step forward to where Mrs. Benfield’s visitor sat close against the window and with her back to the light. For he had a strong suspicion of the identity of this stranger, who shrank into herself at the suggestion, and said she thanked Mr. Lauriston, she would rather not be seen; she felt rather uncomfortable at having come.