“There are times and seasons for everything,” said Sir Oliver. “If you were having a political argument, and any one asked you whether you believed in tariff reform, and you glared at him and said, I believe in Pontius Pilate,' you'd be professing Christianity, but showing yourself an idiot.” “But I don't believe in Pontius Pilate,” retorted Lady Blount. “Oh, don't you?” cried Sir Oliver, in sinister exultation. “Then your whole historical fabric of the Crucifixion must fall to the ground.” “I don't see why you need be irreverent and blasphemous,” said Lady Blount. Herold laid his hand on Lady Blount's and looked at her, with his head on one side. “But do you believe in Stellamaris, Julia.” His smile was so winning, with its touch of mockery, that she grew mollified. “I believe she has bewitched all of us,” she said. Which shows how any woman may be made to eat her words just by a little kindness. So the talk went back to Stella and her ways and her oddities, and the question of faith in Pontius Pilate being necessary for salvation was forgotten. A maid, Stella's own maid, came in with a message. Miss Stella's compliments, and were Mr. Risca and Mr. Herold having a good supper? She herself was about to drink her egg beaten up in sherry, and would be glad if the gentlemen would take a glass of wine with her. The young men, accordingly, raised their glasses toward the ceiling and drank to Stella, in the presence of the maid, and gave her appropriate messages to take back to her mistress. [Illustration: 0046] It was a customary little ceremony, but in Risca's eyes it never lost its grace and charm. To-night it seemed to have a deeper significance, bringing Stella with her elfin charm into the midst of them, and thus exorcising the spirits of evil that held him in their torturing grip. He spoke but little at the meal, content to listen to the talk about Stella, and curiously impatient when the conversation drifted into other channels. Of his own tragedy no one spoke. On his arrival, Lady Blount, with unwonted demonstration of affection, had thrown her arms round his neck, and Sir Oliver had wrung his hand and mumbled the stiff Briton's incoherences of sympathy. He had not yet told them of his decision to go to Australia. He broke the news later, in the drawing-room, abruptly and apropos of nothing, as was his manner, firing his bombshell with the defiant air of one who says, “There, what do you think of it?” “I'm going to Australia next week, never to come back again,” said he.