all debts were paid, and Bella sitting in the vast drawing-room of the Manor-house with a church-service open on her lap, tried hard to forget Huxham's bad traits of character, and to remember his good ones. This was somewhat difficult, as the captain had few engaging qualities. But Bella recalled that he had been kind in a gruff sort of way and had never grudged her the best of food and the gaudiest of frocks. Huxham had been one of those so-called good people, who are amiable so long as everything is done according to their liking; but who display the tyrant when crossed. But on the whole he might have been worse, and after all, as she anxiously kept in mind, he was her father.

The room wherein she sat, with the blinds down, was opposite the study and was a large apartment sparsely furnished. Huxham did not care for a drawing-room, as he preferred his den, but Mrs. Coppersley had bothered him incessantly until he provided her with furniture for the place. She selected the furniture herself, and what with her brother's stinginess and her own bad taste, the result was woefully bad. The room, spacious, lofty and stately, was decorated as beautifully as was the study, and required the most exquisite furniture to enhance its faded splendours. But Mrs. Coppersley had bought a magenta-hued sofa and many magenta-covered chairs, together with a cheap sideboard, so sticky as to look like a fly catcher, and two arm chairs of emerald green. The inlaid floor she had covered with lineoleum, diapered white and black, and her artistic taste had led her to paint the mellow oak panelling with pink Aspinall's enamel. As the curtains of the many windows were yellow, and the blinds blue, the effect was disastrous, and suggestive of a paint-box. An artist would have died of the confusion of tints, and the barbarism of destroying the oak panels, but Mrs. Coppersley was more than satisfied with the result, and when seated in the drawing-room on Sunday felt herself to be quite the lady.

At the present moment Bella's nerves were less troubled than usual; the blinds were down in sympathy with the funeral, and a dim twilight pervaded the room, hiding more or less the atrocious grandeur. She sat in one of the green arm-chairs near the fire-place, reading the burial service and listening to the solemn tolling of the bell. But after a time she dropped the book on her lap and leaned back to close her eyes and reflect on her grave position. If only she had not seen Cyril on that night she could have married in ignorance that he had anything to do with the death of her father; but, enlightened as she was, it appeared impossible that she should become his wife. She had said nothing of his visit at the inquest, but the hideous 

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