In what a complication of calamities was entangled the much-envied Vernell family ! How quiet they had kept it all, though ! To think of this fric assee of tit-bibs being kept from a city hungry for slander and domestic desolation ! And no one knew, apart from the colonel, save she ! Her spirits actually rose at the thought. It was another instalment down on the conjugal contract ! - „. 11 Yes. He was released the following day, though. But he must have borne me malice for my slight part in his detection, for, though I was instrumental in securing his release, he did not return home, and I have not since seen him." "And you don't know where ho is, either?" , ,. The dignified colonel dropped into slang. "Not a know!" Mrs Charu raised |her embroidered lawn handkerchief to her lips, and burst out laughing 11 If you did not find it aggravating," she declared, " it would be intensely amusing. Such a game of hide-and-seek, my dear colonel 1 It reminds me of the magician s trick. Three little puppets in a hat -a breath— presto ! they're gone! Where? Nobody knows. And now here are these three— dear ! dear ! its all like .a very naughty and improbable French novel." But Vernell did not smile. " We don't know how it will end yet. To me it appears uncommonly like an American tragedy." 1 ' Tragedy ? Ah, no !V— in confident pro test " We can't say,"— gloomily. " The end h not yet.". •• Many a true word is spoken in ]est, says the old adage, How true this was, though spoken, if morbidly, without actual apprehension, he never even dimly foresaw. Could he have done so, would he have sat in her house, joying in her society, in the prospect of her possession ? No ! no ! no ! When he rose to go, he asked a question - not for the first time, but she had as yet given him no answer. 14 When are you coming to me, Letitia?" The artistically rouged cheeks neither paled nor flushed ; the flashing dark eyes did not droop. " I hardly know. I have so much to see about first. I " 14 Oh, let shopping, and that kind of business go till after. I'm desperately lonely.". 