down the corrido

pitious moment for once again pressing her request to be allowed to accept Scott's invitation to tea. Her

up to fear her from her cradle. All through her childhood her punishments had been bitterly severe. She winced still at the bare thought of them; and she was as fully convinced as was Lady Grace that her mother had never really loved her. To come under the ban of her displeasure meant days of harsh treatment

sed of a fascination that had held her from babyhood, such was Guy Bathurst. Despised at least outwardly by his wife

on his lips, and by that axiom he ruled his life, looking neglige

both of them were secretly aware that the harshness meted out to her had much of its being in a deep, unreasoning jealousy of that very selfish

comfort, but the idea of her working elsewhere and making her living was one which he refused to consider. With rare self-assertion, he would

ful at home, and would certainly

ine jaunt with the de Vignes, but Billy had been so keen, and

at of his own daughter and being stirred to pity, had suggested that the two children might like to join them on their forthcoming expedition. Bathurst had at once accepted the tentative proposal, and

merry, till some trifling accident had provoked her mother's untempered wrath and a sound boxing of ears had quite sobered her enthusiasm. She had fared forth finally upon the adventure with tearful eyes and drooping heart, her mother's frigid kis

, and fiercely, intensely ambitious. Lack of funds had prevented her climbing very high, and bitterly she resented her failure. He had never done a day's work in his life, but, unlike his wife, he had plenty of friends. He was well-bred, a good rider, a

ter, whose fairy-like daintiness and piquancy were so obvious a contrast to the somewhat coarse and flashy beauty that had once been hers. For all that Dinah inherited from her mother was her gipsy darkness. Mrs. Bathurst was not flashy now, and any attempt

demeaning herself by running after the de Vignes's carriage to deliver a message. Her mother's whippings had always been very terrible, vindictively thorough. The indignity of them lashed her soul even more cruelly than the unsparing thong her body. Because of them she went in daily trepidation, submissive almost to the point of abjectness, lest this hateful and demoralizing form of punishment should be inflicted upon her. For some time now, by great wariness and circumspection she had evaded it, and she had begun to entertain the trembling hope that she was at last considered to have passed the age for such childish correction. But her

row up at home. That's the horrible, horrible part of it. And I shall never have a chance of marrying with mother looking

rageous and impossible, to go back into it monstrous. And yet, so far as she could see, there was no way of escape. She was not apparently to be allowed to make any friends outside her

egun to cost her dear. She must-she must-find a way of escape ere she went back into thraldom. For she knew her mother's strength so terribly well. It would conquer all resistance by sheer, overwhelming weight. She could not remember a single occasion upon which she had ever in the smallest degree held her own against it. Her will had been broken to her mother's so often that the very thought of prolonged resistance seemed absurd. She knew herself to be incapable of it. She was bound to crumple under the strain, bound to be humbled to the dust long ere t

get beyond the stultifying influence of that unvarying despotism. She longed to get away from the perpetual dr

ther occasion when she had received summary and austere punishment for omitting scales from her practising. But then no one ever liked doing what

she knew, to indulge such a thought, but her mood was black and her soul was in revolt. She was sure-quite sure-that marriage presented the only possibility of delive

her bubbled to the surface. What a waste of time to stay here grizzling while that paradise lay awaiting her! The sweetness of her nature began to assert itself once more, and an almost fevered determination to live in the present, to be happy while she could, entered

! And home and the trials thereof were many miles away. Who could be unhappy for long in such a

irit like a cloud. She threw on cap an