'And what is minding a house, Frank? How am I to mind it?' asked Lettice plaintively.

'Go into your kitchen, and look over your linen presses, and dust your chairs; and when all else is done, have an eye to my clothes, which are one and all in worse condition than I ever knew them before.' Oh, your clothes!' groaned Lettice. Sure that is a part of being married I never thought of at all. It ought to be in the service, I'm thinking, among the vows we take. When you say, "With all my worldly goods I thee endow," I ought to answer, "And all thy clothes I'll mend.”

'There's enough and plenty to joke about without taking the words that are said in church, Lettice,' replied her husband.

'I hope you are not a prig, Frank?' said Lettice severely.

Frank laughed.

'I am not,' he said, 'and Donolly is not one either; and I'm not wanting to be preaching to you, my dear, I'm only wanting you to be the nice, good little wife I meant you to be.'

'So I am,' answered Lettice.

LI

CHAPTER XII.

WHITE LIES.

ROW was Lettice to manage to escape from home and husband on this beautiful

spring day, and run down to the little bridge, where she was perfectly certain the fisherman awaited her with a letter for Diana Hope in his hand-that very letter which, by Mr. Donolly's officiousness, he had not been able to give her yesterday, though it had been so close to her hand that she might have grasped and kept it if she had dared to do so?

How was she to manage? Frank had desired her not to go to the bridge by herself, and his reason had been that she might not fall in with any of the gentlemen fishers who frequented the river; and it was to meet one of these very gentlemen fishers she was going. But then, Lettice argued to herself, that

was only because Frank did not know. Had he known, he could not have objected to her going to this particular bridge, or meeting this particular man. Lettice argued this in absolute ignorance of her husband's real character. Had she known him better, she would have been sure that he would have made still stronger objections to her making herself a go-between in a clandestine love affair.

But even if she had been right in her argument, and if Frank would have permitted her to go to meet the fisherman by the bridge if he had known what her errand was, I need hardly point out that Lettice was very wrong to go after what he had said, as she was acting in flat disobedience to his wishes; but at this period in her life, Lettice had very little idea of the meaning of the obedience that a wife owes to her husband. Frank had spoilt her during his courtship, and it did not occur to her that there ought to be any difference now. The excitement of this affair she found extremely amusing; and though she looked forward with great pleasure to the time when, Diana Hope happily married, she should be able to tell him of how much she had done to assist the bringing about of this much-to-be-desired event, still she had not the least objection to the rôle she had now to play in keeping him in the dark; and the romance of the thing was delicious to her, and all the more so from having been so recently in love herself.

Frank being busy in the shop, while Pat was out carrying round the monthly magazines and weekly newspapers, Lettice dressed herself for her walk, and merely put her head into the shop to tell him that she was intending to take a turn before dinner. To her great relief, he was busy with a customer, which she considered quite a sufficient reason for not interrupting him. If he was vexed with her for going out without telling him, she could say how she had come to do so, but finding him occupied had abstained. So she slipped out at the other door, and, light of foot and light of heart, proceeded on her interesting expedition.

As she passed Vellacot's, she saw Miss Diana Hope in the shop, who ran eagerly to the door, and detaining her, spoke in a whisper :

'Have you got it?'

'No; I am going for it.'

'Hurrah!' she said this also in a whisper, and a hurrah in a whisper has a curious sound.

'I'll come to the shop about six o'clock for it. Oh, that blessed shop! what should we do without it?' An earnest squeeze of her hand, a smiling, roguish glance, and Miss Hope was gone.

Lettice felt elated, and wished that Mrs. Donolly had seen the whispered conference and the parting pressure, both speaking of a familiarity which must surprise her, and perhaps would have excited her envy.

Down the old road for 'the good little bit' that Frank had described to her, and then up it through the lane by which the river ran, an abrupt turn. brought her full in sight of the rustic bridge and the pebble ridge, and of the fisherman standing beside them like a statue, with his arm extended, and the square bit of white in it. And as she approached nearer, the statue sang:

'There does the fisher stand,

Just as the clock strikes two,
With his fish in his hand :

He is waiting for you ;'

and as he sang the words 'with his fish,' he waved the square bit of white about in the air significantly.

'Hush!' cried Lettice; 'how imprudent! Suppose any one was near?'

'I stand corrected,' replied he, putting himself into a penitent attitude. 'How very, very good it is of you to come and help us! I am the most unfortunate, ill-treated man in the world. That old scoundrel, Hope, won't let me come near his daughter just because I am poor, and because he wants to marry her to an old baronet with heaps of money, a wooden leg, and no character at all.'

'A wooden leg!' cried Lettice, horrified.

'Upon my word and honour,' answered he. 'I