character. Were not Diana and little Doe justified in doing anything under such very trying, such very unusual circumstances? She was roused from these reflections by hearing her husband call her, and jumping up, she ran hastily down to him. He was standing in the shop before the open till, a candle in one hand, while with the other he kept rummaging over its contents. He stopped doing this when she came to him, and, lifting up a scared, somewhat pale face, looked blankly at her.

'Lettice,' he cried, am I mad or dreaming? Do you remember the paper sticking out of my waistcoat pocket?'

'I do, Frank.'

'And was it here that I put it, then?'

'Did you? I think you did. I might not notice in particular,' replied the wife, faltering a little.

'I did put it there, and it's gone; it's not here now, nowhere,' and he rummaged the drawer again in a helpless, violent sort of way. 'My God, Lettice, what am I to do?'

Lettice was amazed to hear such an exclamation from her husband's lips-he who was so very particular, so very reverent in his language always.

'But what does it matter?' she asked.

'Matter!' cried he. 'Didn't I tell you? Do you forget everything? It was Mr. Hope's subscription to the hospital, trusted to me-trusted, you know,

Lettice, as treasurer. Sure I told you; you can't forget?'

'I remember, now you speak of it. You can't have lost it, Frank dear; you must have put it in some other place.'

'I did not; I put it here. Lettice, I am a ruined man!' He looked so white, and his eyes shone so, that Lettice felt terrified and gave a little scream.

'It will come back,' she cried on the impulse of the moment; and then correcting herself, she added, 'I mean that it can't be lost; but even if it was, dear, it's not so bad. You can make it up. Nobody will ask a word or be a bit the wiser. You will not be wanting it till the end of the year, and you shall save fifty pounds easy by that time.'

'Fifty pounds, Lettice? It was five hundred!' 'Five hundred!' screamed she.

'Five hundred, no less. He gave it to me by a mistake, bad luck to him! and found it out an hour ago, when he sent for me.'

Lettice stood with open mouth and blank eyes staring at her husband. She did not know what to say. She saw no light that she could give him. She felt terrified, and yet she knew that it would all come right very soon, and that Diana would return her the money. Only, bound as she was by her promise, she could not give Frank this comfort; and she could imagine what his distress must be

without it, for though she had spoken so easily of his saving fifty pounds, even she knew that he could never make up the five hundred.

'Lettice,' cried he, 'what is to be done? I did put it there. You saw me yourself.'

'I did.' The words were uttered scarcely above her breath; they were scarcely audible, but he heard them.

'You did. We spoke of it, and it's gone, and the key I never let out of my pocket. I can't have put it anywhere else after, for it was only just before I went to my father. Lettice dear, help me! What's the meaning of it? what will I do?' He looked so scared and wild with that poor, white face of his, so unlike the Frank who had courted and married her, that Lettice felt scared, and wild too, in her inability to assist him and her bewilderment as to what she would say.

'You will find it, Frank, you will find it,' was all she could cry out to him; but she cried that with such heartiness, that the mere manner and words almost comforted him, though the meaning of them did not, for where could he find it? He had put it into the till, and it was gone, and there was nowhere else that he could even look for it, much less that he could hope to find it. He never had walked in his sleep in his life, and even if he had, he had not slept since he put the note in the till;

for he had gone at once to his father, summoned by his mother's telegram.

He stared in Lettice's face, then, unable to make up his mind that there was nothing more that could be done, and yet perfectly well aware that he could do nothing.

'I am a ruined man,' he said at last; 'and I have brought ruin on you, darling, whom I thought to cherish, and whom I love like the veins of my heart.'

Lettice burst into tears.

'Sure, don't talk so,' she sobbed out; 'you are not-you have not-you will find it!'

T was in vain that Lettice endeavoured to comfort Frank, for Frank was not to be comforted. He felt bewildered with the weight of this misfortune, and the impossibility of seeing a way out of it. At last he begged Lettice to go to bed. It was late enough, and she could do nothing for him. Nothing could be done that night. In the morning he must go to Mr. Hope, and face his fate. He had already searched for the fatal cheque everywhere, in all the places where he knew perfectly well it could not be, as well as in the one place where it should be, yet was not; but he determined to make another hunt through drawer and cabinet and desk once again, so as to feel perfectly certain that it was not in the house. After this search, which he knew must