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THE French window of the dining-room at Villetswood stood wide open, disclosing a glittering perspective of white cloth laden with silver and flowers and gilt candlesticks crowned by pink shades.

Gisèle de Kervoyou, aged seven, balanced herself on one foot upon the threshold of the window.

She was gazing eagerly at the beautiful, gleaming vista, repeated in the great mirror at the far end of the room. With a gesture that was essentially un-English, the child shrugged her shoulders together, stepped very daintily into the dining-room, and approached the table. Her dark grey eyes were narrowed together, her head thrown back as though to catch any possible sound, and she moved as gracefully and as soundlessly as a kitten.

With tiny dexterous fingers she abstracted some three or four chocolate bon-bons from as many little silver dessert-dishes, thrust one into her mouth, and the others into the diminutive pocket of her white frock. Then for the first time she looked guilty, flung a terrified glance round her, and fled noiselessly across the room and out into the garden again.

"Zella! aren't you coming ?"

"Yes, yes."

Zella ran across the terrace to the big oak-tree where her cousins, James and Muriel Lloyd-Evans, wore earnestly engaged in digging a passage through the earth to Australia

"Where have you been ?" Muriel inquired.

"On to the top terrace," said Zella glibly; "and I saw a big white horse, trampling on all the flowers."

"Where, where ?" shrieked Muriel, flinging down her spade. James, a quiet little boy who bore unmoved the reputation of being a prig, looked up inquiringly.

"It's gone now," said Zella. "Papa shot it."

"Shot it dead ?" said Muriel, awestruck.

"I don't believe it," remarked James, and resumed his digging.

Zella felt a wave of fury pass over her at this insult. It made her so angry to be disbelieved that she completely lost sight of the entire justification for James' attitude.

"It is true," she cried passionately; "I did see it!" And across her mental vision there passed a very distinct picture of a mammoth white horse destroying the geraniums with plunging hooves, and then suddenly stilled for ever by a gun-shot.

Muriel, who hated quarrels, said: "Don't be angry, Zella. Let's go on digging."

And the governess, who had followed the conversation with what attention she could spare from a novel, looked up and remarked, "James, you are not to tease your cousin," while inwardly thanking Providence that she was not responsible for the upbringing of that untruthful little half-foreign child, Zella de Kervoyou.

But Zella, who was hurt by a suspicion of her truthfulness as by nothing else, rushed away to sob and cry behind the laurel hedge, and wish that she was dead.

"Was it really an untruth?" Muriel asked with a horrified face as her cousin fled in tears.

"I am afraid so, dear," replied Miss Vincent with some asperity, thinking it worth while to improve the occasion. "Your little cousin is very young; when she grows older she will see how very naughty it is to tell stories."

"I don't believe Zella tells stories," muttered James, in a tone inaudible to the governess.

"But you said she did, just now."

"No, I didn't. I said I didn't believe about the horse, that's all."

Muriel looked bewildered.

"But, then, it was an untruth," she reiterated helplessly.

"It's an untruth when you or me say what isn't true, but not Zella," said James, with psychological insight far beyond his powers of grammatical expression.

"But why?"

"Because she's different, that's all. Let's go on digging."

Meanwhile Zella cried and sobbed, crouching on the ground behind the laurel hedge, convinced that nobody loved her, and with a terrible feeling that she was the naughtiest little girl in the whole world. This dreadful state of affairs had all been brought about by the theft of the chocolates, and now that she was confronted by some of the results of her crime Zella felt an unendurable remorse. At least she mistook it for remorse, though it was chiefly a passionate desire to regain her own self-esteem. She rose and went slowly towards the house, a pathetic tiny figure, in her crumpled white frock, with tear-stained face and quivering mouth.

From the top terrace her mother was advancing slowly. At sight of the woe-begone figure of her only child, Madame de Kervoyou sprang forward.

"What is the matter, my darling ?"

Zella immediately began to cry again, was lifted on to her mother's lap, and asked if she had hurt herself.

"No—no."

"Oh, my pet, you haven't quarrelled with the others again, have you? said poor Madame de Kervoyou, who knew that her sister would place any dissension among the children to the credit of that French blood of Zella's, which she owed entirely to her father.

"Have you been naughty?"

"Yes," wailed Zella, with an awful sense of the relief to be founding confession;" I've been most dreadfully wicked." "What have you done?"

"I went into the dining-room, and—and—I took"

Zella gasped.

The clasp of her mother's arms was intensely comforting, and she dreaded the loosening of that clasp at the revelation of her iniquity.

"I took—I took "—her courage failed her—" one chocolate off the table, and I ate it."

"My darling! you know you must never take what isn't yours like that.. It's stealing," said Madame de Kervoyou, with an utter absence of conviction in her tone that was not lost upon Zella.

"But it was very brave of you to come and tell me, and when you are honest like that you know mother never punishes you."

The most intense relief of which seven-years-old is capable filled Zella's heart. Her partial confession had brought her comfort, absolution, and even a sense of complacency at her own voluntary revelation of a sin that might have remained hidden for ever. When her mother said, " Were you crying so sadly about that, my poor little baby?" it was with perfect conviction that Zella replied, "Yes; I was so miserable after I'd done it." It was the orthodox attitude of a sinner, and rilled Zella with a feeling of self-righteousness.

It was with a pang of undiluted dismay that she remembered, half an hour afterwards, the other stolen chocolates in her pocket. Before she went to bed Zella had buried them in the garden, and felt herself noble because she did not eat one of them.

The episode of the white horse amongst the flower-beds was allowed to drop, and never penetrated to the ears of the authorities. Nor was it mentioned amongst the children during the rest of James and Muriel's visit. Muriel forgot the incident, but retained a general impression that Zella was by nature untruthful, and therefore never to be quite trusted again. James, who never forgot things, remembered all about it, but thought it profoundly unimportant. Zella forgot everything but that she had courageously confessed a great sin to her mother, and had been pardoned, and that night she fell asleep with tears still sparkling on her thick lashes and her lips parted in

The attitude of mind thus denoted remained typical of Zella de Kervoyou.