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ON Wednesday afternoon Mrs. Lloyd-Evans saw her brother-in-law shut himself into the study, after a morning spent in necessary and painful business, and immediately said to Zella, who had been gazing hopelessly into the small fire for the last hour:

"Will you come upstairs with Aunt Marianne now, darling ?"

Zella understood that she meant to visit her mother's room, and her little drawn face became a shade more colourless than before.

She had scarcely seen her father since Aunt Marianne's arrival, and had clung to the weeping, demonstrative tenderness and ceaseless murmured recollections of dear, dear mother that alone seemed to make endurable the endless hours. She crept upstairs with her little shaking hand in Aunt Marianne's, but at the familiar door, which had suddenly grown terrible, Zella began to sob hysterically.

Aunt Marianne tightened her hold on Zella's hand and gently opened the door.

Such a curious hush pervaded the darkened room that Zella instinctively ceased sobbing. At the foot of the bed was a light oak coffin placed upon trestles. It was closed.

In the gloom Zella could make out the familiar shapes of the dressing-table and the big bed and the old armchair she had always known in the bow-window.

Her aunt moved gently forward, fumbling for her handkerchief as she went.

"Wouldn't you like to kneel down and say a little prayer ?" she whispered to Zella, who stood as though stupefied.

Zella's mother had taught her to pray as a baby, but for- the last three years she had dropped the custom, which was meaningless to her. But, thus prompted, she fell upon her knees beside the strange hard coffin, and leant her aching head against the wood. She felt too sick and bewildered to cry any more.

But what was there to pray for, if God would not bring mother back to life again?

Zella looked across at her aunt, whose head was dropped upon her hands.

Suddenly Zella felt that it must all be a nightmare, and that she would presently wake up and find that mother was here and this dreadful dream gone. It couldn't be true. A horrible sort of impatient fury seized her—the fury of the undisciplined soul against pain. She clenched her hands to prevent herself from screaming aloud, and suddenly found that she wanted to go away from this darkened room as she had never wanted anything before. She looked across at her Aunt Marianne with a kind of suppressed rage, and began to pray wildly and half unconsciously:

"O God, let us go—let Aunt Marianne get up and go— I can't bear it—make her get up—make us go away from here—oh, make her get up and go!"

It seemed to her that she had been calling so, madly and agonizedly, upon an unheeding God for hours, when her aunt rose at last and laid a hand upon her shoulder. Zella's little tense form relaxed suddenly, and she felt curiously weak and spent.

Aunt Marianne stooped solemnly and pressed her lips upon the lid of the coffin. Then she paused a moment, and Zella, rising trembling to her feet, bent also and passionately kissed the senseless wood.

"It is good-bye to mother," she thought desperately; but she did not really feel that the hard wood of the coffin and this cold, darkened room had any connection with the sweet, laughing mother whom she had last seen leaning back against her pillows, and saying gaily:

"I shall be quite well again to-morrow."

When they had left the room, Aunt Marianne had said, as she seemed to have said so very often since she came:

"Now, if I were you, I should go and lie down for a little while upon your bed, Zella dear. It will do you good. Let Aunt Marianne come and arrange you comfortably."

Zella mechanically followed Mrs. Lloyd-Evans, and passively allowed herself to be divested of her shoes, helped on to her bed, and covered with a quilt. Mrs. Lloyd-Evans kissed her very kindly, said, " Try and have a little sleep now, darling, just till five o'clock," and rustled softly away.

Zella lay still. She had gone to bed very early the evening before, and had slept all night with the heavy slumber of a child exhausted from crying, and she felt no inclination to sleep again now.

She traced the pattern of the wall-paper idly with her finger. When the funeral was over, would things be as dreadful as they were now? Zella felt that, somehow, it would be terrible to be left alone with her father, who must be so very, very unhappy, poor papa ! although he had not cried and did not talk about mother like Aunt Marianne did. Would he never talk about her any more? Some people did not ever talk of their relations who were dead.

Mother was dead.

Zella came back to that thought with an aching wonder that it should bring no greater pang of realization with it. Perhaps that was what people meant by being stunned with grief. Perhaps one only realized later, when one had got used to being without— No, no! it would be impossible ever to get accustomed to it, ever to be happy again, all one's life long. ... "And I'm only fourteen, and perhaps I may live to be very old," thought Zella, and tears of self-pity welled into her eyes.

She cried a little, but her swollen eyelids burnt and smarted so that presently she stopped.

She had been here a long while; it must be five o'clock, and tea would break the miserable monotony of the day. Zella looked at her watch, and thought, as so often during those unspeakably wretched days of inaction, that it must have stopped. It was not yet a quarter 'past four. She held the watch despairingly to her ear, but it was still going.

It seemed unbearable.

Zella tried to make herself cry again by thinking of all the early recollections of her mother that had made her sob so unrestrainedly when she and Aunt Marianne had talked of them yesterday. But the tears would not come.

She turned over and buried her face in the pillow, unspeakably wretched. Only the third day since her mother's death, and she felt as though this life of strained misery had lasted for years. Would nothing ever bring it to an end?

It must be at least ten minutes since she had looked at: her watch. It couldn't be less than twenty-five minutes past four now, thought Zella, half expecting to see that it was even later. She looked at her watch again, and held it to her ear.

Four minutes had passed.

Her eyes fell upon a half-read copy of "Treasure Island" on her bookshelf. She had looked at it that morning and remembered how much excited she had been over reading it only three days ago, and then turned away her eyes with a feeling of shame that she should be capable of such a thought at such a time.

Now she felt that, if only she might read, it would make the time ' less unbearably long. Confusedly she craved any relaxation of the emotional tension to which her mind had been strung during the last three days.

For a few moments Zella battled against the suggestion. It was wicked and heartless to want to read a story-book when mother

How dreadful Aunt Marianne would think it!

But, then, Aunt Marianne needn't know—no one would ever know—and to read for a little while would help her to forget her misery. . . .

Zella crept to the bookshelf in her stockinged feet, casting terrified glances at the door, and pulled down the brightly bound blue and gold book. Then she fled back on to the bed with it.

At first she could understand nothing of what she read, and was only conscious of a sickening sense of guilt and the heavy pounding of her own heart as she strained her ears for the sound of Aunt Marianne's possible approach. But presently the excitement of the story revived, and Zella read eagerly, dimly conscious that unhappiness was waiting in the background to seize upon her, but knowing it to be kept at bay for so long as she should be held absorbed by her book.

When at last she heard the unmistakable rustle of Mrs. Lloyd-Evans's new mourning at the door, Zella, a patch of colour blazing in each pale cheek, thrust "Treasure Island" beneath her pillow.

After that she read eagerly and furtively whenever she could. It was the only means of forgetting for a little while the dull pervading sense of grief which was making life so strange and unbearable.

When Thursday morning dawned serene and cloudless, Zella woke early, and lay in bed reading intently until she remembered, with a sickening pang, that on this day was to take place her mother's funeral.

Then she pushed the book away and began to sob, with a dreary sense of shame and degradation added to her unhappiness.

After the silent breakfast, at which Mrs. Lloyd-Evans, with all the first shock of her grief apparently renewed, had refused everything but a cup of tea, Louis de Kervoyou said abruptly:

"They will be here at two o'clock, Marianne, to fetch"

"I know—I know," she interrupted hurriedly.

"It will take quite an hour to walk down there; they will have to go slowly."

The coffin of Esmée de Kervoyou was to be borne down the hill to the village churchyard by some of the tenants on the estate.

"Will anyone be coming back here afterwards?" asked Mrs. Lloyd-Evans.

"Only old Mr. Oliver and his daughter, who will have a long way to drive," said Louis, with his fixed composure; "and Henry, of course," he added.

Mrs. Lloyd-Evans's husband was arriving that day.

"Will you be kind enough to see about some refreshment, Marianne ?" said Louis. "They will be back here by four o'cloak."

"I will see to it all. These duties are so dreadful, but one must be brave. Don't think of it, Louis; I will do it all."

Zella listened as though she were in a dream. Presently she turned to her aunt, and whispered: "Am I going to—to—it?"

"Oh yes, darling; you will walk with poor papa," said Mrs. Lloyd-Evans aloud.

"What is that ?" Louis looked round, and was struck with compassion at the sight of Zella's colourless face and the great stains round her eyes.

"Why don't you go out into the garden? It is a lovely day," he said gently.

Zella shrank back a little, looking at her aunt, whom she felt to be shocked at the suggestion, and Mrs. Lloyd-Evans interposed tactfully:

"It will be beautifully fine for this afternoon. 'Zella will walk down to the church with you, Louis, I suppose."

He looked at her as though he scarcely understood.

"I had never thought of her coming at all," he said at last. "Why should she? You don't wish to- come, do you, Zella?"

Zella hesitated, thinking that her father wanted her to say no, and that her aunt would think her heartless if she did.

"Whichever you like," she faltered.

"Zella is quite old enough to come to her own

mother's "Mrs. Lloyd-Evans again choked over

the word and left it unspoken. "Indeed, Louis, I think we must consider what people would say, dreadful though it seems to think of these things at such a time; but people would wonder"

"There is nothing to wonder about. She shall do as she wishes. Why should she want to go?"

Mrs. Lloyd-Evans interposed quickly:

"Zella, my poor child, you want to see your dear, dear mother laid to rest, don't you ? near the little church

where "Mrs. Lloyd-Evans stopped rather abruptly,

as she discovered that she could not recall any possible connection between the little church and Esmée's memory.

"Her mother is dead," cried Louis, low and vehemently. "What they are taking to the churchyard is not her. I will not have any false sentiment introduced into the child's mind. Zella, you can decide for yourself. Do you wish to go or not?"

"No," murmured Zella, who was frightened at a tone which she had never heard before from her merry, kindly father.

Louis de Kervoyou, as he left the room, made a gesture of acquiesence that was supremely un-English, and served to remind Mrs. Lloyd-Evans that one must make allowances for a brother-in-law who was practically a Frenchman.

"Poor papa is very much overwrought, darling, and no wonder," she murmured. "Besides, gentlemen do not always think quite as we do about these things."

Mrs. Lloyd-Evans always spoke of "gentlemen," never of " men," unless they definitely belonged to the lower classes of the social scale.

"Gentlemen do not always quite understand," was one of her favourite generalizations, and she told Zella gently that gentlemen did not always quite understand the comfort that was to be found in the Church.

Zella thought that her aunt would be shocked if she said that she had-very seldom been to church, and had not liked it when she had gone, so she answered tearfully:

"Poor papa! he is dreadfully unhappy."

"You must try and comfort him, dear child."

Mrs. Lloyd-Evans, not in general prodigal of endearments, now seemed unable to address her niece without some such expression. Zella felt vaguely that it must be appropriate to her new black frock and bereaved condition.

"Why not go to him in the study, darling, and tell him that dear mother is in heaven and happy, and he must try and not grieve for her, and that you mean to be his little comfort?"

Zella, at this suggestion, mechanically saw her own slender black-garbed figure kneeling beside her father's chair in the study, and heard her own clear, unfaltering voice uttering tender sentiments of faith and consolation. It seemed appropriate enough, and Aunt Marianne evidently thought it so. A certain subtle discomfort at the back of her mind, however, warned her that the project, for some reason which she could not quite analyze, might prove difficult to execute.

"Perhaps afterwards," she faltered, " not now."

"No, darling, now is best," said Mrs. Lloyd-Evans, with the soft-voiced inflexibility, totally unfounded on reason, characteristic of her where her own opinions were concerned. "Papa is all alone in the study; it is your place to comfort him."

It must be the right thing to do, then.

Zella left the room slowly, and as she crossed the hall she discovered that a little pulse was throbbing in her throat and that her hands had suddenly become cold. She clasped them nervously together, and told herself that papa, who had never been angry with her in her life, could not be anything but comforted if she came to him now. She was his only child—all that he had left to him; it was right that she should try and be a comfort.

She did not know why she felt so frightened.

Suddenly she turned the door handle.

"Come in," said her father's familiar tones, with the weary sound that was new to them.

He was sitting at the writing-table, much as Zella had pictured him in her mental rehearsal, and the fact suddenly gave her courage to carry out her own roje.

Crossing the room swiftly, she knelt down besidenim, and repeated faithfully, though with a nervous catch in her voice, the sentiments deemed appropriate to the occasion by Aunt Marianne.

"Darling papa, please don't be so dreadfully unhappy. Darling mother is in heaven now, and she is happy, and— and I will try and be a comfort to you always, as she would have wished."

The hurried, gasping accents, which were all that Zella's thumping heart allowed her to produce, died away into silence, and she felt that the performance had been absurdly inadequate. She had not even dared to raise her eyes to his, with a beautiful look of trust and tenderness; on the contrary, they were cast down as though from shame.

Still the appalling silence continued. Her father had not moved. At last he spoke, but it was in a tone that Zella had never heard from him before:

"I don't want any play-acting now, Zella. You can go back to your Aunt Marianne."

The words cut her like a knife, few though they were and quietly spoken. In such an agony of pain and humiliation as she had never known in all her short life before, Zella sprang to her feet and rushed to her own room.

Mrs. Lloyd-Evans found her there half an hour later, crying convulsively, and soothed her very affectionately, supposing that it was the thought of her mother's funeral which had renewed her tears. But the tears were bitterer and more painful than all those Zella had shed from grief, for they came from her passionate and deeply wounded self-esteem.

That afternoon the body of Esmée de Kervoyou was laid in the grave, while her only child, crouching upon the floor in her room, pressed her fingers into her ears that she might not hear the tolling of the bell.

Mrs. Lloyd-Evans had said rather half-heartedly,

"My poor child, you cannot stay here alone. Shall Aunt Marianne stay with you?" but Zella had begged to be left alone, and, as Mrs. Lloyd-Evans afterwards said to her husband:

"I was torn in two, Henry. I couldn't have borne not to follow my poor Esmée to her last resting-place, and, besides, it would have looked so very odd if I, her only sister, had not been there."

So she had tenderly told Zella to lie down upon her bed and rest a little, and had left a Prayer-Book, with the Burial Service carefully marked, and a Bible, beside her.

While the sound of heavy, careful feet, staggering downstairs under the weight of an awkward burden, was still audible, Zella lay with clenched hands, wishing that she could cry or pray, and feeling utterly unable to do either.

When all the sounds had died away, she took up the Bible and Prayer-Book desperately, but both were unfamiliar to her and she could not command her attention. She had had very little orthodox religious teaching, and had never known the need of a definite creed. She always supposed that her father and mother were Protestants, just as she knew that her grandmother and aunt in France were Catholics, but of the devout practice of either religion Zella knew nothing. In fact, Mrs. Lloyd-Evans, who called herself a Catholic and was a member of the Church of England, had given Zella a greater insight into the orthodox practices of religion during the last few days than any she had as yet received. But in her present overwrought condition Zella found the Bible incomprehensible and the Prayer-Book intolerable.

When the sound of the church bell came, faint and distant from the valley, Zella, shuddering, rose and locked her door, then snatched the copy of "Treasure Island" from the bookshelf, and, crouching against the bed, with her hands over her ears, read furiously.