Desperate Remedies

ese persons' lives. The scene is still the Grayes' native town of Hocb

livening newness of the morning, has not yet made any perceptible advance towards acquiring those mellow and soothing tones which grace its decline. Next, it was that stage in the progress of the week when business-which, carried on under the gables of an old country place, is

ing native peculiarities unconscious of beholders. Discovering themselves to be watched they attem

site, where the much talked-of reading from Shakespeare was about to begin. The doors were open, and those persons who had already assembled within the building

brown stubble. She wore an elegant dark jacket, lavender dress, hat with grey strings and trimmings, and gloves of a colour to ha

t various times whilst sitting in her seat and listening to the reader on the platform, he

ached unusually near to the standard of faultlessness. But even this feature of hers yielded the p

had naturally developed itself with her years. In childhood, a stone or stalk in the way, which had been the inevitable occasion of a fall to her playmates, had usually left her safe and upright on her feet after the narrowest escape by oscillations and whirls for the preservation of her balance. At mixed Christmas parties, when she numbered but twelve or thirteen years, and was heartily despised on that account by lads who deemed themse

nd round into the shade. She had eyes of a sapphire hue, though rather darker than the gem ordinarily appears; they possessed the affectionate and liquid

t of a landscape by exploring it at night with a lantern-or of a full chord of music by piping the notes in succession. Nevertheless it may

t, when her eyes bri

smile) as distinctly

stant expressed clea

which lie over the w

d

of a secret, whic

den minute start, an

side, or neck, as th

macy di

rding one who posse

ng in the progress of the present entertainme

herself and others through after years-was simply that she unknowingly stood, as it were, upon the extreme posterior edge of a tract in her life, in which the real meaning of Taking Thought had never been known. It was the last hour of e

the interior of the room the housetops and chimneys of the adjacent street, and also the upper part of a neighbouring

was now engaged in watching the scene that was being enacted about its airy summit. Round the conical stonework rose a cage of scaffolding against the blue

ifth man was the architect, Mr. Graye. He had been giving directions as it se

It was an illuminated miniature, framed in by the dark margin of the window, the keen

red little larger than pigeons, and made their tiny movements with a soft, spirit-like silentness. One idea above all others was conveyed to the mind of a person on the ground by their asp

h attention to the operations of the others. He appeared to be lost in re

less and careless as one of the ancient Tarentines, who, on such an afternoon as this, wa

n,' she whispered, still gazing at the skybacked pict

as if to test its strength, then let it go and stepped back. In stepping, his foot slipped. An instant

d utter no sound. One by one the people about her, unconscious of what had happened, turned their heads, and inquiry

door-through which another and sadder burden had been carried but a few instants before-her eyes caught sight of the south-western sky, and, without heeding, saw white sunlight shining in shaft-like lines from a rift in a slaty cloud. Emotions will attach themselves to scenes th