ALL THE

CROSS CURRENTS.

BY MARY ANGELA DICKENS. Author of "A Mist of Error," "Her Inheritance," "A Social Success,' 'Kitty's Victim,” etc., etc.

CHAPTER XV.

ANY event, great or small, has a different significance for each human being whose life it touches; a comparison of such significances would be a rather curious study. Helen, when she heard of the Duchess's scheme, looked upon it as a special interposition of Providence, not for the relief of the Chinese, but to keep Selma from dwelling too much upon their last days together in the little house which had been home to them for so long. Everything was to be packed up before the wedding. Helen had carefully arranged that Selma should have no business connected with the move on her hands when she herself should be away; and she had been vaguely afraid that the last week, when the preparation for departure could no longer be kept in the background, might be very painful with the inevitable stir of old association which it involved. Bat Selma was just as usual, except for an added tenderness of manner towards her sister which every one of those last days seemed to increase. Such portions of the work as fell naturally to her, she did, just as she did everything not immediately connected with her profession, quietly, but quite uninterestedly. When Helen was obliged to consult her on any point, her opinion was given readily, and sympathetically, but as though her own personal concern in the matter was absolutely null. The Duchess's scheme was not to be finally

VOL. VI.-THIRD SERIES.

PRICE TWOPENCE.

arranged without incessant change of mind as to details on the part of almost every one concerned, and one question in particularthe question of what the play itself was to be-seemed almost insoluble. Salma heard little of the pros and cons, and had she heard everything she would not have known the truth-that John Tyrrell had made up his mind on the subject from the first, and was only waiting to declare it finally, and with authority, until his comanagers should be so hopelessly divided among themselves as to accept any decision in sheer desperation. Nothing was decided when the sisters' last day together drew to a close.

It was late, but the two girls were still together in the drawing-room. Everything was ready; nothing lay between them and their short parting on the next day but the night's rest, of which Helen looked very much in need; but Selma was lingering, and making her sister linger, as though the prospect of her lonely room was painful to her. When at last they rose, however, and Helen said:

"Let me come and sleep with you, Selma," she answered, rather hurriedly, "No, dear"; adding with a gentle touch on Helen's cheek: "We should only keep each other awake, and you are very tired."

Selma herself was very pale, and her eyes looked almost haggard. Since she came in from the theatre, she had been quietly drawing Helen on to speak of the wedding arrangements more fully than she had yet done, and her manner all the time had been rather unusual, as though she were putting some kind of deliberate force upon herself. And Helen, to whom, at this stage of the proceedings, it seemed far better that they should speak openly to one

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another if Selma "didn't mind," had noticed nothing wrong until after her last hearty good-night kiss given in Selma's bedroom. As she left the room she turned, and was struck by something indefinably pathetic about Selma's face and figure as she stood watching her sister out. Helen hesitated a moment, and then, coming back, she took Selma into her arms as though she were still the little sister of her childhood, and kissed her with all her heart in the pressure.

"You don't feel as if you were being left alone, darling?" she said. "You don't feel as though you were losing me ? "

Selma, who had trembled suddenly like a leaf, as she felt the touch of Helen's arms, drew a quick breath, and with a tender light in her eyes, which had been rather hard and set, returned the pressure which, until Helen spoke, she had only suffered.

"I know I'm not, my dearest !" she said. "Don't think of it like that. I know I shall have you always." She paused a moment, and then with a sudden tightening of her hold on Helen, she whispered: "You know, oh, Nell, you know how much I hope you will be happy. Oh, Nell! Oh, Nell!"

She was clinging to Helen with a convulsive grasp and pressure as the last words came from her in a dry, tearless sob; but before Helen, bewildered and startled, could fairly understand her words, she found herself pushed gently away with another rapid "good night," and the door was shut upon her. Helen stood for a moment, hesitating, and vaguely disturbed; then thinking, simply, that the fewer words and the less emotion indulged in the better, she acquiesced in Selma's unexpressed desire, and went to her own. room hoping that her sister would "soon be asleep."

Humphrey and Helen were only to be away for a week, as the former was anxious about a picture for the Academy, and could spare no more time; and Selma was to spend that week with Miss Tyrrell. She was still very pale, and her eyes looked as though she had not slept much, when she was shown into the drawingroom at Kensington the next morning, and John Tyrrell, who was standing alone on the hearth-rug, apparently waiting for his sister, gave her a quick, keen glance as he shook hands.

"I've some news for you!" he said, as

soon as the usual preliminaries were over. "The knotty point is settled at last!"

"Oh!" cried Selma, the grave composure of her face suddenly giving way to an eager interest which had something pathetic about its intensity. "The play? Ob, tell me?" Then as he answered her her cheeks flushed crimson, and she cried, breathlessly: "Mr. Tyrrell, you don't mean it."

The play which Tyrrell had worked so cleverly that no one had any idea that it had been worked at all, was a translation of an old Italian play, which had taken his fancy as a much younger man, on the adaptation of which he had spent great pains, but which he had never produced for many reasons-one of which had been his inability to find any one to play the heroine; he insisted that she must be young, beautiful, and powerful; and his demands had never been fulfilled. had several years before made Selma study the part, and on first hearing of the proposed matinée, he had determined that she should play it. The piece would be a grave risk as a regular production; but at a matinée it would be a certain sensation, if only because of its novelty.

He

"Bianca !" exclaimed Selma, as het signified, by a slight smile and a gesture, that he did mean it. "Oh, Mr. Tyrrell!"

"It will mean some hard work for us," he said. "Did I tell you that it is to be on the twenty-second?"

"I am so glad," she said, answering his first words. "Yes, it will. I was thinking about Bianca only the other day, thinking that I should like to study her again, now that I am older." She paused a moment, and stood absently, leaning one arm against the mantelpiece. "It will be like a new part," she added, dreamily.

"It is a new part for me, too," he rejoined. "And I shall stage-manage it, of course. Fortunately, we play a great deal with one another, you and I, so we can rehearse to your heart's content."

Selma roused herself, and slipped into the nearest chair, forgetting in the interest of the subject that she had only just arrived, that she had not yet taken off her hat, or seen her hostess,

Tell me about the cast," she said. "Who will be the Guido?"

There were two prominent men's parts in the play-two parts of which it was difficult to say that either was the better. One of these was a middle-aged man-a priest; the other a young man, Guido