plenty of employment, I see ;" and John glanced round the room at Gertrude's pictures. "I am proud of you, Gertrude; I honor you for your self-reliance; but what is your fancy, with your artistic reputation, for living such a nun's life ?"

"Well," said Gertrude, "in the first place, my time is too valuable to me to be thrown away on bores and idlers, and the Paul Pry family, in all its various ramifications. Autograph hunters I have found not without their use, as I never answer their communications, and they find me in letter stamps. But entre nous, John, I have no very exalted opinion of the sex to which you belong.

"Men are so gross and unspiritual, John, so wedded to making money and promiscuous love, so selfish and unchivalric; of course there are occasionally glorious exceptions, but who would be foolish enough to wade through leagues of brambles, and briars, to find perchance one flower? Female friends, of course, are out of the question, always excepting Rose, whose title is no misnomer. And as to general society, it is so seldom one finds a congenial circle that, having resources of my own, I feel disinclined to encounter the risk."

"This isolation is unnatural; Gertrude, you can not be happy."

"Who is ?" asked Gertrude. "Are you? Is Rose?

Where is the feast at which there is no skeleton? I make no complaint. I enjoyed more happiness in the five years of my first wedded life than falls to the lot of most mortals in a life-time. I know that such an experience can not be repeated, so I live on the past. You say I am not happy; I am negatively happy. If I gather no honey, I at least escape the sting."

"I wish for my sake, Gertrude, you would go into society. I can not but think you would form new ties that would brighten life. As a woman, you can not be insensible to your attractive power.”

"I have no desire to exert it," replied Gertrude; "there are undoubtedly men in want of housekeepers, and plenty of widowers in want of nurses for their children. My desires do not point that way.”

"You are incorrigible, Gertrude. Do you suppose there is no man who has sense enough to love you for yourself alone?”

"What if I do not want to be loved?" asked his sister.

"But you do," persisted John; "so long as there is any vitality in a women, she likes to be loved."

"Well, then, granting your proposition for the sake of the argument, please give me credit for a most martyr-like and persistent self-denial," said Gertrude, laughing.

“I will give you credit for nothing, till your heart gets thawed out a little; and I think I know a friend of mine who can do it.”

"Forewarned forearmed,” said his sister.

CHAPTER XLIV.

'ROSE, you are not looking well, this morning. Confess, now, that you did not sleep a wink last night. I heard the pattering of your little feet over my head long after midnight.”

Very likely, for I was unaccountably restless. I will tell you what troubled me. I was trying to think of some way to support myself; I wish I had a tithe of your energy, Gertrude.”

"Well you have not, you are just made to be loved and petted. You are too delicate a bit of porcelain to be knocked and hustled round amid the delf of the world. Your gift is decidedly wife-wise, and the sooner you let my good brother John make you one, the better for all of us."

"What do you think of my turning authoress ?” asked Rose, adroitly turning the subject.

"Oh, do it, by all means," mocked Gertrude, "it is the easiest thing in the world to write a book. It would be just the thing for a little sensitive-plant like you. I think I see it fairly launched. I think I see you sit down with the morning paper in your hand to

read a criticism on it, from some coarse pen, dressed in a little brief authority, in the absence of some editor; a fellow who knows no difference between a sun-flower and a violet, and whose daily aspirations are bounded by an oyster supper, or a mint-julep. I think I see you thumped on the head with his butchering cleaver, every nerve quivering under the crucifixion of his coarse scalpel."

"But surely there are those who know a good book when they see it, and I mean to write a good book.”

"You little simpleton, as if that would save you! Do you suppose you will be forgiven for writing a good book? No, my dear; the editor of 'The Daily Lorgnette,' takes it up, he devours a chapter or two, he begins to fidget in his chair, he sees there is genius in it, he gets up and strides across his office, he recollects certain books of his own, which nobody ever read but his publishers and himself, and every word he reads ir ritates that old sore. The next day, under the head of book notices you will see the following in the Daily Lorgnette:

"Gore House, by Rose Ringdove.'

"We have perused this book; it is unnecessary to state in its title-page that it was written by a female hand. The plot is feeble and inartistic. In dialogue, the writer utterly fails; the heroine, Effie Waters, is a stiff, artificial creation, reminding us constantly of those females painted on the pannels of omnibuses, convuls