DOCTORING THE DOCTOR ASKING for Miss Henley at the doctor's door, Hugh was informed that she had gone out, with her invalid maid, for a walk.

She had left word, if Mr.Mountjoy called in her absence, to beg that he would kindly wait for her return.
On his way up to the drawing-room, Mountjoy heard Mrs.Vimpany's sonorous voice occupied, as he supposed, in reading aloud.

The door being opened for him, he surprised her, striding up and down the room with a book in her hand; grandly declaiming without anybody to applaud her.

After what Hugh had already heard, he could only conclude that reminiscences of her theatrical career had tempted the solitary actress to make a private appearance, for her own pleasure, in one of those tragic characters to which her husband had alluded.

She recovered her self-possession on Mountjoy's appearance, with the ease of a mistress of her art.