The Project Gutenberg eBook of Molly Bawn, by Margaret Wolfe Hamilton

"Positively he is coming!" says Mr. Massereene, with an air of the most profound astonishment.

"Who?" asks Molly, curiously, pausing with her toast in mid-air (they are at breakfast), and with her lovely eyes twice their usual goodly size. Her lips, too, are apart; but whether in anticipation of the news or of the toast, it would be difficult to decide. "Is any one coming here?"

"Even here. This letter"—regarding, with a stricken conscience, the elegant scrawl in his hand—"is from Tedcastle George Luttrell (he is evidently proud of his name), declaring himself not only ready but fatally willing to accept my invitation to spend a month with me."

"A month!" says Letitia, dismayed. "What on earth, John, is any one to do with any one for a month down here?"

"I wish I knew," replies Mr. Massereene, getting more and more stricken as he notices his wife's dejection, and gazing at Molly as though for inspiration. "What evil genius possessed me that I didn't say a fortnight? But, to tell you the honest truth, Letty, it never occurred to me that he might come."

"Then why did you ask him?" says Letitia, as sharply as is possible for her. "When writing, you might have anticipated so much: people generally do."

"Do they?" says Mr. Massereene, with an irrepressible glance at Molly. "Then you must only put me down as an exception to the general rule. I thought it only civil to ask him, but I certainly never believed he would be rash enough to go in for voluntary exile. I should have remembered how unthinking he always was."

"But who is he?" asks Molly, impatiently, full of keen and pleasurable excitement. "I die of vulgar curiosity. What is he like? Is he young, handsome? Oh, John, do say he is young and good-looking."

"Does that groan proceed from a conviction that I am in the last stage of decay?" demands Mr. Massereene. "Anything so rude as you, Molly, has not as yet been rivaled. However, I am at a disadvantage: so I forgive, and will proceed. Though at school with me, he is at least nine years my junior, and can't be more than twenty-seven."

"Ah!" says Molly. To an Irish girl alone is given the power to express these two exclamations with proper effect.

"He is a hussar, of a good family, sufficiently good looks, and, I think, no fortune," says Mr. Massereene, as though reading from a doubtful guide-book.

"How terrific!" sighs Letitia. "Fancy a hussar finding amusement in lambs, and cows, and fat pigs, and green fields!"

"'Green fields and pastures new,'" quotes Mr. Massereene. "He will have them in abundance. He ought to be happy, as they say there is a charm in variety."

"Perhaps he will find some amusement in me," suggests Molly, modestly. "Can it be possible that he is really coming? Oh, the glory of having a young man to talk to, and that young man a soldier! Letitia," to her sister-in-law, "I warn you it will be no use for you to look shocked, because I have finally made up my mind to flirt every day, and all day long, with Tedcastle George Luttrell."

"Shocked!" says Letitia, gravely. "I would be a great deal more shocked if you had said you wouldn't; for what I should do with him, if you refused to take him in hand, is a thing on which I shudder to speculate. John is forever doing questionable things, and repenting when it is too late. Unless he means to build a new wing—" with a mild attempt at sarcasm,—"I don't know where Mr. Luttrell is to sleep."

"I fear I would not have time," says Massereene, meekly; "the walls would scarcely be dry, as he is coming—the day after to-morrow."

"Not until then?" says Letitia, ominously calm. "Why did you not make it to-day? That would have utterly precluded the possibility of my getting things into any sort of order."

"Letitia, if you continue to address me in your present heartless style for one minute longer, I shall burst into tears," says Mr. Massereene. And then they all laugh.

"He shall have my room," says Molly, presently, seeing that perplexity still adorns Letitia's brows, "and I can have Lovat's."

"Oh, Molly, I will not have you turned out of your room for any one," says Letitia; but she says it faintly, and is conscious of a feeling of relief at her heart as she speaks.

"But indeed he shall. It is such a pretty room that he cannot fail to be impressed. Any one coming from a hot city, and proving insensible to the charms of the roses that are now creeping into my window, would be unfit to live. Even a hussar must have a soft spot somewhere. I foresee those roses will be the means of reducing him to a lamb-like meekness."

"You are too good, Molly. It seems a shame," says Letitia, patting her sister-in-law's hand, and still hesitating, through a sense of duty; "does it not, John?"

"It is so difficult to know what a woman really means by the word, 'shame,'" replies John, absently, being deep in the morning's paper. "You said it was a shame yesterday when the cat drank all the cream; and Molly said it was a shame when Wyndham ran away with Crofton's wife."

"Don't take any notice of him, Letty," says Molly, with a scornful shrug of her pretty shoulders, turning her back on her brother, and resuming the all-important subject of the expected visitor.

"Another railway accident, and twenty men killed," says Mr. Massereene, in a few minutes, looking up from his Times, and adopting the lugubrious tone one always assumes on such occasions, whether one cares or not.

"Wasn't it fortunate we put up those curtains clean last week?" murmurs Letitia, in a slow, self-congratulatory voice.

"I don't believe there is a spare bath in the house," exclaims Letitia, again sinking into the lowest depth of despair.

"You forget the old one in the nursery. It will do for the children very well, and he can have the new one," says Molly.

"Twenty men killed, Molly!" reiterates Mr. Massereene, a faint gleam of surprised disgust creeping into his eyes.

"So it will, dear. Molly, you are an immense comfort. What did you say, John? Twenty men killed? Dreadful! I wonder, Molly, if I might suggest to him that I would not like him to smoke in bed? I hear a great many young men have that habit; indeed, a brother of mine, years ago, at home, nearly set the house on fire one night with a cigar."

"Let me do all the lecturing," says Molly, gayly; "there is nothing I should like better."

"Talk of ministering angels, indeed!" mutters Mr. Massereene, rising, and making for the door, paper and all. "I don't believe they would care if England was swamped, so long as they had clean curtains for Luttrell's bed."

The day that is to bring them Luttrell has dawned, deepened, burst into perfect beauty, and now holds out its arms to the restful evening. A glorious sunny evening as yet, full of its lingering youth, with scarce a hint of the noon's decay. The little yellow sunbeams, richer perhaps in tint than they were two hours agone, still play their games of hide-and-seek and bo-peep among the roses that climb and spread themselves in all their creamy, rosy, snowy loveliness over the long, low house where live the Massereenes, and breathe forth scented kisses to the wooing wind.

A straggling house is Brooklyn, larger, at the first glance, than it in reality is, and distinctly comfortable, yet with its comfort, a thing very far apart from luxury, and with none of the sleepiness of an over-rich prosperity about it. In spite of the late June sun, there is a general air of life, a tremulous merriment, everywhere: the voices of the children, a certain laugh that rings like far-off music, the cooing of the pigeons beneath the eaves, the cluck-cluck of the silly fowls in the farm-yard,—all mingle to defy the creeping sense of laziness that the day generates.

"It is late," says Mr. Massereene to himself, examining his watch for the fifteenth time as he saunters in a purposeless fashion up and down before the hall door. There is a suppressed sense of expectancy both in his manner and in the surroundings. The gravel has been newly raked, and gleams white and untrodden. The borders of the lawn that join on to it have been freshly clipped. A post in the railings, that for three weeks previously has been tottering to its fall, has been securely propped, and now stands firm and uncompromising as its fellows.

"It is almost seven," says Letitia, showing her fresh, handsome face at the drawing-room window. "Do you think he will be here for dinner, John?"

"I am incapable of thought," says John. "I find that when a man who is in the habit of dining at six is left without his dinner until seven he grows morose. It is a humiliating discovery. Surely the stomach should be subservient to the mind; but it isn't. Letitia, like a good girl, do say you have ordered up the soup."

"My dear Letitia, most certainly not, unless you wish to raise a storm impossible to quell. At present I feel myself in a mood that a very little more waiting will render ferocious. Besides,"—seeing his wife slightly uneasy,—"as he did not turn up about six, he cannot by any possibility be here until half-past eight."

"I am more glad to hear it than I can tell you," says her husband, briskly. "Take my word for it, Letty, your trouble won't go for nothing."

"I don't believe he is coming at all," says Molly, pettishly, coming out from the curtains of the window, and advancing straight into the middle of the room.

Under the chandelier, that has been so effectively touched up for this recreant knight, she stands bathed in the soft light of the many candles that beam down with mild kindliness upon her. It seems as though they love to rest upon her,—to add yet one more charm, if it may be, to the sweet, graceful figure, the half-angry, wholly charming attitude, the tender, lovable, fresh young face.

Her eyes, large, dark, and blue,—true Irish eyes, that bespeak her father's race,—shine with a steady clearness. They do not sparkle, they are hardly brilliant; they look forth at one with an expression so soft, so earnest, yet withal so merry, as would make one stake their all on the sure fact that the heart within her must be golden.

Her nut-brown hair, drawn back from her low brow into a loose coil behind, is enriched here and there with little sunny tresses, while across her forehead a few wavy locks—veritable love-locks, in Molly's case—wander idly, not as of a set purpose, but rather as though they have there drifted of their own gay will.

Upon her cheeks no roses lie,—unless they be the very creamiest roses that ever eye beheld. She is absolutely without color until such occasions rise as when grief or gladness touch her and dye her lovely skin with their red glow.

But it is her mouth—at once her betrayer and her chief charm—that one loves. In among its many curves lies all her wickedness,—the beautiful mouth, so full of mockery, laughter, fun, a certain decision, and tenderness unspeakable.

She smiles, and all her face is as one perfect sunbeam. Surely never has she looked so lovely. The smile dies, her lips close, a pensive sweetness creeps around them, and one terms one's self a fatuous fool to have deemed her at her best a moment since; and so on through all the many changes that only serve to show how countless is her store of hidden charms.

She is slender, but not lean, round, yet certainly not full, and of a middle height. For herself, she is impulsive; a little too quick at times, fond of life and laughter, as all youth should be, while perhaps (that I should live to say it!) down deep within her, somewhere, there hides, but half suppressed and ever ready to assert itself, a wayward, turbulent vein that must be termed coquetry.

Now, at this instant the little petulant frown, born of "hope deferred," that puckers up her forehead has fallen into her eyes, notwithstanding the jealous guard of the long curling lashes, and, looking out defiantly from thence, gives her all the appearance of a beloved but angry child fretting at the delay of some coveted toy.

"I don't believe he is coming at all," she says, again, with increased emphasis, having received no answer to her first assertion, Letitia being absorbed in a devout prayer that her words may come true, while John is disgracefully drowsy. "Oh, fancy the time I have wasted over my appearance, and all for nothing! I won't be able to get up the enthusiasm a second time: I feel that. How I hate young men,—young men in the army especially! They are so selfish and so good-for-nothing, with no thought for any one on earth but Number One. Give me a respectable, middle-aged squire, with no aspirations beyond South-downs and Early York."

"Poor Molly Bawn!" says John, rousing himself to meet the exigencies of the moment. "'I deeply sympathize.' And just when you are looking so nice, too: isn't she, Letty? I vow and protest, that young man deserves nothing less than extinction."

"I wish I had the extinguishing of him," says Molly, viciously. Then, laughing a little, and clasping her hands loosely behind her back, she walks to a mirror, the better to admire the long white trailing robe, the faultless face, the red rose dying on her breast. "And just when I had taken such pains with my hair!" she says, making a faint grimace at her own vanity. "John, as there is no one else to admire me, do say (whether you think it or not) I am the prettiest person you ever saw."

"I wouldn't even hesitate over such a simple lie as that," says John; "only—Letty is in the room: consider her feelings."

"A quarter to nine. I really think he can't be coming now," breaks in Letitia, hopefully.

"Coming or not coming, I shan't remain in for him an instant longer this delicious night," says Molly, walking toward the open window, under which runs a balcony, and gazing out into the still, calm moonlight. "He is probably not aware of my existence; so that even if he does come he will not take my absence in bad part; and if he does, so much the better. Even in such a poor revenge there is a sweetness."

"I hope so," answers Molly, with a smile, stepping out into the cool, refreshing dark.

Down the wooden steps, along the gravel path, into the land of dreaming flowers she goes. Pale moonbeams light her way as, with her gown uplifted, she wanders from bed to bed, and with a dainty greediness drinks in the honeyed breathings round her. Here now she stoops to lift with gentle touch a drooping head, lest in its slumber some defiling earth come near it; and here she stands to mark a spider's net, brilliant with dews from heaven. A crafty thing to have so fair a home!—And here she sighs.

"Well, if he doesn't come, what matters it? A stranger cannot claim regret. And yet what fun it would have been! what fun! (Poor lily, what evil chance came by you to break your stem and lay your white head there?) Perhaps—who knows?—he might be the stupidest mortal that ever dared to live, and then—yet not so stupid as the walls, and trees, and shrubs, while he can own a tongue to answer back. Ah! wretched slug, would you devour my tender opening leaves? Ugh! I cannot touch the slimy thing. Where has my trowel gone? I wish my ears had never heard his name,—Luttrell; a pretty name, too; but we all know how little is in that. I feel absurdly disappointed; and why? Because it is decreed that a man I never have known I never shall know. I doubt my brain is softening. But why has my tent been pitched in such a lonely spot? And why did he say he'd come? And why did John tell me he was good to look at, and, oh! that best of all things—young?"

A sound,—a step,—the vague certainty of a presence near. And Molly, turning, finds herself but a few yards distant from the expected guest. The fates have been kind!

A tall young man, slight and clean-limbed, with a well-shaped head so closely shaven as to suggest a Newgate barber; a long fair moustache, a long nose, a rather large mouth, luminous azure eyes, and a complexion the sun has vainly tried to brown, reducing it merely to a deeper flesh-tint. On the whole, it is a very desirable face that Mr. Luttrell owns; and so Molly decides in her first swift glance of pleased surprise. Yes, the fates have been more than kind.

As for Luttrell himself, he is standing quite still, in the middle of the garden-path, staring at this living Flora. Inside not a word has been said about her, no mention of her name had fallen ever so lightly into the conversation. He had made his excuses, had received a hearty welcome; both he and Massereene had declared themselves convinced that not a day had gone over the head of either since last they parted. He had bidden Mrs. Massereene good-night, and had come out here to smoke a cigar in quietude, all without suspicion that the house might yet contain another lovelier inmate. Is this her favorite hour for rambling? Is she a spirit? Or a lunatic? Yes, that must be it.

Meanwhile through the moonlight—in it—comes Molly, very slowly, a perfect creature, in trailing, snowy robes. Luttrell, forgetting the inevitable cigar,—a great concession,—stands mutely regarding her as, with warm parted lips and a smile, half amused, half wondering, she gazes back at him.

"Even a plain woman may gain beauty from a moonbeam; what, then, must a lovely woman seem when clothed in its pure rays?"

"You are welcome,—very welcome," says Molly, at length, in her low, soft voice.

"I am not a fairy, nor a spirit, nor yet a vision," murmurs Molly, now openly amused. "Have no fear. See," holding out to him a slim cool hand; "touch me, and be convinced, I am only Molly Massereene."

He takes the hand and holds it closely, still entranced. Already—even though three minutes have scarcely marked their acquaintance—he is dimly conscious that there might possibly be worse things in this world than a perpetual near-to "only Molly Massereene."

"So you did come," she goes on, withdrawing her fingers slowly but positively, and with a faint uplifting of her straight brows, "after all. I was so afraid you wouldn't, you were so long. John—we all thought you had thrown us over."

To have Beauty declare herself overjoyed at the mere fact of your presence is, under any circumstances, intoxicating. To have such an avowal made beneath the romantic light of a summer moon is maddening.

"Cared!" with a low gay laugh. "I should think I did care. I quite longed for you to come. If you only knew as well as I do the terrible, never-ending dullness of this place, you would understand how one could long for the coming of any one."

Try as he will, he cannot convince himself that the termination of this sentence is as satisfactory as its commencement.

"When the evening wore on," with a little depressed shake of her head, "and still you made no sign, and I began to feel sure it was all too good to be true, and that you were about to disappoint me and plead some hateful excuse by the morning post, I almost hated you, and was never in such a rage in my life. But," again holding out her hand to him, with a charming smile "I forgive you now."

"Then forgive me one thing more,—my ignorance," says Luttrell, retaining the fingers this time with much increased firmness. "And tell me who you are."

"Don't you know, really? You never heard of me from John or—— What a fall to my pride, and when in my secret heart I had almost flattered myself that——"

"Oh, nothing—only—— By the bye, now you have confessed yourself ignorant of my existence, what did bring you down to this uninteresting village?" All this with the most perfect naïveté.

"A desire," says Luttrell, smiling in spite of himself, "to see again your—what shall I say?"—hesitating—"father?"

"Nonsense," says Molly, quickly, with a little frown. "How could you think John my father? When he looks so young, too. I hope you are not stupid: we shall never get on if you are. How could he be my father?"

"Step-brother, then," says Molly, unwillingly. "I will acknowledge it for this once only. But never again, mind, as he is dearer to me than half a dozen real brothers. You like him very much, don't you?" examining him anxiously. "You must, to take the trouble to come all the way down here to see him."

"I do, indeed, more than I can say," replies the young man, with wise heartiness that is yet unfeigned. "He has stood to me too often in the old school-days to allow of my ever forgetting him. I would go farther than Morley to meet him, after a lengthened absence such as mine has been."

"Yes." Here they both pause, and Molly's eyes fall on her imprisoned hand. She is so evidently bent on being again ungenerous that Luttrell forces himself to break silence, with the mean object of distracting her thoughts.

"Oh, no," laughing; "you must not think that. To-night there was an excuse for me. And if there is blame in the matter, you must take it. But for your slothfulness, your tardiness, your unpardonable laziness," spitefully, "my temper would not have driven me forth."

"But," reproachfully, "you do not ask the cause of my delay. How would you like to be first inveigled into taking a rickety vehicle in the last stage of dissipation and then deposited by that vehicle, without an instant's warning, upon your mother earth? For my part, I didn't like it at all."

"I'm so sorry," says Molly, sweetly. "Did all that really happen to you, and just while I was abusing you with all my might and main? I think I shall have to be very good to you to make up for it."

"I think so too," says Luttrell, gravely. "My ignominious breakdown was nothing in comparison with a harsh word thrown at me by you. I feel a deep sense of injury upon me."

"It all comes of our being in what the papers call 'poor circumstances,'" says Molly, lightly. "Now, when I marry and you come to see me, I shall send a carriage and a spirited pair of grays to meet you at the station. Think of that."

"I won't," says Luttrell; "because I don't believe I would care to see you at all when—you are married." Here, with a rashness unworthy of him, he presses, ever so gently, the slender fingers within his own. Instantly Miss Massereene, with a marked ignoring of the suggestion in his last speech, returns to her forgotten charge.

"I don't want to inconvenience you," she says, demurely, with downcast lids, "but when you have quite done with my hand I think I should like it again. You see it is awkward being without it, as it is the right one."

"I'm not proud," says Luttrell, modestly. "I will try to make myself content if you will give me the left one."

At this they both laugh merrily; and, believe me, when two people so laugh together, there is very little ice left to be broken.

"And are you really glad I have come?" says Luttrell, bending, the better to see into her pretty face. "It sounds so unlikely."

"When one is starving, even dry bread is acceptable," returns Molly, with a swift but cruel glance.

"I mean this, that you are not to lay too much stress on the fact of my having said——"

"Well, Luttrell, where are you, old fellow? I suppose you thought you were quite forgotten. Couldn't come a moment sooner,—what with Letitia's comments on your general appearance and my own comments on my tobacco's disappearance. However, here I am at last. Have you been lonely?"

"It is John," whispers that young lady mysteriously. "Won't I catch it if he finds me out here so late without a shawl? I must run. Good-night,"—she moves away from him quickly, but before many steps have separated them turns again, and, with her fingers on her lips, breathes softly, kindly—"until to-morrow." After which she waves him a last faint adieu and disappears.

When John Massereene was seven years old his mother died. When he was seventeen his father had the imprudence to run away with the favorite daughter of a rich man,—which crime was never forgiven. Had there been the slightest excuse for her conduct it might have been otherwise, but in the eyes of her world there was none. That an Amherst of Herst Royal should be guilty of such a plebeian trick as "falling passionately in love" was bad enough, but to have her bestow that love upon a man at least eighteen years her senior, an Irishman, a mere engineer, with no money to speak of, with nothing on earth to recommend him beyond a handsome face, a charming manner, and a heart too warm ever to grow old, was not to be tolerated for a moment. And Eleanor Amherst, from the hour of her elopement, was virtually shrouded and laid within her grave so far as her own family was concerned.

Not that they need have hurried over her requiem, as the poor soul was practically laid there in the fourth year of her happy married life, dying of the same fever that had carried off her husband two days before, and leaving her three-year-old daughter in the care of her step-son.

At twenty-one, therefore, John Massereene found himself alone in the world, with about three hundred pounds a year and a small, tearful, clinging, forlorn child. Having followed his father's profession, more from a desire to gratify that father than from direct inclination, he found, when too late, that he neither liked it nor did it like him. He had, as he believed, a talent for farming; so that when, on the death of a distant relation, he found himself, when all was told, the possessor of seven hundred pounds a year, he bought Brooklyn, a modest place in one of the English shires, married his first love, and carried her and Molly home to it.

Once or twice in the early part of her life he had made an appeal to old Mr. Amherst, Molly's grandfather, on her behalf,—more from a sense of duty owing to her than from any desire to rid himself of the child, who had, indeed, with her pretty, coaxing ways, made a very cozy nest for herself in the deepest recesses of his large heart. But all such appeals had been unavailing. So that Molly had grown from baby to child, from child to girl, without having so much as seen her nearest relations, although Herst Royal was situated in the very county next to hers.

Even now, in spite of her having attained her eighteenth year, this ostracism is a matter of the most perfect indifference to Molly. She has been bred in a very sound contempt for the hard old man who so cruelly neglected her mother,—the poor mother whose love she never missed, so faithfully has John fulfilled her dying wishes. There is no poverty about this love, in which she has grown and strengthened: it is rich, all-sufficing. Even Letitia's coming only added another ray to its brightness.

They are a harmonious family, the Massereenes; they blend; they seldom disagree. Letitia, with her handsome English face, her tall, posée figure, and ready smile, makes a delicious centre-piece; John a good background; Molly a bit of perfect sunlight; the children flecks of vivid coloring here and there. They are an easy, laughter-loving people, with a rare store of contentment. They are much affected by those in their immediate neighborhood. Their servants have a good time of it. They are never out of temper when dinner is a quarter of an hour late. They all very much admire Molly, and Molly very much agrees with them. They are fond of taking their tea in summer in the open air; they are not fond of over-early rising; they never bore you with a description of the first faint beams of dawn; they fail to see any beauty in the dew at five o'clock in the morning; they are very reasonable people.

Yet the morning after his arrival, Luttrell, jumping out of his bed at eight o'clock, finds, on looking out of his window that overhangs the garden, Flora already among her flowers. Drawing back hastily,—he is a modest young man,—he grows suddenly energetic and makes good speed with his toilet.

When he is half dressed—that is, when his hair is brushed; but as yet his shirt is guiltless of a waistcoat—he cannot refrain from looking forth again, to see if she may yet be there, and, looking, meets her eyes.

He is slightly abashed; she is not. Mr. Massereene in his shirt and trousers is a thing very frequently seen at his window during the summer mornings. Mr. Luttrell presents much the same appearance. It certainly does occur to Molly that of the two men the new-comer is decidedly the better looking of the two, whereat, without any treachery toward John, she greatly rejoices. It does not occur to her that a blush at this moment would be a blush in the right place. On the contrary, she nods gayly at him, and calls out:

"Hurry! You cannot think what a delicious morning it is." And then goes on with her snipping and paring with the heartiest unconcern. After which Luttrell's method of getting into the remainder of his clothes can only be described as a scramble.

"How did you sleep?" asks Molly, a few minutes later, when he has joined her, looking up from the rose-bush over which she is bending, that holds no flower so sweet as her own self. "Well, I hope?"

"Very well, thank you," with a smile, his eyes fixed immovably upon the fresh beauty of her face.

"You look suspicious," says she, with a little laugh. "Are you thinking my question odd? I know when people are put over-night in a haunted chamber they are always asked the next morning whether they 'slept well,' in the fond hope that they didn't. But you need not be nervous. Nothing so inspiriting——"

"Eh? Oh, no! how could you think me guilty of such a thing? I mean that nothing so hopeful as an undeniable ghost has ever yet appeared at Brooklyn."

"Are you sure? Perhaps, then, I am to be the happy discoverer, as this morning early, about dawn, there came an unearthly tapping at my window that woke me, much to my disgust. I got up, but when I had opened the shutters could see nothing. Was not that a visitation? I looked at my watch, and found it was past four o'clock. Then I crept into my bed again, crestfallen,—'sold' with regard to an adventure."

"That was my magpie," cries Molly, with a merry laugh: "he always comes pecking at that hour, naughty fellow. Oh, what a tame ending to your romance! Your beautiful ghost come to visit you from unknown regions, clad in white and rustling garments, has resolved itself into a lame bird, rather poverty-stricken in the matter of feathers."

"I take it rather hardly that your dependent should come to disturb me," says Luttrell, reproachfully. "What have I done to him, or how have I ingratiated myself, that he should forsake you for me? I did not think even a meagre bird could have shown such outre taste. What fancy has he for my window?"

"Your window?" says Molly, quickly; then as quickly recollecting, she stops short, blushing a warm and lovely crimson. "Oh, of course,—yes, it was odd," she says, and, breaking down under the weight of her unhappy blush, busies herself eagerly with her flowers.

"Have I taken your bedroom?" asks he, anxiously, watching with cruel persistency the soft roses that bloom again at his words. "Yes, I see I have. That is too bad; and any room would have been good enough for a soldier. Are you sure you don't hate me for all the inconvenience I have caused you?"

"I can't be sure," says Molly, "yet. Give me time. But this I do know, that John will quarrel with us if we remain out here any longer, as breakfast must be quite ready by this. Come."

"When you spoke of my chamber as being haunted, a little time ago," says Luttrell, walking beside her on the gravel path, his hands clasped behind his back, "you came very near the truth. After what you have just told me, how shall I keep from dreaming about you?"

"Don't keep from it," says she, sweetly; "go on dreaming about me as much as ever you like. I don't mind."

"True," murmurs Molly, innocently: "so you might. John says all dreams arise from indigestion."

Seven long blissful summer days have surrendered themselves to the greedy past. It is almost July. To-day is Wednesday,—to-morrow June will be no more.

"Molly," says Mr. Massereene, with the laudable intention of rousing Molly's ire, "this is the day for which we have accepted Lady Barton's invitation to go to the Castle, to meet Lord and Lady Rossmere."

"'This is the cat that killed the rat, that did something or other in the house that Jack built,'" interrupts Molly, naughtily.

"And on this occasion you have not been invited," goes on John, serenely, "which shows she does not think you respectable,—not quite fit for polite society; so you must stay at home, like the bold little girl, and meditate on your misdemeanors."

"Lady Barton is a very intelligent person, who fully understands my abhorrence of old fogies," says Miss Massereene, with dignity.

"Sour grapes," says John. "But, now that you have given such an unfair turn to Lady Barton's motives, I feel it my duty to explain the exact truth to Luttrell. When last, my dear Tedcastle, Molly was invited to meet the Rossmeres, she behaved so badly and flirted so outrageously with his withered lordship, that he became perfectly imbecile toward the close of the entertainment, and his poor old wife was reduced almost to the verge of tears. I blushed for her; I did indeed."

"Oh, John! how can you say such things before Mr. Luttrell? If he is foolish enough to believe you, think what a dreadful opinion he will have of me!" With a lovely smile at Luttrell across the bowl of flowers that ornaments the breakfast-table. "And with such a man, too! A terrible old person who has forgotten his native language and can only mumble, and who has not got one tooth in his mouth or one hair on his head, and no flesh at all to speak of."

"What a fetching description!" says Luttrell. "You excite my curiosity. He is not 'on view,' is he?"

"Not yet," says Molly, with an airy laugh. "Probably when he dies they will embalm him, and forward him to the British Museum, as a remarkable species of his kind; and then we shall all get the full value of one shilling. I myself would walk to London to see that."

"So would I," says Luttrell, "if you would promise to tell me the day you are going."

"Letitia, I feel myself de trop, whatever you may," exclaims John, rising. "And see how time flies; it is almost half-past ten. Really, we grow lazier every day. I shudder to think at what hour I shall get my breakfast by the time I am an old man."

"Why, you are as old as the hills this moment," says Molly, drawing down his kind face, that bears such a strong resemblance to her own, to bestow upon it a soft sweet kiss. "You are not to grow any older,—mind that; you are to keep on looking just as you look now forever, or I will not forgive you. Now go away and make yourself charming for your Lady Barton."

"Oh, I don't spend three hours before my looking-glass," says John, "whenever I go anywhere." He is smoothing her beautiful hair with loving fingers as he speaks. "But I think I will utter one word of warning, Ted, before I leave you to her tender mercies for the day. Don't give in to her. If you do, she will lead you an awful life. At first she bullied me until I hardly dared to call my soul my own; but when I found Letitia I plucked up spirit (you know a worm will turn), and ventured to defy her, and since that existence has been bearable."

"Letitia, come to my defense," says Molly, in a tragic tone, stretching out her arms to her sister-in-law, who has been busy pacifying her youngest hope. As he has at last, however, declared himself content with five lumps of sugar and eight sweet biscuits, she finds time to look up and smile brightly at Molly.

"Letitia, my dear, don't perjure yourself," says John. "You know I speak the truth. A last word, Luttrell." He is standing behind his sister as he speaks, and taking her arms he puts her in a chair, and placing her elbows on the table, so that her pretty face sinks into her hands, goes on: "The moment you see her take this attitude, run! don't pause to think, or speculate; run! Because it always means mischief; you may know then that she has quite made up her mind. I speak from experience. Good-bye, children. I hope you will enjoy each other's society. I shall be busy until I leave, so you probably won't see me again."

"Are you afraid of me?" asks she, with a glance half questioning, half coquettish.

"Now you are all my own property," says Molly, gayly, three hours later, after they have bidden good-bye to Mr. and Mrs. Massereene, and eaten their own luncheon tête-à-tête. "You cannot escape me. And what shall we do with ourselves this glorious afternoon? Walk?—talk?—or——"

"If you have made up your mind to it, of course there is little use in my suggesting anything."

"Very little. Not that you ever do suggest anything," maliciously. "Now stay there, and resign yourself to your fate, while I go and put on my hat."

Along the grass, over the lawn, down to the water's edge, over the water, and into the green fields beyond, the young man follows his guide. Above, the blazing sun is shining with all its might upon the goodly earth; beneath, the grass is browning, withering beneath its rays; and in the man's heart has bloomed that tenderest, cruelest, sweetest of all delights, first love.

He has almost ceased to deny this fact to himself. Already he knows, by the miserable doubts that pursue him, how foolishly he lies to himself when he thinks otherwise. The sweet carelessness, the all-satisfying joy in the present that once was his, has now in his hour of need proved false, and, flying, leaves but a dull unrest in its place. He has fallen madly, gladly, idiotically in love with beautiful Molly Massereene.

Every curve of her pliant body is to him an untold poem; every touch of her hands is a new delight; every tone of her voice is as a song rising from out of the gloom of the lonely night.

"Here you are to stand and admire our potatoes," says Molly, standing still, and indicating with a little sweep of her hand the field in question. "Did you ever see so fine a crop? And did you notice how dry and floury they were at dinner yesterday?"

"Good boy. We take very great pride out of our potatoes (an Irish dish, you will remember), more especially as every year we find ours are superior to Lord Barton's. There is a certain solace in that, considering how far short we fall in other matters when compared with him. Here is the oat-field. Am I to understand you feel admiration?"

"Good again. We rather feared"—speaking in the affected, stilted style of a farming report she has adopted throughout—"last month was so deplorably wet, that the oats would be a failure; but we lived in hope, and you may mark the result here again: we are second to none. The wheat-field——" With another slight comprehensive gesture. "By the bye," pausing to examine his face, "am I fulfilling my duties as a hostess? Am I entertaining you?"

"Very much indeed. The more particularly that I was never so entertained before."

"I am fortunate. Well, that is the wheat. I don't know that I can expect you to go into ecstasies over it, as I confess to me it appears more or less weak about the head. Could one say that wheat was imbecile?"

"Yes? You see that rain did some damage; but after all it might have been worse."

"You will excuse my asking the question," says Luttrell, gravely, "but did you ever write for the Farmer's Gazette?"

"Never, as yet. But," with an irrepressible smile, "your words suggest to me brilliant possibilities. Perhaps were I to sit down and tell every one in trisyllables what they already know only too well about the crops, and the weather, and the Colorado beetle, and so forth, I might perchance wake up some morning to find myself famous."

"I haven't the faintest doubt of it," says Tedcastle, with such flattering warmth that they both break into a merry laugh. Not that there is anything at all in the joke worthy of such a joyous outburst, but because they are both so young and both so happy.

"Do you think I have done enough duty for one day?" asks Molly. "Have I been prosy enough to allow of my leaving off now? Because I don't think I have got anything more to say about the coming harvest, and I wouldn't care to say it if I had."

"If you will be so very kind. And you are quite sure no one could accuse me of taking advantage of John's and Letty's absence to be frivolous in my conversation?"

"On the contrary, not a word more: if you do you will spoil all. And now," says Molly, with a little soft, lingering smile, "as a reward for your promises, come with me to the top of yonder hill, and I will show you a lovely view."

"Is it not delicious here?" suggests Mr. Luttrell, who can scarcely be called energetic, and who finds it a difficult matter to grow enthusiastic over landscapes when oppressed by a broiling sun.

"But you are," reproachfully. "You are quite done up. Why, what would you do if you were ordered on a long day's march?"

"I dare say I should survive it," says Tedcastle, shortly, who is rather offended at her putting it in this light.

"Well, perhaps you might; but you certainly would have nothing to boast of. Now, look at me: I am as fresh as when we started." And in truth, as she stands before him, in her sky-blue gown, he sees she is as cool and bright and unruffled as when they left the house three-quarters of an hour ago. "Well," with a resigned sigh that speaks of disappointment, "stay here until I run up,—I love the place,—and I will join you afterward."

"Not I!" indignantly. "I'm good yet for so much exertion, and I don't believe I could exist without you for so long. 'Call, and I follow—I follow,' even though 'I die,'" he adds to himself, in a tone of melancholy.

Up the short but steep hill they toil in silence. Halfway Miss Massereene pauses, either to recover breath or to give encouragement.

"On the top there is always a breeze," she says, in the voice one adopts when determined to impress upon the listener what one's own heart knows to be doubtful.

At length they gain the wished-for top. They stand together, Molly with her usually pale cheeks a little flushed by the exercise, but otherwise calm and collected; Luttrell decidedly the worse for wear. And, yes, there actually is a breeze,—a sighing, rustling, unmistakable breeze, that rushes through their hair and through their fingers, and is as a draught from Olympus.

"There, didn't I tell you?" cries Molly, with all the suspicious haste and joy that betrays how weak has been her former hope. "Now, do say you are glad I brought you up."

"See how beautiful the land is,—as far as one can discern all green and gold," says she, unheeding his subdued tenderness. "Honestly, I do feel a deep interest in farming; and of all the grain that grows I dearly love the barley. First comes the nice plowed brown earth; then the ragged bare suspicion of green; then the strengthening and perfecting of that green until the whole earth is hidden away; then the soft, juicy look of the young blades nodding and waving at each other in the wind, that seems almost tender of them, and at last the fleecy, downy ears all whispering together."

"When you speak in that tone you make me wish myself a barleycorn," says Tedcastle, smiling. "Sit down here beside me, will you, and tell me why your brother calls you 'Molly Bawn'?"

"I hardly know," sinking down near him on the short, cool grass: "it was a name he gave me when I was a little one. John has ever been my father, my mother, my all," says the girl, a soft and lovely dew of earnest affection coming into her eyes. "Were I to love him all my life with twice the love I now bear him, I would scarcely be grateful enough."

"But not mine really. No. I was christened Eleanor, after my poor mother, whose history you know. 'Bawn' means fair. 'Fair Molly,'" says she, with a smile, turning to him her face, that resembles nothing so much as a newly-opened flower. "I had hair quite golden when a child. See," tilting her hat so that it falls backward from her head and lies on the greensward behind. "It is hardly dark yet."

"It is the most beautiful hair in the world," says he, touching with gentle, reverential fingers the silken coils that glint and shimmer in the sunlight. "And it is a name that suits you,—and you only."

"What! you have been here a whole week, and I have never sung for you?" With widely-opened eyes of pure surprise. "What could I have been thinking about? Do you know, I sing very nicely." This without the faintest atom of conceit. "Listen, then, and I will sing to you now."

With her hands clasped around her knees, her head bare, her tresses a little loosened by the wind, and her large eyes fixed upon the distant hills, she thus sweetly sings:

"Oh, Molly Bawn! why leave me pining,

All lonely waiting here for you,

While the stars above are brightly shining,

Because they've nothing else to do?

Oh, Molly Bawn! Molly Bawn!

"The flowers late were open keeping,

To try a rival blush with you,

But their mother, Nature, set them sleeping

With their rosy faces washed in dew.

Oh, Molly Bawn! Molly Bawn!

"The village watch-dog here is snarling;

He takes me for a thief, you see;

For he knows I'd steal you, Molly darling,

And then transported I should be!

Oh, Molly Bawn! Molly Bawn!"

"An odd old song, isn't it?" she says, presently, glancing at him curiously, when she has finished singing, and waited, and yet heard no smallest sound of praise. "You do not speak. Of what are you thinking?"

"Of the injustice of it," says he, in a low, thoughtful tone. "Had you not a bounteous store already when this last great charm was added on? Some poor wretches have nothing, some but a meagre share, while you have wrested from Fortune all her best gifts,—beauty——"

"No, no! stop!" cries Molly, gayly; "before you enumerate the good things that belong to me, remember that I still lack the chiefest: I have no money. I am without doubt the most poverty-stricken of your acquaintances. Can any confession be more humiliating? Good sir, my face is indeed my fortune. Or is it my voice?" pausing suddenly, as though a cold breath from the dim hereafter had blown across her cheek. "I hardly know."

"And here I am recklessly imperiling one," hastily putting on her hat once more, "by exposing my precious skin to that savage sun. Come,—it is almost cool now,—let us have a good race down the hill." She slips her slender fingers within his,—a lovable trick of hers, innocent of coquetry,—and, Luttrell conquering with a sigh a wild desire to clasp and kiss the owner of those little clinging fingers on the spot, together they run down the slope into the longer grass below, and so, slowly and more decorously, journey homeward.

On their return they find the house still barren of inmates; no sign of the master or mistress anywhere. Even the servants are invisible. "It might almost be the enchanted palace," says Molly.

Two of the children, seeing her on the lawn, break from their nurse, who is sleeping the sleep of the just, with her broad back against an elm, and running to Molly, fling their arms around her. She rewards them with a kiss apiece, one of which Luttrell surreptitiously purloins from the prettiest.

"Very far away? But you brought her back again," nodding a golden head gravely at Luttrell; "and nurse said you wouldn't. She said all soldiers were wicked, and that some day you would steal our Molly. But you won't," coaxingly: "will you, now?"

"I doubt if I would be able," he says, without raising his eyes from the child's face.

"I don't think you are a soldier at all," declares the darker maiden, coming more boldly to the front, as though fortified by this assertion. "You have no sword; and there never was a soldier without a sword, was there?"

"I begin to feel distinctly ashamed of myself," says Luttrell. "I have a sword, Daisy, somewhere. But not here. The next time I come I will bring it with me for your special delectation."

"Did you ever cut off any one's head?" asks the timid, fair-haired Renee, in the background, moving a few steps nearer to him, with rising hope in her voice.

"Miss Massereene, if you allow this searching examination to go on, I shall sink into the ground," says Luttrell. "I feel as if the eyes of Europe were upon me. Why cannot I boast that I have sent a thousand blacks to glory? No, Renee, with shame I confess it, I am innocent of bloodshed."

"I am so glad!" says the darker Daisy, while the gentler looking child turns from him with open disappointment.

"Do you think you can manage to amuse yourself for a little while?" says Molly. "Because I must leave you; I promised Letty to see after some of her housekeeping for her: I won't be too long," with a view to saving him from despair.

"I will see what a cigar can do for me," replies he, mournfully. "But remember how heavily time drags—sometimes."

Kissing her hand to him gayly, she trips away over the grass, leaving him to the tender mercies of the children. They, with all the frightful energy of youth, devote themselves to his service, and, seizing on him, carry him off to their especial sanctum, where they detain him in durance vile until the welcome though stentorian lungs of the nurse make themselves heard.

"There, you may go now," says Daisy, giving him a last ungrateful push; and as in a body they abscond, he finds himself depressed, but free. Not only free, but alone. This brings him back to thoughts of Molly. How long she is! Women never do know what time means. He will walk round to the yard and amuse himself with the dogs until she has finished her tiresome business.

Now, the kitchen window looks out upon the path he means to tread;—not only the kitchen window, but Molly. And as Luttrell comes by, with his head bent and a general air of moodiness about him, she is so far flattered by his evident dullness that she cannot refrain from tapping at the glass to call his attention.

"Have you been enjoying yourself?" asks she, innocently. "You look as if you had."

He starts as her voice so unexpectedly meets his ear, and turns upon her a face from which all ennui has fled.

"Do I?" he says. "Then my looks lie. Enjoying myself, with a pack of small demons! For what do you take me? No, I have been wretched. What on earth are you doing down there? You have been hours about it already. Surely, whatever it is, it must be done now. If you don't come out shortly you will have murder on your soul, as I feel suicidal."

Without waiting further invitation, Luttrell goes rapidly round, descends the kitchen steps, and presently finds himself in Molly's presence.

It is a pretty old-fashioned, low-ceilinged kitchen, full of quaint corners and impossible cupboards so high up in the wall as at first sight to be pronounced useless.

A magnificent fire burns redly, yet barely causes discomfort. (Why is it that a fire in the kitchen fails to afflict one as it would, if lit in summer, in the drawing-room or parlor?) Long, low benches, white as snow, run by the walls. The dresser—is there anything prettier than a well-kept dresser?—shines out conceitedly from its own place, full of its choicest bravery. In the middle of the gleaming tiles stands the table, and beside it stands Molly.

Her white arms, bare to the elbow, are covered with flour; a little patch of it has found a resting-place on the right side of her hair, where undoubtedly one hand must have gone to punish some amorous lock that would wander near her lips. Her eyes are full of light; her very lips are smiling. Jane, the cook, at a respectful distance, is half ashamed at the situation of her young lady; the young lady is not at all ashamed.

"Do you like me?" cries she, holding her floury arms aloft. "Are you lost in admiration? Ah! you have yet to learn how universal are my gifts. I can cook!"

"Can you?" says Luttrell, with a grimace. "What are you making now? I am anxious to know."

"Positively," bending a little forward, the better to see him; "you look it. Why?"

"That I may avoid it by and by." Here, with a last faint glimmer of prudence, he retires to the other end of the table.

"Have you come here to insult me in my own domain?" cries Molly wrathfully. "Rash youth, you rush upon your fate; or, to speak more truthfully, your fate intends to rush on you. Now take the consequences."

With both her hands extended she advances on him, fell determination in her eye. Alas for his coat when those ten snowy fingers shall have marked it for their own!

"Mercy!" cries Luttrell, falling on his knees at her feet. "Anything but that. I apologize, I retract; I will do penance; I will even eat it, every bit; I will——"

"No," heroically, rising to his full height, "I will not. I would rather be white from head to heel than leave this adorable kitchen."

There is a slight pause. Mercy and vengeance are in the balance, and Molly holds the scales. After a brief struggle mercy triumphs.

"I forgive you," says Molly, withdrawing; "but as punishment you really must help me, as I am rather late this evening. Here, stone these," pushing toward him a plateful of raisins."

"Law, miss, I'll do 'em," says Jane, who feels matters are going too far. To have a strange gentleman, one of the "high-up" gentry, a "reel millingtary swell," stoning raisins in her kitchen is more than she can reconcile herself to in silence; she therefore opens the floodgates of speech. "He'll soil hisself," she says, in a deep, reproachful whisper, fixing an imploring eye on Molly.

"I hope so," murmurs that delinquent, cheerfully. "He heartily deserves it. You may go and occupy yourself elsewhere, Jane; Mr. Luttrell and I will make this pudding. Now go on, Mr. Luttrell; don't be shirking your duty. It is either do or die."

"I can't find anything in them," ventures he, at last, in a slightly dejected tone; "and they're so horrid sticky."

"Nothing in them? Nonsense! you don't know how to go about it. Look. I'll show you. Open them with your first finger and thumb—so; and now do you see them?" triumphantly producing a round brown article on the tip of her finger.

"There," says Molly, bending too. Their heads are very close together. The discreet Jane has retired into her pantry. "It is the real thing. Can't you see it?"

"Well, it is small," Miss Massereene confesses, with reluctance; "it certainly is the smallest I ever saw. Still——"

By this time they are looking, not at the seed of the raisin, but into each other's eyes, and again there is an eloquent pause.

"May I examine it a little closer?" Luttrell asks, as though athirst for information, possessing himself quietly of the hand, raisin-stone, flour, and all, and bringing it suspiciously near to his lips. "Does it—would it—I mean does flour come off things easily?"

"I don't know," returns Molly, with an innocent gravity that puts him to shame. "Off some things it washes readily enough; but—mind you, I can't say for certain, as I have had no experience; but I don't think——"

"Well, I don't think," emphasizing each word with a most solemn nod, "it would come off your moustache in a hurry."

"I'll risk it, anyhow," says Luttrell, stooping suddenly to impress a fervent kiss upon the little powdered fingers he is holding.

"Oh! how wrong, how extremely wrong of you!" exclaims Miss Massereene, as successfully shocked as though the thought that he might be tempted to such a deed has never occurred to her. Yet, true to her nature, she makes no faintest pretense at withdrawing from him her hand until a full minute has elapsed. Then, unable longer to restrain herself, she bursts into a merry laugh,—a laugh all sweetest, clearest music.

"If you could only see how funny you look!" cries she. "You are fair with a vengeance now. Ah! do go and see for yourself." Giving him a gentle push toward an ancient glass that hangs disconsolately near the clock, and thereby leaving another betraying mark upon the shoulder of his coat.

Luttrell, having duly admired himself and given it as his opinion that though flour on the arms may be effective, flour on the face is not, has barely time to wipe his moustache free of it when Mrs. Massereene enters.

"You here," exclaims she, staring at Tedcastle, "of all places in the world! I own I am amazed. Oh, if your brother officers could only see you now, and your coat all over flour! I need hardly inquire if this is Molly's doing. Poor boy!" with a laugh. "It is a shame. Molly, you are never happy unless you are tormenting some one."

"But I always make it up to them afterward: don't I, now, Letty?" murmurs Molly, sweetly, speaking to Letitia, but directing a side-glance at Luttrell from under her long, dark lashes: this side-glance is almost a promise.

"Well, so you have come at last, Letty. And how did you enjoy your 'nice, long, happy day in the country,' as the children say?"

"Very much, indeed,—far more than I expected. The Mitchells were there, which added a little to our liveliness."

"Lord Rossmere? He is indeed, and was asking most tenderly for you. I never saw him look so well."

"Oh! it grows absurd," says Molly, in disgust. "How much longer does he intend keeping up the farce? He must fall to pieces soon."

"He hasn't a notion of it," says Letitia, warming to her description; "he has taken a new lease of his life. He looked only too well,—positively ten years younger. I think myself he was 'done up.' I could see his coat was padded; and he has adorned his head with a very sleek brown wig."

"Jane," says Molly, weakly, "be so good as to stand close behind me. I feel as if I were going to faint directly."

"Law, miss!" says Jane, giving way to her usual expletive. She is a clean and worthy soul where pots and pans are concerned, but apart from them can scarcely be termed eloquent.

"You are busy, Jane," says Mr. Luttrell, obligingly, "and I am not. (I see you are winding up that long-suffering pudding.) Let me take a little trouble off your hands. I will stand close behind Miss Massereene."

"He had quite a color too," goes on Letitia, mysteriously, "a very extraordinary color. Not that of an old man, nor yet of a young one, and I am utterly certain it was paint. It was a vivid, uncompromising red; so red that I think the poor old thing's valet must have overdone his work, for fun. Wasn't it cruel?"

"I asked John on the way home what he thought," goes on Letitia, with an evident interest in her tale, "and he quite agrees with me that it was rouge, or, at all events, something artificial."

"One more word, Letitia,"—faintly,—"a last one. Has he had that sole remaining tooth in the front of his mouth made steady?"

"No," cries Mrs. Massereene, triumphantly, "he has not. Do you too remember that awful tooth? It is literally the only thing left undone, and I can't imagine why. It still waggles uncomfortably when he talks, and his upper lip has the same old trick of catching on it and refusing to come down again until compelled. Sir John was there, and took me in to luncheon; and as I sat just opposite Lord Rossmere I could see distinctly. I particularly noticed that."

"You have saved me," cries Molly, briskly. "Had your answer been other than it was, I would not have hesitated for a moment: I would have gone off into a death-like swoon. Thank you, Jane,"—with a backward nod at Luttrell, whom she has refused to recognize: "I need not detain you any longer."

"And is this the way you entertain your guests, Molly?" asks Letitia. "Have you spent your day in the kitchen?"

"The society of the 'upper ten' is not good for you, Letitia," says Molly, severely. "There is a faint flavor of would-be sarcasm about you, and it doesn't suit you in the least: your lips have not got the correct curve. No, my dear: although unnoticed by the nobility of our land, we, too, have had our 'nice, long, happy day in the country.' Haven't we, Mr. Luttrell?"

"Do you think he would dare say 'No' with your eyes upon him?" says Letitia, laughing. "By and by I shall hear the truth. Come with me"—to Tedcastle—"and have a glass of sherry before your dinner: I am sure you must want it, after all you have gone through."

"Gather the roses while ye may;

Old time is still a-flying;

And the same flower that smiles to-day

To-morrow will be dying."

It is four o'clock, and a hush, a great stillness, born of oppressive heat, is over all the land. Again the sun is smiting with hot wrath the unoffending earth; the flowers nod drowsily or lie half dead of languor, their gay leaves touching the ground.

"The sky was blue as the summer sea,

The depths were cloudless overhead;

The air was calm as it could be;

There was no sight or sound of dread,"

quotes Luttrell, dreamily, as he strays idly along the garden path, through scented shrubs and all the many-hued children of light and dew. His reverie is lengthened yet not diffuse. One little word explains it all. It seems to him that word is everywhere: the birds sing it, the wind whistles it as it rushes faintly past, the innumerable voices of the summer cry ceaselessly for "Molly."

Above him, on the balcony, stands Molly, "a thing of beauty," fairer than any flower that grows beneath. Her eyes like twin stars are gleaming, deepening; her happy lips are parted; her hair drawn loosely back, shines like threads of living gold. Every feature is awake and full of life; every movement of her sweet body, clad in its white gown, proclaims a very joyousness of living.

With hands held high above her head, filled with parti-colored roses, she stands laughing down upon him; while he stares back at her, with a heart filled too full of love for happiness. With a slight momentary closing of her lids she opens both her hands and flings the scented shower into his uplifted face.

"Take your punishment," she whispers, saucily, bending over him, "and learn your lesson. Don't look at me another time."

"It was by your own desire I did so," exclaims he, bewildered, shaking the crimson and yellow and white leaves from off his head and shoulders. "How am I to understand you?"

"How do I know, when I don't even understand myself? But when I called out to you 'Look up,' of course I meant 'look down.' Don't you remember the old game with the handkerchief?—when I say 'Let go,' 'hold fast;' and when I say 'Hold fast,' 'let go?' You must recollect it."

"It is not idiotic, but it suits only some people; it suits me. There is a certain perverseness about it, a determination to do just what one is told not to do, that affects me most agreeably. Did I"—glancing at the rosy shower at his feet—"did I hurt you much?" With a smile.

There is a little plank projecting from the wood-work of the pillars that supports the balcony: resting his foot on this, and holding on by the railings above, Luttrell draws himself up until his face is almost on a level with hers,—almost, but not quite: she can still overshadow him.

"If that was all the injury I had received at your hands, how easy it would be to forgive!" says he, in a low tone.

"Poor hands," says Molly, gazing at her shapely fingers, "how have they sinned? Am I to understand, then, that I am not forgiven?"

"Dreadfully unkind to me. Can you deny it? Now, tell me what this crime is that I have committed and you cannot pardon."

"I will not," says the young man, turning a little pale, while the smile dies out of his eyes and from round his lips. "I dread to put my injuries into words. Should they anger you, you might with one look seal my death-warrant."

"Do I?" Reading with the wistful sadness of uncertainty her lovely face. "You know better than that. You know too—do you not?—what it is I would say,—if I dared. Oh, Molly, what have you done to me, what witchery have you used, that, after escaping for twenty-seven long years, I should now fall so hopelessly in——"

"Hush!" says Molly, quickly, and, letting her hand fall lightly on his forehead, brings it slowly, slowly, over his eyes and down his face, until at length it rests upon his lips rebukingly. "Not another word. You have known me but a few days,—but a little short three weeks,—and you would——"

"Yes, I would," eagerly, devouring with fond kisses the snow-flake that would stay his words. "Three weeks,—a year,—ten years,—what does it matter? I think the very first night I saw you here in this garden the mischief was done. My heart left me. You stole the very best of me; and will you give nothing in exchange?"

"I will not listen," says Molly, covering her ears with her hands, but not so closely that she must be deaf. "Do you hear? You are to be silent."

"Yes; I am in a hurry; I cannot listen,—now," says this born coquette, unable to release her slave so soon.

"Some other time,—when you know me better,—you will listen then: is that what you mean?" Still detaining her with passionate entreaty both in tone and manner. "Molly, give me one word of hope."

"I don't know what I mean," she says, effecting her escape, and moving back to the security of the drawing-room window, which stands open. "I never do know. And I have not got the least bit of memory in the world. Do you know I came out here to tell you tea was to be brought out for us under the trees on the lawn; and when I saw you I forgot everything. Is that a hopeful sign?" With a playful smile.

"I will try to think so; and—don't go yet, Molly." Seeing her about to enter the drawing-room. "Surely, if tea is to be on the lawn, it is there we ought to go."

"I am half afraid of you. If I consent to bestow upon you a little more of my society, will you promise not to talk in—in—that way again to me?"

"I will have no 'buts.' Promise what I ask, or I will hide myself from you for the rest of the day."

"I swear, then," says he; and, so protected, Miss Massereene ventures down the balcony steps and accompanies him to the shaded end of the lawn.

By this time it is nearly five o'clock, and as yet oppressively warm. The evening is coming with a determination to rival in dull heat the early part of the day. The sheep in great white snowy patches lie panting in the distant corners of the adjoining fields; the cows, tired of whisking their foolish tails in an unsuccessful war with the insatiable flies, are all huddled together, and give way to mournful lows that reproach the tarrying milkmaid.

Above in the branches a tiny bird essays to sing, but stops half stifled, and, forgetting the tuneful note, contents itself with a lazy "cluck-cluck" that presently degenerates still further into a dying "coo" that is hardly musical, because so full of sleep.

Molly has seated herself upon the soft young grass, beneath the shade of a mighty beech, against the friendly trunk of which she leans her back. Even this short walk from the house to the six stately beeches that are the pride and glory of Brooklyn has told upon her. Her usually merry eyes have subsided into a gentle languor; over them the white lids droop heavily. No little faintest tinge of color adorns her pale cheeks; upon her lap her hands lie idle, their very listlessness betokening the want of energy they feel.

At about two yards' distance from her reclines her guest, full length, his fingers interlaced behind his head, looking longer, slighter than usual, as with eyes upturned he gazes in silence upon the far-off, never-changing blue showing through the net-work of the leaves above him.

"Are you quite used up?" asks Molly, in the slow, indifferent tone that belongs to heat, as the crisp, gay voice belongs to cold. "I never heard you silent for so long before. Do you think you are likely to die? Because—don't do it here, please: it would give me such a shock."

"I am far more afraid I shall live," replies her companion. "Oh, how I loathe the summer!"

"You are not so far gone as I feared: you can still use bad language. Now, tell me what sweet thought has held you in thrall so long."

"If I must confess it, I have been thinking of how untold a luxury at this moment would be an iced bath."

"'An iced bath'!" With as much contempt as she can summon. "How prosaic! And I quite flattered myself you were thinking of me." She says this as calmly as though she had supposed him thinking of his dinner.

Tedcastle's lips part in a faint smile, a mere glimmer,—a laugh is beyond him,—and he turns his head just so far round as will permit his eyes to fall full upon her face.

"I fancied such thoughts on my part tabooed," he says. "And besides, would they be of any advantage to you?"

"No material advantage, but they would have been only fair. I was thinking of you."

"Were you? Really!" With such overpowering interest as induces him to raise himself on his elbow, the better to see her. "You were thinking—that——"

"Don't excite yourself. I was wondering whether, when you were a baby, your nose—in proportion, of course—was as lengthy and solemn as it is now."

"If it was," pursues Molly, with a ruthless and amused laugh, "you must have been an awfully funny baby to look at." She appears to find infinite amusement in this idea for a full minute, after which follows a disgusted silence that might have lasted until dinner-hour but for the sound of approaching footsteps.

Looking up simultaneously, they perceive Letitia coming toward them, with Sarah behind, carrying a tray, on which are cups, and small round cakes, and plates of strawberries.

"I have brought you your tea at last," cries Letitia, looking like some great fair goddess, with her large figure and stately walk and benign expression, as she bears down upon them. She is still a long way off, yet her voice comes to them clear and distinct, without any suspicion of shouting. She is smiling benevolently, and has a delicious pink color in her cheeks.

"We thought you had forgotten us," says Molly, springing to her feet with a sudden return of animation. "But you have come in excellent time, as we were on the very brink of a quarrel that would have disgraced the Kilkenny cats. And what have you brought us? Tea, and strawberries, and dear little hot cakes! Oh, Letty, how I love you!"

In the meantime Molly has arranged the tray before herself, and is busily engaged placing all the worst strawberries and the smallest cake on one plate.

"Before you go any further," says Luttrell, "I won't have that plate. Nothing shall induce me. So you may spare your trouble."

"Mrs. Massereene, you are my only friend. I appeal to you; is it fair? Just look at all she is keeping for herself. If I die for it, I will get my rights," exclaims Tedcastle, goaded into activity, and springing from his recumbent position, makes straight for the tray. There is a short but decisive battle; and then, victory being decided in favor of Luttrell, he makes a successful raid upon the fruit, and retires covered with glory and a good deal of juice.

"I wouldn't use school-boy slang if I were you," returns Luttrell, with provoking coolness, and an evident irritating appreciation of the fruit.

"It is warm," says he, sinking on the grass, under the weak impression that he is imparting information.

"I think there is thunder in the air," says Letitia, with a mischievous glance at the late combatants, at which they laugh in spite of themselves.

"Not at all, my dear; you are romancing," says ignorant John. "Well, Molly Bawn, where is my tea? Have you kept me any?"

"As if I would forget you! Is it not an extraordinary thing, Letty, that Sarah cannot be induced to bring us a tea-pot? Now, I want more, and must only wait her pleasure."

"I am tired of doing so. Only yesterday I had a very lengthy argument with her on the subject, to the effect that as it was I who was having the tea, and not she, surely I might be allowed to have it the way I wished. When I had exhausted my eloquence, and was nearly on the verge of tears, I discovered that she was still at the very point from which we started. 'But the tea is far more genteeler, Miss Molly, when brought up without the tea-pot. It spoils the look of the tray.' I said 'Yes, the want of it does,' with much indignation; but I might as well have kept my temper."

"I do hate having my tea poured out for me," goes on Molly, not deigning to notice him. "I am convinced Sarah lived with a retired tallow-chandler, or something equally horrible, before she came to us. She has one idol to which she sacrifices morning, noon, and night, and I think she calls it 'style.'"

"I don't know, but I think it has something to do with not putting the tea-pot on the tray, for instance, and taking the pretty fresh covers off the drawing-room chairs when any one is coming, to convince them of the green damask beneath. And once when, during a passing fit of insanity, I dressed my hair into a pyramid, she told me I looked 'stylish.' It took me some time to recover that shock to my vanity."

"I like 'stylish' people myself," says John. "Lady Barton, I am positive, is just what Sarah means by that, and I admire her immensely,—within bounds, of course, my dear Letitia."

"Dreadful, vulgar woman!" says Molly, with a frown. "I'm sure I wouldn't name Letty in the same day with her."

"We all know you are notoriously jealous of her," says John. "Her meridian charms eclipse yours of the dawn."

"How poetical!" laughs Molly. "But the thing to see is Letitia producing the children when her ladyship comes to pay a visit. She always reminds me of the Mother of the Gracchi. Now, confess it, Letty, don't you think Lady Barton's diamonds and rubies and emeralds grow pale and lustreless beside your living jewels?"

"Letitia," cries Molly, touched, giving her a little hug, "I do think you are the dearest, sweetest, truest old goose in the world."

"Nonsense, my dear!" says Letitia, with a slow pleased blush that is at once so youthful and so lovely.

"Oh! why won't Sarah come?" says Molly, recurring suddenly to her woes. "I know, even if I went on my knees to Mr. Luttrell, he would not so far trouble himself as to go in and find her; but I think she might remember my weakness for tea."

To their right rises a hedge, on which it has been customary for ages to dry the household linen, and moving toward it appears Sarah, armed with a basket piled high to the very top.

Now, Sarah, though an undeniably good servant, and a cleanly one, striking the beholder as a creature born to unlimited caps and spotless aprons, is undoubtedly obtuse. She presents her back hair and heels—that would not have disgraced an elephant—to Miss Massereene's call, and goes on calmly with her occupation of shaking out and hanging up to dry the garments she has just brought.

"Shall I go and call her?" asks Luttrell, with some remains of grace and an air of intense fatigue.

"Not worth your while," says John, with all a man's delicious consideration for a man; "she must turn in a moment, and then she will see us."

For two whole minutes, therefore, they gaze in rapt silence upon the unconscious Sarah. Presently Mr. Massereene breaks the eloquent stillness.

"There is nothing," says he, mildly, "that so clearly declares the sociability—the bon camaraderie, so to speak—that ought to exist in every well-brought-up family as the sight of washing done at home. There is such a happy mingling and yet such a thorough disregard of sex about it. It is 'Hail, fellow! well met!' all through. If you will follow Sarah's movements for a minute longer you will better understand what I mean. There! now she is spreading out Molly's pale-green muslin, in which she looked so irresistible last week. And there goes Daisy's pinafore, and Bobby's pantaloons; and now she is pausing to remove a defunct grasshopper from Renee's bonnet! What a charming picture it all makes, so full of life! There go Molly's stock——"

"John," interrupts Molly, indignantly, who has been frowning heavily at him for some time without the smallest result.

"If you say another word," puts in Luttrell, burying his face in the grass, with a deep groan, "if you go one degree further, I shall faint."

"And now comes my shirt," goes on John, in the same even tone, totally unabashed.

"My dear John!" exclaims Letitia, much scandalized, speaking in a very superior tone, which she fondly but erroneously believes to be stern and commanding, "I beg you will pursue the subject no further. We have no desire whatever to learn any particulars about your shirts."

"And why not, my dear?" demands Mr. Massereene, his manner full of mild but firm expostulation. "What theme so worthy of prolonged discussion as a clean shirt? Think of the horrors that encompass all the 'great unwashed,' and then perhaps you will feel as I do. In my opinion it is a topic on which volumes might be written: if I had time I would write them myself. And if you will give yourself the trouble to think, my dear Letitia, you will doubtless be able to bring to mind the fact that once a very distinguished and reasonable person called Hood wrote a song about it. Besides which——"

"The 'bells they go ringing for Sarah,'" quotes Mr. Luttrell, irrelevantly. But Sarah has heard, and is hastening toward them, and wrath is for the present averted from his unlucky head.

"Some more tea, Sarah," says Molly, with a smile that would corrupt an archbishop. Molly is a person adored by servants. "That's my cup."

"And that's mine," says Tedcastle, turning his upside down on his saucer. "I am particular about getting my own cup, Sarah, and hope you will not mistake mine for Miss Massereene's. Fill it, and bring it back to me just like this."

"And, Sarah—next time we would like the tea-pot," puts in Mr. Massereene, mildly.

They are now drawing toward the close of July. To Luttrell it appears as though the moments are taking to themselves wings to fly away; to more prosaic mortals they drag. Ever since that first day in the garden when he betrayed his love to Molly, he had been silent on the subject, fearful lest he gain a more decided repulse.

Yet this enforced silence is to him a lingering torture; and as a school-boy with money in his pocket burns till he spend it, so he, with his heart brimful of love, is in torment until he can fling its rich treasures at his mistress's feet. Only a very agony of doubt restrains him.

Not that this doubt contains all pain; there is blended with it a deep ecstasy of joy, made to be felt, not spoken; and all the grace and poetry and sweetness of a first great passion,—that thing that in all the chilling after-years never wholly dies,—that earliest, purest dew that falls from the awakening heart.

"O love! young love!

Let saints and cynics cavil as they will,

One throb of yours is worth whole years of ill."

To-day Molly has deserted him, and left him to follow his own devices. John has gone into the next town on some important errand connected with the farm: so perforce our warrior shoulders his gun and sallies forth savagely, bent on slaying aught that comes in his way. As two crows, a dejected rabbit, and an intelligent squirrel are all that present themselves to his notice, he wearies toward three o'clock, and thinks with affection of home. For so far has his air-castle mounted that, were Molly to inhabit a hovel, that hovel to him would be home.

Crossing a stile and a high wall, he finds himself in the middle of the grounds that adjoin the more modest Brooklyn. The shimmer of a small lake makes itself seen through the branches to his right, and as he gains its bank a boat shoots forth from behind the willows, and a gay voice sings:

"There was a little man,

And he had a little gun,

And his bullets they were made of lead, lead, lead;

He went to a brook,

And he saw a little——"

"Oh, Mr. Luttrell, please, please don't shoot me," cries Molly, breaking down in the song with an exaggerated show of feigned terror.

"Do you call yourself a 'duck'?" demands Luttrell, with much scorn. "Is there any limit to a woman's conceit? Duck, indeed! say rather——"

"Swan? Well, yes, I will, if you wish it: I don't mind," says Molly, amiably. "And now tell me, are you not surprised to see me here?"

"So you did. But I never counted on your staying so long away. I was tired of waiting for you. I thought you would never come. So in despair I came out here by myself."

"So you absolutely missed me?" says Luttrell, quietly, although his heart is beating rapidly. Too well he knows her words are from the lips alone.

"Oh, didn't I!" exclaims she, heartily. "You should have seen me standing at the gate peering up and down for you and bemoaning my fate, like that silly Mariana in the moated grange. Indeed, if I had been photographed then and there and named 'Forsaken,' I'm positive I would have sold well."

"Then I grew enraged, and determined to trouble my head no more about you; and then—— It was lucky I came here, wasn't it?"

"Because I hadn't,—at least not for the last two months,—until yesterday. It got broken in the spring, and they have been ever since mending it. They are so slow down here. I kept the news of its return from you a secret all yesterday, meaning to bring you here and show it you as a surprise; and this is how my plan has ended."

"Neither do we. He is a retired butcher, I fancy (he doesn't look anything like as respectable as a grocer), with a fine disregard for the Queen's English. We called there one day, Letitia and I (nothing would induce John to accompany us), but Mrs. Butcher was too much for Letitia,—too much for even me," cries Molly, with a laugh, "and I'm not particular: so we never called again. They don't bear malice, however, and rather affect our having our boat here than otherwise. Jump in and row me for a little while."

Over the water, under the hanging branches they glide to the sweet music of the wooing wind, and scarcely care to speak, so perfect is the motion and the stillness.

Luttrell, with his hat off and a cigar between his lips, is far happier than he himself is at all aware. Being of necessity opposite her, he is calmly feasting himself upon the sweet scenery of Molly's face, or else letting his eyes wander to where her slender fingers drag their way through the cool water, leaving small bubbles in their track.

"It is a pity the country is so stupid, is it not?" says Molly, breaking the silence at length, and speaking in a regretful tone. "Because otherwise there is no place like it."

"Some country places are not at all stupid. There are generally too many people about. I think Brooklyn's principal charm is its repose, its complete separation from the world."

"Well, for my own part," seriously, "I think I would excuse the repose and the separation from the world, by which, I suppose, you mean society. I have no admiration for cloisters and convents myself; I like amusement, excitement. If I could, I would live in London all the year round," concludes Molly, with growing animation.

"Oh, horror!" exclaims Luttrell, who, seven years before, thought exactly as she does now, and who occasionally thinks so still. "Who that ever lived for six months among all its grime and smoke and turmoil but would pine for this calmer life?"

"I lived there for more than six months," says Molly, "and I didn't pine for anything. I thought it charming. It is all very well for you"—dejectedly—"who are tired of gayety, to go into raptures over calmness and tranquillity, and that; but if you lived in Brooklyn from summer until winter and from winter back again to summer, and if you could count your balls on one hand,"—holding up five wet open fingers,—"you would think just as I do, and long for change."

"Yes: when I was sixteen I spent a whole year there, with a cousin of my father's, who went to Canada with her husband's regiment afterward. But I didn't go out much, she thought me too young, though I was quite as tall as I am now. She heard me sing once, and insisted on carrying me up with her to get me lessons from Marigny. He took great pains with me: that is why I sing so well," says Molly, modestly.

"I confess I often wondered where your exquisite voice received its cultivation, its finish. Now I know. You were fortunate in securing Marigny. I have known him refuse dozens through want of time; or so he said. More probably he would not trouble himself to teach where there was no certainty of success. Well, and so you dislike the country?"

"No, no. Not so much that. What I dislike is having no one to speak to. When John is away and Letty on the tread-mill—that is, in the nursery—I am rather thrown on my own resources; and they are not much. Your coming was the greatest blessing that ever befell me. When I actually beheld you in your own proper person on the garden path that night, I could have hugged you in the exuberance of my joy."

"Then why on earth didn't you?" says Luttrell, reproachfully, as though he had been done out of something.

"A lingering sense of maiden modesty and a faint idea that perhaps you might not like it alone restrained me. But for that I must have given way to my feelings. Just think, if I had," says Molly, breaking into a merry laugh, "what a horrible fright I would have given you!"

"Not a horrible one, at all events. Molly," bending to examine some imaginary thing in the side of the boat, "have you never—had a—lover?"

"A lover? Oh, yes, I have had any amount of them," says Molly, with an alacrity that makes his heart sink. "I don't believe I could count my adorers: it quite puzzles me to know where to begin. There were the curates,—our rector is not sweet-tempered, so we have a fresh one every year,—and they never fail me. Three months after they come, as regular as clock-work, they ask me to be their wife. Now, I appeal to you,"—clasping her hands and wrinkling up all her pretty forehead,—"do I look like a curate's wife?"

"You do not," replies Luttrell, emphatically, regarding with interest the debonnaire, spirituelle face before him: "no, you most certainly do not."

"Well, I thought not myself; yet each of those deluded young men saw something angelic about me, and would insist on asking me to share his lot. They kept themselves sternly blind to the fact that I detest with equal vigor broth and old women."

"Was it? I don't think I looked at it in that light. They were all very estimable men, and Mr. Rochfort was positively handsome. You, you may well stare, but some curates, you know, are good-looking, and he was decidedly High Church. In fact, he wasn't half so bad as the generality of them," says Molly, relentingly. "Only—it may be wrong, but the truth is I hate curates. I think nothing of them. They are a mixture of tea and small jokes, and are ever at a stand-still. They are always in the act of budding,—they never bloom; and then they are so afraid of the bishop."

"However,"—regretfully,—"they were something: a proposal is always an excitement. But the present man is married; so that makes it impossible for this present year. There was positively nothing to which to look forward. So you may fancy with what rapture I hailed your coming."

"You are very good," says Luttrell, in an uncertain tone, not being quite sure whether he is intensely amused or outrageously angry, or both. "Had you—any other lovers?"

"Yes. There was the last doctor. He poisoned a poor man afterward by mistake, and had to go away."

"After I declined to assist him in the surgery," says Molly, demurely. "It was a dreadful thing,—the poisoning, I mean,—and caused a great deal of scandal. I don't believe it was anybody's fault, but I certainly did pity the man he killed. And—it might have been me, you know; think of that! He was very much attached to me; and so was the Lefroys' eldest son, and James Warder, and the organist, to say nothing of the baker's boy, who, I am convinced, would cut his throat to oblige me to-morrow morning, if I asked him."

"Well, don't ask him," says Luttrell, imploringly. "He might do it on the door-step, and then think of the horrid mess! Promise me you won't even hint at it until after I am gone."

Onward glides the boat; the oars rise and fall with a tuneful splash. Miss Massereene, throwing her hat with reckless extravagance into the bottom of the punt, bares her white arm to the elbow and essays to catch the grasses as she sweeps by them.

"Look at those lilies," she says, eagerly; "how exquisite, in their broad green frames! Water-sprites! how they elude one!" as she makes a vigorous but unsuccessful grab at some on her right hand.

"Very beautiful," says Luttrell, dreamily, with his eyes on Molly, not on the lilies.

"I want some," says Molly, revengefully; "I always do want what don't want me, and vice versa. Oh! look at those beauties near you. Catch them."

"Not if you stoop very much for them. I think if you were to bend over a good deal you might do it."

"I might; I might do something else, too," says Luttrell, calmly, seeing it would be as easy for him to grasp the lilies in question as last night's moon: "I might fall in."

"Oh, never mind that," responds Molly, with charming though premeditated unconcern, a little wicked desire to tease getting the better of her amiability.

Luttrell, hardly sure whether she jests or is in sober earnest, opens his large eyes to their fullest, the better to judge, but, seeing no signs of merriment in his companion, gives way to his feelings a little.

"I am not, indeed," replies innocent Molly. "How I wish I were 'cool,' on such a day as this! Are you?"

"No," shortly. "Perhaps that is the reason you recommended me a plunge; or is it for your amusement?"

"You are afraid," asserts Molly, with a little mischievous, scornful laugh, not to be endured for a moment.

"Afraid!" angrily. "Nonsense! I don't care about wetting my clothes, certainly, and I don't want to put out my cigar; but"—throwing away the choice Havana in question—"you shall have your lilies, of course, if you have set your heart on them."

"I don't want them now," says Molly, in a degree frightened, "at least not those. See, there are others close behind you. But I will pluck them myself, thank you: I hate giving trouble. No, don't put your hands near them. I won't have them if you do."

"Because I didn't throw myself into the water head foremost to please you?" with impatient wrath. "They used to call that chivalry long ago. I call it folly. You should be reasonable."

Now, to have a person implore you at any time "not to lose your temper" is simply abominable; but to be so implored when you have lost it is about the most aggravating thing that can occur to any one. So Luttrell finds it.

"Well, I don't know what you call it, but when one puts on a frown, and drags down the corners of one's mouth, and looks as if one was going to devour some one, and makes one's self generally disagreeable, I know what I call it," says Molly, viciously.

"Would you like to return home?" asks Mr. Luttrell, with prompt solicitude. "You are tired, I think."

"'Tired'? Not in the least, thank you. I should like to stay out here for the next two hours, if——"

"I'll try," says Tedcastle, quietly taking up the oars and proceeding to row with much appearance of haste toward the landing-place.

By the time they reach it, Miss Massereene's bad temper—not being at any time a lengthened affair—has cooled considerably, though still a very handsome allowance remains. As he steps ashore, with the evident intention of not addressing her again, she feels it incumbent on her to speak just a word or so, if only to convince him that his ill-humor is the worst of the two.

"No,"—his eyebrows are raised, and he wears an expression half nonchalant, wholly bored,—"I am going to Grantham."

Now, Grantham is nine miles distant. He must be very angry if he has decided on going to Grantham. It will take him a long, long time to get there, and a long, long time to get back; and in the meantime what is to become of her?

"That is a long way, is it not?" she says, her manner a degree more frigid, lest he mistake the meaning of her words.

"There are worse things than heat." Getting himself into his coat in such a violent fashion as would make his tailor shed bitter tears over the cruel straining of that garment.

"You will be glad to get away from——" hesitates Molly, who has also stepped ashore, speaking in a tone that would freeze a salamander.

"Go then," cries she, with sudden passion, throwing down the oar she still holds with a decided bang, "and I hope you will never come back. There!"

So she goes to the right, and he goes to the left, and when too late repent their haste. But pride is ever at hand to tread down tenderness, and obstinacy is always at the heels of pride; and out of this "trivial cause" see what a "pretty quarrel" has been sprung.

"The long and weary day" at length has "passed away." The dinner has come to an unsuccessful end, leaving both Luttrell and his divinity still at daggers drawn. There are no signs of relenting about Molly, no symptoms of weakness about Tedcastle: the war is civil but energetic.

They glower at each other through each course, and are positively devoted in their attentions to John and Letitia. Indeed, they seem bent on bestowing all their conversational outbreaks on these two worthies, to their unmitigated astonishment. As a rule, Mr. and Mrs. Massereene have been accustomed to occupy the background; to-night they are brought to the front with a vehemence that takes away their breath, and is, to say the least of it, embarrassing.

Letitia,—dear soul,—who, though the most charming of women, could hardly be thought to endanger the Thames, understands nothing; John, on the contrary, comprehends fully, and takes a low but exquisite delight in compelling the antagonists to be attentive to each other.

"Luttrell, my dear fellow, what is the matter with you this evening? How remiss you are! Why don't you break some walnuts for Molly? I would but I don't wish Letitia to feel slighted."

"No, thank you, John,"—with a touch of asperity from Molly,—"I don't care for walnuts."

"Oh, Molly Bawn! what a tarididdle! Only last night I quite shuddered at the amount of shells you left upon your plate. 'How can that wretched child play such pranks with her digestion?' thought I, and indeed felt thankful it had not occurred to you to swallow the shells also."

"Luttrell, did you see that apple-tree in the orchard? I never beheld such a show of fruit in my life. The branches will hardly bear the weight when it comes to perfection. It is very worthy of admiration. Molly will show it to you to-morrow: won't you, Molly?"

Luttrell, hastily: "I will go round there myself after breakfast and have a look at it."

Molly, cruelly: "I fear I shall be busy all the morning; and in the afternoon I intend going with Letitia to spend the day with the Laytons."

Letitia, agreeably surprised: "Oh, will you, dear? That is very good of you. I thought this morning you said nothing would induce you to come with me. I shall be so glad to have you; they are so intensely dull and difficult."

Molly, still more cruelly: "Well, I have been thinking it over, and it seems, do you know, rather rude my not going. Besides, I hear their brother Maxwell (a few more strawberries, if you please, John) is home from India, and—he used to be so good-looking."

John, with much unction: "Oh, has he come at last! I am glad to hear it. (Luttrell, give Molly some strawberries.) You underrate him, I think: he was downright handsome. When Molly Bawn was in short petticoats he used to adore her. I suppose it would be presumptuous to pretend to measure the admiration he will undoubtedly feel for her now. I have a presentiment that fortune is going to favor you in the end, Molly. He must inherit a considerable property."

"Rich and handsome," says Luttrell, with exemplary composure and a growing conviction that he will soon hate with an undying hatred his whilom friend John Massereene. "He must be a favorite of the gods: let us hope he will not die young."

"And a good, sensible age, too," remarks John; whereupon Molly, who is too much akin to him in spirit not to fully understand his manœuvering, laughs outright.

Then Letitia rises, and the two women move toward the door; and Molly, coming last, pauses a moment on the threshold, while Luttrell holds the door open for her. His heart beats high. Is she going to speak to him, to throw him even one poor word, to gladden him with a smile, however frozen?

Alas! no. Miss Massereene, with a little curve of her neck, glances back expressively to where an unkind nail has caught the tail of her long soft gown. That miserable nail—not he—has caused her delay. Stooping, he extricates the dress. She bows coldly, without raising her eyes to his. A moment later she is free; still another moment, and she is gone; and Luttrell, with a suppressed but naughty word upon his lips, returns to his despondency and John; while Molly, who, though she has never once looked at him, has read correctly his fond hope and final disappointment, allows a covert smile of pleased malevolence to cross her face as she walks into the drawing-room.

Mr. Massereene is holding a long and very one-sided argument on the subject of the barbarous Mussulman. As Luttrell evinces no faintest desire to disagree with him in his opinions, the subject wears itself out in due course of time; and John, winding up with an amiable wish that every Turk that ever has seen the light or is likely to see the light may be blown into fine dust, finishes his claret and rises, with a yawn.

"I must leave you for awhile," he says: "so get out your cigars, and don't wait for me. I'll join you later. I have had the writing of a letter on my conscience for a week, and I must write it now or never. I really do believe I have grasped my own meaning at last. Did you notice my unusual taciturnity between the fish and the joint?"

"My dear fellow, of what were you thinking. I sincerely trust you are not going to be ill; but altogether your whole manner this evening—— Well, just at that moment a sudden inspiration seized me, and then and there my letter rose up before me, couched in such eloquent language as astonished even myself. If I don't write it down at once I am a lost man."

"But now you have composed it to your satisfaction, why not leave the writing of it until to-morrow?" expostulates Luttrell, trying to look hearty, as he expresses a hypocritical desire for his society.

"I always remark," says John, "that sleeping on those treacherous flights of fancy has the effect of taking the gilt off them. When I rise in the morning they are hardly up to the mark, and appear by no means so brilliant as they did over-night. Something within warns me if I don't do it now I won't do it at all. There is more claret on the sideboard,—or brandy, if you prefer it," says Mr. Massereene, tenderly.

"Thanks,—I want nothing more," replies Luttrell, whose spirits are at zero. As Massereene leaves him, he saunters toward the open window and gazes on the sleeping garden. Outside, the heavens are alive with stars that light the world in a cold, sweet way, although as yet the moon has not risen. All is

"Clear, and bright, and deep;

Soft as love, and calm as death;

Sweet as a summer night without a breath."

Lighting a cigar (by the bye, can any one tell me at what stage of suffering it is a man abandons this unfailing friend as being powerless to soothe?), he walks down the balcony steps, and, still grim and unhappy, makes up his mind to a solitary promenade.

Perhaps he himself is scarcely conscious of the direction he takes, but his footsteps guide him straight over the lawn and down to the very end of it, where a broad stream runs babbling in one corner. It is a veritable love-retreat, hedged in by larches and low-lying evergreens, so as to be completely concealed from view, and a favorite haunt of Molly's,—indeed, such a favorite that now as he enters it he finds himself face to face with her.

An impromptu tableau follows. For a full minute they regard each other unwillingly, too surprised for disdain, and then, with a laudable desire to show how unworthy of consideration either deems the other, they turn slowly away until a shoulder and half a face alone are visible.

Now, Luttrell has the best of it, because he is the happy possessor of the cigar: this gives him something to do, and he smokes on persistently, not to say viciously. Miss Massereene, being without occupation beyond what one's thumbs may afford, is conscious of being at a disadvantage, and wishes she had earlier in life cultivated a passion for tobacco.

Meanwhile, the noisy brook flows on merrily, chattering as it goes, and reflecting the twinkling stars, with their more sedate brethren, the planets. Deep down in the very heart of the water they lie, quivering, changing, gleaming, while the stream whispers their lullaby and dashes its cool soft sides against the banks. A solitary bird drops down to crave a drink, terrifying the other inhabitants of the rushes by the trembling of its wings; a frog creeps in with a dull splash; to all the stream makes kind response; while on its bosom

"Broad water-lilies lay tremulously,

And starry river-buds glimmered by;

And round them the soft stream did glide and dance,

With a motion of sweet sound and radiance."

A little way above, a miniature cataract adds its tiny roar to the many "breathings of the night;" at Molly's feet lie great bunches of blue forget-me-nots.

Stooping, she gathers a handful to fasten at her breast; a few sprays still remain in her hands idle; she has turned so that her full face is to her companion: he has never stirred.

He is still puffing away in a somewhat indignant fashion at the unoffending cigar, looking taller, more unbending in his evening clothes, helped by the dignity of his wrongs. Miss Massereene, having indulged in a long examination of his would-be stern profile, decides on the spot that if there is one thing on earth toward which she bears a rancorous hatred it is an ill-tempered man. What does he mean by standing there without speaking to her? She makes an undying vow that, were he so to stand forever, she would not open her lips to him; and exactly sixty seconds after making that terrible vow she says,—oh, so sweetly!—"Mr. Luttrell!"

He instantly pitches the obnoxious cigar into the water, where it dies away with an angry fizz, and turns to her.

She is standing a few yards distant from him, with her head a little bent and the bunch of forget-me-nots in one hand, moving them slowly, slowly across her lips. There is penitence, coquetry, mischief, a thousand graces in her attitude.

Now, feeling his eyes upon her, she moves the flowers about three inches from her mouth, and, regarding them lovingly, says, "Are not they pretty!" as though her whole soul is wrapt in contemplation of their beauty, and as though no other deeper thought has led her to address him.

"Very. They are like your eyes," replies he, gravely, and with some hesitation, as if the words came reluctantly.

This is a concession, and so she feels it. A compliment to a true woman comes never amiss; and the knowledge that it has been wrung from him against his will, being but a tribute to its truth, adds yet another charm. Without appearing conscious of the fact, she moves a few steps nearer to him, always with her eyes bent upon the flowers, the grass, anywhere but on him: because you will understand how impossible it is for one person to drink in the full beauty of another if checked by that other's watchfulness. Molly, at all events, understands it thoroughly.

When she is quite close to him, so close that if she stirs her dress must touch him, so close that her flower-like face is dangerously near his arm, she whispers, softly:

"Are you?" says Luttrell, stupidly, although his heart is throbbing passionately, although every pulse is beating almost to pain. If his life depended upon it, or perhaps because of it, he can frame no more eloquent speech.

"Yes," murmurs Molly, with a thorough comprehension of all he is feeling. "And now we will be friends again, will we not?" Holding out to him a little cool, shy hand.

"Not friends," says the young man, in a low, passionate tone, clasping her hand eagerly: "it is too cold a word. I cannot be your friend. Your lover, your slave, if you will; only let me feel near to you. Molly,"—abandoning her slender fingers for the far sweeter possession of herself, and folding his arms around her with gentle audacity,—"speak to me. Why are you so silent? Why do you not even look at me? You cannot want me to tell you of the love that is consuming me, because you know of it."

"I don't think you ought to speak to me like this at all," says Molly, severely, drawing herself out of his embrace, not hurriedly or angrily, but surely; "I am almost positive you should not; and—and John might not like it."

"I don't care a farthing what John likes," exclaims Luttrell, rather forcibly, giving wings to his manners, as his wrongs of the evening blossom. "What has he or any one to do with it but you and I alone? The question is, do you like it?"

"I am not at all sure that I do," says Molly, doubtfully, with a little distracting shake of her head. "You are so vehement, and I——"

"Don't go on," interrupts he, hastily. "You are going to say something unkind, and I won't listen to it. I know it by your eyes. Darling, why are you so cruel to me? Surely you must care for me, be it ever such a little. To think otherwise would—— But I will not think it. Molly,"—with increasing fervor,—"say you will marry me."

"But indeed I can't," exclaims Miss Massereene, retreating a step or two, and glancing at him furtively from under her long lashes. "At least"—relenting a little, as she sees his face change and whiten at her words—"not yet. It is all so sudden, so unexpected; and you forget I am not accustomed to this sort of thing. Now, the curates"—with an irrepressible smile—"never went on like this: they always behaved modestly and with such propriety."

"'The curates!' What do they know about it?" returns this young man, most unjustly. "Do you suppose I love you like a curate?"

"And yet, when all is told, I suppose a curate is a man," says Molly, uncertainly, as one doubtful of the truth of her assertion, "and a well-behaved one, too. Now, you are quite different; and you have known me such a little time."

"What has time to do with it? The beginning and the ending of the whole matter is this: I love you!"

He is holding her hands and gazing down into her face with all his heart in his eyes, waiting for her next words,—may they not decide his fate?—while she is feeling nothing in the world but a mad desire to break into laughter,—a desire that arises half from nervousness, half from an irrepressible longing to destroy the solemnity of the scene.

"A pinch for stale news," says she, at last, with a frivolity most unworthy of the occasion, but in the softest, merriest whisper.

They are both young. The laugh is contagious. After a moment's struggle with his dignity, he echoes it.

"You can jest," says he: "surely that is a good sign. If you were going to refuse me you would not laugh. Beloved,"—taking her into his fond arms again,—"say one little word to make me happy."

"Will any little word do? Long ago, in the dark ages when I was a child, I remember being asked a riddle à propos of short words. I will ask it to you now. What three letters contain everything in the world? Guess."

"You are wrong, then. It is ALL,—all. Absurd, isn't it? I must have been very young when I thought that clever. But to return: would that little word do you?"

"And if I say 'No,' what then? Will you throw yourself into this small river? Or perhaps hang yourself to the nearest tree? Or, worse still, refuse to speak to me ever again? Or 'go to skin and bone,' as my old nurse used to say I would when I refused a fifth meal in the day? Tell me which?"

"A greater evil than all those would befall me: I should live with no nearer companion than a perpetual regret. But"—with a shudder—"I will not believe myself so doomed. Molly, say what I ask you."

"Well, 'Yes,' then, since you will have it so. Though why you are so bent on your own destruction puzzles me. Do you know you never spoke to me all this evening? I don't believe you love me as well as you say."

"Don't I?" wistfully. Then, with sudden excitement, "I wish with all my heart I did not," he says, "or at least with only half the strength I do. If I could regulate my affections so, I might have some small chance of happiness; but as it is I doubt—I fear. Molly, do you care for me?"

"And you,"—tightening his arms round her,—"some time you will love me, my sweet?"

"'Kiss you'?" says Molly, shrinking away from him, while flushing and reddening honestly now. "No, I think not. I never in all my life kissed any man but John, and—I don't believe I should like it. No, no; if I cannot be engaged to you without kissing you, I will not be engaged to you at all."

"It shall be as you wish," says Luttrell, very patiently, considering all things.

"You mean it?" Still keeping well away from him, and hesitating about giving the hand he is holding out his to receive.

"Mind?" says he, with wrathful reproach. "Of course I mind. Am I a stick or a stone, do you think? You might as well tell me in so many words of your utter indifference to me as refuse to kiss me."

"I don't know anything about that," says Luttrell, growing ashamed of himself and his argument beneath the large, horror-stricken eyes of his companion. "I was merely supposing a case where marriage and love went hand in hand."

"Don't suppose," says Miss Massereene; "there is nothing so tiresome. It is like 'fourthly' and 'fifthly' in a sermon: you never know where it may lead you. Am I to understand that all women want to kiss the man they love?"

"Well, there is one thing: I don't mind your having your arms round me a bit, not in the least. That must be something. I would quite as soon they were there as not."

"I suppose that is a step in the right direction," says Luttrell, trying not to see the meaning in her words, because too depressed to accept the comic side of it.

"You are unhappy," says Molly, remorsefully, heaving a quickly suppressed sigh. "Why? Because I won't be good to you? Well,"—coloring crimson and leaning her head back against his shoulder with the air of a martyr, so that her face is upturned,—"you may kiss me once, if you wish,—but only once, mind,—because I can't bear to see you miserable."

"No," returns Luttrell, valiantly, refusing by a supreme effort to allow himself to be tempted by a look at her beauty, "I will not kiss you so. Why should you be made unhappy, and by me? Keep such gifts, Molly, until you can bestow them of your own free will."

"See, I will give you this one freely," she says, with unwonted sweetness, knowing that she is gaining more than she is giving; and thus persuaded, he presses his lips to the warm tender ones so near his own, while for one mad moment he is absurdly happy.

"You really do love me?" asks Molly, presently, as though just awakening to the fact.

"My darling!—my angel!" whispers he, which is conclusive; because when a man can honestly bring himself to believe a woman an angel he must be very far gone indeed.

"I fancy we ought to go in," says Molly, a little later; "they will be wondering where we are."

"Soon! Why, it must be hours since we came out here," says Molly, with uplifted brows.

"No,"—resenting his tone in a degree,—"I have not been bored to death, if you mean that; but I am not so dead to the outer world that I cannot tell whether time has been short or long. And it is long," viciously.

As they draw near the house, so near that the lights from the open drawing-room windows make yellow paths across the grass that runs their points almost to their feet,—Luttrell stops short to say:

"Oh! neither to-night nor to-morrow," cries Molly, frightened. "Not for ever so long. Why talk about it at all? Only a few minutes ago nothing was farther from my thoughts, and now you would publish it on the house-tops! Just think what it will be to have every one wondering and whispering about one, and saying, 'Now they have had a quarrel,' and 'Now they have made it up again.' Or, 'See now she is flirting with somebody else.' I could not bear it," says Molly, blind to the growing anger on the young man's face as he listens to and fully takes in the suggestions contained in these imaginary speeches; "it would make me wretched. It might make me hate you!"

"Yes, it might; and then what would you do? Let us keep it a secret," says Molly, coaxingly, slipping her hand into his, with a little persuasive pressure. "You see, everything about it is so far distant; and perhaps—who knows?—it may never come to anything."

"What do you mean by that?" demands he, passionately, drawing her to him, and bending to examine her face in the uncertain light. "Do you suppose I am a boy or a fool, that you so speak to me? Am I so very happy that you deem it necessary to blast my joy like this? or is it merely to try me? Tell me the truth now, at once: do you mean to throw me over?"

"I do not," with surprise. "What has put such an idea into your head? If I did, why be engaged to you at any time? It is a great deal more likely, when you come to know me better, that you will throw me over."

"Don't build your hopes on that," says Luttrell, grimly, with a rather sad smile. "I am not the sort of fellow likely to commit suicide; and to resign you would be to resign life."

"Well," says Molly, "if I am ever to say anything on the subject I may as well say it now; and I must confess I think you are behaving very foolishly. I may be—I probably am—good to look at; but what is the use of that? You, who have seen so much of the world, have, of course, known people ten times prettier than I am, and—perhaps—fonder of you. And still you come all the way down here to this stupid place to fall in love with me, a girl without a penny! I really think," winds up Molly, growing positively melancholy over his lack of sense, "it is the most absurd thing I ever heard in my life."

"If I was indifferent I would not argue," says Molly, offended. "I would not trouble myself to utter a word of warning. You ought to be immensely obliged to me instead of sneering and wrinkling up all your forehead into one big frown. Are you going to be angry again? I do hope," says Molly, anxiously, "you are not naturally ill-tempered, because, if so, on no account would I have anything to do with you."

"I am not," replies he, compelled to laughter by her perturbed face. "Reassure yourself. I seldom forget myself in this way. And you?"

"Oh, I have a fearful temper," says Molly, with a charming smile; "that is why I want to make sure of yours. Because two tyrants in one house would infallibly bring the roof about their ears. Now, Mr. Luttrell, that I have made this confession, will you still tell me you are not frightened?"

"Nothing frightens me," whispers he, holding her to his heart and pressing his lips to her fair, cool cheek, "since you are my own,—my sweet,—my beloved. But call me Tedcastle, won't you?"

"I am afraid not," laughing. "All the fellows in the regiment christened me 'Teddy' before I had been in a week."

"Did they? Well, never mind; it only shows what good taste they had. The name just suits you, you are so fair and young, and handsome," says Molly, patting his cheek with considerable condescension. "Now, one thing more before we go in to receive our scolding: you are not to make love to me again—not even to mention the word—until a whole week has passed: promise."

"No, I forbid you to break it. I can endure a little of it now and again," says Molly, with intense seriousness, "but to be made love to always, every day, would kill me."

"Then they sat down and talked

Of their friends at home ...

* * * *

And related the wondrous adventure."

"Do exert yourself," says Molly. "I never saw any one so lazy. You don't pick one to my ten."

"I can't see how you make that out," says her companion in an injured tone. "For the last three minutes you have sat with your hands in your lap arguing about what you don't understand in the least, while I have been conscientiously slaving; and before that you ate two for every one you put in the basket."

"I never heard any one talk so much as you do, when once fairly started," says Molly. "Here, open your mouth until I put in this strawberry; perhaps it will stop you."

"And I find it impossible to do anything with this umbrella," says Luttrell, still ungrateful, eying with much distaste the ancient article he holds aloft: "it is abominably in the way. I wouldn't mind if you wanted it, but you cannot with that gigantic hat you are wearing. May I put it down?"

"Don't think," says Molly: "it is too fatiguing; and if you get used up now, I don't see what Letitia will do for her jam."

"Why do people make jam?" asks Luttrell, despairingly; "they wouldn't if they had the picking of it: and nobody ever eats it, do they?"

"Yes, I do. I love it. Let that thought cheer you on to victory. Oh! here is another fat one, such a monster. Open your mouth again, wide, and you shall have it, because you really do begin to look weak."

They are sitting on the strawberry bank, close together, with a small square basket between them, and the pretty red and white fruit hanging from its dainty stalks all round them.

Molly, in a huge hat that only partially conceals her face and throws a shadow over her glorious eyes, is intent upon her task, while Luttrell, sitting opposite to her, holds over her head the very largest family umbrella ever built. It is evidently an old and esteemed friend, that has worn itself out in the Massereenes' service, and now shows daylight here and there through its covering where it should not. A troublesome scorching ray comes through one of these impromptu air-holes and alights persistently on his face; at present it is on his nose, and makes that feature appear a good degree larger than Nature, who has been very generous to it, ever intended.

It might strike a keen observer that Mr. Luttrell doesn't like the umbrella; either it or the wicked sunbeams, or the heat generally, is telling on him, slowly but surely; he has a depressed and melancholy air.

"Is it good?" asks Molly, à propos of the strawberry. "There, you need not bite my finger. Will you have another? You really do look very badly. You don't think you are going to faint, do you?"

"Molly," taking no notice of her graceful badinage, "why don't you get your grandfather to invite you to Herst Royal for the autumn? Could you not manage it in some way? I wish it could be done."

"So do I," returns she, frankly, "but there is not the remotest chance of it. It would be quite as likely that the skies should fall. Why, he does not even acknowledge me as a member of the family."

"Well, it has always been rather a regret to me, his neglect, I mean," says Molly, thoughtfully, "and besides, though I know it is poor-spirited of me, I confess I have the greatest longing to see my grandfather."

"Do you mean to tell me," growing absolutely animated through his surprise, "that you have never been face to face with him?"

"Never. I thought you knew that. Why, how amazed you look! Is there anything the matter with him? is he without arms, or legs? or has he had his nose shot off in any campaign? If so, break it to me gently, and spare me the shock I might experience, if ever I make my curtsey to him."

"It isn't that," says Tedcastle: "there's nothing wrong with him beyond old age, and a beastly temper; but it seems so odd that, living all your life in the very next county to his, you should never have met."

"It is not so odd, after all, when you come to think of it," says Molly, "considering he never goes anywhere, as I have heard, and that I lead quite as lively an existence. But is he not a stern old thing, to keep up a quarrel for so many years, especially as it wasn't my fault, you know? I didn't insist on being born. Poor mother! I think she was quite right to run away with papa, when she loved him."

"What made her crime so unpardonable was the fact that she was engaged to another man at the time, some rich parti chosen by her father, whom she thought she liked well enough until she saw papa, and then she knew, and threw away everything for her love; and she did well," says Molly, with more excitement than would be expected from her on a sentimental subject.

"Still, it was rather hard on the first man, don't you think?" says Luttrell. There is rather less enthusiasm in his tone this time.

"One should go to the wall, you know," argues Molly, calmly, "and I for my part would not hesitate about it. Now, let us suppose I am engaged to you without caring very much about you, you know, and all that, and supposing then I saw another I liked better,—why, then, I honestly confess I would not hold to my engagement with you for an hour!"

Here that wicked sunbeam, with a depravity unlooked for, falling straight through the chink of the umbrella into Mr. Luttrell's eye, maddens him to such a degree that he rises precipitately, shuts the cause of his misfortunes with a bang, and turns on Molly.

"I won't hold it up another instant," he says; "you needn't think it. I wonder Massereene wouldn't keep a decent umbrella in his hall."

"What's the matter with it? I see nothing indecent about it: I think it a very charming umbrella," says Molly, examining the article in question with a critical eye.

"Well, at all events, this orchard is oppressive. If you don't want to kill me, you will leave it, and come to the wood, where we may know what shade means!"

"Nonsense!" returns Molly, unmoved. "It is delicious here, and I won't stir. How can you talk in that wild way about no shade, when you have this beautiful apple-tree right over your head? Come and sit at this side; perhaps," with a smile, "you will feel more comfortable—next to me?"

Thus beguiled, he yields, and seats himself beside her—very much beside her—and reconciles himself to his fate.

"I wish you would remember," she says, presently, "that you have nothing on your head. I would not be rash if I were you. Take my advice and open the umbrella again, or you will assuredly be having a sun-stroke."

This is one for him and two for herself; and—need I say?—the family friend is once more unfurled, and waves to and fro majestically in the soft wind.

"Now, don't you feel better?" asks Molly, placing her two fingers beneath his chin, and turning his still rather angry face toward her.

"I do," replies he; and a smile creeping up into his eyes slays the chagrin that still lingers there, but half perdu.

"Yes," replies he again, laughing, and slipping his arm round her waist. "And you?" tenderly.

"Oh, I'm all right!" says Miss Massereene, with much graciousness, but rather disheartening vivacity. "And now begin, Teddy, and tell me all about Herst Royal and its inmates. First, is it a pretty place?"

"It is a magnificent place. But for its attractions, and his twenty thousand pounds a year, I don't believe your grandfather would be known by any one; he is such a regular old bear. Yet he is fond of society, and is never content until he has the house crammed with people, from garret to basement, to whom he makes himself odiously disagreeable whenever occasion offers. I have an invitation there for September and October."

"I don't know. I have hardly made up my mind. I have been asked to the Careys, and the Brownes also; and I rather fancy the Brownes. They are the most affording people I ever met: one always puts in such a good time at their place. But for one reason I would go there."

"That Herst is so much nearer to Brooklyn," with a fond smile. "And, perhaps, if I came over once or twice, you would be glad to see me?"

"Oh, would I not!" cries Molly, her faultless face lighting up at his words. "You may be sure of it. You won't forget, will you? And you will come early, so as to spend the entire day here, and tell me all about the others who will be staying there. Do you know my cousin Marcia?"

"Very intimately. He is handsome also, but of a dark Moorish sort of beauty. Not a popular man, by any means. Too reserved,—cold,—I don't know what it is. Have you any other cousins?"

"Not on my mother's side. Grandpa had but three children, you know,—my mother, and Philip's mother, and Marcia's father: he married an Italian actress, which must have been a terrible mésalliance, and yet Marcia is made much of, while I am not even recognized. Does it not sound unfair?"

"Unaccountable. Especially as I have often heard your mother was his favorite child!"

"Perhaps that explains his harshness. To be deceived by one we love engenders the bitterest hatred of all. And yet how could he hate poor mamma? John says she had the most beautiful, lovable face."

"I can well believe it," replied he, gazing with undisguised admiration upon the perfect profile beside him.

"She and Philip will divide everything, people say, the place, of course, going to Philip. Lucky he! Any one might envy him. You know they both live there entirely, although Marcia's mother is alive and resides somewhere abroad. Philip was in some dragoon regiment, but sold out about two years ago: debt, I fancy, was the cause, or something like it."

"No, thank you; I very much prefer her cousin. Besides, I should have no chance, as she and Philip are engaged to each other: they thought it a pity to divide the twenty thousand pounds a year. Do you know, Molly, I never knew what it was to covet my neighbor's goods until I met you? so you have that to answer for; but it does seem hard that one man should be so rich, and another so poor."

"Probably it will make me like you more," replies she, with a bewitching smile, stroking down the hand that supports the obnoxious umbrella (the other is supporting herself) almost tenderly. "It is only the very nicest men that haven't a farthing in the world. I have no money either, and if I had I could not keep it: so we are well met."

"But think what a bad match you are making," says he, regarding her curiously. "Did you never ask yourself whether I was well off, or otherwise?"

"Never!" with a gay laugh. "If I were going to marry you next week or so, it might occur to me to ask the question; but everything is so far away, what does it signify? If you had the mines of Golconda, I should not like you a bit better than I do."

"My own darling! Oh, Molly, how you differ from most girls one meets. Now, in London, once they find out I am only the third son, they throw me over without warning, and generally manage to forget the extra dance they had promised, while their mothers look upon me, and such as me, as a pestilence. And you, sweetheart, you never once asked me how much a year I had!"

"Very handsome," replies he, laughing; "a lieutenant's pay generally is. But I have something besides that; about as much as most fellows would spend on their stabling. I have precisely five hundred and fifty pounds a year, neither more nor less, and I owe two hundred pounds. Does not that sound tempting? The two hundred pounds I owe don't count, because the governor will pay up that; he always does in the long run; and I haven't asked him for anything out of the way now for fully eight months." He says this with a full consciousness of his own virtue.

"I call five hundred and fifty pounds a year a great deal," says Molly, with a faint ring of disappointment in her tone. "I fancied you downright poor from what you said. Why, you might marry to-morrow morning on that."

"So I might," agrees he, eagerly; "and so I will. That is, not to-morrow, exactly, but as soon as ever I can."

"Perhaps you will," says Molly, slowly; "but, if so, it will not be me you will marry. Bear that in mind. No, we won't argue the matter: as far as I am concerned it doesn't admit of argument." Then recurring to the former topic: "Why, John has only seven hundred pounds, and he has all the children and Letitia and me to provide for, and he keeps Lovat—that is the eldest boy—at a very good school as well. How could you call yourself poor, with five hundred pounds a year?"

"It ought to be six hundred and fifty pounds; but I thought it a pity to burden myself with superfluous wealth in my palmy days, so I got rid of it," says he, laughing.

"No, horses. It was in India,—stupid part, you know, and nothing to do. Potts suggested military races, and we all caught at it. And—and I didn't have much luck, you know," winds up Luttrell, ingenuously.

"I don't like that young man," says Molly, severely. "You are always talking of him, and he is my idea of a ne'er-do-weel. Your Mr. Potts seems never to be out of mischief. He is the head and front of every offense."

"Are you talking of Potts?" says her lover, in grieved amazement. "A better fellow never stepped. Nothing underhand about Potts. When you see him you will agree with me."

"I will not. I can see him in my mind's eye already. I know he is tall, and dark, and insinuating, and, in fact, a Mephistopheles."

"Oh, if you could but see Potts!" he says. "He is the best fellow in the world, but—— He ought to be called Rufus: his hair is red, his face is red, his nose is red, he is all red," finishes Tedcastle, with a keen enjoyment of his friend's misfortunes.

"Poor man," kindly; "I forgive him his small sins; he must be sufficiently punished by his ugliness. Did you like being in India?"

"Pretty well. At times it was rather slow, and our regiment has somehow gone to the dogs of late. No end of underbred fellows have joined, with quite too much the linen-draper about them to be tolerated."

"How sad! Your candor amazes me. I thought every soldier made it a point to be enthusiastic over his brother soldiers, whether by being so he lied or not."

"Then look upon me as an exception. The fact is, I grew rather discontented about three years ago when my greatest chum sold out and got married. You have no idea how lost a fellow feels when that happens. But for Potts I might have succumbed."

"What's in a name?" with a laugh. "He was generally called Mrs. Luttrell, we were so much together: so his own didn't matter. But I missed Penthony Stafford awfully."

"Lady Stafford, you mean? Penthony is a baronet. Yes, I like her immensely, and the whole affair was so peculiar. You won't believe me when I tell you that, though they have now been married for three years, her husband has never seen her."

"It is a fact for all that. Shall I tell you the story? Most people know it by this, I think: so I am breaking no faith by telling it to you."

"Well, to begin with, you must understand that she and her husband are first cousins. Have you mastered that fact?"

"Though not particularly gifted, I think I have. I rather flatter myself I could master more than that," says Molly, significantly, giving his ear a pinch, short but sharp.

"She is also a cousin of mine, though not so near. Well, about three years ago, when she was only Cecil Hargrave, and extremely poor, an uncle of theirs died, leaving his entire property, which was very considerable, between them, on the condition that they should marry each other. If they refused, it was to go to a lunatic asylum, or a refuge for dogs, or something equally uninteresting."

"He would have made a very successful lunatic himself, it seems to me. What a terrible condition!"

"Now, up to this they had been utter strangers to each other, had never even been face to face, and being told they must marry whether they liked it or not, or lose the money, they of course on the spot conceived an undying hatred for each other. Penthony even refused to see his possible wife, when urged to do so, and Cecil, on her part, quite as strenuously opposed a meeting. Still, they could not make up their minds to let such a good property slip through their fingers."

"Things dragged on so for three months, and then, Cecil, being a woman, was naturally the one to see a way out of it. She wrote to Sir Penthony saying, if he would sign a deed giving her a third of the money, and promising never to claim her as his wife, or interfere with her in any way, beyond having the marriage ceremony read between them, she would marry him."

"Why, he agreed, of course. What was it to him? he had never seen her, and had no wish to make her acquaintance. The document was signed, the license was procured. On the morning of the wedding, he looked up a best man, and went down to the country, saw nothing of his bride until a few minutes before the service began, when she entered the room covered with so thick a veil that he saw quite as little of her then, was married, made his best bow to the new Lady Stafford, and immediately returning to town, set out a few days later for a foreign tour, which has lasted ever since. Now, is not that a thrilling romance, and have I not described it graphically?"

"The 'Polite Story-teller' sinks into insignificance beside you: such a flow of language deserves a better audience. But really, Teddy, I never heard so extraordinary a story. To marry a woman, and never have the curiosity to raise her veil to see whether she was ugly or pretty! It is inconceivable! He must be made of ice."

"He is warm-hearted, and one of the jolliest fellows you could meet. Curiously enough, from a letter he wrote me just before starting he gave me the impression that he believed his wife to be not only plain, but vulgar in appearance."

"She is positively lovely. Rather small, perhaps, but exquisitely fair, with large laughing blue eyes, and the most fetching manner. If he had raised her veil, I don't believe he would ever have gone abroad to cultivate the dusky nigger."

"She gave up 'milking the cow with the crumpled horn,' and the country generally, and came up to London, where she took a house, went into society, and was the rage all last season."

"Because I was in Ireland at the time on leave, and heard nothing of it until I received that letter telling of the marriage and his departure. I was thunderstruck, you may be sure, but it was too late then to interfere. Some one told me the other day he is on his way home."

"'When Greek meets Greek' we know what happens," says Molly. "I think their meeting will be awkward."

"Rather. She is to be at Herst this autumn: she was a ward of your grandfather's."

"How can I, when you have put it out of my power? There is no room in my heart for any one but Molly Bawn. Besides, it would be energy wasted, as she is encased in steel. A woman in her equivocal position, and possessed of so much beauty, might be supposed to find it difficult to steer her bark safely through all the temptations of a London season; yet the flattery she received, and all the devotion that was laid at her feet, touched her no more than if she was ninety, instead of twenty-three."

"Yet what a risk it is! How will it be some day if she falls in love? as they say all people do once in their lives."

"Why, then, she will have her mauvais quart-d'heure, like the rest of us. Up to the present she has enjoyed her life to the utmost, and finds everything couleur de rose."

"Would it not be charming," says Molly, with much empressement, "if, when Sir Penthony comes home and sees her, they should both fall in love with each other?"

"Charming, but highly improbable. The fates are seldom so propitious. It is far more likely they will fall madly in love with two other people, and be unhappy ever after."

"Oh, cease such raven's croaking," says Molly, laying her hand upon his lips. "I will not listen to it. Whatever the Fates may be, Love, I know, is kind."

"And you are my lover," returns Molly. "And you most certainly are not kind, for that is the third time you have all but run that horrid umbrella into my left eye. Surely, because you hold it up for your own personal convenience is no reason why you should make it an instrument of torture to every one else. Now you may finish picking those strawberries without me, for I shall not stay here another instant in deadly fear of being blinded for life."

With this speech—so flagrantly unjust as to render her companion dumb—she rises, and catching up her gown, runs swiftly away from him down the garden-path, and under the wealthy trees, until at last the garden-gate receives her in its embrace and hides her from his view.

All round one side of Brooklyn, and edging on to the retired butcher's country residence, or rather what he is pleased to term, with a knowing jerk of the thumb over his right shoulder, his "little villar in the south," stretches a belt of trees, named by courtesy "the wood." It is a charming spot, widening and thickening toward one corner, which has been well named the "Fairies' Glen," where crowd together all the "living grasses" and wild flowers that thrive and bloom so bravely when nursed on the earth's bosom.

On one side rise gray rocks, cold and dead, save for the little happy life that, springing up above, flows over them, leaping, laughing from crag to crag, bedewing leaf and blossom, and dashing its gem-like spray over all the lichens and velvet mosses and feathery ferns that grow luxuriantly to hide the rugged jags of stone.

Here, at night, the owls delight to hoot, the bats go whirring past, the moonbeams surely cast their kindest rays; by day the pigeons coo from the topmost boughs their tales of love, while squirrels sit blinking merrily, or run their Silvios on their Derby days.

Just now it is neither night nor garish day, but a soft, early twilight, and on the sward that glows as green as Erin's, sit Molly and her attendant slave.

"The reason I like you," says Molly, reverting to something that has gone before, and tilting back her hat so that all her pretty face is laid bare to the envious sunshine, while the soft rippling locks on her forehead make advances to each other through the breeze, "the reason I like you,—no,"—seeing a tendency on his part to creep nearer, "no, stay where you are. I only said I liked you. If I had mentioned the word love, then indeed—but, as it is, it is far too warm to admit of any endearments."

"You are right,—as you always are," says Luttrell, with suspicious amiability, being piqued.

"You interrupted me," says Miss Massereene, leaning back comfortably and raising her exquisite eyes in lazy admiration of the green and leafy tangle far above her. "I was going to say that the reason I like you so much is because you look so young, quite as young as I do,—more so, indeed, I think."

"It is a poor case," says Luttrell, "when a girl of nineteen looks older than a man of twenty-seven."

"That is not the way to put it. It is a charming and novel case when a man of twenty-seven looks younger than a girl of nineteen."

"How much younger?" asks Luttrell, who is still sufficiently youthful to have a hankering after mature age. "Am I fourteen or nine years old in your estimation?"

"Don't let us dispute the point," says Molly, "and don't get cross. I see you are on for a hot argument, and I never could follow even a mild one. I think you young, and you should be glad of it, as it is the one good thing I see about you. As a rule I prefer dark men,—but for their unhappy knack of looking old from their cradles,—and have a perfect passion for black eyes, black skin, black locks, and a general appearance of fierceness! Indeed, I have always thought, up to this, that there was something about a fair man almost ridiculous. Have not you?"

Here she brings her eyes back to the earth again, and fastens them upon him with the most engaging frankness.

"No. I confess it never occurred to me before," returns Luttrell, coloring slightly through his Saxon skin.

Silence. If there is any silent moment in the throbbing summer. Above them the faint music of the leaves, below the breathing of the flowers, the hum of insects. All the air is full of the sweet warblings of innumerable songsters. Mingling with these is the pleasant drip, drip of the falling water.

A great lazy bee falls, as though no longer able to sustain its mighty frame, right into Miss Massereene's lap, and lies there humming. With a little start she shakes it off, almost fearing to touch it with her dainty rose-white fingers.

"Yes?" sweetly. "And so you really have read your Shakespeare? And can actually apply it every now and then with effect, to the utter confusion of your friends? But I think you might have spared me. Teddy!" bending forward and casting upon him a bewitching, tormenting, adorable glance from under her dark lashes, "if you bite your moustache any harder it will come off, and then what will become of me?"

With a laugh Luttrell flings away the fern he has been reducing to ruin, and rising, throws himself upon the grass at her feet.

"Why don't I hate you?" he says, vehemently. "Why cannot I feel even decently angry with you? You torment and charm in the same breath. At times I say to myself, 'She is cold, heartless, unfeeling,' and then a word, a look—Molly," seizing her cool, slim little hand as it lies passive in her lap, "tell me, do you think you will ever—I do not mean to-morrow, or in a week, or a month, but in all the long years to come, do you think you will ever love me?" As he finishes speaking, he presses his lips with passionate tenderness to her hand.

"Well, then, I apologize, and I am very sorry, and I won't do it again: is that enough?"

"No, the fact still remains," gazing at her hand with a little pout, as though the offending kiss were distinctly visible; "and I don't want it."

"I think—you had better—take it back again," says she, the pretended pout dissolving into an irresistible smile, as she slips her fingers with a sudden unexpected movement into his; after which she breaks into a merry laugh."

"And now tell me," he persists, holding them close prisoners, and bestowing a loving caress upon each separately.

"Whether I love you? How can I, when I don't know myself? Perhaps at the end I may be sure. When I lie a-dying you must come to me, and bend over me, and say, 'Molly Bawn, do you love me?' And I shall whisper back with my last breath, 'yes' or 'no,' as the case may be."

"But not now, not while we are young and happy. Afterward, when old age creeps on us and we look on love as weariness, it will not matter."

"To me, that is the horror of it," with a quick distasteful shiver, leaning forward in her earnestness, "to feel that sooner or later there will be no hope; that we must go, whether with or without our own will,—and it is never with it, is it?"

"It does not frighten me so much to think that in a month, or perhaps next year, or at any moment, I may die,—there is a blessed uncertainty about that,—but to know that, no matter how long I linger, the time will surely come when no prayers, no entreaties, will avail. They say of one who has cheated death for seventy years, that he has had a good long life: taking that, then, as an average, I have just fifty-one years to live, only half that to enjoy. Next year it will be fifty, then forty-nine, and so on until it comes down to one. What shall I do then?"

"My own darling, how fanciful you are! your hands have grown cold as ice. Probably when you are seventy you will consider yourself a still fascinating person of middle age, and look upon these thoughts of to-day as the sickly fancies of an infant. Do not let us talk about it any more. Your face is white."

"Yes," says Molly, recovering herself with a sigh, "it is the one thing that horrifies me. John is religious, so is Letty, while I—oh, that I could find pleasure in it! You see," speaking after a slight pause, with a smile, "I am at heart a rebel, and hate to obey. Mind you never give me an order! How good it would be to be young, and gay, and full of easy laughter, always,—to have lovers at command, to have some one at my feet forever!"

"'Some one,'" sadly. "Would any one do? Oh, Molly, can you not be satisfied with me?"

"How can I be sure? At present—yes," running her fingers lightly down the earnest, handsome face upraised to hers, apparently quite forgetful of her late emotion.

"Well, at all events," says the young man, with the air of one who is determined to make the best of a bad bargain, "there is no man you like better than me."

"You are the greatest flirt I ever met in my life," exclaims he, with sudden anger.

A pause. They are much farther apart by this time, and are looking anywhere but at each other. Molly has her lap full of daisies, and is stringing them into a chain in rather an absent fashion; while Luttrell, who is too angry to pretend indifference, is sitting with gloom on his brow and a straw in his mouth, which latter he is biting vindictively.

"Do you not? I cannot remember saying anything very difficult of comprehension."

"I must be growing stupid, then. You have accused me of flirting; and how am I to understand that, I who never flirted? How should I? I would not know how."

"You must allow me to differ with you; or, at all events, let me say your imitation of it is highly successful."

"Pshaw!" wrathfully, "have you been waiting for me to tell you? It is trying to make a fool of a fellow, neither more nor less. You are pretending to love me, when you know in your heart you don't care that for me." The "that" is both forcible and expressive, and has reference to an indignant sound made by his thumb and his second finger.

"I was not aware that I ever 'pretended to love' you," replies Molly, in a tone that makes him wince.

"Well, let us say no more about it," cries he, springing to his feet, as though unable longer to endure his enforced quietude. "If you don't care for me, you don't, you know, and that is all about it. I dare say I shall get over it; and if not, why, I shall not be the only man in the world made miserable for a woman's amusement."

Molly has also risen, and, with her long daisy chain hanging from both her hands, is looking a perfect picture of injured innocence; although in truth she is honestly sorry for her cruel speech.

"I don't believe you know how unkind you are," she says, with a suspicion of tears in her voice, whether feigned or real he hardly dares conjecture. Feeling herself in the wrong, she seeks meanly to free herself from the false position by placing him there in her stead.

"Do not let us speak about unkindness, or anything else," says the young man, impatiently. "Of what use is it? It is the same thing always: I am obnoxious to you; we cannot put together two sentences without coming to open war."

"But whose fault was it this time? Think of what you accuse me! I did not believe you could be so rude to me!" with reproachful emphasis.

Here she directs a slow lingering glance at him from her violet eyes. There are visible signs of relenting about her companion. He colors, and persistently refuses, after the first involuntary glance, to allow his gaze to meet hers again; which is, of all others, the surest symptom of a coming rout. There are some eyes that can do almost anything with a man. Molly's eyes are of this order. They are her strongest point; and were they her sole charm, were she deaf and dumb, I believe it would be possible to her, by the power of their expressive beauty alone, to draw most hearts into her keeping.

"Did you mean what you said just now, that you had no love for me?" he asks, with a last vain effort to be stern and unforgiving. "Am I to believe that I am no more to you than any other man?"

"Believe nothing," murmurs she, coming nearer to lay a timid hand upon his arm, and raising her face to his, "except this, that I am your own Molly."

"Are you?" cries he, in a subdued tone, straining her to his heart, and speaking with an emotional indrawing of the breath that betrays more than his words how deeply he is feeling, "my very own? Nay, more than that, Molly, you are my all, my world, my life: if ever you forget me, or give me up for another, you will kill me: remember that."

"I will remember it. I will never do it," replies she, soothingly, the touch of motherhood that is in all good women coming to the front as she sees his agitation. "Why should I, when you are such a dear old boy? Now come and sit down again, and be reasonable. See, I will tie you up with my flowery chain as punishment for your behavior, and"—with a demure smile—"the kiss you stole in the melée without my permission."

"This is the chain by which I hold you," he says, rather sadly, surveying his wrists, round which the daisies cling. "The links that bind me to you are made of sterner stuff. Sweetheart," turning his handsome, singularly youthful face to hers, and speaking with an entreaty that savors strongly of despair, "do not let your beauty be my curse!"

"Why, who is fanciful now?" says Molly, making a little grimace at him. "And truly, to hear you speak, one must believe love is blind. Is it Venus," saucily, "or Helen of Troy, I most closely resemble? or am I 'something more exquisite still'? It puzzles me why you should think so very highly of my personal charms. Ted," leaning forward to look into her lover's eyes, "tell me this. Have you been much away? Abroad, I mean, on the Continent and that?"

"Yes, twice. The governor was fond of sending us abroad between the ages of seventeen and twenty-five,—to enlarge our minds, he said; to get rid of us, he meant."

"An awful lot. I would be ashamed to say how many. Ours was indeed a 'numerous father.'"

"He isn't dead?" asks Molly, in a low tone befitting the occasion in case he should be.

"Oh no: he is alive and kicking," replies Mr. Luttrell, with more force than elegance. "And I hope he will keep on so for years to come. He is about the best friend I have, or am likely to have."

"I hope he won't keep up the kicking part of it," says Molly, with a delicious laugh that ripples through the air and shows her utter enjoyment of her own wit. Not to laugh when Molly laughs, is impossible; so Luttrell joins her, and they both make merry over his vulgarity. In all the world, what is there sweeter than the happy, penetrating, satisfying laughter of unhurt youth?

"Lucky you, to have seen so much already," says Molly, presently, with an envious sigh; "and yet," with a view to self-support, "what good has it done you? Not one atom. After all your traveling you can do nothing greater than fall absurdly in love with a village maiden. Will your father call that enlarging your mind?"

"I hope so," concealing his misgivings on the point. "But why put it so badly? Instead of village maiden, say the loveliest girl I ever met."

"What!" cries Molly, the most naïve delight and satisfaction animating her tone; "after going through France, Germany, Italy, and India, you can honestly say I am the loveliest woman you ever met?"

"You put it too mildly," says Luttrell, raising himself on his elbow to gaze with admiration at the charming face above him, "I can say more. You are ten thousand times the loveliest woman I ever met."

Molly smiles, nay, more, she fairly dimples. Try as she will and does, she cannot conceal the pleasure it gives her to hear her praises sung.

"Why, then I am a 'belle,' a 'toast,'" she says, endeavoring unsuccessfully to see her image in the little basin of water that has gathered at the foot of the rocks; "while you," turning to run five white fingers over his hair caressingly, and then all down his face, "you are the most delightful person I ever met. It is so easy to believe what you tell one, and so pleasant. I have half a mind to—kiss you!"

"Don't stop there: have a whole mind," says Luttrell, eagerly. "Kiss me at once, before the fancy evaporates."

"No," holding him back with one lazy finger (he is easy to be repulsed), "on second thought I will reserve my caress. Some other time, when you are good,—perhaps. By the bye, Ted, did you really mean you would take me to Vienna?"

"Care? that is not the question. It will cost a great deal of money to get there, won't it? Shall we be able to afford it?"

"No doubt the governor will stand to me, and give a check for the occasion," says Luttrell, warming to the subject. "Anyhow, you shall go, if you wish it."

"Wait until your father hears you have wedded a pauper, and then you will see what a check you will get," says Miss Massereene, with a contemptible attempt at a joke.

"A pun!" says Luttrell, springing to his feet with a groan; "that means a pinch. So prepare."

"I forbid you," cries she, inwardly quaking, and, rising hurriedly, stands well away from him, with her petticoats caught together in one hand ready for flight. "I won't allow you. Don't attempt to touch me."

"It is the law of the land," declares he, advancing on her, while she as steadily retreats.

"Dear Teddy, good Teddy," cries she, "spare me this time, and I will never do it again—no, not though it should tremble forever on the tip of my tongue. As you are strong, be merciful. Do forgive me this once."

"Then I defy you," retorts Miss Massereene, who, having manœuvred until she has placed a good distance between herself and the foe, now turns, and flies through the trees, making very successful running for the open beyond. Not until they are within full view of the house does he manage to come up with her. And then the presence of John sunning himself on the hall-door step, surrounded by his family, effectually prevents her ever obtaining that richly-deserved punishment.

It is raining, not only raining, but pouring. All the gracious sunshine of yesterday is obliterated, forgotten, while in its place the sullen raindrops dash themselves with suppressed fury against the window-panes. Huge drops they are, swollen with the hidden rage of many days, that fall, and burst heavily, and make the casements tremble.

Outside, the flowers droop and hang their pretty heads in sad wonder at this undeserved Nemesis that has overtaken them. Along the sides of the graveled paths small rivulets run frightened. There is no song of birds in all the air. Only the young short grass uprears itself, and, drinking in with eager greediness the welcome but angry shower, refuses to bend its neck beneath the yoke.

"How I hate a wet day!" says Luttrell, moodily, for the twentieth time, staring blankly out of the deserted school-room window, where he and Molly have been yawning, moping for the last half-hour.

"Do you? I love it," replies she, out of a sheer spirit of contradiction; as, if there is one thing she utterly abhors it is the idea of rain.

"If I said I loved it, you would say the reverse," says he, laughing, not feeling equal to the excitement of a quarrel.

"Without doubt," replies she, laughing too: so that a very successful opening is rashly neglected. "Surely it cannot keep on like this all day," she says, presently, in a dismal tone, betraying by her manner the falsity of her former admiration: "we shall have a dry winter if it continues much longer. Has any wise man yet discovered how much rain the clouds are capable of containing at one time? It would be such a blessing if they had: then we might know the worst, and make up our minds to it."

"Drop a line to the clerk of the weather office; he might make it his business to find out if you asked him."

"Is that a joke?" with languid disgust. "And you professed yourself indignant with me yesterday when I perpetrated a really superior one! You ought to be ashamed of yourself. I would not condescend to anything so feeble."

"That reminds me I have never yet paid you off for that misdemeanor. Now, when time is hanging so heavily on my hands, is a most favorable opportunity to pay the debt. I embrace it. And you too. So 'prepare for cavalry.'"

Meantime, Letitia and John in the morning room—that in a grander house would have been designated a boudoir—are holding a hot discussion.

Lovat, the eldest son, being the handsomest and by far the most scampish of the children, is of course his mother's idol. His master, however, having written to say that up to this, in spite of all the trouble that has been taken with him, he has evinced a far greater disposition for cricket and punching his companions' heads than for his Greek and Latin, Lovat's father had given it as his opinion that Lovat deserves a right good flogging; while Lovat's mother maintains that all noble, high-spirited boys are "just like that," and asks Mr. Massereene, with the air of a Q. C., whether he never felt a distaste for the dead languages.

Mr. Massereene replying that he never did, that he was always a model boy, and never anywhere but at the head of his class, his wife instantly declares she doesn't believe a word of it, and most unfairly rakes up a dead-and-gone story, in which Mr. Massereene figures as the principal feature, and is discovered during school hours on the top of a neighbor's apple-tree, with a long-suffering but irate usher at the foot of it, armed with his indignation and a birch rod.

"And for three mortal hours he stood there, while I sat up aloft grinning at him," says Mr. Massereene, with (considering his years) a disgraceful appreciation of his past immoral conduct; "and when at last the gardener was induced to mount the tree and drag me ignominiously to the ground, I got such a flogging as made a chair for some time assume the character of a rack."

"I did, indeed, my dear," John confesses, heartily, "richly. I am glad to see that at last you begin to take a sensible view of the subject. If I deserved a flogging because I once shirked my tasks, what does not Lovat deserve for a long course of such conduct?"

"He is not accused of stealing apples, at all events; and, besides, Lovat is quite different," says Letitia, vaguely. Whereupon John tells her her heart is running away with her head, and that her partiality is so apparent that he must cease from further argument, and goes on with his reading.

Presently, however, he rises, and, crossing the room, stands over her, watching her white shapely fingers as they deftly fill up the holes in the little socks that lie in the basket beside her. She is so far en rapport with him as to know that his manner betokens a desire for confidence.

"Have you anything to say to me, dear?" she asks, looking up and suspending her employment for the time being.

"Letitia," begins he, thoughtfully, not to say solemnly, "it is quite two months since Luttrell first put in an appearance in this house. Now, I don't wish to seem inhospitable,—far be it from me: a thirst for knowledge alone induces me to put the question,—but, do you think he means to reside here permanently?"

"It is certainly very strange," says Letitia, unmoved by his eloquence to even the faintest glimmer of a smile, so deep is her interest in the subject,—"the very oddest thing. If, now, it were a place where a young man could find any amusement, I would say nothing; but here! Do you know, John,"—mysteriously,—"I have my suspicions."

"No!" exclaims Mr. Massereene, betraying the wildest curiosity in voice and gesture,—so wild as to hint at the possibility of its not being genuine. "You don't say so!"

"Letitia,"—with authority,—"don't think, or suspect, or let it occur to you any more: say it."

"What it is to be a woman of penetration," says he. "So you have found that out. Now, that is where we men fail. But are you certain? Why do you think it?"

"I am almost convinced of it," Letitia says, with much solemnity. "Last night I happened to be looking out of one of the windows that overhang the garden, and there in the moonlight (it was quite ten o'clock) I saw Molly give him a red rose; and he took it, and gazed at it as though he were going to devour it; and then he kissed it; and after that he kissed Molly's hand! Now, I don't think, John, unless a young man was—you know—eh?"

"I altogether agree with you. Unless a young man was, you know, why, he wouldn't—that's all. I am glad, however, he had the grace to stop at the hand,—that it was not Molly's lips he chose instead."

"My darling Letty! have I said anything so very outre? Were you never kissed by a young man?"

"Only by you," returns Mrs. Massereene, laughing apologetically, and blushing a rare delicate pink that would not have disgraced her at eighteen.

"Ah, you may well be excused, considering how you were tempted. It is not every day one meets—— By the bye, Letty, did you cease your eavesdropping at that point?"

"I seldom trouble to think. I only know Luttrell is an uncommonly good-looking fellow, and that the moon is a white witch."

"He is good-looking," says Letitia, rising and growing troubled; "he is more than that,—he is charming. Oh, John! if our Molly were to fall in love with him, and grow unhappy about it, what would we do? I don't believe he has anything beyond his pay."

"He has something more than that, I know, but not much. The Luttrells have a good deal of spare cash throwing about among them."

"But what of that? And a poor man would be wretched for Molly. Remember what an expensive regiment he is in. Why, I suppose as it is he can hardly keep himself. And how would it be with a wife and a large family?"

"Oh, Letitia! let us have the marriage ceremony first. Why on earth will you saddle the miserable man with a large family so soon? And wouldn't a small one do? Of what use to pile up the agony to such a height?"

"I think of no one but Molly. There is nothing so terrible as a long engagement, and that is what it will come to. Do you remember Sarah Annesley? She grew thinner and thinner day by day, and her complexion became positively yellow when Perceval went away. And her mother said it was suspense preying upon her."

"As much as that?" Slightly relieved. "And will his father allow him anything more?"

"If you say that again I shall sue for a divorce. But seriously, Letty, perhaps you are exciting yourself about nothing. Who knows but they are indifferent to each other?"

"Certainly not. It is your duty to—to—find out everything, and ask them both what they mean."

"Then I won't," declares John, throwing out his arms decisively. "I would not be bribed to do it. What! ask a man his intentions! I couldn't bring myself to do such a thing. How could I look him in the face again? They must fight the best battle they can for themselves, like every one else. I won't interfere."

"Very good. I shall speak to Molly. And I really think we ought to go and look them up. I have seen neither of them since breakfast time."

"The rain has ceased. Let us go out by the balcony," says Mr. Massereene, stepping through the open window. "I heard them in the school-room as I passed."

Now, this balcony, as I have told you, runs along all one side of the house, and on it the drawing-room, school-room, and one of the parlor windows open. Thick curtains hang from them and conceal in part the outer world; so that when John and Letty stand before the school-room window to look in they do so without being themselves seen. And this, I regret to say, is what they see:

In the centre of the room a square table, and flying round and round it, with the tail of her white gown twisted over her right arm, is Miss Massereene, with Mr. Luttrell in full chase after her.

"Well, upon my word!" says Mr. Massereene, unable through bewilderment to think of any remark more brilliant.

Round and round goes Molly, round and round follows her pursuer; until Luttrell, finding his prey to be quite as fleet if not fleeter than himself, resorts to a mean expedient, and, catching hold of one side of the table, pushes it, and Molly behind it, slowly but surely into the opposite corner.

There is no hope. Steadily, certainly, she approaches her doom, and with flushed cheeks and eyes gleaming with laughter, makes a vain protest.

"Now I have you," says Luttrell, drawing an elaborate penknife from his pocket, in which all the tools that usually go to adorn a carpenter's shop fight for room. "Prepare for death, or—I give you your choice: I shall either cut your jugular vein or kiss you. Don't hurry. Say which you prefer. It is a matter of indifference to me."

"Don't," says Letitia, with stern promptitude. "That is what you will do. It is no laughing matter. I hope you are not going to make a jest of it, John."

"But, my dear, supposing I can't help it?" suggests he, mildly. "Our risible faculties are not always under our control."

"Letitia," says Mr. Massereene, regarding her with severity, "you are going to laugh yourself; don't deny it."

"No,—no, indeed," protests Letitia, foolishly, considering her handsome face is one broad smile, and that her plump shoulders are visibly shaking.]

"It is mean! it is shameful!" says Molly, from within, seeing no chance of escape. Whichever way she rushes can be only into his arms.

"All that you can say shan't prevent me," decides Luttrell, moving toward her with fell determination in his eye.

"Perhaps a little that I can say may have the desired effect," breaks in Mr. Massereene, advancing into the middle of the room, with Letitia, looking rather nervous, behind him.

There is a sudden, rather undignified, cessation of hostilities on the part of Mr. Luttrell, who beats a hasty retreat to the wall, where he stands as though glad of the support. He bears a sneaky rather than a distinguished appearance, and altogether has the grace to betray a considerable amount of shame.

Molly, dropping her gown, turns a rich crimson, but is, I need hardly say, by far the least upset of the two delinquents. She remains where she is, hedged in by the table, and is conscious of feeling a wild desire to laugh.

Determined to break the silence, which is proving oppressive, she says, demurely:

"How fortunate, John, that you happened to be on the spot! Mr. Luttrell was behaving so badly!"

"But how did you come here?" asks Molly, making a brave but unsuccessful effort to turn the tables upon the enemy. "And Letitia, too! I do hate people who turn up when they are least expected. What were you doing on the balcony?"

"Watching you—and—your friend," says John, very gravely for him. He addresses himself entirely to Molly, her "friend" being in the last stage of confusion and utterly incapable of speech. At this, however, he can support the situation no longer, and, coming forward, says eagerly:

"John, let me explain. The fact is, I asked Miss Massereene to marry me, a little time ago, and she has promised to do so—if you—don't object." After this bit of eloquence he draws himself up, with a little shake, as though he had rid himself of something disagreeable, and becomes once more his usual self.

"Yes, if it is your wish," cries she, forsaking her retreat, and coming forward to lay her hand upon her brother's arm entreatingly, and with a gesture full of tenderness. "But if you do object, if it vexes you in the very slightest degree, John, I——"

"But you will give your consent, Massereene," interrupts her lover, hastily, as though dreading the remainder of the sentence, "won't you?" He too has come close up to John, and stands on one side, opposite Molly. Almost, from the troubled expression of his face as he looks at the girl, one might imagine him trying to combat her apparent lukewarmness more then her brother's objections.

"Things seem to have progressed very favorably without my consent," says John, glancing at the unlucky table, which has come in for a most unfair share of the blame. "But before giving you my blessing I acknowledge—now we are on the subject—I would like to know on what sum you intend setting up housekeeping." Here Letitia, who has preserved a strict neutrality throughout, comes more to the front. "It is inconvenient, and anything but romantic, I know, but people must eat, and those who indulge in violent exercise are generally possessed of healthy appetites."

"I have over five hundred a year," says Luttrell, coloring, and feeling as if he had said fifty and was going to be called presumptuous. He also feels that John has by some sudden means become very many years older than he really is.

"Everything. When my uncle—Maxwell Luttrell—hops the—that is, drops off—I mean dies," says Luttrell whose slang is extensive and rather confusing, "I shall come in for five thousand pounds more."

"How can you speak in such a cold-blooded way of your uncle's death?" says Molly, who is not so much impressed by the occasion as she should be.

"Why not? There is no love lost between us. If he could leave it away from me he would; but that is out of his power."

"Molly, you wish to marry Tedcastle?" John asks his sister, gazing at her earnestly.

"She is young, Luttrell; she has seen little of the world. You must give her time. I know no man I would prefer to you as a brother; but—give her time. Be satisfied with the engagement; do not let us speak of marriage just yet."

"Not unless she wishes it," says the young man bravely, and perhaps a little proudly.

"In a year," says John, still with his eyes on his beautiful sister, and speaking with marked hesitation, as though waiting for her to make some sign by which he shall know how to best forward her secret wishes; "then we may begin to talk about it."

"But a year!—it is a lifetime," says Luttrell, with some excitement, turning his eyes, full of a mute desire for help, upon Letitia. And when did Letitia ever fail any one?

"No," cries Molly, pettishly, "it shall be as John wishes. Why, it is nothing! Think of all the long years to come afterward, when we shall not be able to get rid of each other, no matter how earnestly we may desire it; and then see how small in comparison is this one year."

Luttrell, who has grown a little pale, goes over to her and takes her hand in both his. His face is grave, fuller of purpose than they have ever seen it. To him the scene is a betrothal, almost a marriage.

"You will be true to me?" he says, with suppressed emotion. "Swear that you will, before your brother."

"Of course I will," with a quick, nervous laugh. "Why should I be otherwise? You frighten me with your solemn ways. Am I more to you than I was yesterday? Why, how should I be untrue to you, even if I wished it? I shall see no one from the day you leave until you come again."

At this moment the noise of the door-handle being turned makes him drop her hand, and they all fall simultaneously into what they hope is an easy attitude. And then Sarah appears upon the threshold with a letter and a small packet between her first finger and thumb. She is a very genteel girl, is Sarah, and would scorn to take a firm grasp of anything.

"This 'ere is for you, sir," she says, delivering the packet to Luttrell, who consigns it hastily to his coat-pocket; "and this for you, Miss Molly," giving the letter. "The postman says, sir, as 'ow they only come by the afternoon, but I am of the rooted opinion that he forgot 'm this morning."

Thus Sarah, who is loquacious though trustworthy, and bears an undying grudge to the postman, in that he has expressed himself less enamored of her waning charms than of those of the more buxom Jane, who queens it over the stewpans and the cold joints.

"I don't know the writing," she says in a vague tone. "I do hope it isn't a bill."

"A bill, with that monogram!" exclaims Luttrell. "Not likely. I would swear to a dunning epistle at twenty yards' distance."

"Who can it be from?" wonders Molly, still dallying with one finger inserted beneath the flap of the envelope.

"Perhaps, if you look within you may find out," suggests John, meekly; and thus encouraged she opens the letter and reads.

At first her face betrays mere indifference, then surprise, then a sudden awakening to intense interest, and lastly unmitigated astonishment.

"It is the most extraordinary thing," she says, at last, looking up, and addressing them in an awestruck whisper, "the most unexpected. After all these years,—I can scarcely believe it to be true."

"I don't believe you," cries Luttrell, who means no rudeness at all, but is merely declaring in a modern fashion how delighted beyond measure he is.

"Look: is not that Marcia's writing? I suppose she wrote it, though it is dictated by grandpapa."

All four heads were instantly bent over the clear, bold calligraphy to read the cold but courteous invitation it contains.

"Dear Eleanor" is given to understand that her grandfather will be pleased to make her acquaintance, if she will be pleased to transfer herself and her maid to Herst Royal on the twenty-seventh of the present month. There are a few hints about suitable trains, a request that a speedy reply in the affirmative will be sent, and then "dear Eleanor" is desired to look upon Mr. Amherst as her "affectionate grandfather." Not one word about all the neglect that has been showered upon her for nineteen years.

"He must be near death," says Letitia. Molly is silent, her eyes still fixed upon the letter. "I think, John—she ought to go."

"Of course she shall go," returns John, a kind of savage jealousy pricking him. "I can't provide for her after my death. That old man may be softened by her face or terrified by the near approach of dissolution into doing her justice. He has neither watched her, nor tended her, nor loved her; but now that she has come to perfection he claims her."

"John," cries Molly, with sudden passion, flinging herself into his arms, "I will not go. No, not one step. What is he to me, that stern old tyrant, who has refused for nineteen years to acknowledge me? While you, my dear, my darling, you are my all."

"Nonsense, child!" speaking roughly, although consoled and strengthened by her caress and loving words. "It is what I have been wishing for all these years. Of course you must go. It is only right you should be recognized by your relations, even though it is so late in the day. Perhaps he will leave you a legacy; and"—smiling—"I think I may console myself with the reflection that old Amherst will scarcely be able to cut me out."

"You are a hypocrite," says Letitia; "you know you are dying to go. I should, were I in your place. Instead of lamenting, you ought to be thanking your stars for this lucky chance that has befallen you; and you should be doubly grateful to us for letting you go, as we shall miss you horribly."

"I shan't stay any time," says Molly, reviving. "I shall be back before you realize the fact that I have gone. I know in polite society no one is expected to outstay a month at the very longest."

"You cover me with confusion," says Luttrell, laughing. "Consider what unmentionable form I have displayed. How long have I outstayed my time? It is uncommonly good of you, Mrs. Massereene, not to have given me my congé long ago; but my only excuse is that I have been so utterly happy. Perhaps you will forgive me when you learn that I must tear myself away on Thursday."

"Oh! must you?" says Letitia, honestly sorry. Now that the engagement is un fait accompli, and the bridegroom-elect has declared himself not altogether so insolvent as she had feared, she drops precautionary measures and gives way to the affection with which she has begun to regard him. "You are going to Herst also. Why cannot you stay here to accompany Molly? Her going is barely three weeks distant."

"If I could I would not require much pressing, you can readily believe that. But duty is imperative, and go I must."

"You did not tell me you were going," says Molly, looking aggrieved. "How long have you known it?"

"For a week. I could not bear to think about leaving, much less to speak of it, so full of charms has Brooklyn proved itself,"—with a smile at Mrs. Massereene,—"but it is an indisputable fact for all that."

"Well, in spite of Lindley Murray I maintain that life is long," says Massereene, who has been silent for the past few minutes. "And I need hardly tell you, Luttrell, you are welcome here whenever you please to come."

"Come out," whispers Molly, slipping her hand into her lover's (she minds John and Letitia about as much as she minds the tables and chairs); "the rain has ceased; and see what a beautiful sun. I have any amount of things to say to you, and a whole volume of questions to ask about my detested grand-père. So freshen your wits. But first before we go"—mischievously, and with a little nod full of reproof—"I really think you ought to apologize to John for your scandalous behavior of this morning."

"Molly, I predict this glorious future for you," says her brother: "that you will be returned to me from Herst Royal in disgrace."

When they have reached the summer-house in the garden, whither they have wended their way, with a view to shade (as the sun, having been debarred from shining for so many hours, is now exerting itself to the utmost to make up for lost time), Luttrell draws from his pocket the identical parcel delivered to him by Sarah, and, holding it out to Molly, says, somewhat shamefacedly:

"For me?" coloring with surprise and pleasant expectation. She is a being so unmistakably delighted with anything she receives, be it small or great, that it is an absolute joy to give to her. "What is it?"

"Open it and see. I have not seen it myself yet, but I hope it will please you."

Off comes the wrapper; a little leather case is disclosed, a mysterious fastener undone, and there inside, in its velvet shelter, lies an exquisite diamond ring that glistens and flashes up into her enchanted eyes.

"Oh, Teddy! it cannot be for me," she says, with a little gasp that speaks volumes; "it is too beautiful. Oh, how good of you to think of it! And how did you know that if there is one thing on earth which I love it is a ring? And such a ring! You wicked boy, I do believe you have spent a fortune on it." Yet in reality she hardly guesses the full amount of the generous sum that has been so willingly expended on that glittering hoop.

"I am glad you like it," he says, radiant at her praise. "I think it is pretty."

"'Pretty' is a poor word. It is far too handsome. I would scold you for your extravagance, but I have lost the power just now. And do you know," raising her soft, flushed face to her lover,—"I never had a ring before in my life, except a very old-fashioned one of my mother's, an ancient square, you know, with hair in the centre, and all around it big pearls, that are anything but pearly now, as they have grown quite black. Thank you a thousand times."

She slips her arm around his neck and presses her lips warmly, unbashfully to his cheek. Be it ever so cold, so wanting in the shyness that belongs to conscious tenderness, it is still the very first caress she has ever given him of her own accord. A little thrill runs through him, and a mad longing to catch her in his arms, as he feels the sweet, cool touch; yet he restrains himself. Some innate sense of honor, born on the occasion, a shrinking lest she should deem him capable of claiming even so natural a return for his gift, compels him to forego his desire. It is noticeable, too, that he does not even place the ring upon her engaged finger, as most men would have done. It is a bauble meant to gratify her: why make it a fetter, be it ever so light a one?

"I am amply repaid," he says, gently. "Was there ever such luck as your getting that invitation this morning? I wonder what could have put it into the old fellow's head to invite you? Are you glad you are going?"

"I am. I almost think it is mean of me to be so glad, but I can't help it. Is my grandfather so very terrific?"

"He is all of that," says Luttrell, "and a good deal more. If I were an American I would have no scruples about calling him a 'darned old cuss': as it is, I will smother my feelings, and let you discover his failings for yourself."

"He does, however. We all go,—generally the same lot every year; though I have been rather out of it for a time, on account of my short stay in India. He has first-class shooting; and when he is not in the way, it is pretty jolly. He hates old people, and never allows a chaperon inside his doors,—I mean elderly chaperons. The young ones don't count: they, as a rule, are backward in the art of talking at one and making things disagreeable all round."

"That's just it. It is all jealousy. He finds every old person he meets, no matter how unpleasant, a decided improvement on himself; whereas he can always hope the young ones may turn out his counterparts."

"Oh, well"—temporizing—"perhaps I exaggerate slightly. He has a wretched temper, and he takes snuff, you know, but I dare say there are worse."

"I have heard of damning praise," says Molly, laughing. "You are an adept at it."

"Am I? I didn't know. Well, do you know, in spite of all my uncivil remarks, there is a certain charm about Herst that other country-houses lack? We all understand our host's little weaknesses, in the first place, and are, therefore, never caught sleeping. We feel as if we were at school again, united by a common cause, with all the excitement of a conspiracy on foot that has a master for its victim; though, to confess the truth, the master in our case has generally the best of it, as he has a perfect talent for hitting on one's sore point. Then, too, we know to a nicety when the dear old man is in a particularly vicious mood, which is usually at dinner-time, and we keep looking at each other through every course, wondering on whose devoted head the shell of his wrath will first burst; and when that is over we wonder again whose turn it will be next."

"It does; and, what is better, it prevents formality, and puts an end to the earlier stages of etiquette. We feel a sort of relationship, a clanship among us; and, indeed, for the most part, we are related, as Mr. Amherst prefers entertaining his family to any others,—it is so much easier to be unpleasant to them than to strangers. I am connected with him very distantly through my mother; so is Cecil Stafford; so is Potts in some undefined way."

"Now, don't tell me you are my cousin," says Molly, "because I wouldn't like it."

"I am not proud; if you will let me be your husband, I won't ask anything more. Oh, Molly, how I wish this year was at an end!"

"Do you? I don't. I am absolutely dying to go to Herst." Then, turning eyes that are rather wistful upon him, she says, earnestly, "Do they—the women, I mean—wear very lovely clothes? To be like them must I—be very well dressed?"

"You always are very well dressed, are you not?" asks her lover, in return, casting a loving, satisfied glance over the fresh, inexpensive Holland gown she wears, with a charming but strictly masculine disregard of the fact that muslin is not silk, nor cotton cashmere.

"Am I? You stupid boy!" says Molly; but she laughs in a little pleased way and pats his hand. Next to being praised herself, the sweetest thing to a woman is to have her dress praised. "Not I. Well, no matter; they may crush me if they please with their designs by Worth, but I defy them to have a prettier ring than mine," smiling at her new toy as it still lies in the middle of her hand. "Is Herst very large, Teddy? How shall I remember my own room? It will be so awkward to be forever running into somebody else's, won't it?"

"My maid?" coloring slowly, but still with her eyes on his. "And—supposing I have no maid?"

"Well, then," says Tedcastle, who has been bred in the belief that a woman without her maid is as lost as a babe without its mother, "why, then, I suppose, you would borrow one from your nearest neighbor. Cecil Stafford would lend you hers. I know my sisters were only allowed one maid between each two; and when they spent the autumn in different houses they used to toss up which should have her."

"I am afraid," says Molly, in a rather dispirited tone, "I shall feel rather strange at Herst. I wish you could manage to be there the very day I arrive,—could you, Teddy? I would not be so lonely if I knew for certain you would be on the spot to welcome me. It is horrible going there for—that is—to be inspected."

"I will surely be there a day or two after, but I doubt if I could be there on the twenty-seventh. You may trust me to do my best."

"I suppose it is—a very grand place," questions Molly, growing more and more depressed, "with dinner-parties every day, and butlers, and footmen, and all the rest of it? And I shall be there, a stranger, with no one to care whether I enjoy myself or not."

"True," returns she, brightening; "and whenever you see me sitting by myself, Teddy, you are to come over to me, no matter how engaged you may be, and sit down beside me. If I have any one else with me, of course you need not mind it."

"Have I vexed you? How foolish you are! Why, if you are jealous in imagination, how will it be in reality? There will be many men at Herst; and perhaps—who knows——"

"Why, then you will forget me, and like him,—until you like some one else better."

"Now, if I were a dignified young lady," says Molly, "I should feel insulted; but, being only Molly Bawn, I don't. I forgive you; and I won't fall in love with any one; so you may take that thunder-cloud off your brow as soon as it may please your royal highness."

"What do you gain by making me unhappy?" asks he, impetuously seizing the hand she has extended to him with all the air of an offended but gracious queen.

"Everything." Laughing. "I delight in teasing you, you look so deliciously miserable all through; it is never time thrown away upon you. Now, if you could only manage to laugh at my sallies or tease me back again, I dare say I should give in in a week and let you rest in peace ever after. Why don't you?"

"Perhaps because I can't. All people are not gifted with your fertile imagination. Or because it would give me no pleasure to see you 'deliciously miserable.'"

"Oh, you wouldn't see that," says Molly, airily. "All you could say would not suffice to bring even the faintest touch of misery into my face. Angry I might be, but 'miserable,' never!"

"Be assured, Molly, I shall never put your words to the test. Your happiness means mine."

"See how the diamonds flash!" says Molly, presently, recurring to her treasure. "Is this the engagement-finger? But I will not let it stay there, lest it might betray me."

"Are John and Letty every one? At Herst they are still in blissful ignorance. Let them remain so. I insist on our engagement being kept secret."

"Because if it was known it would spoil all my fun. I have noticed that men avoid a fiancée as they would a—a rattlesnake."

"But it would for all that. Come now, Ted, be candid: how often were you in love before you met me?"

"Like?" Reluctantly. "Oh, as for that, I suppose I did fancy I liked a few girls."

"Just so; and I should like to like a few men," says Miss Massereene, triumphantly.

"Indeed I do. That is just one of the great points which the defenders of women's rights forget to expatiate upon. A man may love as often as he chooses, while a woman must only love once, or he considers himself very badly used. Why not be on an equal footing? Not that I want to love any one," says Molly; "only it is the injustice of the thing I abhor."

"Love any one you choose," says Tedcastle, passionately, springing to his feet, "Shadwell or any other fellow that comes in your way, I shan't interfere. It is hardly necessary for you to say you don't 'want to love one.' Your heart is as cold as ice. It is high time this engagement—this farce—should come to an end."

"If you wish it," says Molly, quietly, in a subdued tone, yet as she says it she moves one step—no more—closer to him.

"But I do not wish it; that is my cruel fate!" cries the young man, taking both her hands and laying them over his heart with a despairing tenderness. "There are none happy save those incapable of knowing a lasting affection. Oh, Molly!"—remorsefully—"forgive me. I am speaking to you as I ought not. It is all my beastly temper; though I used not to be ill-tempered," says he, with sad wonder. "At home and among our fellows I was always considered rather easy-going than otherwise. I think the knowledge that I must part from you on Thursday (though only for a short time) is embittering me."

"Then you are really sorry to leave me?" questions Molly, peering up at him from under her straw hat.

"Yes." Gravely, and with something that is almost tears in his eyes. "Why do you ask me, Molly? Is it not palpable enough?"

"It is not. You look just the same as ever,—quite as 'easy-going'"—with a malicious pout—"as either your 'home' or your 'fellows' could desire. I quite buoyed myself up with the hope that I should see you reduced to a skeleton as the last week crept to its close, and here you are robust and well to do as usual. I call it unfeeling," says Miss Massereene, reproachfully, "and I don't believe you care a pin about me."

"Would you like to see me 'reduced to a skeleton'?" asks Luttrell, reproachfully. "You talk as though you had been done out of something; but a man may be horribly cut up about a thing without letting all the world know of it."

"You conceal it with great skill," says Molly, placing her hand beneath his chin, under a pretense of studying his features, but in reality to compel him to look at her; and, as it is impossible for any one to gaze into another's eyes for any length of time without showing emotion of some kind, presently he laughs.

"Ah!" cries she, well pleased, "now I have made you laugh, your little attack of the spleens will possibly take to itself wings and fly away."

All through the remainder of this day and the whole of the next—which is his last—she is sweetness itself to him. Whatever powers of tormenting she possesses are kept well in the background, while she betrays nothing but a very successful desire to please.

She wanders with him contentedly through garden and lawn; she sits beside him; at dinner she directs swift, surreptitious smiles at him across the flowers; later on she sings to him his favorite songs; and why she scarcely knows. Perhaps through a coquettish desire to make the parting harder; perhaps to make his chains still stronger; perhaps to soothe his evident regret; perhaps (who can say?) because she too feels that same regret.

And surely to-night some new spirit is awake within her. Never has she sung so sweetly. As her glorious voice floats through the dimly-lighted room and out into the more brilliant night beyond, Luttrell, and Letitia, and John sit entranced and wonder secretly at the great gift that has been given her.

"If ever words are sweet, what, what is song

When lips we love the melody prolong!"

Molly in every-day life is one thing; Molly singing divinely is another. One wonders curiously, when hearing her, how anything so gay, so debonnaire as she, can throw such passion into words, such thrilling tenderness, such wild and mournful longing.

"Molly," cries John impatiently from the balcony, "I cannot bear to hear you sing like that. One would think your heart was broken. Don't do it, child."

And Molly laughs lightly, and bursts into a barcarolle that utterly precludes the idea of any deep feeling; after which she gives them her own "Molly Bawn," and then, shutting down the piano, declares she is tired, and that evidently John doesn't appreciate her, and so she will sing no more.

The dog-cart is at the door; John is good-naturedly busy about the harness; and, Letitia having suddenly and with suspicious haste recollected important commands for the kitchen, whither she withdraws herself, the lovers find themselves alone.

"Hurry, man; you will barely catch it," cries John, from outside, meaning the train; having calculated to a nicety how long it would take him to give and receive a kiss, now that he has been married for more years than he cares to count.

"Keep thinking of me always," he says, in a low tone, "always, lest at any moment you forget."

Molly makes him no answer, but slowly raises to him eyes wet with unshed tears. It is more than he has hoped for.

"Molly," he cries, hurriedly, only too ready to grasp this small bud of a longed-for affection, "you will be sorry for me? There are tears in your eyes,—you will miss me? You love me, surely,—a little?"

"A little," he repeats, wistfully. (Perhaps he has been assuring himself of some more open encouragement,—has dreamed of spoken tenderness, and feels the disappointment.) "Some men," he goes on, softly, "can lay claim to all the great treasure of their love's heart, while I—see how eagerly I accept the bare crumbs. Yet, darling, believe me, your sweet coldness is dearer to me than another woman's warmest assertion. And later—who knows?—perhaps——"

"Yes, perhaps," says Molly, stirred by his emotion or by some other stronger sentiment lying deep at the bottom of her heart, "by and by I may perhaps bore you to death by the violence of my devotion. Meantime"—standing on tiptoe, and blushing just enough to make her even more adorable than before, and placing two white hands on his shoulders—"you shall have one small, wee kiss to carry away with you."

Half in doubt he waits until of her own sweet accord her lips do verily meet his; and then, catching her in his arms, he strains her to him, forgetful for the moment of the great fact that neither time nor tide waits for any man.

"You are not going, I suppose?" calls John, his voice breaking in rudely upon the harrowing scene. "Shall I send the horse back to the stables? Here, James,"—to the stable boy,—"take round Rufus; Mr. Luttrell is going to stay another month or two."

"Remember," says Luttrell, earnestly, still holding her as though loath to let her go.

"You remind me of Charles the First," murmurs she, smiling through her tears. "Yes, I will remember you, and all you have said, and—everything. And more, I shall be longing to see you again. Now go." Giving him a little push.

Presently—he hardly knows how—he finds himself in the dog-cart, with John, oppressively cheerful, beside him, and, looking back as they drive briskly up the avenue, takes a last glance at Brooklyn, with Molly on the steps, waving her hand to him, and watching his retreating form with such a regretful countenance as gives him renewed courage.

In an upper window is Letitia, more than equal to the occasion, armed with one of John's largest handkerchiefs, that bears a strong resemblance to a young sheet as it flutters frantically hither and thither in the breeze; while below the two children, Daisy and Renee,—under a mistaken impression that the hour is festive,—throw after him a choice collection of old boots much the worse for wear, which they have purloined with praiseworthy adroitness from under their nurse's nose.

"Oh, Letty, I do feel so honestly lonely," says Molly, half an hour later, meeting her sister-in-law on the stairs.

"Do you, dearest?" admiringly. "That is very nice of you. Never mind; you know you will soon see him again. And let us come and consult about the dresses you ought to wear at Herst."

"Yes, do let us," returns Miss Massereene, brightening with suspicious alacrity, and drawing herself up as straight as a young tree out of the despondent attitude she has been wearing. "That will pass the time better than anything."

Whereupon Letitia chuckles with ill-suppressed amusement and gives it as her opinion that "dear Molly isn't as bad as she thinks herself."

John has done his duty, has driven the melancholy young man to the station, and very nearly out of his wits—by insisting on carrying on a long and tedious argument that lasts the entire way, waiting pertinaciously for a reply to every one of his questions.

This has taken some time, more especially as the train was late and the back drive hilly; yet when at length he reaches his home he finds his wife and Molly still deep in the mysteries of the toilet.

"Well?" says his sister, as he stands in the doorway regarding them silently. As she speaks she allows the dejected expression of two hours ago to return to her features, her lids droop a little over her eyes, her forehead goes up, the corners of her mouth go down. She is in one instant a very afflicted Molly. "Well?" she says.

"He isn't well at all," replies John, with a dismal shake of the head and as near an imitation of Molly's rueful countenance as he can manage at so short a notice; "he is very bad. I never saw a worse case in my life. I doubt if he will last out the day. I don't know how you regard it, but I call it cruelty to animals."

"You need not be unfeeling," says Molly, reproachfully, "and I won't listen to you making fun of him behind his back. You wouldn't before his face."

"How do you know?" As though weighing the point. "I never saw him funny until to-day. He was on the verge of tears the entire way. It was lucky I was beside him, or he would have drenched the new cushions. For shame's sake he refrained before me, but I know he is in floods by this."

"He is not," says Molly, indignantly. "Crying, indeed! What an idea! He is far too much of a man for that."

"I am a man too," says John, who seems to find a rich harvest of delight in the contemplation of Luttrell's misery. "And once, before we were married, when Letitia treated me with disdain, I gave way to my feelings to such an extent that——"

"Really, John," interposes his wife, "I wish you would keep your stupid stories to yourself, or else go away. We are very busy settling about Molly's things."

"What things? Her tea-things,—her playthings? Ah! poor little Molly! her last nice new one is gone."

"Letty, I hope you don't mind, dear," says Molly, lifting a dainty china bowl from the table near her. "Let us trust it won't break; but, whether it does or not, I must and will throw it at John."

"She should at all events have one pretty new silk dress," murmurs Letitia, vaguely, whose thoughts "are with her heart, and that is far away," literally buried, so to speak, in the depths of her wardrobe. "She could not well do without it. Molly,"—with sudden inspiration,—"you shall have mine. That dove-color always looks pretty on a girl, and I have only worn it once. It can easily be made to fit you."

"I wish, Letitia, you would not speak to me like that," says Molly, almost angrily, though there are tears in her eyes. "Do you suppose I want to rob you? I have no doubt you would give me every gown you possess, if I so willed it, and leave yourself nothing. Do remember I am going to Herst more out of spite and curiosity than anything else, and don't care in the least how I look. It is very unkind of you to say such things."

"You are the kindest soul in the world, Letty," says John from the doorway; "but keep your silk. Molly shall have one too." After which he decamps.

"That is very good of John," says Molly. "The fact is, I haven't a penny of my own,—I never have a week after I receive my allowance,—so I must only do the best I can. If I don't like it, you know, I can come home. It is a great thing to know, Letty, that you will be glad to have me, whether I am well dressed or very much the reverse."

"Exactly. And there is this one comfort also, that you look well in anything. By the bye, you must have a maid. You shall take Sarah, and we can get some one in until you come back to us. That"—with a smile—"will prevent your leaving us too long to our own devices. You will understand without telling what a loss the fair Sarah will be."

"You are determined I shall make my absence felt," says Molly, with a half-smile. "Really, Letty, I don't like——"

"But I do," says Letty. "I don't choose you to be one whit behind any one else at Herst. Without doubt they will beat you in the matter of clothes; but what of that? I have known many titled people have a fine disregard of apparel."

"So have I," returns Molly, gayly. "Indeed, were I a man, possessed with a desire to be mistaken for a lord, I would go to the meanest 'old clo' shop and purchase there the seediest garments and the most dilapidated hat (with a tendency toward greenness), and a pair of boots with a patch on the left side, and, having equipped myself in them, saunter down the 'shady side of Pall Mall' with a sure and certain conviction that I was 'quite the thing.' Should my ambitious longings soar as high as a dukedom, I would add to the above costume a patch on the right boot as well, and—questionable linen."

"Well," says Letitia, with a sigh, "I hope Marcia is a nice girl, and that she will be kind to you."

Long, low terraces bathed in sunshine; a dripping, sobbing fountain; great masses of glaring flowers that mix their reds and yellows in hideous contrast and sicken the beholder with a desire for change; emerald lawns that grow and widen as the eye endeavors vainly to grasp them, thrown into bold relief by the rich foliage, all brown, and green, and red, and bronze-tinged, that spreads behind them; while beyond all these, as far as sight can reach, great swelling parks show here and there, alive with deer, that toss and fret their antlered heads, throwing yet another charm into the already glorious scene.

Such is Herst Royal, as it stands, a very castle in its pride of birth. On one side the "new wing" holds prominence, so called, although fully a century has passed since mason's hand has touched it; on the other is a suspicion of heavy Gothic art. Behind, the taste of the Elizabethan era holds full sway; in front (forgetful of time) uprears itself the ancient tower that holds the first stones in all its strength and stately dignity; while round it the sympathetic ivy clings, and, pressing it in its long arms, whispers, "Courage."

Upon the balcony the sleepy peacocks stand, too indolent to unfurl their gorgeous plumage, looking in their quiet like statues placed at intervals between the stone vases of scarlet geraniums and drooping ferns that go to adorn it.

There is a dead calm over all the house; no sound of life beyond the indistinct hum of irrepressible nature greets the ear; all is profoundly still.

The click of high-heeled shoes, the unmistakable rustle of silk, and the peacocks, with a quick flutter, raise their heads, as though to acknowledge the approach of their mistress.

Stepping from one of the windows, thereby displaying to the unobservant air an instep large but exquisitely arched, Marcia Amherst comes slowly up to where the lazy fowl are dreaming. Almost unconsciously (because her face is full of troubled thought), or perhaps a little vengefully, she flicks the one nearest to her with the handkerchief she carries loosely in her hand, until, with a discordant scream, it rouses itself, and, spreading its tail to its fullest, glances round with conscious pride.

Her voice is singularly clear, but low and trainante. She is tall and very dark, with rich wavy black hair and eyes of the same hue, deep and soft as velvet. Her nose is Grecian; her lips a trifle thin. She is distinctly handsome, but does not so much as border on the beautiful.

As she turns from the showy bird with a little shrug of disdain at its vanity or of disgust at its odious cry, she finds herself face to face with a young man who has followed almost in her footsteps.

He, too, is tall and dark, and not altogether unlike her. But his face shows the passion that hers rather conceals than lacks, and, though sufficiently firm, is hardly as determined as hers. There is also a certain discontent about the lower part of the jaw in which she is wanting, and there are two or three wrinkles on his forehead, of which her broad, low brow is innocent.

"Oh, it is of no use," he replies, with a quick frown, "I could not get up my courage to the sticking-point, and if I had I firmly believe it would only have smashed my cause the more completely. Debt is his one abhorrence, or rather—he has so many—his deepest. To ask for that two thousand pounds would be my ruin."

"I wish I had it to give you," she says, gently, laying her hand—a very beautiful hand, but not small—upon his arm.

"Thank you, my dear," replies he, lightly, "but your good wishes do not get me out of my hobble. Money I must have within seven days, and money I have not. And if our grandfather discovers my delinquencies it will be all UP with me. By the bye, Marcia, I can hardly expect you to sympathize with me, as that would be so much the better for you, eh?"

"Nothing the better," says Marcia, calmly; "it would be always the same thing. I should share with you."

"What a stake it is to play for!" says the young man, wearily, with a distasteful gesture. "Is even twenty thousand pounds a year worth it?—the perpetual paying court, every day, and all day long? Sometimes I doubt it."

"It is well worth it," says Marcia, firmly. "How can you doubt it? All the good this world contains might be written under the name of 'money.' There is no happiness without it."

"Don't believe it. Love may be purchased; and as for contentment, there is no such thing. It is a dream, a fable, a pretty story that babes may swallow."

"Not money, but the love of it," replies she, quickly. "Do not lose heart, Philip; he cannot last forever; and this week how ill he has been!"

"So he has, poor old wretch," her companion interrupts her hastily. "Well, I have just one clear week before me, and then,—I suppose I had better have recourse to my friends, the Jews. That will be a risky thing, if you like, under the circumstances. Should he find that out——"

"How can he? They are always so secret, so safe. Better do it than eat your heart out. And who is to betray you?"

"Ay, tremble!" says she, gayly; then softly, "If that is all you have to fear, Philip, you are a happy man. And when you have got the two thousand pounds, will you be free?"

"Or something may turn up," exclaims he, hurriedly, not looking at her, and therefore unable to wonder at the stolidity and utter unconcern of her expression.

At this moment a querulous, broken voice comes to them from some inner room. "Marcia, Marcia!" it calls, with trembling impatience; and, with a last flick at the unoffending peacock, she turns to go, yet lingers, as though loath to leave her companion.

"Good-bye," replies he, and, clasping her lightly round the waist, presses a kiss upon her cheek,—not upon her lips.

"You will be here when I return?" asks she, turning a face slightly flushed by his caress toward him as she stands with one foot placed upon the bow-window sill preparatory to entering the room beyond. There is hope fully expressed in her tone.

"No, I think not," replies he, carelessly. "The afternoon is fine; I want to ride into Longley, for——" But to the peacocks alone is the excuse made known, as Marcia has disappeared.

Close to a fire, although the day is oppressively warm, and wrapped in a flannel dressing-gown, sits an old man,—old, and full of the snarling captiousness that makes some white hairs hideous. A tall man, with all the remains of great beauty, but a singularly long nose (as a rule one should always avoid a person with a long nose), that perhaps once might have added a charm to the bold, aristocratic face it adorned, but now in its last days is only suggestive of birds of prey, being peaky and astonishingly fine toward the point. Indeed, looking at it from a side-view, one finds one's self instinctively wondering how much leaner it can get before kindly death steps in to put a stop to its growth. And yet it matches well with the lips, which, curving downward, and thin to a fault, either from pain or temper, denote only ill-will toward fellow-man, together with a certain cruelty that takes its keenest pleasure in another's mental suffering.

Great piercing eyes gleam out from under heavy brows, and, looking straight at one, still withhold their inmost thoughts. Intellect (wrongly directed, it may be, yet of no mean order) and a fatal desire for power sparkle in them; while the disappointment, the terrible self-accusing sadness that must belong to the closing of such a life as comes of such a temperament as his, lingers round his mouth. He is meagre, shrunken,—altogether unlovely.

Now, as he glances up at Marcia, a pettishness, born of the sickness that has been consuming him for the past week, is his all-prevailing expression. Raising a hand fragile and white as a woman's, he beckons her to his side.

"How you dawdle!" he says, fretfully. "Do you forget there are other people in the world besides yourself? Where have you been?"

"Have I been long, dear?" says Marcia, evasively, with the tenderest air of solicitude, shaking up his pillows and smoothing the crumpled dressing-gown with careful fingers. "Have you missed me? And yet only a few minutes have really passed."

"Where have you been?" reiterates he, irritably, taking no notice of her comfortable pats and shakes.

"Ay, 'with Philip.' Always Philip. I doubt me the course of your love runs too smoothly to be true. And yet it was a happy thought to keep the old man's money well together." With a sneer.

"Love—pish! do not talk to me of it. I thought you too shrewd, Marcia, to be misled by a mirage. It is a myth,—no more,—a sickening, mawkish tale. Had he no prospects, and were you penniless, I wonder how far 'love' would guide you?"

"To the end," says Marcia, quickly. "What has money to do with it? It can neither be bought nor sold. It is a poor affection that would wither under poverty; at least it would have no fears for us."

"Us,—us," returns this detestable old pagan, with a malicious chuckle. "How sure we are! how positive! ready to risk our all upon our lover's truth! Yet, were I to question this faithful lover upon the same subject, I fear me that I should receive a widely different answer."

"I hope not, dear," says Marcia, gently, speaking in her usual soft, low tone. Yet a small cold finger has been laid upon her heart. A dim foreboding crushes her. Only a little pallor, so slight as to be imperceptible to her tormentor, falls across the upper part of her face and tells how blood has been drawn. Yet it is hardly the mere piercing of the skin that hurts us most; it is in the dark night hours when the wound rankles that our agony comes home to us.

"When is this girl coming?" asks the old man, presently, in a peevish tone, vexed that, as far as he can tell, his arrow has overshot the mark. "I might have known she would have caught at the invitation."

"On the twenty-seventh,—the day you mentioned. She must be anxious to make your acquaintance, as she has not lost an hour," says Marcia, in a tone that might mean anything. "But"—sweetly—"why distress yourself, dear, by having her at all? If it disturbs your peace in the very least, why not write to put her off, at all events until you feel stronger? Why upset yourself, now you are getting on so nicely?" As she speaks she lets her clear, calm eyes rest fully upon the hopeless wreck of what once was strong before her. No faintest tinge of insincerity mars the perfect kindliness of her tone. "Why not let us three remain as we are, alone together?"

"What!" cries Mr. Amherst, angrily, and with excitement, raising himself in his chair, "am I to shut myself up within these four walls with nothing to interest me from day to day beyond your inane twaddle? No, I thank you. I will have the house full,—full—do you hear, Marcia?—and that without delay? Do you want me to die of ennui in this bare barrack of a place?"

"Well, do not make yourself ill, dear," says Marcia, with an admirably executed sigh. "It shall be as you wish, of course. I only spoke for your good,—because—I suppose (being the only near relative I have on earth besides my mother), I—love you."

"You are very good," replies the old man, grimly, utterly untouched by all this sweetness, "but I will have my own way. And don't you 'dear' me again. Do you hear, Marcia? I won't have it: it reminds me of my wife. Pah!"

The days fade, the light wanes, and night's cold dewy mantle falls thickly on the longing earth.

Marcia, throwing wide her casements, stretches out her arms to the moonlight and bathes her white face and whiter neck in the cool flood that drenches all the quiet garden.

There is peace everywhere, and rest, and happy sleep, but not for Marcia; for days, for weeks, she has been haunted by the fear that Philip's affection for her is but a momentary joy, that, swiftly as the minutes fly, so it dwindles. To-night this fear is strong upon her.

Not by his word, not by his actions, but by the subtle nothings that, having no name, yet are, and go to make up the dreaded whole, has this thought been forced upon her. The cooling glance, the suppressed restlessness, the sudden lack of conversation, the kind but unloving touch, the total absence of a lover's jealousy,—all go to prove the hateful truth. And now her grandfather's sneer of the morning comes back to torture her and make assurance doubly sure. Yet hardly three months have passed since Philip Shadwell asked her to be his wife.

"Already his love wanes," she murmurs, turning up her troubled face and eyes, too sad for tears, to the starry vault above her, where the small luminous bodies blink and tremble and take no heed of a ridiculous love-tale, more or less. Her tone is low and despairing; and as she speaks she beats her hands together slowly, noiselessly, yet none the less passionately.

In vain she tries to convince herself her doubts are groundless, to compel herself to believe her arms are full, when in her heart she knows she but presses to her bosom an empty, fleeting shadow. The night's dull vapors have closed upon her, and, while exaggerating her misery, still open her eyes with kind cruelty to the end that surely awaits her.

So she sits hugging her fears until the day breaks, and early morning, peeping in at her, wafts her a kiss as it flies over the lawn and field and brooklet. Then, wearied by her watching, she flings herself upon her bed, and, gaining a short but dreamless sleep, wakens refreshed, to laugh at her misgivings of the night before,—at her grandfather's hints,—at aught that speaks to her of Philip's falseness.

Despair follows closely upon night. Hope comes in the train of day. And Marcia, standing erect before her glass, with her beautiful figure drawn to its full height and her handsome head erect, gazes long and earnestly at the reflection therein. At last the deep flush of satisfaction dyes her cheeks; all her natural self-reliance and determination return to her; with a little laugh at her own image (on which she builds her hopes), she defies fate, and, running down the staircase with winged feet, finds herself on the last step, almost in Philip's arms.

"Abroad so early!" he says, with a smile; and the kindliness of his tone, the more than kindness of his glance, confirm her hopes of the morning. She is looking very pretty, and Philip likes pretty women, hence the kindly smile. And yet, though he might have done so without rebuke (perhaps because of that), he forgot to kiss her. "You are the early bird, and you have caught me," he says. "I can only hope you will not make your breakfast off me. See,"—holding out to her an unclosed letter,—"the deed is done. I have written to my solicitor to get me the money from Lazarus and Harty."

"Oh, Philip! I have been thinking," she says, following him into the library, "and now it seems to me a risk. You know his horror of Jews,—you know how he speaks of your own father and his unfortunate dealings with them. Yesterday I felt brave, and advised you, as I fear, wrongly; to-day——"

"I have been thinking it over too,"—lighting the taper on the table, and applying the sealing-wax to the flame,—"and now it seems to me the only course left open. And yet"—speaking gayly, but pausing as the wax falls upon the envelope—"perhaps—who knows?—I may be sealing my own fate."

"You make me superstitious. Why imagine horrors? Yet if you have any doubts, Philip,"—laying one shapely white finger upon the letter,—"do not send it. Something tells me to warn you. And, besides, are you quite sure they will lend you the money?"

"That would hardly alter your position, except that you would be then, not heir, but master," she says, smiling sweetly at him. "No, I was supposing myself also disinherited. This cousin that is coming,—Eleanor Massereene,—she, too, is his grandchild."

As a rule, when speaking of those we hate, quite as much as when speaking of those we love, we use the pronoun alone. Mr. Amherst is "he" always to his relatives.

"What! Can you believe it possible a little uneducated country girl, with probably a snub nose, thick boots, and no manners to speak of, can cut you out? Marcia, you grow modest. Why, even I, a man, can see her in my mind's eye, with a freckled complexion (he hates freckles), and a frightened gasp between each word, and a wholesome horror of wine, and a general air of hoping the earth will open presently to swallow her up."

"She won't be different. Her father was a wild Irishman. Besides, I have seen her sort over and over again, and it is positive cruelty to animals to drag the poor creatures from their dull homes into the very centre of life and gayety. They never can make up their minds whether the butler that announces dinner is or is not the latest arrival; and they invariably say, 'No, thank you,' when asked to have anything. To them the fish-knife is a thing unknown and afternoon tea the wildest dissipation."

"Well, I can only hope and trust she will turn out just what you say," says Marcia, laughing.

Four days later, meeting her on his way to the stables, he throws her a letter from his solicitor.

"It is all right," he says, and goes on a step or two, as though hurried, while she hastily runs her eyes over it.

"Well, and now your mind is at rest," she calls after him, as she sees the distance widening between them.

"Tear it up; I don't want it," he returns, and disappears round the angle of the house.

Her fingers form themselves as though about to obey him and tear the note in two. Then she pauses.

"He may want it," she says to herself, hesitating. "Business letters are sometimes useful afterward. I will keep it for him."

She slips it into her pocket, and for the time being thinks no more of it. That night, as she undresses, finding it again, she throws it carelessly into a drawer, where it lies for many days forgotten.

It is the twentieth of August: in seven days more the "little country girl with freckles and a snub nose" will be at Herst Royal, longing "for the earth to open and swallow her up."

To Philip her coming is a matter of the most perfect indifference. To Marcia it is an event,—and an unpleasant one.

When, some three years previously, Marcia Amherst consented to leave the mother she so sincerely loved to tend an old and odious man, she did so at his request and with her mother's full sanction, through desire of the gold that was to be (it was tacitly understood) the reward of her devotion. There was, however, another condition imposed upon her before she might come to Herst and take up permanent quarters there. This was the entire forsaking of her mother, her people, and the land of her birth.

To this also there was open agreement made: which agreement was in private broken. She was quite clever enough to manage a clandestine correspondence without fear of discovery; but letters, however frequent, hardly make up for enforced absence from those we love, and Marcia's affection for her Italian mother was the one pure sentiment in her rather scheming disposition. Yet the love of riches, that is innate in all, was sufficiently strong in her to bear her through with her task.

But now the fear that this new-comer, this interloper, may, after all her detested labor, by some fell chance become a recipient of the spoil (no matter in how small a degree), causes her trouble.

Of late, too, she has not been happy. Philip's coldness has been on the increase. He himself, perhaps, is hardly aware of the change. But what woman loving but feels the want of love? And at times her heart is racked with passionate grief.

Now, as she and her lip-love stand side by side in the oriel window that overlooks the graveled path leading into the gardens, the dislike to her cousin's coming burns hotly within her.

Outside, in his bath chair, wheeled up and down by a long-suffering attendant, goes Mr. Amherst, in happy ignorance of the four eyes that watch his coming and going with such distaste.

Up and down, up and down he goes, his weakly head bent upon his chest, his fierce eyes roving restlessly to and fro. He is still invalid enough to prefer the chair to the more treacherous aid of his stick.

"He reminds me of nothing so much as an Egyptian mummy," says Philip, presently: "he looks so hard, and shriveled, and unreal. Toothless, too."

"He ought to die," says Marcia, with perfect calmness, as though she had suggested the advisability of his going for a longer drive.

"Die!" With a slight start, turning to look at her. "Ah! yes, of course. But"—with a rather forced laugh—"he won't, take my word for it. Old gentlemen with unlimited means and hungry heirs live forever."

"He has lived long enough," says Marcia, still in the same slow, calculating tone. "Of what use is he? Who cares for him? What good does he do in each twenty-four hours? He is merely taking up valuable room,—keeping what should by right be yours and mine. And, Philip," laying her hand upon his arm to insure his attention,—"I understand the mother of this girl who is coming was his favorite daughter."

"Well," surprised at her look and tone, which have both grown intense,—"that is not my fault. You need not cast such an upbraiding glance on me."

"What if he should alter his will in her favor? More unlikely things have happened. I cannot divest myself of fear when I think of her. Should he at this late hour repent him of his injustice toward his dead daughter, he might——" She pauses. "But rather than that——" Here she pauses again; and her lids falling somewhat over her eyes, leave them small but wonderfully deep.

"What, Marcia?" asks Philip, with a sudden anxiety he would willingly suppress, were it not for his strong desire to learn what her thoughts may be.

For a full minute she makes him no reply, and then, as though hardly aware of his question, goes on meditatively.

"Philip, how frail he is!" she says, almost in a whisper, as the chair goes creaking beneath the window. "Yet what a hold he has on life! And it is I give him that hold,—I am the rope to which he clings. At night, when sleep is on him and lethargy succeeds to sleep, mine is the duty to rouse him and minister such medicines as charm him back to life. Should I chance to forget, his dreams might end in death. Last night, as I sat by his bedside, I thought, were I to forget,—what then?"

"Ay, what then? Of what are you thinking?" cries her companion, in a tone of suppressed horror, resisting by a passionate movement the spell she had almost cast upon him by the power of her low voice and deep, dark eyes. "Would you kill the old man?"

"Nay, it is but to forget," replies she, dreamily, her whole mind absorbed in her subject, unconscious of the effect she is producing. She has not turned her eyes upon him (else surely the terrible fear and shrinking in his must have warned her to go no further), but has her gaze fixed rather on the hills and woods and goodly plains for which she is not only willing but eager to sell all that is best of her. "To remain passive, and then"—straightening her hand in the direction of the glorious view that spreads itself before them—"all this would be ours."

"Murderess!" cries the young man, in a low, concentrated tone, his voice vibrating with disgust and loathing as he falls back from her a step or two.

The word thrills her. With a start she brings herself back to the present moment, turns to look at him, and, looking slowly, learns the truth. The final crash has come, her fears are realized; she has lost him forever.

"What is it, Philip? what word have you used?" she asks, with nervous vehemence, as though only half comprehending; "why do you look at me so strangely? I have said nothing,—nothing that should make you shrink from me."

"You have said enough,"—with a shiver, "too much; and your face said more. I desire you never to speak to me on the subject again."

"Say rather for this lucky chance I have afforded you of breaking off a detested engagement," cries she, with sudden bitterness. "Hypocrite! how long have you been awaiting it?"

"You are talking folly, Marcia. What reason have I ever given you that you should make me such a speech? But for what has just now happened,—but for your insinuations——"

"No?" searchingly, drawing a step nearer him. "Are you sure? Have you never wished our grandfather dead?"

"I may have wished it," confesses he, reluctantly, as though compelled to frankness, "but to compass my wish—to——"

"If you have wished it you have murdered," returns she, with conviction. "You have craved his death: what is that but unuttered crime? There is little difference; it is but one step the more in the same direction. And I,—in what way am I the greater sinner? I have but said aloud what you whisper to your heart."

"Be silent," cries he, fiercely. "All your sophistry fails to make me a partner in your guilt."

"I am the honester of the two," she goes on, rapidly, unheeding his anger. "As long as the accursed thing is unspoken, you see no harm in it; once it makes itself heard, you start and sicken, because it hurts your tender susceptibilities. Yet hear me, Philip." Suddenly changing her tone of passionate scorn to one of entreaty as passionate, "Do not cast me off for a few idle words. They have done no harm. Let us be as we were."

"Impossible," replies he coldly, unloosing her fingers from his arm, all the dislike and loathing of which he is capable compressed into the word. "You have destroyed my trust in you."

A light that means despair flashes across Marcia's face as she stands in all her dark but rather evil beauty before him; then suddenly she falls upon her knees.

"Philip, have pity on me!" she cries painfully. "I love you,—I have only you. Here in this house I am alone, a stranger in my own land. Do not you too turn from me. Ah! you should be the last to condemn, for if I dreamed of sin it was for your sake. And after all, what did I say? The thought that this girl's coming might upset the dream of years agitated me, and I spoke—I—but I meant nothing—nothing." She drags herself on her knees nearer to him and attempts to take his hand. "Darling, do not be so stern. Forgive me. If you cast me off, Philip, you will kill not only my body, but all that is good in me."

"Do not touch me," returns he, harshly, the vein of brutality in him coming to the surface as he pushes her from him and with slight violence unclasps her clinging fingers.

The action is in itself sufficient, but the look that accompanies it—betraying as it does even more disgust than hatred—stings her to self-control. Slowly she rises to her feet. As she does so, a spasm, a contraction near her heart, causes her to place her hand involuntarily against her side, while a dull gray shadow covers her face.

"You mean," she says, speaking with the utmost difficulty, "that all—is at an end—between us."

It is five o'clock in the afternoon, and Herst is the richer by one more inmate. Molly has arrived, has been received by Marcia, has pressed cheeks with her, has been told she is welcome in a palpably lying tone, and finally has been conducted to her bedroom. Such a wonder of a bedroom compared with Molly's snug but modest sanctum at home,—a very marvel of white and blue, and cloudy virginal muslins, and filled with innumerable luxuries.

Molly, standing in the centre of it,—unaware that she is putting all its other beauties to shame—gazes round her in silent admiration, appreciates each pretty trifle to its fullest, and finally feels a vague surprise at the curious sense of discontent that pervades her.

Her reception so far has not been cordial. Marcia's cold unloving eyes have pierced her and left a little cold frozen spot within her heart. She is chilled and puzzled, and with all her strength is wishing herself home again at Brooklyn, with John and Letty, and all the merry, tormenting, kindly children.

"What shall I do for you now, Miss Molly?" asks Sarah, presently breaking in upon these dismal broodings. This antiquated but devoted maiden has stationed herself at the farthest end of the big room close to Molly's solitary trunk (as though suspicious of lurking thieves), and bears upon her countenance a depressed, not to say dejected, expression. "Like mistress, like maid," she, too, is filled with the gloomiest forebodings.

"Open my trunk and take out my clothes," says Molly, making no effort at disrobing, beyond a melancholy attempt at pulling off her gloves, finger by finger.

"Leastways as far as I could judge with looking through the corners of my eyes as I came along them big passages. From every door a'most there popped a head bedizened with gaudy ribbons, and I suppose the bodies was behind 'em."

"Let us hope so, Sarah." Rising, and laughing rather hysterically. "The bare idea that those mysterious heads should lack a decent finish fills me with the liveliest horror." Then, in a brighter tone, "Why, what is the matter with you, Sarah? You look as if you had fallen into the very lowest depths of despair."

"Not so much that as lonesome, miss; they all seem so rich and grand that I feel myself out of place."

Molly smiles a little. After all, in spite of the difference in their positions, it is clear to her that she and her maid share pretty much the same fears.

"There was a very proud look about the set of their caps," says Sarah, waxing more and more dismal. "Suppose they were to be uncivil to me, Miss Molly, on account of my being country-reared and my gowns not being, as it were, in the height of the fashion, what should I do? It is all this, miss, that is weighing me down."

"Suppose, on the contrary," says her mistress, with a little defiant ring in her tone, stepping to the glass and surveying her beautiful face with eager scrutiny, "you were to make a sensation, and cut out all these supercilious dames in your hall, how would it be then? Come, Sarah, let me teach you your new duties. First take my hat, now my jacket, now——"

"No," with a laugh,—"I think not. I had one trial of you in that respect; it was enough."

"But all maids do their young ladies' hair, don't they, miss? I doubt they will altogether look down upon me when they find I can't do even that."

"I shall ring for you every day when I come to dress for dinner. Once in my room, who shall know whether you do my hair or not? And I faithfully promise you, Sarah, to take such pains with the performance myself as shall compel every one in the house to admire it and envy me my excellent maid. 'See Miss Massereene's hair!' they will say, in tearful whispers. 'Oh, that I too could have a Sarah!' By the bye, call me Miss Massereene for the future, not Miss Molly,—at least until we get home again."

"Yes, Miss—Massereene. Law! it do sound odd," says Sarah, with a little respectful laugh, "but high-sounding too, I think. I do hope I shan't forget it, Miss Molly. Perhaps you will be good enough to remind me when I go wrong?"

A knock at the door prevents reply. Molly cries out, "Come in," and, turning, finds herself face to face with a fine old woman, who stands erect, and firm, in spite of her many years, in the doorway. She is clad in a sombre gown of brown silk, and has an old-fashioned chain round her neck that hangs far below her waist, which is by no means the most contemptible portion of her.

"I beg your pardon, Miss Massereene; I could not resist coming to see if you were quite comfortable," she says, respectfully.

"Quite, thank you," replies Molly, in a degree puzzled. "You are"—smiling—"the housekeeper?"

"I am. And you, my dear,"—regarding her anxiously,—"are every inch an Amherst, in spite of your bonny blue eyes. You will forgive the freedom of my speech," says this old dame, with an air that would not have disgraced a duchess, "when I tell you I nursed your mother."

"Ah! did you?" says Molly, flushing a little, and coming up to her eagerly, with both hands extended, to kiss the fair old face that is smiling so kindly on her. "But how could one think it? You are yet so fresh, so good to look at."

"Tut, my dear," says the old lady, mightily pleased nevertheless. "I am old enough to have nursed your grandmother. And now can I do anything for you?"

"You can," replies Molly, turning toward Sarah, who is regarding them with an expression that might at any moment mean either approval or displeasure. "This is my maid. We are both strangers here. Will you see that she is made happy?"

"Come with me, Sarah, and I will make you acquainted with our household," says Mrs. Nesbitt, promptly.

As the door closes behind them, leaving her to her own society, a rather unhappy shade falls across Molly's face.

A sensation of isolation—loneliness—oppresses her. Indeed, her discouraging reception has wounded her more than she cares to confess even to her own heart. If they did not want her at Herst, why had they invited her? If they did want her, surely they might have met her with more civility; and on this her first visit her grandfather at least might have been present to bid her welcome.

Oh, that this hateful day were at an end! Oh, for some way of making the slow hours run hurriedly!

With careful fingers she unfastens and pulls down all her lovely hair until it falls in rippling masses to her waist. As carefully, as lingeringly, she rolls it up again into its usual artistic knot at the back of her head. With still loitering movements she bathes the dust of travel from her face and hands, adjusts her soft gray gown, puts straight the pale-blue ribbon at her throat, and now tells herself, with a triumphant smile, that she has got the better of at least half an hour of this detested day.

Alas! alas! the little ormolu ornament that ticks with such provoking empressement upon the chimney-piece assures her that her robing has occupied exactly ten minutes from start to finish.

This will never do. She cannot well spend her evening in her own room, no matter how eagerly she may desire to do so; so, taking heart of grace, she makes a wicked moue at her own rueful countenance in the looking-glass, and, opening her door hastily, lest her courage fail her, runs down the broad oak staircase into the hall beneath.

Quick-witted, as women of her temperament always are, she remembers the situation of the room she had first entered, and, passing by all the other closed doors, goes into it, to find herself once more in Marcia's presence.

"Ah! you have come," says Miss Amherst, looking up languidly from her macrame, with a frozen smile that owes its one charm to its brevity. "You have made a quick toilet." With a supercilious glance at Molly's Quakerish gown, that somehow fits her and suits her to perfection. "You are not fatigued?"

"Fatigued?" Smiling, with a view to conciliation. "Oh, no; it is such a little journey."

"So it is. How strange this should be our first meeting, living so close to each other as we have done! My grandfather's peculiar disposition of course accounts for it: he has quite a morbid horror of aliens."

"Is one's granddaughter to be considered an alien?" asks Molly, with a laugh. "The suggestion opens an enormous field for reflection. If so, what are one's nephews, and one's nieces, and cousins, first, second, and third? Poor third-cousins! it makes one sad to think of them."

"I think perhaps Mr. Amherst's incivility toward you arose from his dislike to your mother's marriage. You don't mind my speaking, do you? It was more than good of you to come here at all, considering the circumstances,—I don't believe I could have been so forgiving,—but I know he felt very bitterly on the subject, and does so still."

"Does he? How very absurd! Amhersts cannot always marry Amhersts, nor would it be a good thing if they could. I suppose, however, even he can be forgiving at times. Now, for instance, how did he get over your father's marriage?"

Marcia raises her head quickly. Her color deepens. She turns a glance full of displeased suspicion upon her companion, who meets it calmly, and with such an amount of innocence in hers as might have disarmed a Machiavelli. Not a shadow of intention mars her expression; her widely-opened blue eyes contain only a desire to know; and Marcia, angry, disconcerted, and puzzled, lets her gaze return to her work. A dim idea that it will not be so easy to ride rough-shod over this country-bred girl as she had hoped oppresses her, while a still more unpleasant doubt that her intended snubbing has recoiled upon her own head adds to her discontent. Partly through policy and partly with a view to showing this recreant Molly the rudeness of her ways, she refuses an answer to her question and starts a different topic in a still more freezing tone.

"Quite all that, thank you," cordially. "And such a pretty room too!" (She is unaware as she speaks that it is one of the plainest the house contains.) "How large everything seems! When coming down through all those corridors and halls I very nearly lost my way. Stupid of me was it not? But it is an enormous house, I can see."

"Is it? Perhaps so. Very much the size of most country houses, I should say. And yet, no doubt, to a stranger it would seem large. Your own home is not so?"

"Oh, no. If you could only see poor Brooklyn in comparison! It is the prettiest little place in all the world, I think; but then it is little. It would require a tremendous amount of genius to lose one's self in Brooklyn."

"How late it grows!" says Marcia, looking at the clock and rising. "The first bell ought to ring soon. Which would you prefer,—your tea here or in your own room? I always adopt the latter plan when the house is empty, and take it while dressing. By the bye, you have not seen—Mr. Amherst?"

"Has he not yet heard of my arrival?" asks Molly, impulsively, some faint indignation stirring in her breast.

"He knew you were coming, of course; I am not sure if he remembered the exact hour. If you will come with me, I will take you to the library."

Across the hall in nervous silence Molly follows her guide until they reach a small anteroom, beyond which lies the "chamber of horrors," as, in spite of all her efforts to be indifferent, Molly cannot help regarding it.

Marcia knocking softly at the door, a feeble but rasping voice bids them enter; and, throwing it widely open, Miss Amherst beckons her cousin to follow her into the presence of her dreaded grandfather.

Although looking old, and worn, and decrepit, he is still evidently in much better health than when last we saw him, trundling up and down the terraced walk, endeavoring to catch some faint warmth from the burning sun.

His eyes are darker and fiercer, his nose a shade sharper, his temper evidently in an uncorked condition; although he may be safely said to be on the mend, and, with regard to his bodily strength, in a very promising condition.

Before him is a table covered with papers, from which he looks up ungraciously, as the girls enter.

"I have brought you Eleanor Massereene," says Marcia, without preamble, in a tone so kind and gentle as makes Molly even at this awful moment marvel at the change.

If it could be possible for the old man's ghastly skin to assume a paler hue, at this announcement, it certainly does so. With suppressed but apparent eagerness he fixes his eyes upon the new grandchild, and as he does so his hand closes involuntarily upon the paper beneath it; his mouth twitches; a shrinking pain contracts his face. Yes, she is very like her dead mother.

"How long has she been in my house?" he asks, presently, after a pause that to Molly has been hours, still with his gaze upon her, though beyond this prolonged examination of her features he has vouchsafed her no welcome.

"And it is nearly six. Pray why have I been kept so long in ignorance of her arrival?" Not once as he speaks does he look at Marcia, or at anything but Molly's pale, pretty, disturbed face.

"Dear grandpapa, you have forgotten. Yesterday I told you the hour we expected her. But no doubt, with so many important matters upon your mind," with a glance at the littered table, "you forgot this one."

"I did," slowly, "so effectually as to make me doubt having ever heard it. No, Marcia, no more excuses, no more lies: you need not explain. Be satisfied that whatever plans you formed to prevent my bidding your cousin welcome to my house were highly successful. At intrigue you are a proficient. I admire proficiency in all things,—but—for the future—be so good as to remember that I never forget."

"Dear grandpapa," with a pathetic but very distinct sigh, "it is very hard to be misjudged!"

"Granted. Though at times one must own it has its advantages. Now, if for instance I could only bring myself, now and again, to misjudge you, how very much more conducive to the accomplishment of your aims it would be! Leave the room. I wish to speak to your cousin."

Reluctant, but not daring to disobey, and always with the same aggrieved expression upon her face, Marcia withdraws.

As the door closes behind her, Mr. Amherst rises, and holds out one hand to Molly.

"You are welcome," he says, quietly, but coldly, and evidently speaking with an effort.

Molly, coming slowly up to him, lays her hand in his, while entertaining an earnest hope that she will not be called upon to seal the interview with a kiss.

"Thank you," she says, faintly, not knowing what else to say, and feeling thoroughly embarrassed by the fixity and duration of his regard.

"Yes," speaking again, slowly, and absently. "You are welcome—Eleanor. I am glad I have seen you before—my death. Yes—you are very like—— Go!" with sudden vehemence, "leave me; I wish to be alone."

Sinking back heavily into his arm-chair, he motions her from him, and Molly, finding herself a moment later once more in the anteroom, breathes a sigh of thankfulness that this her first strange interview with her host is at an end.

"Dress me quickly, Sarah," she says, as she gains her own room about half an hour later, and finds that damsel awaiting her. "And make me look as beautiful as possible; I have yet another cousin to investigate, and something tells me the third will be the charm, and that I shall get on with him. Young men"—ingenuously, and forgetting she is expressing her thoughts aloud—"are certainly a decided improvement on young women. If, however, there is really any understanding between Philip and Marcia, it will rather spoil my amusement and—still I need not torment myself beforehand, as that is a matter I shall learn in five minutes."

"There's a very nice young man down-stairs, miss," breaks in Sarah, at this juncture, with a simper that has the pleasing effect of making one side of her face quite an inch shorter than the other.

"What! you have seen him, then?" cries Molly, full of her own idea, and oblivious of dignity. "Is he handsome, Sarah? Young? Describe him to me."

"Yes! Do go on, Sarah, and take that smile off your face: it makes you look downright imbecile. 'Short!' 'Stout!' Good gracious! of what on earth could Teddy have been thinking."

"His manners is most agreeable, miss, and altogether he is a most gentleman-like young man."

"Not a bit stiffish, or uppish, as one might expect, considering where he come from. And indeed, Miss Molly," with an irrepressible giggle, "he did say as how——"

"Sarah," exclaims Miss Massereene, sinking weakly into a chair, "do you mean to tell me my cousin Philip—Captain Shadwell—told you—had the impertinence to speak to you about——"

"Law, Miss Molly, whatever are you thinking about?—Captain Shadwell! why, I haven't so much as laid eyes on him! I was only speaking of his young man, what goes by the name of Peters."

"Ridiculous!" cries Molly, impatiently; then bursting into a merry laugh, she laughs so heartily and so long that the somewhat puzzled Sarah feels compelled to join.

"'Short, and stout, and gentlemanly'—ha, ha, ha! And so Peters said you were bewidging, Sarah? Ah! take care, and do not let him turn your head: if you do, you will lose all your fun, and gain little for it. Is that a bell? Oh, Sarah! come, dispatch, dispatch, or I shall be late, and eternally disgraced."

The robing proceeds, and when finished leaves Molly standing before her maid with (it must be confessed) a very self-satisfied smirk upon her countenance.

"How am I looking, Sarah? I want a candid opinion; but on no account say anything disparaging."

"Lovely!" says Sarah, with comfortable haste. "There's no denying it, Miss Molly. Miss Amherst below, for all her dark hair and eyes (and I don't say but that she is handsome), could not hold a candle to you, as the saying is—and that's a fact."

"Is there anything in all the world," says Miss Massereene, "so sweet as sincere praise? Sarah, you are a charming creature. Good-bye; I go—let us hope—to victory. But if not,—if I find the amiable relatives refuse to acknowledge my charms I shall at least know where to come to receive the admiration I feel I so justly deserve!"

So saying, with a little tragic flourish, she once more wends her way down-stairs, trailing behind her her pretty white muslin gown, with its flecks of coloring, blue as her eyes, into the drawing-room.

The close of autumn brings to us a breath of winter. Already the daylight has taken to itself wings and flown partially away; and though, as yet, a good deal of it through compassion lingers, it is but a half-hearted dallying that speaks of hurry to be gone.

The footman, a young person, of a highly morbid and sensitive disposition, abhorrent of twilights, has pulled down all the blinds in the sitting-rooms, and drawn the curtains closely, has lit the lamps, and poked into a blaze the fire, that Mr. Amherst has the wisdom to keep burning all the year round in the long chilly room.

Before the fire, with one arm on the mantel-piece, and one foot upon the fender, stands a young man, in an attitude suggestive of melancholy. Hearing the rustling of a woman's garments, he looks up, and, seeing Molly, stares at her, first lazily, then curiously, then amazedly, then——

She is quite close to him; she can almost touch him; indeed, no farther can she go without putting him to one side; and still he has not stirred. The situation grows embarrassing, so embarrassing that, what with the ludicrous silence and Philip Shadwell's eyes which betray a charmed astonishment, Molly feels an overpowering desire to laugh. She compromises matters by smiling, and lowering her eyelids just half an inch.

"I beg your pardon," exclaims Philip, in his abstraction, moving in a direction closer to the fire, rather than from it. "I had no idea I was. I"—doubtfully, "am I speaking to Miss Massereene?"

"We are cousins, then," says Molly, kindly, as though desirous of putting him at his ease. "I hope we shall be, what is far better, friends."

"We must be; we are friends," returns he, hastily, so full of surprise and self-reproach as to be almost unconscious of his words.

Is this the country cousin full of freckles and mauvaise honte, who was to be pitied, and lectured, and taught generally how to behave?—whose ignorance was to draw forth groans from pit and gallery and boxes? A hot blush at his own unmeant impertinence thrills him from head to foot. Were she ever, by any chance, to hear what he had said. Oh, perish the thought!—it is too horrible!

"You should not stare so," she says, severely, with an adorable attempt at a frown. "And you need not look at me all at once, you know, because, as I am going to stay here a whole month, you will have plenty of time to do it by degrees, without fatiguing yourself. By the bye," reproachfully, "I have come a journey to-day, and am dreadfully tired, and you have never even offered me a chair; must I get one for myself?"

"You have driven any manners I may possess out of my head," replies he, laughing, too, and pushing toward her the coziest chair the room contains. "Your sudden entrance bewildered me; you came upon me like an apparition; more especially as people in this house never get to the drawing-room until exactly one minute before dinner is announced."

"Lest we should bore each other past forgiveness. Being together as we are every day, and all day long, one can easily imagine how a very little more pressure would smash the chains of politeness. You may have heard of the last straw and its disastrous consequences?"

"I have. I am sorry I frightened you. To-morrow night I shall know better, and shall leave you to your silent musings in peace."

"No; don't do that!" says her companion, earnestly. "On no account do that. I think the half-hour before dinner, sitting by the fire, alone, as we are now, the best of the whole day; that is, of course, if one spends it with a congenial companion."

"Try, then, by all means." In a moment or two,—"I should like to fathom your thoughts," says Molly. "When I came in, there was more than bewilderment in your face; it showed—how shall I express it? You looked as though you had expected something else?"

"I will tell you what I did not expect," he says, hastily, coloring a little. "How should I? It is so seldom one has the good luck to discover in autumn a rose belonging to June."

"Am I one?" asks she, looking with dangerous frankness into the dark eyes above her, that are telling her silently, eloquently, she is the fairest, freshest, sweetest queen of flowers in all the world.

The door opens, and Mr. Amherst enters, then Marcia. Philip straightens himself, and puts on his usual bored, rather sulky expression. Molly smiles upon her grumpy old host. He offers her his arm, Philip does the same to Marcia, and together they gain the dining-room.

It is an old, heavily wainscoted apartment, gloomy beyond words, so immense that the four who dine in it tonight appear utterly lost in its vast centre.

Marcia, in an evening toilet of black and ivory, sits at the head of the table, her grandfather opposite to her. Philip and Molly are vis-à-vis at the sides. Behind stand the footmen, as sleek and well-to-do, and imbecile, as one can desire.

There is a solemnity about the repast that strikes but fails to subdue Molly. It has a contrary effect, making her spirits rise, and creating in her a very mistaken desire for laughter. She is hungry too, and succeeds in eating a good dinner, while altogether she comes to the conclusion that it may not be wholly impossible to put in a very good time at Herst.

Never does she raise her eyes without encountering Philip's dark ones regarding her with the friendliest attention. This also helps to reassure her. A friend in need is a friend indeed, and this friend is handsome as well as kind, although there is a little something or other, a suppressed vindictiveness, about his expression, that repels her.

She compares him unfavorably with Luttrell, and presently lets her thoughts wander on to the glad fact that to-morrow will see the latter by her side, when indeed she will be in a position to defy fate,—and Marcia. Already she has learned to regard that dark-browed lady with distrust.

"Is any one coming to-morrow?" asks Mr. Amherst, à propos of Molly's reverie."

"I wonder if Luttrell will be much altered," says Philip; "browned, I suppose, by India, although his stay there was of the shortest."

"Oh, yes, very well," coloring a little. "That is, he was staying with us for a short time at Brooklyn."

"Staying with you?" her grandfather repeats, curiously. It is evidently a matter of wonder with them, her friendship with Tedcastle.

"Yes, he and John, my brother, are old friends. They were at school together, although John is much older, and he says——"

Mr. Amherst coughs, which means he is displeased, and turns his head away. Marcia gives an order to one of the servants in a very distinct tone. Philip smiles at Molly, and Molly, unconscious of offense, is about to return to the charge, and give a lengthened account of her tabooed brother, when luckily she is prevented by a voice from behind her chair, which says:

"I thought all women were prejudiced in favor of Moselle," says Philip, addressing her hastily, more from a view to hinder a recurrence to the forbidden topic than from any overweening curiosity to learn her taste in wines. "Are not you?"

"I am hardly in a position to judge," frankly, "as I have never tasted Moselle, and champagne only once. Have I shocked you? Is that a very lowering admission?"

Mr. Amherst coughs again. The corners of Marcia's mouth take a disgusted droop. Philip laughs out loud.

"On the contrary, it is a very refreshing one," he says, in an interested and deeply amused tone, "more especially in these degenerate days when most young ladies can tell one to a turn the precise age, price, and retailer of one's wines. May I ask when was this memorable 'once'?"

"At the races at Loaminster. Were you ever there? I persuaded my brother to take me there the spring before last, and he went."

"We were there that year, with a large party," says Marcia. "I do not remember seeing you on the stand."

"We were not on it. We drove over, John and I and Letty, in the little trap, a Norwegian, and dreadfully shaky it was, but we did not care, and we sat in it all day, and saw everything very well. Then a friend of John's, a man in the Sixty-second, came up, and asked to be introduced to me, and afterward others came, and persuaded us to have luncheon with them in their marquee. It was there," nodding at Philip, "I got the champagne. We had great fun, I remember, and altogether it was quite the pleasantest day I ever spent in my life."

As she speaks, she dimples, and blushes, and beams all over her pretty face as she recalls that day's past glories.

"The Sixty-second?" says Marcia. "I recollect. A very second-rate regiment I thought it. There was a Captain Milburd in it, I remember."

"That was John's friend," says Molly, promptly; "he was so kind to me that day. Did you like him?"

"Like him! A man all broad plaid and red tie. No, I certainly did not like him."

"His tie!" says Molly, laughing gayly at the vision she has conjured up,—"it certainly was red. As red as that rose," pointing to a blood-colored flower in the centre of a huge china bowl of priceless cost, that ornaments the middle of the table, and round which, being opposite to him, she has to peer to catch a glimpse of Philip. "It was the reddest thing I ever saw, except his complexion. But I forgave him, he was so good-natured."

"Does good-nature make up for everything?" asks Philip, dodging the bowl in his turn to meet her eyes.

"For most things. Grandpapa," pointing to a family portrait over the chimney-piece that has attracted her attention ever since her entrance, "whose is that picture?"

"Your grandmother's. It is like you, but," says the old man with his usual gracefulness, "it is ten times handsomer."

"Very like you," thinks the young man, gazing with ever increasing admiration at the exquisite tints and shades and changes in the living face before him, "only you are ten thousand times more beautiful!"

Slowly, and with much unnecessary delay, the dinner drags to an end, only to be followed by a still slower hour in the drawing-room.

Mr. Amherst challenges Philip to a game of chess, that most wearisome of games to the on-looker, and so arranges himself that his antagonist cannot, without risking his neck, bestow so much as a glance in Miss Massereene's direction.

Marcia gets successfully through two elaborate fantasies upon the piano, that require rather more than the correct brilliancy of her touch to make up for the incoherency of their composition; while Molly sits apart, dear soul, and wishes with much devoutness that the inventor of chess had been strangled at his birth.

At ten o'clock precisely Mr. Amherst rises, having lost his game, and a good deal of his temper, and expresses his intention of retiring without delay to his virtuous slumbers. Marcia asks Molly whether she too would not wish to go to her room after the day's fatigue; at which proposition Molly grasps with eagerness. Philip lights her candle,—they are in the hall together,—and then holds out his hand.

"Do you know we have not yet gone through the ceremony of shaking hands?" he says, with a kindly smile, and a still more kindly pressure; which I am afraid met with some faint return. Then he wishes her a good night's rest, and she wends her way up-stairs again, and knows the long-thought-of, hoped-for, much-dreaded day is at an end.

"Teddy is coming to-day," is Molly's first thought next morning, as, springing from her bed, she patters across the floor in her bare feet to the window, to see how the weather is going to greet her lover.

"He is coming." The idea sends through her whole frame a little thrill of protective gladness. How happy, how independent she will feel with her champion always near her! A sneer loses half its bitterness when resented by two instead of one, and Luttrell will be a sure partisan. Apart from all which, she is honestly glad at the prospect of so soon meeting him face to face.

Therefore it is that with shining eyes and uplifted head she takes her place at the breakfast-table, which gives the pleasantest meal at Herst—old Amherst being ever conspicuous by his absence at it.

"It will be a tête-à-tête breakfast," says Marcia, with a view to explanation. "Grandpapa never appears at this hour, nor—of late—does Philip."

"How unsociable!" says Molly, rather disappointed at the latter's defection. "Do they never come? All the year round?"

"Grandpapa never. But Philip, I presume, will return to his usual habits once the house begins to fill,—I mean, when the guests arrive."

"This poor little guest is evidently of small account," thinks Molly, rather piqued, and, as the thought crosses her mind, the door opens and Philip comes toward her.

"Long since. But I will take a cup of coffee from you now, if you will allow me."

"I hardly think you deserve it," remarks Molly, turning luminous, laughing eyes upon him. "Marcia has just been telling me of your bad habits. Fancy your preferring your breakfast all alone to having it with——"

"You?" interrupts he, quickly. "I admit your argument; it was bearish; but I was particularly engaged this morning. You shall not have to complain of my conduct in the future, however, as I am resolved to mend my ways. See how you have improved me already."

"No. It all hinges on the fact that the iron was hot. There is no knowing what you may not do with me before you leave, if you will only take the trouble to teach me. Some more toast?"

Marcia grows a shade paler, and lets one cup rattle awkwardly against another. Have they forgotten her very presence?

"I have not much fancy for the rôle of teacher," goes on Molly, archly: "I have heard it is an arduous and thankless one. Besides, I believe you to be so idle that you would disgrace my best efforts."

"Do you? Then you wrong me. On the contrary, you would find me a very apt pupil,—ambitious, too, and anxious to improve under your tuition."

"Suppose," breaks in Marcia, with deadly civility, "you finish your tête-à-tête in the drawing-room. We have quite done breakfast, I think, and one wearies of staring at the very prettiest china after a bit. Will you be good enough to ring the bell, Philip?"

"Our tête-à-tête, as you call it, must be postponed," says Philip, smiling, rising to obey her order; "I am still busy, and must return to my work. Indeed, I only left it to pay you a flying visit."

"Then you do actually work, sometimes?" says that young lady, with exaggerated surprise and uplifted lids.

"What a speech, coming from an ambitious pupil!" cries she, gayly. "Ah! did I not judge you rightly a moment ago when I accused you of idleness?"

Philip laughs, and disappears, while Molly follows Marcia into a small drawing-room, a sort of general boudoir, where the ladies of the household are in the habit of assembling after breakfast, and into which, sooner or later, the men are sure to find their way.

Marcia settles down to the everlasting macrame work on which she seems perpetually engaged, while indolent Molly sits calmly, and it must be confessed very contentedly, with her hands before her.

"I fear you will find Herst Royal dull. There is so little to amuse one in a house where the host is an invalid. Do you read?"

"Sometimes," says Molly, studying her companion curiously, and putting on the air of ignorance so evidently expected.

"Yes? that is well. Reading is about the one thing we have to occupy our time here. In the library you will probably be able to suit yourself. What will you prefer? an English work? or"—superciliously—"perhaps French? You are without doubt a French scholar."

"If you mean that I consider myself complete mistress of the French language," says Molly, meekly, "I must say no."

"Ah! of course not. The remote country parts in which you live afford, I dare say, few opportunities of acquiring accomplishments."

"We have a National School," says Molly, with increasing mildness, and an impassive countenance.

"You are very accomplished, I suppose," says Molly, presently, her voice full of resigned melancholy. "You can paint and draw?"

"How fortunate you are!" she says aloud. "How I envy you! Why, there is positively nothing you cannot do! Even that macrame, which seems to me more difficult than all the other things I have mentioned, you have entirely mastered. Now, I could not remember all those different knots to save my life. How clever you are! How attractive men must find you!" Molly sighs.

A shade crosses Marcia's face. Her eyelids quiver. Although the shaft (be it said to Molly's praise) was innocently shot, still it reached her cousin's heart, for has she not failed in attracting the one man she so passionately loves?

"I really hardly know," Miss Amherst says, coldly. "I—don't go in for that sort of thing. And you,—do you paint?"

("'The Annen Polka,' and on memorable occasions 'The Battle of Prague,'" thinks Marcia, comfortably.) "You sing," she says.

("'Rosalie the Prairie Flower,' and the 'Christy Minstrels' generally," concludes Marcia, inwardly.) "That is charming," she says out loud: "it is so long since we have had any one here with a talent for music."

"Oh," says Molly, biting a little bit off her nail, and then examining her finger in an embarrassed fashion, "you must not use the word talented, that implies so much, and I—really you know I—— Why," starting to her feet, and regaining all her usual impulsive gayety, "that is surely Philip walking across the lawn, and he said he was so busy. Can we not go out, Marcia? The day is so lovely."

"If you want Philip, I dare say one of the servants will bring him to you," says Marcia, insolently.

Just before luncheon the Darleys arrive. Henry Darley, tall, refined, undemonstrative; Mrs. Darley, small and silly, with flaxen hair, blue eyes, pink and white complexion, and a general wax-dollyness about her; and just such a tiny, foolishly obstinate mouth as usually goes with a face like hers. She is vain, but never ill-natured, unless it suits her purpose; frivolous, but in the main harmless; and, although indifferent to her husband,—of whom she is utterly unworthy,—takes care to be thoroughly respectable. Full of the desire, but without the pluck, to go altogether wrong, she skirts around the edges of her pet sins, yet having a care that all those who pass by shall see her garments free of stain.

"I understand my husband, and my husband understands me," she is in the habit of saying to those who will take the trouble to listen; which is strictly true as regards the latter part of the speech, though perhaps the former is not so wise an assertion.

"So glad, dear, so charmed to make your acquaintance. Have always felt such a deep interest in your poor dear mother's sad but romantic story. So out of the common as it was, you know, and delightfully odd, and—and—all that. Of course you are aware there is a sort of cousinship between us. My father married your——" and so on, and on, and on.

She talks straight through lunch to any one and every one without partiality; although afterward no one can remember what it was she was so eloquent about.

"Tedcastle not come?" she says, presently, catching Marcia's eye. "I quite thought he was here. What an adorable boy he was! I do hope he is not changed. If India has altered him, it will be quite too bad."

"He may come yet," replies Marcia; "though I now think it unlikely. When writing he said to-day, or to-morrow; and with him that always means to-morrow. He is fond of putting off; his second thoughts are always his best."

"Always," thinks Molly, angrily, feeling suddenly a keen sense of sure disappointment. What does she know about him? After all he said on parting he must, he will come to-day.

Yet somehow, spite of this comforting conclusion, her spirits sink, her smile becomes less ready, her luncheon grows flavorless. Something within compels her to believe that not until the morrow shall she see her lover.

When they leave the dining-room she creeps away unnoticed, and, donning her hat, sallies forth alone into the pleasant wood that surrounds the house.

For a mile or two she walks steadily on, crunching beneath her feet with a certain sense of vicious enjoyment those early leaves that already have reached death. How very monotonous all through is a big wood! Trees, grass, sky overhead! Sky, grass, trees.

She pulls a few late wild flowers that smile up at her coaxingly, and turns them round and round within her fingers, not altogether tenderly.

What a fuss poets, and painters, and such-like, make about flowers, wild ones especially! When all is said, there is a terrible sameness about them; the same little pink ones here, the same little blue ones there; here the inevitable pale yellow, there the pure warm violet. Well, no doubt there is certainly a wonderful variety—but still——

Looking up suddenly from her weak criticism, she sees coming quickly toward her—very close to her—Teddy Luttrell.

With a glad little cry, she flings the ill-treated flowers from her and runs to him with hands outstretched.

"You have come," she cries, "after all! I knew you would; although she said you wouldn't. Oh, Teddy, I had quite given you up."

Luttrell takes no notice of this contradictory speech. With his arms round her, he is too full of the intense happiness of meeting after separation the beloved, to heed mere words. His eyes are fastened on her perfect face.

How more than fair she is! how in his absence he has misjudged her beauty! or is it that she grows in excellence day by day? Not in all his lover's silent raptures has he imagined her half as lovely as she now appears standing before him, her hands clasped in his, her face flushed with unmistakable joy at seeing him again.

"Darling, darling!" he says, with such earnest delight in his tones that she returns one of his many kisses, out of sheer sympathy. For though glad as she is to welcome him as a sure ally at Herst, she hardly feels the same longing for the embrace that he (with his heart full of her alone) naturally does.

"You look as if you were going to tell me I have grown tall," she says, amused at his prolonged examination of her features. "John always does, when he returns from London, with the wild hope of keeping me down. Have I?"

"Silly boy, and I have seen all the disimprovements in you long ago. I have also seen that you are wearing an entirely new suit of clothes. Such reckless extravagance! but they are very becoming, and I am fond of light gray, so you are forgiven. Why did you not come sooner? I have been longing for you. Oh, Teddy, I don't like Marcia or grandpapa a bit; and Philip has been absent nearly all the time; you said you would come early."

"So I did, by the earliest train; you could hardly have left the house when I arrived, and then I started instantly to find you. My own dear darling," with a sigh of content, "how good it is to see you again, and how well you are looking!"

"Am I?" laughing. "So are you, disgracefully well. You haven't a particle of feeling, or you would be emaciated by this time. Now confess you did not miss me at all."

"Were I to speak forever, I could not tell you how much. Are you not 'the very eyes of me'?" says the young man, fondly.

"That is a very nonsensical quotation," says Molly, gayly. "Were you to see with my eyes, just consider how different everything would appear. Now, for instance, I would never have so far forgotten myself as to fall so idiotically and ridiculously in love, as you did, with beautiful Molly Massereene!"

At this little touch of impertinence they both laugh merrily. After which, with some hesitation, and a rather heightened color, Tedcastle draws a case from his pocket, and presents it to her.

"I brought you a—a present," he says, "because I know you are fond of pretty things."

As she opens the case and sees within it, lying on its purple velvet bed, a large dull gold locket, with a wreath of raised forget-me-nots in turquoises and enamel on one side, she forms her lips into a round "Oh!" of admiration and delight, more satisfactory than any words.

"Do you like it? I am so glad! I saw it one day, quite accidentally, in a window, and at once it reminded me of you. I thought it would exactly suit you. Do you remember down by the river-side that night, after our first important quarrel, when I asked you to marry me?"

"You had forget-me-nots in your hands then, and in your dress. I can never forget you, as you looked at that moment; and those flowers will ever be associated with you in my mind. Surely they are the prettiest that grow. I call them 'my sweet love's flower.'"

"How fond you are of me!" she says, wistfully, something like moisture in her eyes, "and," turning her gaze again upon his gift, "you are too good: you are always thinking how to please me. There is only one thing wanting to make this locket perfect," raising her liquid eyes to his again, "and that is your face inside it."

At which words, you may be sure, Luttrell is repaid over and over again all the thought and care he has expended on the choosing of the trinket.

"And so you are not in love with Herst?" he says, presently, as they move on through the sweet wood, his arm around her.

"With Herst? No, I have no fault to find with Herst; the place is beautiful. But I confess I do not care about my grandfather or Marcia: of the two I prefer my grandfather, but that is saying very little. Philip alone has been very nice to me,—indeed, more than kind."

"Oh, there is nothing between them; I am sure of that. They either hate each other or else familiarity has bred contempt between them, and they avoid each other all they can, and never speak unless compelled. For instance, she says to him, 'Tea or coffee, Philip?' and he makes her a polite reply; or he says to her, 'Shall I stir the fire for you?' and she makes him a polite reply. But it can hardly be called a frantic attachment."

"In our case you have all the franticness to yourself," she says; but as she says it she puts her own soft little hand over the one that encircles her waist, to take the sting out of her words; though why she said it puzzles even herself: nevertheless there is great truth, in her remark, and he knows it.

"Then Philip is handsome," she says: "it is quite a pleasure to look at him. And I admire him very much."

"He is a good-looking fellow," reluctantly, and as though it were a matter of surprise nature's having bestowed beauty upon Philip Shadwell, "but surly."

"Oh, of course not to you! A man must be a brute to be uncivil to a woman. And I don't say he is that," slowly, and as though it were yet an undecided point whether Philip should be classed with the lower creation or not. "Do not let your admiration for him go too far, darling; remember——"

"About that," interrupts she, hurriedly, "you have something to remember also. Your promise to keep our engagement a dead secret. You will not break it?"

"I never," a little stiffly, "break a promise. You need not have reminded me of this one."

Glancing up at her companion stealthily, Molly can see his lips are in a degree compressed, and that for the first time since their reunion his eyes are turned determinedly from her. Her heart smites her. So good as he is to her, she has already hurt and wounded him.

With a little caressing, tender movement, she rubs her cheek up and down against his sleeve for a moment or two, and then says, softly:

"Are you cross with me, Teddy? Don't then. I am so glad, so happy, to have you with me again. Do not spoil this one good hour by putting a nasty unbecoming little frown upon your forehead. Come, turn your face to me again: when you look at me, I know you will smile, for my sake."

The morrow brings new faces, and Herst is still further enlivened by the arrival of two men from some distant barracks,—one so tall, and the other so diminutive, as to call for an immediate joke about "the long and the short of it."

Captain Mottie is a jolly, genial little soul, with a perpetual look on all occasions as though he couldn't help it, and just one fault, a fatal tendency toward punning of the weakest description with which he hopes in vain to excite the risibility of his intimates. Having a mind above disappointment, however, he feels no depression on marking the invariable silence that follows his best efforts, and, with a perseverance worthy of a better cause, only nerves himself for fresh failures.

Nature, having been unprodigal to him in the matter of height, makes up for it generously in the matter of breadth, with such lavish generosity, indeed, that he feels the time has come when, with tears in his eyes, he must say "no" to his bitter beer.

His chum, Mr. Longshanks (commonly called "Daddy Longlegs," on account of the length of his lower limbs), is his exact counterpart, being as silent as the other is talkative; seldom exerting himself, indeed, to shine in conversation, or break the mysterious quiet that envelops him, except when he faithfully (though unsmilingly) helps out his friend's endeavors at wit, by saying "ha! ha!" when occasion calls for it. He has a red nose that is rather striking and suggests expense. He has also a weakness for gaudy garments, and gets himself up like a showy commercial traveler.

They are both related in some far-off manner to their host, though how, I believe, both he and they would be puzzled to explain. Still, the relationship beyond dispute is there, which is everything. Enfin they are harmless beings, such as come in useful for padding purposes in country houses during the winter and autumn seasons, being, according to their friends' account, crack shots, "A1 at billiards," and "beggars to ride."

It is four o'clock. The house is almost deserted. All the men have been shooting since early morning. Only Molly and Marcia remain in possession of the sitting-room that overlooks the graveled walk, Mrs. Darley having accompanied Mr. Amherst in his customary drive.

The sound of wheels coming quickly down the avenue compels Molly to glance up from the book she is enjoying.

"Somebody is coming," she says to Marcia; and Marcia, rising with more alacrity than is her wont, says, "It must be Lady Stafford," and goes into the hall to receive her guest. Molly, full of eager curiosity to see this cousin of Tedcastle's whose story has so filled her with interest, rises also, and cranes her neck desperately round the corner of the window to try and catch a glimspe of her, but in vain, the unfriendly porch prevents her, and, sinking back into her seat, she is fain to content herself by listening to the conversation that is going on in the hall between Marcia and the new arrival.

"Oh, Marcia, is that you?" says a high, sweet voice, with a little complaining note running through it, and then there is a pause, evidently filled up by an osculatory movement. "How odiously cool and fresh you do look! while I—what a journey it has been! and how out of the way! I really don't believe it was nearly so far the last time. Have the roads lengthened, or have they pushed the house farther on? I never felt so done up in my life."

"You do look tired, dear. Better go to your room at once, and let me send you up some tea."

"Not tea," says the sweet voice; "anything but that. I am quite too far gone for tea. Say sherry, Marcia, or—no,—Moselle. I think it is Moselle that does me good when I am fatigued to death."

"Maudie? Is she as fascinating as ever? I do hope, Marcia, you have got her young man for her this time, as she was simply unbearable last year."

"I have not," laughing: "it is a dead secret, but the fact is, he wouldn't come."

"I like that young man; though I consider he has sold us shamefully. Any one else?"

"The cousin! I am so glad. Anything new is such a relief. And I have heard she is beautiful: is she?"

"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder," quotes Marcia, in a low tone, and with a motion of her hand toward the open door inside which sits Molly, that sends Lady Stafford up-stairs without further parley.

"I don't know, really. She thinks she is,—which amounts to the same thing. You will see her in half an hour or so as fresh as though fatigue were a thing unknown."

"How does she do it?" asks Molly, curiously, who has imagined Lady Stafford by her tone to be in the last stage of exhaustion.

"Why? Does she—paint?" asks Molly, with hesitation, who has been taught to believe that all London women are a mixture of false hair, rouge, pearl powder, and belladonna.

"Paint!" with a polite disgust, "I should hope not. If you are a judge in that matter you will be able to see for yourself. I know nothing of such things, but I don't think respectable women paint."

"But," says Molly, who feels a sudden anger at her tone, and as sudden a desire to punish her for her insolence, opening her blue eyes innocently wide, "you are respectable, Marcia?"

"What do you mean by that?" growing pale with anger, even through that delicate soupçon of color that of late she has been compelled to use to conceal her pallor. "Do you mean to insinuate that I paint?"

"I certainly thought you did," still innocent, still full of wonder: "you said——"

"I would advise you for the future to restrain such thoughts: experience will teach you they show want of breeding. In the meantime, I beg you to understand that I do not paint."

"You are either extremely impertinent or excessively ignorant, or both!" says Marcia, rising to her full height, and turning flashing eyes upon her cousin, who is regarding her with the liveliest reproach. "I insist on knowing what you mean by your remarks."

"Why, have you forgotten all about those charming water-color sketches in the small gallery up-stairs?" exclaims Molly, with an airy irrepressible laugh. "There, don't be angry: I was only jesting; no one would for a moment suspect you of such a disreputable habit."

"Pray reserve your jests for those who may appreciate them," says Miss Amherst, in a low angry tone: "I do not. They are as vulgar as they are ill-timed."

"But I took a good rise out of her all the same," says Molly to herself, as she slips from the room full of malicious laughter.

Before dinner—not sooner—Lady Stafford makes her appearance, and quite dazzles Molly with her beauty and the sweetness of her manner. She seems in the gayest spirits, and quite corroborates all Marcia has said about her exhibiting no symptoms of fatigue. Her voice, indeed, still retains its sad tone, but it is habitual to her, and does not interfere with the attractive liveliness of her demeanor, but only adds another charm to the many she already possesses.

She is taller than Tedcastle has led Molly to believe, and looks even smaller than she really is. Her eyelids droop at the corners, and give her a pensive expression that softens the laughter of her blue eyes. Her nose is small and clever, her mouth very merry, her skin exquisite, though devoid of the blue veins that usually go with so delicate a white, and her hair is a bright, rich gold. She is extremely lovely, and, what is far better, very pleasing to the eye.

"I am much better," she says, gayly, addressing Marcia, and then, turning to Molly, holds out to her a friendly hand.

"Miss Massereene, I know," she smiles, looking at her, and letting a pleased expression overspread her features as she does so. "Marcia told me of your arrival; I have heard of you also from other people; but their opinion I must reserve until I have become your friend. At all events, they did not lie in their description. No, you must not cross-examine me; I will not tell what they said."

She is a decided addition to the household; they all find her so. Even Mr. Longshanks brightens up, and makes a solitary remark at dinner; but, as nobody catches it, he is hardly as unhappy as otherwise assuredly he would have been.

After dinner she proves herself as agreeable in the drawing-room (during that wretched half-hour devoid of men) as she had been when surrounded by them, and chatters on to Marcia and Molly of all things possible and impossible.

Presently, however, the conversation drifting toward people of whose existence Molly has hitherto been unaware, she moves a little apart from the other two, and amuses herself by turning over a book of Byron's beauties; while wishing heartily those stupid men would weary of their wine,—vain wish!

By degrees the voices on the other sofa wax fainter and fainter, then rise with sudden boldness, as Marcia, secure in her French—says in that language, evidently in answer to some remark, "No; just conceive it,—she is totally uneducated, that is, in the accepted meaning of the word. The very morning after her arrival she confessed to me she knew nothing of French, nothing to signify of music, nothing, in fact, of anything."

"But her air, her whole bearing,—it is inconceivable," says Lady Stafford. "She must have had some education surely."

"She spoke of a National School! Consider the horror of it! I expect her brother must be a very low sort of person. If she can read and write it is as much as we need hope for. That is the worst of living in one of those petty villages, completely out of society."

"What a pity, with her charming face and figure!" says Lady Stafford, also (I regret to say) so far forgetting herself as to speak in the language she believes falsely to be unknown to Molly.

"Yes, she is rather pretty," admits Marcia, against her will; "but beauty when attached to ignorance is only a matter of regret, as it seems to me."

The latter, whose own eyes have been fixed vacantly on some distant and invisible object outside in the dark garden, now rises, humming softly, and going toward the window presses her forehead against one of the cool panes. So stationed, she is out of sight and hearing.

The door opens, and the men come in by twos. Luttrell makes straight for Molly, and as an excuse for doing so says out loud:

"I don't sing," returns Molly, in a distinct and audible tone,—audible enough to make Marcia raise her shoulders and cast an "I told you so" glance at Cecil Stafford.

"I tell you I don't sing," she says, again, in a lower, more imperative tone, although even now she repents her of the ill-humor that has balked her of a revenge so ready to her hand. To sing a French song, with her divine voice, before Marcia! A triumph indeed!

All night long the conversation between her cousin and Lady Stafford rankles in her mind. What a foolish freak it was her ever permitting Marcia to think of her as one altogether without education! Instinct might have told that her cousin would not scruple about applying such knowledge to her disadvantage. And yet why is Marcia her enemy? How has she ever injured her? With what purpose does she seek to make her visit unpleasant to her?

And to speak contemptuously of her to Lady Stafford, of all people, whom already she likes well enough to covet her regard in return,—it is too bad. Not for worlds would she have had her think so poorly of her.

At all events she will lose no time in explaining, on the morrow; and with this determination full upon her she retires to rest, with some small comfort at her heart.

"By all means," returns the plaintive voice from within; and Molly, opening the door, finds Cecil has risen, and is coming forward eagerly to meet her.

"I knew your voice," says the blonde, gayly. "Come in and sit down, do. I am ennuyée to the last degree, and will accept it as a positive charity if you will devote half an hour to my society."

"But you are sure I am not in the way?" asks Molly, hesitating; "you are not—busy?"

"Busy! Oh, what a stranger I am to you, my dear," exclaims Cecil, elevating her brows: "it is three long years since last I was busy. I am sure I wish I were: perhaps it might help me to get through the time. I have spent the last hour wondering what on earth brought me to this benighted spot, and I really don't know yet."

"Well, yes, perhaps so; and something else,—something that I verily believe brings us all!—the fact that he has untold money, and can leave it where he pleases. There lies the secret of our yearly visitations. We outsiders don't of course hope to be the heir,—Philip is that, or Marcia, or perhaps both; but still there is a good deal of ready money going, and we all hope to be 'kindly remembered.' Each time we sacrifice ourselves by coming down here, we console ourselves by the reflection that it is at least another hundred tacked on to our legacy."

"I often think of that," says her ladyship, going off into a perfect peal of laughter. "Oh, the fun it would be! Think of our expressions. I assure you I spend whole hours picturing Maud Darley's face under the circumstances; you know she takes those long drives with him every day in the fond hope of cutting us all out and getting the lion's share."

"Poor woman! it is sad if she has all her trouble for nothing. I do not think I should like driving with grandpapa."

"I share your sentiments: neither should I. Still, there is a charm in money. Every night before going to bed I tot up on my fingers the amount of the bequest I feel I ought to receive. It has reached two thousand pounds by this. Next visit will commence a fresh thousand."

"You are sanguine," says Molly. "I wonder if I shall go on hoping like you, year after year."

"I request you will not even insinuate such a thing," cries Lady Stafford in pretended horror. "'Year after year!' Why, how long do you mean him to live? If he doesn't die soon, I shall certainly throw up my chance and cut his acquaintance." Then, with sudden self-reproach, "Poor old fellow," she says, "it is a shame to speak of him like this even in jest. He may live forever, as far as I am concerned. Now tell me something about yourself, and do take a more comfortable chair: you don't look half cozy."

"Don't make me too comfortable, or perhaps I shall bore you to death with the frequency of my visits. You will have me again to-morrow if you don't take care."

"Well, I hope so. Remember you have carte blanche to come here whenever you choose. I was fast falling into the blues when I heard you knock, so you may fancy how welcome you were, almost as welcome as my cousin."

"Oh, dear, no,—not Marcia; she and I don't get on a bit too well together, and she was excessively disagreeable all this morning: she is her grandfather's own child. I am sure she need not visit Philip's defection on me; but she has a horrible temper, and that's the truth. No, I meant Tedcastle; he is my cousin also. I do so like Tedcastle: don't you?"

"Very much indeed," coloring faintly. "But," hastily, "I have not yet told you what brought me here to-day."

"Do you mean to tell me you had an object in coming?" cries her ladyship, throwing up her little white jeweled hands in affected reproach. "That something keener than a desire for my society has brought you to my boudoir? You reduce me to despair! I did for one short quarter of an hour believe you 'loved me for myself alone.'"

"No," laughing, and blushing, too, all through her pale clear skin, "I confess to the object. I—the fact is—I have felt a little deceitful ever since last night. Because—in spite of Marcia's superior information on the subject, I have had some slight education, and I do know a little French!"

"Ah!" cries Lady Stafford, rising and blushing herself, a vivid crimson: "you heard, you understood all. Well," with a sudden revival, and a happy remembrance of her own words, "I didn't say anything bad, did I?"

"No, no: I would not have come here if you had. You said all there was of the kindest. You were so kind. I could not bear to deceive you or let you retain a false opinion of me. Marcia, indeed, outdid herself, though I am guiltless of offense toward her. She is evidently not aware of the fact that one part of my life was spent in London with my aunt, my father's sister, and that while with her I had the best masters to be found. I am sorry for Marcia, but I could not bring myself to speak just then."

"It is delicious!" cries she, wickedly. "A very comedy of errors. If we could but manage some effective way of showing Marcia her mistake. Can you," with sudden inspiration, "sing?"

"You can. That sounds promising. I wonder you don't say 'a little,' as all young ladies do, more especially when they sing a good deal more than any one wants them to! Come here, and let me see what you mean by that uncompromising 'can.'"

Opening a small cottage piano at the other end of her pretty sitting-room, she motions Molly to the instrument.

"Play for me," Molly says, bent on doing her very best. "I can sing better standing."

"This," taking up a song of Sullivan's, after a rapid survey of the pile of music lying on one side.

She sings, her lovely voice thrilling and sobbing through the room, sings with a passionate desire to prove her powers, and well succeeds. For a minute after she has finished, Cecil does not speak, and then goes into raptures, as "is her nature to."

"Oh that I had your voice!" cries she, with genuine tears in her eyes. "I would have the world at my feet. What a gift! a voice for a goddess! Molly—may I call you so?—I absolutely pity Marcia when I think of her consternation."

"She deserves it," says Molly, who feels her cousin's conduct deeply. "I will sing to-night, if you will get Marcia to ask me."

So the two conspirators arrange their little plan, Cecil Stafford being quite mischievous enough to enjoy the thought of Miss Amherst's approaching discomfiture, while Molly feels all a woman's desire to restore her hurt vanity.

Dinner is half over; and so far it has been highly successful. Mr. Amherst's temper has taken this satisfactory turn,—he absolutely refuses to speak to any of his guests.

Under these circumstances every one feels it will be the better part of valor not to address him,—all, that is, except Mrs. Darley, who, believing herself irresistible, goes in for the doubtful task of soothing the bear and coaxing him from his den.

"I am afraid you have a headache, dear Mr. Amherst," she says, beaming sweetly upon him.

"Are you, madam? Even if I were a victim to that foolish disorder, I hardly see why the fact should arouse a feeling of terror in your breast. Only weak-minded girls have headaches."

A faint pause. Conversation is languishing, dying, among the other guests; they smell the fight afar, and pause in hungry expectation of what is surely coming.

"I pity any one so afflicted," says Mrs. Darley, going valiantly to her death: "I am a perfect martyr to them myself." Here she gives way to a little sympathetic sigh, being still evidently bent on believing him weighed down with pain heroically borne.

"Are you?" says Mr. Amherst, with elaborate politeness. "You astonish me. I should never have thought it. Rheumatism, now, I might. But how old are you, madam?"

"Well, really," says Mrs. Darley, with a pretty childish laugh which she rather cultivates, being under the impression that it is fascinating to the last degree, "asking me so suddenly puts the precise day I was born out of my head. I hardly remember—exactly—when——"

Conversation has died. Every one's attention is fixed; by experience they know the end is nigh.

"Just so; I don't suppose you could, it happened such a long time ago!" says this terrible old man, with an audible chuckle, that falls upon a silent and (must it be said?) appreciative audience.

Mrs. Darley says no more; what is there left to say? and conversation is once more taken up, and flows on as smoothly as it can, when everybody else is talking for a purpose.

"Is she old?" Molly asks Philip, presently, in a low tone, when the buzz is at its highest; "very old, I mean? She looks so babyish."

"How old would you say?" speaking in the same guarded tone as her own, which has the effect of making Luttrell and Marcia believe them deep in a growing flirtation.

"She does it uncommonly well then," says Philip, regarding Mrs. Darley with much admiration,—"uncommonly well; her maid must be a treasure."

"I don't know, I am sure," says Philip, unkindly, with an amused smile. "She used to be my age, but I haven't the faintest idea in the world what she is—now!"

After one or two more playful sallies on the part of their host,—for having once found his tongue he takes very good care to use it, and appears fatally bent on making his hearers well aware of its restoration,—the ladies adjourn to the drawing-room, where Mrs. Darley instantly retires behind her handkerchief and gives way to a gentle sob.

"That detestable old man!" she says, viciously; "how I hate him! What have I done, that he should treat me with such exceeding rudeness? One would think I was as old as—as—Methuselah! Not that his mentioning my age puts me out in the least,—why should it?—only his manner is so offensive!"

And as she finishes she rolls up the corners of her handkerchief into a little point, and carefully picks out, one by one, the two tears that adorn her eyes, lest by any chance they should escape, and, running down her cheeks, destroy the evening's painting.

"Don't distress yourself about it, Maud," says Lady Stafford, kindly, although strongly divided between pity for the angry Maud and a growing desire to laugh; "nobody minds him: you know we all suffer in turn. Something tells me it will be my turn next, and then you will indeed see a noble example of fortitude under affliction."

There is no time for more; the door opens and the men come in, more speedily to-night than is their wont, no doubt driven thereto by the amiability of Mr. Amherst.

Maud suppresses the tell-tale handkerchief, and puts on such a sweet smile as utterly precludes the idea of chagrin. The men, with the usual amount of bungling, fall into their places, and Cecil seizes the opportunity to say to Marcia, in a low tone:

"You say Miss Massereene sings. Ask her to give us something now. It is so slow doing nothing all the evening, and I feel Mr. Amherst is bent on mischief. Besides, it is hard on you, expecting you to play all the night through."

"I will ask her if you wish it," Marcia says, indifferently, "but remember, you need not look for a musical treat. I detest bad singing myself."

"If you will care to hear me," Molly answers, coldly rather than diffidently, and rising, goes to the piano.

"Perhaps there may be something of mine here that you may know," Marcia says, superciliously, pointing to the stand; but Molly, declaring that she can manage without music, sits down and plays the opening chords of Gounod's "Berceuse."

A moment later, and her glorious voice, rarely soft, and sweet as a child's, yet powerful withal, rings through the room, swells, faints, every note a separate delight, falling like rounded pearls from her lips.

A silence—truest praise of all—follows. One by one the talkers cease their chatter; the last word remains a last word; they forget the thought of a moment before.

A dead calm reigns, while Molly sings on, until the final note drops from her with lingering tenderness.

Even then they seem in no hurry to thank her; almost half a minute elapses before any one congratulates her on the exquisite gift that has been given her.

"You have been days in the house, and never until now have let us hear you," Philip says, leaning on the top of the piano; he is an enthusiast where music is concerned. "How selfish! how unkind! I could hardly have believed it of you."

"Was I ever asked before?" Molly says, raising her eyes to his, while her fingers still run lightly over the notes.

"I don't know. I suppose it never occurred to us, and, as you may have noticed, there is a dearth of graciousness among us. But for you to keep such a possession a secret was more than cruel. Sing again."

"Not like you." He pauses, and then says, slowly, "I used to think nature was impartial in the distribution of her gifts,—that, as a rule, we all received pretty much the same amount of good at her hands; to one beauty, to another talent, and so on; but I was wrong: she has her favorites, it appears. Surely already you had had more than your share, without throwing in your perfect voice."

Molly lowers her eyes, but makes no reply; experience has taught her that this is one of the occasions on which "silence is golden."

"You sing yourself, perhaps?" she says, presently, when she has tired of waiting for him to start a subject.

"Occasionally. Will you sing this with me?" taking up a celebrated duet and placing it before her. "Do you know it?"

"Yes, Mr. Luttrell and I used to sing it often at Brooklyn: it was a great favorite of ours."

"Oh, that! Indeed!" laying it aside with suspicious haste. "Shall we try something else?"

"And why something else?" composedly. "Does that not suit your voice? If it does, I will sing it with you with pleasure."

"Really?" regarding her closely, with what is decidedly more than admiration in his gaze. "Are there no recollections hidden in that song?"

"How can I tell? I never saw that particular edition before. Open it, and let us see," returns Molly, with a merry laugh. "Who knows what we may find between the pages?"

"If I might only believe you," he says, earnestly, still only half convinced. "Do you mean to tell me Luttrell spent an entire month with you, and left you heart-whole? I cannot believe it."

At this instant, Luttrell, who has with moody eyes been watching Philip's eager face from the other end of the room, saunters up, and seeing the old well-remembered duet lying open before Molly, suddenly thinks it may be there for him, and cheering up, says pleasantly:

"Not to-night," Molly replies, kindly; "Philip has just asked me to sing it with him. Some other time."

"Ah!" says Luttrell, more wounded than he cares to confess; for is not that very song endeared to him by a thousand memories? and turning on his heel, he walks away.

With a little impulsive gesture Molly rises from the piano-stool, and, without again looking at Philip, moves across the room to the seat she had originally vacated. As she does so she passes close by Marcia, who, ever since her cousin's voice first sounded in her ears, has been sitting silent, now pale, now red.

"I don't think I could have said quite that," Molly replies, quietly; "I told you I sang a little; it is not customary to laud one's own performances."

"You are a clever actress," says Marcia, so low as to be unheard by all but Molly: "with such a voice as yours, and such masterly command of all emotion and expression, you should make the stage your home."

"Perhaps I shall find your hint useful in the future," says Molly, with a slight shrug of her shoulders: "when one is poor it is always well to know there is something one can put one's hand to when things come to the worst; but at present I feel sufficiently at home where I am. I am glad," calmly, "my singing pleased you,—if, indeed, it did."

"You sing magnificently," Marcia says, aloud, giving her meed of praise justly, but unwillingly.

"And such a charming song as that is!" breaks in Mrs. Darley: "I remember hearing it for the first time, just after my marriage; indeed, while we were yet enjoying our wedding tour. Do you remember it, dearest?" As she murmurs the tender words, she turns upon her lord two azure eyes so limpid and full of trust and love that any man ignorant of the truth would have sworn by all his gods her desire was with her husband, whereas every inch of heart she possesses has long since been handed over to a man in the Horse Guards Blue.

"Humph!" says Henry Darley, eloquently; and without further rejoinder goes on with the game of chess he is playing with Mr. Amherst.

"Let us have something else, Eleanor," her grandfather says, looking up for an instant from his beloved queens and kings and castles; "another song."

This is such a wonderful request coming from Mr. Amherst, who is known to abhor Marcia's attempts, that every one looks surprised.

"Willingly, grandpapa," says Molly, and, going once more to the piano, gladly puts the obnoxious duet away, feeling sure its appearance has caused Tedcastle's annoyance. "Though if he is going to be jealous so early in the game as this," thinks she, "I don't fancy I shall have an altogether festive time of it."

"Nothing Italian, at all events," says Mr. Amherst (all Marcia's endeavors are in that language); "I like something I can understand, and I hate your runs and trills."

"I will sing you my own song," says Molly, gayly, and gives them "Molly Bawn" deliciously.

"How pretty that is!" says Lady Stafford; "and so wild,—quite Irish! But your name, after all, is Eleanor, is it not?"

"There is, I believe, a tradition in the family to that effect," says Molly, smiling, "but it is used up, and no one now pays to it the least attention. I myself much prefer Molly. I am always called Molly Bawn at home."

Her voice lingers on the word "home." In an instant, amidst all the luxuries and charms of this beautiful drawing-room at Herst, her mind goes back to the old, homely, beloved sanctum at Brooklyn, where she sees John, and Letty, and all the happy, merry, good-hearted children, harmoniously mixed up together.

"It is a pity," says Mr. Amherst, purposely, seeing an opening for one of his cheerful remarks, "that everything about Ireland should be so wretchedly low."

At this dangerous moment the door is thrown wide open, and a servant announces "Mr. Potts."

The effect is electric. Everybody looks up, and pleased, and glad; while the owner of this euphonious name comes forward, and, having shaken hands with Marcia, turns to old Amherst.

"Do you?" says Mr. Amherst, unamiably, feeling still a keen regret that the neat retort intended for Molly must wait another occasion. "I would believe you if I could, but it isn't in human nature. Yes, I am better, thank you; much better. I dare say with care I shall last this winter, and probably the next, and perhaps outlive a good many of you." He chuckles odiously as he winds up this pleasing speech.

Mr. Potts, rather taken aback, mutters something inaudible, and turns to Lady Stafford, who receives him warmly.

He is a young man of about twenty-four (though he might, in appearance, be any age from that to forty-four), and is short rather than tall. His eyes are gray, small, and bright, and full of fun, bespeaking imperturbable good humor.

His hair is red. It is hair that admits of no compromise; it is neither auburn, golden, nor light brown—it is a distinct and fiery red. His nose is "poor, but honest," and he has a thorough and most apparent appreciation of himself.

As I said before, Lady Stafford greets him warmly; he is one of her special pets.

"How are you getting on?" he asks, mysteriously, when the first questions and answers have been gone through. "Old boy evidently worse than ever. The wine theory would not suit his case; age does anything but improve him. He has gone to the bad altogether. I suppose you've been putting in an awful bad time of it?"

"We have, indeed," says Lady Stafford; "he has been unbearable all through dinner, though he was pretty well yesterday. I think myself it must be gout; every twinge brings forth a caustic speech."

By this time every one had shaken hands with the newcomer, and welcomed him heartily. He seems specially pleased to see Tedcastle.

"Luttrell! you here? Never had a hint of it. So glad to see you, old man! Why, you're looking as fit as even your best friend could wish you."

"Meaning yourself," says Luttrell. "Now, let's have a look at you. Why, Planty, what an exquisite get up! New coat and—etc. latest tie, and diamonds ad lib. Quite coquettish, upon my word. Who gave you the diamonds, Potts? Your mother?"

"No; I got tired of hinting there," says Potts, ingenuously, "so gave it up, and bought 'em myself. They are fetching, I take it. Luttrell, who is the girl at the piano? Never saw anything so lovely in all my life."

"Indeed! Been received, and all that? Well, there's been nothing this season to touch on her. Introduce me, Ted, do!"

He is introduced. And Molly, smiling up at him one of her own brightest, kindliest smiles, makes him then and there her slave forever. On the spot, without a second's delay, he falls head over ears in love with her.

By degrees he gets back to Lady Stafford, and sinks upon the sofa beside her. I say "sinks" unadvisedly; he drops upon the sofa, and very nearly makes havoc of the springs in doing so.

"I want to tell you who I saw in town the day before I left—a week ago," he says, cautiously.

"No; I did it by degrees. First, I went down to the Maplesons', and spent two days there—very slow, indeed; then I got on to the Blouts', and found it much slower there; finally, I drove to Talbot Lowry's night before last, and stayed there until this evening. You know he lives only three miles from here."

"No!" says Cecil, with a little faint laugh. "You don't say so! what a remarkable coincidence!"

"An annual coincidence. But you don't ask me who it was I saw in London. Guess."

"The Christy Minstrels, without doubt. They never perform out of London, so I suppose are the only people in it now."

"Really!" says Cecil, coloring warmly, and sitting in a more upright position. "He has returned, then? I thought he was in Egypt."

"So he was, but he has come back, looking uncommon well, too—as brown as a berry. To my thinking, as good a fellow to look at as there is in England, and a capital fellow all round into the bargain!"

"Dear me!" says Cecil. "What a loss Egypt has sustained! And what a partisan you have become! May I ask," suppressing a pretended yawn behind her perfumed fan, "where your rara avis is at present hiding?"

"And is that your Mr. Potts?" asks Molly, finding herself close to Tedcastle, speaking with heavy and suspicious emphasis.

"Yes," Tedcastle admits, coloring slightly as he remembers the glowing terms in which he has described his friend. "Don't you—eh, don't you like him?"

"Oh! like him? I cannot answer that yet; but," laughing, "I certainly don't admire him."

And indeed Mr. Potts's beauty is not of the sort to call forth raptures at first sight.

"I have seen many different shades of red in people's hair," says Molly, "but I have never seen it rosy until now. Is it dyed? It is the most curious thing I ever looked at."

As indeed it is. When introduced to poor Potts, when covering him with a first dispassionate glance, one thinks not of his pale gray orbs, his large good-humored mouth, his freckles, or his enormous nose, but only of his hair. Molly is struck by it at once.

"He is a right good fellow," says Luttrell, rather indignantly, being scarcely in the mood to laugh at Molly's sarcasms.

"He may be," is her calm reply, "but if I were he, rather than go through life with that complexion and that unhappy head, I would commit suicide."

Then there is a little more music. Marcia plays brilliantly enough, but it is almost impossible to forget during her playing that she has had an excellent master. It is not genuine, or from the heart. It is clever, but it is acquired, and falls very flatly after Molly's perfect singing, and no one in the room feels this more acutely than Marcia herself.

Then Luttrell, who has a charming voice, sings for them something pathetic and reproachful, you may be sure, as it is meant for Molly's ears; and then the evening is at an end, and they all go to their own rooms.

What a haven of rest and security is one's own room! How instinctively in grief or joy one turns to it, to hide from prying eyes one's inmost thoughts, one's hopes, and despairs!

To-night there are two sad hearts at Herst; Marcia's, perhaps, the saddest, for it is full of that most maddening, most intolerable of all pains, jealousy.

For hours she sits by her casement, pondering on the cruelty of her fate, while the unsympathetic moon pours its white rays upon her.

"Already his love is dead," she murmurs, leaning naked arms upon the window-sill, and turning her lustrous southern eyes up to the skies above her. "Already. In two short months. And how have I fallen short? how have I lost him? By over-loving, perhaps. While she, who does not value it, has gained my all."

A little groan escapes her, and she lets her dark head sink upon her outstretched arms. For there is something in Philip's eyes as they rest on Molly, something undefined, hardly formed, but surely there, that betrays to Marcia the secret feeling, of which he himself is scarcely yet aware.

One hardly knows how it is, but Molly, with a glance, a gesture, three little words pointed by a smile from the liquid eyes, can draw him to her side. And when a man of his cold, reserved nature truly loves, be sure it is a passion that will last him his life.

Tedcastle, too, is thoroughly unhappy to-night. His honest, unprying mind, made sharp by "love's conflict," has seen through Philip's infatuation, and over his last cigar before turning in (a cigar that to-night has somehow lost half its soothing properties) makes out with a sinking of the heart what it all means.

He thinks, too, yet upbraids himself for so thinking, that Miss Massereene must see that Philip Shadwell, heir to Herst and twenty thousand pounds a year, is a better catch than Teddy Luttrell, with only his great love for her, and a paltry six hundred pounds a year.

Is it not selfish of him to seek to keep her from what is so evidently to her advantage? Perhaps he ought to throw up his engagement, and, passing out of her life, leave her to reap the "good the gods provide."

In vain he tries to argue himself into this heroic frame of mind. The more he tries, the more obnoxious grows the idea. He cannot, he will not give her up.

"Faint heart," says Teddy, flinging the remnant of his cigar with fierce determination into the grate, "never won fair lady; she is mine, so far, the fairest darling that ever breathed, and be it selfish or otherwise, keep her I will if I can."

But he sighs as he utters the word "can," and finds his couch, when at length he does seek it, by no means a bed of roses.

While Molly, the pretty cause of all this heart-burning, lies in slumber, soft and sweet, and happy as can be, with her "red, red" lips apart and smiling, her breathing pure and regular as a little child's, and all her "nut-brown" hair like a silken garment round her.

Cecil Stafford, walking leisurely up and down her apartment, is feeling half frightened, half amused, at the news conveyed to her by Mr. Potts, of her husband's arrival in England. Now, at last, after these three years, she may meet him at any moment face to face.

Surely never was a story so odd, so strange as hers! A bride unknown, a wife whose face has never yet been seen!

"Well," thinks Cecil, as she seats herself while her maid binds up her long fair hair, "no use troubling about it beforehand. What must be must be. And at all events the dreaded interview cannot be too soon, as until my return to town I believe I am pretty safe from him here."

Next day at luncheon Mr. Amherst, having carefully mapped out one of his agreeable little surprises, and having selected a moment when every one is present, says to her, with a wicked gleam of anticipative amusement in his cunning old eyes:

Although she has neither hint nor warning of what is coming, Lady Stafford is a match for him. Mr. Potts's intelligence of the evening before stands her now in good stead.

"Indeed!" she says, without betraying any former knowledge, turning eyes of the calmest upon him; "you surprise me. Tired so soon of Egyptian sphinxes! I always knew he had no taste. I hope he is quite well. I suppose you heard from him?"

"Yes. He is well, but evidently pines for home quarters and old friends. Thinking you would like to see him after so long a separation, I have invited him here. You—you don't object?"

"I?" says her ladyship, promptly, reddening, but laughing too very successfully. "Now, why should I object? On the contrary, I shall be charmed; he will be quite an acquisition. If I remember rightly,"—with a little affected drooping of the lids,—"he is a very handsome man, and, I hear, amusing."

Mr. Amherst, foiled in his amiable intention of drawing confusion on the head of somebody, subsides into a grunt and his easy-chair. To have gone to all this trouble for nothing, to have invited secretly this man, who interests him not at all, in hopes of a little excitement, and to have those hopes frustrated, disgusts him.

Yet, after all, there will, there must be some amusement in store for him, in watching the meeting between this strange pair. He at least may not prove as cool and indifferent as his pretty wife.

"He will be here to dinner to-day," he says, grumpishly, knowing that all around him are inwardly rejoicing at his defeat.

This is a thunder-bolt, though he is too much disheartened by his first defeat to notice it. Lady Stafford grows several shades paler, and—luncheon being at an end—rises hurriedly. Going toward the door, she glances back, and draws Molly by a look to her side.

"Come with me," she says; "I must speak to some one, and to you before any of the others."

When they have reached Cecil's pretty sitting-room, off which her bedroom opens, the first thing her ladyship does is to subside into a seat and laugh a little.

"It is like a play," she says, "the idea of his coming down here, to find me before him. It will be a surprise; for I would swear that horrible old man never told him of my being in the house, or he would not have come. Am I talking Greek to you, Molly? You know my story, surely?"

"I have heard something of it—not much—from Mr. Luttrell," says Molly, truthfully.

"It is a curious one, is it not? and one not easily matched. It all came of that horrible will. Could there be anything more stupid than for an old man to depart this life and leave behind him a document binding two young people in such a way as makes it 'do or die' with them? I had never seen my cousin in all my life, and he had never seen me; yet we were compelled at a moment's notice to marry each other or forfeit a dazzling fortune."

"Because the lawyers said we couldn't. Lawyers are always aggressive. My great-uncle had particularly declared it should not be divided. It was to be all or none, and whichever of us refused to marry the other got nothing. And there was so much!" says her ladyship, with an expressive sigh.

"It was. Yet, as I managed it, it wasn't half so bad. Now, I dare say many women would have gone into violent hysterics, would have driven their relations to the verge of despair and the shivering bridegroom to the brink of delirious joy, and then given in,—married the man, lived with him, and been miserable ever after. But not I."

Here she pauses, charmed at her own superior wisdom, and, leaning back in her chair, with a contented smile, puts the tips of her fingers together daintily.

"I? I just reviewed the case calmly. I saw it was a great deal of money,—too much to hesitate about,—too much also to make it likely a man would dream of resigning it for the sake of a woman more or less. So I wrote to my cousin explaining that, as we had never known each other, there could be very little love lost between us, and that I saw no necessity why we ever should know each other,—and that I was quite willing to marry him, and take a third of the money, if he would allow me to be as little to him in the future as I was in the present, by drawing up a formal deed of separation, to be put in force at the church-door, or the door of any room where the marriage ceremony should be performed."

"Well, I don't know how it would have been but that, to aid my request, I inclosed a photograph of our parlormaid (one of the ugliest women it has ever been my misfortune to see), got up in her best black silk, minus the cap, and with a flaming gold chain round her neck,—you know the sort of thing,—and I never said who it was."

"How couldn't I? you mean. And, after all, my crime was of the passive order; I merely sent the picture, without saying anything. How could I help it if he mistook me for Mary Jane? Besides, I was fighting for dear life, and all is fair in love and war. I could not put up with the whims and caprices of a man to whom I was indifferent."

"Molly," says Lady Stafford, slowly, with a fine show of pity, "you are disgracefully young: cure yourself, my dear, as fast as ever you can, and as a first lesson take this to heart: if ever there was a mortal man born upon this earth without caprices it must have been in the year one, because no one that I have met knows anything about him."

"Well, for the matter of that," says Molly, laughing, "I don't suppose I should like a perfect man, even if I did chance to meet him. By all accounts they are stilted, disagreeable people, with a talent for making everybody else seem small. But go on with your story. What was his reply?"

"He agreed cordially to all my suggestions, named a very handsome sum as my portion, swore by all that was honorable he would never interfere with me in any way, was evidently ready to promise anything, and—sent me back my parlor-maid. Was not that insulting?"

"Scarcely. I decided on having the wedding in our drawing-room, and wrote again to say it would greatly convenience my cousin and myself (I lived with an old cousin) if he would not come down until the very morning of the wedding. Need I say he grasped at this proposition also? I was dressed and ready for my wedding by the time he arrived, and shook hands with him with my veil down. You may be sure I had secured a very thick one."

"Do you mean to tell me," says Molly, rising in her excitement, "that he never asked you to raise your veil?"

"Never, my dear. I assure you the 'best man' he brought down with him was by far the more curious of the two. But then, you must remember, Sir Penthony had seen my picture." Here Cecil goes off into a hearty burst of laughter. "If you had seen that maid once, my dear, you would not have been ambitious of a second view."

"Still I never heard of anything so cold, so unnatural," says Miss Massereene, in high disgust. "I declare I would have broken off with him then and there, had it been me."

"Not if you lived with my cousin Amelia, feeling yourself a dependent on her bounty. She was a startling instance of how a woman can worry and torment. The very thought of her makes my heart sore in my body and chills my blood to this day. I rejoice to say she is no more."

"Yes, in Amelia's drawing-room. I had a little gold band put on my third finger, I had a cold shake-hands from my husband, a sympathetic one from his groomsman, and then found myself once more alone, with a title and plenty of money, and—that's all."

"Talbot Lowry. He lives about three miles from here, and"—with an airy laugh—"is rather too fond of me."

"What a strange story!" says Molly, regarding her wistfully. "Do you never wish you had married some one you loved?"

"I never do," gayly. "Don't look to me for sentiment, Molly, because I am utterly devoid of it. I know I suffer in your estimation by this confession, but it is the simple truth. I don't wish for anything. And yet"—pausing suddenly—"I do. I have been wishing for something ever since that old person down-stairs tried to take me back this morning, and failed so egregiously."

"That I could make my husband fall madly in love with me. Oh, Molly, what a revenge that would be! And why should he not, indeed?" Going over to a glass and gazing earnestly at herself. "I am pretty,—very pretty, I think. Speak, Molly, and encourage me."

"You know you are lovely," says Molly, in such good faith that Cecil kisses her on the spot. "But what if you should fall in love with him?"

"Perhaps I have done so long ago," her ladyship replies, in a tone impossible to translate, being still intent on the contemplation of her many charms. Then, quickly, "No, no, Molly, I am fire-proof."

"Not a bit of it. I should despise myself forever if I once found myself letting my pulse beat half a second faster for one man than for another."

"Never, never, never. And, indeed, to give myself due credit, I believe the fact that I have a husband somewhere would utterly prevent anything of the sort."

"That is a good thing, if the idea lasts. But won't you feel awkward in meeting him this evening?"

"I? No, but I dare say he will; and I hope so too," says her ladyship, maliciously. "For three long years he has never been to see whether I were well or ill—or pining for him," laughing. "And yet, Molly, I do feel nervous, awfully, ridiculously nervous, at the bare idea of our so soon coming face to face.

"Ye—es, pretty well. Lanky sort of man, with a good deal of nose, you know, and very little whisker. On my word, now I think of it, I don't think he had any at all."

"No, whisker. He was clean-shaven, all but the moustache. I suppose you know he was in Ted's regiment for some time?"

"I wonder what he hasn't told you? Shall I confess, Molly, that I know your secret, and that it was I chose that diamond ring upon your finger? There, do not grudge me your confidence; I have given you mine and anything I have heard is safe with me. Oh, what a lovely blush, and what a shame to waste such a charming bit of color upon me! Keep it for dessert."

"How will Sir Penthony like Mr. Lowry's close proximity?" Molly asks, presently, when she has confessed a few interesting little facts to her friend.

"I hope he won't like it. If I thought I could make him jealous I would flirt with poor Talbot under his nose," says Cecil, with eloquent vulgarity. "I feel spitefully toward him somehow, although our separation was my own contrivance."

"A slight one,—I suppose from the nerves. I think I will lie down for an hour or two before commencing the important task of arming for conquest. And—are you going out, Molly? Will you gather me a few fresh flowers—anything white—for my hair and the bosom of my dress?"

"I will," says Molly, and, having made her comfortable with pillows and perfumes, leaves her to her siesta.

"Anything white." Molly travels the gardens up and down in search of all there is of the loveliest. Little rosebuds, fresh though late, and dainty bells, with sweet-scented geraniums and drooping heaths,—a pure and innocent bouquet.

Yet surely it lacks something,—a little fleck of green, to throw out its virgin fairness. Above, high over her head, a creeping rosebush grows, bedecked with palest, juiciest leaves.

Reaching up her hand to gather one of the taller branches, a mote, a bit of bark—some hateful thing—falls into Molly's right eye. Instant agony is the result. Tears stream from the offended pupil; the other eye joins in the general tribulation; and Molly, standing in the centre of the grass-plot, with her handkerchief pressed frantically to her face, and her lithe body swaying slightly to and fro through force of pain, looks the very personification of woe.

So thinks Philip Shadwell as, coming round the corner, he unperceived approaches.

"What is it?" he asks, trying to see her face, his tones absolutely trembling from agitation on her behalf. "Molly, you are in trouble. Can I do anything for you?"

"You can," replies Miss Massereene, in a lugubrious voice; though, in spite of her pain, she can with difficulty repress an inclination to laugh, so dismal is his manner. "Oh! you can."

"Well, I'm not exactly weeping," says Miss Massereene, slowly withdrawing one hand from her face, so as to let the best eye rest upon him; "it is hardly mental anguish I'm enduring. But if you can get this awful thing that is in my eye out of it I shall be intensely grateful."

"Poor eye!"—pathetically—"how inflamed it is! Let me see—there—don't blink—I won't be able to get at it if you do. Now, turn your eye to the right. No. Now to the left. Yes, there is," excitedly. "No, it isn't," disappointedly. "Now let me look below; it must be there."

Just at this delicate moment who should turn the corner but Luttrell! Oh, those unlucky corners that will occur in life, bringing people upon the scene, without a word of warning, at the very time when they are least wanted!

Luttrell, coming briskly onward in search of his ladylove, sees, marks, and comes to a dead stop. And this is what he sees.

Molly in Philip's—well, if not exactly in his embrace, something very near it; Philip looking with wild anxiety into the very depths of Molly's lovely eyes, while the lovely eyes look back at Philip full of deep entreaty. Tableau!

It is too much. Luttrell, stung cruelly, turns as if to withdraw, but after a step or two finds himself unable to carry out the dignified intention, and pauses irresolutely. His back being turned, however, he is not in at the closing act, when Philip produces triumphantly on the tip of his finger such a mere atom of matter as makes one wonder how it could ever have caused so much annoyance.

"I—am—thank you." Blinking thoughtfully, as though not yet assured of the relief. "I am so much obliged to you. And—yes, I am better. Quite well, I think. What should I have done without you?"

"Ah, that I could believe myself necessary to you at any time!" Philip is beginning, with fluent sentimentality, when, catching sight of Tedcastle, he stops abruptly. "Here is Luttrell," he says, in an injured tone, and seeing no further prospect of a tête-à-tête, takes his departure.

"What is the matter with you?" he asks, with odious want of sympathy. "Have you been crying?"

"No," replies Molly, indignant at his tone,—so unlike Shadwell's. "Why should you think so?"

"Why? Because your eyes are red; and certainly as I came up, Shadwell appeared to be doing his utmost to console you."

"Anything the matter with you, Teddy?" asks Miss Massereene, with suspicious sweetness. "You seem put out."

"Yes,"—sternly,—"and with cause. I do not relish coming upon you suddenly and finding you in Shadwell's arms."

"Well, if not exactly in his arms, very nearly there," says Tedcastle, vehemently.

"You are forgetting yourself." Coldly. "If you are jealous of Philip, say so, but do not disgrace yourself by using coarse language. There was a bit of bark in my eyes. I suppose you think it would have been better for me to endure torments than allow Philip—who was very kind—to take it out? If you do, I differ from you."

"I am not speaking alone of this particular instance in which you seem to favor Shadwell," says the young man, moodily, his eyes fixed upon the sward beneath him. "Every day it grows more palpable. You scarcely care to hide your sentiments now."

"You mean"—impatiently—"you would wish me to speak to no one except you. You don't take into account how slow this would be for me." She says this cruelly. "I care no more for Philip than I do for any other man."

"Just so. I am the other man, no doubt. I have never been blind to the fact that you do not care for me. Why take the trouble of acting a part any longer?"

"'Acting a part'! Nonsense!" says Molly. "I always think that the most absurd phrase in the world. Who does not act a part? The thing is to act a good one."

"You are the best judge of that," returns she, haughtily. "If you do not think so, why keep to our engagement? If you wish to break it, you need fear no opposition from me." So saying, she sweeps past him and enters the house.

Yet in spite of her anger and offended pride, her eyes are wet and her hands trembling as she reaches Cecil's room and lays the snow-white flowers upon her table.

Cecil is still lying comfortably ensconced among her pillows, but has sufficient wakefulness about her to notice Molly's agitation.

"You have been quarreling, ma belle," she says, raising herself on her elbow; "don't deny it. Was it with Marcia or Tedcastle?"

"Tedcastle," Molly replies, laughing against her will at the other's shrewdness, and in consequence wiping away a few tears directly afterward. "It is nothing; but he is really intolerably jealous, and I can't and won't put up with it."

"Oh, that some one was jealous about me!" says Cecil, with a prolonged sigh. "Go on."

"It was nothing, I tell you. All because Philip kindly picked a little bit of dust out of my eye."

"How good of Philip! considering all the dust you have thrown into his of late. And Ted objected?"

"Well, you know yourself you have been going on anyhow with Philip during the past few days."

"Oh, Cecil, how can you say so? Am I to turn my back on him when he comes to speak to me? And even supposing I had flirted egregiously with him (which is not the case), is that a reason why one is to be scolded and abused and have all sorts of the most dreadful things said to one?" (I leave my readers to deplore the glaring exaggeration of this speech.) "He looked, too, as if he could have eaten me then and there. I know this, I shan't forgive him in a hurry."

"Poor Ted! I expect he doesn't have much of a time with you," says Cecil, shaking her head.

"Are you laughing at me?" cries Molly, wrathfully. "Then make ready for death." And, taking the smaller Cecil in her arms, she most unkindly lifts her from among her cozy cushions and deposits her upon the floor. "There! Now will you repent? But come, Cecil, get up, and prepare for your husband's reception. I will be your maid to-night, if you will let me. What will you wear?"

"Pale blue. It suits me best. See, that is my dress." Pointing to a light-blue silk, trimmed with white lace, that lies upon the bed. "Will you really help me to dress? But you cannot do my hair?"

She does try, and proves so highly satisfactory that Cecil is tempted to offer splendid wages if she will consent to come and live with her.

The hair is a marvel of artistic softness. Every fresh jewel lends a grace; and when at length Cecil is attired in her blue gown, she is all that any one could possibly desire.

"Now, honestly, how do I look?" she asks, turning round to face Molly. "Anything like a housemaid?" With a faint laugh that has something tremulous about it.

"I never saw you half so charming," Molly answers, deliberately. "Oh, Cecil! what will he say when he finds out—when he discovers how you have deceived him?"

"Anything he likes, my dear!" exclaims Cecil, gayly giving a last touch to the little soft fair locks near her temples. "He ought to be pleased. It would be a different thing altogether, and a real grievance, if, being like the housemaid, I had sent him a photo of Venus. He might justly complain then; but now—— There, I can do no more!" says her ladyship, with a sigh, half pleased, half fearful. "If I weren't so shamefully nervous I would do very well."

"I don't believe you are half as frightened for yourself at this moment as I am for you. If I were in your shoes I should faint. It is to me an awful ordeal."

"I am so white, too," says Cecil, impatiently. "You haven't—I suppose, Molly—but of course you haven't——"

"Rouge. After all, Therese was right. When leaving town she asked me should she get some; and, when I rejected the idea with scorn, said there was no knowing when one might require it. Perhaps afterward she did put it in. Let us ring and ask her."

"Never mind it. You are no comparison prettier without it. Cecil,"—doubtingly,—"I hope when it comes to the last moment you will have nerve."

"Be happy," says Cecil. "I am always quite composed at last moments; that is one of my principal charms. I never create sensations through vulgar excitement. I shall probably astonish you (and myself also) by my extreme coolness. In the meantime I"—smiling—"I own I should like a glass of sherry. What o'clock is it, Molly?"

"Ah! he must be here now. How I wish it was over!" says Lady Stafford, with a little sinking of the heart.

"And I am not yet dressed. I must run," exclaims Molly. "Good-bye, Cecil. Keep up your spirits, and remember above all things how well your dress becomes you."

Two or three minutes elapse,—five,—and still Cecil cannot bring herself to descend. She is more nervous about this inevitable meeting than she cares to own. Will he be openly cold, or anxious to conciliate, or annoyed? The latter she greatly fears. What if he should suspect her of having asked Mr. Amherst to invite him? This idea torments her more than all the others, and chains her to her room.

She takes up another bracelet and tries it on. Disliking the effect, she takes it off again. So she trifles, in fond hope of cheating time, and would probably be trifling now had not the handle of her door been boldly turned, the door opened, and a young man come confidently forward.

"I beg your pardon, I'm sure," he says, beating a hasty retreat back to the landing outside. "I had no idea—I'm awfully sorry—but this room used to be mine."

"It is mine now," says Cecil, accepting the situation at a glance, recognizing Sir Penthony without hesitation.

He is a tall young man,—"lanky," as she has herself expressed him,—with thick brown hair, closely cropped. He has handsome dark eyes, with a rather mocking expression in them, and has a trick of shutting them slightly if puzzled or annoyed. His voice is extremely charming, though it has a distinct croak (that can hardly be called husky or hoarse) that is rather fascinating. His short upper lip is covered by a heavy brown moustache that hides a laughing mouth. He is aristocratic and good-looking, without being able to lay claim to actual beauty.

Just now he is overwhelmed with confusion, as Cecil, feeling compelled thereto, steps forward, smiling, to reassure him.

"You have made a mistake,—you have lost your way," she says, in a tone that trembles ever such a little in spite of her efforts to be calm.

"To my shame I confess it," he says, laughing, gazing with ill-concealed admiration at this charming azure vision standing before him. "Foolishly I forgot to ask for my room, and ran up the stairs, feeling certain that the one that used to be mine long ago must be so still. Can you forgive me?"

"I think I can. Meantime, if you are Sir Penthony Stafford, your room lies there," pointing to the last door opening on the corridor.

"Thank you," yet making no haste to reach the discovered shelter. "May I not know to whom I am indebted for so much kindness?"

"I dare say you will be introduced in proper form by and by," says Cecil, demurely, making a movement as though to leave him. "When you are dressed you shall be formally presented."

"At least," he asks, hastily, with a view to detaining her, "do me one more service before you go. If you know me so well, perhaps you can tell me if any of my friends are staying here at present?"

"A most accurate description. And there is another friend,—one who ought to be your dearest: I allude to Lady Stafford."

"Is a man always pleased at his wife's unexpected appearance?" asks Sir Penthony, recovering himself with a rather forced laugh. "I had no idea she was here. I—— Is she a friend of yours?"

"The dearest friend I have. I know no one," declares her ladyship, fervently, "I love so fondly."

"Happy Lady Stafford! I almost think I would change places with her this moment. At all events, whatever faults she may possess, she has rare taste in friends."

"The greatest a woman can have: she lacks that one quality that would make her a 'joy forever.'"

"Your severity makes you unkind. And yet, do you know she is greatly liked. Nay, she has been loved. Perhaps when you come to know her a little better (I do not conceal from you that I have heard something of your story), you will think more tenderly of her. Remember, 'beauty is only skin deep.'"

"That is the retort discourteous. I see it is time wasted to plead my friend's cause. Although, perhaps,"—reproachfully,—"not blessed with actual beauty, still——"

"No, there's not much beauty about her," says Sir Penthony, with something akin to a groan. Then, "I beg your pardon," he murmurs; "pray excuse me. Why should I trouble a stranger with my affairs?" He stands aside, with a slight bow, to let her pass. "And you won't tell me your name?" he cannot resist saying before losing sight of her.

"Make haste with your dressing; you shall know then," glancing back at him, with a bewitching smile.

"Be sure I shall waste no time. If, in my hurry, I appear to less advantage than usual to-night, you must not be the one to blame me."

"A very fair beginning," says Cecil, as she slips away. "Now I must be firm. But, oh dear, oh dear! he is much handsomer even than I thought."

The minutes, selfishly thoughtless of all but themselves, fly rapidly. Cecil makes her way to the drawing-room, where she is followed presently by Molly, then by Luttrell; but, as these two latter refuse to converse with each other, conversation is rather one-sided.

Mr. Amherst, contrary to his usual custom, appears very early on the field, evidently desirous of enjoying the fray to its utmost. He looks quite jubilant and fresh for him, and his nose is in a degree sharper than its wont. He opens an animated discourse with Cecil; but Lady Stafford, although distrait and with her mind on the stretch, listening for every sound outside, replies brilliantly, and, woman-like, conceals her anxiety with her tongue.

At length the dreaded moment comes. There is a sound of footfalls, nearer—nearer still—then, "clearer, deadlier than before," and the door opens, to discover Sir Penthony upon the threshold.

"Fortune favors me," she says hurriedly to Molly, alluding to the other guests' non-appearance.

"Your wife is staying with me," Mr. Amherst begins, complacently; and, pointing to Cecil, "Allow me to introduce you to——"

"Lady Stafford," Cecil interrupts, coming forward while a good deal of rich crimson mantles in her cheeks. She is looking lovely from excitement; and her pretty, rounded, graceful figure is shown off to the best advantage by the heavy fall of the red draperies behind her.

Sir Penthony gazes, spell-bound, at the gracious creature before him; the color recedes from his lips and brow; his eyes grow darker. Luttrell with difficulty suppresses a smile. Mr. Amherst is almost satisfied.

"You are welcome," Cecil says, with perfect self-possession, putting out her hand and absolutely taking his; for so stunned is he by her words that he even forgets to offer it.

Drawing him into a recess of the window, she says, reproachfully, "Why do you look so astonished? Do you not know that you are gratifying that abominable old man? And will you not say you are glad to see me after all these long three years?"

"I don't understand," Sir Penthony says, vaguely. "Are there two Lady Staffords? And whose wife are you?"

"Yours! Although you don't seem in a hurry to claim me," she says, with a rarely pretty pout.

"And whose picture did I get?" he asks, a faint glimmer of the real facts breaking in upon him.

"The parlor-maid's," says Cecil, now the strain is off her, laughing heartily and naturally,—so much so that the other occupants of the room turn to wonder enviously what is going on behind the curtains. "The parlor-maid! And such a girl as she was! Do you remember her nose? It was celestial. When that deed on which we agreed was sealed, signed, and delivered, without hope of change, I meant to send you my real photo, but somehow I didn't. I waited until we should meet; and now we have met and—— Why do you look so disconsolate? Surely, surely, I am an improvement on Mary Jane?"

"You have indeed," quickly. "The idea of letting that odious old man see your discomfiture! By the bye, does my 'ugliness go to the bone,' Sir Penthony?"

"Could you not even see my hair was yellow, whilst Mary Jane's was black,—a sooty black?"

"How could I see anything? Your veil was so thick, and, besides, I never doubted the truth of——"

"Oh, that veil! What trouble I had with it!" laughs Cecil. "First I doubled it, and then nearly died with fright lest you should imagine me the Pig-faced Lady, and insist on seeing me."

"Would not that have been desirable? Is it not a good thing for a man to fall in love with the woman he is going to marry?"

"Not unless the woman falls in love with him," with a little expressive nod that speaks volumes.

"However, you showed no vulgar curiosity on the occasion, although I think Mr. Lowry, who supported you at the last moment, suggested the advisability of seeing your bride. Ah, that reminds me he lives near here. You will be glad to renew acquaintance with so particular a friend."

"There was nothing particular about our friendship; I met him by chance in London at the time, and—er—he did as well as any other fellow."

"Indeed! I shouldn't have thought him your style. Like Cassius, he used to have a 'lean and hungry look.'"

"He must have developed, then, in body as in intellect. Three years ago he was a very gaunt youth indeed."

"Of course, Stafford," breaks in Mr. Amherst's rasping voice, "we can all make allowances for your joy on seeing your wife again after such a long absence. But you must not monopolize her. Remember she is the life of our party."

"Thank you, Mr. Amherst. What a delightful compliment!" says Cecil, with considerable empressement. "Sir Penthony was just telling me what an enjoyable voyage he had; and I was congratulating him. There is nothing on earth so depressing or so humiliating as sea-sickness. Don't you agree with me?"

Mr. Amherst mutters something in which the word "brazen" is distinctly heard; while Cecil, turning to her companion, says hastily, holding out her hand, with a soft, graceful movement:

"Forever, I trust," he replies, taking the little plump white hand within his own, and giving it a hearty squeeze.

To some the evening is a long one,—to Luttrell and Molly, for instance, who are at daggers drawn and maintain a dignified silence toward each other.

Tedcastle, indeed, holds his head so high that if by chance his gaze should rest in Molly's direction, it must perforce pass over her without fear of descending to her face. (This is wise, because to look at Molly is to find one's self disarmed.) There is an air of settled hostility about him that angers her beyond all words.

"What does he mean by glowering like that, and looking as though he could devour somebody? How different he used to be in dear old Brooklyn! Who could have thought he would turn out such a Tartar? Well, there is no knowing any man; and yet—— It is a pity not to give him something to glower about," thinks Miss Massereene, in an access of rage, and forthwith deliberately sets herself out to encourage Shadwell and Mr. Potts.

She has a brilliant success, and, although secretly sore at heart, manages to pass her time agreeably, and, let us hope, profitably.

Marcia, whose hatred toward her rival grows with every glance cast at her from Philip's eyes, turns to Tedcastle and takes him in hand. Her voice is low, her manner subdued, but designing. Whatever she may be saying is hardly likely to act as cure to Teddy's heart-ache; at least so thinks Cecil, and, coming to the rescue, sends Sir Penthony across to talk to him, and drawing him from Marcia's side, leads him into a lengthened history of all those who have come and gone in the old regiment since he sold out.

The ruse is successful, but leaves Cecil still indignant with Molly. "What a wretched little flirt she is!" She turns an enraged glance upon where Miss Massereene is sitting deep in a discussion with Mr. Potts.

"Have you any Christian name?" Molly is asking, with a beaming smile, fixing her liquid Irish eyes upon the enslaved Potts. "I hear you addressed as Mr. Potts,—as Potts even—but never by anything that might be mistaken for a first name."

"Yes," replies Mr. Potts, proudly. "I was christened Plantagenet. Good sound, hasn't it? Something to do with the Dark Ages and Pinnock, only I never remember clearly what. Our fellows have rather a low way of abbreviating it and bringing it down to 'Planty.' And—would you believe it?—on one or two occasions they have so far forgotten themselves as to call me 'the regular Plant.'"

"Let 'em," says Mr. Potts, heroic, if vulgar, shaking his crimson head. "It's fun to them, and it's by no means 'death' to me. It does no harm. But it's a nuisance to have one's mother put to the trouble of concocting a fine name, if one doesn't get the benefit of it."

"I agree with you. Were I a man, and rejoiced in such a name as Plantagenet, I would insist upon having every syllable of it distinctly sounded, or I'd know the reason why. 'All or nothing' should be my motto."

"I never think of it, I don't see my wife's cards," says Mr. Potts, who has had a good deal of champagne, and is rather moist about the eyes. "'Mrs. Plantagenet Potts' would look well, wouldn't it?"

"Very aristocratic," says false Molly, with an admiring nod. "I almost think,—I am not quite sure,—but I almost think I would marry a man to bear a name like that."

"Would you?" cries Mr. Potts, his tongue growing freer, while enthusiasm sparkles in every feature. "If I only thought that, Miss Molly——"

"How pretty Mrs. Darley is looking to-night!" interrupts Molly, adroitly; "what a clear complexion she has!—just like a child's."

"Not a bit of it," says Mr. Potts. "Children don't require 'cream of roses' and 'Hebe bloom' and—and all that sort of thing, you know—to get 'emselves up."

"Ah! my principal pity for her is that she doesn't seem to have anything to say."

"Englishwomen never have, as a rule; they are dull to the last degree. Now, you are a singular exception."

"English! I am not English," says Molly, with exaggerated disgust. "Do not offend me. I am Irish—altogether, thoroughly Irish,—heart and mind a Paddy."

"No! are you, by Jove?" says Mr. Potts. "So am I—at least, partly so. My mother is Irish."

So she had been English, Welsh, and Scotch on various occasions; there is scarcely anything Mrs. Potts had not been. There was even one memorable occasion on which she had had Spanish blood in her veins, and (according to Plantagenet's account) never went out without a lace mantilla flowing from her foxy head. It would, indeed, be rash to fix on any nationality to which the venerable lady might not lay claim, when her son's interests so willed it.

"She came from—er—Galway," he says now; "good old family too—but—out at elbows and—and—that."

"Blake," replies he, unblushingly, knowing there never was a Blake that did not come out of Galway.

"I feel quite as though I had known you forever," says Molly, much pleased. "You know my principal crime is my Hibernian extraction, which perhaps makes me cling to the fact more and more. Mr. Amherst cannot forgive me—my father."

"Beyond all doubt. What a question for you to ask! Did you ever hear of an Irishman who wasn't of good family? My father"—with a mischievous smile—"was a direct descendant of King O'Toole or Brian Boru,—I don't know which; and if the king had only got his own, my dear brother would at this moment be dispensing hospitality in a palace."

"You terrify me," said Mr. Potts, profoundly serious. "Why, the blood of all the Howards would be weak as water next to yours. Not that there is anything to be surprised at; for if over there was any one in the world who ought to be a princess it is——"

"Molly, will you sing us something?" Lady Stafford breaks in, impatiently, at this juncture, putting a stop to Mr. Potts's half-finished compliment.

"Molly, I want to speak to you for a moment," Luttrell says next day, coming upon her suddenly in the garden.

"Yes?" coldly. "Well, hurry, then; they are waiting for me in the tennis-ground."

"It seems to me that some one is always waiting for you now when I want to speak to you," says the young man, bitterly.

"For me?" with a would-be-astonished uplifting of her straight brows. "Oh, no, I am not in such request at Herst. I am ready to listen to you at any time; although I must confess I do not take kindly to lecturing."

"Do not let us waste time going into details: ask me this all-important question and let me be gone."

"I want to know"—severely, yet anxiously—"whether you really meant all you said yesterday morning?"

"Yesterday morning!" says Miss Massereene, running all her ten little white fingers through her rebellious locks, and glancing up at him despairingly. "Do you really expect me to remember all I may have said yesterday morning? Think how long ago it is."

"Shall I refresh your memory? You gave me to understand that if our engagement came to an end you would be rather relieved than otherwise."

"Did I? How very odd! Yes, by the bye, I do recollect something of the kind. And you led up to it, did you not?—almost asked me to say it, I think, by your unkind remarks."

"Let us keep to the truth," says Luttrell, sternly. "You know such an idea would never cross my mind. While you—I hardly know what to think. All last night you devoted yourself to Shadwell."

"That is wrong; he devoted himself to me. Besides, I spoke a little to Mr. Potts."

"Yes, I suppose you could not be satisfied to let even an idiot like Potts go free."

"Idiot! Good gracious! are you talking of your friend Mr. Potts? Why, I was tired to death of hearing his praises sung in my ears morning, noon, and night at Brooklyn; and now, because I am barely civil to him, he must be called an idiot! That is rather severe on him, is it not?"

"Never mind Potts. I am thinking principally of Shadwell. Of course, you are quite at liberty to spend your time with whom you choose, but at all events I have the right to know what you mean seriously to do. You have to decide between Shadwell and me."

"I shall certainly not be rude to Philip," Molly says, decisively, leaning against the trunk of a flowering tree, and raising defiant, beautiful violet eyes to his. "You seem to pass your time very agreeably with Marcia. I do not complain, mind, but I like fairness in all things."

"I thought little country girls like you were all sweetness, and freshness, and simplicity," says Luttrell, with sudden vehemence. "What lies one hears in one's lifetime! Why, you might give lessons in coquetry and cruelty to many a town-bred woman."

"Might I? I am glad you appraise me so highly. I am glad I have escaped all the 'sweetness, and freshness,' and general imbecility the orthodox village maiden is supposed to possess. Though why a girl must necessarily be devoid of wit simply because she has spent her time in good, healthy air, is a thing that puzzles me. Have you delayed me only to say this?"

"No, Molly," cries Luttrell, desperately, while Molly, with cool fingers and a calm face, plucks a flower to pieces, "it is impossible you can have so soon forgotten. Think of all the happy days at Brooklyn, all the vows we interchanged. Is there inconstancy in the very air at Herst?"

His words are full of entreaty, his manner is not. There is an acidity about the latter that irritates Molly.

"All Irish people are fickle," she says recklessly, "and I am essentially Irish."

"All Irish people are kind-hearted, and you are not so," retorts he. "Every hour yields me an additional pang. For the last two days you have avoided me,—you do not care to speak to me,—you——"

"How can I, when you spend your entire time upbraiding me and accusing me of things of which I am innocent?"

"Well, I don't think you can say much more,"—maliciously,—"because—I see Philip coming."

He has taken her hand, but now, stung by her words and her evident delight at Shadwell's proximity, flings it furiously from him.

"If so, it is time I went," he says, and turning abruptly from her, walks toward the corner that must conceal him from view.

A passing madness seizes Molly. Fully conscious that Luttrell is still within hearing, fatally conscious that it is within her power to wound him and gain a swift revenge for all the hard words she chooses to believe he has showered down on her, she sings,—slightly altering the ideas of the poet to suit her own taste,—she sings, as though to the approaching Philip:

"He is coming, my love, my sweet!

Was it ever so airy a tread,

My heart would know it and beat,

Had it lain for a century dead."

She smiles coquettishly, and glances at Shadwell from under her long dark lashes. He is near enough to hear and understand; so is Luttrell. With a suppressed curse the latter grinds his heel into the innocent gravel and departs.

It is evening; the shadows are swiftly gathering. Already the dusk—sure herald of night—is here. Above in the trees the birds are crooning their last faint songs and ruffling their feathers on their night-perches.

How short the days have grown! Even into the very morning of sweet September there has fallen a breath of winter,—a chill, cold breath that tells us summer lies behind.

Luttrell, with downcast eyes and embittered heart, tramples through the same green wood (now, alas, fuller of fallen leaves) where first, at Herst, he and Molly re-met.

With a temperament as warm but less hopeful than hers, he sees the imaginary end that lies before him and his beloved. She has forsaken him, she is the bride of another,—that other is Shadwell. She is happy with him. This last thought, strange to say, is the unkindest cut of all.

He has within his hand a stout stick he took from a tree as he walked along; at this point of the proceeding he breaks it in two and flings it to one side. Happy! away from him, with perhaps only a jesting recollection of all the sweet words, the tender thoughts he has bestowed upon her! The thought is agony; and, if so, what will the reality be?

At all events he need not witness it. He will throw up his commission, and go abroad,—that universal refuge for broken hearts; though why we must intrude our griefs and low spirits and general unpleasantnesses upon our foreign neighbors is a subject not yet sufficiently canvassed. It seems so unkind toward our foreign neighbors.

A rather shaky but consequently picturesque bridge stretches across a little stream that slowly, lovingly babbles through this part of the wood. Leaning upon its parapet, Luttrell gives himself up a prey to gloomiest forebodings, and with the utmost industry calls up before him all the most miserable possibilities. He has reached the verge of suicide,—in a moment more (in his "mind's eye") he will be over, when a delicious voice behind him says, demurely:

It is Molly: such a lovely Molly!—such a naughty unrepentant, winsome Molly, with the daintiest and widest of straw hats, twined with wild flowers, thrown somewhat recklessly toward the back of her head.

"I am sorry to disturb you," says this apparition, gazing at him unflinchingly with big, innocent eyes, "but I do not think there is room on this bridge for two to pass."

Luttrell instantly draws his tall, slight, handsome figure to its fullest height, and, without looking at her, literally crushes himself against the frail railing behind him, lest by any means he should touch her as she passes. But she seems in no hurry to pass.

"It is my opinion," she says, in a matter-of-fact tone of warning, "that those wooden railings have seen their best days; and if you try them much harder you will find, if not a watery grave, at all events an exceedingly moist coat."

There is so much truth in this remark that Luttrell sees the wisdom of abstaining from further trial of their strength, and, falling into an easier position, makes as though he too would leave the bridge by the side from which she came on it. This brings them nearly face to face.

Now, dear reader, were you ever in the middle of a crossing, eager to reach the other side of the street? And did you ever meet anybody coming toward you on that crossing, also anxious to reach his other side of the street? And did you ever find yourself and that person politely dancing before each other for a minute or so, debarring each other's progress, because, unhappily, both your thoughts led you in the same direction? And did you ever feel an irresistible desire to stop short and laugh aloud in that person's face? Because now all this happens to Molly and Luttrell.

Each appears full of a dignified haste to quit the other's society. Molly steps to the right, so does Luttrell to the left, at the very same instant; Luttrell, with angry correction of his first movement, steps again to his first position, and so, without pausing, does Molly. Each essay only leaves them as they began, looking fair into each other's eyes. When this has happened three times, Molly stops short and bursts into a hearty laugh.

"Do try to stay still for one second," she says, with a smile, "and then perhaps we shall manage it. Thank you."

Then, being angry with herself, for her mistaken merriment, like a true woman she vents her displeasure upon him.

"I suppose you knew I was coming here this evening," she exclaims, with ridiculous injustice, "and followed to spoil any little peace I might have?"

"Well,"—imperiously,—"why do you hesitate? Say the unkind thing. I hate innuendoes. Had you known it——"

"I should certainly have gone the other way." Coldly: "Meanly as you may think of me, I have not fallen so low that I should seek to annoy you by my presence."

"Then without doubt you have come to this quiet place searching for solitude, in which to think out all your hard thoughts of me."

Now, he might easily have abashed her at this point by asking "where was the necessity to think of her at all?" but there is an innate courtesy, a natural gentleness about Luttrell that utterly forbids him.

"And," goes on his tormentor, the more angry that she cannot induce him to revile her, "I do not wish you to call me 'Molly' any more. Only those who—who love me call me by that name. Marcia and my grandfather (two people I detest) call me Eleanor. You can follow their example for the future."

"There will not be any future. I have been making up my mind, and—I shall sell out and go abroad immediately."

"Indeed!" There was a slight, a very slight, tremble in her saucy tones. "What a sudden determination! Well, I hope you will enjoy yourself. It is charming weather for a pleasure-trip."

"You shouldn't lose much more time, however. Winter will soon be here; and it must be dismal in the extreme traveling in frost and snow."

"I assure you"—bitterly—"there is no occasion to hurry me. I am as anxious to go as ever you could desire."

"No, you may not," cries he, at length fiercely goaded past endurance; "only, be assured of this: I am going as far from you as steam can take me; I am going where your fatal beauty and heartlessness cannot touch me; where I shall not be maddened day by day by your coquetry, and where perhaps—in time—I may learn to forget you."

His indignation has made him appear at least two inches taller than his ordinary six feet. His face is white as death, his lips are compressed beneath his blonde moustache, his dark blue eyes—not unlike Molly's own—are flashing fire.

"Thank you," says his companion, with exaggerated emphasis and a graceful curtsey; "thank you very much, Mr. Luttrell. I had no idea, when I lingered here for one little moment, I was going to hear so many home truths. I certainly do not want to hear any more."

"I would—only—perhaps you may not be aware of it, but you have your foot exactly on the very end of my gown."

Luttrell raises his foot and replaces it upon the shaking planks with something that strongly resembles a stamp,—so strongly as to make the treacherous bridge quake and tremble; while Molly moves slowly away from him until she reaches the very edge of their uncertain resting-place.

Here she pauses, glances backward, and takes another step, only to pause again,—this time with decision.

"Teddy—darling!" murmurs Molly, in the faintest, fondest tone, using toward him for the first time this tenderest of all tender love words.

In another moment his arms are around her, her head is on his breast. He is vanquished,—routed with slaughter.

In the heart of this weak-minded, infatuated young man there lingers not the slightest thought of bitterness toward this girl who has caused him so many hours of torment, and whose cool, soft cheek now rests contentedly against his.

"My love,—my own,—you do care for me a little?" he asks, in tones that tremble with gladness and sorrow, and disbelief.

"Of course, foolish boy." With a bright smile that revives him. "That is, at times, when you do not speak to me as though I were the fell destroyer of your peace or the veriest shrew that ever walked the earth. Sometimes, you know,"—with a sigh,—"you are a very uncomfortable Teddy."

She slips a fond warm arm around his shoulder and caresses the back of his neck with her soft fingers. Coquette she may be, flirt she is to her finger-tips, but nothing can take away from her lovableness. To Luttrell she is at this moment the most charming thing on which the sun ever shone.

"How can you be so unkind to me," he says, "so cold? Don't you know it breaks my heart?"

"I cold!" With reproachful wonder. "I unkind! Oh, Teddy! and what are you? Think of all you said to me yesterday and this morning; and now, now you called me a coquette! What could be worse than that? To say it of me, of all people! Ted,"—with much solemnity,—"stare at me,—stare hard,—and see do I look the very least bit in the world like a coquette?"

He does stare hard, and doing so forgets the question in hand, remembering only that her eyes, her lips, her hair are all the most perfect of their kind.

"It is all your own fault," goes on Circe, strong in argument. "When I provoke you I care nothing for Philip Shadwell, or your Mr. Potts, or any of them: but when you are uncivil to me, what am I to do? I am driven into speaking to some one, although I don't in the least care for general admiration, as you well know."

He does not know; common sense forbids him to know; but she is telling her fibs with so much grace of feature and voice that he refuses to see her sin. He tries, therefore, to look as if he agreed with her, and succeeds very fairly.

"Not a syllable," says Molly. "Though even if I did you will forgive me, won't you? You always do forgive me, don't you?"

It would be impossible to describe the amount of pleading, sauciness, coaxing she throws into the "won't you?" and "don't you?" holding up her face, too, and looking at him out of half-shut, laughing, violet eyes.

"I suppose so," he says, smiling. "So abject a subject have I become that I can no longer conceal even from myself the fact that you can wind me round your little finger."

He tightens his arm about her, and considering, I dare say, she owes him some return for so humble a speech—stoops as though to put his lips to hers.

"Not yet," she says, pressing her fingers against his mouth. "I have many things to say to you yet before—— For one, I am not a coquette?"

"If I went to the world's end I could not compass that. No, I shall not go abroad now."

"And"—half removing the barring fingers—"I am the dearest, sweetest, best Molly to be found anywhere?"

"Oh, darling! don't you know I think so?" says Luttrell, with passionate fondness.

"Very well,"—taking away her hand, with a contented sigh,—"now you may kiss me."

So their quarrel ends, as all her quarrels do, by every one being in the wrong except herself. It is their first bad quarrel; and although we are told "the falling out of faithful friends is but the renewal of love," still, believe me, each angry word creates a gap in the chain of love,—a gap that widens and ever widens more and more, until at length comes the terrible day when the cherished chain falls quite asunder. A second coldness is so much easier than a first!

It was an unfortunate thing,—nay, more, it was an unheard-of thing (because for a man to fall in love with his own wife has in it all the elements of absurdity, and makes one lose faith in the wise saws and settled convictions of centuries),—but the fact remained. From the moment Sir Penthony Stafford came face to face with his wife in the corridor at Herst he lost his heart to her.

There only rested one thing more to make the catastrophe complete, and that also came to pass: Cecil was fully and entirely aware of his sentiments with regard to her.

What woman but knows when a man loves her? What woman but knows (in spite of all the lies she may utter to her own heart) when a man has ceased to love her? In dark moments, in the cruel quiet of midnight, has not the terrible certainty of her loss made her youth grow dead within her?

Cecil's revenge has come, and I hardly think she spares it. Scrupulously, carefully, she adheres to her rôle of friend, never for an instant permitting him to break through the cold barricade of mere good-fellowship she has raised between them.

Should he in an imprudent moment seek to undermine this barrier, by a word, a smile, sweet but chilling, she expresses either astonishment or amusement at his presumption (the latter being perhaps the more murderous weapon of the two, as ridicule is death to love), and so checks him.

To her Sir Penthony is an acquaintance,—a rather amusing one, but still an acquaintance only,—and so she gives him to understand; while he chafes and curses his luck a good deal at times, and—grows desperately jealous.

The development of this last quality delights Cecil. Her flirtation with Talbot Lowry,—not that it can be called a flirtation, being a very one-sided affair, the affection Talbot entertains for her being the only affection about it,—carefully as he seeks to hide it, irritates Sir Penthony beyond endurance, and, together with her marked coldness and apparent want of desire for his society, renders him thoroughly unhappy.

All this gratifies Cecil, who is much too real a woman not to find pleasure in seeing a man made miserable for love of her.

"I wish you could bring yourself to speak to me now and then without putting that odious 'Sir' before my name," he says to her one day. "Anybody would say we were utter strangers."

"Well, and so we are," Cecil replies, opening wide her eyes in affected astonishment. "How can you dispute it? Why, you never even saw me until a few days ago."

"Ay, more's the pity," murmurs her ladyship, with such a sudden, bewitching, aggravating smile as entirely condones the incivility of her speech. Sir Penthony smiles too.

"Cecil—Cis,—a pretty name.—It rhymes with kiss," he says, rather sentimentally.

"So it does. And Penthony,—what does that rhyme with? Tony—money. Ah! that was our stumbling block."

"It might have been a worse one. There are more disagreeable things than money. There was once upon a time a stubborn mare, and even she was made to go by this same much-abused money. By the bye,"—thoughtfully,—"you don't object to your share of it, do you?"

"I see. I don't think my remark called for so ungracious a reply. To look at you one could hardly imagine a cruel sentiment coming from your lips."

"That shows how deceitful appearances can be. Had you troubled yourself to raise my veil upon your wedding-day you might have made yourself miserable for life. Really, Sir Penthony, I think you owe me a debt of gratitude."

"Do you? Then I confess myself ungrateful. Oh, Cecil, had I only known——" Here he pauses, warned by the superciliousness of her bearing, and goes on rather lamely. "Are you cold? Shall I get you a shawl?" They are standing on the veranda, and the evening is closing in.

"Cold? No. Who could feel cold on so divine an evening? It reminds one of the very heart of summer, and—— Ah!" with a little start and a pleased smile, "here is Mr. Lowry coming across the grass."

"Lowry! It seems to me he always is coming across the grass." Testily. "Has he no servants, no cook, no roof over his head? Or what on earth brings him here, morning, noon, and night?"

"I really think he must come to see me," says Lady Stafford, with modest hesitation. "He was so much with me in town, off and on, that I dare say he misses me now. He was very attentive about bringing me flowers and—and that."

"No doubt. It is amazing how thoughtful men can be on occasions. You like him very much?"

"Has he?" With exaggerated surprise. "Is he indeed all that you say? It is strange how blind a man can be to his neighbor's virtues, whatever he may be to his faults. Now, if I had been asked my opinion of Talbot Lowry, I would have said he was the greatest bore and about the ugliest fellow I ever met in my life."

"Well, of course, strictly speaking, no one could call him handsome," Cecil says, feeling apologetic on the score of Mr. Lowry; "but he has excellent points; and, after all, with me, good looks count for very little." She takes a calm survey of her companion's patrician features as she speaks; but Sir Penthony takes no notice of her examination, as he is looking straight before him at nothing in the world, as far as she can judge.

"I never meet him without thinking of Master Shallow," he says, rather witheringly. "May I ask how he managed to make himself so endurable to you?"

"In many ways. Strange as it may appear to you, he can read poetry really charmingly. Byron, Tennyson, even Shakespeare, he has read to me until," says Cecil, with enthusiasm, "he has actually brought the tears into my eyes."

"I can fancy it," says Sir Penthony, with much disgust, adjusting his eyeglass with great care in his right eye, the better to contemplate the approach of this modern hero. "I can readily believe it. He seems to me the very personification of a 'lady's man,'—a thorough-paced carpet knight. When," says Sir Penthony, with careful criticism, "I take into consideration the elegant slimness of his lower limbs and the cadaverous leanness of his under-jaw, I can almost see him writing sonnets to his mistress's eyebrow."

"If"—severely—"there is one thing that absolutely repels me, it is sarcasm. Don't you be sarcastic. It doesn't suit you. I merely said Mr. Lowry probably feels at a loss, now his mornings are unoccupied, as he generally spent them with me in town."

"They were indeed. But, as you evidently don't admire Talbot, you can hardly be expected to sympathize with my enjoyment."

"I merely hinted I thought him a conceited coxcomb; and so I do. Ah, Lowry, how d'ye do? Charmed to see you. Warm evening, is it not?"

"You are come at last, Mr. Lowry," Cecil says, with sweet meaning in her tone, smiling up at him as he stands beside her, with no eyes but for her. "What a glorious day we have had! It makes one sad to think it cannot continue. I do so hate winter."

"Poor winter!" says Lowry, rather insipidly. "It has my most sincere sympathy. As for the day, I hardly noticed its beauties: I found it long."

"Very," says Lowry, with a look that implies his absence from her side was the sole cause of its tedium, and such an amount of emphasis as awakens in Sir Penthony a mad desire to horsewhip him. Though how, in these degenerate days, can one man horsewhip another because he makes use of that mild word "very"?

It certainly is a delicious evening. Five o'clock has crept on them almost insensibly, and tea has been brought out to the veranda. Within, from the drawing-room, a roaring fire throws upon the group outside white arms of flame, as though petitioning them to enter and accept its warm invitation.

Marcia, bending over the tea-tray, is looking tall and handsome, and perhaps a degree less gloomy than usual. Philip, too, is present, also tall and handsome; only he, by way of contrast, is looking rather more moody than usual. Molly is absent; so is Luttrell.

Mr. Potts, hovering round the tea-table, like an over-grown clumsy bee, is doing all that mortal man can do in the way of carrying cups and upsetting spoons. There are few things more irritating than the clatter of falling spoons, but Mr. Potts is above irritation, whatever his friends may be, and meets each fresh mishap with laudable equanimity. He is evidently enjoying himself, and is also taking very kindly to such good things in the shape of cake as the morbid footman has been pleased to bring.

Sir Penthony, who has sturdily declined to quit the battle-field, stands holding his wife's cup on one side, while Mr. Lowry is supplying her with cake on the other. There is a good deal of obstinacy mingled with their devotion.

"I wonder where Molly can be?" Lady Stafford says, at length. "I always know by instinct when tea is going on in a house. She will be sorry if she misses hers. Why don't somebody go and fetch her? You, for instance," she says, turning her face to Sir Penthony.

"I would fly to her," replies he, unmoved, "but I unfortunately don't know where she is. Besides, I dare say if I knew and went I would find myself unwelcome. I hate looking people up."

"I haven't seen her all day," says Mr. Potts, in an aggrieved tone, having finished the last piece of plum-cake, and being much exercised in his mind as to whether it is the seed or the sponge he will attack next. "She has been out walking, or writing letters, or something, since breakfast. I hope nothing has happened to her. Perhaps if we instituted a search——"

At this moment, Molly, smiling, gracieuse, appears at the open window and steps on the veranda. She is dressed in a soft blue clinging gown, and has a flower, fresh-gathered, in her hair, another at her throat, another held loosely in her slender fingers.

"Well, if ever I heard such a disgracefully conceited speech!" says Lady Stafford, laughing. But Philip says, "We were," still with his eyes on Molly.

"Evidently you have all been pining for me," says Molly, gayly. "It is useless your denying it. Mr. Potts,"—sweetly,—"leave me a little cake, will you? Don't eat it all up. Knowing as you do my weakness for seed-cake, I consider it mean of you to behave as you are now doing."

"You shall have it all," says Mr. Potts, magnanimously. "I devoted myself to the plum-cake so as to leave this for you; so you see I don't deserve your sneer."

Philip straightens himself, and his moodiness flies from him. Marcia, on the contrary, grows distrait and anxious. Molly, with the air of a little gourmand, makes her white teeth meet in her sweet cake, and, with a sigh of deep content, seats herself on the window-sill.

Mr. Potts essays to do likewise. In fact, so great is his haste to secure the coveted position that he trips, loses balance, and crash goes tea, cup, and all—with which he meant to regale his idol—on to the stone at his feet.

"You seem determined to outdo yourself this evening, Potts," Sir Penthony says, mildly, turning his eyeglass upon the delinquent. "First you did all you knew in the way of battering the silver, and now you have turned your kind attention on the china. I really think, too, that it is the very best china,—Wedgwood, is it not? Only yesterday I heard Mr. Amherst explaining to Lady Elizabeth Eyre, who is rather a connoisseur in china, how blessed he was in possessing an entire set of Wedgwood unbroken. I heard him asking her to name a day to come and see it."

"I don't think you need pile up the agony any higher," Philip interposes, laughing, coming to the rescue in his grandfather's absence. "He will never find it out."

"I'm so awfully sorry!" Mr. Potts says, addressing Marcia, his skin having by this time borrowed largely of his hair in coloring. "It was unpardonably awkward. I don't know how it happened. But I'll mend it again for you, Miss Amherst; I've the best cement you ever knew up-stairs; I always carry it about with me."

"He is evidently in the habit of going about breaking people's pet china and mending it again,—knows all about it," murmurs Sir Penthony, sotto voce, with much interest. "It isn't a concoction of your own, Potts, is it?"

"No; a fellow gave it to me. The least little touch mends, and it never gives way again."

"That's what's-meant to do," Captain Mottie has the audacity to say, very unwisely. Of course no one takes the faintest notice. They all with one consent refuse indignantly to see it; and Longshank's inevitable "Ha, ha!" falls horribly flat. Only Molly, after a wild struggle with her better feelings, gives way, and bursts into an irrepressible fit of laughter, for which the poor captain is intensely grateful.

Mrs. Darley, who is doing a little mild running with this would-be Joe Miller, encouraged by Molly, laughs too, and gives the captain to understand that she thinks it a joke, which is even more than could be expected of her.

A sound of footsteps upon the gravel beneath redeems any further awkwardness. They all simultaneously crane their necks over the iron railings, and all at a glance see Mr. Amherst slowly, but surely, advancing on them.

He is not alone. Beside him, affording him the support of one arm, walks a short, stout, pudgy little man, dressed with elaborate care, and bearing all the distinguishing marks of the lowest breeding in his face and figure.

It is Mr. Buscarlet, the attorney, without whose advice Mr. Amherst rarely takes a step in business matters, and for whom—could he be guilty of such a thing—he has a decided weakness. Mr. Amherst is frigid and cutting. Mr. Buscarlet is vulgar and gushing. They say extremes meet. In this case they certainly do, for perhaps he is the only person in the wide world with whom old Amherst gets on.

With Marcia he is a bugbear,—a bête noire. She does not even trouble herself to tolerate him, which is the one unwise step the wise Marcia took on her entrance into Herst.

Now, as he comes puffing and panting up the steps to the veranda, she deliberately turns her back on him.

"Pick up the ghastly remains, Potts," Sir Penthony says, hurriedly, alluding to the shattered china. Mr. Amherst is still on the lowest step, having discarded Mr. Buscarlet's arm. "If there is one thing mine host abhors more than another, it is broken china. If he catches you red-handed, I shudder for the consequences."

"What an ogre you make him out!" says Molly. "Has he, then, a private Bastile, or a poisoned dagger, this terrible old man?"

"Neither. He clings to the traditions of the 'good old times.' Skinning alive, which was a favorite pastime in the dark ages, is the sort of thing he affects. Dear old gentleman, he cannot bear to see ancient usages sink into oblivion. Here he is."

Mr. Potts, having carefully removed all traces of his handiness, gazes with recovered courage on the coming foe.

"No, thank you. Mr. Buscarlet will probably have some, if he is asked," says grandpapa, severely.

"Ah, thank you; thank you. I will take a little tea from Miss Amherst's fair hands," says the man of law, rubbing his own ecstatically as he speaks.

"Mr. Longshanks, give this to Mr. Buscarlet," says Marcia, turning to Longshanks with a cup of tea, although Mr. Buscarlet is at her other elbow, ready to receive it from her "fair hands."

Mr. Longshanks does as he is bidden; and the attorney, having received it, walks away discomfited, a fresh score against this haughty hostess printed on his heart. He has the good luck to come face to face with pretty Molly, who is never unkind to any one but the man who loves her. They have met before, so he has no difficulty about addressing her, though, after his rebuff from Marcia, he feels some faint pangs of diffidence.

"Is it not a glorious evening?" he says, with hesitation, hardly knowing how he will be received; "what should we all do but for the weather?"

"Is it not?" says Molly, with the utmost cheerfulness, smiling on him. She is so sorry for his defeat, which she witnessed, that her smile is one of her kindest. "If this weather might only continue, how happy we should be. Even the flowers would remain with us." She holds up the white rose in her hand for his admiration.

"A lovely flower, but not so lovely as its possessor," says this insufferable old lawyer, with a smirk.

"Oh, Mr. Buscarlet! I doubt you are a sad flirt," says Miss Molly, with an amused glance. "What would Mrs. Buscarlet say if she knew you were going about paying compliments all round?"

"Not all round, Miss Massereene, pardon me. There is a power about beauty stronger than any other,—a charm that draws one out of one's self." With a fat obeisance he says this, and a smile he means to be fascinating.

Molly laughs. In her place Marcia would have shown disgust; but Molly only laughs—a delicious laugh, rich with the very sweetest, merriest music. She admits even to herself she is excessively amused.

"Thank you," she says. "Positively you deserve anything for so pretty a speech. I am sorry I have nothing better to offer, but—you shall have my rose."

Still smiling, she goes close to him, and with her own white fingers places the rose in the old gentleman's coat; while he stands as infatuated by her grace and beauty as though he still could call himself twenty-four with a clear conscience, and had no buxom partner at home ready to devour him at a moment's notice.

Oh, lucky, sweetly-perfumed, pale white rose! Oh, fortunate, kindly, tender manner! You little guess your influence over the future.

Old Mr. Amherst, who has been watching Molly from afar, now comes grumbling toward her and leads Mr. Buscarlet away.

"Grandpa is in a bad temper," says Marcia, generally, when they have quite gone.

"No, you don't say so? What a remarkable occurrence!" exclaims Cecil. "Now, what can have happened to ruffle so serene a nature as his?"

"I didn't notice it; I was making a fresh and more lengthened examination of his features. Yet, I still adhere to my original conviction: his nose is his strong point." Mr. Potts says this as one would who had given to the subject years of mature study.

"It is. Considering his antiquity, his features are really quite handsome. But his nose—his nose," says Mr. Potts, "is especially fine. That's a joke: do you see it? Fine! Why, it is sharper than an awl. 'Score two on the shovel for that, Mary Ann.'"

For want of something better to do, they all laugh at Mr. Potts's rather lame sally. Even Mr. Longshanks so far forgets himself and his allegiance to his friend as to say "Ha-ha-ha!" out loud—a proceeding so totally unexpected on the part of Longshanks that they all laugh again, this time the more heartily that they cannot well explain the cause of their merriment.

Captain Mottie is justly vexed. The friend of his soul has turned traitor, and actually expended a valuable laugh upon an outsider.

Mrs. Darley, seeing his vexation, says, quietly, "I do not think it is good form, or even kind, to speak so of poor Mr. Amherst behind his back. I cannot bear to hear him abused."

"It is only his nose, dear," says Cecil; "and even you cannot call it fat without belying your conscience."

"How silly that woman is!" Cecil says, somewhat indignantly. She and Molly and one or two of the men are rather apart. "To hear her going in for simple sentiments is quite too much for me. When one looks at her, one cannot help——" She pauses, and taps her foot upon the ground, impatiently.

"She is rather pretty," says Lowry, glancing carelessly at the powdered doll's face, with its wealth of dyed hair.

"There was a young lady named Maud,"

"Who had recently come from abroad,

Her bloom and her curls,

Which astonished the girls,

Were both an ingenious fraud.

Tedcastle, with the boy Darley mounted high on his shoulder, comes leisurely over the lawn and up the steps.

"There, my little man, now you may run to your mother," he says to the child, who shows a morbid dislike to leave his side (all children adore Luttrell). "What! not tired of me yet? Well, stay, then."

"Let me get you some more, Miss Massereene," says Plantagenet. "You came late, and have been neglected."

"I think I will take a very little more. But," says Molly, who is in a tender mood, "you have been going about on duty all the evening. I will ask Mr. Luttrell to get me some this time, if he will be so kind." She accompanies this with a glance that sets Luttrell's fond heart beating.

"Ah, Molly, why did you not come with Teddy and me this day, as usual?" says little Lucien Darley, patting her hand. "It was so nice. Only there was no regular sun this evening, like yesterday. It was hot, but I could see no dear little dancing sunbeams; and I asked Teddy why, and he said there could be no sun where Molly was not. What did he mean by that?"

"Yes, what could he have meant by that?" asks Sir Penthony, in a perplexed tone, while Molly blushes one of her rare, sweet blushes, and lowers her eyes. "It was a wild remark. I can see no sense in it. But perhaps he will kindly explain. I say, Luttrell, you shouldn't spend your time telling this child fairy tales; you will make him a visionary. He says you declared Miss Massereene had entire control over the sun, moon, and stars, and that they were never known to shine except where she was."

"I have heard of the 'enfant terrible,'" says Luttrell, laughing, to cover some confusion; "I rejoice to say I have at last met with one. Lucien, I shall tell you no more fantastic stories."

Whether it is because of Marcia's demeanor toward Mr. Buscarlet, or the unusual excellence of the weather, no one can tell, but to-night Mr. Amherst is in one of his choicest moods.

Each of his remarks outdoes the last in brilliancy of conception, whilst all tend in one direction, and show a laudable desire to touch on open wounds. Even the presence of his chosen intimate, the lawyer, who remains to dinner and an uncomfortable evening afterward, has not the power to stop him, though Mr. Buscarlet does all in his knowledge to conciliate him, and fags on wearily through his gossiping conversations with an ardor and such an amount of staying power as raises admiration even in the breast of Marcia.

All in vain. The little black dog has settled down on the old gentleman's shoulders with a vengeance and a determination to see it out with the guests not to be shaken.

Poor Mr. Potts is the victim of the hour. Though why, because he is enraged with Marcia, Mr. Amherst should expend his violence upon the wretched Plantagenet is a matter for speculation. He leaves no stone unturned to bring down condemnation on the head of this poor youth and destroy his peace of mind; but fortunately, Plantagenet has learned the happy knack of "ducking" mentally and so letting all hostile missiles fly harmless over his rosy head.

After dinner Mr. Darley good-naturedly suggests a game of besique with his host, but is snubbed, to the great grief of those assembled in the drawing-room. Thereupon Darley, with an air of relief, takes up a book and retires within himself, leaving Mr. Buscarlet to come once more to the front.

"You have heard, of course, about the Wyburns?" he says, addressing Mr. Amherst. "They are very much cut up about that second boy. He has turned out such a failure! He missed his examination again last week."

"I see no cause for wonder. What does Wyburn expect? At sixty-five he weds a silly chit of nineteen without an earthly idea in her head, and then dreams of giving a genius to the world! When," says Mr. Amherst, turning his gaze freely upon the devoted Potts, "men marry late in life they always beget fools."

"That's me," says Mr. Potts, addressing Molly in an undertone, utterly unabashed. "My father married at sixty and my mother at twenty-five. In me you behold the fatal result."

"Well, well," goes on Mr. Buscarlet, hastily, with a view to checking the storm, "I think in this case it was more idleness than want of brain."

"My dear Buscarlet, did you ever yet hear of a dunce whose mother did not go about impressing upon people how idle the dear boy was? Idle? Pooh! lack of intellect!"

"At all events, the Wyburns are to be pitied. The eldest son's marriage with one so much beneath him was also a sad blow."

"Was it? Others endure like blows and make no complaint. It is quite the common and regular thing for the child you have nurtured, to grow up and embitter your life in every possible way by marrying against your wishes, or otherwise bringing down disgrace upon your head. I have been especially blessed in my children and grandchildren."

"Just so, no doubt,—no doubt," says Mr. Buscarlet, nervously. There is a meaning sneer about the old man's lips.

"Specially blessed," he repeats. "I had reason to be proud of them. Each child as he or she married gave me fresh cause for joy. Marcia's mother was an Italian dancer."

"She was an actress," Marcia interposes, calmly, not a line of displeasure, not the faintest trace of anger, discernible in her pale face. "I do not recollect having ever heard she danced."

"Probably she suppressed that fact. It hardly adds to one's respectability. Philip's father was a spendthrift. His son develops day by day a very dutiful desire to follow in his footsteps."

"Perhaps I might do worse," Shadwell replies, with a little aggravating laugh. "At all events, he was beloved."

With a sudden, irrepressible start Molly rises to her feet and, with a rather white face, turns to her grandfather.

"I will thank you, grandpapa, to say nothing against my father," she says, in tones so low, yet so full of dignity and indignation, that the old man actually pauses.

"High tragedy," says he, with a sneer. "Why, you are all wrongly assorted. The actress should have been your mother, Eleanor."

Yet it is noticeable that he makes no further attempt to slight the memory of the dead Massereene.

"I shan't be able to stand much more of this," says Mr. Potts, presently, coming behind the lounge on which sit Lady Stafford and Molly. "I shall infallibly blow out at that obnoxious old person, or else do something equally reprehensible."

"He is a jolly old snook," says Mr. Potts. But as neither of his listeners know what he means, they do not respond.

"But what? Will you sing for us, Molly? 'Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast.'"

"It would take a good deal of music to soothe our bête noire," says Potts. "Besides—I confess it,—music is not what Artemus Ward would call my 'forte.' I don't understand it. I am like the man who said he only knew two tunes in the world: one was 'God save the Queen,' and the other wasn't. No, let us do something active,—something unusual, something wicked."

"If you can suggest anything likely to answer to your description, you will make me your friend for life," says Cecil, with solemnity. "I feel bad."

"A devil," repeats he, unmoved. "I don't mean our own particular old gentleman, who has been behaving so sweetly to-night, but a regular bona fide one."

"Nothing half so paltry. There is no deception about my performance. It is simplicity itself. There is no rapping, but a great deal of powder. Have you ever seen one?"

"Then you shall. It won't be much, you know, but it has a pretty effect, and anything will be less deadly than sitting here listening to the honeyed speeches of our host. I will go and prepare my work, and call you when it is ready."

In twenty minutes he returns and beckons them to come; and, rising, both girls quit the drawing-room.

With much glee Mr. Potts conducts them across the hall into the library, where they find all the chairs and the centre table pushed into a corner, as though to make room for one soup-plate which occupies the middle of the floor.

On this plate stands a miniature hill, broad at the base and tapering at the summit, composed of blended powder and water, which Mr. Potts has been carefully heating in an oven during his absence until, according to his lights, it has reached a proper dryness.

"It will go off, certainly, but it won't do any damage," replies their showman, with confidence; "and really it is very pretty while burning. I used to make 'em by hundreds when I was a boy, and nothing ever happened except once, when I blew the ear off my father's coachman."

This is not reassuring. Molly gets a little closer to Cecil, and Cecil gets a little nearer to Molly. They both sensibly increase the distance between them and the "devil."

"Now I am going to put out the lamp," says Plantagenet, suiting the action to the word and suddenly placing them in darkness. "It don't look anything if there is light to overpower its own brilliancy."

Striking a match, he applies it to the little black mountain, and in a second it turns into a burning one. The sparks fly rapidly upward. It seems to be pouring its fire in little liquid streams all down its sides.

"It is Mount Etna," says the latter, "except much better, because they don't seem to have any volcanoes nowadays. Mr. Potts, you deserve a prize medal for giving us such a treat."

"Plantagenet, my dear, I didn't believe it was in you," says Cecil. "Permit me to compliment you on your unprecedented success."

Presently, however, they slightly alter their sentiments. Every school-boy knows how overpowering is the smell of burnt powder.

"What an intolerable smell!" says Molly, when the little mound is half burned down, putting her dainty handkerchief up to her nose. "Oh! what is it? Gunpowder? Brimstone? Sulphur?"

"And extremely appropriate, too, dear," says Cecil, who has also got her nose buried in her cambric; "entirely carries out the character of the entertainment. You surely don't expect to be regaled with incense or attar of roses. By the bye, Plantagenet, is there going to be much more of it,—the smell, I mean?"

"Not much," replies he. "And, after all, what is it? If you went out shooting every day you would think nothing of it. For my part I almost like the smell. It is wholesome, and—er—— Oh, by Jove!"

There is a loud report,—a crash,—two terrified screams,—and then utter darkness. The base of the hill, being too dry, has treacherously gone off without warning: hence the explosion.

"You aren't hurt, are you?" asks Mr. Potts, a minute later, in a terrified whisper, being unable to see whether his companions are dead or alive.

"Not much," replies Cecil, in a trembling tone; "but, oh! what has happened? Molly, speak."

"I am quite safe," says Molly, "but horribly frightened. Mr. Potts, are you all right?"

"I am." He is ignorant of the fact that one of his cheeks is black as any nigger's, and that both his hands resemble it. "I really thought it was all up when I heard you scream. It was that wretched powder that got too dry at the end. However, it doesn't matter."

"Have you both your ears, Molly?" asks Cecil, with a laugh; but a sudden commotion in the hall outside, and the rapid advance of footsteps in their direction, check her merriment.

"I hear Mr. Amherst's voice," says Mr. Potts, tragically. "If he finds us here we are ruined."

"Let us get behind the curtains at the other end of the room," whispers Cecil, hurriedly; "they may not find us there,—and—throw the plate out of the window."

No sooner said than done: Plantagenet with a quick movement precipitates the soup-plate—or rather what remains of it—into the court-yard beneath, where it falls with a horrible clatter, and hastily follows his two companions into their uncertain hiding-place.

It stands in a remote corner, rather hidden by a bookcase, and consists of a broad wooden pedestal, hung round with curtains, that once supported a choice statue. The statue having been promoted some time since, the three conspirators now take its place, and find themselves completely concealed by its falling draperies.

This recess, having been originally intended for one, can with difficulty conceal two, so I leave it to your imagination to consider how badly three fare for room inside it.

Mr. Potts, finding himself in the middle, begins to wish he had been born without arms, as he now knows not how to dispose of them. He stirs the right one, and Cecil instantly declares in an agonized whisper that she is falling off the pedestal. He moves the left, and Molly murmurs frantically in another instant she will be through the curtains at her side. Driven to distraction, poor Potts, with many apologies, solves the difficulty by placing an arm round each complainant, and so supports them on their treacherous footing.

They have scarcely brought themselves into a retainable position when the door opens and Mr. Amherst enters the room, followed by Sir Penthony Stafford and Luttrell.

With one candlestick only are they armed, which Sir Penthony holds, having naturally expected to find the library lighted.

"What is the meaning of this smell?" exclaims Mr. Amherst, in an awful voice, that makes our three friends shiver in their shoes. "Has any one been trying to blow up the house? I insist on learning the meaning of this disgraceful affair."

"There doesn't seem to be anything," says Tedcastle, "except gunpowder, or rather the unpleasant remains of it. The burglar has evidently flown."

"If you intend turning the matter into a joke," retorts Mr. Amherst, "you had better leave the room."

"Nothing shall induce me to quit the post of danger," replies Luttrell, unruffled.

Meantime, Sir Penthony, who is of a more suspicious nature, is making a more elaborate search. Slowly, methodically he commences a tour round the room, until presently he comes to a stand-still before the curtains that conceal the trembling trio.

Mr. Amherst, in the middle of the floor, is busily engaged examining the chips of china that remain after their fiasco,—and that ought to tell the tale of a soup-plate.

Mr. Potts, with half his face blackened beyond recognition, glares out at them with the courage of despair. On one side of him is Lady Stafford, on the other Miss Massereene; from behind each of their waists protrudes a huge and sooty hand. That hand belongs to Potts.

Three pairs of eyes gleam at the discoverers, silently, entreatingly, yet with what different expressions! Molly is frightened, but evidently braced for action; Mr. Potts is defiant; Lady Stafford is absolutely convulsed with laughter. Already filled with a keen sense of the comicality of the situation, it only wanted her husband's face of indignant surprise to utterly unsettle her. Therefore it is that the one embarrassment she suffers from is a difficulty in refraining from an outburst of merriment.

There is a dead silence. Only the grating of Mr. Amherst's bits of china mars the stillness. Plantagenet, staring at his judges, defies them, without a word, to betray their retreat. The judges—although angry—stare back at him, and acknowledge their inability to play the sneak. Sir Penthony drops the curtain,—and the candle. Instantly darkness covers them. Luttrell scrapes a heavy chair along the waxed borders of the floor; there is some faint confusion, a rustle of petticoats, a few more footsteps than ought to be in the room, an uncivil remark from old Amherst about some people's fingers being all thumbs, and then once more silence.

Now that they are well out of the library, though still in the gloomy little anteroom that leads to it, Molly and Cecil pause to recover breath. For a few moments they keep an unbroken quiet. Lady Stafford is the first to speak,—as might be expected.

"I am bitterly disappointed," she says, in a tone of intense disgust. "It is a downright swindle. In spite of a belief that has lasted for years, that nose of his is a failure. I think nothing of it. With all its length and all its sharpness, it never found us out!"

By this time they have reached the outer hall, where the lamps are shining vigorously. They now shine down with unkind brilliancy on Mr. Potts's disfigured countenance. A heavy veil of black spreads from his nose to his left ear, rather spoiling the effect of his unique ugliness.

It is impossible to resist; Lady Stafford instantly breaks down, and gives way to the laughter that has been oppressing her for the last half-hour, Molly chimes in, and together they laugh with such hearty delight that Mr. Potts burns to know the cause of their mirth, that he may join in.

He grins, however, in sympathy, whilst waiting impatiently an explanation. His utter ignorance of the real reason only enhances the absurdity of his appearance and prolongs the delight of his companions.

When two minutes have elapsed, and still neither of them offers any information, he grows grave, and whispers rather to himself than them, the one word, "Hysterics?"

"You are right," cries Cecil: "I was never nearer hysterics in my life. Oh, Plantagenet! your face is as black as—as——"

"Your hat!" supplies Molly, as well as she can speak. "And your hands,—you look demoniacal. Do run away and wash yourself and—— I hear somebody coming."

Whereupon Potts scampers up-stairs, while the other two gain the drawing-room, just as Mr. Amherst appears in the hall.

Seeing them, half an hour later, seated in all quietude and sobriety, discussing the war and the last new marvel in bonnets, who would have supposed them guilty of their impromptu game of "hide and seek"?

Tedcastle and Sir Penthony, indeed, look much more like the real culprits, being justly annoyed, and consequently rather cloudy about the brows. Yet, with a sense of dignified pride, the two gentlemen abstain from giving voice to their disapprobation, and make no comment on the event of the evening.

Mr. Potts is serenity itself, and is apparently ignorant of having given offense to any one. His face has regained its pristine fairness, and is scrupulously clean; so is his conscience. He looks incapable of harm.

Bed-hour arrives, and Tedcastle retires to his pipe without betraying his inmost feelings. Sir Penthony is determined to follow his lead; Cecil is equally determined he shall not. To have it out with him without further loss of time is her fixed intention, and with that design she says, a little imperiously:

She has lingered, before saying this, until almost all the others have disappeared. The last of the men is vanishing round the corner that leads to the smoking-room; the last of the women has gone beyond sight of the staircase in search of her bedroom fire. Cecil and her husband stand alone in the vast hall.

"I fear you are annoyed about something," she says, in a maddening tone of commiseration, regarding him keenly, while he gravely lights her candle.

"I was never a great talker, and I do not think I am in the habit of laughing more than other people."

"But you have not laughed at all,—all this evening, at least,"—with a smile,—"not since you discovered us in durance vile."

"Did you find the situation so unpleasant? I fancied it rather amused you,—so much so that you even appeared to forget the dignity that, as a married woman, ought to belong to you."

"At all events you are my wife,"—rather angrily; "I must beg you to remember that. And for the future I shall ask you to refrain from such amusements as call for concealment and necessitate the support of a young man's arm."

"I really do not see by what right you interfere with either me or my amusements," says Cecil, hotly, after a decided pause. Never has he addressed her with so much sternness. She raises her eyes to his and colors richly all through her creamy skin. "Recollect our bargain."

"I do not see how you intend carrying out that argument. The money was quite as much mine as yours."

"Which is to be regretted. At least I should have had a clear half, which I haven't; so you have the best of it. And—I will not be followed about, and pried after, and made generally uncomfortable by any one."

"Just what I say. And, as I never so far forget myself as to call you by your Christian name without its prefix, I think you might have the courtesy to address me as Lady Stafford."

"Then pray defer it until to-morrow, as"—with a bare-faced attempt at a yawn—"I really cannot sit up any longer. Good-night, Sir Penthony."

Sir Penthony puts the end of his long moustache into his mouth,—a sure sign of irritation,—and declines to answer.

"Good-night," repeats her ladyship, blandly, going up the staircase, with a suspicion of a smile at the corners of her lips, and feeling no surprise that her polite little adieu receives no reply.

When she has reached the centre of the broad staircase she pauses, and, leaning her white arms upon the banisters, looks down upon her husband, standing irresolute and angry in the hall beneath.

"Sir Penthony," murmurs she; "Sir——" Here she hesitates for so long a time that when at last the "Penthony" does come it sounds more familiar and almost unconnected with the preceding word.

Stafford turns, and glances quickly up at her. She is dressed in some soft-flowing gown of black, caught here and there with heavy bows and bands of cream-color, that contrast admirably with her hair, soft skin, her laughing eyes, and her pouting, rosy lips. In her hair, which she wears low on her neck, is a black comb studded with pearls; there are a few pearls round her neck, a few more in her small ears; she wears no bracelets, only two narrow bands of black velvet caught with pearls, that make her arms seem even rounder and whiter than they are.

"Good-night," she says, for the third time, nodding at him in a slow, sweet fashion that has some grace or charm about it all its own, and makes her at the instant ten times lovelier than she was before.

Stafford, coming forward until he stands right under her, gazes up at her entranced like some modern Romeo. Indeed, there is something almost theatrical about them as they linger, each waiting for the other to speak,—he fond and impassioned, yet half angry too, she calm and smiling, yet mutinous.

For a full minute they thus hesitate, looking into each other's eyes; then the anger fades from Stafford's face, and he whispers, eagerly, tenderly:

"Friend," murmurs back her ladyship, decisively, leaning yet a little farther over the banisters.

Then she kisses her hand to him and drops at his feet the rose that has lain on her bosom all the evening, and, with a last backward glance and smile, flits away from him up the darkened staircase and vanishes.

"I shall positively lose my heart to her if I don't take care," thinks the young man, ruefully, and very foolishly, considering how long ago it is since that misfortune has befallen him. But we are ever slow to acknowledge our own defeats. His eyes are fixed upon the flower at his feet.

"No, I do not want her flowers," he says, with a slight frown, pushing it away from him disdainfully. "It was a mere chance my getting it. Any other fellow in my place at the moment would have been quite as favored,—nay, beyond doubt more so. I will not stoop for it."

With his dignity thus forced to the front, he walks the entire length of the hall, his arms folded determinedly behind him, until he reaches a door at the upper end.

Here he pauses and glances back almost guiltily. Yes, it is still there, the poor, pretty yellow blossom that has been so close to her, now sending forth its neglected perfume to an ungrateful world.

It is cruel to leave it there alone all night, to be trodden on, perhaps, in the morning by an unappreciative John or Thomas, or, worse still, to be worn by an appreciative James. Desecration!

"'Who hesitates is lost,'" quotes Stafford, aloud, with an angry laugh at his own folly, and, walking deliberately back again, picks up the flower and presses it to his lips.

"I thought that little speech applied only to us poor women," says a soft voice above him, as, to his everlasting chagrin, Cecil's mischievous, lovable face peers down at him from the gallery overhead. "Have another flower, Sir Penthony? You seem fond of them."

She throws a twin-blossom to the one he holds on to his shoulder as she speaks with very accurate aim.

"So it was,"—with an accent of affected surprise,—"which makes your behavior all the more astonishing. Well, do not stand there kissing it all night, or you will catch cold, and then—what should I do?"

"Very probably. Yet you should pity me too, in that I have fallen so low as to have nothing better given me to kiss. I am wasting my sweetness on——"

At this they both laugh,—a low, a soft laugh, born of the hour and a fear of interruption, and perhaps a dread of being so discovered, that adds a certain zest to their meeting. Then he says, still laughing, in answer to her words, "Try."

"No, thank you." With a little moue. "Curiosity is not my besetting sin, although I could not resist seeing how you would treat my parting gift a moment ago. Ah!"—with a little suppressed laugh of the very fullest enjoyment,—"you cannot think what an interesting picture you made,—almost tragic. First you stalked away from my unoffending rose with all the dignity of a thousand Spaniards; and then, when you had gone sufficiently far to make your return effective, you relented, and, seizing upon the flower as though it were—let us say, for convenience sake—myself, devoured it with kisses. I assure you it was better than a play. Well,"—with a sigh,—"I won't detain you any longer. I'm off to my slumbers."

"No doubt. A short time since you said the same thing. Were I to stay now you might, perhaps, finish that scolding; instinct told me it was hanging over me; and—I hate being taken to task."

"I will not, I swear I will never again attempt to scold you about anything, experience having taught me the futility of such a course. Cecil, stay."

"I can't, then. Where should I be without my beauty sleep? The bare idea fills me with horror. Why, I should lose my empire. Sweet as parting is, I protest I, for one, would not lengthen it until to-morrow. Till then—farewell. And—Sir Penthony—be sure you dream of me. I like being dreamed of by my——"

"My slaves," returns this coquette of all coquettes, with a last lingering glance and smile. After which she finally disappears.

"There is no use disguising the fact any longer,—I have lost my heart," groans Sir Penthony, in despair, as he straightway carries off both himself and his cherished flowers to the shelter of his own room.

The next day is Sunday, and a very muggy, disagreeable one it proves. There is an indecision about it truly irritating. A few drops of rain here and there, a threatening of storm, but nothing positive. Finally, at eleven o'clock, just as they have given up all hope of seeing any improvement, it clears up in a degree,—against its will,—and allows two or three depressed and tearful sunbeams to struggle forth, rather with a view to dishearten the world than to brighten it.

Sunday at Herst is much the same as any other day. There are no rules, no restrictions. In the library may be found volumes of sermons waiting for those who may wish for them. The covers of those sermons are as clean and fresh to-day as when they were placed on their shelves, now many years ago, showing how amiably they have waited. You may play billiards if you like; you need not go to church if you don't like. Yet, somehow, when at Herst, people always do go,—perhaps because they needn't, or perhaps because there is such a dearth of amusements.

Molly, who as yet has escaped all explanation with Tedcastle, coming down-stairs, dressed for church, and looking unusually lovely, finds almost all the others assembled before her in the hall, ready to start.

Laying her prayer-books upon a table, while with one hand she gathers up the tail of her long gown, she turns to say a word or two to Lady Stafford.

At this moment both Luttrell and Shadwell move toward the books. Shadwell, reaching them first, lays his hand upon them.

"You will carry them for me?" says Molly, with a bright smile to him; and Luttrell, with a slight contraction of the brow, falls back again, and takes his place beside Lady Stafford.

As the church lies at the end of a pleasant pathway through the woods, they elect to walk it; and so in twos and threes they make their way under the still beautiful trees.

"It is cold, is it not?" Molly says to Mrs. Darley once, when they come to an open part of the wood, where they can travel in a body; "wonderfully so for September."

"Is it? I never mind the cold, or—or anything," rejoins Mrs. Darley, affectedly, talking for the benefit of the devoted Mottie, who walks beside her, "laden with golden grain," in the shape of prayer-books and hymnals of all sorts and sizes, "if I have any one with me that suits me; that is, a sympathetic person."

"A lover you mean?" asks uncompromising Molly. "Well, I don't know; I think that is about the time, of all others, when I should object to feeling cold. One's nose has such an unpleasant habit of getting beyond one's control in the way of redness; and to feel that one's cheeks are pinched and one's lips blue is maddening. At such times I like my own society best."

"And at other times, too," said Philip, disagreeably; "this morning, for instance." He and Molly have been having a passage of arms, and he has come off second best.

"I won't contradict you," says Molly, calmly; "it would be rude, and, considering how near we are to church, unchristian."

"A pity you cannot recollect your Christianity on other occasions," says he, sneeringly.

"Is it charitable, is it kind to scorn a fellow-creature as you do, only because he loves you?" Philip says, in a low tone.

Miss Massereene is first honestly surprised, then angry. That Philip has made love to her now and again when opportunity occurred is a fact she does not seek to deny, but it has been hitherto in the careless, half-earnest manner young men of the present day affect when in the society of a pretty woman, and has caused her no annoyance.

That he should now, without a word of warning (beyond the slight sparring-match during their walk, and which is one of a series), break forth with so much vehemence and apparent sense of injury, not only alarms but displeases her; whilst some faint idea of treachery on her own part toward her betrothed, in listening to such words, fills her with distress.

There is a depth, an earnestness, about Philip not to be mistaken. His sombre face has paled, his eyes do not meet hers, his thin nostrils are dilated, as though breathing were a matter of difficulty; all prove him genuinely disturbed.

To a man of his jealous, passionate nature, to love is a calamity. No return, however perfect, can quite compensate him for all the pains and fears his passion must afford. Already Philip's torture has begun; already the pangs of unrequited love have seized upon him.

"I wish you would not speak to me like—as—in such a tone," Molly says, pettishly and uneasily. "Latterly, I hate going anywhere with you, you are so ill-tempered; and now to-day—— Why cannot you be pleasant and friendly, as you used to be when I first came to Herst?"

At this inauspicious moment a small rough terrier of Luttrell's rushes across their path, almost under their feet, bent on some mad chase after a mocking squirrel; and Philip, maddened just then by doubts and the coldness of her he loves, with the stick he carries strikes him a quick and sudden blow; not heavy, perhaps, but so unexpected as to draw from the pretty brute a sharp cry of pain.

Hearing a sound of distress from his favorite, Luttrell turns, and, seeing him shrinking away from Molly's side, casts upon her a glance full of the liveliest reproach, that reduces her very nearly to the verge of tears. To be so misunderstood, and all through this tiresome Philip, it is too bad! As, under the circumstances, she cannot well indulge her grief, she does the next best thing, and gives way to temper.

"Don't do that again," she says, with eyes that flash a little through their forbidden tears.

"Why?" surprised in his turn at her vehemence; "it isn't your dog; it's Luttrell's."

"No matter whose dog it is; don't do it again. I detest seeing a poor brute hurt, and for no cause, but merely as a means to try and rid yourself of some of your ill-temper."

"There is more ill-temper going than mine. I beg your pardon, however. I had no idea you were a member of the Humane Society. You should study the bearing-rein question, and vivisection, and—that," with a sullen laugh.

"There are other—perhaps mistakenly termed—superior animals on whom even you can inflict torture," he says, with a sneer. "All your tenderness must be reserved for the lower creation. You talk of brutality: what is there in all the earth so cruel as a woman? A lover's pain is her joy."

"You are getting out of your depth,—I cannot follow you," says Molly, coldly. "Why should you and I discuss such a subject as lovers? What have we in common with them? And it is a pity, Philip, you should allow your anger to get so much the better of you. When you look savage, as you do now, you remind me of no one so much as grandpapa. And do recollect what an odious old man he makes."

This finishes the conversation. He vouchsafes her no reply. To be considered like Mr. Amherst, no matter in how far-off a degree, is a bitter insult. In silence they continue their walk; in silence reach the church and enter it.

It is a gloomy, antiquated building, primitive in size, and form, and service. The rector is well-meaning, but decidedly Low. The curate is unmeaning, and abominably slow. The clerk does a great part of the duty.

He is an old man, and regarded rather in the light of an institution in this part of the county. Being stone deaf, he puts in the responses anyhow, always in the wrong place, and never finds out his mistake until he sees the clergyman's lips set firm, and on his face a look of patient expectation, when he coughs apologetically, and says them all over again.

There is an "Amen" in the middle of every prayer, and then one at the end. This gives him double trouble, and makes him draw his salary with a clear conscience. It also creates a lively time for the school-children, who once at least on every Sunday give way to a loud burst of merriment, and are only restored to a sense of duty by a severe blow administered by the sandy-haired teacher.

It is a good old-fashioned church too, where the sides of the pews are so high that one can with difficulty look over them, and where the affluent man can have a real fire-place all to himself, with a real poker and tongs and shovel to incite it to a blaze every now and again.

Here, too, without rebuke the neighbors can seize the opportunity of conversing with each other across the pews, by standing on tiptoe, when occasion offers during the service, as, for instance, when the poor-box is going round. And it is a poor-box, and no mistake,—flat, broad, and undeniable pewter, at which the dainty bags of a city chapel would have blushed with shame.

When the clergyman goes into the pulpit every one instantly blows his or her nose, and coughs his or her loudest before the text is given out, under a mistaken impression that they can get it all over at once, and not have to do it at intervals further on. This is a compliment to the clergyman, expressing their intention of hearing him undisturbed to the end, and, I suppose, is received as such.

It is an attentive congregation,—dangerously so, for what man but blunders in his sermon now and then? And who likes being twitted on week-days for opinions expressed on Sundays, more especially if he has not altogether acted up to them! It is a suspicious congregation too (though perhaps not singularly so, for I have perceived others do the same), because whenever their priest names a chapter and verse for any text he may choose to insert in his discourse, instantly and with avidity each and all turn over the leaves of their Bibles, to see if it be really in the identical spot mentioned, or whether their pastor has been lying. This action may not be altogether suspicion; it may be also thought of as a safety-valve for their ennui, the rector never letting them off until they have had sixty good minutes of his valuable doctrine.

All the Herst party conduct themselves with due discretion save Mr. Potts, who, being overcome by the novelty of the situation and the length of the sermon, falls fast asleep, and presently, at some denunciatory passage, pronounced in a rather distinct tone by the rector, rousing himself with a precipitate jerk, sends all the fire-irons with a fine clatter to the ground, he having been most unhappily placed nearest the grate.

"The ruling passion strong in death," says Luttrell, with a despairing glance at the culprit; whereupon Molly nearly laughs outright, while the school-children do so quite.

Beyond this small contre-temps, however, nothing of note occurs; and, service being over, they all file decorously out of the church into the picturesque porch outside, where they stand for a few minutes interchanging greetings with such of the county families as come within their knowledge.

With a few others too, who scarcely come within that aristocratic pale, notably Mrs. Buscarlet. She is a tremendously stout, distressingly healthy woman, quite capable of putting her husband in a corner of her capacious pocket, which, by the bye, she insists on wearing outside her gown, in a fashion beloved of our great-grandmothers, and which, in a modified form, last year was much affected by our own generation.

This alarming personage greets Marcia with the utmost bonhommie, being apparently blind to the coldness of her reception. She greets Lady Stafford also, who is likewise at freezing-point, and then gets introduced to Molly. Mrs. Darley, who even to the uninitiated Mrs. Buscarlet appears a person unworthy of notice, she lets go free, for which favor Mrs. Darley is devoutly grateful.

Little Buscarlet himself, who has a weakness for birth, in that he lacks it, comes rambling up to them at this juncture, and tells them, with many a smirk, he hopes to have the pleasure of lunching with them at Herst, Mr. Amherst having sent him a special invitation, as he has something particular to say to him; whereupon Molly, who is nearest to him, laughs, and tells him she had no idea such luck was in store for her.

"You are the greatest hypocrite I ever met in my life," Sir Penthony says in her ear, when Buscarlet, smiling, bowing, radiant, has moved on.

"I am not indeed; you altogether mistake me," Molly answers. "If you only knew how his anxiety to please, and Marcia's determination not to be pleased, amuse me, you would understand how thoroughly I enjoy his visits."

"I ask your pardon. I had no idea we had a student of human nature among us. Don't study me, Miss Massereene, or it will unfit you for further exertions; I am a living mass of errors."

"Alas that I cannot contradict you!" says Cecil, with a woful sigh, who is standing near them.

Mr. Amherst, who never by any chance darkens the doors of a church, receives them in the drawing-room on their return. He is in an amiable mood and pleased to be gracious. Seizing upon Mr. Buscarlet, he carries him off with him to his private den, so that for the time being there is an end of them.

"For all small mercies," begins Mr. Potts, solemnly, when the door has closed on them; but he is interrupted by Lady Stafford.

"'Small,' indeed," grumbles she. "What do you mean? I shan't be able to eat my lunch if that odious little man remains, with his 'Yes, Lady Stafford;' 'No, Lady Stafford;' 'I quite agree with your ladyship,' and so on. Oh, that I could drop my title!"—this with a glance at Sir Penthony;—"at all events while he is present." This with another and more gracious glance at Stafford. "Positively I feel my appetite going already, and that is a pity, as it was an uncommonly good one."

"Cheer up, dear," says Molly; "and remember there will be dinner later on. Poor Mr. Buscarlet! There must be something wrong with me, because I cannot bring myself to think so disparagingly of him as you all do."

"I am sorry for you. Not to know Mr. Buscarlet's little peculiarities of behavior argues yourself unknown," Marcia says, with a good deal of intention. "And I presume they cannot have struck you, or you would scarcely be so tolerant."

"He certainly sneezes very incessantly and very objectionably," Molly says, thoughtfully. "I hate a man who sneezes publicly; and his sneeze is so unpleasant,—so exactly like that of a cat. A little wriggle of the entire body, and then a little soft—splash!"

"And then there is Mrs. Buscarlet: I never saw any one like Mrs. Buscarlet," Maud Darley says, plaintively; "did you? There is so much of her, and it is all so nasty. And, oh! her voice! it is like wind whistling through a key-hole."

"Poor woman," says Luttrell, regretfully, "I think I could have forgiven her had she not worn that very verdant gown."

"My dear fellow, I thought the contrast between it and her cheeks the most perfect thing I ever saw. It is evident you have not got the eye of an artist," Sir Penthony says, rather unfeelingly.

CHAPTER I.		CHAPTER XX.
CHAPTER II.		CHAPTER XXI.
CHAPTER III.		CHAPTER XXII.
CHAPTER IV.		CHAPTER XXIII.
CHAPTER V.		CHAPTER XXIV.
CHAPTER VI.		CHAPTER XXV.
CHAPTER VII.		CHAPTER XXVI.
CHAPTER VIII.		CHAPTER XXVII.
CHAPTER IX.		CHAPTER XXVIII.
CHAPTER X.		CHAPTER XXIX.
CHAPTER XI.		CHAPTER XXX.
CHAPTER XII.		CHAPTER XXXI.
CHAPTER XIII.		CHAPTER XXXII.
CHAPTER XIV.		CHAPTER XXXIII.
CHAPTER XV.		CHAPTER XXXIV.
CHAPTER XVI.		CHAPTER XXXV.
CHAPTER XVII.		CHAPTER XXXVI.
CHAPTER XVIII.		CHAPTER XXXVII.
CHAPTER XIX.		CHAPTER XXXVIII.

MOLLY BAWN

By

THE DUCHESS

(Margaret Wolfe Hamilton)

Author of "Phylis," "Airy Fairy Lilian," "Portia," Etc,. Etc.

NEW YORK
HURST AND COMPANY
PUBLISHERS

MOLLY BAWN.

MOLLY BAWN

By

THE DUCHESS (Margaret Wolfe Hamilton)

Author of "Phylis," "Airy Fairy Lilian," "Portia," Etc,. Etc.

NEW YORK HURST AND COMPANY PUBLISHERS

MOLLY BAWN.

THE DUCHESS

(Margaret Wolfe Hamilton)

NEW YORK
HURST AND COMPANY
PUBLISHERS