skilful angler allows her fish to play its foolish self, till, exhausted with splashing and struggling, she can land it without the line cutting her fingers or the water wetting her dress. The fish too was mute, but not for long.

"Did Maxwell really write to you, Miss Blair ?" said he, still savouring the bitter drop in a cup that might have been so sweet.

"Why should he not ?" she replied, lifting her large grey eyes to his with that rare smile of which she well knew the effect. "Would you rather he didn't?"

He often asked himself afterwards why, with such an opening, he had not dashed boldly in. Perhaps she thoroughly realised her power when he blushed, stammered, and answered-if answer it could be called:

"He's an old friend of mine, you know. I was at school with him long ago. I-I wonder he didn't write to me."

'Suppose he never wrote at all ?" said she, laughing outright.

He drew a long breath of intense relief, while she wondered how men could be so thick-witted, so much easier to manage, than the beasts of the field.

Again they walked on in silence, and now they were nearing the wicket in the park paling through which they must emerge on the publicity of the village. His hands were cold, his throat was dry, his tongue clave to the roof of his mouth.

"Miss Blair," said he, in a faint thick voice; and for the life of him he could not get out another syllable.

Well, Mr. Lexley ?"

How could she remain so cool and calm while he felt literally choking with emotion? It stung him just enough to give him courage. Loosening his neckcloth and squaring his shoulders, he stood up like a man and looked her in the face.

"He certainly has a good figure," she said to herself," and he's not so ugly as I thought. I hope he isn't going to ask me to marry him, for I feel as if I might almost say 'Yes.'"

"Miss Blair," he repeated, "will you forgive me for what I am going to tell you? I want you to-to-I don't know how to say it; I never said such a thing to anybody before."

"That is complimentary," she said, half pitying half mocking his agitation; "complimentary, but not reassuring."

"I want to make you understand-to tell you-of course, it's no use of course, I feel it's hopeless; but-but-Miss Blair, I never saw anybody like you. I never admired anybody so much, nor cared for anybody before. Couldn't you I don't mean now, but at a future time when you know me better-couldn't you care for me in return, and give me hope that at last you would—would look on me with some little regard ?"

1

He took her hand and was going to press it to his lips, had she not drawn it hastily away, admitting to herself, while she contrasted this with other declarations she had received of a like nature, that, considering he was so inexperienced, he had done it remarkably well. "Mr. Lexley," said she, perfectly calm and composed, "am I to understand that you are asking me to be your wife?"

"I know I might as well expect an angel to come down from heaven and marry me, but that is my desire," he answered, unconsciously borrowing from the Baptismal Service his energetic affirmative.

"And do you know who I am-what I am-how and where all my previous life has been spent, till you met me here for the first time, only a fortnight ago, Mr. Lexley—a fortnight yesterday?"

Do you remember it?" he exclaimed eagerly. "I could tell you every word you said that night. It was the beginning of a new life to me!-whether for happiness or misery, it remains with you to decide. I have staked everything on your answer. Oh, Miss Blair, I could wait for years-I could go through fire and water-I could bear anything-except to give you up!"

"You do love me, I think," she said very softly, but keeping at arm's length the while. "Listen, Mr. Lexley. You are younger than I am-younger in years, very much younger in knowledge of the world. Have you considered what it is to marry a woman without fortune, without position, without one single social advantage except a certain comeliness in your eyes, that will be faded long before you are past your prime? Have you ever thought of what your friends would say-your relations, your own parish, and the world in general?"

"I have considered nothing, I have calculated nothing, I have thought of nothing but you," he answered impetuously. "It is no question of me, but of yourself. The whole world might turn its back and welcome, if I saw the least chance of a kind word and a smile from you once a week."

Most women are gamblers at heart. Even if they abstain from defying chance on their own account, there are few but acknowledge the charm of recklessness in the other sex, and a man is pretty sure to find favour in their eyes whom they see risking his all at heavy disadvantage because they themselves are the prize. Laura Blair was no exception to the general rule. The most rational argument, the wisest forethought, would have made far less way in her good graces than Lexley's tumultuous declaration that he was ready and willing to pay any price for the toy he coveted, without even inquiring what it was worth. The unaccustomed tears sprang to her eyes, but she sent them back with an effort; and though her lip quivered, her voice was perfectly steady while she spoke.

"Mr. Lexley," said she, "you have paid me a very high compliment-one that I do not deserve. Hush! do not interrupt me: I repeat, one that I do not deserve. No, I don't hate you; I like you -yes, very much. But that is not the question. Let go my hand ; if you choose to take it after you have heard me out-well, perhaps I may consider the matter you mentioned just now. And yet it seems impossible-impossible! Yes, I know all that. I believe you—I do from my heart. But still, I say, it ought to be impossible. Now listen to me. You never smoke, do you? If you did, I would ask you to light a cigar while I make my little statement. Never mind; promise to be a good boy and hold your tongue. Now, Mr. Lexley, this must be in the strictest confidence as between man and man."

“Wait a moment," he replied, stopping short, for they were walking up and down where the path was thickly screened by laurels. "Before you begin, let me say one word. I do not care what disclosures you make. I love you just the same. If it were possible that your past life had been worse than any convict's in prison, I should love you just the same. Even if you were married already," he added in a trembling voice, "it would break my heart, and I would never see you again; but, I should love you just the same!"

A faint colour tinged the delicate cheek he had often compared to the inner petals of a white rose, and the face he worshipped glowed for a moment with a rush of pride, qualified by pity, astonishment, and something like self-reproach.

"Married," she repeated. "You have hit upon the exact truth. I have been married, Mr. Lexley. No; you needn't break your heart and fly the country for fear of seeing me again. I said I have been married. Nobody can regret it more than myself. Now, do you understand how foolish you are? There are scores of girls in society who would love you very dearly, who would make excellent wives, any one of whom I am sure you might have for asking, and everybody would say you had chosen wisely and well."

"I had rather choose for myself," said he, looking rapturously in her face, for his hopes rose with the increasing kindness of her tone. "I have chosen my queen; and whenever she comes she shall find me ready, if I have to wait all my life and be disappointed at the end."

"Don't say that," she answered with a sigh. "You deserve a better fate. If there were more men like you in the world there would be more good women. As it is, there are plenty bad of both sexes, and I think fortune has thrown me among some of the worst. My father was not a good man, Mr. Lexley, though I have heard he was a good officer. He broke my mother's heart. I can remember when I was a little thing, how she used to cry when she came to wish me good-night. After she died I was sent away from home to stay

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with one relation after another, and whilst he lived I don't think I saw him half a dozen times again. Poor mother! How well I remember her. There is a miniature of her in my dressing-case upstairs. Mr. Lexley, you have a kind heart-I will show it you."

"Was she like you?" he asked.

"In features, yes," she replied, smiling rather sadly. "In disposition, very different, and very far superior. My mother was one of the best women that ever lived, and I sometimes think I am capable of being one of the worst! On her death bed she urged my father to marry a young lady, to whom she believed he was attached, and who, I learnt afterwards, received his attentions under the impression that he was a single man. He cared for her as little as for anybody else in the world, except Colonel Blair, but he was rather handsome, very agreeable, and Miss Bland loved him with all her heart. Mr. Lexley, I am telling you everything. Can you guess who Miss Bland was?"

"Not a sister of Mrs. Dennison's ?" said he. "Her maiden name, I know, was Bland."

"Not a sister of Mrs. Dennison," she repeated, "but Mrs. Dennison herself. Now you understand why Plumpton Priors is my home whenever I like to come, and why, though my position in her house is only that of a companion, Mrs. Dennison seems kinder and more considerate to me than to any of her own family or friends. I wonder whether I still remind her of papa. I hope not. The first time I ever saw her she said she knew me by something in my manner and the tone of my voice,. even before I told her my name. I was very friendless then, very. forlorn and helpless. If it had not been for my two hands I must have starved; but, happily, I could play the piano-forte, and I gave lessons at eighteen-pence an hour. How long the hours used to be! and oh, Mr. Lexley! if you knew how stupid some girls are, and how difficult it is to make them play in time!" He was looking at her with a fond pitiful admiration that touched

her to the heart.

"I hate to think of it," said he. on a throne!"

"You, who ought to be a queen

"I was a very stupid girl myself, once," she continued hurriedly, and in some confusion. "I ran away from school. You ought to know this, Mr. Lexley. Ran away with a gentleman I had only seen in my walks to and from church, and had never even spoken to. He wrote me beautiful letters-I was young and foolish, hating school, and having no real home; for a cousin of my father's, who took charge of me in the holidays, never let me forget I was a dependent. It seemed a fine thing to have a lover of one's own, and I suppose I cherished some romantic girlish notions then, that

have all been knocked out of me since. In short, I slipped through the gate one morning, before anybody was up, with a thick veil on and a travelling-bag in my hand, to find a four-wheeled cab and a gentleman in a white hat waiting at the end of the lane. By twelve o'clock in the day I was legally entitled to call myself Mrs. Delancy, and crying as if my heart would break, for sheer fright at the plunge I had made."

"Did you care for him," he asked eagerly, with retrospective jealousy, that was equally ludicrous and unreasonable.

"I thought I did then," she answered. "I am sure I did not now. There was so much hurry and excitement about the whole thing, that I had no leisure to analyse my feelings, and I accepted this new life with tolerable content. The very fact of being married seems to a mere girl, as I was, so high a step in the social scale. For a week or two I don't think I regretted my folly, and if Mr. Delancy had been tolerably kind to me I believe I should have made him a good wife-perhaps loved him, though they say a woman never loves a man she cannot respect. But I soon found out what I had done, and wished myself back again a hundred times a day. It was bad enough to grind on through one unvarying routine of lessons, music, back-board, and bread-and-butter, in a place that was halfprison, half-convent, but it was worse to find oneself the slave of an adventurer, the accomplice-Mr. Lexley, I must say it—of a sharper!

"Brussels, Paris, Vienna, Trieste, Italy, Greece-we visited them all, we left them all more or less tainted with suspicion, more or less detected and disgraced. You liked my playing the other night, didn't you? If I choose, Mr. Lexley, I can play better than most professionals. Well, our plan was this. We took beautiful rooms, drove good horses, lived like people with a large income, and gave pleasant little dinners or suppers, according to the fashion of the place.

"You can guess what it all meant. Mr. Delancy would sit down to any game at cards, against any adversary, for any stake, but what he liked best was écarté in my drawing-room, while I played the pianoforte and overlooked his adversary's hand. Will you believe it—he invented a scale of music by which I could communicate to him the cards his antagonist held; and forced me to assist him in this basest and most cowardly of robberies, because it was so impossible to bring it home! I wonder how I could. I had rather have cut my right hand off; but he frightened me and I did. Wait, I have not told you all.

"We never stayed long in one place. Mr. Delancy understood his profession thoroughly, and passed for a wealthy Englishman tormented with the continual restlessness foreigners attribute to our