drowsy, the soft ripple of the tide upon the golden sand was like a lullaby. Even that long sleep of the morning had not cured Vixen's weariness; there were long arrears of slumber yet to be made up. Her eyelids. drooped, then closed altogether; the ocean lullaby took a still softer sound, the distant voices of the tourists grew infinitely soothing, and Vixen sank quietly to sleep, her head leaning on her folded arms, the gentle west wind faintly stirring her loose hair. “Oh, Oh, happy kiss that woke thy sleep!" cried a familiar voice close in the slumberer's ear; and then a warm breath which was not the summer wind fanned the cheek which lay upmost upon her arm, two warm lips were pressed against that glowing cheek in ardent. greeting. The girl started to her feet, every vein tingling with the thrilling recognition of her assailant. There was else-none no one else none other than he-in this wide world who would do such a thing. She sprang up and faced him, her eyes flashing, her cheeks crimson.

"How dare you?" she cried. "Then it was you I saw in the fly? Pray, is this the nearest way to Norway?"

Yes, it was Rorie, looking exactly like the familiar Rorie of old, not one whit altered by marriage with a duke's only daughter; a stalwart young fellow in a rough gray suit, a dark face sunburned to the deepest bronze, eyes with a happy smile in them, firmly-cut lips half hidden by the thick brown beard, a face that would have looked well under a lifted helmet-such a face as the scared Saxons must have seen among the bold followers of William the Norman when those hardy Norse warriors ran amuck in Dover town.

"Not to my knowledge," answered this audacious villain, in his lightest tone. “I am not very geographical, but I should think it was rather out of the way."

"Then you and Lady Mabel have changed your plans?" said Vixen, trembling very much, but trying desperately to be as calmly commonplace as a young lady talking to an ineligible partner at a ball. "You are not going to the North of Europe?"

"Lady Mabel and I have changed our plans. We are not going to the North of Europe."

"Oh !"

"In point of fact, we are not going anywhere."

"But you have come to Jersey. That is your tour, I suppose?"

part of

"Do not be too hasty in your suppositions, Miss Tempest. I have come to Jersey; I am quite willing to admit as much as that." "And Lady Mabel? She is with you, of course?"

"Not the least bit in the world. To the best of my knowledge, Lady Mabel-I beg her pardon: Lady Mallow-is now on her way to the fishing grounds of Connemara with her husband."

"Rorie!" What a glad, happy cry that was! It was like a gush of sudden music from a young blackbird's throat on a sunny spring morning.

. The crimson dye had faded from Violet's cheeks a minute ago and left her deadly pale. Now the bright color rushed back again, the happy brown eyes, the sweet blush-rose lips, broke into the gladdest smile that ever Rorie had seen upon her face. He held out his arms, he clasped her to his breast, where she rested unresistingly, infinitely happy. Great

Heaven! how the whole world and herself had become transformed in this moment of unspeakable bliss! Rorie, the lost, the surrendered, was her own true lover, after all! “Yes, dear, I obeyed you. You were hard and cruel to me that night in the fir plantation, but I knew in my heart of hearts that you were wise and honest and true, and I made up my mind that I would keep the engagement entered upon beside my mother's death-bed. Loving or unloving, I would marry Mabel Ashbourne and do my duty to her, and go down to my grave with the character of a good and faithful husband, as many a man has done who never loved his wife. So I held on, Vixen-yes, I will call you by the old pet name now; henceforward you are mine, and I shall call you what I like I held on, and was altogether an exemplary lover went wherever I was ordered to go, and always came when they whistled for me; rode at my lady's jog-trot pace in the Row, stood behind her chair at the opera, endured more classical music than ever man heard before and lived, listened to my sweetheart's manuscript verses, and, in a word, did my duty in that state of life to which it had pleased God to call me; and my reward has been to be jilted with every circumstance of ignominy on my weddingmorning."

once, but Lord Mallow bowled me out. His eloquence, his parliamentary success, and, above all, his flattery, proved irresistible. The scoundrel brought a marriagecertificate in his pocket when he came to stay at Ashbourne, and had the art to engage rooms at Southampton and sleep there a night en passant. He left a portmanteau and a hat-box there, and that constituted legal occupancy; so, when he won Lady Mabel's consent to an elopement-which I believe he did not succeed in doing till the night before our intended wedding-day-he had only to ride over to Southampton and give notice to the parson and clerk. The whole thing was done splendidly. Lady Mabel went out at eight o'clock under the pretence of going to early church; Mallow was waiting for her with a fly half a mile from Ashbourne. They drove to Southampton together, and were married at ten o'clock in the old church of St. Michael. While the distracted duchess and her women were hunting everywhere for the bride, and all the visitors at Ashbourne were arraying themselves in their wedding-finery, and the village children were filling their baskets with flowers to strew upon the pathway of the happy pair, emblematical of the flowers which did not blossom in the highway of life, the lady was over the border with Jock of Hazeldean. Wasn't it fun, Vixen?" and the jilted one flung back his handsome head and laughed long and loud. It was too good a joke, the welcome release coming at the last moment. "At half-past ten there came a telegram from my runaway bride: 'Ask Roderick to forgive me, dear mamma. I found at the last that my heart was not mine to give, and I am married to Lord Mallow. I do not

think my cousin will grieve very much.' That last clause was sensible, anyhow, was it not, Vixen ?"

"I think the whole business was very sensible," said Vixen, with a sweet grave smile. "Lord Mallow wanted a clever wife, and you did not; it was very wise of Lady Mabel to find that out before it was too late."

"She will be very happy as Lady Mallow," said Roderick. "Mallow will legislate for Ireland, and she will rule him. He will have quite enough of home rule, poor beggar! Hibernia will be Mabelized. She is a dear good little thing; I quite love her now she has jilted me.

"But how did you come here?" asked Vixen, looking up at her lover in simple. wonder. "All this only happened yesterday morning."

"Is there not a steamer that leaves Southampton nightly? Had there not been one, I would have chartered a boat for myself. I would have come in a cockle-shell, I would have come with a swimming-belt-I would have done anything wild and adventurous to hasten to my love. I started for Southampton the minute I had seen that too-blessed telegram, went to St. Michael's, saw the registry with its entry of Lord Mallow's marriage hardly dry, and then went down to the docks and booked my berth. Oh what a long day yesterday was!-the longest day of my life."

"And of mine," sighed Vixen, between tears and laughter, "in spite of the shepherd-kings."

"How did you find me here?" she asked. "Very easily. Your custodian-what a grim-looking personage she is, by the way! told me where you were gone and directed me how to follow you. I told her I had a most important message to deliver to you from your mother. You don't mind that artless device, I hope?"

"Not much. How is dear mamma? She complains in her letters of not feeling very well."

"I have not seen her lately; when I did, I thought her looking ill and worn. She will get well when you go back to her, Vixen; your presence will be like sunshine."

"I shall never go back to the Abbey House."

"Yes, you will-for one fortnight, at least; after that your home will be at Briarwood. You must be married from your father's house.'

"Who said I was going to be married, sir?" asked Vixen, with delicious coquetry. "I said it-I say it. Do you think I am too bold, darling? Ought I to go on my knees, love, and make you a formal offer? Why, I have loved you all my life, and I think you have loved me as long."

"So I have, Rorie," she answered, softly, shyly, sweetly; "I forswore myself that night in the fir wood. night in the fir wood. I always loved you; there was no stage of my life when you were not dearer to me than any one on earth, except my father.'

I gave

into a joyous peal of laughter.

wish-a wish that had been dinned into my ear for the last years of her life-and I have done nothing but repent my folly ever since. Can you forgive me, Violet? I shall never forgive myself."

"Let the past be like a dream that we have dreamed. It will make the future seem so much the brighter."

"Yes."

And then under the blue August sky, fearless and unabashed, these happy lovers gave each other the kiss of betrothal.

What am I to do with you?" Vixen asked, laughingly. "I ought to go home to Les Tourelles."

"Don't you think you might take me you might take me with you? I am your young man now, you know. I hope it is not a case of no followers allowed'?"

They found Miss Skipwith pacing the weedy gravel-walk in front of her parlor window with a disturbed air and a yellow envelope in her hand.

"My dear, this has been an eventful day," she exclaimed; "I have been very anxious for your return. Here's a telegram for you, and, as it is the first you have had since you have been staying here, I conclude it is of❘ some importance."

Poor Vixen looked at her lover with a conscience-stricken countenance.

"Oh, Rorie! And I have been so wickedly, wildly happy!" she cried, as if it were a crime to have so rejoiced.

Violet's portmanteaus were immediately packed. All was ready. There would be just time for a hurried breakfast with Miss Skipwith, and then the fly from St. Helier's would be at the gate to carry the exile on the first stage of the journey home.

Oh what a happy voyage that was over the summer sea! They sat side by side upon the bridge, sheltered from wind and sun, and talked the happy nonsense lovers talk, but which can hardly be so sweet between lovers whose youth and childhood have been spent far apart as between these two who had been reared amidst the same sylvan world and had desire and every every thought in unison. How brief the voyage seemed! It was but an hour or so since Roderick had been buying peaches and grapes as they lay at the end of the pier at Guernsey, and here were the Needles and the chalky cliffs and undulating downs of the Wight. The Wight! That meant Hampshire and home.

"How often those downs have been our

hand.

"If you were not standing by my side, a telegram would frighten me," she whispered to Roderick. "It might tell me you were dead."

riding across the hills between Lyndhurst and Beaulieu !" said Vixen.

She had a world of questions to ask him about all that had happened during her exile. She almost expected to hear that Lyndhurst

of old age, that the Knightwood Oak had been struck by lightning, or that some among those calamities which time naturally brings had befallen the surroundings of her home.