In truth, Dysart's behavior to her since his return has been all she had led him to understand it ought to be. He it so changed toward her in every way that sometimes she has wondered if he has forgotten all the strange, unhappy past, and is now entirely emancipated from the torture of love unrequited that once had been his.

It is a train of thought she has up to this shrank from pursuing, yet which, she being strong in certain ways, should have been pursued by her to the bitter end. One small fact, however, had rendered her doubtful. She could not fail to notice that whenever he and she are together in the morning room, ballroom, or at luncheon or dinner, or breakfast, though he will not approach or voluntarily address her unless she first makes an advance toward him, a rare occurrence; still, if she raises her eyes to his, anywhere, at any moment, it is to find his on her!

And what sad eyes! Searching, longing, despairing, angry, but always full of an indescribable tenderness.

Last night she had specially noticed this—but then last night he had specially held aloof from her. No, no! It was no use dwelling upon it. He would not forgive. That chapter in her life was closed. To attempt to open it again would be to court defeat.

Joyce, however, had not been the only one to whom last night had been a disappointment. Beauclerk's determination to propose to her—to put his fortune to the touch and to gain hers—failed. Either the fates were against him, or else she herself was in a willful mood. She had refused to leave the dancing room with him on any pretext whatever, unless to gain the coolness of the crowded hall outside, or the still more inhabited supper room.

He was not dismayed, however, and there was no need to do things precipitately. There was plenty of time. There could be no doubt about the fact that she preferred him to any of the other men of her acquaintance; he had discovered that she had refused Dysart not only once, but twice. This he had drawn out of Isabel by a mild and apparently meaningless but nevertheless incessant and abstruse cross-examination. Naturally! He could see at once the reason for that. No girl who had been once honored by his attentions could possibly give her heart to another. No girl ever yet refused an honest offer unless her mind was filled with the image of another fellow. Mr. Beauclerk found no difficulty about placing "the other fellow" in this case. Norman Beauclerk was his name! What woman in her senses would prefer that tiresome Dysart with his "downright honesty" business so gloomily developed, to him, Beauclerk? Answer? Not one.

Well, she shall be rewarded now, dear little girl! He will make her happy for life by laying his name and prospective fortune at her feet. To-day he will end his happy bachelor state and sacrifice himself on the altar of love.

Thus resolved, he walks up through the lands of the Court, through the valley filled with opening fronds of ferns, and through the spinney beyond that again, until he comes to where the Monktons live. The house seems very silent. Knocking at the door, the maid comes to tell him that Mr. and Mrs. Monkton and the children are out, but that Miss Kavanagh is within.

Happy circumstance! Surely the fates favor him. They always have, by the by—sure sign that he is deserving of good luck.

Thanks. Miss Kavanagh, then. His compliments, and hopes that she is not too fatigued to receive him.

The maid, having shown him into the drawing-room, retires with the message, and presently the sound of little high-heeled shoes crossing the hall tells him that Joyce is approaching. His heart beats high—not immoderately high. To be uncertain is to be none the less unnerved—but there is no uncertainty about his wooing. Still it pleases him to know that in spite of her fatigue she could not bring herself to deny herself to him.

"Ah! How good of you!" says he as she enters, meeting her with both hands outstretched. "I feared the visit was too early! A very betise on my part—but you are the soul of kindness always."

"Early!" says Joyce, with a little laugh. "Why you might have found me chasing the children round the garden three hours ago. Providentially," giving him one hand, the ordinary one, and ignoring his other, "their father and mother were bound to go to Tisdown this morning or I should have been dead long before this."

"Ah!" says Beauclerk. And then with increasing tenderness. "So glad they were removed; it would have been too much for you, wouldn't it?"

"Yes—I dare say—on the whole, I believe I don't mind them," says Miss Kavanagh. "Well—and what about last night? It was delightful, wasn't it?" Secretly she sighs heavily, as she makes this most untruthful assertion.

"Ah! Was it?" asks he. "I did not find it so. How could I when you were so unkind to me?"

"I! Oh, no. Oh, surely not!" says she anxiously. There is no touch of the coquetry that might be about this answer had it been given to a man better liked. A slow soft color has crept into her cheeks, born of the knowledge that she had got out of several dances with him. But he, seeing it, gives it another, a more flattering meaning to his own self love.

"Can you deny it?" asks he, changing his seat so as to get nearer to her. "Joyce!" He leans toward her. "May I speak at last? Last night I was foiled in my purpose. It is difficult to say all that is in one's heart at a public affair of that kind, but now—now——"

Miss Kavanagh has sprung to her feet.

"No! Don't, don't!" she says earnestly. "I tell you—I beg you—I warn you——" She pauses, as if not knowing what else to say, and raises her pretty hands as if to enforce her words.

"Shy, delightfully shy!" says Beauclerk to himself. He goes quickly up to her with all the noble air of the conqueror, and seizing one of her trembling hands holds it in his own.

"Hear me!" he says with an amused toleration for her girlish mauvaise honte. "It is only such a little thing I have to say to you, but yet it means a great deal to me—and to you, I hope. I love you, Joyce. I have come here to-day to ask you to be my wife."

"I told you not to speak," says she. She has grown very white now. "I warned you! It is no use—no use, indeed."

"I have startled you," says Beauclerk, still disbelieving, yet somehow loosening the clasp on her hand. "You did not expect, perhaps, that I should have spoken to-day, and yet——"

"No. It was not that," says Miss Kavanagh, slowly. "I knew you would speak—I thought last night would have been the time, but I managed to avoid it then, and now——"

"Well?"

"I thought it better to get it over," says she, gently. She stops as if struck by something, and heavy tears rush to her eyes. Ah! she had told another very much the same as that. But she had not meant it then—and yet had been believed—and now, when she does mean it, she is not believed. Oh! if the cases might be reversed!

Beauclerk, however, mistakes the cause of the tears.

"It—get what over?" demands he, smiling.

"This misunderstanding."

"Ah, yes—that! I am afraid,"—he leans more closely toward her,—"I have often been afraid that you have not quite read me as I ought to be read."

"Oh, I have read you," says she, with a little gesture of her head, half confused, half mournful.

"But not rightly, perhaps. There have been moments when I fear you may have misjudged me——"

"Not one," says she quickly. "Mr. Beauclerk, if I might implore you not to say another word——"

"Only one more," pleads he, coming up smiling as usual. "Just one, Joyce—let me say my last word; it may make all the difference in the world between you and me now. I love you—nay, hear me!"

She has risen, and he, rising too, takes possession of both her hands. "I have come here to-day to ask you to be my wife; you know that already—but you do not know how I have worshiped you all these dreary months, and how I have kept silent—for your sake."

"And for 'my sake' why do you speak now?" asks she. She has withdrawn her hands from his. "What have you to offer me now that you had not a year ago?"

After all, it is a great thing to be an accomplished liar. It sticks to Beauclerk now.

"Why! Haven't you heard?" asks he, lifting astonished brows.

"I have heard nothing!"

"Not of my coming appointment? At least"—modestly—"of my chance of it?"

"No. Nothing, nothing. And even if I had, it would make no difference. I beg you to understand once for all, Mr. Beauclerk, that I cannot listen to you."

"Not now, perhaps. I have been very sudden——"

"No, never, never."

"Are you telling me that you refuse me?" asks he, looking at her with a rather strange expression in his eyes.

"I am sorry you put it that way," returns she, faintly.

"I don't believe you know what you are doing," cries he, losing his self-control for once in his life. "You will regret this. For a moment of spite, of ill-temper, you——"

"Why should I be ill-tempered about anything that concerns you and me?" says she, very gently still. She has grown even whiter, however, and has lifted her head so that her large eyes are directed straight to his. Something in the calm severity of her look chills him.

"Ah! you know best!" says he, viciously. The game is up—is thoroughly played out. This he acknowledges to himself, and the knowledge does not help to sweeten his temper. It helps him, however, to direct a last shaft at her. Taking up his hat, he makes a movement to depart, and then looks back at her. His overweening vanity is still alive.

"When you do regret it," says he—"and I believe that will be soon—it will be too late. You had the goodness to give me a warning a few minutes ago—I give you one now."

"I shall not regret it," says she, coolly.

"Not even when Dysart has sailed for India, and then 'the girl he left behind him' is disconsolate?" asks he, with an insolent laugh. "Ha! that touches you!"

It had touched her. She looks like a living thing stricken suddenly into marble, as she stands gazing back at him, with her hands tightly clenched before her. India! To India! And she had never heard.

Extreme anger, however, fights with her grief, and, overcoming it, enables her to answer her adversary.

"I think you, too, will feel regret," says she, gravely, "when you look back upon your conduct to me to-day."

There is such gentleness, such dignity, in her rebuke, and her beautiful face is so full of a mute reproach, that all the good there is in Beauclerk rises to the surface. He flings his hat upon a table near, and himself at her feet.

"Forgive me!" cries he, in a stifled tone. "Have mercy on me, Joyce!—I love you—I swear it! Do not cast me adrift! All I have said or done I regret now! You said I should regret, and I do."

Something in his abasement disgusts the girl, instead of creating pity in her breast. She shakes herself free of him by a sharp and horrified movement.

"You must go home," she says calmly, yet with a frowning brow, "and you must not come here again. I told, you it was all useless, but you would not listen. No, no; not a word!" He has risen to his feet, and would have advanced toward her, but she waves him from her with a sort of troubled hatred in her face.

"You mean——" begins he, hoarsely.

"One thing—one thing only," feverishly—"that I hope I shall never see you again!"



CHAPTER XLVIII.

"When a man hath once forfeited the reputation of his sincerity he is set fast, and nothing will then serve his turn, neither truth nor falsehood."

When he is gone Joyce draws a deep breath. For a moment it seems to her that it is all over—a disagreeable task performed, and then suddenly a reaction sets in. The scene gone through has tried her more than she knows, and without warning now she finds she is crying bitterly.

How horrible it all had been. How detestable he had looked—not so much when offering her his hand (as for his heart—pah!) as when he had given way to his weak exhibition of feeling and had knelt at her feet, throwing himself on her mercy. She placed her hands over her eyes when she thought of that. Oh! she wished he hadn't done it!

She is still crying softly—not now for Beauclerk's behavior, but for certain past beliefs—when a knock at the door warns her that another visitor is coming. She has not had time or sufficient presence of mind to tell a servant that she is not at home, when Miss Maliphant is ushered in by the parlor maid.

"I thought I'd come down and have a chat with you about last night," she begins in her usual loud tones, and with an assumption of easiness that is belied by the keen and searching glance she directs at Joyce.

"I'm so glad," says Joyce, telling her little lie as bravely as she can, while trying to conceal her red eyelids from Miss Maliphant's astute gaze by pretending to rearrange a cushion that has fallen from one of the lounges.

"Are you?" says her visitor, drily. "Seems to me I've come at the wrong moment. Shall I go away?"

"Go! No," says Joyce, reddening, and frowning a little. "Why should you?"

"Well, you've been crying," says Miss Maliphant, in her terribly downright way. "I hate people when I've been crying; but then it makes me a fright, and it only makes you a little less pretty. I suppose I mustn't ask what it is all about?"

"If you did I don't believe I could tell you," says Joyce, laughing rather unsteadily. "I was merely thinking, and it is the simplest thing in the world to feel silly now and then."

"Thinking? Of Mr. Beauclerk?" asks Miss Maliphant, promptly, and without the slightest idea of hesitation. "I saw him leaving this as I came by the upper road! Was it he who made you cry?"

"Certainly not," says Joyce, indignantly.

"It looks like it, however," says the other, her masculine voice growing even sterner. "What was he saying to you?"

"I really do think——" Joyce is beginning, coldly, when Miss Maliphant stops her by an imperative gesture.

"Oh, I know. I know all about that," says she, contemptuously. "One shouldn't ask questions about other people's affairs; I've learned my manners, though I seldom make any use of my knowledge, I admit. After all, I see no reason why I shouldn't ask you that question. I want to know, and there is no one to tell me but you. Was he proposing to you, eh?"

"Why should you think that?" says Joyce, subdued by the masterful manner of the other, and by something honest and above board about her that is her chief characteristic. There is no suspicion, either, about her of her questions being prompted by mere idle curiosity. She has said she wanted to know, and there was meaning in her tone.

"Why shouldn't I?" says she now. "He came down here early this afternoon. He goes away in haste—and I find you in tears. Everything points one way."

"I don't see why it should point in that direction."

"Come, be open with me," says the heiress, brusquely, in an abrupt fashion that still fails to offend. "Did he propose to you?"

Joyce hesitates. She raises her head and looks at Miss Maliphant earnestly. What a good face she has, if plain. Too good to be made unhappy. After all, why not tell her the truth? It would be a warning. It was impossible to be blind to the fact that Miss Maliphant had been glad to receive the dishonest attentions paid to her every now and then by Beauclerk. Those attentions would probably be increased now, and would end but one way. He would get Miss Maliphant's money, and she—that good, kind-hearted girl—what would she get? It seems cruel to be silent, and yet to speak is difficult. Would it be fair or honorable to divulge his secret?

Would it be fair or honorable to let her imagine what is not true? He had been false to her—Joyce (she could not blind herself to the knowledge that with all his affected desire for her he would never have made her an offer of his hand but for her having come in for that money)—he would therefore be false to Miss Maliphant; he would marry her undoubtedly, but as a husband he would break her heart. Is she, for the sake of a word or two, to see her fall a prey to a mere passionless fortune-hunter? A thousand times no! Better inflict a little pain now rather than let this girl endure endless pain in the future.

With a shrinking at her heart, born of the fear that the word will be very bitter to her guest, she says, "Yes;" very distinctly.

"Ha!" says Miss Maliphant, and that is all. Joyce, regarding her anxiously, is as relieved as astonished to see no trace of grief or chagrin upon her face. There is no change at all, indeed, except she looks deeply reflective. Her mind seems to be traveling backward, picking up loose threads of memory, no doubt, and joining them together. A sense of intense comfort fills Joyce's soul. After all; the wound had not gone deep; she had been right to speak.

"He is not worth thinking about," says she, tremulously, apropos of nothing, as it seems.

"No?" says Miss Maliphant; "then what were you crying about?"

"I hardly know. I felt nervous—and once I did like him—not very much—but still I liked him—and he was a disappointment."

"Tell you what," says Miss Maliphant, "you've hit upon a big truth. He is not worth thinking about. Once, perhaps, I, too, liked him, and I was an idiot for my pains; but I shan't like him again in a hurry. I expect I've got to let him know that, one way or another. And as for you——"

"I tell you I never liked him much," says Joyce, with a touch of displeasure. "He was handsome, suave, agreeable—but——"

"He was, and is, a hypocrite!" interrupts Miss Maliphant, with truly beautiful conciseness. She has never learned to mince matters. "And, when all is told, perhaps nothing better than a fool! You are well out of it, in my opinion."

"I don't think I had much to do with it," says Joyce, unable to refrain from a smile. "I fancy my poor uncle was responsible for the honor done me to-day." Then a sort of vague feeling that she is being ungenerous distresses her. "Perhaps, after all, I misjudge him too far," she says.

"Could you?" with a bitter little laugh.

"I don't know," doubtfully. "One often forms an opinion of a person, and, though the groundwork of it may be just, still one is too inclined to build upon it and to rear stories upon it that get a little beyond the actual truth when the structure is completed."

"Oh! I think it is he who tells all the stories," said Miss Maliphant, who is singularly dull in little unnecessary ways, and has failed to follow Joyce in her upstairs flight. "In my opinion he's a liar; I was going to say 'pur et simple,' but he is neither pure nor simple."

"A liar!" says Joyce, as if shocked. Some old thought recurs to her. She turns quickly to Miss Maliphant. The thought grows into words almost before she is aware of it. "Have you a cousin in India?" asks she.

"In India?" Miss Maliphant regards her with some surprise. Why this sudden absurd question in an interesting conversation about that "Judas"? I regret to say this is what Miss Maliphant has now decided upon naming Mr. Beauclerk when talking to herself.

"Yes, India."

"Not one. Plenty in Manchester and Birmingham, but not one in India."

Joyce leans back in her chair, and a strange laugh breaks from her. She gets up suddenly and goes to the other and leans over her, as though the better to see her.

"Oh, think—think," says she. "Not a cousin you loved? Dearly loved? A cousin for whom you were breaking your heart, who was not as steady as he ought to be, but who——"

"You must be going out of your mind," says Miss Maliphant, drawing back from her. "If you saw my Birmingham cousins, or even the Manchester ones, you wouldn't ask that question twice. They think of nothing but money, money, money, from morning till night, and are essentially shoppy. I don't mind saying it, you know. It is as good to give up, and acknowledge things—and certainly they——"

"Never mind them. It is the Indian cousin in whom I am interested," says Joyce, impatiently. "You are sure, sure that you haven't one out there? One whom Mr. Beauclerk knew about? And who was in love with you, and you with him. The cousin he told me of——"

"Mr. Beauclerk?"

"Yes—yes. The night of the ball at the Court, last autumn. I saw you with Mr. Beauclerk in the garden then, and he told me afterward you had been confiding in him about your cousin. The one in India. That you were going to be married to him. Oh! there must be truth—some truth in it. Do try to think!"

"If," says Miss Maliphant, slowly, "I were to think until I was black in the face, as black as any Indian of 'em all, I couldn't even by so severe a process conjure up a cousin in Hindostan! And so he told you that?"

"Yes," says Joyce faintly. She feels almost physically ill.

"He's positively unique," says Miss Maliphant, after a slight pause. "I told you just now that he was a liar, but I didn't throw sufficient enthusiasm into the assertion. He is a liar of distinction very far above his fellows! I suppose it would be superfluous now to ask if that night you speak of you were engaged to Mr. Dysart?"

"Oh, no," says Joyce quickly, as if struck. "There never has been, there never will be aught of that sort between me and Mr. Dysart Surely—Mr. Beauclerk did not——"

"Oh, yes, he did. He assured me—not in so many words (let me be perfectly just to him)—but he positively gave me to understand that you were going to marry Felix Dysart. There! Don't mind that," seeing the girl's pained face. "He was bound to say something, you know. Though it must be confessed the Indian cousin story was the more ingenious. Why didn't you tell me of that before?"

"Because he told it to me in the strictest confidence."

"Of course. Bound you on your honor not to speak of it, lest my feelings should be hurt. Really, do you know, I think he was almost clever enough to make one sorry he didn't succeed. Well, good-by." She rises abruptly, and, taking Joyce's hand, looks at her for a moment. "Felix Dysart has a good heart," says she, suddenly. As suddenly she kisses Joyce, and, crossing the room with a quick stride, leaves it.



CHAPTER XLIX.

"Shall we not laugh, shall we not weep?"

It is quite four o'clock, and therefore two hours later. Barbara has returned, and has learned the secret of Joyce's pale looks and sad eyes, and is now standing on the hearthrug looking as one might who has been suddenly wakened from a dream that had seemed only too real.

"And you mean to say—you really mean, Joyce, that you refused him?"

"Yes. I actually had that much common-sense," with a laugh that has something of bitterness in it.

"But I thought—I was sure——"

"I know you thought he was my ideal of all things admirable. And you thought wrong."

"But if not he——"

"Barbara!" says Joyce sharply. "Was it not enough that you should have made one mistake? Must you insist on making another?"

"Well, never mind," says Mrs. Monkton hastily. "I'm glad I made that one, at all events; and I'm only sorry you have felt it your duty to make your pretty eyes wet about it Good gracious!" looking put of the window, "who is coming now? Dicky Browne and Mr. Courtenay and those detestable Blakes. Tommy," turning sharply to her first-born. "If you and Mabel stay here you must be good. Do you hear now, good! You are not to ask a single question or touch a thing in the room, and you are to keep Mabel quiet. I am not going to have Mrs. Blake go home and say you are the worst behaved children she ever met in her life. You will stay, Joyce?" anxiously to her sister.

"Oh, I suppose so. I couldn't leave you to endure their tender mercies alone."

"That's a darling girl! You know I never can get on with that odious woman. Ah! how d'ye do, Mrs. Blake? How sweet of you to come after last night's fatigue."

"Well, I think a drive a capital thing after being up all night," says the new-comer, a fat, little, ill-natured woman, nestling herself into the cosiest chair in the room. "I hadn't quite meant to come here, but I met Mr. Browne and Mr. Courtenay, so I thought we might as well join forces, and storm you in good earnest. Mr. Browne has just been telling me that Lady Swansdown left the Court this morning. Got a telegram, she said, summoning her to Gloucestershire. Never do believe in these sudden telegrams myself. Stayed rather long in that anteroom with Lord Baltimore last night."

"Didn't know she had been in any anteroom," says Mrs. Monkton, coldly. "I daresay her mother-in-law is ill again. She has always been attentive to her."

"Not on terms with her son, you know; so Lady Swansdown hopes, by the attention you speak of, to come in for the old lady's private fortune. Very considerable fortune, I've heard."

"Who told you?" asks Mr. Browne, with a cruelly lively curiosity. "Lady Swansdown?"

"Oh, dear no!"

Pause! Dicky still looking expectant and Mrs. Blake uncomfortable. She is racking her brain to try and find some person who might have told her, but her brain fails her.

The pause threatens to be ghastly, when Tommy comes to the rescue.

He had been told off as we know to keep Mabel in a proper frame of mind, but being in a militant mood has resented the task appointed him. He has indeed so far given in to the powers that be that he has consented to accept a picture book, and to show it to Mabel, who is looking at it with him, lost in admiration of his remarkable powers of description. Each picture indeed, is graphically explained by Tommy at the top of his lungs, and in extreme bad humor.

He is lying on the rug, on his fat stomach, and is becoming quite a martinet.

"Look at this!" he is saying now. "Look! do you hear, or I won't stay and keep you good any longer. Here's a picture about a boat that's going to be drowned down in the sea in one minnit. The name on it is"—reading laboriously—"'All hands to the pump.' And" with considerable vicious enjoyment—"it isn't a bit of good for them, either. Here"—pointing to the picture again with a stout forefinger—"here they're 'all-handsing' at the pump. See?"

"No, I don't, and I don't want to," says Mabel, whimpering and hiding her eyes. "Oh, I don't like it; it's a horrid picture! What's that man doing there in the corner?" peeping through her fingers at a dead man in the foreground. "He is dead! I know he is!"

"Of course he is," says Tommy. "And"—valiantly—"I don't care a bit, I don't."

"Oh, but I do," says Mabel. "And there's a lot of water, isn't there?"

"There always is in the sea," says Tommy.

"They'll all be drowned, I know they will," says Mabel, pushing away the book. "Oh, I hate 'handsing'; turn over, Tommy, do! It's a nasty cruel, wicked picture!"

"Tommy, don't frighten Mabel," says his mother anxiously.

"I'm not frightening her. I'm only keeping her quiet," says Tommy defiantly.

"Hah-hah!" says Mr. Courtenay vacuously.

"How wonderfully unpleasant children can make themselves," says Mrs. Blake, making herself 'wonderfully unpleasant' on the spot. "Your little boy so reminds me of my Reginald. He pulls his sister's hair merely for the fun of hearing her squeal!"

"Tommy does not pull Mabel's hair," says Barbara a little stiffly. "Tommy, come here to Mr. Browne; he wants to speak to you."

"I want to know if you would like a cat?" says Mr. Browne, drawing Tommy to him.

"I don't want a cat like our cat," says Tommy, promptly. "Ours is so small, and her tail is too thin. Lady Baltimore has a nice cat, with a tail like mamma's furry for her neck."

"Well, that's the very sort of a cat I can get you if you wish."

"But is the cat as big as her tail?" asks Tommy, still careful not to commit himself.

"Well, perhaps not quite," says Mr. Browne gravely. "Must it be quite as big?"

"I hate small cats," says Tommy. "I want a big one! I want—" pausing to find a suitable simile, and happily remembering the kennel outside—"a regular setter of a cat!"

"Ah," says Mr. Browne, "I expect I shall have to telegraph to India for a tiger for you."

"A real live tiger?" asks Tommy, with distended eyes and a flutter of wild joy at his heart, the keener that some fear is mingled with it. "A tiger that eats people up?"

"A man-eater," says Mr. Browne, solemnly. "It would be the nearest approach I know to the animal you have described. As you won't have the cat that Lady Baltimore will give you, you must only try to put up with mine."

"Poor Lady Baltimore!" lisps Mrs. Blake. "What a great deal she has to endure."

"Oh, she's all right to-day," returns Mr. Browne, cheerfully. "Toothache any amount better this morning."

Mrs. Blake laughs in a little mincing way.

"How droll you are," says she. "Ah! if it were only toothache that was the matter But—" silence very effective, and a profound sigh.

"Toothache's good enough for me," says Dicky. "I should never dream of asking for more." He glances here at Joyce, and continues sotto voce, "You look as if you had it."

"No," returns she innocently. "Mine is neuralgia. A rather worse thing, after all."

"Yes. You can get the tooth out," says he.

"Have you heard," asks Mrs. Blake, "that Mr. Beauclerk is going to marry that hideous Miss Maliphant. Horrid Manchester person, don't you know! Can't think what Lady Baltimore sees in her"—with a giggle—"her want of beauty. Got rather too much of pretty women I should say."

"I'm really afraid," says Dicky, "that somebody has been hoaxing you this time, Mrs. Blake;" genially. "I happen to know for a fact that Miss Maliphant is not going to marry Beauclerk."

"Indeed!" snappishly. "Ah, well really he is to be congratulated, I think. Perhaps," with a sharp glance at Joyce, "I mistook the name of the young lady; I certainly heard he was going to be married."

"So am I,"' says Mr. Browne, "some time or other; we are all going to get married one day or another. One day, indeed, is as good as another. You have set us such a capital example that we're safe to follow it."

Mr. and Mrs. Blake being a notoriously unhappy couple, the latter grows rather red here; and Joyce gives Dicky a reproachful glance, which he returns with one of the wildest bewilderment. What can she mean?

"Mr. Dysart will be a distinct loss when he goes to India," continues Mrs. Blake quickly. "Won't be back for years, I hear, and leaving so soon, too. A disappointment, I'm told! Some obdurate fair one! Sort of chest affection, don't you know, ha-ha! India's place for that sort of thing. Knock it out of him in no time. Thought he looked rather down in the mouth last night. Not up to much lately, it has struck me. Seen much of him this time, Miss Kavanagh?"

"Yes. A good deal," says Joyce, who has, however, paled perceptibly.

"Thought him rather gone to seed, eh? Rather the worse for wear."

"I think him always very agreeable," says Joyce, icily.

A second most uncomfortable silence ensues. Barbara tries to get up a conversation with Mr. Courtenay, but that person, never brilliant at any time, seems now stricken with dumbness. Into this awkward abyss Mabel plunges this time. Evidently she has been dwelling secretly on Tommy's comments on their own cat, and is therefore full of thought about that interesting animal.

"Our cat is going to have chickens!" says she, with all the air of one who is imparting exciting intelligence.

This astounding piece of natural history is received with varied emotions by the listeners. Mr. Browne, however, is unfeignedly charmed with it, and grows as enthusiastic about it as even Mabel can desire.

"You don't say so! When? Where?" demands he with breathless eagerness.

"Don't know," says Mabel seriously. "Last time 'twas in nurse's best bonnet; but," raising her sweet face to his, "she says she'll be blowed if she has them there this time!"

"Mabel!" cries her mother, crimson with mortification.

"Yes?" asked Mabel, sweetly.

But it is too much for every one. Even Mrs. Blake gives way for once to honest mirth, and under cover of the laughter rises and takes her departure, rather glad of the excuse to get away. She carries off Mr. Courtenay.

Dicky having lingered a little while to see that Mabel isn't scolded, goes too; and Barbara, with a sense of relief, turns to Joyce.

"You look so awful tired," says she. "Why don't you go and lie down?"

"I thought, on the contrary, I should like to go out for a walk," says Joyce indifferently. "I confess my head is aching horribly. And that woman only made me worse."

"What a woman! I wonder she told so many lies. I wonder if——"

"If Mr. Dysart is going to India," supplies Joyce calmly. "Very likely. Why not. Most men in the army go to India."

"True," say Mrs. Monkton with a sigh. Then in a low tone: "I shall be sorry for him."

"Why? If he goes"—coldly—"it is by his own desire. I see nothing to be sorry about."

"Oh, I do," says Barbara. And then, "Well, go out, dearest. The air will do you good."



CHAPTER L.

"'Tis with our judgment as our watches, none Go just alike, yet each believes his own."

Lord Baltimore had not spoken in a mere fit or pique when he told Lady Swansdown of his fixed intention of putting a term to his present life. His last interview with his wife had quite decided him to throw up everything and seek forgetfulness in travel. Inclination had pointed toward such countries as Africa, or the northern parts of America, as, being a keen sportsman, he believed there he might find an occupation that would distract his mind from the thoughts that now jarred upon him incessantly.

His asking Lady Swansdown to accompany him therefore had been a sudden determination. To go on a lengthened shooting expedition by one's self is one thing, to go with a woman delicately nurtured is another. Of course, had she agreed to his proposal, all his plans must necessarily have been altered, and perhaps his second feeling, after her refusal to go with him, was one of unmistakable relief. His proposal to her at least had been born of pique!

The next morning found him, however, still strong in his desire for change. The desire was even so far stronger that he now burned to put it into execution; to get away to some fresh sphere of action, and deliberately set himself to obliterate from his memory all past ties and recollections.

There was, too, perhaps a touch of revenge that bordered upon pleasure as he thought of what his wife would say when she heard of his decision. She who shrank so delicately from gossip of all kinds could not fail to be distressed by news that must inevitably leave her and her private affairs open to public criticism. Though everybody was perpetually guessing about her domestic relations with her husband, no one as a matter of fact knew (except, indeed, two) quite the real truth about them. This would effectually open the eyes of society, and proclaim to everybody that, though she had refused to demand a separation, still she had been obliged to accept it. This would touch her. If in no other way could he get at her proud spirit, here now he would triumph. She had been anxious to get rid of him in a respectable way, of course, but death as usual had declined to step in when most wanted, and now, well! She must accept her release, in however disreputable a guise it comes.

It is just at the moment when Mrs. Blake is holding forth on Lady Baltimore's affairs to Mrs. Monkton that Baltimore enters the smaller drawing-room, where he knows he will be sure to meet his wife at this hour.

It is far in the afternoon, still the spring sunshine is streaming through the windows. Lady Baltimore, in a heavy tea gown of pale green plush, is sitting by the fire reading a book, her little son upon the hearth rug beside her. The place is strewn with bricks, and the boy, as his father enters, looks up at him and calls to him eagerly to come and help him. At the sound of the child's quick, glad voice a pang contracts Baltimore's heart. The child——He had forgotten him.

"I can't make this castle," says Bertie, "and mother isn't a bit of good. Hers always fall down; come you and make me one."

"Not now," says Baltimore. "Not to-day. Run away to your nurse. I want to speak to your mother."

There is something abrupt and jerky in his manner—something strained, and with sufficient temper in it to make the child cease from entreaty. The very pain Baltimore, is feeling has made his manner harsher to the child. Yet, as the latter passes him obediently, he seizes the small figure in his arms and presses him convulsively to his breast. Then, putting him down, he points silently but peremptorily to the door.

"Well?" says Lady Baltimore. She has risen, startled by his abrupt entrance, his tone, and more than all, by that last brief but passionate burst of affection toward the child. "You, wish to speak to me—again?"

"There won't be many more opportunities," says he, grimly. "You may safely give me a few moments to-day. I bring you good news. I am going abroad. At once. Forever."

In spite of the self-control she has taught herself, Lady Baltimore's self-possession gives way. Her brain seems to reel. Instinctively she grasps hold of the back of a tall prie-dieu next to her.

"Hah! I thought so—I have touched her at last, through her pride," thinks Baltimore, watching her with a savage satisfaction, which, however, hurts him horribly. And after all he was wrong, too. He had touched her, indeed; but it was her heart, not her pride, he had wounded.

"Abroad?" echoes she, faintly.

"Yes; why not? I am sick of this sort of life. I have decided on flinging it up."

"Since when have you come to this decision?" asks she presently, having conquered her sudden weakness by a supreme effort.

"If you want day and date I'm afraid I shan't be able to supply you. It has been growing upon me for some time—the idea of it, I mean—and last night you brought it to perfection."

"I?"

"Have you already forgotten all the complimentary speeches you made me? They"—with a sardonic smile—"are so sweet to me that I shall keep them ripe in my memory until death overtakes me—and after it, I think! You told me, among many other wifely things—if my mind does not deceive me—that you wished me well out of your life, and Lady Swansdown with me."

"That is a direct and most malicious misapplication of my words," says she, emphatically.

"Is it? I confess that was my reading of them. I accepted that version, and thinking to do you a good turn, and relieve you of both your betes noire at once, I proposed to Lady Swansdown last night that she should accompany me upon my endless travels."

There is a long, long pause, during which Lady Baltimore's face seems to have grown into marble. She takes a step forward now. Through the stern pallor of her skin her large eyes seem to gleam like fire.

"How dare you!" she says in a voice very low but so intense that it rings through the room. "How dare you tell me of this! Are you lost to all shame? You and she to go—to go away together! It is only what I have been anticipating for months. I could see how it was with you. But that you should have the insolence to stand before me—" she grows almost magnificent in her wrath—"and declare your infamy aloud! Such a thought was beyond me. There was a time when I would have thought it beyond you!"

"Was there?" says he. He laughs aloud.

"There, there, there!" says she, with a rather wild sort of sigh. "Why should I waste a single emotion upon you. Let me take you calmly, casually. Come—come now." It is the saddest thing in the world to see how she treads down the passionate, most natural uprisings within her against the injustice of life: "Make me at least au courant with your movements, you and she will go—where?"

"To the devil, you thought, didn't you?" says he. "Well, you will be disappointed as far as she is concerned. I maybe going. It appears she doesn't think it worth while to accompany me there or anywhere else."

"You mean that she refused to go with you?"

"In the very baldest language, I assure you. It left nothing to be desired, believe me, in the matter of lucidity. 'No,' she would not go with me. You see there is not only one, but two women in the world who regard me as being utterly without charm."

"I commiserate you!" says she, with a bitter sneer. "If, after all your attention to her, your friend has proved faithless, I——"

"Don't waste your pity," says he, interrupting her rather rudely. "On the whole, the decision of my 'friend,' as you call her, was rather a relief to me than otherwise. I felt it my duty to deprive you of her society"—with an unpleasant laugh—"and so I asked her to come with me. When she declined to accompany me she left me free to devote myself to sport."

"Ah! you refuse to be corrupted?" says she, contemptuously.

"Think what you will," says he, restraining himself with determination. "It doesn't matter in the least to me now. Your opinion I consider worthless, because prejudiced—as worthless as you consider me. I came here simply to tell you of my determination to go abroad."

"You have told me of that already. Lady Swansdown having failed you, may I ask"—with studied contempt—"who you are going to take with you now?"

"What do you mean?" says he, wheeling round to her. "What do you mean by that? By heavens!" laying his hands upon her shoulders, and looking with fierce eyes into her pale face. "A man might well kill you!"

"And why?" demands she, undauntedly. "You would have taken her—you have confessed so much—you had the coarse courage to put it into words. If not her, why"—with a shrug—"then another!"

"There! think as you will," says he, releasing her roughly. "Nothing I could say would convince or move you. And yet, I know it is no use, but I am determined I will leave nothing unsaid. I will give you no loop-hole. I asked her to go with me in a moment of irritation, of loneliness, if you will; it is hard for a man to be forever outside the pale of affection, and I thought—well, it is no matter what I thought. I was wrong it seems. As for caring for her, I care so little that I now feel actually glad she had the sense to refuse my senseless proposal. She would have bored me, I think, and I should undoubtedly have bored her. The proposition was made to her in a moment of folly."

"Oh, folly?" says she with a curious laugh.

"Well, give it any other name you like. And after all," in a low tone, "you are right. It was not the word. If I had said despair I should have been nearer the mark."

"There might even be another word," said she slowly.

"Even if there were," says he, "the occasion for it is of your making. You have thrown me; you must be prepared, therefore, to accept the consequences."

"You have prepared me for anything," says she calmly, but with bitter meaning.

"See here," says he furiously. "There may still be one thing left for you which I have not prepared. You have just asked me who I am going to take with me when I leave this place forever. Shall I answer you?"

Something in his manner terrifies her; she feels her face blanching. Words are denied her, but she makes a faint movement to assent with her hand. What is he going to say!

"What if I should decide, then, on taking my son with me?" says he violently. "Who is there to prevent me? Not you, or another. Thus I could cut all ties and put you out of my life at once and forever!"

He had certainly not calculated on the force of his words or his manner. It had been a mere angry suggestion. There was no crudity in Baltimore's nature. He had never once permitted himself to dwell upon the possibility of separating the boy from his mother. Such terrible revenge as that was beyond him, his whole nature would have revolted against it. He had spoken with passion, urged by her contempt into a desire to show her where his power lay, without any intention of actually using it. He meant perhaps to weaken her intolerable defiance, and show her where a hole in her armor lay. He was not prepared for the effect of his words.

An ashen shade has overspread her face; her expression has become ghostly. As though her limbs have suddenly given way under her, she falls against the mantel-piece and clings to it with trembling fingers. Her eyes, wild and anguished, seek his.

"The child!" gasps she in a voice of mortal terror. "The child! Not the child! Oh! Baltimore, you have taken all from me except that. Leave me my child!"

"Good heavens! Don't look at me like that," exclaims he, inexpressibly shocked—this sudden and complete abandonment of herself to her fear has horrified him. "I never meant it. I but suggested a possibility. The child shall stay with you. Do you hear me, Isabel! The child is yours! When I go, I go alone!"

There is a moment's silence, and then she bursts into tears. It is a sharp reaction, and it shakes her bodily and mentally. A wild return of her love for him—that first, sweet, and only love of her life, returns to her, born of intense gratitude. But sadly, slowly, it dies away again. It seems to her too late to dream of that again. Yet perhaps her tears have as much to do with that lost love as with her gratitude.

Slowly her color returns. She checks her sobs. She raises her head and looks at him still with her handkerchief pressed to her tremulous lips.

"It is a promise," says she.

"Yes. A promise."

"You will not change again—" nervously. "You——"

"Ah! doubt to the last," says he. "It is a promise from me to you, and of course the word of such a reprobate as you consider me can scarcely be of any avail."

"But you could not break this promise?" says she in a low voice, and with a long, long sigh.

"What trust you place in me!" said he, with an open sneer—"Well, so be it. I give you home and child. You give me——Not worth while going into the magnificence of your gifts, is it?"

"I gave you once a whole heart—an unbroken faith," says she.

"And took them back again! Child's play!" says he. "Child's promises. Well, if you will have it so, you have got a promise from me now, and I think you might say 'thank you' for it as the children do."

"I do thank you!" says she vehemently. "Does not my whole manner speak for me?" Once again her eyes filled with tears.

"So much love for the child," cries he in a stinging tone, "and not one thought for the father. Truly your professions of love were light as thistledown. There! you are not worth a thought yourself. Expend any affection you have upon your son, and forget me as soon as ever you can. It will not take you long, once I am out of your sight!"

He strides towards the door, and then looks back at her.

"You understand about my going?" he says; "that it is decided, I mean?"

"As you will," says she, her glance on the ground. There is such a total lack of emotion in her whole air that it might suggest itself to an acute student of human nature that she is doing her very utmost to suppress even the smallest sign of it. But, alas! Baltimore is not that student.

"Be just:" says he sternly. "It is as you will—not as I. It is you who are driving me into exile."

He has turned his back, and has his hand on the handle of the door in the act of opening it. At this instant she makes a move toward him, holding out her hands, but as suddenly suppresses herself. When he turns again to say a last word she is standing where he last saw her, pale and impassive as a statue.

"There will be some matters to arrange," says he, "before my going. I have telegraphed to Hansard" (his lawyer), "he will be down in the morning. There will be a few papers for you to sign to-morrow——"

"Papers?"

"My will and your maintenance whilst I am away; and matters that will concern the child's future."

"His future. That means——"

"That in all probability when I have started I shall never see his face again—or yours."

He opens the door abruptly, and is gone.



CHAPTER LI.

"While bloomed the magic flowers we scarcely knew The gold was there. But now their petals strew Life's pathway." "And yet the flowers were fair, Fed by youth's dew and love's enchanted air."

The cool evening air breathing on Joyce's flushed cheeks calms her as she sets out for the walk that Barbara had encouraged her to take.

It is an evening of great beauty. Earth, sea, and sky seem blended in one great soft mist, that rising from the ocean down below floats up to heaven, its heart a pale, vague pink.

The day is almost done, and already shadows are growing around trees and corners. There is something mystical and strange in the deep murmurs that come from the nestling woods, the sweet wild coo of the pigeons, the chirping of innumerable songsters, and now and then the dull hooting of some blinking owl. Through all, the sad tolling of a chapel bell away, away in the distance, where the tiny village hangs over the brow of the rocks that gird the sea.

"While yet the woods were hardly more than brown, Filled with the stillness of the dying day, The folds and farms, and faint-green pastures lay, And bells chimed softly from the gray-walled town; The dark fields with the corn and poppies sown, The dull, delicious, dreamy forest way, The hope of April for the soul of May— On all of these night's wide, soft wings swept down."

Well, it isn't night yet, however. She can see to tread her way along the short young grasses down to a favorite nook of hers, where musical sounds of running streams may be heard, and the rustling of growing leaves make songs above one's head. Here and there she goes through brambly ways, where amorous arms from blackberry bushes strive to catch and hold her, and where star-eyed daisies and buttercups and delicate faint-hearted primroses peep out to laugh at her discomfiture.

But she escapes from all their snares and goes on her way, her heart so full of troublous fancies that their many wiles gain from her not so much as one passing thought.

The pretty, lovely May is just bursting into bloom; its pink blossoms here and its white blossoms there mingle gloriously, and the perfume of it fills the silent air.

Joyce picks a branch or two as she goes on her way, and thrusts them into the bosom of her gown.

And now she has reached the outskirts of the wood, where the river runs, crossed by a rustic bridge, on which she has ever loved to rest and dream, leaning rounded arms upon the wooden railings and seeing strange but sweet things in the bright, hurrying water beneath her eyes.

She has gained the bridge now, and leaning languidly upon its frail ramparts lets her gaze wander a-field. The little stream, full of conversation as ever, flows on unnoticed by her. Its charms seem dead. That belonged to the old life—the life she will never know again. It seems to her quite a long time since she felt young. And yet only a few short months have flown since she was young as the best of them—when even Tommy did not seem altogether despicable as a companion, and she had often been guilty of finding pleasure in running a race with him, and of covering him not only with confusion, but with armfuls of scented hay, when at last she had gained the victory over him, and had turned from the appointed goal to overwhelm the enemy with merry sarcasms.

Oh, yes, that was all over. All done! An end must come to everything, and to her light-heartedness an end had come very soon. Too soon, she was inclined to believe, in an excess of self, until she remembered that life was always to be taken seriously, and that she had deliberately trifled with it, seeking only the very heart of it—the gaiety, the carelessness, the ease.

Well, her punishment has come! She has learned that life is a failure after all. It takes some people a lifetime to discover that great fact; it has taken her quite a short time. Nothing is of much consequence. And yet——

She sighs and looks round her. Her eyes fall upon a distant bank of cloud overhanging a pretty farmstead, and throwing into bold relief the ricks of hay that stand at the western side of it. A huge, black crow standing on the top of this is napping his wings and calling loudly to his mate. Presently he spreads his wings, and, with a creaking of them like the noise of a sail in a light wind, disappears over her head. She has followed his movements with a sort of lazy curiosity, and now she knows that he will return in an hour or so with thousands of his brethren, darkening the heavens as they pass to their night lodgings in the tall elm trees.

It is good to be a bird. No care, no trouble. No pain! A short life and a merry one. Better than a long life and a sorry one. Yes, the world is all sorry.

She turns her eyes impatiently away from the fast vanishing crow; and now they fall upon a perfect wilderness of daffodils that are growing upon the edge of the bank a little way down. How beautiful they are. Their soft, delicate heads nod lazily this way and that way. They seem the very embodiment of graceful drowsiness. Some lines lately read recur to her, and awake within her memory;

"I wandered lonely as a cloud, That floats on high o'er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, A crowd of golden daffodils Beside the lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze."

They seem so full of lazy joy, or unutterable rapture, that they belie her belief in the falseness of all things. There must surely be some good in a world that grows such charming things—things almost sentient. And the trees swaying about her head, and dropping their branches into the stream, is there no delight to be got out of them? The tenderness of this soft, sweet mood, in which perpetual twilight reigns, enters into her, and soothes the sad demon that is torturing her breast. Tears rise to her eyes; she leans still further over the parapet, and drawing the pink and white hawthorn blossoms from her bosom, drops them one by one into the hasty little river, and lets it bear them away upon its bosom to tiny bays unknown. Tears follow them, falling from her drooping lids. Can neither daffodils, nor birds, nor trees, give her some little of their joy to chase the sorrow from her heart?

Her soul seems to fling itself outward in an appeal to nature; and nature, that kind mother of us all, responds to the unspoken cry.

A step upon the bridge behind her! She starts into a more upright position and looks round her without much interest.

A dark figure is advancing toward her. Through the growing twilight it seems abnormally large and black, and Joyce stares at it anxiously. Not Freddy—not one of the laborers—they would be all clad in flannel jackets of a light color.

"Oh, is it you?" says Dysart, coming closer to her. He had, however, known it was she from the first moment his eyes rested upon her. No mist, no twilight could have deceived him, for—

Lovers' eyes are sharp to see And lovers' ears in hearing."

"Yes," says she, advancing a little toward him and giving him her hand. A cold little hand, and reluctant.

"I was coming down to Mrs. Monkton with a message—a letter—from Lady Baltimore."

"This is a very long way round from the Court, isn't it?" says she.

"Yes. But I like this calm little corner. I have come often to it lately."

Miss Kavanagh lets her eyes wander to the stream down below. To this little spot of all places! Her favorite nook! Had he hoped to meet her there? Oh, no; impossible! And besides she had given it up for a long, long time until this evening. It seems weeks to her now since last she was here.

"You will find Barbara at home," says she gently.

"I don't suppose it is of very much consequence," says he, alluding to the message. He is looking at her, though her averted face leaves him little to study.

"You are cold," says he abruptly.

"Am I?" turning to him with a little smile. "I don't feel cold. I feel dull, perhaps, but nothing else."

And in truth if she had used the word "unhappy" instead of "dull" she would have been nearer the mark. The coming of Dysart thus suddenly into the midst of her mournful reverie has but served to accentuate the reality of it. A terrible sense of loneliness is oppressing her. All things have their place in this world, yet where is hers? Of what account is she to anyone? Barbara loves, her; yes, but not so well as Freddy and the children! Oh, to be first with someone!

"I find no spring, while spring is well-nigh blown; I find no nest, while nests are in the grove; Woe's me for mine own heart that dwells alone— My heart that breaketh for a little love."

Christina Rosetti's mournful words seem to suit her. Involuntarily she lifts her heavy eyes, tired of the day's weeping, and looks at Dysart.

"You have been crying," says he abruptly.



CHAPTER LII.

"My love has sworn with sealing kiss With me to live—to die; I have at last my nameless bliss— As I love, loved am I."

There is a pause: it threatens to be an everlasting one, as Miss Kavanagh plainly doesn't know what to say. He can see this; what he cannot see is that she is afraid of her own voice. Those troublesome tears that all day have been so close to her seem closer than ever now.

"Beauclerk came down to see you to-day," says he presently. This remark is so unexpected that it steadies her.

"Yes," she says, calmly enough, but without raising the tell-tale eyes.

"You expected him?"

"No." Monosyllables alone seem possible to her. So great is her fear that she will give way and finally disgrace herself, that she forgets to resent the magisterial tone be has adopted.

"He asked you to marry him, however?" There is something almost threatening in his tone now, as if he is defying her to deny his assertion. It overwhelms her.

"Yes," she says again, and for the first time is struck by the wretched meagreness of her replies.

"Well?" says Dysart, roughly. But this time not even the desolate monosyllable rewards the keenness of his examination.

"Well?" says he again, going closer to her and resting his hand on the wooden rail against which she, too, was leaning. He is So close to her now that it is impossible to escape his scrutiny. "What am I to understand by that? Tell me how you have decided." Getting no answer to this either, he says, impatiently, "Tell me, Joyce."

"I refused him," says she at last in a low tone, and in a dull sort of way, as if the matter is one of indifference to her.

"Ah!" He draws a long breath. "It is true?" he says, laying his hand on hers as it lies on the top of the woodwork.

"Quite true."

"And yet—you have been crying?"

"You can see that," says she, petulantly. "You have taken pains to see and to tell me of it. Do you think it is a pleasant thing to be told? Most people," glancing angrily toward him—"everyone, I think—makes it a point now-a-days not to see when one has been making a fool of oneself; but you seem to take a delight in torturing me."

"Did it," says he bitterly, ignoring—perhaps not even hearing—her outburst. "Did it cost you so much to refuse him?"

"It cost me nothing!" with a sudden effort, and a flash from her beautiful eyes.

"Nothing?"

"I have said so! Nothing at all. It was mere nervousness, and because—it reminded me of other things."

"Did he see you cry?" asks Dysart, tightening unconsciously his grasp upon her hand.

"No. He was gone a long time, quite a long time, before it occurred to me that I should like to cry. I," with a frugal smile, "indulged myself very freely then, as you have seen."

Dysart draws a long breath of relief. It would have been intolerable to him that Beauclerk should have known of her tears. He would not have understood them. He would have taken possession of them, as it were. They would have merely helped to pamper his self-conceit and smooth down his ruffled pride. He would inevitably have placed such and such a construction on them, one entirely to his own glorification.

"I shall leave you now with a lighter heart," says Felix presently—"now that I know you are not going to marry that fellow."

"You are going, then?" says she, sharply, checking the monotonous little tattoo she has been playing on the bridge rail, as though suddenly smitten into stone. She had heard he was going, she had been told of it by several people, but somehow she had never believed it. It had never, come home to her until now.

"Yes. We are under orders for India. We sail in about a month. I shall have to leave here almost immediately."

"So soon?" says she, vaguely. She has begun that absurd tattoo again, but bridge, and restless little fingers, and sky and earth, and all things seem blotted out. He is going, really going, and for ever! How far is India away?

"It is always rather hurried at last. For my part I am glad I am going."

"Yes?"

"Mrs. Monkton will—at least I am sure she will—let me have a line now and then to let me know how you—how you are all getting on. I was going to ask her about it this evening. You think she will be good enough?"

"Barbara is always kind."

"I suppose"—he hesitates, and then goes on with an effort—"I suppose it would be too much to ask of you——"

"What?"

"That you would sometimes write me a letter—however short."

"I am a bad correspondent," says she, feeling as if she were choking.

"Ah! I see. I should not have asked, of course. Yes, you are right. It was absurd my hoping for it."

"When people choose to go away so far as that——" she is compelling herself to speak, but her voice sounds to herself a long way off.

"They must hope to be forgotten. 'Out of sight out of mind,' I know. It is such an old proverb. Well——You are cold," says he suddenly, noting the pallor of the girl's face. "Whatever you were before, you are certainly chilled to the bone now. You look it. Come, this is no time of year to be lingering out of doors without a coat or hat."

"I have this shawl," says she, pointing to the soft white, fleecy thing that covers her.

"I distrust it. Come."

"No," says she, faintly. "Go on; you give your message to Barbara. As for me, I shall be happier here."

"Where I am not," says he, with a bitter laugh. "I suppose I ought to be accustomed to that thought now, but such is my conceit that it seems ever a fresh shock to me. Well, for all that," persuadingly, "come in. The evening is very cold. I shan't like to go away, leaving you behind me suffering from a bad cough or something of that kind. We have been friends, Joyce," with a rather sorry smile. "For the sake of the old friendship, don't send me adrift with such an anxiety upon my mind."

"Would you really care?" says she.

"Ah! That is the humor of it," says he. "In spite of all I should still really care. Come." He makes an effort to unclasp the small, pretty fingers that are grasping the rails so rigidly. At first they seem to resist his gentle pressure, and then they give way to him. She turns suddenly.

"Felix,"—her voice is somewhat strained, somewhat harsh, not at all her own voice,—"do you still love me?"

"You know that," returns he, sadly. If he has felt any surprise at the question he has not shown it.

"No, no," says she, feverishly. "That you like me, that you are fond of me, perhaps, I can still believe. But is it the same with you that it used to be? Do you," with a little sob, "love me as well now as in those old days? Just the same! Not," going nearer to him, and laying her hand upon his breast, and raising agonized eyes of inquiry to his—"not one bit less?"

"I love you a thousand times more," says he, very quietly, but with such intensity that it enters into her very soul. "Why?" He has laid his own hand over the small nervous one lying on his breast, and his face has grown very white.

"Because I love you too!"

She stops short here, and begins to tremble violently. With a little shamed, heartbroken gesture she tears her hand out of his and covers her face from his sight.

"Say that again!" says he, hoarsely. He waits a moment, but when no word comes from her he deliberately drags away the sheltering hands and compels her to look at him.

"Say it!" says he, in a tone that is now almost a command.

"Oh! it is true—true!" cries she, vehemently. "I love you; I have loved you a long time, I think, but I didn't know it. Oh, Felix! Dear, dear Felix, forgive me!"

"Forgive you!" says he, brokenly.

"Ah! yes. And don't leave me. If you go away from me I shall die. There has been so much of it—a little more—and——" She breaks down.

"My beloved!" says he in a faint, quick way. He is holding her to him now with all his might. She can feel the quick pulsations of his heart. Suddenly she slips her soft arms around his neck, and now with her head pressed against his shoulder, bursts into a storm of tears. It is a last shower.

They are both silent for a long time, and then he, raising one of her hands, presses the palm against his lips. Looking up at him, she smiles, uncertainly but happily, a very rainbow of a smile, born of sunshine, and, raindrops gone, it seems to beautify her lips. But Felix, while acknowledging its charm, cannot smile back at her. It is all too strange, too new. He is afraid to believe. As yet there is something terrible to him in this happiness that has fallen into his life.

"You mean it?" he asks, bending over her. "If to-morrow I were to wake and find all this an idle dream, how would it be with me then? Say you mean it!"

"Am I not here?" says she, tremulously, making a slight but eloquent pressure on one of the arms that are round her. He bends his face to hers, and as he feels that first glad eager kiss returned—he knows!



CHAPTER LIII.

"True love's the gift which God has given To man alone beneath the heaven:

It is the secret sympathy, The silver link, the silken tie, Which heart to heart and mind to mind In body and in soul can bind."

Of course Barbara is delighted. She proves charming as a confidante. Nothing can exceed the depth of her sympathy.

When Joyce and Felix came in together in the darkening twilight, entering the house in a burglarious fashion through the dining-room window, it so happens that Barbara is there, and is at once struck by a sense of guilt that seems to surround and envelop them. They had not, indeed, anticipated meeting Barbara in that room of all others, and are rather taken aback when they come face to face with her.

"I assure you we have not come after the spoons," says Felix, in a would-be careless tone that could not have deceived an infant, and with a laugh, so frightfully careless that it would have terrified the life out of you.

"You certainly don't look like it," says Mrs. Monkton, whose heart has begun to beat high with hope. She hardly knows whether it is better to fall upon their necks forthwith and declare she knows all about it, or else to pretend ignorance. She decides upon the latter as being the easier; after all they mightn't like the neck process. Most people have a fancy for telling their own tales, to have them told for one is annoying. "You haven't the requisite murderous expression," she says, unable to resist a touch of satire. "You look rather frightened you two. What have you been doing?" She is too good natured not to give them an opening for their confession.

"Not much, and yet a great deal," says Felix. He has advanced a little, while Joyce, on the contrary, has meanly receded farther into the background. She has rather the appearance, indeed, of one who, if the wall could have been induced to give way, would gladly have followed it into the garden. The wall, however, declines to budge. "As for burglary," goes on Felix, trying to be gay, and succeeding villainously. "You must exonerate your sister at all events. But I—I confess I have stolen something belonging to you."

"Oh, no; not stolen," says Joyce, in a rather faint tone. "Barbara, I know what you will think, but——"

"I know what I do think!" cries Barbara, joyously. "Oh, is it, can it be true?"

It never occurs to her that Felix now is not altogether a brilliant match for a sister with a fortune—she remembers only in that lovely mind of hers that he had loved Joyce when she was without a penny, and that he is now what he had always seemed to her, the one man that could make Joyce happy.

"Yes; it is true!" says Dysart. He has given up that unsuccessful gayety now and has grown very grave; there is even a slight tremble in his voice. He comes up to Mrs. Monkton and takes both her hands. "She has given herself to me. You are really glad! You are not angry about it? I know I am not good enough for her, but——"

Here Joyce gives way to a little outburst of mirth that is rather tremulous, and coming away from the unfriendly wall, that has not been of the least use to her, brings herself somewhat shamefacedly into the only light the room receives through the western window. The twilight at all events is kind to her. It is difficult to see her face.

"I really can't stay here," says she, "and listen to my own praises being sung. And besides," turning to Felix a lovely but embarrassed face, "Barbara will not regard it as you do; she will, on the contrary, say you are a great deal too good for me, and that I ought to be pilloried for all the trouble I have given through not being able to make up my own mind for so long a time."

"Indeed, I shall say nothing but that you are the dearest girl in the world, and that I'm delighted things have turned out so well. I always said it would be like this," cries Barbara exultantly, who certainly never had said it, and had always indeed been distinctly doubtful about it.

"Is Mr. Monkton in?" says Felix, in a way that leads Monkton's wife to imagine that if she should chance to say he was out, the news would be hailed with rapture.

"Oh, never mind him," says she, beaming upon the happy but awkward couple before her. "I'll tell him all about it. He will be just as glad as I am. There, go away you two; you will find the small parlor empty, and I dare say you have a great deal to say to each other still. Of course you will dine with us, Felix, and give Freddy an opportunity of saying something ridiculous to you."

"Thank you," says Dysart warmly. "I suppose I can write a line to my cousin explaining matters."

"Of course. Joyce, take some writing things into the small parlor, and call for a lamp as you go."

She is smiling at Joyce as she speaks, and now, going up to her, kisses her impulsively. Joyce returns the caress with fervor. It is natural that she should never have felt the sweetness, the content of Barbara so entirely as she does now, when her heart is open and full of ecstasy, and when sympathy seems so necessary. Darling Barbara! But then she must love Felix now just as much as she loves her. She rather electrifies Barbara and Felix by saying anxiously to the former:

"Kiss Felix, too."

It is impossible not to laugh. Mrs. Monkton gives way to immediate and unrestrained mirth, and Dysart follows suit.

"It is a command," says he, and Barbara thereupon kisses him affectionately.

"Well, now I have got a brother at last," says she. It is indeed her first knowledge of one, for that poor suicide in Nice had never been anything to her—or to any one else in the world for the matter of that—except a great trouble. "There, go," says she. "I think I hear Freddy coming."

They fly. They both feel that further explanations are beyond them just as present; and as for Barbara, she is quite determined that no one but she shall let Freddy into the all-important secret. She is now fully convinced in her own mind that she had always had special prescience of this affair, and the devouring desire we all have to say "I told you how 'twould be" to our unfortunate fellow-travellers through this vale of tears, whether the cause for the hateful reminder be for weal or woe, is strong upon her now.

She goes to the window, and seeing Monkton some way off, flings up the sash and waves to him in a frenzied fashion to come to her at once. There is something that almost approaches tragedy in her air and gesture. Monkton hastens to obey.

"Now, what—what—what do you think has happened?" cries she, when he has vaulted the window sill and is standing beside her, somewhat breathless and distinctly uneasy. Nothing short of an accident to the children could, in his opinion, have warranted so vehement a call. Yet Barbara, as he examines her features carefully, seems all joyous excitement. After a short contemplation of her beaming face he tell himself that he was an ass to give up that pilgrimage of his to the lower field, where he had been going to inspect a new-born calf.

"The skys are all right," says he, with an upward glance at them through the window. "And—you hadn't another uncle, had you?"

"Oh, Freddy," says she, very justly disgusted.

"Well, my good child, what then? I'm all curiosity."

"Guess," says she, too happy to be able to give him the round scolding he deserves.

"Oh! if it's a riddle," says he, "you might remember I am only a little one, and unequal to the great things of life."

"Ah! but, Freddy, I've something delicious to tell you. There sit down there, you look quite queer, while I——"

"No wonder I do," says he, at last rather wrathfully. "To judge by your wild gesticulations at the window just now, any one might have imagined that the house was on fire and a hostile race tearing en masse into the back yard. And now—why, it appears you are quite pleased about something or other. Really such disappointments are enough to age any man—or make him look 'queer,' that was the word you used, I think?"

"Listen," says she, seating herself beside him, and flipping her arm around his neck. "Joyce is going to marry Felix—after all. There!" Still with her arm holding him, she leans back a little to mark the effect of this astonishing disclosure.



CHAPTER LIV.

"Well said; that was laid on with a trowel."

"Gratiano speaks an infinite deal of nothing, more than any man in all Venice."

"After all, indeed; you may well say that," says Mr. Monkton, with indignation. "If those two idiots meant matrimony all along, why on earth didn't they do it all before. See what a lot of time they've lost, and what a disgraceful amount of trouble they have given all round."

"Yes, yes, of course. But then you see, Freddy, it takes some time to make up one's mind about such an important matter as that."

"It didn't take you long," says Mr. Monkton most unwisely.

"It took me a great deal longer than it took you," replies his wife with dignity. "You have always said that it was the very first day you ever saw me—and I'm sure it took me quite a week!"

This lucid speech she delivers with some severity.

"More shame for you," says Monkton promptly.

"Well, never mind," says she, too happy and too engrossed with her news to enjoy even a skirmish with her husband. "Isn't it all charming, Freddy?"

"It has certainly turned out very well, all things considered."

"I think it is the happiest thing. And when two people who love each other are quite young——"

"Really, my dear, you are too flattering," says Monkton. "Considering the gray hairs that are beginning to make themselves so unpleasantly at home in my head, I, at all events, can hardly lay claim to extreme youth."

"Good gracious! I'm not talking of us; I'm talking of them," cries she, giving him a shake. "Wake up, Freddy. Bring your mind to bear upon this big news of mine, and you will see how enchanting it is. Don't you think Felix has behaved beautifully—so faithful, so constant, and against such terrible odds? You know Joyce is a little difficult sometimes. Now hasn't he been perfect all through?"

"He is a genuine hero of romance," says Mr. Monkton with conviction. "None of your cheap articles—a regular bonafide thirteenth century knight. The country ought to contribute its stray half-pennies and buy him a pedestal and put him on the top of it, whether he likes it or not. Once there Simon Stylites would be forgotten in half an hour. Was there ever before heard of such an heroic case! Did ever yet living man have the prowess to propose to the girl he loved! It is an entirely new departure, and should be noticed. It is quite unique!"

"Don't be horrid," says his wife. "You know exactly what I mean—that it is a delightful ending to what promised to be a miserable muddle. And he is so charming; isn't he, now, Freddy?"

"Is he?" asks Mr. Monkton, regarding her with a thoughtful eye.

"You can see for yourself. He is so satisfactory. I always said he was the very husband for Joyce. He is so kind, so earnest, so sweet in every way."

"Nearly as sweet as I am, eh?" There is stern inquiry now in his regard.

"Pouf! I know what you are, of course. Who would, if I didn't? But really, Freddy, don't you think he will make her an ideal husband? So open. So frank. So free from everything—everything—oh, well, everything—you know!"

"I don't," says Monkton, uncompromisingly.

"Well—everything hateful, I mean. Oh! she is a lucky girl!"

"Nearly as lucky as her sister," says Monkton, growing momentarily more stern in his determination to uphold his own cause.

"Don't be absurd. I declare," with a little burst of amusement, "when he—they—told me about it, I never felt so happy in my life."

"Except when you married me." He throws quite a tragical expression into his face, that is, however, lost upon her.

"Of course, with her present fortune, she might have made what the world would call a more distinguished match. But his family are unexceptionable, and he has some money—not much, I know, but still, some. And even if he hadn't she has now enough for both. After all"—with noble disregard of the necessaries of life—"what is money?"

"Dross—mere dross!" says Mr. Monkton.

"And he is just the sort of man not to give a thought to it."

"He couldn't, my dear. Heroes of romance are quite above all that sort of thing."

"Well, he is, certainly," says Mrs. Monkton, a little offended. "You may go on pretending as much as you like, Freddy, but I know you think about him just as I do. He is exactly the sort of charming character to make Joyce happy."

"Nearly as happy as I have made you!" says her husband, severely.

"Dear me, Freddy—I really do wish you would try and forget yourself for one moment!"

"I might be able to do that, my dear, if I were quite sure that you were not forgetting me, too."

"Oh, as to that! I declare you are a perfect baby! You love teasing. Well—there then!" The "there" represents a kiss, and Mr. Monkton, having graciously accepted this tribute to his charms, condescends to come down from his mental elevation and discuss the new engagement with considerable affability. Once, indeed, there is a dangerous lapse back into his old style, but this time there seems to be occasion for it.

"When they stood there stammering and stuttering, Freddy, and looking so awfully silly, I declare I was so glad about it that I actually kissed him!'"

"What!" says Mr. Monkton. "And you have lived to tell the tale! You have, therefore; lived too long. Perfidious woman, prepare for death."

"I declare I think you'd have done it," says Barbara, eloquently. Whereupon, having reconsidered her speech, they both give way to mirth.

"I'll try it when I see him," says Monkton. "Even a hero of romance couldn't object to a chaste salute from me."

"He is coming to dinner. I hope when you do see him. Freddy,"—anxiously this—"you will be very sober about it."

"Barbara! You know I never get—er—that is—not before dinner at all events."

"Well, but promise me now, you will be very serious about it. They are taking it seriously, and they won't like it if you persist in treating it as a jest."

"I'll be a perfect judge."

"I know what that means"—indignantly—"that you are going to be as frivolous as possible."

"My dear girl! If the bench could only hear you. Well, there then! Yes, really! I'll be everything of the most desirable. A regular funeral mute. And," seeing she is still offended, "I am glad about it, Barbara. Honestly I think him as good a fellow as I know—and Joyce another."

Having convinced her of his good faith in the matter, and argued with her on every single point, and so far perjured himself as to remember perfectly and accurately the very day and hour on which, three months ago, she had said that she knew Joyce preferred Felix to Beauclerk, he is forgiven, and presently allowed to depart in peace with another "there," even warmer than the first.

But it is unquestionable that she keeps a severe eye on him all through dinner, and so forbids any trifling with the sacred topic. "It would have put the poor things out so!" She had said to herself; and, indeed, it must be confessed that the lovers are very shy and uncomfortable, and that conversation drifts a good deal, and is only carried on irregularly by fits and starts. But later, when Felix has unburdened his mind to Monkton during the quarter of an hour over their wine—when Barbara has been compelled, in fear and trembling, to leave Freddy to his own devices—things grow more genial, and the extreme happiness that dwells in the lovers' hearts is given full play. There is even a delightful half hour granted them upon the balcony, Barbara having—like the good angel she is—declared that the night is almost warm enough for June.



CHAPTER LV.

"Great discontents there are, and many murmurs."

"There is a kind of mournful eloquence In thy dumb grief."

Lady Baltimore, too, had been very pleased by the news when Felix told her next morning of his good luck. In all her own great unhappiness she had still a kindly word and thought for her cousin and his fiancee.

"One of the nicest girls," she says, pressing his hands warmly. "I often think, indeed, the nicest girl I know. You are fortunate, Felix, but"—very kindly—"she is fortunate, too."

"Oh, no, the luck is all on my side," says he.

"It will be a blow to Norman," she says, presently.

"I think not," with an irrepressible touch of scorn. "There is Miss Maliphant."

"You mean that he can decline upon her. Of course I can quite understand that you do not like him," says she with a quick sigh. "But, believe me, any heart he has was really given to Joyce. Well, he must devote himself to ambition now."

"Miss Maliphant can help him to that."

"No, no. That is all knocked on the head. It appears—this is in strict confidence, Felix—but it appears he asked her to marry him last evening, and she refused."

Felix turns to her as if to give utterance to some vehement words, and then checks himself. After all, why add to her unhappiness? Why tell her of that cur's baseness? Her own brother, too! It would be but another grief to her.

To think he should have gone from her to Miss Maliphant! What a pitiful creature! Beneath contempt! Well, if his pride survives those two downfalls—both in one day—it must be made of leather. It does Felix good to think of how Miss Maliphant must have worded her refusal. She is not famous for grace of speech. He must have had a real bad time of it. Of course, Joyce had told him of her interview with the sturdy heiress.

"Ah, she refused?" says he hardly knowing what to say.

"Yes; and not very graciously, I'm afraid. He gave me the mere fact of the refusal—no more, and only that because he had to give a reason for his abrupt departure. You know he is going this evening?"

"No, I did not know it. Of course, under the circumstances——"

"Yes, he could hardly stay here. Margaret came to me and said she would go, but I would not allow that. After all, every woman has a right to refuse or accept as she will."

"True." His heart gives an exultant leap as he remembers how his love had willed.

"I only wish she had not hurt him in the refusal. But I could see he was wounded. He was not in his usual careless spirits. He struck me as being a little—well, you know, a little——" She hesitates.

"Out of temper," suggests Felix involuntarily.

"Well, yes. Disappointment takes that course with some people. After all, it might have been worse if he had set his heart on Joyce and been refused."

"Much worse," says Felix, his eyes on the ground.

"She would have been a severe loss."

"Severe, indeed." By this time Felix is beginning to feel like an advanced hypocrite.

"As for Margaret Maliphant, I am afraid he was more concerned about the loss of her bonds and scrips than of herself. It is a terrible world, Felix, when all is told," says she, suddenly crossing her beautiful long white hands over her knees, and leaning toward him. There is a touch of misery so sharp in her voice that he starts as he looks at her. It is a momentary fit of emotion, however, and passes before he dare comment on it. With a heart nigh to breaking she still retains her composure and talks calmly to Felix, and lets him talk to her, as though the fact that she is soon to lose forever the man who once had gained her heart—that fatal "once" that means for always, in spite of everything that has come and gone—is as little or nothing to her. Seeing her sitting there, strangely pale indeed, but so collected, it would be impossible to guess at the tempest of passion and grief and terror that reigns within her breast. Women are not so strong to bear as men, and therefore in the world's storms suffer most.

"It is a lovely world," says he smiling, thinking of Joyce, and then, remembering her sad lot, his smile fades. "One might make—perhaps—a bad world—better," he says, stammering.

"Ah! teach me how," says she with a melancholy glance.

"There is such a thing as forgiveness. Forgive him!" blurts he out in a frightened sort of way. He is horrified, at himself—at his own temerity—a second later, and rises to his feet as if to meet the indignation he has certainly courted. But to his surprise no such indignation betrays itself.

"Is that your advice?" says she, still with the thin white hands clasped over the knee, and the earnest gaze on him. "Well, well, well!"

Her eyes droop. She seems to be thinking, and he, gazing at her, refrains from speech with his heart sad with pity. Presently she lifts her head and looks at him.

"There! Go back to your love," she says with a glance that thrills him. "Tell her from me that if you had the whole world to choose from, I should still select her as your wife. I like her; I love her! There, go!" She seems to grow all at once very tired. Are those tears that are rising in her eyes? She holds out to him her hand.

Felix, taking it, holds it closely for a moment, and presently, as if moved to do it, he stoops and presses a warm kiss upon it.

She is so unhappy, and so kind, and so true. God deliver her out of her sorrow!



CHAPTER LVI.

"I would that I were low laid in my grave."

She is still sitting silent, lost in thought, after Felix's departure, when the door opens once again to admit her husband. His hands are full of papers.

"Are you at liberty?" says he. "Have you a moment? These," pointing to the papers, "want signing. Can you give your attention to them now?"

"What are they?" asks she, rising.

"Mere law papers. You need not look so terrified." His tone is bitter. "There are certain matters that must be arranged before my departure—matters that concern your welfare and the boy's. Here," laying the papers upon the davenport and spreading them out. "You sign your name here."

"But," recoiling, "what is it? What does it all mean?"

"It is not your death warrant, I assure you," says he, with a sneer. "Come, sign!" Seeing her still hesitate, he turns upon her savagely. Who shall say what hidden storms of grief and regret lie within that burst of anger?

"Do you want your son to live and die a poor man?" says he. "Come! there is yourself to be considered, too! Once I am out of your way, you will be able to begin life again with a light heart; and this," tapping the paper heavily, "will enable you to do it. I make over to you and the boy everything—at least, as nearly everything as will enable me to live."

"It should be the other way," says she. "Take everything, and leave us enough on which to live."

"Why?" says he, facing round, something in her voice that resembles remorse striking him.

"We—shall have each other," says she, faintly.

"Having happily got rid of such useless lumber as the father and husband. Well, you will be the happier so," rejoins he with a laugh that hurts him more than it hurts her, though she cannot know that. "'Two is company,' you know, according to the good old proverb, 'three trumpery.' You and he will get on very well without me, no doubt."

"It is your arrangement," says she.

"If that thought is a salve to your conscience, pray think so," rejoins he. "It isn't worth an argument. We are only wasting time." He hands her the pen; she takes it mechanically, but makes no use of it.

"You will at least tell me where you are going?" says she.

"Certainly I should, if I only knew myself. To America first, but that is a big direction, and I am afraid the tenderest love letter would not reach me through it. When your friends ask you, say I have gone to the North Pole; it is as likely a destination as another."

"But not to know!" says she, lifting her dark eyes to his—dark eyes that seem to glow like fire in her white face. "That would be terrible. It is unfair. You should think—think—" Her voice grows husky and uncertain. She stops abruptly.

"Don't be uneasy about that," says he. "I shall take care that my death, when it occurs, is made known to you as soon as possible. Your mind shall be relieved on that score with as little delay as I can manage. The welcome news shall be conveyed to you by a swift messenger."

She flings the pen upon the writing table, and turns away.

"Insult me to the last if you will!" she says; "but consider your son. He loves you. He will desire news of you from time to time. It is impossible that you can put him out of your life as you have put me."

"It appears you can be unjust to the last," says he, flinging her own accusation back at her. "Have I put you out of my life?"

"Ah! was I ever in it?" says she. "But—you will write?"

"No. Not a line. Once for all I break with you. Should my death occur you will hear of it. And I have arranged so, that now and after that event you and the boy will have your positions clearly defined. That is all you can possibly require of me. Even if you marry again your jointure will be secured to you."

"Baltimore!" exclaims she, turning upon him passionately. She seems to struggle with herself for words. "Has marriage proved so sweet a thing?" cries she presently, "that I should care to try it again? There! Go! I shall sign none of these things." She makes a disdainful gesture towards the loose papers lying on the table, and moves angrily away.

"You have your son to consider."

"Your son will inherit the title and the property without those papers."

"There are complications, however, that perhaps you do not understand."

"Let them lie there. I shall sign nothing."

"In that case you will probably find yourself immersed in troubles of the meaner kinds after my departure. The child cannot inherit until after my death and——"

"I don't care," says she, sullenly. "Go, if you will. I refuse to benefit by it."

"What a stubborn woman you are," cries he, in great wrath. "You have for years declined to acknowledge me as your husband. You have by your manner almost commanded my absence from your side; yet now when I bring you the joyful news that in a short time you will actually be rid of me, you throw a thousand difficulties in my path. Is it that you desire to keep me near you for the purposes of torture? It is too late for that. You have gone a trifle too far. The hope you have so clearly expressed in many ways that time would take me out of your path is at last about to be fulfilled."

"I have had no such hope."

"No! You can look me in the face and say that! Saintly lips never lie, however, do they? Well, I'm sick of this life; you are not. I have borne a good deal from you, as I told you before. I'll bear no more. I give in. Fate has been too strong for me."

"You have created your own fate."

"You are my fate! You are inexorable! There is no reason why I should stay."

Here the sound of running, childish, pattering footsteps can be heard outside the door, and a merry little shout of laughter. The door is suddenly burst open in rather unconventional style, and Bertie rushes into the room, a fox terrier at his heels. The dog is evidently quite as much up to the game as the boy, and both race tempestuously up the room and precipitate themselves against Lady Baltimore's skirts. Round and round her the chase continues, until the boy, bursting away from his mother, dashes toward his father, the terrier after him.

There isn't so much scope for talent in a pair of trousers as in a mass of dainty petticoats, and presently Bertie grows tired, flings himself down upon the ground, and lets the dog tumble over him there. The joust is virtually at an end.

Lady Baltimore, who has stood immoveable during the attack upon her, always with that cold, white, beautiful look upon her face, now points to the stricken child lying panting, laughing, and playing with the dog at his father's feet.

"There is a reason!" says she, almost inaudibly.

Baltimore shakes his head. "I have thought all that out. It is not enough," says he.

"Bertie!" says his mother, turning to the child. "Do you know this, that your father is going to leave you?"

"Going?" says the boy vaguely, forgetting the dog for a moment and glancing upward. "Where?"

"Away. Forever."

"Where?" says the boy again. He rises to his feet now, and looks anxiously at his father; then he smiles and flings himself into his arms. "Oh, no!" says he, in a little soft, happy, sure sort of a way.

"Forever! Forever!" repeals Isabel in a curious monotone.

"Take me up," says the child, tugging at his father's arms. "What does mamma mean? Where are you going?"

"To America, to shoot bears," returns Baltimore with an embarrassed laugh. How near to tears it is.

"Real live bears?"

"Yes."

"Take me with you"? says the child, excitedly.

"And leave mamma?"

"Oh, she'll come, too," says Bertie, confidently. "She'll come where I go." Where he would go—the child! But would she go where the father went? Baltimore's brow darkens.

"I am afraid it is out of the question," he says, putting Bertie back again upon the carpet where the fox terrier is barking furiously and jumping up and down in a frenzied fashion as if desirous of devouring the child's legs. "The bears might eat you. When you are big and strong——"

"You will come back for me?" cries Bertie, eagerly.

"Perhaps."

"He will not," breaks in Lady Baltimore violently. "He will come back no more. When he goes you will never see him again. He has said so. He is going forever!" These last two terrible words seem to have sunk into her soul. She cannot cease from repeating them.

"Let the boy alone," says Baltimore angrily.

The child is looking from one parent to the other. He seems puzzled, expectant, but scarcely unhappy. Childhood can grasp a great deal, but not all. The more unhappy the childhood, the more it can understand of the sudden and larger ways of life. But children delicately brought up and clothed in love from their cradle find it hard to realize that an end to their happiness can ever come.

"Tell me, papa!" says he at last in a vague, sweet little way.

"What is there to tell?" replies his father with a most meagre laugh, "except that I saw Beecher bringing in some fresh oranges half an hour ago. Perhaps he hasn't eaten them all yet. If you were to ask him for one——"

"I'll find him," cries Bertie brightly, forgetting everything but the present moment. "Come, Trixy, come," to his dog, "you shall have some, too."

"You see there' won't be much trouble with him," says Baltimore, when the boy has run out of the room in pursuit of oranges. "It will take him a day, perhaps, and after that he will be quite your own. If you won't sign these papers to-day you will perhaps to-morrow. I had better go and tell Hansard that you would like to have a little time to look them over."