If my belief be not a popular one, I hardly like to be the first to preach it, but it seems to me that few can study society as it is to-day, without concluding very disagreable things; one of these is the deplorable fact that, in our day, the purest selfishness seems to have established itself as the source and promoter of, not only the indifferent, but the apparently best impulses of the human heart. It is a pity indeed, that our analysing tendency has been so strengthened by cultivation, for most often, by prying into the very remotest origin and causes of things we learn a lesson that for ourselves or the world would have been infinitely better unlearned. Hence it is trait in our own day we are not satisfied that certain lavish displays of generosity pass for Christian charity, simply, and without more ado. We will not look upon the givers, with an admiring eye, and spend our enthusiasm, on a religion which teaches the love of our neighbor so effectively, oh no! we must "open the drum to find where the noise is kept," and how, unfortunately, often, do we find, that practical virtues, or at least, what are so called by the world, have nothing more solid at base than the hollow drum. It sounds deplorable, to say that nineteenth century charity is a Dead Sea apple, even the guilty ones will not like to hear that they have subscribed to this fund, or built that asylum, through policy, or as an advertisement, or for the less harmful but still unworthy reason that they like to give something, when there is plenty around them. Nevertheless, is it not true that in all countries, in our own little city, there are men, who drive the starving beggar from their doors, and who yet head a public charity list handsomely. There are people, who, under their parson's eye, wear down-cast look and thump their breasts, but, who behind his back, would much sooner thump any one else's breast, or cast down any other person's eyes. There are members of high society, who feel it their duty to set good example for their social inferiors, and so they feast and dance and gratify themselves all through the hours of the night, and then in half spoiled frizzes and sleepy looks repair to church in the early morning. This may all be right enough, but if so, there is more than one version of right and wrong, and that is impossible. This omnipotent selfishness has even crept into our loves. Men kiss the dainty finger tips of their lady-loves, to-day, with a passionate fondness that is proportionate to the bulk of lucre that dainty hand can hold. The words "be mine" so sweetly answered by fair trusting damsels, are addressed to them, because estates and dowries cannot speak of themselves, and must consequently be wooed and won by proxy. The divine institution as marriage was wont to be considered, is better understood in our day as a "linking transaction", a "speculation in the matrimonial market," or for the man alone, he is either "spliced" or "fleeced."

At least our century has succeeded in one thing: it is the grandest parody on all that is lofty, or elevated or holy, it is an unparalleled burlesque on any exalted sentiment or practical good. Every ennobling tendency, every redeeming trait is cunningly caricatured, and so cleverly ridiculed that is impossible to respect them afterwards. It is hard to tell what another era may bring forth of good, but it is certain that ours has killed, to the very possibility of a future regeneration, every germ and atom of solid morality, that sustained it. Perhaps that is what was wanted, the end may be achieved now. It has been clearly and undeniably proved to the world, that there is no longer any God, there is no eternity, no atonement, no recompense. We are left to wonder whose business it was to call some of us into this miserable existence, to take us out of it again before we have culled any real happiness, and send us back to—Well, we are not allowed to say where, because there is some inconsistency mixed up with it, but we are sure to go there at all events.

This may seem a most exaggerated deviation from the smooth course of the narrative, but in reality it is not so. The little reflections made may serve to remind the reader, that those great universal movements, social, political and religious, floating as they are at random in the atmosphere, cannot fail, when breathed by our youth to develop into substance with their growth, and to manifest their poisonous influences later, in the lives of their wretched victims. After pondering over such reminders for a moment or more, there will be no call for surprise, when our young men are pictured in their true colors. The mind need not hesitate to enquire, when it views youth and manhood, beautiful and blase, attractive and cynical, credulous to simplicity in many things, and infidels in the one great act of faith that alone merits anything.

From the taint of this evil, and all its sorrowful consequences I am tempted to exempt Guy Elersley, so handsome, so young, so winning; but I cannot give the lie to obstinate reality. Of course, Guy Elersley was not a bad man, he was exactly what most young men of to-day are—what you, my reader, know them to be, what all the world, but themselves, know them to be. Guy thought he "wasn't such a bad sort of fellow at all," and yet in every movement of his, one could detect him—the victim of the age. He had never professed any direct code of belief. He would have been very much offended if any one called him an "atheist." He knew there was some reason why a fellow should go to church now and then, and not be everlastingly doing mischief. He confided to himself in strict secret that "to die" was about the very last thing he'd like to do; but, somehow, such serious considerations as these never lingered long, a good cigar or "half-a-glass" easily sufficing to turn the current of his thought into a more pleasant course. He had all the "might-have-beens" in the collection of qualities that he possessed, to make any one sorry, but as fast as a new trait developed itself in him, he put it to the worst possible advantage, and made those who took an interest in him intensely sorry for his grave mistakes.

He had early fallen in with the tide, and learned to love himself before and above all else.

One hardly likes to say that this new born enthusiasm of his was a selfish gratification, and yet in its radical sense it was thoroughly so. He delighted in it because of the benefit it brought himself. He had long felt a void within his heart, a want or craving for something, something indefinite, intangible certainly—something that no sensual indulgence could appease, that no light pleasure could distract, and now all at once it seemed to him that long-felt vacuum was filling up. A something, just as ethereal as his craving had been, was creeping into his heart. It felt like the liquid music of a low, serious voice, or it may have been a passion, such as he had seen in the depths of two large, sad, gray eyes, or it might have been the soft soothing influence of a sweet, dreamy smile. It was just as abstract as any of these, and yet just as fascinating and just as exquisite. This was Love for him, a beautiful but a dreadful thing! feeding his hungry soul and quenching his heart's awful thirst, yet swaying him with a merciless tyranny, for love caresses with one hand and smites with the other. If it can be the exponent of certain delicate phases in our spiritual nature, it can also, alas! almost smother the good it does by the pain it so cruelly inflicts. It has a double mission, for in the cry of joy that escapes the lips under its influence there is an echo of pain and despair, and hence it is that love is so violent a passion. If it were a pleasure only to love, we could never prize the object of our wild affection as when it has cost us sighs and tears, and anxiety untold.

It was thus Guy Elersley ruminated as he sauntered through the streets this sear October day, whistling silently to himself, and knocking the clotted leaves recklessly from side to side with his slender cane. He was persuading himself that at last his destiny was beginning to accomplish itself. She would surely see the lines he had traced for her eye in the book he had been reading, and if she were what he supposed her to be, they would be an eloquent appeal in his behalf—but. Here the misery came in—

"Love was never yet without The pang, the agony, the doubt."

What if she never reciprocated?—if there did not linger in her breast a single responsive sigh? But he dared not ask. What then? Not until hope had quite faded away and left the bare, truthful reality to confront him by itself.



CHAPTER V.

"And then I met with one who was my fate, he saw me and I knew 'Twas Love, like swift lightning darted through My spirit 'ere I thought, my heart was won— Spell-bound to his, forever and forever!"

In this interesting meanwhile, life was unfolding its strange mysteries just as unexpectedly to Honor Edgeworth as to Guy Elersley. After she had returned from her pleasant drive, a half hour after Guy's departure from his uncle's house, dinner was announced, immediately after which Mr. Rayne had to excuse himself, having had an engagement "up town." Honor, left to her own resources for distractions, repaired, as usual, to the sitting room, and seated herself on the floor before the grate. Her eyes assumed their old hazy look, she clasped her hands over her knees and looked vacantly into the fire. What a strange girl this was! So dreamy, so pensive. She was reasoning with herself now as she often did, trying to feel thankful for all the good things with which her life was blest, but though she acknowledged to herself that youth and health, and comfort and kind friends were grand gifts of Providence, she could not stifle the dissatisfaction that filled her as she yearned for "something else." She could not say what it was, only she knew that she yearned for a gratification that is not found in any of those things that she enjoyed so profusely.

Oh, that "something else!" Why do we not stop and gather it by the roadside we are passing now? We will not find it farther on. That which is enticing us onward is only the illusionary flicker of a will o'-the-wisp! We will stretch out our hands too late—when we have been caught in its fatal snares, and then in the darkness and misery that will surround us, we will feel how foolish we have been, and our cries of despair and distress will be echoed back to our own ears in sounds of mockery and scorn. Let us not build upon that "something else" that is always buried in the to-morrows, for we are losing the present and risking the future thereby.

Poor Honor, after thinking until her head sank wearily upon her shoulder, sighed and rose up, pacing the room with her hands behind her back. As she passed by the little etagere she smiled curiously, and stretching out her hand drew towards her Guy's book of poetic selections. As she slid the pages through her delicate fingers, she murmured slowly—

"I have said that my life is a terrible thing, All ruined and-"

She stopped suddenly, for her eyes had fallen on the pencil marks traced under these little verses she was accustomed to recite—her heart gave a sudden bound—

"Oh, sweeter self, like me art thou astray"

She quoted the words in bewilderment. What did it mean? There was no one in the house to write such meaning words there! That pretty, legible penmanship did not correspond with anyone's she had ever known—except— where was it she had noticed something just the same? Suddenly she remembered. On the fly-leaf of the book were words traced in the same hand. She turned over the leaves and compared them. There was no doubting their identity. It was, then, G. E. who had written this passionate little quotation. "G. E. How strange" she muttered. Was it her "fairy prince" had come to visit her while she was away? She could not fathom it—some hidden meaning lay stowed away under those pretty words. "They were not there when last I had the book, of that I am sure," Honor said meditatively. "Some one has been in here since, and that 'some one' sympathises with me, that 'some one,' I feel, is my long-sought ideal. Has destiny changed its frown into a smile at last for this lone, eccentric girl, I wonder?" She dropped her hands negligently, still clasping the mysterious volume, and looked wistfully into the space before her. She was undergoing the change that comes over each of us as soon as we yield our hearts to the strange influence that fascinates them. We have been told that "Love is a great transformer," and if we had never heard it we would have found it out for ourselves.

Honor Edgeworth, sitting alone in the cosy enclosures of a cushioned fauteuil, thought out the queer circumstance that had visited her to-night; never noticing how fast time flitted by, never heeding the stillness of advancing night, until Mr. Rayne's late arrival roused her from her reverie, and brought her suddenly back from the sunlight of her dreams to the grim darkness of the reality. Kissing him a sleepy good- night, Honor left the room, henceforth haunted by the spirits of her earliest conceptions of love, and went silently, almost gloomily, up to her own handsome little room, bringing to her friendly pillow all the hazardous hopes and fears, and interesting experiences of a love unborn but well conceived.

In the gray of the following morning, the angels of slumber on their upward flight must have borne one another an interesting message, for Honor's guardian spirit had noted the happy smile creeping over her face, as in her dreams she saw the noble hero of her waking reverie—and Guy, as he tossed restlessly on his pillow, betrayed to his "silent watcher" a heart overflowing with a new-born love for a creature to whom he had yet spoken no word. And how those angels must have smiled, knowing, as they did, that 'ere another day had passed those two would have met, to recognize in one another the destiny of each!

"It will soon be four o'clock," Honor said to herself on the afternoon of this same day, looking, as she spoke, towards the delicately tinted window-sill. She had whiled away so many afternoons in this little boudoir, or family sitting room, that she could tell by the progress of the sun on the broad sill when to expect Mr. Rayne home from his office. "He will be here in half-an-hour," she soliloquized, then looking aimlessly around for distraction, Honor spied a half-knitted stocking and a ponderous looking pair of gold-mounted spectacles lying carefully on a side table. Smiling mischievously, she adjusted the glasses, very low down on her nose, for of course she can see much better over than through them, and unwinding a yard or two of the wool, tucked the ball professionally under her arm, and began slowly to penetrate the intricate mysteries of "narrowing the gore." She had just seated herself in the great rocking chair, when a very familiar sort of tap at the door caused her to look up. She thought to make a joke for Fitts, and feigned "Nanette" accordingly—she dropped her head on her shoulder, slowly moving her needles all the while—and with closed lids, and mouth half-way open, she considered the tableau perfect. The knock was not repeated, but she knew that the door had been opened. For a few seconds longer she remained in her interesting attitude, and then considering that Fitts was rather slow to appreciate a joke, she opened her eyes, and was about to close her mouth, but the exclamation of surprise that rose to her lips, kept it wide open for a second or two longer. The blankest of blank stupid wonder looked out from her eyes over the old-fashioned, gold-rimmed spectacles.

"I hope you won't think I am intruding," said the person at the door, "but being quite at home in the house, and having received no answer when I announced myself, I thought I might admit myself here as usual."

Honor detected an effort in the speaker's voice to refrain from laughing outright, and did not feel too comfortable at the success of her joke.

"Did you—did you wish to see Mr. Rayne?" she stammered, dragging the unsightly spectacles off her nose, and throwing them back on the table.

"I certainly expected he was here," the stranger answered mischievously, "but I had mistaken you for him on coming suddenly in."

Honor felt mortified, while her companion evidently was very much amused. She looked at him suddenly, her pretty face suffused with blushes, but on raising her eyes they met his in a quick glance—the large, passionate gray and the deep, dreamy blue penetrated each other's depths in an instant—only during one short breath, and then Honor's fell. She had been about to speak, but the mischief in his look reminded her of the absurdity of this recontre, and she could only turn aside, and show him by her shaking shoulders that she was forced to laugh.

At last the situation became too ridiculous, and Honor, between smothered fits of laughter, said,

"If you have made any appointment with Mr. Rayne, he will not detain you, I know. Be seated; I will enquire if he has yet arrived"

"Do not trouble yourself," her companion answered. "My uncle, Mr. Rayne makes no ceremony for me, I assure I you. I must only await his pleasure. But lest I have disturbed you—"

"Not at all," Honor interrupted, "I was only amusing myself."

"We may as well not be strangers," Guy said, courteously advancing towards Honor, "for we are likely to meet very often henceforward. I am Mr. Rayne's nephew, his sister's son, and I was the only toy in the big nursery of his heart until Miss Edgeworth appeared, which young lady I think I have at present the honor to address."

Honor bowed, and, extending her hand, said in her sweetest voice—

"For Mr. Rayne's sake we must certainly be friends,"—then feeling a little more at home with her visitor, she continued, "As no one comes in here unannounced, I ventured to attempt a little disguise this afternoon. I mistook your knock for some one's of the household, and had just struck the last attitude of my assumed character when you caught me—I hope the effect on your nerves was nothing serious," and as she spoke this in her bewitching confusion Guy felt like taking her up in his arms, little bundle of blushes and smiles as she looked, and devouring her, but before he had time for word or action, the door opened again, and this time Henry Rayne bustled in, glaring in bewilderment upon them—

"Why! You two young rascals, how did you come together? Here you've cheated me out of anticipated pleasure by finding one another out behind my back—this is too bad!" and Mr. Rayne as he spoke looked suspiciously at each of them.

"Oh, Mr. Rayne," and "Really, uncle," broke simultaneously from their lips, and then Guy, advancing, explained the interesting circumstances of their premature introduction.

"Well, it's just as well," Henry Rayne said, laughing, "we are all to be the one family henceforth, and the sooner it began the better—sit down Honor—sit down my boy," continued he, drawing chairs towards the fire, "come Guy, tell us the news, you have nothing else to do but gather it."

It was all over and done, those hands that had been groping in the darkness for so long, had met at length in one another's clasp. True it was, that no word had yet betrayed the feeling of either heart, no action, no sign had been made, and yet each knew full well that they had met at a threshold which they were both destined to cross, hand in hand. It was not presumption on either side, but each felt so truly that it would be easy now to love, that they had met. It seemed as though one had sought the other for a long tune, and that now they had met never, never to part.

It will avail us nothing to dwell upon the details that made up the happy days of Honor Edgeworth's life after her meeting with Guy Elersley. To those who know what it is to breathe, live, and act under the soothing influence of a first love, the page would be a superfluous one, and to those for whom such a blessed phase of life is yet among the things to be, mine must not be the pen that will spoil the luxury thereof by anticipating its joy—and again, to the wrinkled brows and aching hearts for which such a thing lies among the "might have beens," oh, I will not surely speak—I see their blinding tears—I hear a long, mournful sigh—somebody's fate is cursed, somebody's hope is trampled, somebody's heart is withered and dead! There remain only those who live their love-days in a holy remembrance, those who, in going backward through time go

"—hand in hand With spirits from the shadowland,"

and to those I whisper the words of our poet, and say—

"'Tis better to have loved and lost, Than never to have loved at all."

All I will say is, that the sun which set upon the world on the day when, for the first time, Guy and Honor linked hands, never, since nor before, went down upon any two creatures who were more thoroughly satisfied with themselves than were these two.

When Guy left Mr. Rayne's house, the evening was far spent—and such an evening! If an exclamation point cannot imply its happiness it must remain a mystery. Long after he had bade his earnest "good-night," Honor and her guardian sat together over the dying coals and chatted pleasantly. It was their custom to hold this nightly gossip no matter at how late an hour their visitors left them.

"And so that is my brave nephew for you," Henry Rayne said, as Honor stood up and placed her chair against the wall, "How do you like him?"

Like him? If he could have seen her averted face—her eyes—her mouth!

"Don't you ask an opinion a little soon?" she replied, so carelessly, that the shrewdest observer would be baffled.

"Well, I don't mean to ask you if you're crazy about him, or anything like that," Mr. Rayne said, half-laughing, "but do you take to him, do you think you will be friends? That's what I'd like to know."

"Oh," she exclaimed, disguising her excitement in a smile of surprise, "I do not doubt that, at least so far as I am concerned, I have been friends with more—with less—I mean with more—no, with less intereresting people."

"Gracious! it seems to have puzzled you if you have," Henry Rayne said, mischievously, as he saw her color and grow impatient with herself, "you seem at a loss to know on what equality you would put poor Guy's interest"

"Now, you needn't teaze, just because I'm dreadfully sleepy and can't talk right; I won't say another word, only—Good-night," and kissing him brusquely on the cheek, she skipped out of the room.

But the subject had not dropped through with these remarks.

The following day as Honor sat in the library alone, Mr. Rayne bustled in, and sat down beside her, as he said, to read her some interesting item from the morning Citizen, but instead of leaving her again, Honor saw that he was lingering in the room purposely. (I wonder if anyone ever yet loitered around a place pretendingly to no purpose without immediately betraying that he was full of purpose.) After Henry Rayne had looked at the titles of several books, and gazed vacantly at the paintings that decorated the walls, and raised the cover of a massive ink-stand just to drop it again, he made a bold stroke and began his subject as though it had only entered his head at that very moment.

"Honor," he said somewhat timidly, "I was going to ask you to do something, last night, but you left me so suddenly that I had to put it off."

"Oh, I am so sorry," Honor answered, raising her lace frame to her mouth, not to hide her face, but only to bite off an obstinate knot of thread that provoked her. "Is it too late, now?" she queried anxiously, looking at him.

"Oh, no; it's not too late. It's about Guy."

"Guy?"

"Yes."

"Why, what can I have to do with Guy?"

"Well, I just want you to promise me you will do all you are able. If you do that, I can almost promise you I will never ask you to do me a favor again."

The puzzled, asking look in her gray eyes deepened, a curious smile stole round her lips.

"I need not tell you how strange this is to me," she said slowly, "you must know that you proposed an enigma which I cannot solve."

"Come here, Honor," Mr. Rayne said seriously. She laid down her work and went towards him. He was sitting in a velvet arm-chair, and she knelt beside him, with her white, delicate hands clasped on the ruby upholstering. He put one arm gently around her, and as he smoothed her wavy hair with one hand, he asked her earnestly,

"Honor, you know how much good is done in the world by mere contact, do you not?"

"Of course I do, Mr. Rayne; good and evil alike have been kept circulating from the beginning by individuals."

"That is so. Well, now, don't you think it is a pity when there is a very susceptible person, one who would be good if he was led, or who would be wicked if he was led—don't you think it a pity, I ask, that such a person as that should go to ruin because there is no good influence open to him in his life?"

"Undoubtedly," the girl answered seriously. "But Mr. Rayne, no one need be wicked if he wishes to be good, evil is not forced on us you know."

"I know that, my child, but we are not always as strong as our inclinations—the spirit is one thing and the flesh another. Now, I want to appoint you a mission—you are a good girl, and your pleasure is in doing good. Supposing you would favor me by doing good at my request?"

Honor started a little, and looked enquiringly into his face.

"You know you have only to tell me your wish, dear Mr. Rayne. I wish I could have anticipated it; but as that could not be, I pray you tell me immediately. What can I do for you worth the asking?"

"I want you to promise me that you will begin right away to work your influence over Guy." The color rose to her cheeks, and the smile faded out of her eyes and mouth. "This, mind, is a profound secret, Guy has neither father nor mother—he has no home, nor no real friends. I, like the rest, have spoiled him but God has sent me you in time. I know that my dead sister would rebuke me severely were she to see her boy, my charge, so reckless and so dissipated. But I fancy it is not so much my fault—my influence could never change him much.—I want you, for my sake, to try yours. You have only to meet him often, and talk with him. If he has eyes at all he must see in our practical life all the theories he has heard preached to him so often. Show him in all the indirect ways you can, how foolish and frivolous are the ways of society to-day. He is a clever boy, and susceptible, and your trouble will not be lost. Come, now, will you promise me only to try, for my sake?"

"How you exaggerate the capacity of a weak woman," she said a little sadly, then, after a moment's pause, she continued—"It is no trifling mission you appoint to me, Mr. Rayne; it is full of responsibilities. But there!" and she clapped her little hand firmly into his, "That means my strongest resolution—I will do my best You can ask no more."

"God bless you" the old man murmured slowly, squeezing the slender fingers tenderly between both his hands, "I am sure you will never regret it."

No other word was spoken. Henry Rayne had left the room, and Honor stood there alone—stood with folded hands and dreamy eyes—thinking. What a strange request this had been! How was she going to fulfil her promise without betraying the real impulse that had spurred her to make it? How was she going to work her way into his confidence, and yet guard her own? Oh, if this were a task for Mr. Rayne's sake only, how easily she would convert it into a pleasure—but she had promised, that cancelled all her misgivings. She would do it now, if it were in woman's power, she would make it her duty, and with a resolute will and an anxious heart, surely the accomplishment would not prove too hard—"Only—if I had not seen my want supplied in him—if I had not recognized in him the hero of my life's dream. Oh, Guy! What a joy it will be to me if I can teach you to come to me, turning your back upon gaiety, and pleasure, and temptation, to sit by my side, when the voice of a more powerful tempter is stifling mine. What joy for me then!—but no, I am wrong!—it is not my gratification I have been sent to seek; this is a mere duty. If I had loathed you at this moment, my duty is still the same. Just now, it is not your sake nor mine—it is Henry Rayne's."

The door opened slowly and the croaky voice of the old male servant broke upon her reverie.

"Beg pardon Miss, but dinner is served."

Heroically she stowed away her emotions, the old pleasant smile stole back into its home, and with a beaming face and cheerful step she passed into the dining-room.



CHAPTER VI.

"Oh the snow, the beautiful snow Filling the sky and the earth below.'

"It will be a stormy night I think," Honor says, shrugging her pretty shoulders behind the window-blind she is just lowering, "I wish I had the stout brawny arms of a man to-night...."

"Around your waist?" says a voice from behind her, and, suiting the action to the word, some one encircles her slender waist with "stout brawny arms."

"Guy! I have told you in plain English that I will not allow you to take such freedom with me. This time, I say, 'Je vous difends sirieusementde mettre vos bras....'"

"Oh! that's enough, by Jove, you'd drive a fellow crazy if he'd listen to you long enough, with your recitals on maidenly propriety. Now, there's Miss Bella Dash—many a season's belle—just chuckles with delight when I get this broad cloth sleeve fairly around her blue satin basque"

"Oh! I dare say! but society gives 'poetical licences' to her adopted children, which outside of her pale would be simply atrocious. If Bella Dash saw your coat sleeve around Betsy, the house-maid's basque, it would mean another thing altogether, though Betsy's eyes are as fine as Miss Bella's any day. Besides, you must have learned by now that the 'Bella Dash's' of Ottawa society to-day are nothing to me. My sympathy for my sex goes out to the whole species and when I offer it to individuals, I exclude the 'Miss Dash's' that make the 'tableaux vivants' of the modern drawing-room."

"By Jove! that is a fine speech Honor; now see here between you and me (I might also add the only two sensible people in Ottawa) what do you think would become of us young enthusiastic fellows if all the 'girls' stood on their high-heeled dignity like you? Why of course the monasteries and lunatic asylums would have more to do, and by and by, the lunatic asylum would have it all; but destiny is not so cruel a tyrant as you, so she makes your haughty kind the exception and not the rule."

Honor laughed, a low curious laugh, and said "Then she is very kind to me to have made me realize soon enough how much too worthy I am to be any man's pastime, a toy for him to play with until the paint is rubbed off—then to be flung aside for something new. If that is all Bella Dash and her prototypes, are worth in your estimation, it is no wonder they are proud, and no wonder they hold their heads high enough to sniff the air over the heads of girls, who, were you to use their names as you do Miss Dash's, would level you to the ground."

"My most supreme stand-offish friend, I hope sincerely you won't preach any of these theories around our gay little city. Why, the young ladies here are just a jolly crowd, who don't transmogrify their whole faces because a fellow likes to spoon now and then to kill time. By Jove! you'd spoil the fun for the winter, and as soon as spring came the whole male element of Ottawa City would 'make' for the fresh pastures of the North-West."

"That is a worthy declaration Mr. Elersly, I must say. I hope you are aware that in speaking thus, you risk the good opinion of your respectable sensible friends—if you have any—outside of this house. It is cold so near the window, let me pass please. I prefer a seat by the fire to this stupid argument here in the window recess."

The mischievous smile died out of Guy's handsome face, as he looked earnestly into the beautiful eyes of the girl standing by him.

"Oh yes, of course" said he, with a sigh, "anything is stupid in my company, although I come to you when I'm in good spirits for sympathy, as well as when I'm 'blue' for consolation: you always find it dull and stupid, and you don't hesitate to tell me either. If I bore you so dreadfully, I'll be off."

Honor looked up suddenly; she stretched out her hand and laid it on his shoulder; her voice was changed and earnest as she said. "Stay Guy, and we'll talk it over in a friendly way. There are two seats by the grate, and I will be very amiable—I promise you."

There was a moment of hesitation—temptation—both ways for Guy. At last he looked up, saying: "I'm really sorry, Honor, but I made an engagement for eight o'clock, and I've only ten minutes to walk over half a mile; so we'll have to postpone our little 'veillee.'"

She turned from him and looked into the fire "Very well," she answered quietly, "the night is stormy, but I suppose you don't mind that."

"Not much," a fellow has to humour the weather for the weather won't humour him.

"But by Jove! its eight o'clock," said Guy, looking at his watch, "and I'll be puckering my patrician brow to invent an excuse for this delay. So 'ta-ta.'"

"Good night," Honor said in a low voice, extending her hand as Guy approached the fire to light his cigar. Another moment, and the young girl was alone with her thoughts.

We might stop here and wonder at the mysterious conventionality that is influencing all our lives now-a-days. It is not a deception, and yet its consequences are often the same. Here was a striking instance of its existence. It might have been noticed from the beginning of the last interview that Honor and Guy had grown somewhat more familiar with one another. It was Mr. Rayne's doings, for had he not interfered, the same cold mysterious distance would still have been between them; but there was no sacrifice too great where he was concerned, and it was purely for his sake the young people dispensed with the formality of their early acquaintance. And yet, how superficial this familiarity was on both sides! Just now, look at them—read their thoughts—see their hearts.

Guy closed the front door with a heavy bang and went out into the street troubled. He was talking to himself: "Such a farce, by Jove! one would think she was a little sister, by the way I try to speak, and if she only knew how I struggle to suffocate the passion that rises within me, when she looks up so earnestly out of her big dreaming eyes; it is sheer folly and I'll go mad if it must continue—and yet—if uncle ever suspected my love he would separate us then and there. But it is dangerous dust I am flinging in his eyes by being free and easy with her in this way. In a little while more I won't be able to trust myself, and God help me then. Confound those Teazle girls, only for their invitation I would have stayed with Honor to-night, but a fellow belongs to every one in this city before himself, and I can't expect to escape"

"Alas! for the rarity Of Christian charity Under the sun."

By this time he was mounting the steps of his boarding-house, and he flung the butt of his cigar violently at a gaunt spare cat that just ventured its pinched countenance from under the verandah. As he turned the latch-key, he was indulging in a strain of "In the gloaming, oh! my darling" as though he were the happiest of living creatures.

For some moments after Guy left his uncle's house Honor sat motionless reading the coals. She was troubled: Mr. Rayne expected her to be able to entice his nephew away from these never ending parties of pleasure, and she could not. If she did not care for him quite so much, her task would indeed be easier, indifference spurs on so to a task that is mere duty. How miserable she was, here, all alone, on his account, while he, where was he spending these moments fraught with so much anxiety for her?

At this juncture Mr. Rayne bustled in and, somewhat surprised to find his little girl alone, he took the seat Honor had placed for Guy, and settled himself for a comfortable fireside chat.



CHAPTER VII.

"The lamps shone o'er fair women and brave men: A thousand hearts beat happily: and when Music arose with its voluptuous swell, Soft eyes looked love to eyes which spake again, And all went merry as a marriage-bell." —Byron.

Let us now contrast the two pictures which present themselves to the imagination on this stormy winter evening. One is quiet, usual, familiar; the other is noisy, glittering, but also familiar. One is the drawing-room in Mr. Rayne's comfortable house, with the gaslight falling gently over the silent room—it is not turned very high. Mr. Rayne is dozing in an arm-chair. His hands are folded across his breast, and his limbs are extended at full length—he is dreaming. Honor is seated at the piano, stealing her slender fingers over the ivory keys. It is a low, rippling strain—Valse des Soupirs—such as fairies might bring from their magic touch. 'Tis the music of her own heart—the sound of her sighs, and she plays on softly, heedlessly. She is lost in the ecstacy of her own reverie.

We turn to the other side of the picture. Noisy strains of dance music, merry peals of laughter, little snatches of society gossip, beaming faces, silk and lace and flimsy loveliness, bouquets and gloves, trains, handkerchiefs, fans and flirtation, all in a sweet confusion. This is Ottawa at its best, as every one allows when the Misses Teazle throw aside their family portals for their annual ball. Every one is there— married and single, young and old, homely and pretty, rich and—(no! not rich and poor), the rich only, the powerful only, the most influential papas and the best-dressed mammas that Ottawa can afford, and the "juveniles" get in on pa's and ma's qualifications. It is the first private ball since the opening of Parliament, and every one feels very fresh for pleasure. The Misses Teazle themselves look charming (what hostesses ever did not in Ottawa?) and the rest vie with one another.

We are somewhat confused on our entrance into the brilliant room, but some glaring objects attract our attention, thereby kindly taking that look of vacant bewilderment out of our eyes. We have often wondered what the scene was like inside those closed shutters, and here we are now, transported all at once to the very midst of the interesting proceedings.

There is a group near the door that we readily take in, in our first sweeping glance round the room. Mrs. Mountainhead, a lady prodigiously inclined to embonpoint, looking exceedingly warm and uncomfortable, is the central figure. Her two daughters and their attendant cavaliers are also there. But it is plain to see that Mrs. Mountainhead does not enjoy the ball. She stands in holy awe of her aristocratic daughters, who are just "fresh" from a very modern boarding-school. Every word she utters has an accompanying look thrown either to the short-sighted full- complexioned eldest daughter or to the slim, unprepossessing younger one, seeking approval from their responsive glances. And, after all, poor Mamma Mountainhead, in her ruby velvet and Chantilly lace, has, by far, more brains of her own—if she could get a license to use them— than either of her daughters have ever admitted within the limits of their well-frizzed heads. But who is the apparently devoted admirer of Miss Gerty Mountainhead, who is leaning over her chair from behind, with the top of his aquiline nose in ridiculous proximity to her very red face? Who but Mr. Guy Elersley? There he is, whispering all kinds of nothings into the blushing, susceptible ear of dear Miss Gerty, never heeding the thought of the lonely girl at the piano in the quiet home of his uncle.

Then there is a silvery laugh, and you hear the words—"Well, between the Racquet court and the skating rink, and calls, and going out, what do you think I could ever do? Why, the day is not half long enough as it is."

"Surely not, Miss Dash," a deep voice makes answer in a tone of quiet amusement, "you must be dreadfully worried in trying to make things harmonize. You are so tired at night that half the morning must go for repose, and then—"

Here the speakers moved on and it was seen that Bella Dash was happy on the arm of a wealthy bachelor who was fast becoming interesting to all female friends, mamas and daughters. It is easy to see at a glance that every one is fooling every one else, and the male element in the room is absorbing all the real fun.

With the exception of a few newly-appointed civil servants who have "made their calls" and run an account at the tailors, the other gentlemen are mostly well-versed in the drawing-room slang and will certainly not bore their fair partners by discussing anything outside of Rideau Hall, or the other fashionable and interesting haunts of gay winter festivities. These gallant knights are easily distinguished looking around the ball room with half-closed eyes (they are mostly short-sighted), or parading their audible element through the room with such a lazy drawl—beautifully substituting the r's with a perfectly Italianized "aw."

Among these indispensables, were Jack Fairmay, Willie Airey and a great many more of our "Sparks Street" elegants. How much better they look on a freezing afternoon with their noses blue and their fur caps pulled comfortably down over their ears, than in the painfully proper looking long-tailed broad cloth and white kids, exactions of society's absolute laws.

All the blondes and brunettes of Centre Town and Upper Town and Sandy Hill, all the "tony" Post Office clerks, all the young, flourishing, embryo and genuine lawyers, doctors, engineers, rich lumber merchants, and civil servants, ad infinitum were there.

What a gay picture! What an interesting sight! Who would not love Ottawa for its self-made gouty papas and its fat, airy, comfortable mamas? Think of the wonderful influence of these thoroughly Christian women on the sphere in which they shine. Even in this one gathering can we not realize how the improvements and customs of the day cast their benign influence over a mighty world, through the rising generation. Those dear pretty pink and white dimpled darlings done up in "illusion" and silks, how happy it makes one feel only to look at them! This must be the nature of the remarks, Guy and another male friend exchange in the bay window. Let us draw nearer.

"You're wrong, Bob my dear," Guy is saying, "I agree with you they do look like fish-hooks strung in a row, but I heard Miss Nellie Teazle tell Mrs. John Prim, that that was the 'Montagu' style; so excuse me for contradicting you."

"Oh! don't mention it, the name almost redeems the folly of the thing. By the way Elersley, you have been 'going it' in rather a pronounced way with Miss Mountainhead to-night. Is it too soon to be the first to congratulate?"

"Oh Lord!" Guy smothers the exclamation under his heavy moustache. "You might try the names of all the dear ones in succession on me. They're just immensely jolly, you know, but I never heard of a young Ottawaite in his sane sober senses, go choose his future wife in a ballroom."

Just here, Miss Dash comes up and throws a coquettish look at Guy through the opening in the curtains. He nods a temporary good-bye to his companion and goes off to claim the next waltz which Miss Dash has promised him, and, oh Guy! naughty boy! if he is not saying over the identical pretty nothings to Miss Bella, that are yet filling the heart of Miss Mountainhead. with a delicious souvenir of him.

In another corner of the room Bob Apley is "spooning" most suggestively with the same Miss MacArgent whose "fish-hooks" he has just been ridiculing so mercilessly. This of course is pardonable according to the world's wise indulgent maxims, especially when we consider that Miss MacArgent's father's income, daily, is almost identical with the amount of dollars and cents that find their way to the pockets of the impecunious Bob in a whole year.

Besides Emily is rather a good-looking specimen of the "foreign" belles that winter in Ottawa, and some one even said last winter that one of the Governor-General's Aides-de Camp and she—oh! we all know how the green-eyed monster tortured the hearts of the poor belles of countless seasons, when they saw their indisputable rights usurped by a comparative stranger. The two Misses Begg, for instance, who have been twenty-five and twenty-six respectively for the last eight years, waiting for the turn in their lives, that will never come, have cause for bitter complaint. The same faces are here that are ever on exhibition as the champion tennis player, the champion skater, another an unrivalled waltzer, and some more distinguished vocalists and instrumental performers. These grow wearisome once the novelty wears off. There is nothing in them besides the foam that blows away after a little and leaves no trace of its once august presence.

We will make our adieus gladly to the affected civil servants, the young embryo professionals, the rich independent bachelors, the corpulent papas and mamas, the famous tennis, skating, singing, dancing and playing heroines, and go joyfully back to the snug little parlor of Henry Rayne, where sits the only one sensible girl we have seen to-night.

She has ceased playing, and is now sitting by a low table with her lovely head bent earnestly over a lap full of wool-work. The little clock goes ticking on through the noiseless moments that come and go and still her busy fingers ply hurriedly through the stitches. At last it is ten o'clock and instinctively she rises, puts away her wools and needle, and goes over to the chair which yet supports the sleeping figure of Henry Rayne.

"Good night, Grandpapa," she says softly in his ear.

He hears the low sweet whisper. Her voice would penetrate the depth of death itself for him, he fancies. She said "Grandpapa." She only calls him that when she is sad, whenever a sense of bitter loneliness fills her heart, making her miss a kind mother and her dear handsome father most.

He opens his eyes instantly and raises his hand to draw the pretty bowed head closer still to his.

"Good-night, my dear little child. How stupid of me to have dozed here all night leaving you by yourself."

"Don't fret, Grandpa dear, I love your company, and all that, but remember I am never less alone than when alone, and an evening by myself is never lost to me."

"No, my pretty one, but you must grow tired some day thinking so incessantly, I must try and distract you; it is dreadful of me to keep you housed up, so secluded, when there is so much for your youth and beauty to enjoy outside. May be I'm responsible for many a sigh you've heaved lately, but it never struck me you see, my pretty darling, that our sentiments and sympathies run so widely apart, it is not very surprising if an old prosy bachelor should forget to ferret out the pleasures of youth, to bestow them on a fair young beautiful thing like you,"

"Oh-ho, now dear old Grandpa, you have been sleeping and dreaming of somebody you are mistaking for me. Don't fret for not spoiling me more than you do. I am pampered enough dear knows. Good-night, I am sleepy too, and I think a night's rest would not be detrimental to either of us, eh grandfather?" and kissing him tenderly on both cheeks, she skipped out through the open doorway and ran up to her own little room.



CHAPTER VIII.

Grace was in all her steps Heaven in her eye In every gesture, dignity and love. —Milton.

There was no nonsense about Honor Edgeworth. Anyone should like her. There may have been traits in her character that would elicit no sympathy from some, but they either forget the extraordinary circumstances that influenced her young life, or else they are prejudiced against such individuals as she, whose eyes are widely opened to all the existing follies and extravagances of her species.

Honor would have grown up and bloomed to ornament a far fairer land than Canada, her too enthusiastic nature would have been infinitely better developed in another world, but it is useless to sit down and mourn over the "might have beens" that are always such a loss to us, because we see them, devoid of all the disadvantages realization brings to bear on our own sad experience.

Honor was not even one of those exceptionable women created, not out of the slime of the earth, but conceived in the romantic mind of some extravagant novelist, and brought into the world by his magic pen. No indeed, she had certainly a beautiful face, almost a faultless face, but how many have cursed the day when first they knew their own beauty! How many look back over pages and pages of awful crimes and shameful deeds, and the index page, the starting point, is their beautiful face. So do not be too hasty in envying the physical perfection or loveliness of others. Rejoice that you have it not; the want of it must be your salvation. Know well that if it is not yours, it is because the possession and consciousness thereof would lead you to evil, and it is one of those things for which God has his own wise ends.

Perhaps if Honor had mixed with the feminine world more intimately she would not be the standard of maidenly modesty and reserve that she was in her nineteenth year; but in her there was an utter absence of that self-sufficiency and loudness that is painfully prominent now-a-days in the very city we inhabit. And yet in all her meekness and mildness if you by look or word injured the extreme sense of delicacy that was the under current of all her movements, then—she reared her aristocratic chin high in the air and looked down upon you in such scorn and anger, as wounded innocence alone can assume. One curl of that splendid lip, one flash from that cold grey eye and you did not take long to feel how basely you had lowered yourself, and that a pardon craved on your knees could scarce half atone for the offence.

What a loss to the social world that women of her stamp are not more plentiful! What on earth else can redress social evils if not the redeeming influence of good Christian determined women? Why should they not hold the key to the good impulses, the moral treasures of mankind as well as they wind themselves into the evil nature by enticing the susceptible, dealing out gratification to the willing, and dragging souls blindfolded into an irremediable eternity?

Physiognomists tell us, if we can not observe it for ourselves, that there exists not only that universal difference among things, which makes genus, species, classes, etc., but that even among individuals there is no perfect resemblance found. There are the general prominent traits that serve to classify them, but perhaps there is more difference among the individuals of a species, when examined minutely, than there would be between individuals of a different genus.

This is so true of the human species, which is difficult to judge individually on account of the incessant mysterious hidden workings of that ever active faculty of the soul, which manifests itself so differently to other eyes through actions and words of greater or less import.

This is a digression, but, it came from contemplating the singular beauty of one woman's soul, among the tarnished multitude of victims to that social levity and those superficial virtues that society honors, and with which our modern fashionable women persuade themselves they are doing marvels in the world of good.

If I make a paragon of Honor Edgeworth, it is because I can defy any broad-minded, unprejudiced critic to find a single grievous fault in her character.

Besides the ordinary cultivation of her mind in all its faculties, Honor had another and a nobler ambition. She had acquired all the requisite knowledge to fit her for any station in life, from that of a nursery governess to that of the highest lady in the land. Her learning was not a smattering of this and that—a few words of German, a great deal too many of her own tongue, a well-studied enthusiasm for Tennyson and Longfellow, and may be now and then a word for the "Lake" school poets. Who has not met in their long or short run of experience with the modern graduate who "perfectly idolized" Tennyson or Byron, who "raved" about Shelley's poetical mysticism, or who was "fairly enchanted" with Goethe's deep romanticism. In some of her peculiar phases she even reckons as items of her illimitable knowledge selections from her "favorites" among the French romantics, or the realistic school may be more to her taste. She rolls up her eyes for Mozart and Beethoven and Gottschalk, but her heart thumps for Offenbach, Lamothe or Strauss. To make herself "interesting" in society she has "burned the midnight oil" over "David Copperfield," "Dombey and Son," "Jane Eyre," "East Lynne," "Endymion" and other popular volumes as they gain fame. She can sing snatches from all the finest operas, in Italian, German or French. She can dance the Boston and Rush Polka with unrivalled grace, she can flirt and affect the most becoming airs, she never misses a matinee or evening performance at the Grand Opera House; she can do the "grape-vine" exquisitely on her silver-plated skates, and can toss the tennis ball with wonderful dexterity.

All this relates to the effects of the superficial cultivation that our women are getting in this century. A mind polished so that the "rough" cannot manifest itself, a little veneering of knowledge and showy accomplishments, but a heart, alas!—ignored and neglected; the source of all womanly perfection blocked up and destroyed—that is the sacrifice that will alone appease the world in its most sensual phase of to-day, the sacrifice complete and universal of women's hearts. Ah! how soon they nourish the briers and thistles of cold indifference and unchristian feeling. In opposition to this sad spectacle I come back to Honor Edgeworth by her bedside, on her knees, at her evening prayer. Here is a woman who has moulded her heart according to the law of Christ. "Be ye perfect, as your Heavenly Father is perfect." Here is a woman who is learned, wise and simple, gay, light-hearted and pious, confiding and discreet, one who can redeem the loss of many because temptation assailed her and left her the victor.

Long after Honor lay sleeping peacefully, her pink cheeks buried in the soft pillows, Mr. Rayne sat thinking in the armchair below. It was growing painfully evident to him that his darling protegee was now budding into all the fullness and maturity of womanhood, and had she been his own daughter he would have introduced her formally into society by now. This was what troubled him. He did not relish the idea of sending this fair delicate morsel out among the chills and dangers of a cold world. And yet, if influenced by this good intention, he deprived her of the seeming advantages that active life in society affords, and if in later years she would reproach him as the cause of some misfortune or other, what would these probably groundless fears avail him in his defence? She was old enough to know danger, and she had spoken to him already of the world as though her experience of it was great and sufficient. Perhaps all she needed for a final confirmation of her opinions of the degradation of that same world was a trial of it. And should he wrong her by depriving her of it through a false motive?

Whatever way he turned the argument it looked like a dilemma. He should either send her "out" or not. If he pursued the former course, the advantages were six, the disadvantages half-a-dozen. If the latter, the advantages were twelve, the disadvantages a dozen, so that he found himself almost unequal to the solution of the problem.

Bye-and-bye however, he resolved to come to some conclusion, and thus by getting angry with himself, he narrowed the two inclinations into one, and that assumed the shape of a final decision to give her the same chances as Ottawa's other comfortable daughters.

Once his resolution was made, matters grew easy. He would write to a widowed cousin who was living a seceded life in Western Ontario, inducing her to share his home, and the responsibility that weighed upon him of giving his adopted child her due.

This lady had mourned her departed husband in solitary seclusion for nigh eight years, and it struck Mr. Rayne on this eventful evening that may be she would find pleasure in a change.

Thus was Honor's destiny slowly deciding itself in the troubled mind of her benefactor while she lay blissfully unconcious, fast asleep among a heap of downy pillows, with one fair hand thrown carelessly over her head and a little stray curl or two nestling on her warm flushed brow.

Satisfied with his final judgment, Mr. Rayne called for a light and escorted himself to the downy arms of his comfortable bed, and when we next take a peep—for of course we've not intruded for the few moments he was saying his prayers—he is snoring the snore of the truly heavy sleeper, and his big good-natured face scarcely discernible among night-cap, pillows and sheets, easily convinces one of the indisputable quiescence of the mind's consciousness in slumber.

Is it not almost equivalent to the acomplishment of the deed itself when we have fallen asleep the night before with the resolution of performing it on the morrow? Is not the wrong almost redressed when we have promised our selves to right it at any cost on the morrow? Is not the thought itself equal to the vow if we know that with the morning's sun we shall rise to make it in reality? One feels all the satisfaction of a deed accomplished in anticipation, and God be thanked for this, for how many weary souls must have made their last night on earth endurable, by the peace of mind that such resolutions infallibly bring.

This explains the comfort and utter heedlessness of Mr Rayne's slumber after such a miserable time as he passed arguing against himself in his drawing-room. He had vowed that he would broach the tender subject to Honor the very next day, and thus free himself from any more hours of self-reproach.



CHAPTER IX.

"They say the maxim is not new, That good and evil mixed must be In every thing this world can show."

—Patty

The next morning dawned a calm, mild day. The snow was knee-deep on the ground and covered the housetops with a thick soft mantle. On how many utterly different scenes the stray sunbeams rested that winter morning. Nearly all the heroines of Miss Teazle's ball were sunk in heavy, tired slumber, in rooms strewn with laces and flowers and other fragments of last night's dissipation. The poor over-exerted mammas are neither able to rise nor to sleep, and their pitiably puckered brows and sour looking faces would excite the sympathy of the most cynical misanthrope.

And yet, perhaps if not reminded, some readers would be tasteless enough to overlook the noble sacrifice these mothers were making of the comfort of their lives in order to "chaperone" their stylish daughters to all the haunts of pleasure. These poor fashionable women must indeed drain life's cup of bitterness to the dregs, if we can judge from the worldly girl's soliloquy.

Who rigs herself in satins light, And goes to parties every night, To chaperone her daughters bright? My mother

Who eats late suppers to her grief, Of jellied turkeys and roast beef, And finds no dyspeptic relief My mother

Who tries to talk with pompous air, And saturates with dye her hair, To gratify her daughters fair? My mother

Who snubs our neighbor Mrs. Bell, In poorer days we knew so well, And tales of woe did often tell? My mother

Who calls at Ridleau and all round, Where rank and titles do abound, And boasts of cousins newly found? My mother

Who fears to bow to poorer kin, For fear her daughters will begin To growl and scold as though 'twere sin! My mother.

I give the intelligent reader ten minutes to pause and moralize after digestion.

I anticipate the look of stupid wonder that must necessarily envelope the face. If there is so much in individual influence in the lower circle, what can one expect from the multitude that must submit to a thousand other decrees coming imperatively from the infallible (?) lips of society herself? How can we do otherwise than substitute for truth and simplicity, deception and affectation? What else can we do but fail to recognise one another in the characters we are forced to assume? Is it surprising that good and wise men from their corners of seclusion call the world degenerate, and wonder at the persistent wrong-doing of those who are the work of such merciful hands? Strange to say, most of us know, or pretend to know, that life is all deception; that the world itself, and those who belong to it are essentially, almost necessarily, selfish; that the goodness and charity which circulate at rare intervals are only the superfluidities of comfort, proceeding from no generous impulse whatever. It is not dealt out at the sacrifice of a crust of bread. It is given so that it may not be left.

Oh, the weakness of humanity after nineteen centuries of fortification! Oh, the despicable degradation of a race conceived in an Eternal Mind, created by an Infinite Hand, redeemed by the voluntary sacrifice of a God, and sanctified by the Spirit that pervades the universe!

Knowing this, realizing this, as most of us do, why do we not make a move towards independence? Not the independence of the State, that gratifies the paltry ambition of thousands, not that social independence whose meaning has of late been so shamefully misapplied, not even the individual independence that satisfies many. These are but names. I mean that independence that leaves one unfettered by one's self, that makes one victor over one's own evil tendencies and impulses—for man has no enemy so cunning as himself. If he cannot conquer his own inclinations to error, how is he going to subdue them in others?

If we are slaves, mentally and morally to our sensual selves—if we raise the material element above the spiritual within us, we then lose the right of opinion on good or evil, for a man that is passion's slave is the mouth-piece of evil, and an active agent of the enemy of mankind! If we open our volumes of literature, every page bears a reflection of some kind on these things.

For instance, see what a great writer says, speaking of the deception in life:

"I am weary Of the bewildering masquerade of life— Where strangers walk as friends and friends as strangers, Where whispers overhead betray false hearts; And through the mazes of the crowd we chase Some form of loveliness that smiles and beckons. And cheats us with fair words, to leave us A mockery and a jest, maddened, confused— Not knowing friend from foe."

Every one who chooses to think at all has a thought in common on the question. In a biography of George Eliot, Hutton speaks of the manners of good society as "a kind of social costume or disguise which is in fact much more effective in concealing how much of depth ordinary characters have, and in restraining the expression of universal human instincts and feelings, than in hiding individualities the distinguishing inclinations, talents, bias and tastes of those who assume them. After all, what we care chiefly to know of men and women is not so much their special bias or tastes as the general depths and mass of the human nature that is in them—the breadth and power of their life, its comprehensiveness of grasp, its tenacity of instinct, its capacity for love and its need for trust."

I fear we will never find this among the leading men and women of our day. Great minds, like George Eliot's, when they wish to spend their genius in written books, will leave the lighted hall where refinement and bon-ton hold their nightly revels, and will descend to the huts of laborers and mechanics that form one distinct phase of English life. Like Charlotte Bronte, and some others, she seeks substance for her work in a true, open character, and that is rarely found among the educated classes, who learn from books to unlearn the lessons of nature.

We will now leave the "lollipop" darlings of material nature and pass on out of their dishevelled untidy rooms, leaving their painted faces and powdered heads to spin out the late morning among the blankets,—and seek gratification elsewhere. It is breakfast-time in Henry Rayne's house and the curling steam rises in graceful clouds from the hot tasty dishes that Mrs. Potts concocts with so much art. Honor, Nanette and Mr. Rayne are as usual the only participants of the wholesome things. Honor has just come in, fresh and rosy, all smiles as she steps up to Mr. Rayne's chair with a cheery good-morning. Then kneeling beside her guardian, and looking into his kindly face, she says shyly:

"I have something to tell you all, a surprise, and don't begin breakfast before you know it. If I were not a little orphan this morning, I would let it pass likely, but having only you and Nanette I must tell you, that you may not spare your kind wishes for me. To-day is my twentieth birthday!"

Mr. Rayne rose instantly to his feet and his eyes looked suspiciously moist as he kissed her tenderly on the brow. Then Honor turned to Nanette, but the poor woman was weeping mournfully in her blue handkerchief.

"I'll never forgive myself," she was saying, "to have forgotten your birthday above everything else, and your dear kind father when he gave you to me, a tiny thing in my arms, said, 'she will be a year the 24th February, don't ever forget the day,' and there it slipped from me this time and I never thought of it."

Honor flung her arms round the old creature's neck and drowned her reproaches in a volley of kisses.

"Don't mind that Nanny dear, say you wish me a good Christian life for the next year and you will have done your duty."

"God grant it you, my pretty child."

"Amen," answered Mr. Rayne's deep voice as he left the room.

Honor looked up surprised, but in a few moments her guardian returned with a morocco jewel case in his hands. He placed it in hers, saying, "My you live to wear it out in goodness and virtue, and may God spare you from the snares of this wicked world."

With trembling fingers Honor opened the little box which revealed to view a spangling collection of diamonds. It was an oval locket, profusely set with diamonds with her initials turned artfully on the surface. Inside were the miniature pictures of her father and mother. She laid down the costly gift and went over to her benefactor with tear-dimmed eyes. She put both her slender arms around his neck and pressed one long fervent kiss upon the old man's brow.

"Are you determined, dear Mr. Rayne, to put me under an everlasting obligation to you? Are you not satisfied with bestowing those tokens that I might in time repay by constant love and care, without forcing such a splendid gift as this on me? Really your kindness begins to make me uncomfortable, for it is amounting to a debt I can never repay. And where did you get these dear, dear pictures, and how did you have it ready and all for my birthday?"

"Well, my dear, say we sit down and I'll answer all your questions to the music of knives and forks. I have had a miniature likeness of your father in my possession for many years, and it had often struck me, if I could but procure one of your mother's too, how it would please me to have them set together in a locket for you. The other day I was taken nicely out of my dilemma by finding an old-fashioned locket of yours by the fire in the library. I borrowed it for the short space of a few days until I had copies taken from it, and then Nanette kindly slipped it back into your jewel-case for me. I then ordered the little receptacle that you have admired so much and I only received the whole last night. Strangely enough too, that it should have come just in time. I would have given it to you immediately anyway, because of something I am going to discuss with you in the library after breakfast."

Honor was still looking intently down at the open case beside her plate when he finished the last sentence, but she looked up suddenly as he ceased, with a glance of eager inquiry in her eyes.

"It may startle you, Honor, or may not, but we'll see to that."

A little more rattling of plates and cutlery, a few more clouds of steam from the rich coffee, a series of disconnected gay sentences and ejaculations and the meal was over. The grave tones of Mr. Rayne's voice filled the room in a prayer of thanksgiving, and with the last echo of the "Amen," Honor and her guardian came out from the dining-room into the library arm in arm.



CHAPTER X.

"Her life, I said Will be a volume wherein I have read But the first chapters, and no longer see To read the rest of the dear history." —Longfellow

Honor had just taken up her crocheting and was plying her needle busily when Mr Rayne drew his heavy leathern chair opposite to the fire and began:

"Well, my dear little girl, here you are a young woman all at once on my hands, and to me you are yet the childish little thing you were three years ago in the railway carriage at the Manchester Depot. But the world won't see things to suit a short-sighted old bachelor like me, and according to that omnipotent, omniscient world, it is now my duty to introduce you into society, to bring you 'out' into Ottawa life, that you may make a display of all the accomplishments which fortune has bestowed upon you. I will introduce you to a world that will not hesitate in appreciating all the physical, mental, and moral beauty, you may choose to display in it. My duty will then be completed for another while. Now what is your opinion on it? You will have Mrs. D'Alberg, my widowed cousin from Guelph, to chaperone you, you have 'carte blanche' as regards toilet expenditure, and my house is open and at your service henceforth."

All along a smile of slow astonishment had been creeping over Honor's beautiful face, but instead of any showy enthusiasm either way, as Mr. Rayne had certainly expected, she straightened out the rosette of lace work on her knee and clapped it with her little palm. Then drawing a long breath she said:

"So! it has come to this. Well, my dear Mr. Rayne, if my position in your house exacts an entree into society, I most willingly go forth to it, though had you never spoken of it, it had never entered my mind. I am prejudiced, it is true, against society, but I defy its influence over me. Every woman owes her mite to the social world, and consequently I owe mine, so as soon as you wish it Mr. Rayne, I am yours to command."

She had scarcely finished the words when the door was flung open and the words and air of "I'll live for love or die" filled the room. He was just continuing "I'll live for lo—"

"O pardon, a hundred thousand times, Miss Edgeworth and uncle, I didn't really think the room was inhabited at such an early hour in the morning, but the fact that it is, only enchants me all the more, I assure you."

"Well, well, Guy, you are a 'case.' How are you this morning? Have you breakfasted?"

"Well, uncle, I thank you; and to your second kind query, I respectfully beg to inform you that I helped to clear away Mrs. Best's table this morning very perceptibly. Not that I had any particular relish for her compositions—which were yesterday's lunch and last night's dinner done over a la Francay—Rooshan-hash-up! but then a fellow by natural instinct owes himself the indispensable duty of eating his breakfast, and as a slave to duty, I, this morning, about an hour ago, ate my breakfast."

"Well, for goodness sake! as a duty to your fellow-creatures talk sense. Here, sit down," Mr. Rayne continued, rising himself, "I must excuse myself for half-an-hour. I've not had a look at the Citizen yet, and I must be off soon to official duties."

Guy Elersley was well satisfied to be a substitute in Mr. Rayne's vacant chair. He had not laid himself out for such good luck when he turned into his uncle's on this eventful morning, so his appreciation was consequently all the more vivid.

"You're bright and early, Honor, for a young lady on a winter morning," he said, as he drew his chair towards the fire.

"Not unusually so for Honor Edgeworth—and that means a young lady, doesn't it?"

"That's right; snub a fellow right and left when he forgets to isolate you from the whole living, breathing creation. Then you are not bright and early—will that do?"

"My dear Mr. Elersley," said Honor, in a provokingly placid way, "don't exert yourself so violently in contradicting your own free, unextracted observations. You can amuse me in a dozen other different ways as well."

"Oh, bother! Come now, Honor, leave off that ice water business, and give a fellow a word of welcome after being out in the cold. Put away that bundle of thread you're fooling with there this half-hour. You have not taken your eyes from off it yet, nor spoken a decent word since I came in."

"Oh, dear!" said Honor, drawing a feigned sigh, "I suppose when a child's spoiled it's spoiled, that's all, and you must humor it." "Now," folding up her work, "what have you to say worth the trouble you've given me?"

"Oh nothing I could tell you would be that in your opinion. I was at a big 'shine' last night at Miss Teazle's, and feasted my eyes on all Ottawa has to show in the way of female loveliness."

"And you have come to spend the gush of your emotions consequent to such a feast on me, have you?"

"No, Honor, I have not. I did see deuced pretty girls, but the emotion, as you call it, vanished as I handed the last fair bundle of shawls into her carriage. While the light burns, you know, the moth hangs around it, but when the flame goes out, spent in a weary flicker, after 'braving it' for a whole night, the moth goes to roost, when he has not been singed, or otherwise personally damaged without insurance. Well, what are you thinking of now? when you cross your arms, bury your gaze in the fire and strike your slipper with such measured beat on the fender, I know you're not paying much attention to what I am saying."

She drew a long breath as though no answer were required, and then in a quiet, low tone she said,

"Guy, do not talk in that light way of any woman. I know what you men have long accustomed yourselves to believe—that woman was made purposely for your pleasure; 'Man for God only, she for God in him,'—but, all the same that does not exact the ratification of Heaven. If my sisters of Ottawa society, with whom you one moment amuse yourself, and the next amuse your listeners with a recital of their follies, are weak enough to seek to gratify you and your kind, 'tis not that such a weakness is a natural inheritance, for every woman who realizes her true worth, knows what a grand mission is before her, and consequently crushes such an absurd theory as fashionable women are brought up to believe from their infancy. Perhaps I am too sensitive on this point, if such a thing could be, but it is the awful wrong which is being done to our sex that fires my indignation thus. And then there are those poor deluded 'ornamental women' who sanction that outrage on their own dignity by sitting with folded hands, taking in all the nonsense which is dealt out to them when they should gather up their skirts and shrink away from you as their inveterate enemies. False faces lead them astray, but there are others who see behind them."

"Yes, by Jove! And you are one who can see through the hair of a fellow's head. Well, Honor, it's plain to see, that you and I cannot agree. There's an involuntary performance of 'rhyme' for you, excuse me for so doing, but I could not withhold it. I said that we don't agree, and it is true. You are quite too tremendously proper for me, and I am just too 'galoptiously' awful for you. So begin to maul that wool over again, and I'll go to my respectable office in the respectable Eastern Block, and there I am sure of finding half-a-dozen eager friends with their pens behind their ears wheeled around on their office stools, quite ready to hear all the 'news' that you reject with such dignity."

"Then go. Sow your seed in fertile ground; but if you speak so lightly of any woman in presence of an office full of men, as you do to me, I cry,—shame on you and your listeners."

She had taken the soft bundle of crochet work in her lap again, and as she bent her indignant face over its intricate stitches, Guy could not help acknowledging to himself, that this was the fairest vision man had ever beheld. How was it that her name never crossed his lips in fun? He would have torn the tongue from its roots before uttering hers in jest. He stood at the door, with the knob in his hand, trying to extract one word of earnest friendship from her, but the serious frown never relaxed itself on her brow, and her mouth was set and stern. He could not stand this. He thought if it was only any other girl—any of Miss Teazle's heroines, he could pooh-pooh it so easily, but Honor was not one of them at all—his heart told him that. He left his place at the door and was at her side instantly. She looked quietly up and said nothing. He felt as though the words would not come, and the wee small voice said "another time," so he merely reassumed his old way, and said:

"Good morning, Honor. Don't send a fellow off in the blues. Come now, smile just the least little bit and speed me away with a charitable word." Then the sweet red lips parted, and looking up from her work, she said:

"I absolve you, Guy. Good morning."

"Well, I'll make hay while the sun shines, and be off, for if I delay a minute I shall have a dozen more pardons to ask. By, bye!"

He closed the door and was gone, but though his hurried steps brought him further and further away from the form he loved, yet his thoughts were of her, his heart beat for her, and his memory dwelt upon each little word she had spoken.

Honor sat as most of us do very often in our lives, with the same smile on her face which had absolved Guy at parting. If we meet a friend and are pleased, the smile of recognition lingers on our faces long after he has passed. If we have heard a pleasant word, the gratification is evident on our countenances, long after the words have died; and the same with unpleasant or sorrowful things. I suppose our memory is necessarily a slow faculty, and only revives the expression of our emotion just as that caused by the first experience is dying away. Any one could tell by Honor's face, that she was thinking of pleasant things. Thence we may know it was no 'clairvoyant' tendency on the part of Mr. Rayne, that on entering the room the ne moment, he exclaimed:

"So you're spinning your threads in the sunlight, my pet, are you?"

Honor started—"Sunlight? Yes, I think the sun will be up presently."

"Oh, you distracted child! I am talking of the sunlight of your thoughts." Here both joined in a hearty laugh, and Mr. Rayne having thrown aside the well dissected Citizen, re-deposited himself in the arm-chair by Honor's side. He came too to make hay while the sun shone, and the smile on Honor's face indicated that much.

"You see, that fellow Guy interrupted us just in the beginning of our discourse—but perhaps it was just as well, for something has since happened that throws a new light on the subject. With this morning's mail came a document from Turin to me, from your father's bankers, Honor. It seems from the copy of an original letter written by your father, that he wished to test my friendship by holding me responsible for his daughter's welfare and comfort, and he therefore apparently represented you to me as entirely dependent on my bounty. Even as such, it was an immense gratification to me to take you, and at the risk of all I own nou I could not let you go, but it seems your diplomatic father—and my best friend—had arranged it so, that if, after a short period, I had performed the duties of a true friend towards you, supplying you with the necessary comforts and wants out of my own pocket, that on your birthday at the end of that time, which is to-day, this document should be forarded to me. The surprising and intensely gratifying news concerns only you, it makes not the slightest matter to me," and so speaking, he handed her the least formidable looking letter of a pile of correspondence. She read it with dilated eyes and confused look generally, and laid it down only with this difference actually to her, that she had in her own realization, in one short moment been suddenly transformed from Mr. Rayne's dependent waif into a richly endowed heiress, independent and free. A small change indeed for Honor Edgeworth. It had not power to chisel in finer style the features of her handsome face, nor the power to direct into her heart a purer, holier or more worthy sense of duty than already reigned there. No, it could make her no better. Hers was not a nature susceptible to the ready influences of evil, and so she experienced none of that material delight which generally is the result of such a change for the world's ordinary ones. The only gratification it afforded her was, that now she could repay Mr. Rayne for his untiring kindness, she could deck Nanette in "decent" attire, and give such little alms as she longed to distribute with Mr. Rayne's money. She folded the letter carefully back into its primitive creases and handed it to Mr. Rayne, saying,

"I thought I should have had to repay your unlimited kindness to me by love, sincerity and gratitude alone; and though this would have been an easy debt to liquidate, so far as my sentiments went, yet, it seems Providence has not tired of heaping favors upon my head, and I can add to my other offering this new found treasure. But I think, Mr Rayne, had this gold mine never opened beneath our feet, we would still be the same to one another, I know"—and as she spoke she rose and threw herself into the old man's arms—"you, who have been both parents to me when I was alone and penniless, who surrounded me with comforts and luxuries, cannot now be cold to me because I no longer need to be dependent. You have made your home and your kind watchfulness a necessity to me, now will you not let us be the same as ever with one another? I do not want to be a rich heiress if I must thereby cease to be 'your own Honor,' and 'your own favorite.'"

The old man's eyes were wet with tears. He pressed the girlish figure close to him and kissed the fair, flushed cheek.

"We will speak no more of it, darling," he said, "let it be as though nothing had happened, only you must no longer hesitate to accept the many little favors that, up to this, you persistently refused— henceforth I am yours to command when you want something. But, about your debut child, I want you to consult some one else on that matter, for you must be as fine to look at as all the rest. You can be ready as soon as you please, for Mrs D'Alberg will be here shortly, I requested an immediate answer."

Honor looked thoughtfully into the fire. "This is all so strange," she said, "but Destiny is Destiny, I suppose, and Fate is Fate."



CHAPTER XI.

"A sadder and a wiser man He rose the morrow—morn." —Coleridge

"Well, I did not think this at the very worst," Mr. Rayne said over a newly received letter to Honor. "Here's the long expected news from Guelph, and my cousin says she would find it so convenient for you to go up, just for a week and she would come back with you. There are so many things for her to settle, and besides you would see a little bit of life in the meantime. Now, how in the world are we going to live without sunshine or daylight for a week, eh?"

"Oh, Mr. Rayne, you spoil me! But, does Mrs. D'Alberg really want me to go to her? If it is not very far away, and you have no particular objection, I think I'd rather like to go."

"Of course you would," echoed the generous words of Henry Rayne, "and why would'nt you? I am too selfish to live. It will make a nice little trip and you'll feel all the more refreshed when you get back. But, think of how soon you must go—to-morrow morning at the latest, I tell you. So, now be active, my dear. Run and tell Nanette to get your things ready, and I'll drop a note to Guy to come and make himself useful."

Honor bounded off under the influence of the first experience of a new anticipation—that of shifting the scenes, for no matter how short an act. She was going among new faces for a little while. What a break in the monotony of her present quiet life.

When the hastily written note reached Guy's boarding-house, he was absent. It was as a rule rather hard to find Guy when he was wanting; but, I doubt if he ever regretted his absence more than be did on this particular night. I would not care to shock my innocent readers unnecessarily by telling the hours that brought Guy Elersley to his room that night, nor the circumstances that caused him to dream such frightful things through his broken slumber. Some of them either from having been there before or from close observation could suspect one of Guy's worst failings at the sight of his dim sleepy eyes, his straggling cravat and half-buttoned coat, as well as by the thick utterances he hummed to himself, intended no doubt for the familiar strains of his favorite "Warrior Bold" or "In the Gloaming," but, nevertheless differing from them as much as they resembled them.