ST. JOHN has arrived; he has jumped down from the dog-cart that brought him from the station, wrapped up in a huge greatcoat lined with otter-skin, that makes him look like "three single gentlemen rolled into one." His nose, always rather a salient point in his face, is reddened by the east winds, and his eyelids purple with want of sleep, as he has been travelling night and day—not from any violent hurry to reach his destination, but because boats and mail-trains suited—from the South of Ireland, where for the last ten days he has been daily shooting the wily woodcock, and nightly putting into practice the excellent resolution expressed in the song of "not going home till morning," with some rather fast bachelor-friends, who, like himself, are as yet destitute of household angels, to bring heaven to their hearths, to take away their cues, blow out their cigars, and reduce the number of their brandies and sodas. Neither a good-looking nor a good-tempered young man does he look as he makes his descent. The first he cannot help—the second he can. His ill-humour is owing partly to a violent headache; partly to the information, just imparted to him by the butler, that "the family dines at six o'clock now reg'lar—no difference made whatever company there may be—on account of the old squire's 'ealth."

Perhaps, had St. John known that a woman was watching his arrival, he might have endeavoured to smooth his features into an expression of greater amiability. Had he known that that woman was Esther Craven, the look of bored annoyance would certainly have given way to a stronger one, whether of pleasure or pain. Crouched on one of the paintless window-seats in the China gallery, she watches his coming, as she had watched his going; only that now she makes no smallest effort to attract his attention—cowers away rather in the dark, while he stands, unconscious and grumbling, in the patch of red light that comes through the open hall-door. He has been here half an hour now—half an hour spent in the hot airtight saloon, where the giant fire draws a strong woolly smell from Miss Blessington's winter dress, as she sits right into the fire—a practice not permitted by the autocrat of Felton, and consequently largely indulged in by his subjects when away from his master-eye.

The old squire has requested St. John to come round to his other side—to draw his chair closer to his—to speak more distinctly. The old lady has explained to him the exact manner in which the draught comes through the middle window, and catches her just at the back of the neck, so that when she wakes in the morning it is so stiff that she can hardly turn it a quarter of an inch one way or another. Miss Blessington has expressed one fear that he had had a cold journey down, and another that he had not been able to get a foot-warmer at Shoreditch; there were always so shamefully few there, particularly these afternoon trains, that all the business-men came down from their offices by. Constance had certainly never spoken a truer word, than in saying that she and her lover were not fond of public demonstrations; the question that their acquaintance asked each other was, whether they were any fonder of private ones.

As the clock strikes half-past five, Miss Blessington rises and floats away lightly, and without noise, to dress. Not for a kingdom would she rob one second from the sacred half-hour—all too short already—though the toilette to be made is only for the benefit of two purblind old people, who cannot see it, and of a young man who does not know gingham from "gaze de Chambéry," and who has seen her in short frock and trousers, in long dress and chignon, in court- dress, in ball-dress, in walking-dress, in driving-dress, in staying-at-home dress, any thousand number of times during the last seventeen years.

Momently the hot close atmosphere is making Gerard's headache worse; momently the prospect of the six-o'clock dinner becomes more intolerable to him. Heroically, however, he enters into conversation with his great aunt-in-law elect.

"So you have been trying an experiment, I hear," he says, scratching the cat's ear and cheek and chin as she successively lifts them to him for titillation,—"set up a 'companion,' haven't you? Do you find it work well?"

"You must ask grandpapa," replies the old lady, looking towards her husband, who, with head sunk on chest, lips protruded, and eyes closed, seems at the present moment hardly in a condition to be put through a catechism on any subject; "he has more to say to her than I have. You see it was too great a strain on dear Constance's strength reading to him every day, and he dislikes Gurney's reading" (Gurney is the valet): "he says he never minds his stops, and bawls at him; and so we thought it better to get a person of more education, who would be always on the spot, and—"

"And whose strength," interrupts St. John, a little ironically, "unlike Constance's, would be warranted un-overworkable? "

"Exactly," answers the old lady, innocently.

"And she is a satisfactory beast of burden, I hope?" says Gerard, yawning till the tears come into his eyes; "fetches and carries well?"

"She seems a nice, quiet, ladylike person enough," replies Mrs. Blessington, leaning back placidly in her chair, with her hands, in black kid half-gloves, lying folded in her lap—"only, unfortunately, over-sensitive: those sort of people always are. Why, it was only yesterday that she rushed from this room with such violence that she nearly shook Constance and me out of our chairs, because I made some slight observation about a brother of hers who died lately, and to whom, it seems, she was much attached. I'm sure I had no intention of hurting her feelings, poor girl!"

"Girl!" repeats St. John, laughing; "that means a gushing thing of fifty, I suppose?"

"More like fifteen. By-the-by, she said something the other day about having known you."

"Known me!" cries the young man, opening his quick grey eyes. "Well, 'more know Tom Fool than Tom Fool knows.' I never knew any one in my life that had a 'companion'—of this sort, I mean. What may my unknown friend's name be?"

But at this juncture, before the name of his unknown friend can be confided to him, the old squire, waking up, urgently requests to be told what they are talking about, which information is communicated, in a succession of long dull roars, into his good ear. St. John takes advantage of the diversion to leave the room, and, running upstairs, knocks at Constance's door.

"Constance!"

"Who's there?" (Voice rather muffled—from under an avalanche of hair apparently).

"I. Can you come out and speak to me for a minute, if you are not in too great deshabille?"

" Certainly."

Ordinarily, Miss Blessington is a prude; but to appear for an instant before her betrothed in light-blue cashmere lined with blue satin, and her hair in golden rain about her shoulders, is, she thinks, for once permissible. Has he come to make some demonstration of affection?—to give her some warmer greeting than the nonchalant handshake with which they met? Or has he, has he—oh sweeter, warmer thought!—brought her a present from Ireland? Visions of Irish poplin, Irish lace, bog-oak and gold, cunningly fashioned together into bracelet or necklace, float before her mind's eye. In a moment, with a little affected coyness on her face, she stands before him; stands before him—and he does not even see her! He has opened one of the rusty casements in the passage, and thrust his head out, feeling the keen eastern blast blow against his throbbing brow with a sense of relief. He has evidently no gift in his hand, nor does he seem to be assailed by any very over-powering temptation to embrace her, blue and gold and white miracle though she be. Hearing her he turns, and the expression of his countenance is glum.

"I say, does this sort of thing happen every day?"

"What sort of thing?" (with a little pique at the errand on which she has been called away from among her cosmetics).

"This feeding, I cannot call it dining, like savages, at mid-day?"

"It is a fancy of my uncle," replies Constance, with the door-handle still in her hand; "he imagines that, if he dined later, he should not have time to digest his food before going to bed."

St. John utters an impatient exclamation. "In Heaven's name let him digest in bed, then; or, if not, let him dine by himself! I'm sure no one would object to that arrangement. Poor old boy ! he can't help it; but it does take away one's appetite to see a very old man mumbling his food, like a toothless old dog over a bone."

"I suppose he may dine at what hour he chooses in his own house ?" says Constance, coldly.

"Of course he may. He may go back to the manners and customs of the ancient British," rejoins Gerard, impatiently; "he may get up in the middle of the night and paint himself in blue-and-white stripes, instead of wearing coat and waistcoat, if he chooses—only he can hardly expect civilized beings to join him."

"I always think it right, on principle, to humour old people's whims," answers Constance, taking the high moral tone that she has adopted more than once since their engagement in any discussion with her lover, a tone symptomatic of what the postnuptial line of attack is likely to be.

"A very excellent sentiment, my dear," says St. John, a little mockingly, "worthy of being copied by little boys and girls after they have mastered straight strokes and pot-hooks; but to-night I must request the aged to humour my whim, and my whim is to absent myself from this symposium. I have got a splitting headache, and am altogether pretty nearly dead-beat. I have hardly a leg to stand upon: if you won't take it as a personal insult, I have a good mind to turn in at once. I have not been in bed, for any time worth speaking of, for the last ten days."

"Indeed!" replies Constance, freezing up, and looking as though tortures should not wring from her any question as to what had been the vicious pursuits that had detained her lover from balmy slumbers. "You will please yourself of course."

"If every one pleased themselves, and no one else, this would be a much more passable world to live in," retorts St. John, with a little misanthropy; " for then each person would get their fair share of attention neither more nor less, which is what they do not now."

But the last half of his sentence is addressed to himself, as his madonna has retired again within her shrine.

Meanwhile, for the first time since her brother's death, the "companion"—the nice, quiet, young ladylike person, whose only fault is being over-sensitive—is, like Constance, making a toilette. Since Jack's death she has daily put on her clothes, as a necessary preliminary to the day's work; but it has been a task full of weariness—devoid of pleasure. To-night, like Constance, she makes a toilette, and like Constance, it is for the benefit of the young man who does not know gingham from "gaze de Chambéry." It is not, however, with any faintest hope that her Sunday frock, any more than her work-a-day one, will bring back her lost lover to her side, that she puts the former on. The very strength of her faith in his honour hinders the possibility of his turning away from the woman he has promised to marry to any other woman from entering her head. Only, seeing, as plainly as if it were another's and not her own, the ruin of the face that meets her, daily and nightly, in the dim oval of the old glass in its tarnished frame, she wishes that that ruin might be revealed slowly, and by degrees (not all at once), to him that had once thought her so fair. For this one night, she would fain look like her old self—would fain be pretty plump Esther Craven, whose face, dimpled and débonnaire, men used to turn round in the street to look after—instead of the thin depressed "companion," whom if men looked at at all, it was only to pity her sunken white cheeks and sombre mourning weeds. Her Sunday frock is a lugubrious combination of cheap black silk and crape, against which her artistic eye has been revolting ever since she heard of St. John's coming. A little white tucker will not make her any the less mindful of Jack. And so she has been devoting most of the short winter daylight to the inserting of such a tucker, and to cutting the funereal body square. The alterations have been effected, now the Sunday frock is on: if it had been costliest velvet or satin, instead of papery silk at two-and-sixpence a yard, its black could not have contrasted better with the milkwhite of the long lily. throat and swelling bust. Esther has lost flesh a good deal lately; but, being small-boned and thoroughly well-made, no unsightly hollows show as yet, like salt-cellars, beneath her collar-bones—not yet are elbows or shoulders sharp. Brilliancy of colouring is gone; but the head, arched like the Clyte's, is still left, and great plenty of night dark hair to clothe it. Instead of the unnatural protuberance of a chignon, she has arranged this hair in the thick plain twists with which in the old time Miss Blessington's betrothed used— ...."to play Not knowing—," and, so playing, spoke in loving commendation of them. In like twists Miss Blessington herself often disposes her locks—twists purchased by her for a considerable price from M. Isidore, golden hair being hard to match, and consequently expensive.

It is five minutes to six. The toilette is finished, and Esther stands before the glass considering it; but with none of the triumphant self-content with which a fine woman usually regards the victory that art and nature, fighting side by side, have achieved on the battle-field of her face. Colour had been Esther's strong point, and colour has gone from her; as it goes from a violet sent in a letter, or from a poppy dried between the leaves of a love-song. A raging desire for rouge, raddle, plate-powder—anything to bring back that flower-flush that used to need no persuasion to stay with her—enters her mind. But neither rouge nor raddle is near, and for plate-powder she would have to apply to the butler—an effort for which not even her great wish to appear once more red-cheeked before her ex-lover can nerve her. Suddenly, her eyes fall on a spray of scarlet geranium, that, plucked this morning in the conservatory, she has worn all day in the breast of her dress. A recollection comes to her of having, when a child, crushed one of those dazzling flowers against the face of another child, and of having laughed with pleasure at the scarlet stain. She snatches up eagerly some of the petals, and rubs them on her cheeks; the hue produced, though too scarlet for nature, is vivid and beautifying. She sets to work on the other cheek.

Esther is not a very cunning artiste; she has no idea of softening off edges with cotton-wool—of working deftly from cheekbone downwards. She is only possessed by a great longing to get back, for this one night, something of her old brilliancy. And in this she partially succeeds. The result of her labours is, indeed, a too hectic bloom; but the bright colour seems to fill up somewhat the hollowed cheeks—seems to bring back a little of the old childish débonnaire grace. Her labour ended, she runs downstairs quickly—not giving herself time for remorse at the meretricious nature of her charms, and listens, trembling all over, at the saloon-door before entering. There is no sound except the rolling grunts with which, unheard by himself, the old gentleman accompanies every respiration. A footman crosses the hall; the "companion" must not be caught eavesdropping; she turns the door-handle and goes in.

The old squire, with coat-tails under his arms, standing on tottery old legs before the fire; the old lady, in her evening-cap, sunk in armchair and Shetland shawls; Miss Blessington, with blue bands binding close her waved golden hair, and an expression of face less bland than usual, on the ottoman. No one else.

"How smart you are, my dear!" the old lady says, not. unkindly, her faded eyes straying slowly over the square- cut bodice, white tucker, and cabled hair. "Is that in honour of Mr. Gerard?"

"It is rather thrown away if it is," says Mr. Gerard's future owner, with some temper: "St. John has chosen to make an invalid of himself tonight, and has gone to bed."

No need now for the geranium dye—a great hot blush burns through it—burns throat and brow and neck; she has made herself up in vain.

"Gone to bed!" repeats Mrs. Blessington, raising herself a little from among her pillows—"at six o'clock! Dear me, love, I hope he is not ill! I thought he seemed rather absent when he was talking to me before I went to dress; and he left the room so abruptly too! Are you sure, Constance, that he would not like something sent up to him?"

"He is quite able to take care of himself, I assure you—thanks, aunt," replies Constance, not without a vexed ring in her low flute voice. "If we served him right, we should accept him as the invalid he pretends himself, and allow him nothing but a little water-gruel or arrowroot."

"It seems so unnatural, a young man going to bed without his dinner; I'm sure, dear, I hope it is nothing serious," cries the old lady, with that righteous horror of death and sickness which, by some strange contrariety, one finds so often amongst the aged, so seldom amongst the young.

"Nothing more serious than the natural results of ten days' Irish hospitality," replies Constance, with a laugh, which, though low and highbred, is not mirthful; "men are so fond of one another's society when they get together, that they never can take it in moderation. I dislike bachelor parties particularly."

"He is making the most of his time, my dear—he knows it is short," suggests the old lady, smiling and nodding, and looking wise.

NEXT morning St. John wakes, recovered from his ill temper, his headache, and all the effects of his Irish saturnalia. Perhaps, had he known who it was that lay wakeful in a great ginger four-poster, two doors off, his slumbers would not have been so profound. The hounds meet twelve miles away, at Shepherds Hatch. By nine o'clock he is in the saddle, and riding quietly along the deep Essex lanes and wet fields, with a soft, south wind blowing in his face, and the grass, crisped by the slightest possible frost, beneath the horse's hoofs.

He is lucky enough to come in for the run of the season; has the satisfaction of seeing many better men than himself floundering, hatless and well-watered, in a brook, or getting croppers over stiff hawthorn hedges; over all which obstacles his grey, a new investment, of whose fencing powers he and his groom had been unjustly doubtful, carries him like a bird. As to whether his ladylove may relish this early preference of " bold Reynolds " to herself, any more than she relished his fatigue and headache last night, he troubles himself but little. He has no intention whatever of being a hen-pecked husband. When he proposed to her, he told her what he could give her, and what he could not—what she might expect, and what she might not: nor has this day's desertion been any departure from his half of the bargain. Somewhere about five o'clock he is back again at Blessington, splashed from head to heel; his tops, in which this morning you might have seen your face, all stained and discoloured; with a dab of mud on each cheek, and a third on the bridge of his nose. He runs upstairs lightly, whistling a tune, and has just reached the first landing, when, "Click-clack," he hears a woman's high-heeled shoes descending. It is Esther, who is walking listlessly down, with her eyes fixed on a great picture let into the wall—a large, white woman, with her clothes tumbling off, hurling her substantial person upon a spear; a young man, with arms like a blacksmith's, lying on the ground, making a profuse display of his charms, and, though with no very perceptible wound, evidently in articulo mortis; a fat Cupid blubbering hard by—the whole entitled "Pyramus and Thisbe."

St. John looks upward, to see who the author of the "click-clacking " may be. "Who the devil is this pretty girl?" is his first thought. His second—a thought that makes him stagger back with the colour hurrying from his healthy cheek—a thought full of anger, astonishment, desire, and pain—a thought that involuntarily he speaks aloud, is "Esther."

At almost the same moment she has caught sight of him. In her case, there is no surprise; but the pain is as great, if not greater.

"Yes, it is I," she answers, almost inaudibly, trembling all over.

No one ever accused the dinners en famille at Felton of being too lively; but, that evening, Gerard decides that they yield the palm, in point of perfect: stagnation, to Blessington. There is, indeed, none of that lynx-eyed watching of the servants, none of that pouncing upon their minutest derelictions, which makes dining in Sir Thomas's company so thoroughly uncomfortable a process : no one calls the fat red-faced butler and the two blue-and-yellow footmen "hounds, louts, fools."

At Blessington, indeed the servants have things pretty much their own way; and, accustomed to their master's total and mistress's partial deafness, have got into a habit of conversing with one another in a tone of voice considerably above that usually considered seemly in civilised ménages. With one member of the company (Miss Craven) St. John has entered into a pact to exchange no remarks, good or bad; a second member (Mr. Blessington) contributes nothing to the conversation but a series of inarticulate though loud mumblings over his food—with the exception of a question, addressed to the butler, as to what the viands upon the table under his sightless eyes consist of. "'Aricot—Volly Vong—Line of Mutton—Biled Turkey," enumerates that functionary, glibly, at the top of his voice. From a third member (Mrs. Blessington) St. John has already heard all that is to be said on the subject of draughts and sand-bags; and with the fourth member, conversation always drives as heavily as a loaded waggon dragged up a perpendicular hill.

The evening is but a prolongation of the dinner, with the additional disadvantage of there being no eating and drinking to employ the otherwise unoccupied jaws. "England expects every man to do his duty!" She expects every man who has the misfortune to be in the position of an affianced to sit, hours long, idle beside his betrothed—however ardently his soul may be sighing for a sheet of the Times or a whiff of Latakia: to hold converse with no other man, woman, or child, if she be in the room.

Since, at the entrance of the gentlemen, Constance looked up expectant, and since he has a vague idea that it is part of his share of their bargain to pay her all outward observance and attention, St. John seats himself on the sofa beside her. She sits rather forward, upright as a dart; he leans back, with his arms resting on the sofa behind her. It is not a caress; but, from a little distance, it has the air of one. The old gentleman, rendered surprisingly wakeful by the unwonted incident of the addition of a stranger to his little circle, insists upon hearing a pungent article on Gladstone and the Irish Church, over which he has fallen asleep in the morning, re-read to him by his little white slave.

"I am afraid I can hardly see, Mr. Blessington; there is so little light!" she has remonstrated, mildly.

"Light!—pooh!" repeats the old gentleman, gaily. "What do young eyes like yours want with light? They ought to be able to see in the dark, like cats. You'll be borrowing Mrs. Blessington's spectacles next—eh, Mrs. Blessington?"

THIS ancient distich proves true in the year I am speaking of. Not later than Christmas does the moist mild weather last. With January the frost comes hurrying back; hanging great icicles on the house-eaves, throwing men out of work, and pressing with its iron finger the thin faint life out of half-a-dozen old almsmen and almswomen. The foxes have a little breathing-time—a little space in which to steal and eat three or four more fat capons and stubble-fed geese—before that evil day when their dappled foes shall tear their poor little red bodies limb from limb. Hunting is stopped, and men are hurrying up from the shires to London. St. James's Street and its hundred clubs are crowded. At Blessington everybody is pirouetting on the ice. St. John, passionately fond of all out-of-door sports, spends the whole day on the mere. One afternoon a large party comes over from Lord Linley's place, five miles away. Not in all Lord Linley's grounds is there such a stretch of smooth ice as the Blessington pool affords; and so they are all come to show their prowess on its hard flat face.

Esther keeps well out of their way. From her post of obcervation—the deep window-seat in the China gallery— she has watched their arrival, heard their gay voices in the hall, and then, unnoticed, unmissed, she has stolen out upon one of her long, dawdling, cold-giving strolls in the park: over the frost-crisped grass, under the branchy trees, whose staglike crowns cut the pale sky—up little knolls and down into dips where, in summer time, the fern stands neck high. At last she comes in sight of the mere; and, impelled by curiosity, trusting in her own insignificance to escape notice, sits down on a bank that slopes gently down towards the sheet of water, and looks upon the unwonted brilliance of the scene. Girls in velvet short costumes; bright petticoats, furs, hats with humming birds on them, curls, fair chignons, glancing in the cheerful winter sun. Fashion in all its folly and extravagance, but picturesque withal; it is as if a company of Dresden shepherdesses had stepped off the mantelshelf, and come tripping, dainty-footed, over the frozen water. Her eyes follow the shepherdess figures with eager interest—so seldom in her simple country-bred life has she been brought into contact with any of Fashion's bright daughters. The men have less attraction for her. Under no most prosperous conjunction of circumstances could she ever have been a man ; but under happier auspices she might have been one of these fluttering butterflies—a prettier butterfly than any there, her heart tells her. Shylock's words recur to her: "Am not I 'fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer?' Why, then, are they frisking about in purple and fine linen upon the ice, with half-a-dozen young patricians (in trousers of surprising tightness and coats of unequalled brevity) in their train, while I am perched here upon the all-alone stone, among these stiff cold sedges, with only the Canada geese, with their long necks craned out, screeching above my head?"

Meanwhile, Miss Craven is the subject of more remark than she is at all aware of.

"I say, Gerard," says Lord Linley's heir—a goodnatured ugly little prodigal, who is one of the shining lights of Her Majesty's Household, and goes among men by the sobriquet of "Gaolbird," for which he has to thank the unexampled brevity of his locks—"I say, Gerard, you ought to know all the remarkable objects about here: tell us, who is the mourner in the distance?"

St. John's eyes follow the direction indicated by his friend, and a shade of annoyance crosses his face. "Her name is Miss Craven, I believe," he answers, shortly.

"Uncommon good-looking girl, whoever she is!" says a second man, who has just stopped to adjust his skates; "I have been perilling my life among those d—d rushes by the edge, to get a good look at her!"

"Deuced good legs!" subjoins a third, remarkable for his laconism; taking his pipe out of his mouth to make room for his criticism, and fixing upon that part of a woman's charms which is always the first to enchain the masculine attention.

"She is vewy like a girl I used to know at the Cape," says a "Heavy," who has been vanquished in single combat by the letter R. " The Fly we used to call her, because when she settled on a f'la, it was mowally impossible to dwive her off."

St. John, who has been listening with ill-concealed anger and disgust to these comments—free as if they had been upon the points of a horse—on the charms of the woman for whom he has been trying to persuade himself that he feels inveterate aversion, turns to move away; but Linley's voice recalls him.

"I say, Gerard!—Gerard!"

"Well?"

"Do you know her?"

"Slightly."

"Introduce me, then—there's a good fellow!"

"And me!"

"And me!"

"My acquaintance with Miss Craven is not such as to justify my introducing any one to her," answers Gerard, stiffly, and so walks resolutely off.

"Sly dog!" cries Linley, laughing; "means to keep her all to himself—a nice quiet little game of his own."

"Means to drive a pair then—eh?" asks the laconic youth.

"Vewy seldom pays," says the "Heavy," sagely; "one or other invawiably jibs."

But Mr. Linley, being more in earnest than he usually is about most things, is not so easily balked. After many fruitless inquiries among the company, he at length appeals to Miss Blessington.

"Do you know, Miss Blessington," he says, peering up at her with his quick terrier-face (for her stately height exceeds his), "I have actually been putting the same question to twenty people running, and never yet succeeded in getting an answer? You are my last hope: who is that lady in black?"

"The lady in black!" repeats Constance, amiably—following, as her lover had done, the direction of his gaze. "Oh!" (with a little, slighting laugh), " nobody very particular; only poor Miss Craven, my aunt's companion!"

THE frost goes, but so does not St. John. He hunts all day, and all the long evenings lounges sedulously on the sofa beside Constance, trying to feel affectionate: trying to make her talk—trying, metaphorically, to pull the string at his fine wax-doll's side, to make her say "Pap-pa" and " Mam-ma" prettily. "Since I am to spend my life with this woman," he says to himself, heavily, "I must try and make the best of her."

And, alas! alas! the best is not very good. He is thirty now, and—the Gerards are a long-lived, tough race—he may live till ninety. He asks himself, now and then, in a sort of startled terror, is he to see opposite him at breakfast, every day for the next sixty years, this carven face, changeless as the stone saints on the walls of Felton Church? Of all the one-half of creation, is this unsuggestive, unresponsive, negative woman to be his sole portion? "It is her misfortune that she is not a woman of science," as Mr. Shandy mildly remarked of his wife, "but she might ask a question." Strive as he may against the conviction, the yoke that he has taken upon himself in careless apathy has already begun to gall his withers. And yet it was not (as you may imagine) pique that first made Gerard Miss Blessington's lover. It was partly that numb indifference as to anything that might happen to him, that always follows a great blow, partly sheer weariness of his father's importunities upon the subject of his marriage.

He is the last scion of a family that has come down in direct male line from a Norman robber: if it be tersely predicated of him on his tombstone that he died S. P., the Hall, and the lake, and the wide fat lands will go to some distant needy cousins, with whom Sir Thomas is at dagger's drawing, and for whom he cherishes a hatred livelier even than that which poachers, Irish beggars, and vulpecides inspire in his gentle breast. The fact of his responsibilities has been chimed into St. John's ears till he is rather weary of it: he has been hearing it for the last five-and-twenty years—ever since indeed, that solemn day when, petticoats being cast aside, he was invested with the virile dignity of round jacket and breeches.

"Why don't we cut off the entail?" he asks impatiently, one day, shortly after Esther's visit—a visit which has naturally given him a greater distaste for the subject than he had ever before experienced. " You and I together can do it, cannot we, Sir Thomas, and leave the property to the Foundling, or Hanwell, or to some hospital or penitentiary, where it would do a deal more good, I don't doubt, than it ever has in our hands?" But he does not mean it; his pride in the old house and the old name is as great, though not as offensively shown, as his father's.

"It's all your cursed selfishness," says his parent, strutting and fuming about, one morning, over the crimson and ash-coloured squares of the library carpet; puffing out his feathers, as it were, and beginning to gobble-obble. "You prefer your lazy, lounging club life, your French chef, and d—d sybarite habits, to everything else under heaven; you don't reflect that, when a man has been given such advantages as yours, he owes corresponding duties to his country and his estate, and—and—and his father—" concludes Sir Thomas, rather at a loss for a peroration.

St. John lifts his eyebrows almost imperceptibly at the last clause. "If you like to look out for a wife for me," he says, flinging himself indolently into an arm-chair, and speaking half-seriously, half-derisively, "and will engage to undertake all the bore of the preliminaries—love-making, dancing attendance, etc.—I have no objection to marrying, since the duty of continuing this illustrious race has been perverse enough to devolve on me, who, God knows, am not ambitious of perpetuating myself."

"Love-making !—pooh !" repeats Sir Thomas, contemptuously; "we need have none of that rubbish; respect and esteem are a deal the best basis to go upon; that's what your mother and I began life with—"

"And have continued undiminished up to the present day," says St. John, with a slight sneer. "Well" (yawning), "if you can find, amongst the wide range of your acquaintance, any young lady who is willing io respect and esteem me—which is not likely—or to respect and esteem Felton—which is more probable, and, after all, comes to much the same in the end—she may have the felicity of being your daughter-in-law, for all I shall do to hinder it: anything for a quiet life."

TIME goes by. Since Joshua, God-bidden, commanded sun and moon to stand still, who has been able to stop it?

Gerard still remains at Blessington—remains, despite the six-o'clock dinners; despite the inarticulate and inharmonious mumblings with which old Blessington takes away the appetites of such as feast with him; despite the utter failure of his endeavours to draw from the mind of his betrothed any ideas but such as Le Follet and Le Journal des Demoiselles had just put into it. Latterly he has abandoned the attempt, has taken to reading the Times, Field, anything in the evening, instead; has even, in his despair—modern works of fiction being, as I have before observed, unknown at Blessington—waded through two chapters and a half of "Pamela," which Esther had inadvertently left on the table. Sometimes, to his own surprise, he catches himself wishing that his wedding-day were over. "When we are married, we need never speak to one another," he reflects. "Thank God, we shall not be so poor as to be obliged to keep together from economy; a dinner of herbs and hatred, or, worse still, indifference therewith, would be hard to digest; she may go her way, and I mine. I will get up a great stock of beads, and looking-glasses, and red calico, and make an expedition to Central Africa; learn some euphonious African tongue, all made up of Ms and Ns; and carefully abstain from engaging in arguments upon the immortality of the soul with intelligent natives."

Now and again conscience's voice thunders at him in the recesses of his soul: "You are paltering with temptation. Arise!—flee!—begone!" But he, strong in the innocence of his acts and words, replies doughtily: "Temptation is there none for me here. The occupations of my life are such as they would be at home; I am struggling to know and like better her with whom my life is to be passed. As to that other woman, I see her rarely, speak to her never, look at her as seldom as it is possible to me."

And, in the meantime, that other woman droops like an unwatered flower, day by day. When the mainspring of a watch is broken, must it not stop? If hope, the mainspring of life, be broken, must not life stop—not all at once, as the watch does, but by gentle yet sure degrees? A slow fire burns in the child's veins; before this man had come, she had peace—a sad stagnant peace, indeed, but still peace. Now she lives in a state of perpetual concealed excitement. True, they meet but rarely, speak to each other never; but the same roof covers them both. From her outlook in the China Gallery, she can watch his going forth in the morning, his coming back at evening. At breakfast and dinner he sits opposite to her; she can study his face, with stealthy care, lest she may be observed, while he drives heavily through slow trite talk with her that fills the place in his life that, for a golden day, from one sundown to another, was Esther's. Sometimes they meet upon the stairs; her black dress lightly touches him, as they pass one another dumbly. At night she lies awake, waiting to catch the sound of his footfall in the gallery past her door; has to wait long hours often; for he, unknowing that any one takes note of his vigils, sits in the smoking-room far into the small hours, puffing out of his well-coloured meerschaum great volumes of smoke—wishing, not seldom, I think, that he could puff away Constance, his beloved, into smoke volumes and thin air.

Fed by no kindly words, nourished only upon neglect and cold looks, Esther's love for Gerard yet strikes out great roots downwards—shoots forth strong branches upwards. A tree of far statelier growth it stands than in the days when the soft gales and gentle streams of answering love fanned and watered it. Who cares for what they can have? Who cries for the moon? It is the intermediate something—the something that lies just a handbreadth beyond the utmost stretch of our most painfully-strained arms, that we eat out our hearts in longing for.

Esther never goes beyond the park palings now, deterred by the fear of being waylaid by Linley. She need not have been alarmed. As long as she came naturally in his way, he was delighted to see her: as we stoop and pick gladly the fruit that drops off the tree at our feet. He had even, on a day when the frost forbade hunting, and when he had got tired of skating, taken the unwonted trouble of riding over to Blessington, to warm himself at the fire of those great black eyes, that have still for him the charm of novelty upon them; but women, many and fair, came too readily to his hand to make him very keen in the chase of any one individual woman. In former generations men used to be the pursuers, women the pursued. In this generation we, who have set right most things, have set right this also. Now, the hares pursue the harriers, the foxes the hounds, and the doves swoop upon the falcons.

During these latter evenings Mr. Blessington has been very alert and wakeful—has insisted on being read to from tea to bed-time—a liberal hour. But, however hoarse and voiceless the young reader may be, Gerard never now comes to the rescue, never interferes, though the frequent teasing cough of the "damnable flirt" goes through his heart like a sword. With steady certainty, through frost and thaw, rain and shine, through all the alternations of an English winter, the young girl's health declines. To all but herself is this fact evident, and she, unaccustomed to illness—never having seen the signs of premature decay in others—thinks it is but a little weariness, a little languor, a nothing. It will pass when the swooned world revives into spring and the buttercups come.

Sunday is here again, the initial letter in the week's alphabet: "The Sundays of man's life, Threaded together on Time's string, Make bracelets to adorn the wife Of the eternal glorious King."

Ah me! the languid, yawning Sundays of most of us will make but sorry bracelets for any one, methinks. Sunday—the day on which the Shelford shopboys and shopgirls walk about gloriously apparelled, arm-in-arm, man and maid, filling their lungs with country air,—day on which the gentlefolks, such as are men of them, debarred from horse and hound and cue, smoke a cigar or two more than usual over the instructive pages of Messieurs De Kock, Sue, Balzac, etc.; while such as are women, being for the most part piously disposed, hold Goulburn's "Thoughts on Personal Religion," or Hannay's "Last Day of Our Lord's Passion," open on their velvet laps, and kill a reputation between each paragraph.

On this especial Sunday Esther has risen, feeling feebler, more nerveless than usual. Something in the influence of the weather—soft, sodden, sunless—weighs upon her with untold oppression. She would fain not go to church, remain at home, and lie on her bed; but this cannot be. Foremost in importance, in indispensability, among her duties are these Sunday ones. If the weather be tolerable, Mr. Blessington is always scrupulously punctual in attending Divine worship. Leaning on his valet's arm, he totters up the church, in his old tail-coat, tightly buttoned over his sunken chest, and, arrived at the Blessington pew, is deposited in a little nook thereof, partitioned (in some quirk of his, while he could yet see) from the rest. In thia nook there is room for two people—to wit, for Mr. Blessington, and for the happy person who is to guide his devotions. And to conduct Mr. Blessington's prayers and praises is, I assure you, no sinecure. Almost entirely deaf, almost entirely blind, he is yet resolute to take a part in the services by no means less prominent than the clerk's. It is, therefore, his attendant's duty to shout the responses in his ear, in order to give him some clue to the portion of the ritual which has been arrived at and to check him with elbowings and nudgings, when his aberrations from the right path become so flagrantly noticeable as to distract the attention of the other worshippers. But too often, however, the attempts at repression on the part of the acolyte are so much labour lost. In the region of darkness and silence in which his infirmities have placed him, the old man frequently becomes impatient of the slow progress of the service as notified to him by the roars of his companion. Not seldom he proclaims, in a voice distinctly audible throughout the building, the point at which, according to his reckoning, priest and people should have arrived. "And with thy spirit," cries the squire, with unction in his deep, tremulous bass, while the sleek young rector's gentle "The Lord be with you" does not follow till five minutes later. In the Creed there is but one course to pursue: to start him, if possible, fair—happy, indeed, if he does not insist on turning to the altar somewhere towards the close of the second lesson or beginning of the Jubilate,—to start him fair, I say. and then in despair, give him his head. Fervently, loudly, rapidly, he announces his belief in the articles of the Christian faith, while parson, clerk, and congregation toil after him in vain. Occasionally—especially at such portions of the service as refer to our need of forgiveness, our sinfulness, our mortality,—he breaks out into senile tears; too deaf to hear his own penitent sobs, he has no idea of the loudness with which they reverberate through the church. Strangers, hearing, perk their heads up above their pews, and then fling them down again on their pocket-handkerchiefs convulsed with inextinguishable laughter; but the greater part of the assemblage are used to these spasms of grotesque devotion—it is only "t'oud squoire."

Esther always draws a long breath of relief when "Lord, have mercy upon us! Christ, have mercy upon us! Lord, have mercy upon us!" has been safely tided over without any unusually noisy burst of lamentation.

On the Sunday I speak of "t'oud squoire's" prayers were more unruly than usual. Whether it was that Esther's weakened voice was unable to guide them into the right channel, or to whatever other cause assignable, certain it is that his vagaries were more painfully evident—ludicrously to the congregation, distressingly to his family—than on any former Sunday within the memory of man. Many heads turn towards the Blessington pew ; even the rector—meekest among M.A.s—looks now and again with gentle reproach at the old man, who is, with such aggressive loudness, usurping his office of leading the devotions of his flock. A proud woman is Esther Craven when the Liturgy comes to a close. In the sermon there are, thank God, no responses for the congregation to make; it is not even customary to cry, "Hear, hear!" "Hallelujah!" "More power to you!" at intervals. In the sermon, therefore, the old gentleman composes himself to sleep, and there is peace.

The Blessington pulpit is to-day occupied by a stranger—a Boanerges, or Son of Thunder, in the shape of a muscular, half-educated, fluent Irishman—a divine who would fain flog his hearers to heaven, show them the way upwards by the light of hell's flambeaux—one of that too numerous class who revel in disgusting descriptions, and similes drawn from our mortality. It is impossible to help listening to him, and difficult to help being sick. Esther listens, trembling, while he descants with minute relish on "the worm that never dies." The worm that never dies! Surely, a terrible picture enough, in its simple bareness, without enlargement thereupon! With imagination rendered more vivid, and reason weakened by sickness, the unhappy girl pictures that worm gnawing at her brother's heart—gnawing, crawling, torturing eternally. She covers her face with her hands; it is too horrible! A sort of sick feeling comes over her—a giddy faintness. If she can but reach the open air ! She rises unsteadily, opens the pew-door, and walks as in a mist down the aisle, between the two rows of questioning faces, and so out. As she passes through the church-door she staggers slightly, and catches at the wall for support. Gerard, watching her anxiously, sees her unsteady gait, and the involuntary gesture of reaching out for some stay for her tottering figure. Instantly, without giving thought to the light in which his beloved may regard his proceeding, he, rising, quickly follows the young girl. She has just managed to reach a flat tombstone, and there sits, with her face turned thirstily westwards, whence a small soft wind blows fitfully.

"You are ill," he says, bending solicitously over her, and laying aside in that compassionate mment the armour of his coldness.

She does not answer for awhile; then, drawing a long breath, and trying to smile: "The church was so close," she says, sighingly; "and that smell of escaped gas always makes me feel faint, and—and" (with a shudder)—" that dreadful man—with his metaphors all taken from the charnelhouse!"

"I wish he were there himself, with all my heart," answers Gerard, devoutly; "he might there frame metaphors to his taste at his leisure."

"And it is so terrible to think that it is all true, isn't it?" she says, fixing her great awestruck eyes upon his face, as if trying to find comfort and reassurance there; "that the reality exceeds even his revolting word-painting; that we shall be loathsome, all of us!—you and I and everybody—young and old, beautiful and ugly! How could God be so cruel as to let us know it beforehand?"

"Knowing it beforehand is better than knowing it at the time, which, at least, we are spared," replies St. John, composedly.

"But are we?" she cries, eagerly: "that is the question! Latterly I have been beset by a fearful idea that death is but a long catalepsy. In a catalepsy, you know, a person seems utterly without consciousness or volition; breath is suspended, and all the vital functions; and yet he feels and sees and hears more acutely than when in strong health. Why may not death, too, be a catalepsy?"

"Absurd!" he says. "My poor child, it is thoughts like these, gone wild, that fill madhouses. According to your theory, at what point of time does your catalepsy end? When we are dissolved into minutest particles of dust does each atom still feel and suffer?"

"My theory, as you call it, will not hold water, I know," she answers gravely, "but it does not haunt me any the less. There are times when one cannot reason—one can only fear."

" You should not give way to these morbid fancies," he says, chidingly; "they are making you ill."

"Am I ill, do you think? Do I look ill?" she asks, with startled eagerness.

The havoc worked in face and figure by the last few months is too directly under his eyes for him to answer anything but truthfully, "Very ill."

"You don't think I'm going to die?" she says, lowering her voice, and laying her hand on his arm, while her great feverish eyes burn into his very soul. " People are not any the more likely to die for being thin and weak, are they? Creaky doors hang the longest."

"Die!—God forbid!" he replies, trying to speak lightly. "Let us banish death from our talk. I suppose it is this place of tombs that has made him take such a leading part in it. Come, you are not at all fit to go back into church, and I am not anxious to hear the tail-end of that wormy discourse. The smell of brimstone is quite strong enough in my nostrils already. Let us go home!"

So they return to the house, and he still shows no inclination to leave her. He draws a chair for her near an open window, and stands with his hand resting on the back. It is almost like the old times—the old times that he thinks of, "As dead men of good days, Ere the wrong side of death was theirs, when God Was friends with them."

Something in the recollection of those days makes soft his voice, which is not wont to be soft. "You are not fit for this life," he says, stooping down his face towards her small wan one. "It requires a tough seasoned woman, in middle life. Tell me why you have undertaken it? Why are you not—not married?"

She turns away, crimsoning painfully. "Because no one has asked me, I suppose," she answers, trying to speak banteringly.

"But you were engaged when—when we parted?"

"Yes."

"And you are not now?"

With ungovernable, unaccountable impatience, he awaits the slow brief answer.

"No."

"Had he then—h'm! h'm!—discovered anything?" Gerard asks, finding some difficulty in framing the question politely.

She fires up quickly. "Discovered anything!" she repeats, indignantly. "Do you think it is impossible for me to be honest even once in my life? I told him myself."

"You broke it off, then?"

"No, I didn't."

"He did?"

"Yes."

"Poor fellow! he had good cause to be angry," says St. John; the old bitterness surging back upon him, as he reflects on the cowardly duplicity that had made waste two honest lives.

"But he was not angry," she cries, eagerly: "he was grieved—oh, so grieved ! Shall I ever forgive myself when I think of how he looked when I told him?" (her eyes gazing out abstractedly at the "Rape of the Sabines," as her thoughts fly back to that quarried nook on the bleak autumnal hillside, where she had broken a brave man's heart). "But he was not angry. Oh, no! he never thought of himself! he thought only about me! Ah! that was love!"

AT Blessington no one goes to church twice. It is the bounden duty of every Christian man, woman, and child to go to church in the morning; it is the duty of only the clergyman, the school-children, and the organist to go to church in the afternoon. The old people sleep side by side in the blaze of the saloon-fire ; being, both of them, happily deaf, they are undisturbed by each other's grunts and snores.

Since the beginning of St. John's visit, the north drawing-room has been made over to him and his betrothed to be affectionate in, so that they may enjoy, uninterrupted, those fits of affection to which all engaged people are supposed, and sometimes unjustly supposed, to be liable. Whether they have reached the requisite pitch of warmth on the afternoon I speak of is, to say the least, doubtful; but, all the same, in the north drawing-room they are. Constance leans back in an armchair, rather listless. She is fond of work, and it is not right to work on Sunday : her feet repose on a foot-stool before her—her eyes are fixed upon them: she is thinking profoundly whether steel buckles a size smaller than the ones she is at present wearing would not be more becoming to the feet. St. John sits by the table; his left hand supports his head; his right scribbles idly, on a bit of paper, horses taking impossible fences, prize pigs, ballet-girls, little skeleton men squaring up at one another. He, too, is thinking—but not of shoe-buckles. He has got something to say to Miss Blessington—something unpleasant, unpolite; and he cannot, for the life of him, imagine how to begin to say it. Chance favours him. Miss Blessington, happening to look up, catches her lover's eyes fixed, with an expression she had never before seen in them—not on herself, as she, for the first second imagines, but (as a second glance informs her) on some object outside the window. Her gaze follows his, and lights upon "nobody very particular—only poor Miss Craven!" who, with head rather bent, is trudging by towards the garden. "How ill that girl looks !" she says, pettishly. "I really believe those sort of people take a pleasure in looking as sickly and woebegone as possible, in order to put one out of spirits."

The opening he has been looking for has come. " Constance," he says, bending his head, and speaking in a low voice, "what fatuity induced you not to send me word when you found that that girl was here?"

"You forbad me ever to mention her name to you," she answers, coldly; "and, to tell you the truth, I thought it was a good thing that you should see her. If you had not met again, you might have carried a sentimental recollection of her throughout life, which you can hardly do now that you have seen with your own eyes how completely she has lost her beauty."

NIGHT'S black sheet drawn off the other half of the world is thrown over us; the dark side of the lantern is turned towards us. Esther has fallen asleep, with almost a happy smile upon her soft, parted lips. She is forgiven; and is there any sweetness like the sweetness of being pardoned, having sinned? He no longer hates her! That was not hate that looked out of his quick, keen eyes to-day, as he leant over her while she sat, dizzy and faint, on that church- yard slab, or as he knelt in strong emotion at her knees, And now, though at her own telling, he is going away from her to-morrow—though, when next they meet, either they will have put off mortality's tatters, God will have laid "Death, like a kiss, across their lips;" or else, to look and lean as he looked and leant to-day will be deadly sin—yet creeps there a sorrowful joy about her heart. He has given her back the past—the short, happy Felton past; no one can take it from her again; not even Miss Blessington, who has taken all else—present and future and all. She is dreaming of him now—dreaming that she is sitting in the library at Felton, in the fragrant gloom made by the lowered Venetian blinds, by dark oak book- shelves, by plentiful sweet flowers, and so sitting hears the sound of his quick feet coming along the passage. He is at the door—he is opening it. But, ah! what is this—it will not open; it is stiff on its hinges. He is pushing it—pushing gently, pushing hard—but it will not move. What a stealthy noise it is he makes, as if he were afraid of some one hearing him! She starts up, broad awake; it is not all dream; there is some one pushing stealthily, yet audibly, against a door. For the first bewildered moment of sick fear she imagines that it is her own door on which this attempt is being made; but a moment's listening undeceives her. The sound comes from underneath her window, apparently. It is not rats this time; a rat, with all its ingenuity, would be puzzled to make a noise so distinctly human. Upon her mind there flashes suddenly the recollection of a door leading into the garden beneath her casement, but not so immediately beneath but that she can see it; a door that stands wide open all the summer through, when people step from house to garden, from garden to house, a hundred times a day, but which in winter is rarely used. She sits up motionless, while round her utter darkness surges. The noise is repeated: push—push! creak—creak! it is as if some one, with hand and knee, were attempting to obtain entrance. When light is withdrawn hearing becomes preternaturally sharpened; in an instant she has jumped out of bed, and run barefoot over the cold boards to the window. There, pulling aside the blind, she, trembling all over, peeps out. Moon is there none, but the joint light of countless star-squadrons, faint though it be, is yet strong enough to enable her distinctly to make out the figure of a man pressing itself against the door in question. With bodily eyes she at length looks upon that burglar, whom, with the terrified eyes of imagination, she had so often beheld. Whether he wear a crape mask or not it is too dark to discern. What is she to do?—she, in all probability, the only wakeful, conscious being in all that great house. For a minute she stands irresolute, while a rushing sound fills her ears, and her teeth chatter dismally in the cold. Shall she alarm the servants? But how to reach them? She does not even know the way to their sleeping-places. They are miles away, in the other wing of the house, where she has never been. Shall she go to Miss Blessington? At least she knows the way thither, though it is some distance off. But of what avail would that be? Of what use would two girls be, any more than one, against the onslaught of daring unscrupulous robbers? Shall she betake herself to St. John, whose room is but two doors off? No sooner does this idea suggest itself to her, than she puts it into practice. Hastily striking a light, and wrapping her dressing-gown round her, she opens her door, and, flying down the passage, knocks loudly at Mr. Gerard's. But Gerard, having a not particularly bad conscience, and a particularly good digestion, is a sound sleeper. She knocks again, more violently, almost to the flaying of her knuckles: "Mr. Gerard!—Mr. Gerard!"

"Hullo! who's there?" responds a sleepy voice.

"It's I! Esther!" she cries pantingly. "Open the door, please—this minute—quick!"

" Esther!—you!" says the voice, perfectly awake this time. "What on earth is the matter I—wait one second!"

He hurries on his clothes, and then hastens to accede to her request of opening the door.

"Are you ill?" he asks, anxiously, seeing her lean against the door-post, with death-white cheeks and terror-struck eyes.

"No—no!" she answers, hoarse and breathless, while, St. John, candle, and door, all seem to be dancing a jig round her. "It is not I, but there's a man—getting into the house—by the garden-door. I saw him!"

"The devil there is!" replies the young man, with animation. "Here, give me your candle, and I'll go and see what he wants."

OF the three persons whose repose has been disturbed by the amours of Thomas the footman, only one is able to take up again the thread of interrupted slumber. Miss Blessington, having returned to her chamber, and having meditated calmly for a quarter of an hour on the knot in her destiny she has just untied, and having given one great sigh to the memory of the Gerard diamonds, lays down her golden scented head on her pillow again, and sleeps the sleep of the just. Miss Blessington has well nigh mastered the secret of eternal youth and perennial beauty—incapacity for feeling any emotion. It is hardly likely that the god Sleep, who loves a quiet house, will visit two such unquiet temples as the brains of St. John and Esther: he goes away from them utterly, taking his gentle poppyheads with him.

St. John walks miles and miles up and down his bedroom carpet, pondering, deeply and vexedly, not on what his own course of conduct shall be—that he is already determined upon—but on what effect Miss Blessington's coldly sceptical reception of his wildly improbable yet true tale is likely to have upon Esther.

And Esther herself, having conceived a mortal aversion for the shelter of the ginger-canopied pavilion, wraps a great shawl round her, and, sitting down on the deep window-seat, watches for the first streaks of dawn, which, on these winter mornings, are long, long coming. Though it is a winter night, her hands burn hot and dry; for the last few days she has had a sharp pain in her side—to-night it is getting yet sharper; it begins to hurt her to draw her breath. Two thoughts keep buzzing about her brain: "I am going to be ill," and "I am going to be turned away." She throws aside her shawl, but the dry burning still continues. She has sat here for hours now, and the dawn's feet are beginning slowly to climb the steps from the eastern gate. The battle between day and night is yet undecided; almost equally they divide the sky between them. Perhaps it is the night's excitement that has given her this fever; perhaps the cold morning air would refresh her. She waits until day's victory is complete, and then—being already dressed—puts on her hat and jacket, and steals noiselessly downstairs, to the garden door that has been the cause of so much mischief, out into the garden between the brown earthed beds, where the winter aconite's small yellow heads and green tippets are beginning to push themselves into sight, and thence into the park.

There is no wind abroad, only heavy rain-clouds outwalling the infant sun, and the unarmed air has a piercing chillness in it. Esther has not proceeded far, and is standing thoughtful on the brow of a little knoll, from whence one looks down on the dark flag-fringed pool, when she is aware of a footstep behind her; and the next instant St. John Gerard stands by her side.

"What have you come here for? Why have you followed me?" she asks, turning upon him in hasty dismay. "Miss Blessington's windows look this way—she will see us together."

"Let her see us," he answers, doggedly.

"She will never believe that it was by accident we have met," cries poor Esther, in great agitation.

"She will be right, then; it is not accident,"

"She will think that it was an appointment!" she says, clasping her hands in unfeigned distress.

"Let her think so!"

"It is very well for you to talk in this way," she says, with passionate reproach. "You are a man—you may defy the opinion of the world; but is it so easy for me?"

"Why should her opinion concern either you or me?" he inquires, gravely. "What is she to either of us? Did not you last night, with your own ears, hear my dismissal pronounced?"

She stoops her head until her hat almost conceals her face from him.

"She was angry," she says, in a low voice; "she will be sorry for the things she said; she will forgive you."