never would he marry; but he felt a halfpaternal love for this child of a dream-wife, and he lavished on her luxuries which made the rector and Mrs. Dallas remonstrate. Remonstrance was vain. For little Barbara nothing was too good. She had a pony at five-a sturdy little Exmoor, with a loin like the seat of an arm-chair. It clearly gave the Squire such pleasure to be kind to her, that her father and mother gave up their objections, and he was allowed to do much as he liked.

Barbara Dallas grew into a lovely girl. Like her mother in form, though slenderer, she was converse in character. Barbara the elder was daring-daring enough to marry a poor and elderly curate because she loved him. Barbara the younger was shy, timid, afraid indeed of all men except her father and the Squire. The Squire, to say truth, was her playmate, though old enough to be her father; he taught her to ride to hounds; he got her a light gun with which to shoot pheasants; he

introduced her to old-fangled literature in his quaint old library; he taught and teazed and petted her as if she had been a favourite daughter.

The rector had been about twenty years married, when a severe disease of the chest, doubtless latent before, so weakened him that he was ordered to go abroad. He and his wife and daughter started for Madeira. The Squire would gladly have gone too, but the lord of a great estate and the master of hounds is not always his own lord and master. He would hardly have allowed these claims to operate, had he known that he should never again see the rector or his wife, and that he should not meet Barbara for almost ten years.

Yet this was the result, An elder brother of Mrs. Dallas's, the head of the Restormel family, had been living in various parts of the Continent for half a century. Accident brought them together. He was kind; he wanted amusement; he thought his niece a lovely

The

child, approaching the end of her teens; he made them deviate from their appointed tack, and took them to many other places. rector by this time was growing too weak to have a voice in the matter; his wife was easily persuaded by her brother that his plans were the best-that movement and distraction were more likely to do the rector good than monotonous residence in a single island; and our timid Barbara, if she had thought there was any mistake, would scarce have dared say SO. Hence the rector went from city to city, the choicest in Europe, luxuriously travelling, faring luxuriously; and he quite enjoyed the time; and in his eighth decade it was a delight to him to see cities and waters known to him. in dreams to compare with his classic vision the neoteric reality of Rome and Athens.

People said it shortened his life.

"It lengthened his life," said Polwhele Restormel. "He lived more in those last few years than he had ever lived before."

A series of accidents, which would be tedious in description, prevented Barbara Dallas from again meeting Squire Silchester for nearly ten years. By this time she was an orphan. Her mother had died at Nice. Her uncle, Polwhele Restormel, had died a few months later in the crescent-city of Bath, leaving her all his personal property. She had communicated with some of her Cornish friends, and had received hearty west-country invitations. She would go first to Truro, where cousins innumerable desired to welcome and console her.

The Quicksilver mail had come up to the front entrance of the York House. The impatient leaders shook their hoofs in curious contrast with the heavy turtles that lay a few yards beneath in the open area, ready to be made into soup. Down the wide staircase of the famous old hotel, waiters with waxlights in advance, and a gentlemanly groom of the chambers in respectful attendance at her side, came lovely Barbara Dallas-a fine woman,

though blackened by the deepest funereal

crape.

At the foot of the staircase, nervous in her solitariness, she tripped. The groom of the chambers was not quick enough. A stalwart man who was crossing the vestibule from the coffeeroom promptly caught her, saying cheerily, "Not hurt, I hope?"

There was something so familiar in his voice that she looked straight at him without her customary fear.

"Why, Barbara!" exclaimed Squire Silchester, amazing the demure groom of the chambers by instantly kissing her. "Where

have you been these fifty years?"

It was in this way that Squire Silchester met again the daughter of his lost love-the little girl whom he had petted as a daughter. The result of the meeting was that he married her; and the result of the marriage was our friend John Silchester, whom I have left all this time in doubt whether the new-comer into