No, dear. Yes, he's wrong; not in having fallen in love with you, but in having asked you to marry him. Oh, Katie! there will be such a fuss when papa and mamma come to know it.'

'I can live on anything-on nothing-with Charlie,' exclaimed Kate, passionately, and be happy, and so could he, he says.'

No, you could not, Kate, that's nonsense; and as to Charlie! well, I won't say anything, because it will do no good; but, for gracious' sake, don't marry him under the idea that he" can live upon nothing."

'I could not help his proposing to me, you know, Flora; now could I?' 'Oh, no- -nor accepting him either, I suppose. Well, dear Kate, I can only say I hope it will end well. I shall like you for a sister-in-law as much as ever I have liked you for a friend; but after all my good wishes you are exactly in the same place as you were before, and it is no use my attempting to conceal the fact from you. You have my best wishes though, Kate, I assure you. And now, as you will not dress while I remain here to talk to you, I shall go away.'

'Flora! Flora!' cried Kate Elton, energetically springing up and seizing her friend by the hands as the latter was about to leave the room, 'don't counsel your brother, don't persuade Charlie to leave me-to give me up-it will kill me if you do!'

gain an insight into his feelings by looking over his shoulder at a letter he has just penned to a brother officer, whose name is of little consequence, as he only exists in my story for the purpose of having this one letter written to him.

'DEAR CLAUDE (it commenced),

I am in a precious fix, and you will say I have made an awful fool of myself; but before I tell you how, I want to ask you to do something for me. Sell the grey horse I got from Turner-get as long a price for him as you can. As he is known about Aldershott, he had better, I think, notwithstanding his excellence, be sent to a new neighbourhood for sale-and with what he makes settle the bills I enclose as far as the money will go. The Dean refuses to increase my allowance, and my mother says she can do nothing for me. This is not the worst-Kate Elton is here, and I have made a fool of myself. I dare not let this be known, as my mother has induced Mrs. Ponsonby to catch an heiress for me; I have not seen her yet, but twenty heiresses would not shake my faith to Kate, who is looking prettier than ever. Manage that matter about the grey as soon as possible (I gave seventy for him, but he's worth more) for these fellows have been bothering

me.

Yours faithfully,

'CHARLES FORRESTER.'

'Here's a sacrifice I'm about to make for you, Kate, for he's a horse I shall not meet the like of again in a hurry,' said Captain Forrester to himself as he sealed his letter; 'but if I told her of it she would think it all nothing; women are so precious selfish! And won't my own people be down upon me like a thousand of bricks when they hear of it!'

Having finished his labours, Captain Forrester got up and brushed out his chestnut curls and thought 'What a lovely girl Kate Elton was.'

'Maurice! you need not leave the room at all,' said pretty little Lady St. Clair to her maid, eyeing herself complacently in the glass, before which she was sitting to be dressed; she did not want to have any private and confidential conversation with her lord, who had just hobbled in, looking sulky. The afternoon had been long and wearisome to Lord St. Clair; jealousy had prevented his indulging in refreshing slumbers at his accustomed time, and after

wards he had determinately kept himself awake because he wanted to see if the half-foreign fellow rode by Ida's side on their return.

Drowsiness overtook him, unfortunately, just previous to that return, and as he did not choose to accuse her on suspicion of having been indiscreet enough to accept the escort of one especial cavalier the whole time, he had merely come up to grumble with her about her having ridden the horse of she didn't know who.'

'But I do know "who" he is,' she said, turning the bright little face with its large surprised blue eyes upon him. Lady St. Clair always looked surprised at any one being rash enough to blame her in the slightest. And I like him very much, and his horse carried me beautifully. I wish you could have gone with us,' she politely added.

If you had, you would have been pleased too, instead of being cross and scolding me, and calling Mr. Morton a you don't know who," my lord.' She gave the last clause of her sentence rather poutingly.

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'Well, my lady,' he replied, grumpily, as you have had your pleasure, now perhaps you'll consult mine; it is that you don't go tearing about the country on any other horse than your own.'

The old bear!' thought the young wife, to say that to me before my maid! when if he had told me quietly I would have done anything to oblige him! Has Philip Morton, I wonder, ever spoken so crossly and coarsely to any woman in his life?'

The public reprimand was unwise on the part of Lord St. Clair; his wife did not speak to him again; but as soon as she was dressed she walked out of the room.

A fairy queen indeed she seemed, as she took her place on a couch in one of the windows of the corridor and looked at the long line of Ponsonbys deceased who were hanging on the opposite wall. A fairy queen, or a butterfly, for with nothing else could you compare her, she was so delicately small, so ethereal.

Maurice had set off and adorned her mistress's fair beauty to-day by decking her in the colour that well

suited her blue. A pale blue chenille net held her bright auburn hair, and a blue and white silkstriped, gauzy, grenadine dress floated about her. She looked like a convolvulus as she reclined there against the cushions of dark-brown velvet, and presently along the corridor came Philip Morton.

"Ah!' she exclaimed, brightening visibly at his approach, for she had been made to suffer through him, and, like a true woman, she liked him the better for it. Ah, Mr. Morton, I was going to say, I had been waiting for you ever so long; that would not be true; but I have been waiting for some one to come past who can reach me one of those lovely white roses,' and she pointed as she spoke to several clusters of flowers which could be easily seen, but not so easily reached, through the open window.

'Here are some,

He leaned out. Lady St. Clair, but they have withered leaves. I will only give you a perfect flower-fresh, bright, and beautiful as yourself,' he added, admiringly. You must let me stand in that corner of the sofa.'

He had grasped the rose, a large, pure, spotless flower, but to do this he had to lean a long way out. The prize was gained, however, when he nearly lost his balance, and it was only by a strong effort, which left him rather pale, that he could recover himself.

But the next moment he was presenting the rose-offering it ratherto the lady, who was shaking too violently from agitation to take it. She had seen that he was nearly over; she had suffered agony during that one moment of suspense, when he was making the effort, and now she could only clasp her hands and mutter, as she grew paler and paler, 'If you had fallen; if you had fallen!'

'I could not have lost my life in the service of a fairer lady,' he said, attempting to speak gaily, but withal very much touched by the interest this lovely almost stranger displayed for him; and as he said the last words his eye fell upon the chiselled features and penetrating, deep eyes of Horace Greville.

Down in the library, whither they had hastily retired as soon as they had completed a rapid toilet, were Sir Ulric Lyster and his friend, Mr. Berners.

Are you sure this information is correct, George?' asked the baronet, running his eye rapidly over a soiled sheet of note-paper.

'Quite sure. That is, I can answer for his good faith as certainly as I can for my own. I asked him to go down to the training-stables, because I had heard a hint before to the effect that Saint Kevin was not so safe a horse as you thought.'

'Then my book--and it's precious heavy, too-is a bad one,' said Sir Ulric, moodily. The only thing for me is to propose to the pill-man's daughter what's her name?Thwaites?'

"The best thing for you, indeed,' said his friend, who was a true 'rat.' Very likely she'll have you; it won't do for her to be too particular, you know.'

The baronet was a poor representative, truly, of those who bear the bloody hand' by right. He looked not unlike a long-haired terrier, but he deserved something better at the lips of his friend. The Hon. George Berners would have been obliged for some years to eat his bread by the sweat of his aristocratic brow had it not been for Sir Ulric's generosity.

'Who are you writing to in such hot haste, Carry?' asked Agnes Gambier, languidly, of her sister. 'You're not rescinding your refusal to the Earl of Wilton's, are you? You haven't given up Mr. Morton yet, surely?'

To your first question, I answer that I am writing for a lot of costumes to be sent down. Mrs. Ponsonby tells me the stage will be finished to-morrow. Your second is so imbecile that I shall not answer it at all.'

'Imbecile, indeed,' replied Agnes, quietly, to imagine you would give up such a prize while there remained the faintest shadow of a chance of your gaining it. What is the play to be?'

'I have not yet decided.'

'At any rate, Carry, take my ad

vice, and don't give Lady St. Clair a very becoming part; if he gets into a flirtation with a married woman he's lost.'

Trust me for that, Agnes. Tomorrow we will decide on the play. It had better be something that will take in Mrs. Ponsonby, Flora, and Kate Elton-ourselves of courseand no more. Lady St. Clair does not deserve a "fair field and no favour." I have no patience with the woman.'

'Nor I,' chimed in Agnes. And so in attacking a common foe the sisters waived their own little mutual heartburnings and grew cordial.

So passed the hours before dinner with the different members of the party assembled at Kempstowe.

CHAPTER IV.

IN WHICH PLANS ARE FORMED FOR PHILIP MORTON AND OTHERS.

"Twere long to tell and vain to hear' how, at length, they all reassembled and ate that dinner for which the previous hour had been a preparation; how Mr. Ponsonby carried away, swooped off with, the Dean's lady before that affectionate mother could perceive how her children would be disposed of for the next two hours and a half; how Sir Ulric Lyster, after glancing curiously through his eye-glass for some moments at Miss Thwaites, as if she were rather an interesting thing in zoology, advanced and offered that young lady his little arm, which she grasped with such convulsive energy that she hurt it; how Philip, just as he was going to dare the eye and tongue of idle scandal by offering himself as escort to the Titania whom he had frightened, was touched on the arm by his beautiful hostess, and given to understand that he was to have the honour' of leading her in - for Mrs. Ponsonby had seen Lord St. Clair's brow darken at the evident intention of this handsome half-don, her guest; how the Misses Gambier, Fitzpatrick, Mr. Berners, and other small deer paired themselves off for the occasion; how Captain Forrester so elaborately avoided Kate Elton

that that young lady burned with wrath, and his sister Flora with fear, that his over-precaution would be tray his secret; how Flora herself, through stress of circumstances, was compelled for those two hours and a half to sit next to Horace Greville; how Miss Thwaites, whenever she glanced at her friend and instructress, Miss Baines, was rendered wretched by the extra rigidity that lady immediately imparted to her throat and shoulders, evidently intending that her pupil should do likewise,' and how this proceeding, resulting in a widely different effect to that produced by the throat and shoulders' of any other lady present, caused Miss Thwaites to doubt her friend's possession of that 'something' which she had already marked in Mrs. Ponsonby. All this shall not be enlarged upon at greater length, but summarily dismissed with the few sentences I have bestowed upon it.

They were back in the drawingroom, in the long, lofty drawingroom, which, combining old-fashioned comfort with all the modern appliances of luxury as it did, was the very beau idéal of the principal reception-room of an English mansion. Lord St. Clair had elected to play cribbage, and his poor little wife, who hated cribbage, had, in a fit of penitence for the petulance she had displayed up-stairs, volunteered to be the victim. She found it hard to count, and move her little pegs, and keep her attention strung up to the pitch Lord St. Clair required of his partner, when disjointed sentences from other groups reached her. But the fright she had received in the corridor had humbled her. If Philip Morton had fallen out and broken his neck, where should she have gone for comfort and sympathy in the remorse that would have been hers to endure? Not to her lord, she felt sorrowfully sure, for the circumstance would have given a colouring to the half-hinted suspicion which had so much offended him. Out of the fulness of her gratitude for the escaped danger there grew a softer feeling for her husband. She began to pity him for being old, and gouty, and cross; and so, with a

shudder at the thought of how poor Philip would have looked with all his beauty mangled by the terrible fall that might have been his, she strongly constrained her attention and fixed it upon the game. And so winningly lovely was she in her desire to please, so purely fresh looked, and was, this May, that her crabbed December felt ashamed of the thoughts he had suffered to cloud his mind that afternoon, and of the prohibition he had issued as to her riding the stranger's snow-white steed.

There has been a duet; triumphant Carry Gambier has dashed off a brilliant pianoforte accompaniment to the melody Philip Morton has tinkled forth from his guitar, and now she has being a little fatigued with the exercise she has taken on the instrument-wheeled round on the music stool to find herself and Philip the centre of a group. He leans upon a high-backed chair, and what with his lounging, graceful attitude, and the suggestive guitar on which he occasionally strikes a chord, and the old memories the romance he has sung has called up, he looks more the Spanish don than ever, despite the rigorous English evening costume in which he is arrayed. Mrs. Ponsonby has come up to him with the advertisement sheet of that morning's Times' in her hand.

Read that, Mr. Morton,' she says. 'You have not settled upon any house yet, and I think this will just suit you.'

Philip reads. It is a description of a furnished house and grounds that are to be let in the garden of England,' in the fair county of Kent. The place is about twenty miles from London; it is called a residence fit for any nobleman,' and it is stated that good shooting' can be hired in the immediate neighbourhood; that the hounds met every week during the season, at a distance of only two miles from the lodge gates, and that the stables are large, elegantly built, and excellently ventilated.

'It will be the very thing,' says Morton, enthusiastically. 'I'll write about it to-morrow. Rent only six

hundred a year! why it's a mere bagatelle !'

Had you not better see the place first, Morton? It sounds promising, but it may be the veriest puff in the world,' says Mr. Ponsonby, after running his eye over the paragraph.

Oh! Mr. Ponsonby, there can be no deception I should imagine. No one would call a place an Italian residence, in the first style of architecture, unless it were such, because any one could go and look and detect the imposture in a moment. write about it, Mr. Morton; it must be a lovely place; so near London, too; how agreeable!' Miss Gambier throws an expression of the deepest interest into her face as she makes this speech.

Do

'Let us hold a council on the subject,' says Horace Greville, languidly advancing. 'We are all interested in where our friend finally settles.'

6

For my part, I wish it had been near Kempstowe; don't you, Fred?' asked Mrs. Ponsonby.

'And I heartily re-echo the wish,' observes the hero of the hour. As

Greville says, let us hold a council on the subject; though for my own part I take Miss Gambier's view of the case, and think I might safely conclude a bargain without any fear of an imposition, which, if attempted, might any day be detected.'

Probably the place is awfully out of repair, and every acre that has a bird upon it for miles round strictly preserved; and most likely it is only a beggarly pack of harriers that "meet near,' mutters Sir Ulric Lyster, who looks at the gloomy side of things since the perusal of that note relating to Saint Kevin's shortcomings.

'Fraternal, but unfriendly,' observes Horace Greville.

'What shall I do then? go off to-morrow and look at the place? I shall not be much the wiser, I fear, for so doing, unless some one will go with me, for I know nothing of insecure foundations and failing walls.

'Shall I save you the trouble, Morton? I must go up to town for a day or two, and I could easily run down and look over the place. Not having a brother (happily) to oblige, you may trust to my-honour.' The speaker, to every one's surprise, is Horace Greville. Mr. Berners changes visibly under the concluding remark, but abstains from speech.

Thank you; it would be doing me a great favour; you will do it all much better than I, in my ignorance of your customs, could do.' Philip rouses himself from his inert attitude to give greater force to his thanks for this unexpected offer. 'I shall leave everything to your judgment,' he continues, warmly. 'Act as for yourself, and conclude all arrangements as you think proper.'

'Do you mean,' asks Mr. Ponsonby, quietly, that Greville is to hire the place if he likes it?'

Certainly; decidedly,' replies Philip, enthusiastically; that is, if he will honour me by troubling himself so far. Miss Forrester, you have not vouchsafed a single remark about it. What do you think of the plan?'

'I should go and see it myself, I think, were I in your place, Mr. Morton; tastes differ so much. It will be awkward should Mr. Greville hire it, conscientiously admiring and thinking it suitable himself, if when you go there you should not like it.'

'How sweet of you to put in a word delicately appreciative of Mr. Greville's conscience!' whispers that gentleman to Flora. You have forgiven me for having all unintentionally pained you this afternoon?' The glance Flora gave him in reply did not savour very strongly of 'forgiveness.'

'How could I ever have liked him!' she thinks; 'he is dangerous,