my arm was set, and Mrs. Betty and a doctor were with me in my own pretty chamber.

I implored Mrs. Betty not to leave me for a moment. I shuddered at the thought of being left alone. I told my story at once. The doctor shrugged his shoulders, and desired Mrs. Betty on no account to leave me, an order which she scrupulously obeyed, nursing me tenderly till I had grown quite well again.

She tried to divert me by telling anecdotes of the family, and especially of Mr. Alaric, child, boy, and man. But still my thoughts would wander back to that haunting vision, oftenest in twilight, when the white face and glittering eyes seemed gleaming on me from every shadowy corner.

One evening when my brain ached with pondering this uneasy theme, I said:

'Mrs. Betty, is there no story connected with the house which might account for the appearance of this spirit, for spirit I believe it to be?'

She tried to evade the question, but I saw that I had guessed rightly. There was a story, and after much coaxing I prevailed on her to tell it to me. It impressed me drearily at the time; I suffered from it for a day and two nights; but then the sun shone out, and a summer wind blew away all my trouble. I have tried to put together the fragments of a story which Mrs. Betty told me. It runs as follows:

III.

Twenty-five years before the date of my first visit there, Heatherbell Abbey was a merry home, full of young life, and the music of young voices. Alaric Holme, the youngest of many, was then unborn, and Clarence, the eldest, the hope and pride of the house and name, was twenty-five. Clarence was the child of a former marriage, and all the rest of the children were very much younger. Mrs. Holme was the most affectionate of stepmothers, and all almost forgot that she was not the real mother of the eldest

son.

A few months before the period

of the story, Mrs. Holme had made a change in the arrangements of her household; the elder children had been sent to school, and a governess had been engaged for the younger ones. The mother had been anxious to find a young person who would be gentle and yielding, and not too strict with her darlings. She fancied that an inexperienced girl might better submit to her supervision than one well drilled to the occupation of teaching. She engaged her governess rather indiscreetly; but the young lady had excellent testimonials, and Mrs. Holme was at the time quite satisfied.

Eunice Frith arrived at Heatherbell Abbey one stormy evening in October. The trees were wailing and crashing, and the sea booming on the strand between the gusts, when a vehicle rolled up the avenue, bringing the new comer to her destination. When opened, the great hall door was swung back to the wall by the storm, and a cold wind swirled in under the mats and over the thresholds, and swept the bright inner hearth with a chill breath, and an unheard wail.

The

The long drawing-room, then the family evening room, was filled with glow and brilliance. It was teatime, pleasantest of domestic hours. Mr. Holme reclined in his armchair by the wide, bright hearth. Mrs. Holme had just taken her seat opposite the steaming urn. rich lamp and firelight sparkled on the china and the silver, on the half-closed, reposing eyes, and the ease-enjoying brows and lips of the husband and father, and on the shining hair and burnished drapery of the wife and mother. It danced into the bewildering recesses and flattering vistas of the mirrors. It leaped over polished ornaments and fanciful cabinets, and the carved backs of dark, grotesque chairs. It was everywhere in snatches, this beautiful wandering home - light, beckoning quaint fancies from their nooks, sweet affections from their rose-coloured niches, young thrifty hopes from the warm atmosphere of their teeming growth, and leading them in flowery chains to dance a dance of worship round the silent,

potent hearth-blaze. It brought Clarence Holme to his seat at the tea-table, and thus it brought a new flush of smiles to the other two faces in the room.

Clarence Holme was the more petted by all, and the more beloved by his stepmother because that she had no son of her own. He was the heir and the pride of the house, and the darling of father, mother, and sisters. His innocent manhood excused their creed that Clarence could do no wrong. His affectionate smile was their brightest sunshine, his kindly word and witty jest their dearest music.

Clarence came and took his seat at the table. His figure was a good height and well knit, broad-chested, and round-limbed. His fair hair swept from his forehead in sunshiny rings and masses, with a dash of warmer colour in the shadows. He had been out in the storm with the gamekeeper, and his brow was very fair and his eyes very bright as he sat down smiling by his stepmother's side. Three little fairies who had been allowed to wait up to welcome their new governess, gathered round his elbows with a score of questions and appeals to 'Clarrie.'

Mr. Holme, with beaming eyes resting on the group at the table, had just risen to approach and join it, when that expected peal rang out from the bell with an unrecognized menace in its shrill clamour, the hall door swung back, and that cold breath swept under the threshold.

Eunice Frith entered the long drawing-room with the step of an empress, her black silken drapery glistening and darkling around and behind her like a sombre cloud. She looked like the young queen of night, though she wore no jewels, except one diamond which blazed at her throat, and her eyes which glittered under her white forehead with a brilliance which no gems ever possessed.

Mr. Holme started and looked at his wife. Mrs. Holme rose, flushed and uneasy. This was not quite the kind of person she had wished She glanced from her hus

to see.

band to Clarence, who stood with his hand on the back of his chair, and his head bent forward in reverential and wondering admiration.

Eunice Frith passed down the long drawing-room without blush or falter, her dark head with its braided crown gracefully erect, her face, fair and unruffled as snow, her lips-red as the holly-berries ripening for Christmas in the wood - undistressed by any nervous quiver. She accepted the greetings of her surprised employers with passionless ease, and took her seat at the tea-table as though she had been accustomed to sit there all her life.

And the shrinking home-light glanced over her with a nervous start, and fled away; and Eunice Frith seemed illumined by some cold, foreign gleam-some white reflection from an iceberg.

IV.

Two months passed, and Eunice Frith was one of the household. In her glistening and darkling robe she flitted from school-room to drawing-room. Her low, clear voice was expected to mingle in the domestic converse, and her smile, though too gleamy, was found to possess a fascination. Her influence over the children was complete -an influence which had no root in love, but was composed of a share of admiration and a species of attraction which was more than half fear-a fear of which the little pupils themselves were scarce conscious.

It was breakfast-time at Heatherbell Abbey. Eunice Frith stood at the window unlacing and lacing her white fingers, while her wild dark eyes with their jewelled glitter were roving restlessly over the waste land of snow outside. Mrs. Holme stood by the hearth, waiting for her husband's entrance, with her eyes fixed uneasily on Clarence, who was studying the young governess over the edge of his book. He met his stepmother's glance as the appearance of the letter-bag diverted his attention. He met that anxious, scrutinizing look with an open smile which seemed to say

'No, mother; be at rest. I shall

husband; they must depart at once to see the sufferer.

'How provoking!' cried Mrs. Holme to Clarence.

'Ariel Forrest was to have been here the day after to-morrow.'

Ariel Forrest was a name Mrs. Holme loved to utter. The girl was the motherless daughter of a school friend. And this name, which his stepmother loved to utter, Clarence loved to hear.

Eunice Frith opened her red lips and closed them again. This was the only token she gave of having heard what had been said.

And will she not come now?' asked Clarence, in a voice which was careless with an effort.

4

And the disappointing note was written to Ariel Forrest, who had promised to spend her Christmas at Heatherbell Abbey, and Mr. and Mrs. Holme left for France that night. We shall be home again for Christmas-day, if possible,' were their last words.

A certain kind, harmless old Aunt Mattie, who lived a few miles away, came to matronize the household in the absence of the mistress, and took up her abode in the Abbey.

But she is not coming,' said Eunice Frith, as she stood tapping her foot in the twilight at the window, where the chill snow-wreaths looked wanly in at the ruddy hearth.

She is not coming, and the watchful stepmother is away. And as for her' with a scornful glance at the poor old lady, unconsciously nod

ding in her chair-' she is no match for me. I fear her as little as the mouse that nibbles at the wainscot.' But Eunice Frith was not omniscient. She could not see beyond the verge of ordinary mortal vision. She did not know that Mrs. Holme's note had not reached her young friend's dwelling till the bird had flown. Therefore, when one evening she tied on her bonnet and wrapped herself in a rough gray shawl for a swift walk over the snow, she did not expect to meet Ariel Forrest before she returned.

V.

Eunice Frith stood transfixed in meditation on the Elfin Span, a quaint old bridge built high over a boiling torrent rushing from the mountain. There were weird stories about this bridge of ghosts and goblins haunting it at nightfall. It was near nightfall now, and there were few in the country besides the governess from the Abbey who would have stood there so calmly leaning over the old wall, the only speck in the white waste. But Eunice Frith feared neither man nor spirit.

Snow was on the earth and snow was in the sky. Nature wore a shroud, and the shroud was stained with blood. A long, ragged, crimson streak lay on the brink of the horizon, like gore welling from the dull lips of the gray distant sea. Eunice Frith looked like a spirit herself, motionless by the wall in her gray garments, with her weird glittering eyes building monuments of ambition in the misty undulations of the thick white clouds.

Woods and mountains, regal in their wintry ermine, stretched behind her, pale uplands swept away at either side, and below in the vale rose the Abbey with its ivied gables and chimneys, one fiery star from the oriel glaring back defiance at that angry western gleam by the sea.

Mine! mine!' whispered Eunice Frith between her closed lips as her eyes roved over the rich lands and the noble homestead.

'Mine! mine!' echoed the water rushing under the dark arch of the Span and the wind swept by moan

ing faintly-Oh! Clarence Holme, woe on you that you have looked with frank admiration on this woman's cruel beauty!'

Hark! there were wheels on the road in the distance; and as the governess looked and listened a figure sprang up on the pathway down below. The slight form of a young girl with bright brown curls blowing in waves and clusters from under her velvet hat with its drooping scarlet-tipped feathers. She was wrapped up in black velvet and sables, and her hands were thrust in a costly muff. She stepped airily over the snow in her dainty boots, seeming to follow the carriage with haste.

She glanced up and beheld the gray figure on the bridge, and met the white repellant face and wrathful eyes of the governess. From her triumphant dream of ambition Eunice Frith was aroused to behold the advent of her rival.

'My foe!' murmured Eunice Frith between her shut teeth; and then, as the young stranger fled away in fear, and she stood once more alone in the ghostly twilight, with the white foam of the river hissing in her ears, she became aware, by a sudden shock of intolerable pain, that not only were all the hopes of her deeplaid ambition cast upon this stake, but that all the love of which her resolute, tenacious nature was capable of conceiving and retaining, had gone forth to wrestle and do battle for its one prize in life. Racked and quivering, the heart of Eunice Frith crouched in humiliation before her intellect like an unfaithful slave before his enraged master. It had sworn to take a cool, stern part in a great cause, and it had turned craven and suffered defeat.

But the discovery was made, the humiliation endured, and her suffering only strengthened a thousandfold the iron determination to work her own will.

'She shall not crush me!' she said. 'I will crush her, him first.'

And then she wrapped herself more closely in her gray shawl, and with fiercely swift footsteps hurried over the snowy moors home to the Abbey. The long drawing-room

was full of fire-light when Eunice Frith's white face peered in at the window like a wintry moon when there are signs of a storm. Ariel Forrest had thrown her hat on the floor, and her bright curls were wandering away from her blooming cheeks and down over her shoulders as she sat on a low stool by old Aunt Mattie's arm-chair, and heard of the departure of the mistress and master of Heatherbell Abbey.

'But I am glad I came,' said she, 'if only to see you, Aunt Mattie, and the children.'

'And no one else, Ariel?' whispered Clarence, who stood gravely in the flickering shadows, watching her every movement.

Aunt Mattie was very deaf, but Ariel made no answer with her lips. She looked silently at the coals for a few moments, and then, as a chill recollection startled her reverie, she cried, with a shiver

'Oh! Aunt Mattie, I wonder who is the beautiful, fierce-looking girl whom I passed standing all alone on the Elfin Span? I almost thought she was a ghost.'

'Miss Frith, the governess, is out walking, is she not, Clarence? I don't know any one else whom the description would suit. Yes, my dear, I suppose you met the gover

ness.

VI.

A very sunbeam on the snow was Ariel Forrest on those December days at Heatherbell Abbey. A very home sprite, with her radiant smile, her sunny hair, her white floating dress. The children flew from Eunice Frith and clung to her. Aunt Mattie spoke querulously to the governess, and beamed her love in smiles upon her blithe, pretty young favourite. Clarence Holme, in his capacity of host to a beautiful, friendless girl in his father's house, was kind and attentive and chivalrous, never thinking how Eunice Frith's glittering eyes followed every speaking look that passed from his to Ariel's, little dreaming how she paced her chamber night after night, biting her red lips and clenching her slender hands in paroxysms of jealousy.

VOL. II.-NO. XII.

It was vacation time now, and children and governess were free to mingle in the general sports and merriment of the household. Good news had arrived from France, and all were gay and glad—but one.

A wonderful change came over Eunice Frith, Cold and still and proud in her exceeding beauty she had been. She had thought to conquer without an effort, or to retire haughtily from the field. Now her proud neck was bent, and she stooped to work, to toil, to make a mighty struggle to gain her object.

Eunice Frith, who could have imagined that your cold cheek could glow with so radiant a blush; who guessed that your proud lips could wreathe themselves into such bewildering smiles; that your low, seldom-heard voice could pour forth a cataract of song such as to shake the souls of reverent listeners? And yet these miracles were wrought in Heatherbell Abbey on those snowy December days; and with triumph Eunice Frith saw Ariel Forrest stand eclipsed.

The governess was sweet-voiced and gentle to the curly-haired girl whose trusting eyes met hers without a shadow of suspicion. She was amiable to the children and attentive to Aunt Mattie. Eunice Frith was singular and admirable from every point of view,-and yet-the heart of Clarence Holme was in the keeping of Ariel Forrest.

Slowly, like a storm-cloud, the truth gathered round the soul of Eunice Frith, and still her eyes shone forth like stars from the darkness. But the crisis was coming, the shadow was falling, chill winds were gathering round the Abbey hearth. A prophecy had been uttered that night on the Elfin Span'I will crush her or him.'

VII.

It was the day before Christmas Eve, and on Christmas Eve Mr. and Mrs. Holme were to return to Heatherbell Abbey. It was a calm evening after a night and day of such rain and storm as had enraged the mountain torrents, making them rush madly through the glens and valleys, crashing down trees and

E