WHEN Bishop Clare came back to Bouverie, after long absence, the summer in all her languid beauty reigned over the land, and exerted a depressing influence over the health and spirits of those who required all the energy they could command at any season, to support the stagnant routine of their lives.

My grandmother, more than any other member of the household, seemed to droop and fail, under the dry glare of August. She had lost appetite, even for fruits, usually her favorite foodand her habitual color died from her cheek, leaving it clear yet sallow. Jasper, too, was pale and listless, and would lie dreaming under the trees for hours, with a neglected book, instead of exerting himself with his pencil or pen, as he had been in the habit of doing, or galloping through the woods and meadows, or to Croften for letters and papers, on his beautiful grey mareViolet Fane.

Dr. Quintil and I bore up better under the steady breathless heat-yet his anxiety about those he loved would not suffer him to rest, and day after day he was devising new remedies for debility and languor, new provocatives for the failing appetite, of those he watched with such unwearying solicitude. As for me, I confess, that for the first time in my life, I suffered from ennui -a strange enemy to beset a girl of my age, full of life, and health and rigon and with cccupation enough to beguile time

very effectually-if this, indeed, were all that is needed for such a purpose.

Two years had passed since we last saw Bishop Clare--two years which he had spent abroad, partly for the benefit of his church, and partly in the hope of restoring his own declining health. He returned invigorated and satisfied with the success of his mission, and with all his olden interest and affection for the inmates of Bouverie unchanged; pained, indeed, to see the evidences of ill-health in my grandmother's appearance, and never weary of exclaiming at my rapid growth and wonderful physical and mental improvement.

Those years had indeed done more for my development than any other five of my life have effected. They had brought to me my full stature, and opened unsuspected sources of intellect and feeling; yet with them had come new suspicions, painful glimmerings of truths, cautiously and I could but think injudiciously, concealed from me. Among other matters a light had dawned across my brain-wakened how and when I could scarcely tellthat had changed Jasper's attitude toward me, and thrown constraint between us. He himself had aided but little to do thisno one had openly done it. I could recall but one overt advance to such a revelation on Jasper's part-it was when we were reading the "Bride of Abydos" together-alone in the library. He drew near to me on the sofa on which we were sitting, and encircling me with one arm in his half playful yet fraternal way, stopped me in my reading to draw his pencil beneath the lineZuleika, I am not your brother." Then rose and went hurriedly out; nor did he recur again to this imperfect explanation of a subject that embarrassed both.

Bianca's insinuations had long pointed to this. my own instincts

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had risen against the disproportioned tie between us; but that a near one existed, I could not doubt, though not precisely that, I felt, which I had been heretofore suffered to suppose-our bond of kindred.

Yet I neither demanded, nor received the slightest satisfaction about the condition of things that had weighed so heavily upon me, from any one around me, and I leave to the reader the solution of the question why it would have been such joy to me to feel that a distant link of relationship alone united me to Jasper.

There is a wonderful sagacity in affection to discover the exact limit of its natural boundaries. Nature speaks to blood as to the waves of the ocean, and says in commands that are never mistaken, nor transcended, "So far, and no further shalt thou go."

An external voice only had said these things to me-no law of my soul spoke out against the affection I gave to Jasper-no cry of wrong-doing rose up to stifle my devotion.

It was in a state of things like this that Bishop Clare arrived at Bouverie, and never were his cheerfulness, and practical wisdom, and determined energy more needed than now among us.

He came from the outside world, bearing a valued freight-as a ship to a distant island. His simple yet shrewd and practical nature befitted him well to mingle with, and understand men and motives, and to deal with them. He had a power of delineation and even analysis that belongs to few, and which, wherever it may be found-commands interest and attention. His conversational powers were far beyond those of many men, his superiors in knowledge and profundity of thought, adapted as

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to the occasion by an infinite sweetness of manners

He saw at a glance how heavy a cloud was brooding over our patient household, and he strove to dispel it by cheering accounts of matters beyond our province-by vivid descriptions of scenes he had recently moved among-by animated, yet always friendly controversy with Dr. Quintil, whose chief delight lay in argument and by lively pictures of friends once familiar to my grandmother, and still remembered by her with placid affection although shut away forever now from her narrow sphere.

The effort made in turn to entertain him suitably, and as be came her own dignity, reacted favorably on my grandmother's condition. Additional delicacies were provided at meals—for one who cared little for more than a bone and crust, and a draught of water—and yet who recognized with pleasure the spirit of the exertions made to honor him.

We sat in the drawing-room, with its pleasant shadowed windows and handsome surroundings; we looked over folios of pictures, and talked of books, long neglected or laid aside or examined some curious presents he had brought. The old enthusiasm for chess was revived, which Bishop Clare declared to be "the only perfect human institution-both as to arrange ment and conduct," and thus revealed, my grandmother de clared, the Templar Spirit that abode in his heart in spite of modern innovations. For she contended that a taste for military tactics and chess always existed together-and that it was a mistaken notion to look upon it as a scholar's, or clergyman's game! It was nothing but war in disguise!

"I wish you could live here always, Bishop Clare," I said to him one day, after listening with rapt attention to one of those lively narratives he told so well, at the subsidence of which my