-in his well-doing and happiness-such happiness as he can have separated from such a family?' said Guy. "That is so like the sympathetic unselfish nature of a woman!'

Mrs. Smith's head was slightly bent over her work. Her thread was entangled, and for a moment she was too much preoccupied to speak. It was important that she should make that running perfectly smooth. Then she lifted up her head, but still drew her thread through her white soft fingers, so that she could not look at her companion.

'Yes,' she answered in her usual voice, sweet, low, and monotonous, without emphasis or faltering.

'I congratulate you,' he said warmly.

She bowed slightly.

'Thank you,' was her answer.

'The honour of the head of the house, the father of a family— nothing can come up to that!' cried Guy enthusiastically. It was such a relief to find that, so far from this unknown Mr. Smith being tainted with madness, with dishonour, with fault in any form, he was absent on some noble mission, working courageously in some great field, whence he would come some day radiant, and bearing the fruits and spoils of his years! He felt like a boy, glad he scarcely knew why; glad of his life, of the sunshine, of the day and of to-morrow. 6 That is the ideal state of things,' he continued; the only solid foundation for family happiness and worth.'

Yes,' she said when he paused. She had to say something, and she could not say less.

'Do you expect your husband home soon?' he continued. 'Will he have gained his medal, earned his discharge from the servitude of toil, the treadmill even of success?' he asked.

'The date is still uncertain,' she answered.

'But he is coming?'

'Yes; he is coming.'

'We must give him a welcome when he comes—a real English welcome!' cried Guy, flinging up his voice.

'Thank you,' she answered; neither refusing nor accepting; then, the loophole being opened, she glided through it without either haste or affectation, and said quietly-Talking of fêtes, the Brown de Paumelles seem to be arranging one of extreme magnificence on Miss Brown's coming of age. It promises to be quite an event in the neighbourhood."

'And you will not break through your rule and go to it?' he asked eagerly.

'My rules are not easily broken through,' she answered.

VOL. XXXIT, NO. CXXV.

C

'But Miss Smith ?-and your son?' by the grace of an afterthought.

'What do you say, Muriel?' asked Mrs. Smith, with the faintest little sigh of relief as her daughter came into the room with her sweet and happy face full of the joy of love, but knowing nothing yet of its torment; sentiment and conscience in accord together, and passion, fear, and self-reproach, words without meaning to her soul. About what, mamma?' she asked.

6

The de Paumelle ball. Mr. Perceval was asking me if you and Derwent were going. You are, are you not?'

'We agreed that we should,' she answered, shaking hands with Guy, and wondering why he kept hers so long, and held it so closely pressed; his method of shaking hands being, in general, of that flabby kind which allows the companion's to drop out of the grasp without an effort to retain it.

But he was too happy to-day to be flabby. As he looked at her more critically than he had ever done before, and noted the bloom and softness of her skin, the clearness of her eyes, the freshness of her lips, and how white and shining were her small square teeth, noted too the innocence of her face, and the feminine strength that lay behind its girlish softness, he was angry with Lady Machell and himself, that she should have suggested and he adopted such a monstrous hypothesis as the insanity or doubtful condition anyhow of the father of so exquisite a creature as Muriel Smith.

Then I shall have the pleasure of seeing you,' he said, his face radiant, but none the handsomer for its brightness.

She smiled.

'I am glad of that,' she answered simply; and Guy was glad that she said so.

He was the owner of the Manor, and a power in the place; she was only Muriel Smith, with a certain uncomfortable mystery about her father, let kind hearts and unsuspicious minds say what they would. herself kindly, and looked at him with her sweet and gracious smile, as if he had been the subordinate and she the royal lady whose favour conferred distinction.

Yet he was as grateful that she expressed

May I engage you for the first waltz?' he said in his highpitched voice.

Muriel coloured, and for a moment hesitated. Guy Perceval was a good fellow enough, in spite of his crazes, now for blue-gum trees and now for oatmeal-porridge; no one could be found to deny his substantial worth of character, nor to doubt the sharpness, if some might the soundness, of his intellect; but as a dancer, and

above all as a waltzer, he was simply execrable. He slid and he ducked, he hopped and he halted; he trod on his partner's feet and entangled his own in her train; he generally contrived to overset some unlucky couple against whom he cannoned, and not infrequently to overset himself and his luckless lady. His dances were chapters of terror in the book of the evening to the girls whom he engaged; and had he not been Mr. Perceval of the Manor, he would not have found a partner even among the wallflowers, so utterly atrocious was his style. When therefore he asked poor Muriel, she naturally felt dismayed and disappointed as well. Down in the secret depths she had dedicated this first waltz to Arthur; and have we not spoken of the exaggerated proportions assumed by small matters, when we are in that state of bondage to imagination called being in love? Not to dance that first dance with Arthur Machell was to lose the flower of the evening. But how could she refuse Guy Perceval? She could not say that she was engaged when she was not. She had not those keen and shifty wits which are never at a loss for made-up excuses and reasons why, of more cleverness than truth. To her the truth was the truth, and not to be tampered with, how great soever its cost; and not even to escape from Guy and save herself for Arthur could she frame any of those small white lies which come so glibly from pretty lips when the straight way is disagreeable, and crooked paths are pleasant.

With a distressed look to her mother she began: "Thank you,' when Mrs. Smith said quietly:

'I have just promised your brother that you should dance the first dance with him, my dear.'

'Oh! a brother is a movable feast. He counts for nothing,' said Guy. No; with me, Miss Smith; not with him-with me.' 'But if mamma has promised Derwent-' she said hesitatingly. 'You can give him the second. I must indeed have the first. You must give me the first waltz, the first galop, the first mazurka,' he added, rising in his demands as the consequence of opposition; which was his way. 'I must have the first of all three,' emphatically; and your brother and the herd may come in for the rest.'

'You are very kind,' said Muriel, more and more distressed, her eyes still turned appealingly to her mother. I do not think I can promise so many to one person.'

'I think you are singling out my daughter for too much attention, Mr. Perceval,' said Mrs. Smith gravely. 'I am not fond of this kind of thing with young girls. It is bad for them in every way.'

6

'If you think that I could show her honour, I would dance with her all the evening!' exclaimed Guy enthusiastically. Muriel shuddered. Pray do not interpose, Mrs. Smith, except in my behalf,' he continued. "I specially request this; I have reasons.' He came near to her, and said below his breath, so that Muriel should not hear: It is to disprove something that I have been told. It is most important, I assure you!'

Mrs. Smith smiled faintly; an acute observer would have said a little contemptuously. It was as if she had said that she, who knew so well the importance of life, was not disposed to accept Guy Perceval's estimate of the value contained in a triad of dances. She, like everyone else at Grantley Bourne, had heard too often of that faculty of his for magnifying molehills into mountains, to be easily impressed with any chart of social Alps which he might present; but with all this, there was an undercurrent of something that was not contempt-a faint and passing flash of what?-of terror? It was however all so faint and vague, contempt and fear alike, that not even Muriel, who knew her, had detected the passing of the shadow; and to Perceval her face had been absolutely unchanged from the first-so much so that he was half inclined to quarrel with her for her stolidity. She made just a moment's pause before she spoke; then she said:

"You have doubtless some good reason, Mr. Perceval; I will not suppose it a mere young man's whim of the moment; still, it is the kind of thing that I specially dislike. I have a great objection to my daughter being put en évidence in any way. My own manner of life must have shown you this before now.'

For this once,' urged Mr. Perceval with characteristic tenacity. 'Trust my reasons, and let me beseech you not to refuse me.'

Mrs. Smith made one or two stitches in her work with marked care and precision.

Perhaps I am foolishly sensitive about what is after all a mere trifle,' she said slowly, refilling her needle. It is really of so little consequence in any way!'

'Just so,' said Guy in an odd tone of voice, glad to have his will but not much flattered at what was implied in granting it. 'Of no consequence to anyone but me-and to me of all consequence! So, Miss Smith, it is agreed on-the three dances that I have asked for and the first quadrille as well.'

But Derwent, mamma!' pleaded Muriel.

This time Mrs. Smith made no sign. She had launched her little boat for rescue, and it had carried off nothing and saved no one; so now her daughter must do the best that she could do for herself. After all, taken by itself and without those consequences

which she was afraid lurked behind, it was not a serious misfortune as life reckons its misfortunes; and if, like Hilda with the porridge, Muriel were never to know more humiliation than that involved in standing up with a bad dancer, and never have worse things said of her, and hers, than the ill-natured little sarcasms which would be flung at her head for carrying off a prize parti for the best of the evening, she would be exceptionally fortunate, thought the mother, sitting there in her statuesque way, and shaping the flowers of a deadly nightshade, introduced for effect of line and colour into a bunch of ox-eye daisies.

So there was no help for it, evidently; and the bargain had to be concluded, with good will or bad. Neither would a social miracle be worked in her favour; nor was it likely that any such catastrophe as that Guy Perceval should have an attack of measles say, or fall downstairs and sprain his ankle, would come in to break through the network in which she was enclosed. She was caught and caged, and she must submit to her captivity since struggling would not set her free. How little Guy Perceval, the master of the Manor, accustomed to think of himself as one who had but to throw the handkerchief wherever his fancy directed, when he should make up his mind to give that Manor a mistress, imagined the dismay which he had created in this dowerless, fatherless Muriel Smith, by his pertinacious determination to do her honour! As he stood up to wish her good-bye, he repeated the various items of the engagement as a lesson not to be forgotten: the first waltz; the first galop-the coquette galop-poor Muriel! the first mazurka and the first quadrille at the Brown de Paumelles' ball; Muriel's heart sinking like lead as she said yes, and buried in that yes all her pride and more than half the pleasure. No one in or near Grantley Bourne danced with so much grace, precision, lightness as she; and, like all healthy and natural girls, she was fond of dancing and particular as to the skill of her partner. To be doomed then to three round dances and one square with a partner whom a marionette would put to shame, was an infliction sufficiently severe in itself; but how much more severe when to this was added the loss of that other, and a certain uneasy consciousness that this other would not like it; and that the women would not like it; and that she would gain a great deal of envy, hatred, and malice, by being thus singled out by Mr. Perceval of the Manor for undue honour; she who only felt herself singled out for undue victimization!

But she was in the grasp of necessity, and the laws of honour had to be obeyed whether they were to her comfort or her disadvantage.