buried in his hands. The man, believing him to be in prayer, hesitated to touch him on the shoulder. Then fearing lest he should miss his train, he coughed loudly and shuffled with his feet upon the stone pavement. At those admonitory sounds, George Hamilton rose from his knees, his face ashen white, and made as though he would leave the church.

"You have forgotten this, sir," and the sexton picked up the copy of the register.

Thanks, my friend.”

And George Hamilton went out of that crumbling little village church an older man by twenty years than he had entered it.

Meanwhile Lesbia sat smiling to herself at Berrylands, dreaming of “the murmuring pines and the hemlocks," of the golden

sunshine and the gentle breezes, of the mystic moonlight and silent glades, of a strong arm and a pleading voice, and of the warm kiss of betrothal.

CHAPTER XXIII.

PROS AND CONS

HAVING taken Mrs. Scarsdale into his confidence, Mr. Hamilton of course imparted to her also the result of his visit to Stoneybridge. When he came to the fact of Stephen Dalrymple's age, he paused, and said piteously, "To think that he is older than I am!"

"A man has only the age he looks to have," replied Mrs. Scarsdale, adapting a well-known French proverb.

"At that rate, then, I must be at least seventy," said he ruefully.

"For you

that doesn't matter; but for

a bridegroom it is certainly an advan

tage to look younger than his years. You, fortunately, don't want to marry a girl of nineteen,”

"No," groaned Mr. Hamilton, and relapsed into thought. He wished Mrs. Scarsdale to tell Lesbia that her lover was nearer fifty than forty; but she refused to have anything to do with such communications, making Mr. Hamilton feel that he was desperately shabby and mean for suggesting such a thing.

He, poor man, had spent a time of such complete repose by the side of his wife, they had lived so entirely the life of an elderly couple (for even the second youth of children had been denied denied them), that to him it appeared a monstrous thing that this young girl should marry a man some eight-and-twenty years older than herself. He had been treated by Blanche and Lesbia like a patriarch; he was perpetually being told by Mrs. Scarsdale not to sit in draughts, not to keep

late hours, not to wear light clothing; and there had seemed to him propriety and fitness in both the respect and the admonitions of his friends. But the case was altered now, and new lights had arisen for him, only to show him his outer darkness, it is true, but still they had arisen and made that "darkness visible."

If he had only troubled himself to look in the glass, he would have seen that Stephen Dalrymple's tailor understood the art of "making" his man better than Shears and Snip, his own clothiers ; he would have seen that Stephen Dalrymple's whiskers and hair were cut after a different fashion to his own; that his splendid moustache spoke of an art concealing art; that his scarf, his gloves, his sleeve-links, his boots, his umbrella, his hat, were all chosen