her, there is no objection to the plan that I can discover. The plain truth of the matter is, Miss Silver has made herself necessary to you, and Miss Silver we must keep, at any cost. I do believe she almost saved your life in this last illness." Ella's eyes filled.

"How can we ever repay such devotion " she said.

"You forget that she is poor!" Sir George replied; "and that reminds me to ask you, my dear, what became of all the trinkets your aunt Frances left you? There was a pretty coral necklace, worth very little; why not give it to Miss Silver?"

"O papa! as if Kitty would wear such trumpery! But I am going to give her something on her birthday which will make her look like a queen," and Ella instructed Sir George to bring out a certain little case from her drawer, and take from it two or three strings of exquisite pearls.

They-are

- not—out — of--your-own-jewel-case?" gasped her father.

"I ought first to have told you that they were bought on purpose for Kitty," answered Ella, "knowing your dislike to anything going out of the family. These were never in the family, papa. How lovely they are, and how Kitty will love them for my sake!" and for Kitty's sake she kissed them before they were put away.

Sir George having decided to go to England, decided to go at once, and Kitty had to be told. Ella was a very bad actor. She felt perfectly guiltless of any treachery in her own heart towards her friend, but the mere fact of Sir George's errand seemed mean and under-hand, and she hated herself for being the prime mover in such a step. In spite of all her efforts to the contrary, she showed evident embarrassment of manner when the subject of her father's journey was brought forward, excusing the journey unnecessarily, apologising to Kitty for it, and saying a hundred things that aroused Kitty's suspicions. Ella would fain have been doubly and trebly loving to Kitty just now; for had she not watched by her bedside during nights of suffering, and tended her like a sister? But she could not play the hypocrite; she could not show a fondness

So

and confidence in words that her deeds wholly wanted. poor Ella, after the way of very sensitive people, tormented herself and punished herself a thousand times more than occasion required.

Kitty had vague grounds for uneasiness. She saw plainly enough that there was some secret at the bottom of Sir George's sudden departure for England; but how could such a secret affect her directly? She could hardly believe herself to be of so much importance in Ella's or her father's eyes as to imagine that the journey was made on her account. And yet she felt instinctively that she had something to do with it.

Did they suspect any secret engagement existing between herself and a man of inferior station? Did they know of her engagement with Dr Norman ? Had Myra compromised her in their eyes? Kitty asked herself a hundred questions of this kind. She felt it just possible that Myra might have worked a little mischief. Myra had given up all idea of going to Arcachon now, and by every post entreated Kitty to return to her. But Ella was ill-and how could she go? Then Sir George was obliged to visit England, and how could she leave Ella alone? There was always a plausible reason for Kitty remaining where she was; and Myra's patience was on the verge of giving way, when a diversion came in the shape of her old lover, the ugly, the clever, the fascinating Captain Longley.

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

PERRY'S PILGRIMAGE.

IT was Polly Cornford who had persuaded-nay, constrained-Perry to make a little tour, though at starting he had no more idea of meeting Kitty than he had of meeting any other person at all like her. What with Perry's liking for Laura, and Laura's liking for Perry, poor Mrs Cornford had led an uneasy life of it for weeks past. All that was best and brightest in Perry's nature seemed to be consumed by his passion for Kitty, burnt

up, shrivelled, destroyed. Who could recognise in the morose, quarrelsome, bitter Perry of to-day, his old, enthusiastic, genial, sweet-natured, sociable self?

Perhaps Laura was the only person who would not believe him changed; and to her, in truth, he tried to be the same. His motive was a kind one, but the consequences of it were cruel. Laura looked upon all the world as unjust to poor Perry, and tried to make up for the injustice of the world by extra kindness on her part. Perry accepted her consolations in spite of himself.

But a day came when Perry's sense of danger, and Mrs Cornford's exhortations, prevailed over every other consideration, and he went away. He did not want to ruin any one but himself. He thought that Laura would soon forget him.

“Whatever you do, don't write to her," Mrs Cornford had said at parting. "Folly spoken is as harmless as a dishonoured bill; folly written down, is an I O U that you must pay one day. Send her your love if you like, but don't come back to Paradise Place till you've recovered your senses, or married a black woman."

"Don't be so horribly afraid of my coming back, my good soul," Perry said, with unpardonable sourness. "You can let my studio to-morrow, if you like."

"Perugino, if I didn't love you as your own mother might

do"

"Might, but didn't," interrupted Mr Perry, with admirable satire. "You forget that she ran away from my father, and no more thought of me than if I had been a little rat in her cupboard.”

“O Perry! you make a bad hand at acting the brute; your heart is in the right place, as the ass said to the master who cudgelled him. But when you are thousands of miles away you will think of Polly Cornford, the veritablest ass that ever was, and wish you had not cudgelled her so often."

66

'Good-bye, and God bless you!" Perry said, kissing her in a boyish fit of penitence. "Why did you pick Kitty and me out of the gutter, to serve you thus?""

Then he pushed his way on to the platform of the Chemin de Fer de l'Ouest, and never looked back at poor Polly, who was crying in the third-class waiting-room.

She went back, after a time, consoled. If anything could effect Perry's cure, she felt that it was foreign travel. He loved travel as passionately as only artists can. In his prime days of enjoyment, and zealous, though intermittent laboriousness, a trip to Havre or Dieppe, effected at the least possible cost, had refreshed and invigorated him for months. A run down to Harwich by boat would be a tonic alike to mind and body; a day at Marlow would inspire him with rapture; for it is the enviable faculty of the born artist to renew his strength by briefest glimpses of the beautiful world of Nature, in which adverse circumstances do not permit him to spend his days. Mrs Cornford had packed Perry's knapsack with her own hands, putting in all sorts of things he might want: drugs for the cure of ague and cholera, woollen vests, waterproof mocassins, and money. Having done this, she sent a blessing after him, and went home to paint laboriously for the support and education of her orphan nieces, and the benefit of her poor relations in general.

Perry set off on his travels, wilfully determined to see nothing, enjoy nothing, paint nothing. He traversed the lovely region of La Dordogne in perfect autumnal weather, without losing his evil temper, and reached Bourdeaux in as dull, morbid, unproductive state of mind as a man could well be. There he had unexpectedly come upon traces of Kitty. Turning over the pages of the Visitors' Guide, he saw this entry-Sir George Bartelotte and party, en route to Arcachon-and of course he must see Kitty at any cost.

When Kitty left him, almost savage with a new sense of disappointment, he was divided between two minds. He was no more to Kitty than the pebbles under his feet, but Laura loved him, and the little love he had to give would suffice to make her happy. Should he retrace his steps, and marry Laura, and earn a living by painting pictures as best he could? Or should he go on, caring for no one, letting no one care for

him, and painting only when the fancy took him? He decided to choose between these two courses by tossing up three francs. Heads were for going forwards, tails for returning home. Heads decided that he was to go on. So he went on.

He spent two or three days at Biarritz, and from thencealways travelling by third class and sleeping in cheap little inns -journeyed across the Pyrenees into Spain. He passed the weird region of the Landes, which at other times would have affected him with eerie, fanciful moods; and the demon still clung to him. The weather was one long pageant of golden sunshine, Nature, like a coquette, seeming to make herself more beautiful than ever, in order to win back the heart of the poor, unhappy, forsaken young artist. Who, even in the Pyrenees, saw such skies, such mountains, such pine woods, such stars as he? For Nature fêtes not the princes and possessors of the land, but her lovers, with the greatest of her noontide glories and sunset pomps; she puts a carpet of flowers under their feet, she sends wild, beautiful birds across their way, who sing to them. And Perry had glimpses and snatches of rapture in spite of himself. "It is of no use for me to paint

anything," he would say, but he painted, nevertheless.

"Oh! what a divine world were this," he thought, "if Kitty or I had never been born! Were I not such a poor devil going to the bad," he mused, "I would pick up Spanish-it is such an enchanting language from beginning to end."

And he found the world divine in spite of Kitty, and picked up Spanish, though a poor devil going to the bad.

It is quite wonderful in how many ways genius contrives to manifest itself. Perry had not been on Spanish soil a fortnight before he could talk in very pretty Castilian, play the guitar a little, dance a bolero, and sing half a hundred coplas. He did these things with such winning abandonment of manner, and was, moreover, so fascinating with his large blue eyes, clear, slightly sunburnt complexion, and dark gold-brown curls and beard, that he was always obliged to leave pleasant places because some pretty Pepa or Gregoria had fallen in love with him. What were Pepas or Gregorias to him? A delusion