more talk, rose to go, Myra adding a word of advice on the threshold.

"If you are guided by me," she said at parting, "you will just give Kitty big lumps of sugar, and not trouble your head about anything else. What good are pedigrees to clever people?"

When her visitor had gone, Myra went to her room, and cried for an hour over Kitty's unkind behaviour. She was going back to India, the wife of Captain Longley; but was not her approaching marriage an extra reason for needing her friend?

Myra was not romantic. She knew the world very well, and she entertained no sentimental notions about love and marriage. She had been married before, and she understood the necessity of husband and wife not boring each other, if they would be happy. But she was so terribly dependent on others, that she felt she must inevitably bore Captain Longley if she were shut up with him alone in some station up country. If Kitty were but with her always, to organise a little society, all would go smoothly. Myra really cared for Kitty, and she now declared to herself bitterly that she would never again trust a friend as she had trusted this false one.

Sir George went down to Shelley House next day, determined to fulfil his errand to the best of his ability, in spite of Myra's somewhat flippant deprecations.

It is just possible that there may have been a touch of jealousy at the bottom of this obstinacy. Sir George no more dreamed of marrying Kitty than he dreamed of marrying Myra: but had she not smiled upon him and flattered him in a hundred ways, wearing the colours he liked best, singing his favourite songs, and reminding him from day to day that his admiration was worth the having?

Kitty had often talked of Shelley House, of her kind, admirable friend Dr Norman, of his high-spirited, self-managed children, and all the love they bore her. She had, moreover, hinted at having been a sort of governess to the little girls; but beyond the period of her sojourn at Shelley House, Kitty's

account of herself was as vague as the carboniferous epoch in geological history. Whilst Sir George and Ella remained abroad, moving from place to place, not fixing their abode anywhere, it little mattered whether Ella's friend and companion was the daughter of a clergyman—or a chimney-sweep; but if they came to England, or settled down at Rome, Brussels, or Paris, it would be quite another thing.

So Sir George determined to find out from the man who had wanted to marry Kitty whether she was a person fit to live with his daughter; and as the question was a delicate one, he pondered on the best mode of putting it.

But he was doomed to a temporary disappointment. On inquiring for Shelley House at the railway station, he was informed that Dr Norman had lately lost a considerable sum of money by a bank failure; that he had in consequence left the country for some time; that Shelley House had been put into proper order and let for a term of years, and that the owner was living in a very small house in London.

Sir George walked to the house that had been Kitty's home for so many ambitious months, and having obtained Dr Norman's address from its new tenant, returned to London in a very bad temper indeed. He had spent exactly nineteen shillings and sixpence for no purpose. It was a vexatious thought.

CHAPTER XLI.

WHAT DR NORMAN SAID ON KITTY'S BEHALF.

DR NORMAN had hired a pretty cottage in the Addison Road, Kensington, boasting of a little flower-garden in front, and a little croquet-lawn and shrubbery at the back; and, though a mere doll's house compared to Shelley, pleasant enough. The situation was, moreover, quiet, healthful, and convenient. Novelty delights the young; and Dr Norman's children thought it a splendid thing that papa should have brought them to London, within reach of the South Kensington

Museum, the Crystal Palace, the Polytechnic, the Zoological Gardens, and so many bewitching places. Dr Norman was not one of those men who do things by halves; and when he woke up one morning, and found himself on the verge of poverty, he set to work to retrieve his fortune by every means in his power. It was the immediate loss of some thousands of pounds by the failure of a bank that had induced him to look into his affairs, and he was aghast at the inroads made upon a fair patrimony by the mismanagement and neglect of a few years. So he withdrew Regy from college, and sent him to a German University; put the younger boys to University College School instead of Eton and Harrow; let his land to a respectable farmer on a long lease, and his home to a wealthy friend; reduced his staff of servants to three maids; and resolved to turn the steady work of years to some account at last.

Prissy had not yet decided what sort of education would be best for herself and Laura, declaring that nothing could be thought of at present but the arrangement of the house. What with choosing chintzes, buying flowers for the little conservatory, hanging up pictures, and the like, the little maid was in her element; and when Sir George presented himself, who should open the door but Miss Prissy, a long lilac apron tied over her short frock, her fair hair blown about wildly, looking the very impersonation of briskness and bustle.

"Oh, dear!" she said, when Sir George gave her his card, requesting to see her papa; "we didn't want visitors yet, and especially such grand ones. The hall is littered with books and things, and my doll's linen is hanging on the stairs to dry".

"Prissy," put in Laura from the dining-room, "ask the gentleman in."

So Prissy held the door about a quarter of a yard open, and led the way to Dr Norman's study, a quiet room at the top of the house, talking volubly all the way.

"It is such an undertaking to move," she said; "how many times have you moved? And how many little girls have you?

streets, every one a real, live little Prince Bedreddin. Veiled women glided among the dusky olive groves. The beautiful white mosques were crowded with worshippers at the summons of the muezzin. And when the many-coloured but tender daylight passed away, came the wondrous southern night, with skies of purplish black, and large silvery stars like moons shining direct overhead.

Perry spent half his days in cutting Kitty's name on the ruins. On the base of a majestic monolith, that had been split in two by earthquake, he cut this legend very laboriously

"KITTY IS FALSE."

"It cannot harm her," he mused, as he chiselled away in the twilight, with only a little Arab goat-herd watching by. "Who will ever come here who knows either Kitty or me? But what I have written will remain for hundreds of years, and it is some consolation to hand down her perfidy from generation to generation, even on the borders of the desert."

He painted three or four charming, mystical twilight scenes; but here, fortunately for him, there were no buyers, so the sketches were saved and put aside. At Telemçen he fell in with a grazier bound to the farthest French station in the interior to buy sheep, who invited him to share his gig. Perry saw a vision of Bedouin encampments, wild gazelles feeding by turbulent streams, caravans coming out of yellow atmospheres, and the Great Desert beyond all, and went. It was hardly wonderful that he should go, but incredible that he should have come away. To live in the open air-in a wide, fresh world, without cities or conventionalities; to breathe the sweet, fragrant atmosphere of the desert; to see savage life in its gayest, most genial aspect; to share the Bedouin's hospitality, -all this fulfilled the dreams of Perry's boyhood. He grew broader, browner, and stronger than he had ever been in his life. He learned to saddle a horse, to shoot the jackal, to hunt the gazelle, to use his muscles in all sorts of ways. He could say a hundred things in the most astonishing Arabic, full of whistling aspirates and wonderful sibilations. He found him

self forgetting to be unhappy; yet he could not rest. The grazier said to him one day

"You are young, you like adventures, you want to see what this country is like. Be my partner. I dare say you have a few thousand francs-all you Englishmen are rich."

"I haven't a sou. I'm a painter," Perry said.

"Eh bien! stay with me for a few months. You're welcome to bed and board, if you will be a little handy now and then; a painter couldn't be better placed."

Perry shook his head.

"I should like it, but the truth is, I've been hardly used by a woman, and though she will no more marry me than she will marry you, I can't rest so far away from her."

So Perry forsook the life that he loved so well, and joined the first party to be heard of travelling to Oran. Oran is a stately, prosperous, half-Spanish city, two days' journey from Gibraltar, from which one can sail to all parts of the world. Perry went down to the harbour as soon as he arrived, in search of some vessel that would carry him to any English port at a cheaper rate than the mail-packet. He bargained. with the master of a cattle-steamer, bound to Harwich in a day or two, and had paid his passage-money, and carried his chattels on board, when a marvellous thing happened.

Winter was over now, and the balmy, delicious, southern spring had appeared like a dream in the night. With the sunshine and the south wind came beautiful, graceful pleasureboats, like white-winged birds, which fluttered to the harbour, and there rested for a while. Perry watched them with childish glee, as he loitered on the shore, sketch-book in hand, and hoped that in the next stage of existence he should be the owner of one of those pretty yachts, and not the poor artist drawing it from a distance with longing eyes.

One morning he lay at full length on the sands, watching a yacht come in; she was an elegant little craft, and scudded along in a fair wind at such a rate that one might have fancied a pirate-ship was at her heels. Perry saw a red flag hoisted in the harbour with a smile of contempt.