not be befooled by her, charming as she is; or there will be no peace for us in the future.”

For instance, they were talking, one day, about their probable return to England, and Sir George, who had been extremely fault-finding and captious that morning, mentioned a season in London by way of a compensating sugar-plum.

Kitty's eyes sparkled and her cheeks glowed with pleasure at the bare thought. For a few seconds she could not speak. A season in London !

As if in a vision, all the delights of such an old, old dream fulfilled passed before her mind. She saw herself, the Cinderella of bygone times, driving through the parks in the full sunshine of a June afternoon; her equipage flashing by, the dusty, eager foot-passengers looking on; her toilet as elegant as those she was wont to envy when she also had gazed at the gay scene, dusty and on foot; she saw herself, leaning on her husband's arm-he a baronet !—ascending carpeted staircases, and joining crowds of fashionable men and women in brilliantly-lighted reception-rooms; she saw-what, indeed, did she not see during that momentary rapture?

Sir George's voice broke the spell.

"You have too much good sense to care about conventionalities, I am sure,” he said; “and of course we could not do as other people do ; but we should see the picture-galleries, and Ella would hear a little good music."

He added, suddenly, "You don't care for gaieties, I hope?" Upon which Kitty blushed guiltily, and said she did not care much for them.

"Because it is better we should understand each other upon that point without delay," her lover went on. "We could not pretend to fashionable gaieties in any shape, and Ella does not like them; we should be able to stay at Clarges Street, or at Akenholme Park, and be very comfortable with a little economy; but there would be no sort of surplus for conventional extravagances. I must think of the future, and provide for you as well as Ella, in case"

it should be necessary.

he broke off hesitatingly,-" in case You will have as comfortable a home as any lady could desire, and you know that I will leave no

stone unturned to make you happy. But there is a medium in all things, and if comforts will not satisfy a woman, no amount of luxuries ever will."

"I want no luxuries. You are much too good for me," poor Kitty said, humbly, feeling ready to cry, less overcome by Sir George's goodness than by a feeling of childish disappointment.

"Nonsense!" he said. And not daring to kiss her yet, though sorely tempted to do so, he clasped her hand, and spoke out boldly like a lover, "I will be as good to you as my means will allow when you are my wife. You are a little fond of me, are you not?"

Of course Kitty was fond of him. Was she not naturally disposed to be fond of those who loved her, and gave her the things in which her soul delighted? He was unlike her former lovers. He had neither Perry's beautiful genius, nor Regy's boyish enthusiasm, nor Dr Norman's quiet dignity; and his love for her was not as the love of these had been. But he was rich, whilst they were poor, and-wanting alike the sweet gifts and graces of youth, and the more solid qualities of a manhood rife in goodness and wisdom-could win her, because he possessed wealth, and titles, and ancestral lands.

Kitty was far from forgetting the past under these new influences. Sometimes she would drop the book she was reading, and dream a dream. She had heard many an old Greek fairy-tale in her girlhood, had seen many a nymph and god portrayed on canvas or sculptured in marble; and now, in her days of worldly care, and thoughts of other things, these beautiful fancies came back to her, fresher, fairer, more real than ever.

She pictured Perry and herself, both young, both beautiful, and both loving, wandering hand in hand about some enchanted island, where the sunshine, and the youth, and the contentment lasted for ever and ever.

And then Sir George's voice would suddenly break the spell, and the dream of youth, and love, and immortality vanished, as it had come. "It must be all for the best," Kitty consoled herself by saying again and again. "I meant to do Perry no harm; I meant to do no one any harm ; but I could not, I dared not enter upon a life that was hateful to me. No amount of

self-sacrifice on my part could have enabled me to be happy' enough to make others happy under those circumstances."

Poor Kitty's moral notions were, it must be confessed, sadly hazy. She could not see what good women-indeed, most women-perceive by intuition, that where self-sacrifice is a positive duty, one is generally as happy as one could be under any other circumstances, and often more so.

CHAPTER LI.

THE BITTERNESS OF FRIENDSHIP.

SIR GEORGE set off to Gibraltar in high glee.

"Mind and do your best for us both-your very best," were his last words to Kitty, before stepping on board the little steamer that was to carry him away from the field of battle. "Had I been able to do any good, I would have stayed; but I'm much better out of the way."

Kitty smiled to herself as she walked home in the blazing noontide. What a parody upon love-making was this! and yet it was the only love-making to which she had ever willingly listened! Had she possessed the faculty of humour in equal degree with other faculties, she would have seen, not only the strangeness of Sir George's conduct, but the glaring whimsicality of it. She wished that he were different in many things, but she did not see that his conduct towards herself was as undignified as it was comical.

"After all, it is better he should be away," she mused. "It would be intolerable to me to see a quarrel arise between Ella and her father on my account. I will banish myself, a beggar, to the uttermost ends of the earth rather than make them so miserable."

But the idea of being banished, a beggar, to remote places of the earth, was not a cheerful subject of contemplation to Kitty; whilst that of being Lady Bartelotte, and the mistress of Akenholme Park, was eminently so. She therefore set aside the prospect of martyrdom, fully determined to act the martyr if occasion required, mind you! and indulged in pleasant dreams of future splendour. All splendour is comparative, and

to the Cinderella of Paradise Place, the most threadbare, outat-elbow aristocracy imaginable seemed priceless, and not at all to be compared to the loving, merry poverty of Bohemia.

Whilst sauntering on with the man-servant at her heelsfor English ladies do not walk unattended in Spain-she was overtaken by the Baron de Fontanié.

"I am going up to Sir George's to pay my respects," he said. "May I walk with you?"

66

Certainly," Kitty answered, smiling, "though Sir George is not at home."

"I have to leave Malaga for Paris by this evening's train," he went on, without heeding the last part of her speech, "and I wanted to thank you all for your hospitality to me."

"I am sorry that you have to leave Malaga," Kitty said, quite naturally.

Pray don't be sorry. I am very glad."

Kitty coloured, and was silent. The baron had always been so amiable, so courteous, so full of consideration for every one's feelings, especially in small matters, that she could only attribute this sudden savageness of manner to a fit of extreme ill-temper.

"I suppose it happens to everybody to find the accumulated experience of life so unexpectedly hurled at him like Jupiter's thunderbolt sometimes," said the baron; then turning to her quickly, he asked

"Has it happened also to Mademoiselle Silver?" Kitty smiled.

"Not yet," she answered, in her frank, innocent way.

"Ah! you are so much younger than I-not much above half my years and yet you are a woman, and women live quickly." "Not all women; and I have lived very little in the world, which makes a difference."

The baron seemed a little disconcerted at Kitty's manner, which was perfectly unembarrassed, easy, and free from sentiment. The fact is, her tact was for once wholly at fault, and she no more knew what was going on in her companion's mind, than he knew what dreams had just before been making her eyes brighter, and her cheeks rosier than usual.

“I will tell you—that is to say, if you care to hear—what has been the accumulated experience of my life on two subjects, or rather, on one subject," the baron went on after a pause. Kitty not replying, he repeated

"Do you care to hear?”

"Certainly," Miss Kitty said, beginning to blush a little.

“My experience, then, Miss Silver, is that friendship is impossible between a man and woman, who have no stronger feeling for any third person. Am I not worldly-wise, and trained not in one, but a dozen schools of society? Am I not double your years? Am I not a cosmopolitan? Am I not a politician and a diplomatist? But I am a man, and you are a woman! Our friendship was a thing that could not last. Voilà tout!" Kitty had crimsoned to the eyebrows at the beginning of this speech, but was now slowly recovering self-possession.

Was he, too, her lover? He, the elegant, the courtly, the brilliant Baron de Fontanié ?

She felt as one in a dream. A hundred fancies, a hundred ambitions, passed across her mind. The hurried leave-taking on the quay, and the secret courtship of the last day or two, seemed as far off as if they had taken place years ago.

"We may meet again, or we may not; but how should that do us either good or harm? I cannot be your lover—I dare not be your friend. The rest doesn't matter—at least to me," he added, "and I have no right to ask whether it matters to you. But pray believe that this friendship of ours seemed the sweetest thing in my life once and if it has since turned out to be the most bitter, you are wholly free from blame.”

They walked on, side by side, in uneasy silence. There appeared no need to say any more; and yet each was waiting for the sound of the other's voice.

When Sir George's villa was within a hundred yards of them, the baron said, very quickly and eagerly

"If I can at any time serve you, or friends of yours, I entreat you to count on me. It will always give me pleasure to be reminded of the first epoch in our acquaintance, and if I cannot forget the last," he shrugged his shoulders, and added, "what does it matter?"