trice Sedgwick. The child was in a perfect spasm of shrill-toned crying. Beatrice bent over her, holding in one hand a handkerchief, with which she seemed endeavouring to staunch a wound on the girl's arm. Still further on, Reginald now discovered that a certain large Newfoundland dog, for several years a pet of his own, lay crouching in a sort of sick attitude, with protruded tongue. He was on the point of calling out to Beatrice, inquiring the cause of the trouble, when a new-comer appeared on the scene. This was none other than Haslitt himself, wearing a very excited demeanour, and carrying a gun. Advancing toward the dog with a great deal of caution, Haslitt suddenly levelled upon him the muzzle of the weapon; one moment later a clear discharge was heard, and the dog, shot through the head, lay in his death agony.

Beatrice now left the screaming child and hurried toward Haslitt. The two held a brief conversation together, purposely low-voiced. Reginald guessed what was being said while he noticed the anxious look on Beatrice's face and the gardener's serious shake of the head as he turned and pointed to the now motionless animal. Hastening back to the child, Beatrice knelt at her side. A thrill almost of horror passed through Reginald as he saw the lips of her whom he had resolved to make his future wife press themselves against the wounded arm. But from whatever cause the thrill began, it ended in an enthusiasm of admiration. He had needed no further evidence of this creature's nobly charitable nature, yet here was thrust upon him the final convincing proof of it! What other woman would have acted with this fearless, unselfish benignity? If she consented to marry him, should he not have won a treasure of surpassing worth?

A little later he made known to the group on the lawn that he had observed them. Beatrice passed indoors,

after having tightly bandaged the child's arm with her handkerchief, and given Haslitt instructions at once to go for a doctor. When she entered the room whence Reginald had watched her, it is hardly hyperbole to say that his maimed state alone prevented him from throwing himself at her feet after the old-time romantic fashion, and covering her hands with many kisses of fealty, of honour, and of pride. Beatrice walked up to where he lay in a half-reclined attitude, and with a slight smile on her tranquil face, said

'So you have been watching that pleasant little affair? I hope I haven't shocked you?'

'Yes,' he answered, you have shocked me--and very much. But I suppose I had no right to be shocked. It was no more than just what one should have expected from you.'

His tones so palpably bespoke his real meaning that they seemed to embarrass her. The dog was probably not mad,' she began, with a touch of confusion about her rapid sentences; 'but there is no doubt that he has been sick for a day or two and that when little Jane attempted to make him play with her he bit the child quite cruelly. Haslitt was for shooting him on the spot. You know the old superstition. I don't believe I could have stopped the shooting if I had commanded him ever so harshly. Of course the best plan was to have waited and discovered just what the dog's malady really proved to be. But my common-sense suggestions were worthless sound in the ears of the poor ignorant fellow. I was a tyrant to be put down at the muzzle of the gun. So he put me down-and shot your Lion. I hope you are not inconsolable.'

Reginald's face was bright with a smile as he held out toward her a hand which she could not choose but see and take. Her own hand was very cool and firm, but his had both an unwonted warmth and tremor.

'I believe,' he softly replied, 'that it must rest with you whether I am to be inconsolable or not

And then he came to an abrupt pause, for a high girlish voice was heard outside, and the next moment a slim young figure burst into the room.

'Why, Eloise,' exclaimed Beatrice, promptly moving towards the intruder. 'You have arrived a day earlier than we expected.'

Eloise laughed a shrill silvery laugh as she kissed Beatrice impulsively on either cheek. 'Yes, the Marksleys

were coming straight from Newport to our own hotel, so I couldn't miss the opportunity of having them take care of me instead of that stupid old Mrs. Osgood-Oh, there you are, you poor Reginald' (running up to the invalid and seizing his hand in her own gloved clasp). 'I've felt so dreadfully for you ever since I heard of it.

But you're ever so much better, aren't you? And you haven't lost flesh a bit; has he, Beatrice? You're just the same great big creature you used to be. A little bit paler, though, now I look well at you.'

Considerably paler, Miss Eloise might have thought, could she have compared Reginald's present appearance with what it had been just before her entrance. The bright blue eyes and the plump little face, rimmed with waves of yellowish hair, expressed a sort of funny superficial sympathy, as Miss Forbes seated herself on a section of the unoccupied lounge, still retaining the invalid's hand. And very probably she did not feel, through her intervening glove, how almost clammily cold that hand of Reginald's had now become.

Another week accomplished wonders for Reginald's sprained ankle. He was able, at its end, to dispense with the cane, and though still an imperfect walker, the evidence of his injury now decreased with daily rapidity. During this same week two letters had been exchanged between himself and his friend Wallace Wil

lard, recently returned from a considerable stay in Europe. The result of this correspondence was Mr. Willard's appearance at the house of his old friend.

Quick of manner, slim and rather unnoticeable in figure, possessing a face that suggested almost a decade more than his real age of thirty-two, Wallace Willard rarely impressed at first sight. His features were of good regularity, but his somewhat lean visage nullified their effect, being of a slightly yellowish colouring. He had inherited at an early age a sufficient competence to permit the indulgence of that extraordinary American eccentricity usually defined as being 'without a business.' Many years of his life had been spent in travel, and these same years had proved productive of much valuable social experience. He was a man with no special predominating tendency, but with a liberal appreciative inclination toward all that was worthy of a cultured taste, and of an educated intellect originally well above the common. He recognized the shortcomings of humanity, as the unprejudiced observer and the thinker, wholly freed from inherited bigotries, wholly exempt from all distorting touches of dogma, may alone recognize them. Coated, to those who first met him, with a light film of what might almost resemble cynicism, he was promptly found, by all whom this deceptive over-dress did not repel, to wear beneath it a serious mailwork of reflective soundness and moral

solidity. He had looked deeply enough into life to have discovered that what seem its baffling mysteries and entanglements are themselves a silent scorn of anything like sceptical approach; and while he was far from preserving any faith which might be called definite or positive, his respect for the very majesty of those insoluble problems constituting human existence, informed him with a calm and patient philosophic trust, full of lofty liberality and wise meditation.

Conversationally he knew how to make himself charming, and with a fresh rarity of charm, that the whole Ross household were not slow to discover and appreciate. Eloise should perhaps be excepted from the list of his more earnest admirers; for where it was a question of pleasing young bachelors she belonged to that class of feminine entertainers who would have no hesitation in scorning even the holy laws of hospitality themselves, provided she were not at all times rewarded with a good lion's share of notice.

'I don't dislike him-oh, not a bit! she told Reginald, one evening, while he and she were standing together on the starlit piazza, having left a family-group within-doors. But I feel (don't you know?) as if I were the merest cypher when he is present, and of course that bothers my vanity, or something of the sort, can't you understand!'

'I think I can understand,' Reginald said, with a smile that the young lady did not see.

But she detected a satiric ring in his tones and fired up quite vigorously. 'Oh, you can, can you? Well, no doubt I'm not fit to breathe in the same room with that prodigious wiseacre. He exhausts all the air. What made you follow me out?' (with a sudden lowering of the voice and a quick lifting of the eyes to his face, succeeded as rapidly by a downward look.) I wish you hadn't.'

It is possible that Reginald already wished very much the same thing. Since the first coming of Eloise Forbes into his mother's household, there had been a new incident force directed upon his life, whose effects he had himself been watching with a sort of disappointed wonder, at certain separate intervals during the past five years. The man somehow revolted from what his temperament seemed imperatively to ordain. While he was in Eloise's company his mind seemed to close every door of intellec

tual congeniality except that of a little antechamber, as it might be said, where trifling fancy and light pleasantry, and often random nonsense, gained free admission. That his feeling for Eloise should be dignified with the name of a passion, he sometimes made haughtiest mental denial; that it was a passion, dominating him with a tyranny as irresistible as distasteful, he now and then dejectedly confessed.

He had never come nearer to a complete victory over these self-despised impulses than just before Eloise's return. Had she remained away a few days longer, and had Beatrice given favourable answer to his suit, the change, he could not help believing, might have assumed a most permanent and resistant stability. Closer personal nearness to Constance, and those respectful caresses and pure fondlings that their engagement must sweetly have sanctioned, might have lighted with the real sacred flame an altar whose sculptured beauty alone needed this one illuminative grace. But now the altar seemed not only hopeless of the kindling touch; it had been overthrown as well. And who had been the iconoclast? A flippantminded girl, a piece of pink-and-white wilfulness, too well-dowered with mischief to be called innocent, and too shallow to make the charge of wickedness ever a just one! In proportion to the strength of Reginald's late rcsolution, now followed the strength of its reaction. 'I can do nothing,' he told himself, as these new days lapsed along. If I were a lesser man or a greater man, it might be well with me. As I now exist, there is but one course left: To go away. I have gone many times before. A year ago it was Europe; it shall be Europe again, and this time for an indefinite space.'

But he did not go away. Willard's visit as yet showed no signs of termination, and he indeed seemed holding Reginald at his host's word as regarded making a most extended stay. Meanwhile each new day only aug

mented the unhappy spell. More than once a certain bitterly despondent mood laid its black hand upon Reginald's soul. His self-mortification now appeared to take secret pleasure in assigning one grotesque and strangely imaginative cause to what, during all rational moments, he condemned as unpardonable weakness.

No wholesome effects had sprung from a confidence once made by Mrs. Ross to her son regarding the singular fancy with which she herself had been haunted. It is sure that the strong impression which that odd story relative to his brother Julian from the first made upon Reginald, had never been revived into more positive memorial colours than just at present.

The large neighbouring hotel numbered among its present guests a Mr. Alfred Austin, who very often strolled over, both mornings and evenings, for the apparent purpose of being pointedly civil to Eloise. He was a gentleman whom she had known for several years, meeting him rather frequently in town during the winter. He was tall, straight-limbed, with an oval face, pleasant grayish eyes and a scant blonde moustache. Escaping the charge of foppery, he nevertheless exhibited a daintiness of costume, a perceptible affectation of manner and a pronounced tendency to imitate prevailing fashions. Jealousy was beyond doubt wholly exempt from the unwilling toleration with which Regi

nald regarded him, after a few meetings. He deserved the name of wellinformed, in its most absolute sense. On many subjects he was positively redundant with facts; fluency seldom failed him; he sparkled at times with something that it would be hypercritical not to allow as wit; his stock of happy phrases perpetually showed itself: he was adroit at veiling his ignorance, very often under graceful epigram; he was a man who might shine for an hour or so where his intellectual betters would seem justly enough to merit the charge of dulness. But his measure was limited, and Reginald was not wrong, perhaps, in his rapid taking of it. I suppose the man is what ought to be called clever,' he told Willard one evening, while smoking a late cigar with his friend, after the ladies had disappeared; but for myself he compares with men of really interesting parts about the same as the dictionary would compare with any enjoyable piece of reading. By-the-by, Eloise asked him to make one of our little pic-nic to-morrow.'

Reginald was not wholly ill-pleased, however, that the little pic-nic in question had been made to include Mr. Austin's company. He had a dreary certainty that most of his own time would be given to Eloise, provided a party of four allowed him opportunities of unlimited tit-à-tête. And, to put the matter in its harshest terms, he was ashamed that Wallace Willard should have any such striking proof as might then be afforded, of how Eloise's society could attract him with so engrossing an efficiency. Hitherto he had managed to shroud from Willard, under a half-abstracted sort of carelessness, the spiritual servitude which bound him.

And so,

on the following morning, when Austin, with fresh-looking, blond demeanour, really appeared, Reginald's welcome wore a touch of cordiality no less insincere than explainable.

The party of five started on foot for

a certain charming spot called Green Hollow, which they reached after perhaps an hour of leisurely walking. On either side of the hollow, rose thick-wooded hills, one of which broke most beautifully at its base into rocky cavelike irregularities, of lichen-grown and fern-plumed picturesqueness. A boulder-broken stream foamed through the delightful vale, on its way toward lower lands.

The morning, though somewhat oppressively warm during their walk, left this cool monastic retreat almost untouched by its ardours. Everybody was sun-wearied on reaching the end of the walk, and everybody soon recovered under the sweet touch of a new refreshing atmosphere.

Two servants had accompanied the party, bearing liberally-filled hampers, and after nearly an hour of what perhaps struck more than one person as general conversation of a rather aimless order, the edibles being spread upon a tract of meadowy sward, cold chicken vied in its allurements with a savoury store of other dainties.

Austin was what his admirers (and such men always have devoted admirers) would have called in his best vein this morning. He told several sprightly stories, nearly all of which sparkled with some foreign reminiscence; he seemed bent upon infusing a gentle spirit of mirth into the party, notwithstanding the marked resistance that somehow met this noble attempt; and far from anything like monopoly of Eloise's society, he appeared even to avoid securing one. Finally, while the eating was in progress, he waxed despondent, declared himself unable to make anybody jolly,' and in one of his characteristic word-torrents, where all the brief sentences trod hot on each other's verbal heels, he poured forth amusing reproaches. Reginald and his friend. Willard now and then exchanged looks, as two calm-eyed sensible horses might do on witnessing the wild gambols of a colt.

'With what object do five people meet together as we are met now?' said Austin, brandishing a chickenleg loftily in one of his white womanish hands. Is it to look pensive over a waterfall, Miss Beatrice? Is it to smell our vinaigrette and wish we had not walked here, Miss Eloise? Is it to appear wisely absent-minded, Ross And Willard, is it to show even less appetite than conversation? Why let to-day's pic-nic get itself registered in our memories as a failure? If so, we shall shrink from all future pic-nics, and scent ennui in the very name of one. For myself I have done my best, but I have been grossly rebuffed. Yet never mind that; all social reformers have to run the gauntlet of contempt. Already having taken one glass of claret, I now proceed to accompany with more claret this yet-undevoured chicken-leg. After that, I shall probably have gained courage enough for the dreadful act of boldness which I meditate. What is this act of boldness? It is to storm your outworks of unsocial melancholy. It is to sing a comic song.-By Jove! how dark things are getting!'

'I should say, Mr. Austin,' now laughed Beatrice, 'that your comic. song will have to be sung in the midst of a thunder-storm, unless you rather expedite it.'

The clear, blue sky above them had indeed darkened during the past few minutes into thick-folded masses of purple cloud. One of those sudden storms to which our American summer is so often subject, had hurried up with startling velocity from the South-west. Low grumbles of thunder already sound in surly distinctness, and the gloom deepened with every

new moment.

'We shall catch it in about ten minutes,' exclaimed Reginald, springing from the ground; but his prophecy was an incorrect one; for in half that space the rain began to fall, and the two servants, abruptly deluged while endeavouring to replace the edibles.