within the hampers, were forced to quit their task and join the other portion of the party, dryly ensconced beneath those rocky coverts whose overjutting ridges afforded ample shelter. Eloise, nervous from the first approach of the storm, uttered more than one terrified cry as vivid lightning-flashes illumined the almost solid sheets of down-rushing rain, and were promptly followed by furious roars of thunder. Reginald and Beatrice were on either side of the frightened girl, and to Reginald there was something like a direct mockery of his own position in the intensity of contrast between the separate demeanours of Eloise and her companion. One face wore a childish terror that well suited the occasional plaintive cries issuing from its lips; the other face was a trifle paler than usual, perhaps, but full of sweet, serious composure, suggesting a natural awe restrained by a gentle though firm sufficiency of self-possession.

The lightning at length abated, and both rain and wind palpably lessened. There was even manifest a certain brightening of the sky, too, when suddenly a fresh mass of yet blacker cloud brought a deeper dimness, and new peals of thunder alternated with fresh and intensely brilliant flashes. Eloise's fears, diminished by what she believed to be the end of the storm, were now re-awakened with more than their first force. She threw her arms about Beatrice, uttering wretched little cries, and buried her face impetuously against the other's bosom. Many soft words of comforting assurance were spoken by Beatrice, in tones so full of womanly strength, of unconscious placid superiority, that once more the same mockery of contrast struck with telling effect upon Reginald.

And now there occurred, after a momentary lull in the tempest, one flash of such livid luridness that every eye which met it involuntarily closed, while with simultaneous rapidity there pealed forth a great crashing outburst to which the other

thunder-claps had almost been of slight volume.

That struck somewhere near !' exclaimed Willard, as the hollow reverberations were yet rolling boomingly away. And indeed, not many yards distant, a large hickory, standing somewhat alone and far overtopping all adjacent foliage, showed to every eye a great splintered gash through its midst and an utter ruin of several stalwart branches. Eloise, however, should be excepted from those who really witnessed the effect of this terrible bolt; for her condition had at once become wildly hysterical, and her moaning screams resounded with shrill sharpness, while she clutched Beatrice in an actual agony of tearful alarm. The storm at once permanently decreased, and both peals and flashes showed signs of its pacified condition; but Eloise, her noisy spasms having ceased, now seemed overcome by a complete prostration, like a vaguelyconscious swoon. Beatrice not only bathed her temples with a raindrenched handkerchief and performed every attentive office which the occasion would allow, but repeatedly assured Alfred Austin, in low placid words, that she felt convinced the attack would soon pass over, that Eloise had before suffered in much the same way, and that there was no occasion for the least anxiety. Austin was the only one of the party who exhibited any marked worriment at the sufferer's condition, and his nervousness and pallor were both plainly evident. Reginald remained watchful, making no comment. Wallace Willard, ready in whatever suggestions of relief occurred to him, seemed to partake of the same tranquil coolness that marked Beatrice.

In quarter of an hour the storm had wholly departed, and the sun was once more shining upon drenched foliage and sodden country. All were

so confident that Mrs. Ross would have caused a vehicle to be sent after the party as soon as the weather per

mitted, that the idea of despatching one of the servants to the house was only momentarily entertained. And, true enough, the vehicle at length appeared. By this time Eloise had grown much stronger, and was even able to profess herself 'dreadfully ashamed,' which she did with so much pretty humility that the most unsympathetic observer would have had little heart to feel toward her anything except indulgent pity.

II.

Six months had passed, and the same party, after a continued period of separation, were again to be found in Mrs. Ross's country-house. They had assembled there to spend Christmas. The spaciously comfortable mansion had been decorated with a charming collection of greens throughout nearly all of its attractive chambers. Good cheer reigned everywhere, with a sweet sovereignty. It was Christmas day, briskly cold out of doors, but free from the snowy accompaniments common to this period. The household had met at a sumptuous-looking six o'clock dinner, which was still in progress. Reginald had scarcely spent six weeks at home during the months since we last saw him. It was somehow understood that he had been passing most of his time in New York, though he had been oddly reticent regarding his frequent and prolonged departures. For three days past, since the two guests, Austin and Willard had arrived, his manner had seemed to everyone unusually taciturn and preoccupied. To-day, during dinner, he scarcely spoke ten sentences. occupants of the dining-room were all rising from dessert, when he whispered in Willard's ear:

The

'I want to have a short talk with you, Wallace.'

A few moments afterwards he and Wallace had quitted the house by a rear door and were strolling side-andside along one of the more retired

paths of the lawn in the early winter starlight. It was not till now that Reginald gave his companion the least clue regarding what was to be the subject of their conversation.

Wallace,' he rather measuredly began, looking straight before him, 'I hope you won't attempt to contradict me when I tell you that I am the weakest man of your acquaintance.'

I shall require proof, however,' was the slow and rather dry answer.

'Proof!' exclaimed Reginald, looking all about him for a second as though to make sure of there being no unseen listener. 'Good heavens, my condition fairly teems with proof! You know I had been away for a little time before the accident from which you found me recovering last summer.' "You had been fishing, I think you said-yes.'

'I had been falling in love.'
'Ah.'

'I had been falling in love-well, let me say it all-with two women. 'That is serious. Was one a fisherman's wife and the other his ·?' 'Don't jest, please. I was never more serious than now. Can't you see it?'

If Willard had not seen it before, the look that Reginald here turned upon him was, indeed, well calculated to settle all doubt. No matter how long I was away, Wallace,' he went on, and no matter what opportunities I have had of fully observing these two women. Some of the facts are these I have seen enough of both to understand their natures pretty thoroughly. Both are my social equals; both are unmarried. I love one-he paused now, and laid his hand heavily on Willard's shoulder, while his restless eyes dwelt for a moment on the other's face in solemn and appealing fixity-'I love one, Wallace, with my heart, and one with my soul. This has a very high flown sound to you, no doubt, but it is the only lucid way to put the matter, after all.'

A silence, during which the two friends walked slowly along, in the crisp, keen air. Willard suddenly slipped his arm into that of Reginald. 'Describe to me,' he said, 'your feelings towards her whom you say that you love with the heart."

They are not complicated,' was the deliberative answer, touched with a sort of dignified melancholy. When we are together I am simply very much pleased. A strong attractive force has me in its grasp. If I attempt to find a reason for this charm I usually finish by profound and regretful self-contempt. There is between us no congeniality of intellect. I will even admit to you that the woman is common-place, whimsical, of a small nature. I am like one bewitched, yet fully cognizant of the spell-power binding him. If I marry this woman my happiness must last, only so long as that spell-power continues unchanged. Should it cease, there will be no barrier against myself-contempt assuming wider than personal limits. Only, I believe that it will last. I believe that the influence of this woman over me is an indestructible fact, and founded upon no fleeting impression of the senses. I can safely tell you that satiety will never make headway against it, though on this point you will probably feel like presenting objections.'

Willard offered no reply for some little space, as the two men still

walked onward. His head remained meditatively drooped, while Reginald turned more than one swift inquiring glance at his half-hidden face.

And the other?' he at length questioned.

Reginald's voice had loudened when his prompt answer now found utterance, and its melancholy of tone had deepened likewise. Through all that he said there seemed to surge a steady undercurrent of self-reproach, even of confessional self-abasement.

'She is a woman in ten thousandclever, capable, courageous, brimming

with the sweetest charities, looking at life with the broad-sightedness of some deeply thoughtful man, yet mingling with her view a sympathetic intuition exquisitely feminine. I feel that if I married her I should be a wretch not to become the happiest of men! And

'And yet you would probably be the most miserable.'

'No, no! I did not say that. I do not think it.'

Before answering, Willard brought his friend to a dead stand still. There was a half-smile on his lean, worldlywise sort of face, and a few tiny wrinkles seemed, in the bluish dimness where he stood, to have come into sudden view beneath either eye. He drew his arm from Reginald's and began to speak, with placid distinct

ness.

'It is fair to suppose, my dear fellow, that you have not put this confidence in me without a certain feeling that my advice may be of some value. But if I am wrong, here, at least this advice can do no harm, and I am going to give it. The woman of these two whom you love is evidently she whom you mentioned first. What you described to me regarding your sentiments toward her was undoubtedly the description of a passion. To gratify this passion may be an imprudence which your after-life will heartily repent; I don't pretend, on such a point, to prophesy affirmatively or negatively. I have seen too many marriages of this sort turn out well, and too many turn out ill, not to confess that the dissimilarity of both temperament and intellect between a wedded pair is one of those questions as yet quite defiant of inductive reasoning. The accumulation of instances does not seem to give much help of an a posteriori kind to the social observer. Perhaps when pure science has made more psychological headway we shall be able to match men and women one with another as accurately as we now match certain meats and certain sauces.

But I don't want to seem flippant, as your look informs me that you think me. All that I would suggest is this: either marry or do not marry the woman whom you have told me that you love. But by no means dream of marrying the beautiful-souled creature whom you respect so emphatically and esteem with such a chivalrous warmth of admiration. No man ever falls in love through his conscience, or from a sense of advisability. And least of all, my dear Reginald, a man of your somewhat peculiar nature.'

Nature!' exclaimed Reginald, with a touch of such absolute despair in face and voice that a pang of involuntary pity shot through Willard's heart. What is my nature, for Heaven's sake? I sometimes think I am a man born without any !'

The twilight had become darkness when Wallace Willard rejoined the little group within doors. Reginald did not accompany him. He was yet walking about the lawns, having been left alone at his own suggestion. Reliance upon the soundness of Willard's views and belief in the excellence of his friend's rarely-proffered advice had grown almost a second nature with him during the years of their long acquaintance; but he could not now bring himself to place trust in either. That the declaration of his love to Eloise should have come so near being sanctioned by a man of Willard's keenly perceptive judgment, roused in him a passionate yearning to make the words he had just heard an excuse for giving sentiment fresh liberty and revelling in its unrestrained gratification. But co-existent with this yearning arose an indignant unwillingness, which seemed to cry out at the commission of a sacrilege. memory perpetually reverted to past events, and that satire of contrast so plainly observable between these two women was like a reproachful indexfinger, pointing, across months of fool-!

His

ish hestitation, at other equally fair experiences in the sweet grandeur of Beatrice Sedgwick's character. Willard had been confident enough in his prophecy of future unhappiness resulting from any such union, yet Willard was after all but a fallible seer. And as regarded this abnormal fascination exerted by Eloise, how did he know but that rigid spiritual disdain of it might accomplish wonders hereafter? His reflections, indeed, ran on into angry syllogism, and he declared that all men could crush out a passion unworthy of their moral natures, that he was a man, and that therefore the hope of ultimate victory must not be thought delusive; though whether any marked flaw existed or no in the poor fellow's major premise may be a matter of doubt to some who read these chronicled meditations. Granted, he went on, that his love for Eloise was a weakness ludicrously disproportionate to much else within him that was sound and healthful. There he would be the hospital for his own disease, and perhaps with an ultimately curative effect or the private asylum, to put it a little more strongly, for his own distressing insanity!

Having reached this stoic stage in his musings, Reginald passed into the house. The idea now occurred to him of entering the library, a certain room on the ground-floor, richly stored with bookshelves of his literary preferences and antipathies, and of taking down some favourite author with whom to spend, as a sort of desperate, though unsocial makeshift, an hour or two of the evening. He had nearly reached the doorway of this room, when the sound of a voice-a woman's voice, speaking with much vibrant clearness -told him, to his sharp surprise, that the library had other occupants. A second later he was aware that the voice belonged to Beatrice; and while in doubt whether to turn away or to make his presence known, he had become a listener to the following words:

'I can say, without any consciencequalms, that until I met you I had no experience of what it is to love as doubtless every woman has loved once in her lifetime. And yet, since you have made perfect candour between us the order of the evening, I... I think I had best repose in you a confession.' By all means do so.' Wallace Willard's voice! possible that no thought of his objectionable situation occurred to Reginald at this moment. Astonishment was alone uppermost within him, as Beatrice now proceeded, rather hesitatingly :

6

Is it

During several weeks before you came here, Reginald, as you have heard, was suffering from the effects of an accident. We were constantly thrown in each other's society. . . Often I would spend hours at his side, talking with him, or reading aloud. His mother

had often hinted to me, in a hundred ways more or less pointed, that if we two should ever care for each other, such an occurrence would prove the gratification of a very dear wish. Until then I had never believed that Reginald felt for me other than a most ordinary regard; but repeatedly, during those days of his convalescence, I fancied that I discovered in him signs of an actual passion. And it was great pain for me to believe that I had inspired any such intenser feeling; for

let me say it most solemnly. . . I had none to bestow in return. But my love for Mrs. Ross, my deep respect for her wishes. my strong sense of duty toward a friend who. .'

'I know,' the other voice broke in, with soft and sympathizing tones; 'I understand perfectly. You would have accepted Reginald at that time if he had asked you to marry him? Or did he ask, and did you refuse?'

Those were the last words of this conversation to which Reginald listened. Gliding away, he paced up and down the hall for a long time. There was no suspicion in his soul that Wallace Willard, by his recent advice,

His

had played false, having guessed the concealed truth. Unjust as such a suspicion would have been, many a man, under circumstances like the present, would have been prone to foster it. But no thought of the kind troubled Reginald. He simply felt an excited over-glowing sense of liberty. The inexorable finger of duty no longer pointed toward a certain path. If his mind reverted at all toward Willard it was only that he felt for his friend a genial instinctive gratitude. Willard had forever settled the tormenting problem. By falling in love with Beatrice and winning her love in return, this man had freed himself, Reginald, from all future excuses for doing otherwise than his emotional part had long so powerfully prompted. course was clear now, and it seemed literally paved with self-justification. Toward Beatrice fate had lastingly sealed his lips; and not the most rigid casuist, knowing every struggle through which he had fought his way, could have blamed him now for letting this residual need profit by which his spiritual demand had irrevocably lost. Perhaps ten minutes later Reginald heard the door of the sitting-room, which was situated considerably further toward the outer entrance of the hall, slowly unclose. He chanced, at this time, to be considerably distant from the opening door, having sunk into an easy chair midway between library and sitting-room. But now he saw Eloise come forth, and a single glance at her face showed him its unwontedly flushed condition.

Reginald's heart gave a quick bound. A sudden colour showed itself on his face, and his eyes took a rich, softening light. It occurred to him that Eloise had never looked prettier than now, as she came and stood before him, with her blonde hair waved in crisp disorder about her fresh young face, and wearing a great pink rose in the bosom of her white-muslin dress.

'Are you alone?' he asked. 'I mean, has Austin left you?'