ness which, had it ever power to charm and to fascinate him, must do so still.

Then she pinned on the disfiguring cap, and went out and sat down again before her writing-case and began to write rapidly and hastily, with a glad rosy flush coming and going upon her downbent face.

Why should we waste any more of our lives apart from each other? We have suffered too much and too long to care any longer for the empty conventionalities and the idle gossip of strangers who do not know what our life's story has been. I am prepared very gladly to be called heartless and disrespectful to poor Cecil's memory, and to be a nine days' wonder and scandal to my native county, if only by so doing I may but have you with me again. Dear Hugh; come back to me, for truly I have hungered and thirsted for the sight of you, for too many weary days, to bear absence from you with anything like patience, now that nothing more need stand between us forever. Our lives have been half wasted apart; let us not lose any more of the precious golden days which might be spent together. Darling, come back to me; do not give me the bitter humiliation of being rejected by you for the third time!

Nor does he.

Within a few months of the receipt of that letter, Hugh Fleming is in England again; and when a year is over since Cecil has been carried to his grave, he goes down to Sotherne one morning by the early train, and Juliet, and Mrs. Dawson, and Wattie, and Flora meet him in Sotherne church, just in their everyday clothes, only that Juliet has doffed her crape and wears a simple grey dress, plain as any nun's; the old vicar stands in the chancel with his spectacles on his nose and his open prayer-book in his hand, and a few villagers drop in to look and to wonder; and in this fashion these two, who have loved and suffered so long, are married at last to each other.

Of course, as she had prophesied, it was a nine days' scandal to the neighbourhood, who knew nothing of her life; but to Cecil's family she had told her story, and they forgave her, and were not offended with her for marrying the man she had loved for so longand that was enough for Juliet.

Another distress to the county was that Colonel and Mrs. Fleming did not go away for a wedding tour, like all other decent and respectable brides and bridegrooms, but that, shaking hands with the little wedding party at the church door, they walked off together arm-in-arm up the hill to the house, where they immediately took up their abode without any sort of outward rejoicing, and with no thought of going away even for a week.

One more glimpse of my heroine before we say good-bye to her. She is standing on the lawn with her husband a few days after her marriage, and together they are watching a glowing golden winter sunset shedding its glory over the landscape below.

It is just such another evening as the one with which my story

opened, only that, in place of the golden-heated glow of October, it is now the paler but scarcely less lovely light of the finest and warmest of February days.

Crocuses and snowdrops are springing up in the garden-beds around them, and blackbirds and thrushes are awaking after their long winter silence to welcome the coming spring with a very concert of joy.

A new life dawns upon the earth. A new life, too, is opening for the husband and wife. Juliet, with a deep thankfulness in her sobered face, is looking out with solemnly glad eyes over the familiar scene, and Hugh is looking at her face.

'Darling,' he says, drawing her to him with a sudden flash of tenderness, it is good to be together at last, is it not? We have suffered so much in the past

6

Ah, it is more than I deserve!' she interrupts quickly, resting a soft rosy cheek against his own. "When I think of all the wicked things I once said and thought, can I ever repent enough! We have suffered, Hugh-but I have also sinned!'

'Sweet sinner!' he answers playfully, and lays his lips upon hers. Where is the man living who would not forgive to so fair a penitent the sin that was sinned for love's sake!'

BELGRAVIA

MAY 1877.

By Proxy.

BY JAMES PAYN.

THE

CHAPTER I.

ON THE CANAL.

HE time is spring-time-the scene the north of China; or rather that north-eastern portion of the Celestial Empire which the few Europeans who have visited it call North. At the date of which we write, it was a much rarer matter to explore the plains of Keang-Soo, the district lying to the north-west of Shanghae, than even now; it was an excursion which, on the part of the 'PakQuei-Tye' or 'Foreign Devils,' required money, courage, an armed guard, and above all a quietness of demeanour and conduct in the presence of much that was irritating, and more that was ludicrous, which all Europeans, and we fear we must add especially our military fellow-countrymen, do not possess. English officers in particular, who have been accustomed to the natives of India, are apt to get into trouble with those of China; the character of 'Pandy' being very different from that of John Chinaman, and especially of John Chinaman on his own dunghill-far inland, where the Barbarians' -that is to say, all persons belonging to civilised communitiesare held not only cheap but contemptible. The fine old quotation, omne ignotum pro magnifico, is in this instance sadly out of place; for though the Chinese know nothing whatever of our particular 'tribute-bearing nation,' except that it consists of men without pig-tails governed by a lady with large feet,' they do not despise us one whit the less on that account. From the days when the unconscious Lord Macartney went up the Peiho with Ambassador bearing tribute from the country of England' in Chinese upon his flag, until now, the Celestial People have laboured under false impressions of us which induce the circumstances of what, in domestic scenes at our police courts, is termed 'aggravation;' and when

VOL. XXXII. NO. CXXVII.