Or the foregoing history Maud had gathered only the most general outlines, but they were enough to satisfy her that her object was gained. For the first day she had there to rest content-the more so as the end of her interview with Samuel Foote had been unhappily cut short by the appearance of a fisher-lad on a cobbling errand.

This was all very well for the first day, but not for the second. With the return of daylight came new anxieties. Christopher Swan, to be sure, was found. But supposing he were to be lost again, and with him the clue to the

copper's whereabouts? For no particulars upon this point had yet been reached at the abrupt termination of the interview. When she thought of the look of panic in the shoemaker's one eye, a dread came over Maud lest her very next visit to Wheal Tally-ho should find him flown once more -hunted away by his terror of the law, and disbelieving in her promise of protection. Such an end to so carefully conducted a scheme would be like foundering within sight of land, and at the mere thought of this possibility, Maud felt herself grow chill with apprehension. At any price the danger must be averted, and the only step which seemed quite certain to avert it was to put a guard upon the shoemaker—if not, indeed, to secure his person. This, a very brief reflection assured Maud, she could not do unaided. Events, as she was wise enough to acknowledge, had got beyond her single-handed

control. By the time breakfast was over, she had made up her mind that there was nothing to be gained, and possibly everything to be lost, by withholding the truth any longer from those most interested in it; and as a resolve with Maud was synonymous with immediate action, the breakfast things were not yet quite cleared away, and Hal was barely installed with his nurse in the inn garden, when already Miss Epperton might have been seen walking rapidly along the road which skirted the bay towards Gullyscoombe House.

It was a white and dismal road, unshaded by any tree and unmarked by any special feature. On the one side the ground fell away towards the cliffs; on the other, the waste hillside rose abruptly, only occasionally broken by some small stony field laboriously reclaimed from the wilderness and jealously walled in. A thin and uncertain bloom of furze ran through the grey and the brown of the hills, crossing and recrossing itself, and breaking into new combinations of pattern, like a thread of dull gold dull gold running through the web of a sad-coloured garment. The only moving thing in sight was a cart laden with seaweed; plodding its way along far ahead, and shaking down fragmonts of its cargo on to the road, where the wet coils lay and glistened like some sort of shining black snake.

Maud had believed that this seaweed-cart was the only moving thing on the road; but presently,

from behind this shifting screen. there energed another figure quite distinct from that of the driver, and walking, moreover, straight towards her. It was the figure of a tall man. as she could see immediately. When she had gone a dozen paces farther. she could see that the man was young; another dozen paces. and the man was fairhaired; a dozen more. and she be gan to think that the man might be Germaine; yet another dozen, and she knew that it was. Her first instinct was to turn and fly. A meeting with Germaine tête-à-tête had not entered into her plans for to-day, and somehow this very natural occurrence had not suggested itself to her even as a possibility. In the hurry of recent events, she had had no time to come to a final conclusion as to how he should be accosted: whether all misunderstandings should be ignored, or whether there would be any necessity for her to play the penitent. But it was clear that some resolution must very quickly be come to-for, of course, that idea of flight had been no more than a half-hysterical impulse, overcome on the moment; and, of course, Maud was still pursuing her way, though her pace had slackened. By this a little time might be gained-a few minutes more in which to consider her course. Was this to be a reconciliation scene, or was it to be a business interview? Was Christopher Swan to be the theme of the conversation, or was it their relations to each other which were first to be put on a distinct footing There were certain prudential considerations which seemed to point out the advisability of not hurrying into a reconciliation before this affair of the copper had been sifted to its bottom, and Maud began by inclining very

seriously to the business side of the question. But it was a Lotice able fact that the nearer she found herself to Germaine, and the more plainly could she distinguish his features, and the gold of his hair, and the blue of his eyes, the harder did she find it to keep her attention fixed on the more practical aspects of the case, or to remind herself of the measure of uncertainty which still hovered around the future of his family. Not long after she first perceived him, she saw him stand still and look along the road with his hand shading his eyes. "He has noticed me,' said Maud. "Will he recognise me? Yes"-for, as he dropped his hand, he suddenly quickened his pace. "No, he can't have recoguised me," she added, in an instant. "He is walking slower again-slower than before."

And so, on the naked, white road, without a tree as cover, the two advanced upon each other, drawing inevitably nearer, but the steps of each imperceptibly lagging more heavily, as though they were loath to meet. They were abreast before they stopped. The breadth of the road was between them; and as they stopped, they did not make any of the conventional signs of recognition: they simply stood still, as something inevitable, and stared across the road, rather helplessly, at each other. By this time a paramount curiosity had taken the place of all prudential considerations. For the moment, possibly only a brief moment, yet not the less absolutely, Maud was simply a woman in face of her lover, and everything resolved itself into the one question, "Does he love me still?" As she looked at him she was trying to smile, but her lips were pale. The absence of surprise upon Germaine's faco filled her with dismay. He must,

after all, have recognised her when he shaded his eyes to look along the road have recognised her, and yet not flown to meet her. What could this portend? was she who spoke first.

It

"Are these Choughshire manners?" she began, with another attempt at a smile; "or does the sea-air affect the sight?"

"The sight!" repeated Germaine, stupidly. He showed no inclination to cross the road. His eyes, indeed, were upon her face, but she wondered why they were so desperately sad.

"Are you aware that, if I had not stopped, you would have cut me dead?"

"I beg your pardon; I am very rude, I am very stupid," stammered Germaine, growing scarlet. He pulled off his tweed cap, and managed first to drop it in the dust, and then to put it on wrong side foremost. Somehow this relieved Maud; it was like the old Germaine of Kippendale - the old Germaine who used to tread on her toes and adore her with his eyes. She breathed more freely; this was the Germaine she had always been able to twist round her little finger.

"It is as crooked as possible," she cried, with one of her Kippendale laughs. "You have given a great deal too much of it to the right ear, and a great deal too little to the left," and she laughed again, rather loudly; but Germaine did not seem to see the joke. Determined, apparently, to stick to his side of the cart-ruts, he flattened the cap more hopelessly with one pat of his big paw, and then waited silently, his eyes now fixed on the black sea-weed snake that lay in a gleaming twist between them.

Maud's eyes hung on him for one minute, and it was borne in upon her that this sham fencing

between them was as useless as it was torturing.

"You were going to Floundershayle?" she asked in a different tone.

"Yes," said Germaine, "I was.”

"Was it to-to see me?" The question slipped out, quite regardless of her will, and with a touch of deprecation that seemed to plead almost humbly that the answer should be "Yes."

"No," said Germaine, stolidly yet sadly; "I was going to the post-office."

"And yet you knew that I was at Floundershayle?"

"Yes, I knew it, because Frances told me you were coming."

"And you would have passed the door of the inn without taking two steps aside to shake hands with me?"

"No," said Germaine, "I wouldn't.”

"Ah!" she said breathlessly, her pleading eyes still fixed upon his downcast face, "then you

would have come to me?"

"I didn't mean that," said Germaine, grinding the sea-weed snake into the dust with his stick. "I mean, that to go to the post-office I haven't got to pass the inn-door.”

Maud looked away with a groan. This was indeed the Germaine of old, but this time there was no comfort in the thought.

"What did you come for?" he asked abruptly, still operating with his stick upon the coil of sea-weed. "I came as caretaker to little Hal Wyndhurst," said Maud, quickly. An instant's reflection had assured her that it was wiser to abide by the version which had originally been given out as the motive of her journey. She therefore gave the account of Sir Ambrose Cathcart's curious prescription.

Germaine listened with his eyes

"Because you once told me something that was not true." "Because I was once driven to do so, you mean," and she laughed uneasily. "I suppose you are talking of what I told you of—of my aunt's illness at the time I left Kippendale?"

"Yes, I am talking of that. You said afterwards that it was all an invention."

Didn't you see that it was my only course } said Maud, with quickening breath," my only course-in mercy to you?"

"But it was an invention, was it not?" persisted Germaine, with gentle doggedness.

Maud threw up her hands in exasperation.

"Yes, in heaven's name! it was an invention. And do you know what drove me to invent it?"

"No," said Germaine; "I only know that you told me a lie.”

"A lie! a lie!" cried Maud, putting her hands to her ears. "How glib we all are with that word-a lie! How smart we all are about marking our neighbours with that brand-a lie! So-andso has called a thing black that was white, or square that was round. Never mind his motives; never mind the circumstances; never mind that the truth would have been brutal; never mind the pain which the innocent makeshift has saved: quick! the brand! and let So-and-so be marked a liar in the face of all his fellow-men.for ever after."

"I don't understand all that," said Germaine, as Maud caught her breath; "but I know that to

"But if there was no other way If would listen to no reason? you If I felt that I must go, and go suddenly and quickly, does that weigh not a feather in the balance?"

"But you said what was not true," repeated Germaine.

She

"If I loved you, Germaine," cried Maud, with a break in her voice,-"if I loved you all the time, and if I was flying from myself?" For the last few minutes Maud had been slowly drawing across the road towards him. stood close before him now, and her eyes, drowned in tears, sought his. Alarm had been rising within her for some little time; but it was only now, as his patient gaze met hers, that there flashed upon her the possibility, the bare possibility, of her quest being vain and her cause being lost. For a moment her heart stood still, but in the next she had rallied her forces and redoubled the languishing fire of her eyes. Was it indeed conceivable, that with all this beauty and all this passion brought to bear straight upon him, this country-bumpkin youth could hold out much longer?

"Germaine !" sobbed Maud"Germaine!" and she put her hand on his arm. "Don't you hear me?"

"I hear you," said Germaine, with his face still averted:

"True!" he said, turning upon her with shining eyes and heaving breast; "do you tell me that I have not been true? I have been too true. I have believed everything, but it is over now," he said, dropping his voice; "I can believe nothing more." He looked so masterful in his sudden movement and with his proud gaze, that Maud felt a new pang. At that moment she could almost have married him penniless. With all her cleverness she had mistaken him all along, perhaps because a nature so elaborately trained as hers was morally unable to do justice to a nature so simple as his. There had always been a touch of contempt in her affection; she had overvalued his credulity and undervalued his intellect.

"Yes," she said, "you believed too much; that was the mistake." "I believed you were an angel," said Germaine, brokenly.

"Exactly. And when you found out I was not, you put me down as the opposite, instead of calling me simply a woman. Oh, you men! you men! Will nothing but extremes do for you? Does not being an angel necessarily mean that you are a devil And because you have not got wings, will nothing serve but that you must have horns?" She was trying again to smile, but Ger

maine only shook his head with a perplexed air.

"I can't follow what you say— I am not clever enough; and I don't know either what has made you change your mind back again about-about me. I only know that you have told me a lie, and that I could never believe you again-never, never!" he cried passionately. "I don't know how it is," he went on, with his brows drawn together as though in painful thought, "I don't think I can explain it, but perhaps if I had not loved you so much, so very much-if I had not thought you so perfect-I could have stood it better. If it had been any one else, perhaps I might have been able to forgive.

But the shock was too great; the change, — I could never get used to it—not in you," stumbled on Germaine, growing very hot in the endeavour to make his meaning clear. "I thought you were without a speck, without a flaw.

Don't cry," he

said piteously-"don't cry; it breaks my heart!" For Maud had her hands pressed to her face and was sobbing helplessly.

"If it breaks your heart you must love me still," she gasped.

"Yes," sighed Germaine, perplexed, "I am afraid I love you still."

"Then take me back-oh, take me back! Believe me, trust me, give me another chance!"

"After you have once deceived me?" said Germaine, opening his eyes wide. "I could not, I could never believe you again. My faith in you is gone. It's like I don't know what it's like; it's like a tree that has been cut down; there is only a stump of it now. The stump can't grow again. Another tree may grow, perhaps, but it won't be the same thing; it won't be my faith in you.'

He