had never discovered in them before. It was wonderful how perfect the opportunity was, as it dawned upon her bit by bit. Here had been two people asking themselves which way to turn-two hands groping about in the dark, when all they had to do was to clutch each other for mutual support. It must have been her good angel-or her bad one-that had inspired her not to snub Mr Carbury and send him away. Charity for once had truly been its own reward.

Oh, Mr Carbury," exclaimed Maud, as she returned to her chair straight opposite to him, "I have made such a mistake! I told you just now that Sir Peter's return was nothing to me, instead of thanking you so much for bringing me the intelligence. I didn't quite understand it then, but I see it all now—I see it all quite clearly before me. The ways of Providence are strange. Do you believe in fate, Mr Carbury? I do; and I believe it is no use trying not to do a thing when it is destined that you are to do it."

Mr Carbury stared at her in perplexity for a moment, and then, with some vague idea that Miss Epperton was not quite in her right mind, made an undetermined movement towards his hat. She saw it at once.

"Don't go away," she said, quickly. "You have been sent me in the very nick of time. I have not half explained to you the interest I feel in your case. You must let me help you. That was another mistake that I made when I said that I could not help you. I can do so very easily."

Mr Carbury said nothing, but looked at her with some suspicion. "Wait; you must give me a minute to disentangle the threads,

there are so many, and they get so mixed." Then to herself she continued: "Yes, that is the way; that will work; I believe that will answer." "Mr Carbury," she said aloud, "would you like to be put in the way of earning the eternal gratitude of Lady Baby and all her relations?"

"I don't want their gratitude," said Carbury, sullenly.

"Not even if it prove a stepping-stone to your purpose?" "My purpose? What on earth do you mean by my purpose?"

"The one for which you left London. It was to try again that you came down here, was it not?"

Carbury started bolt - upright. "I am not thinking of doing anything of the sort. At least,-I mean that I left London without any such purpose in my mind."

"Then you are a greaterpardon me-fool than I should have taken you for. Such a combination of circumstances ! Such a situation ! Such a chance! "

"I don't understand you"You shall presently. Love may be awakened by gratitude. may it not?"

"And how is this gratitude to be awakened?" asked Carbury in the most ungracious of tones.

"By playing Providence to them. I meant to do it myself, but I yield to you the whole honour and glory. I believe I have let slip the secret to you already, but Ì have let it slip to no one else, so its market-value is still intact." And then she very briefly told him of the old shoemaker on the moor and the discovery she had made. "I make you a present of the secret," she concluded, "and along with it I make you a present of the fate of the entire Bevan

family. Use it as your feelings vll direct. If with that weapon in your hand you cannot extort from Fate what you want, you are too great a bungler to be pitied; I wash my hands of you."

Before she had done speaking Carbury was pacing the room in an excitement which he vainly attempted to mask. He had spoken the truth, or at least as much of the truth as he was aware of, when he said that he had left London without any intention of "trying again"; but since he had left Lon

don there had been that vision on the cliff, and from that moment he had known that merely to feast his eyes upon her humiliation would never satisfy the passion that was tearing his soul. He was a weaker if not exactly a more mercifully inclined man than he had been but a few hours back. This hope, flashed so dexterously into his eyes, was fast upsetting his senses. This chance pushed right into his hand, would it be possible to resist it?

"But if she-if she cares for him," he said at last with an effort, "what good will all that do? Does she care for him?" he abruptly inquired, standing still before Maud.

"Of course she cares for him," was Maud's serene reply. "Wait a minute," as his face darkened"I am not done yet. Have you ever heard of a girl of seventeen who was not ready to care for a walking-stick, as long as the thing had a well-cut coat over it and a pair of lips wherewith to propose to her? Your coat is quite as well cut as Sir Peter's; ergo, your chances are quite as good."

"Then why

Why was he the favoured one and not you? Because he was first in the field,-voilà tout."

Carbury looked down intently into her face. "Will you swear to me that this is your conviction? Will you swear that you have no reason to suppose that her feeling for Wyndhurst is anything deeper. than this-than the sort you have just described ?"

For just one little instant Maud hesitated,-just one little doubt flickered across her mind. Up to this moment her treachery had not been very deep; she was almost quite sure of her own theory; she honestly saw no reason why Mr Carbury should not yet cut out Sir Peter. And yet, there had been moments,-lights on Lady Baby's face, shadows in Lady Baby's eyes,-bah! after all, she was but a child, and no child ever cries for long.

"As many oaths as you like," she laughed. "Sir Peter was a new toy, and when the varnish was rubbed off she threw him away, and now that he is gone she would like to have him back again; that is not love, that is the contrariness' of human nature. Give her a newer toy and the old one will be forgotten."

Carbury had resumed his pacing of the room, but his step was now more hurried and the pulses in his temples hammered feverishly. If she did not love him-and must not Miss Epperton know her own sex and her own friend?-then indeed a new light would have fallen on the situation; at worst it would be but a fair race between himself and Wyndhurst,-always supposing that he should really resolve to take the field again ;could the result be doubtful? Laurence Carbury did not think so, at any rate not at this moment. As he restlessly paced the little inn-parlour from end to end, Maud's arguments poured into his

ears, smoothing out his ruffled vanity and pointing out to him the peculiar advantages of this new position. in which she proposed to place him. It was necessary to do so if he were to be her ally, her unwitting and unconscious ally, as she had already determined that he should be. Neither was the task a very hard oue, consider ing the man she had to deal with, and considering the woman she was. The revulsion of feeling brought by the last hour had paralysed her conscience and hardened her heart to a stone. All the evil instincts in her were awake, and had trampled down all the good instincts into a corner where they could neither stir nor cry out, much as the mutinous crew of a ship may fall upon the right commander and his supporters, and having put them in irons and battened down the hatchways, usurp the guidance of the ship for a time.

"If only it wasn't so confoundedly like a thing in a play," reflected Carbury as he listened. "And yet if it's the only way in which the thing is to be done, I'll do it; by —, I'll do it!"

Nothing perhaps so distinctly showed the violence of the shock which had convulsed his nature as that he should not scorn to play the family saviour. Even his supreme self was eclipsed; he had reached that state of mind when a muan no longer cares how he gets a thing, so long as he gets it; nor. on what ternis he is taken, so long as he is taken at all. Presently, in the midst of his walk, he turned aside and picked up his hat.

Maud watched him with an amused smile. "If I do not stop you," she said, "I do believe that you will go straight off to Gullyscoombe,"

Well," he collly inquired, "and if I did?”

Maud struck her forehead. "How like a man! Why, don't you sce that in that way you are simply throwing your chances by handfuls out of the window? Don't you know that you are ever so much more likely to succeed if you go in by the back door instead of by the front? Bless the man, that's not the way to do it at all!"

"I never said that I intended to do it at all," remarked Carbury, in his most ill-tempered tone.

"The way is to find out where she walks," continued Maud calmly, disregarding the interruption; "it will probably be somewhere near the sea. So much the better, as nothing makes a better background than waves; you cannot fail to have a halo of poetry about you. Meet her alone, of course. What you will say to her, I think I can safely leave to you. But just one hint; the more you can manage to resemble the hero of a three-volume novel, the better it will be. She will probably be reading one when you come across her among the rocks, and all will depend upon how you compare with the lover in those printed pages. You have oue immense advantage mon with most novel-heroes. You aro poor at least you are poor compared to Sir Peter; that in itself ought to give you a pull over him. No heroine worth her salt, having the choice between a millionaire and a pauper, ever hesitates in favour of the pauper. Oh, Mr Carbury, I do believe that no man ever before had such a chance as you have got!"

com

Without signifying by a single word whether he intended to adopt the course recominended or not

and without so much as taking leave, Carbury walked to the door. His fingers were on the handle when she called him back.

"One more piece of advice," she said, rising and looking him steadily in the face. "Watch your moment; don't be in too great a hurry to disclose your secret. Remember that in giving the clue to the copper, you knock over the barrier that now stands between Sir Peter and Lady Baby. Be careful, Mr Carbury; I want you to succeed."

"Why does she want me to succeed?" reflected Carbury, as he walked up the village street. "Why does she want to leave to me the honour and the glory of the announcement?" Maud's eagerness in his cause was obvious; the reason for it was not so obvious. But the question did no more than pass through Carbury's mind. He had been so used all his life to have everything done

for him, that he found it after all but natural that this should be done for him too. Since all dificulties and bothers had always heen cleared out of his daily path, why shouldn't difficulties and bothers be cleared out of his love affairs as well? He supposed women liked to do that sort of thing; he supposed it was what they were meant for. This friendly interference was a pleasant fact, which he accepted much in the same spirit as he accepted the pleasant fact of his toast at breakfast being done to a turn, or his slippers being warmed for him before the fire.

"I think I have got matters into the right groove," said Maud to herself, alone in the inn - parlour. "It is playing. Va Banque, of course, but at any rate it is a chance; the rest must be left to hunan nature and to fate. And now I wonder when Sir Peter will bo here?"

FIRST of all, a few words of personal explanation. I was eight years among the Jesuits-two as a novice, three as a student of philosophy, and three as teacher or assistant in their colleges. I left them of my own accord, though not without their consent, and after having asked their advice on the matter. Our regret was, I believe, mutual. Our relations since that time, though infrequent, have not been unfriendly, and I am still in communion with the Church. My position is therefore characterised by perfect independence on one hand, and on the other by the want of any incitement to injure an Order with which I parted on good terms. Startling revelations will be wanting, as I have neither talent nor motive for inventing lies. Private, possibly even trivial, details-all depends upon taste -will be found in abundance. Jesuits, so far as they are known to me, are neither good nor bad angels, but nien; and it is as men that I intend to portray them. This would seemingly imply a certain amount of indiscretion, and something like a breach of confidence on my part. Some points, indeed, seemed to me so private that I hesitated about writing these pages; for all or nothing ought to be the motto of every faithful memoir. But on perusing narratives of a similar sort, composed by expelled members, and others whose knowledge of the Society must have been inferior to mine, I found all these particulars already in print, and often enough with exaggerations, alterations, and additions. This put an end to any reluctancy that I might have had before; for when I found

those "family matters" long ago exposed to the public gaze, I 897 that my silence was immaterial, and that it was perhaps better for me to write all.

I ought besides to observe, that the following account cannot be considered as correct except as a statement of facts in one particular Novitiate of one particular Province, and at one particular time. Many, even considerable, differences are to be found between one Province and another. I noticed that myself whilst spending a few days in a Spanish Novitiate during a pilgrimage that we had to make. I am, told, moreover, that between the English Province and the others the difference is still more strongly marked. It is, for instance, the custom throughout the Society to give the "kiss of peace" whenever a member comes to or goes away from one of their houses. An English novice, who was visiting Pau on account of his health, came to see us, and went through the ceremony. I saw that he did not like it, and asked whether it was done in England. "Never," answered he; "we only shake hands." Now the "fraternal embrace" is explicitly alluded to in the very text of St Ignatius's rules. So this sketch, though I can vouch for its faithfulness, might convey a very false idea, if supposed to picture any other Province or any other timo.

Any person at all acquainte with Pau knows the Rue Montpensier, and has probably noticed the Jesuits' chapel, next door to which stands the Residence and Novitiate. The chapel is a fine enough building, in the Romanesque style,