not this lady-well, this young womannot possess as keen a sense of honor as you credit me with ?”

"Because it's not natural. She might be honest enough to keep from any wrongdoing during her husband's lifetime, but not have the delicacy to resist planning what would do him no actual material harm. It is the associations, the habits of life, the tone of every one and everything around that makes a gentlewoman what she is, or ought to be."

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Ought to be,' is well put in, Sir Hugh. Does nature, which is, after all, the groundwork for our embroideries forgive a professional illustration-does nature count for nothing? The true kindly instincts of the heart-and, remember, the highest good breeding is but the outward and visible sign of this inward grace-will often make the humblest woman act with both delicacy and tact. Have you never met with absolute vulgarity in high places? And let me assure you, though you choose to imagine me-I scarce know what-my people are and were what I am, shopkeepers, not on a large scale."

I

"I do not care what they were. only know you look like a princess very slightly disguised." As Galbraith said this he leant his arms upon the table, looking straight at her, pleasantly, frankly, but not in the least like a lover.

"I claim to be more than a princess, whatever my faults may be," returned Kate, speaking softly as if to herself. "I claim to be a true-hearted woman." A silence ensued, which both felt to be dangerous, yet Galbraith dared not speak. At length Kate's thoughts, having shot along some curiously interwoven lines of association, suddenly stopped on the topic of Galbraith's antagonism.

"But why have you so strong an antipathy to this woman-this widow?"

"I certainly had a very strong antipathy to her."

"Had?" repeated Kate. "Is it, then, passed by ?"

Well, yes; one generally feels more amiable to a defeated enemy."

"True; still why did you hate her? Did she injure you?"

"She did. She extinguished the hopes of my whole life," returned Galbraith earnestly. "Travers always led me to suppose I was to be his heir, and I had NEW SERIES.-VOL. XXIV., No. 1

perfect trust in his justice. He was as cold and dry and hard as a piece of granite, and he was a gentleman of the same blood as myself; if it did not sound absurd to talk of sympathy (I have picked up the word from you, Mrs. Temple) between two such men as Travers and myself, I should say there was a good deal. I really felt like a son, or rather a younger brother, towards him. If he had come to grief, I would have shared my last shilling with him; not as a mere duty, for I owed him that much, but gladly; and then to find him throwing me over for a mere bit of vulgar prettiness, a girl nearly young enough to be his granddaughter-not even a gentlewoman !— at his age! I never felt so disgusted, by heaven! I was as much cut up at having my respect for the old man destroyed, as at seeing my prospects go overboard. Nor do I believe Travers would ever have been so unjust, so unlike himself, if a strong pressure had not been brought to bear upon him. I think his ultimate action proves that he found he had made a mistake, and was anxious to atone. Still he must have had some strong reason for disinheriting the wife; and they lived peacefully together to the last. That is the strangest part of the story," added Galbraith thoughtfully.

"It is, indeed," said Kate, who had listened with avidity and a beating heart to this long speech-unusually long for Galbraith-and now only forced herself to speak, lest her silence should permit him to wander from the subject. “I cannot, indeed, wonder at your hating this obnoxious woman." She was unconscious of the earnest, appealing gaze she poured into his eyes as she spoke, but it riveted his attention, and swept the wicked widow and his wrongs out of his thoughts. "Still," urged Kate, speaking soft and low, "she may have been innocent of any intention to harm you. She might have been very poor and desolate, as I think I suggested to you once before, and poverty is more terrible than you can know-real poverty. When your kinsman asked her to be his wife, she knew nothing of you or your hopes; she may never have influenced him against you. Are you sure that in your anger you did nothing to offend this Mr. Travers?" How strange it was to speak thus of her dead hubsand to her foe!

4

"Why, yes. I certainly wrote a letter on the spur of the moment which could rot be exactly pleasant to him or the female he had been pleased to bestow his name on. But I don't regret it; I should do the same thing again. However, he did not like it, for he never replied, and I only heard vague reports of him for the next two or three years. Then came the news of his death, and of that infamous first will. The widow wrote me an insolent letter through her solicitors, offering me a third of the property as a free gift; but the idea of being under an obligation to her for what ought to have been my own, was more than I could stand," and Galbraith, warming with his subject, started up as if to pace the room; but its narrow limits forbid that favorite exercise, so he resumed his seat, and lisened attentively to his companion's words.

"It was not such an illiberal offer -after all," she was saying thoughtfully.

one.

"I grant that. It was more; it was rather an extraordinary offer, and meant to keep me quiet; for I fancy she knew the second will existed, or feared I might find a flaw in the first. Of course, had I agreed to accept her terms, I could have made no move against her under the first will; and no one could have foreseen that a curious accident should have led Ford to discover the second Fortunately he was an honest man, or, rather, rational enough not to risk a felony, so he handed it over to my solicitors or her solicitors, and it was all right." "For you-yes! Then, the sum of your opinion is, that this Mrs. Travers strove to alienate your benefactor's affections from you; was found out in some disgraceful intrigue; was ready to bribe you to silence, and to destroy the will made by her husband under the influence of his just indignation against

her?"

"Yes; that is a tolerably accurate outline."

"Never say again that you are an unimaginative man, Sir Hugh Galbraith," said Mrs. Temple slowly, in an altered voice. "You have built up an ingenious theory on very small foundation.'

"Perhaps so. I confess this woman's disappearance has puzzled me. Some times I think it shows that she is all right, with more in her than I gave her

credit for. Sometimes I think her keeping out of my way a confession of guilt; still I don't like to think of her being in want or difficulty. And, by Jove, I will find her! But I must have bored you with my affairs, Mrs. Temple. One of the privileges of friendship, you know! I can't tell how it is, but I think I talk more to you than to any one else."

you

"I am interested in your story, Sir Hugh; that is the reason. But I tell candidly I am disposed to take sides with the widow against you.'

"That of course. You are always in opposition. Still I fancy I am right in the main. I have heard traits of Mrs. Travers-small indications of the current that show she is grasping and selfish and mean. She cannot be so pretty either! Ford said she had reddish hair, and of course she was bad style."

"I suppose she was," said Kate composedly; "but if she were to make any attempt to disturb you?"

"Oh, I should fight every inch of ground. If my whole fortune went in law, she should have none of it." "Would you resist a just claim ?" "It could not be just, you see. ing could upset the last will." Kate sighed.

Noth

"I have been trespassing on you unconscionably," said Galbraith. "The shades of evening are closing, and I had better go. If you admit me to-morrow, I will promise not to prose about myself."

"To-morrow," returned Kate dreamily. "Are you coming to-morrow?"

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Yes, of course," cried Galbraith boldly, though for half a second he had hesitated whether he should say so, or ask permission to come. "I hope to bring you your money to-morrow. When is this solicitor of yours to return?"

"To-morrow, I hope," said Kate, with a sigh.

I suspect you will be in the downbelows until you see him."

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'And perhaps after," she said smiling. "Good-bye, Sir Hugh."

CHAPTER XXXV.

But Monday brought no Mr. Wall, nor Tuesday, nor Wednesday; nevertheless they brought Hugh Galbraith with almost undeviating regularity to the commonplace little cottage, which was a corner of paradise, [though an uneasy paradise to him.

Kate felt a little worried by his visits. She felt she ought not to allow them; but she was an exceedingly unconventional woman, and a fearless one. Moreover, she was interested in her visitor. She did not acknowledge it to herself, but she would have missed him. There was a subtle pleasure to her in the sense that she was charming to him; that Kate Temple was thus revenging the injuries of Catharine Travers. Yet she did not intend any cruelty, any real revenge. "When he knows who I am, he will find the knowledge sufficiently repulsive to give me no more trouble," she thought; "and if he is brought to confess that he did Mrs. Travers injustice, he may agree to reasonable arrangements with Mrs. Temple."

It was very strange to have him sitting there familiarly with her by the fireside in the dusk of the October evenings, just as he might have sat with her in her more stately home had he come back from India on good terms with her husband. No, not exactly. Hugh Galbraith would never have permitted his eyes and voice to speak the language they often did-friendship notwithstanding-had he known her as his cousin's wife; and as she thought so, her heart leaped up in a great throb of delight to know that she was free.

It was very strange to be thus swept by the eddy of her life's current into this still pool for an instant's rest before she was hurried on again into the rapids. Strange, but also delightful-more delightful than she confessed even to her

THE only result of Mrs. Temple's daily visits of inquiry to the office of Messrs. Wall and Wreford was the promised communication from Captain Gregory enclosing a letter of his late father's with his signature, which she placed carefully with the documents Tom Reed had left her for Mr. Wall's information. Kate felt greatly tempted to proceed to Doctors' Commons and compare the writing with that upon the will, but she feared to take any step without either Reed's or Mr. Wall's knowledge. She therefore strove to possess her soul in patience till the moment for action came.

Tom wrote also. He had paid the last tribute of respect to the remains of his chief, and hoped to be in London within another week. So far there was a slight movement in her enforced stagnation. At last, on Thursday morning, when she had gone down to the office more mechanically than hopefully, she found good tidings. Mr. Wall had arrived the night before, had been at the office that morning for half an hour, had read his letters, and left word that he would be happy to see Mrs. Travers the next day at eleven. (She had left no address, not liking to acknowledge that she bore a feigned name at her lodgings.)

This sudden fulfilment of her longdelayed hope sent her back to her temporary abode somewhat tremulous, with a curious confusion of thought seething and bubbling round one central idea. 'To-morrow I am to lay the first charge in the mine that is to shatter Hugh's fortunes! Will he ever accept the fragments back from the hands that wrought the mischief?"

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She felt that in her present mood she could not meet Galbraith, so purposely made a long détour in order to reach her lodgings after his usual hour for calling.

The gentleman has been here, ma'am," said the landlady, as she opened the door. "He was very sorry to miss you, and asked to come in and write a note: it's on the table."

Kate walked in, looked at it, and then stirred the fire, took off her bonnet and wraps, and even folded them up with me

chanical neatness before she opened the missive. How would this straightforward, rather rigid nature judge her? Would she not seem false and double-dealing in his eyes? Would not his idea of his cousin's widow be on the whole confirmed by the line of conduct she had adopted? What did he write about? Perhaps to say he was obliged to leave town and should not see her again. She hoped so; it would be better and wiser. She opened the note, and colored with pleasure to find her conjecture wrong.

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So sorry not to find you," ran the epistle, in large, ugly, but legible writing; for I cannot call to-morrow. Obliged to run down to see my sister at Richmond; but hope to call the day after with some intelligence of your five pounds. I trust you have caught the lawyer at last, and found all right.-Yours very truly, HUGH GALBRAITH.'

Something had been begun below, and had been carefully obliterated. She had to-morrow, then, perfectly clear for her interview, and for reflection afterwards; but the day after she would see him for the last time as a friend, probably for the last time in any character. Soon he would be a bitterer, probably a more contemptuous foe than ever. And then the thought arose-ought she to see him again? Would it not be wiser and kinder to avoid any further interviews? She blushed to think she had not hitherto avoided them as she ought-she might! Well, now she would check the culpable weakness; she would be firm. If it were possible, after her interview with Mr. Wall the next day, she would leave town on Saturday, and send a few lines of polite acknowledgment to Galbraith. the lost five pounds they had almost ceased to speak. She felt it was now but an excuse for meeting. Not altogether blinded by his tolerable assumption of friendliness, Kate had formed but a faint idea of the depth and reality of Galbraith's passion for her. In truth, though mature in some ways, especially in a genial mellowness, resulting from richness of nature rather than the ripening of time, Kate was only learning the A B C of love. As yet she did not quite recognise the direction in which her own feelings were drifting. The ice of an uncongenial marriage closing over the warm currents of

Of

her heart kept it pure and free from all the false mirage-like shadows of the real deity, but ready to receive the fullest, deepest, most indelible impression of the true god once he either smiled or frowned upon her.

As to her lover, whatever chance of recovery he might have had before, the last week of quiet, delicious intercourse had utterly swept away; and with all the force of his will he resolved that nothing but her own resolute rejection of him should separate them. Her past might be doubtful. He felt certain she could explain everything. That any shadow of dishonor should ever dim those frank, fearless eyes, he would not for a moment believe. Whatever was in the past or future, the spell of her presence had struck the imprisoned fountain of youth and joy that had so long lain congealed in the dark recesses of his soul, and all the world was changed to him.

Having fully determined to explain everything to Mr. Wall, and arrange, if possible, to leave town the next day without seeing Galbraith, Kate started to keep her appointment. It was nearly two years since she had gone into that well-remembered room with a suppressed sensation of bitter wrath and defeat, to place the will that laid her fortunes low in the hands of the lawyer, and now she was taking the first step towards the recovery of her rights with feelings not a whit less painful.

"Well, Mrs. Travers," said Mr. Wall a little stifly, "this is a very unexpected visit indeed. I thought you had disappeared altogether."

And you are not the least glad to see

me?"

She took the lawyer's wrinkled hand as she spoke, smiling with pleasant reproachfulness.

"I confess I should have been better pleased had you treated me with more confidence, of which I flatter myself I am not undeserving," replied Mr. Wall, visibly relaxing.

"You deserve, and you have my confidence, my dear sir. I know you are displeased at my concealing my abode from you."

"I am, and naturally. Nor was it judicious to have for your sole confidant

a young man-a young man of attractive manners and appearance," he interrupted.

"Instead of one older, certainly, but similar in other respects."

“Ah, my dear lady, that will not do," returned Mr. Wall, smiling in spite of himself, so sweetly and brightly was this morsel of transparent flattery offered.

"Well, well, Mr. Wall, let us speak seriously. I am going to tell you everything everything-under the seal of confession. Had you known my abode you would have persecuted me to accept Sir Hugh Galbraith's splendid offer of three hundred a year, would you not?"

"I certainly would have urged your acceptance of it," he returned, entrenching himself behind his professional man

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"A shop!" echoed Mr. Wall, infinitely surprised, not to say horrified. My late respected friend and client's name over a shop!"

Considering that you believe your respected client capable of leaving the wife he professed to love unprovided for, penniless, to battle alone with the world, you have no right to exclaim at any honest use I may put his name to," said Kate very quietly. "But as I have a higher opinion of him than you have, and never will believe that he was guilty of the cruel will you accept, I preserved the respect due-you would say to his name, I say due to his natural prejudices-and did not put his name over my-shop," a little pause, an arch smile as she pronounced the obnoxious word. Nay, more, Mr. Wall; I dropped the name altogeth

er."

"Have you been living under a false name, then?" asked Mr. Wall drily, in a tone which implied the highest moral disapprobation, and not only expressed his real feeling, but was a quid pro quo for the tone of quiet rebuke she had adopted, and which nettled the orthodox lawyer, as showing too high a spirit of independence for a woman, and a poor woman

to boot.

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Mr. Wall was a very good, honest man, but thoroughly imbued with the respectability worship" which pervades so large and so valuable a section of English life. He flattered himself that he had the presumptuous young widow, who was after all only reduced to her original nothingness by her husband's eccentric will, at his foot, morally, by the admission she had just made. she had just made. "You have been living under a false name, then?"

"Precisely," she replied, looking straight into his eyes, with an expression he did not quite like, and very different from the smile that played upon her softly-curved lips.

And may I ask if you consider such a proceeding respectable?"

"I really never thought about it," she said, slightly raising her eyebrows. "I don't suppose you think so. Our habits of thought are no doubt widely different. At any rate, I adopted the name of Temple, and started in the Berlin-wool and fancy-work line. You see, my intercourse with poor Mr. Travers developed my commercial faculties," she went on rapid. ly. "I established myself at the little seaside town of Pierstoffe; and I have succeeded fairly. I determined to wait there in humble independence until I could find some evidence on which to found an attempt to upset the will that robbed me. I have found it; and I am come to lay it before you.'

As she spoke she drew forth a paper, in which she had written as shortly as possible an account of Tom Reed's inter view with Poole-the expert's opinion; Captain Gregory's assertion that the will his father signed must have been executed before the 10th of March, and drawing the lawyer's attention to the great improbability that another totally different will had been made within ten days of that drawn out by Gregory. This she placed upon his desk.

"You are really a wonderful woman, Mrs. Travers," said Mr. Wall, with a sort of reluctant admiration. Before I look at this, may I ask who supplied the capital for your undertaking?"

"I did, myself. You know Sir Hugh Galbraith could not claim my jewels. I have been completely on my own sources; and I owe no man, or woman either, anything."

re

Strange in that office she could speak