looking bored and cross (as indeed she felt), and Miss Danesdale looking prim, as she stepped from one to the other of her guests, to mutter a remark and receive an answer-these ladies disposed themselves variously about the wellwarmed, comfortable drawing-room, while the one who was the youngest of them, the most simply dressed, the handsomest, and by far the most intelligent looking, the wife of the vicar of Stanniforth, sat a little apart, and felt amused at the proceedings.

As soon as politeness would allow her, Philippa seated herself beside Miss Dunlop, and, with a frosty little smile of friendship, said, in a mutter intended to be good natured:

"When the men come in, Anna, and if Randulf comes to you, just ask him something, will you?"

"Ask him what? If he enjoyed the wine and walnuts as much as the roast mutton?.or if he thinks me like Mrs. Prancington?"’

"Oh no, dear. And if he did, Mrs. Prancington is a very handsome woman. But ask him if he has seen anything of the Miss Conisbroughs to-day.'

"The Miss Conisbroughs? Are they friends of yours?''

"No, but they are of his dear friends. Just ask him how long he stopped at their house on his way home. I must go, dear. There's old Mrs. Marton looking fit to eat me, for not having been civil to her."

She rose, and walked with neat, prim little steps across the room.

Miss Dunlop sat still for a few minutes; her big black eyes fixed upon her big, black-mittened hands, upon her yellow satin and black-lace lap, and upon the black and yellow fan which her fingers held. After frowning at her hands for some time, she arose, and went to the piano, near which sat Mrs. Malleson, the vicar's wife. Miss Dunlop placed herself upon the music-stool, and began to play a drawing-room melody of questionable value as a composition, in a prononcé, bravura style.

By and by the men did come in-Sir Gabriel and the vicar first. A fine old gentleman was Sir Gabriel Danesdale. Abundant curly hair, which had long been snow-white; large yet delicately chiselled features of great strength and

power, and somewhat of the old Roman type, and a complexion of a clear, healthy brown, not turned crimson, either with his outdoor sports or his modest potations. He looked as if he could be stern upon occasion., His face and bearing showed that mingling of patrician pride and kindly bonhomie which made him what he was, and which had secured him the love and goodwill of friends and dependents years ago.

Behind him followed Randulf, as tall as his father, and with shoulders as broad, looking at the moment as if he could hardly summon up energy to move one foot before the other. He was listening with the air of a martyr to a stout country squire with a red face, and other country squires-the husbands of those squiresses who sat in an amply spreading ring about the roomfollowed after him, talking-what do country gentlemen talk about, whose souls are in the county hunt and the agricultural interest ?

Randulf, "promenading" his eyes around the room, beheld Miss Dunlop at the piano, and the vicar's wife sitting close beside her. To the left, he saw the ring of dowagers, "looking like a peacock's tail magnified," he said to himself, and fled toward the priestess for refuge.

"I suppose you got here before the storm came on, Mrs. Malleson ?''

"Yes, we did. We shall have to drive home in it, though."

"I'm afraid you will. What roads they are here too! I know I thought so this afternoon, riding from Hawes . . . Don't let us interrupt your music on any account, Miss Dunlop," he continued blandly, as she stopped.

"Oh, I've finished," she answered, somewhat unceremoniously cutting into the conversation. "Did you ride from Hawes this afternoon?"

"Yes," said he, instantly becoming exhausted again.

"And that is a rough road?"’
"Very."

"It comes through Yoresett, doesn't

it?''

Will these girls be much of heiresses, asked Randulf, apparently stifling a yawn.

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Very pretty heiresses, if he divides equally. Some fifteen hundred a year apiece, I should say. But why do you want to know?" added Sir Gabriel. "Has something happened?"

"Nothing, to my knowledge," rereplied his son ; it was only the extreme interest felt in the young ladies by Miss Dunlop that made me ask."

"Well, that's all I can tell you about it, except a few anecdotes of old John's prowess in the hunting-field, and of his queer temper and off-hand ways."

Sir Gabriel left them. Randulf implored Miss Dunlop to sing, which she did, thereby reducing him to the last stage of woe and dejection.

That night the tempest howled out its roughest paroxysms. The following day was wet, and hopelessly so, with gusts of wind, melancholy, if not violent. The inmates of Danesdale Castle were weather-bound, or the ladies at any rate considered themselves so. Sir Gabriel was out all the morning. Randulf was invisible during the greater part of the day, and was reported by his man as having a headache and not wishing for any lunch.

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Headache!" cried Sir Gabriel to the ladies, with a mighty laugh, " at his age I had never even dreamed of a headache. I'd bet something he's on his back on a couch, with a pipe and a French novel."

The ladies said nothing. In the afternoon Sir Gabriel was out again, and Miss Danesdale and Miss Dunlop yawned in company until dinner-time, when they and their mankind all met together for the first time that day. They were scarcely seated when Sir Gabriel said:

"It's odd, Randulf, that you should have been asking so many questions last

night about old John Aglionby and those girls. There does seem to be a fatality about these things sometimes.”’ "As how?" inquired his son.

"Old John is dead. He had an apoplectic fit last night, and died at noon to-day. I met the doctor while I was out this afternoon, and he told me. It gave me a great shock, I must confess. Aglionby of Scar Foot was a name so inseparably connected with this dale, and with every remembrance of my life that has anything to do with the dale, that it is difficult to realize that now he must be a remembrance himself, and nothing more.

Yes, indeed, it is very strange. And he leaves no one to take his

name.

"He is sure to have made a proviso that those girls shall take the name of Aglionby. I cannot grasp it somehow; that there will be Conisbroughs at Scar Foot-and women !"

"Do you visit them, Philippa ?" asked Randulf, turning to his sister.

"We exchange calls occasionally, and we always ask them to our parties in winter, but they have never been to one of them. Of course I must go and call upon Mrs. Conisbrough at the proper time."

"I'm not sorry the poor girls will have better times at last," observed Sir Gabriel, on whom the occurrence seemed to have fallen almost as a blow. "And, after all, he was seventy-two and over. When I get to that age, boy, you will be thinking it about time for me to clear out.'

Randulf smiled, and drawled out, "Perhaps I may, sir," but his eyes met those of his father. The old man and the young man understood each other well already. Sir Gabriel Danesdale slept that night with the secure consciousness that if he lived to be a hundred, his son would never wish him away.

CHAPTER XIII.

"THE FIRST CONCERT OF THE SEA

SON."

"THE first concert of the season, Bernard, and you mustn't miss it. Really, for the life of me, I can't tell what you hear in those awfully classical concerts. Isn't it classical' that they call them? I've been to some of them. I like watching the swells come in, and I dare say it's very amusing for them, who go regularly to the same places, to meet all their friends, and that sort of thing; but there I'm done. Those concerts send me to sleep, or else they make my head ache. It's nothing but a bangbanging, and a squeak-squeaking, without any tune to go by in it. I can't tell what you hear in them."

It was Miss Vane who thus addressed her swain on the Wednesday evening after he had told her about his meeting with his grandfather. He held his hat in his hand, and listened to her smilingly, but without any signs of relinquish ing his purpose.

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Perhaps you don't, my love. I hear a great deal in them. To-night I shall hear Madame Trebelli sing Che farò senza Eurydice?' which is enough to last any fellow for a week, and make him thrill whenever he thinks of it. Likewise, I shall hear Beethoven's symphony, No. 5, which-"

"Oh, those horrid long symphonies! I know them. I can no more make head or tail of them than I can of your books about ethics or agnostics, or something sticks. But go, go; and I hope you may enjoy it. I like a play or a comic opera, for my part. Promise you'll take me to Madame Angot the next time it comes, and I'll be good."

"To Madame Angot you shall go if I am here, and able to take you," he rejoined, his eyes smiling darkly beneath the brim of his hat. You won't be gone to bed when I get back," he said. It won't be late; and we can have half an hour's chat; just half an hour.' "Well, if you're not too late," said Miss Vane graciously.

Bernard promised and vowed to return very early; and then went off to enjoy his one piece of genuine, unadulterated luxury and extravagance-his shilling's-worth of uncomfortable stand

ing-room in the "body of the hall," which shilling's-worth, while the great singers sang, and the great orchestral masterpieces were performed in a style almost peculiar to Irkford, of all English towns-represented to him a whole realm of riches and glory, royal in its splendor.

He secured a good place, just behind the last of the reserved seats, which were filled with a brilliant-looking audience. From the moment in which the well-known leader came on and received his rounds of welcome and applause to the last strain of the last composition he was all ear and all delight.

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It was certainly a feast that night for those who care for such feasts. There was a delicious "Anacreon" overture, full of Cherubini's quaintest thoughts; and there was the great cantatrice singing in her most superb style. Che farò," though, came in the second part of the performance. Before it was the Fifth Symphony. Bernard, drinking in the sounds, remembered the old tale of how some one asked the composer what he meant by those four portentous and thrilling chords which open the symphony, and how he replied, "Thus fate knocks at the door."

Se non è vero è ben trovato,' thought our hero, smiling to himself. "A fate that knocked in that way would be a fate worth opening to, whether good or bad. But one usually hears a more commonplace kind of tap at the door than that."

He listened with heart and soul to the grand scena from "Orpheus." The cadence rang in his ears.

Eurydice! Eurydice! Che farò senza Eurydice?" When it was over, he slipped out, not caring to spoil the effect of it by listening to anything more. As he marched home, his pulses were beating fast. The strains of "Eurydice" rang in his ears. But the opening chords of the symphony struggled with them and overcame them. "Thus fate knocks at the door," he repeated to himself many times, and in a low voice hummed the notes. "Thus fate knocks at the door," he muttered, laughing a little to himself, as he inserted his latch-key, and opened the door of No. 13 Crane Street.

He found Lizzie in the parlor, seated

on a stool in the very middle of the hearthrug, and gazing upward at a brown envelope which she had stuck on the mantelpiece, in front of the clock. "Bernard, she said, "there's a telegram for you." She scarcely turned her delicate fair face toward him as she spoke. It came almost the minute you'd gone, and I'm fairly dying to know what it can be about.'

He was very much surprised to see it himself, but did not say so, taking it as if nothing could have been more natural than for it to come.

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Why, it's addressed to the warehouse," he remarked. "How did it get here?"

"That boy, Robert Stansfield, from the warehouse, brought it. He said it came just as he was leaving, and he thought you might like to have it. I believe that boy would die, or do any thing for you, Bernard," she added, watching him as he opened and read the message without a muscle of his face changing.

"James Whaley, solicitor, Yoresett, to Bernard Aglionby, 15 Fence Street, Irkford. Your grandfather died suddenly this morning, and your presence here is indispensable. Come to-morrow by the train leaving Irkford at 2.15, and I will meet you at Hawes, and explain.'"'

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What a long one, Bernard! What is it all about?''

"A stupid thing which will oblige me to set off on a business journey to-morrow," he said, frowning a little, speaking quite calmly, but feeling his heart leaping wildly. Was it fate that knocked at the door? or was it "but a bootless bene ''?

Why did he not tell her, or read her the telegram? It was chiefly because of their conversation on Monday night last. It was because he knew what she would say if she heard the news, and because, rough and abrupt though he was, he simply could not endure to hear her comments upon that news, nor to listen to the wild and extravagant hopes which she would build upon it, and which she would not hesitate to express. He would have laughed loud and long, if any one had told him that his sense of delicacy, and of the fitness of things, was finer and more discriminating than

that of Miss Vane, but it was a fact that it was so.

Meantime, wild and rapid speculations and wonders crowded into his own mind. He tried hard to see things in what he called a "sensible'' light. He told himself that it was utterly impossible that his grandfather could have done anything to his will which in anyway affected him. There had not been time for it. He would have to go to Hawes, and hear what they wanted him forpossibly to attend the funeral-a ceremony with which he would rather have dispensed. Then, when he knew how much he, with his slender salary, was to be out of pocket by the whole affair, he would come back, and reveal the news to Lizzie, thus forever putting out of her head all hopes or aspirations connected with old Mr. Aglionby and his money. She was quite satisfied with his explanation: though she girded at him and teased him and disagreed with him, he had the power of making her do exactly as he chose when he chose, and of making her see things as he desired her to see them. But he could only do it by means of fear-intimidation, and he knew it, and rarely indeed chose to exert that power.

He thrust the telegram into his pocket, and, consulting a little railway guide, found that the train mentioned by Mr. Whaley was the only one during the day by which his journey could be accomplished in reasonable time. The earlier ones were slow, and necessitated so many waitings and changings that he would arrive no sooner. In the morning he took his leave of Lizzie, saying he could not give her his address now, as he did not know where he should be that night, but he would write as soon as possible. Lizzie was very sweet and amiable; she hung about him affectionately, and held up her face to be kissed, and he thought what an angel she was, what a guileless, trusting angel, to confide herself to the keeping of a roughhewn, cross-grained carle like him. Again his heart fluttered as he gave a flying glance toward the possibility that Mr. Whaley of Yoresett might have some solid reason for summoning him thus suddenly to his grandfather's house. If there were any such reason—he kissed Lizzie's sweet face with a strange