"I know you do not, Lewis, but can you not trust me?"

"Trust you, Mary? yes. But whom else to trust?" He rose from his seat in agitation, and leant against the tree beside it. "You mean to tell me, that, in spite of what I have said, in spite of the peril at which you do it, you will persist in keeping this most unfortunate appointment? Is that what you mean me to understand?"

"It is, Lewis," she answered, in a low but firm voice. "And I think, when I tell you that my doing so involves the sanctity of a promise made to the Departed, you will no longer refuse me your permission. I cannot say more just now, but "

"You have said enough, Mary," replied Græme, turning away with a deep sigh. "I leave you to do as you please."

At that moment the sound of voices was heard approaching from some little distance, and Mary started from her seat.

"Let us go before these people come, Lewis," she said in a low voice.

He made her no answer, but remained leaning immoveably against the tree.

"Will you not come, Lewis?" she repeated, laying her hand on his arm.

"I cannot, Mary," he at last replied. "I cannot meet these people at the breakfasttable to-day, remembering what I heard last night, and knowing what new food for their malice is about to be afforded them-I have not fortitude for it. I can place no farther restraint upon you after what you have said, but I cannot go with you amongst them. No one will miss me. I am sup

"No one miss you, Lewis?" began Mary, in a faltering tone, "do think I can go

and leave_"}

you

Her words were interrupted by a loud laugh a little way off, and through some intervening trees, the lovers beheld a couple

of young men, residents at the hotel, who had apparently been out fishing before breakfast. They were coming, armed with their rods and baskets, towards the spot where Græme and Mary stood, and the latter recognized one for the favourite "beau" of Hetta Milsom.

"Oh, Lewis! let us go," whispered Mary.

He turned away without speaking, and fervently pressing her hand, as he relinquished it, plunged down the steep wooded bank of the river, and was lost to sight in an instant.

Mary stood still for the same space of time, then, as she heard the beau and his companion coming close behind her, she hastily drew down her veil, and pursued her way back to the hotel, which she reached a little while before the breakfast hour. This was fortunate for her, as she would have found it impossible any longer to restrain the agonising burst of tears and sobs which,

upon her entering her own apartment, forced its vent from her wounded heart. Poor motherless girl, left to steer her own unaided course amongst the shoals and breakers through which others were so carefully piloted, in a world where "le malheureux a toujours tort,"-well might she weep! And well was it for her that amidst the hard trials of her youth, she had been early led to cast her burden there, where the weakest may find strength, and the heaviest laden, rest.

The breakfast hour came and passed away, and nothing was seen of Lewis Græme. Mrs. Clarkson "wondered whether the indisposition of which he had complained the previous night, was confining him to Miss Hetta Milsom "'oped that

his room." he was not very hill," and glanced inquisitively at Mary. She had discovered that her cousin had been out before breakfast, and this circumstance, coupled with Mary's looks, and the absence of Græme, induced

in her mind the most sanguine hopes of the lovers having quarrelled. Some such idea likewise infused new life into Mrs. Clarkson, and led her, although quite unaware of the appointment which Mary had made, to agree without opposition to her niece's request that she might be permitted to remain at home that day, when the arrangements for the pleasure excursion came under discussion. Within an hour after breakfast, accordingly, a very large party started without Mary, who remained alone in the drawing-room, vainly endeavouring to command her attention to a book, while now listening in vain for some sound indicative of Græme's having returned to the house, and now nervously anticipating the entrance of Musgrave.

The latter, whose observant eye had instantly been caught by the altered looks of Mary at breakfast time, and who had scarcely ceased watching her during the whole of that