good-humoredly, "but I didn't do much | ther. I wonder what made the boy want good." to go to the seaside." "How far is it?" "Wanted something a good deal more thorough, no doubt." Adrian suggested. "I hope he delivered his message?" Harding inquired. "It is his birthday to morrow, and his father is going to take him for the day to the seaside. He was to ask if your brother would go with him." "Oh, Bob will be delighted, I'm sure," Isaid Miss Wilton. "I should think you would enjoy the holiday, Mr. Harding, you must be thankful to get rid of your charge now and then." Scarlett, sitting on the end of the sofa, saw Harding's face darken with displeasure. "It makes very little difference, thank you," said the tutor coldly. “I think I'll go and find Guy now." And he bowed himself out of the room in his sullen fashion. The girl looked after him, and then turned to Adrian and laughed. "Aren't we dignified?" she said. "What did I say to make him so cross? I didn't mean any harm." "Oh, I don't know- I don't think you said anything very dreadful. Who is Guy?" 66 Guy Robinson. His father has no end of money, Jones and Robinson the builders, you know, who are always get ting big contracts for things in the newspapers you see their names forever. Old Robinson has bought the Priory, so they are neighbors of ours. Guy is twelve or thirteen, the only boy, and they won't send him to school." False pretences ?" “Yes. I believe they think he is stern, and will keep Guy in order, and my private conviction is that he does nothing of the kind. Nobody could keep Guy in order without perpetual battles, and Mr. Robinson always ends the battles by dismissing the tutor. I never hear of any battles with Mr. Harding," 66 I see. You think he spoils the boy." "Spoils him? Well, I think that in his supreme contempt for Guy and all the Robinsons, he just takes care that he doesn't drown himself, or blow himself up with gunpowder, or break his neck, and I don't believe he troubles himself any fur "Well, about thirty miles if they go to Salthaven. There's a railway - I should think old Robinson will have a special. Bob will have a great deal too much to eat and drink, and he'll be ill the day after. And if he and Guy can think of any senseless mischief, they are sure to be up to it, and the old man will swagger and pay for the damage. Boy will be boys," said Miss Wilton, with pompous intonation. Adrian laughed. "Perhaps Mr. Harding will go too." "Oh no! I know he won't." "I suppose his features are good, when one comes to think about them," said the girl, with a dubious expression in her eyes. "Yes, I suppose they are." "I wish mine were anything like as good," said Scarlett, with dispassionate candor. "Miss Wilton "You wish yours began, and ended with an amazed and incredulous laugh, which was exceedingly flattering. It was so evidently genuine. "I don't think you half believe me now," he said. "But I assure you, if you were to ask an artist he would tell you "An artist? Oh, I dare say, an artist might say so. But I don't believe a woman would say that Mr. Harding was good-looking." "How if she were an artist ?" "But why wouldn't a woman think so?" She paused to consider. "I don't know," she said, "and yet I do mean it, somehow. He may be handsome, but he doesn't seem like it. I think a woman would want him to seem as well as to be." "Do you mean that she wouldn't ad mire him unless he gave himself airs? | waited for the duet, but her elder sister, That's not very complimentary to the Amy. Each sister had her recognized woman, you know." Miss Wilton shook her head. "I don't mean that. He might not think about himself at all I should like him all the better." She stood for a minute with her eyes raised to Adrian's, yet was plainly looking back at the image of Reynold Harding which she had called up for the purpose of analysis. At last, "He isn't a bit unconscious!" she exclaimed.." He is the most self-conscious man I know. believe he is always thinking about himself!" "If he is," said Scarlett, "as far as I could judge I should say he didn't enjoy it much." "That's it!" she said. "He doesn't find himself attractive, and so no more do we. Isn't that it?" He smiled. "There's something in the idea as far as it goes. But it doesn't alter his features, you know." "Of course not. But we don't look at them." Adrian stood, pulling his moustache, and still smiling. He was not afraid, yet he found it rather pleasant to be told that this picturesque tutor, who had been shut up in Mitchelhurst Place with Barbara, was not the kind of man to take a woman's fancy. It was pleasant, but of course it did not mean much. Molly Wilton might be perfectly right, and yet it would not mean much. It is easy to lay down general rules about women, and very clever rules they often are. The mistake is in applying these admirable theories to any one particular woman she is certain to be an exception. Scarlett, while he listened to his companion, did not forget that there are always women enough to supply a formidable minority. "I say," Miss Wilton exclaimed, with a real kindling of interest in her face, "I'll just go and take off my hat, and then we might try over that duet, you know." To this he readily assented, but when she left the room he lingered by the window, and presently ejaculated "Poor devil!" It is hardly necessary to say that he was not thinking of Molly Wilton, who assuredly was neither angel nor devil, but a bright, wholesome, rather substantial young woman. CHAPTER XVII. TWO GLANCES. AFTER all it was not Molly Wilton who first came into the room where Adrian province, in which she reigned supreme. Amy was the beauty of the family, and had a taste for poetry; Molly was musical and lively. This arrangement worked perfectly, and Molly admired her sister's charms, and her poetical sympathies, without a trace of jealousy, feeling quite sure that justice would be done to her if there were any question of music or repartee. Adrian was not looking at his proofs when Miss Wilton came in. He was sit ting on the sofa, with his legs stretched out before him, gazing into space, and thinking of Sandmoor near Ilfracombe. It was absolutely necessary that he should put himself into communication with that place, but how was it to be done? Should he write that day, or should he go the next? "Oh, I have interrupted you! " Miss Wilton ejaculated, and stopped just inside the door. Interrupted me! Not a bit of it! I was only · I “You were thinking of that sonnet know you were!" "No, really," ," said Adrian, almost wishing he had been thinking of that sonnet. " No, I wasn't. In fact I think the sonnet is pretty well finished." "Is it? You must read it to me, won't you?" and she came forward eagerly, took a chair, and dropped into a graceful attitude of attention. She had a real taste for poetry, and the poet was also to her liking. This was not the first time that she had listened, with shining eyes and quickened breath, and had brought the color to the young man's cheek by saying with soft earnestness, "I like that-oh, I like that!" Adrian found it very pleasant to read his poems to Miss Wilton. "If you like," he said. "If you are sure it won't bore you." "Of course I like," she answered. "It's the first sonnet of all, you know," he explained, "a sort of dedication. I didn't like the one I had, so I shall make them put this in instead." He pulled his papers out of his pocket, and took a leaf of manuscript from among the printed pages. "You must tell me what you think of it," he said, and cleared his throat. At that moment Molly opened the door. She saw the state of affairs at a glance, and slipped into her place, as quietly as if she had come into church late, and spied a convenient free seat Adrian read Have not all songs been sung, all loves been told? O for a single word should be mine own, doesn't look strong, and I should think that Robinson boy would be enough to worry anybody into an early grave." Adrian, standing by the piano, raised his eyes to the old mirror, as if he half expected to see the pale face with its watchful eyes, below the gleaming surface of the glass. But it reflected only a vague confusion of curtain and wall-paper, and the feathery foliage of a palm. "I say," said Molly, "had you met him before this morning, or did introduce yourselves?" you "We introduced ourselves. I found he knew a place where I stayed last summer. Don't you remember," he said, looking across at Amy, "the old house I told you about! "I remember. Where you wrote that bit, Waiting by the Sundial '?" Scarlett nodded. As he finished he lifted his eyes and looked at Amy. Where else should a young man look, to emphasize the mean. ing of his love-poem, except into a woman's sympathizing eyes? But the look, mere matter of course as it was, startled and silenced her. "You - if you alone!" The words, spoken with the soft fulness of Adrian's pleasant voice, rang in her A young woman whose attractions were recognized by all the family might very well be pardoned for not at once perceiving that the emphasis was purely arily tistic. ears. But the silence which would have been 'full of meaning for the lover, frightened the poet. "You don't like it!" he exclaimed anxiously. “Oh yes, I do — I like it very much." "But there is something wrong," Adrian persisted. "I am sure you don't like it." "Indeed indeed I do," the girl declared fervently, and Molly chimed in with an enthusiastic 66 Oh, Mr. Scarlett, it's charming! "It's very kind of you to say so," he replied, pocketing his sonnet and going towards the piano, still with a slightly troubled expression. "Shall we try that duet now?" Molly's thoughts were very easily diverted from poetry. She set up the music; but just as she was about to strike the first note, an idea occurred to her, and spinning half round on the stool – Amy," she said, "do you call that Mr. Harding so very good-looking?" Amy was taken by surprise. "I? oh no!" she answered. "There!" Molly exclaimed, looking up at Scarlett. "Why, what do you mean?" Miss Wilton asked. "Somehow I can't fancy he'll live. Whenever I look at that man's face I think of death." "What a queer idea!" said the younger sister reflectively. "Well, he certainly "Yes. Well I found he knew it well in fact it turned out that he was a connection What, of your friends there?" 'No, not of my friends, of the old famwho used to have the place." "Oh, your friends aren't the old family then?" said Molly. "No, they are not. I ought to say they there were only two of them," he added in an explanatory fashion, "old Mr. Hayes, and his niece Miss Strange, and Mr. Harding told me to-day that the old man was dead. I didn't know it." Molly looked up sympathetically, but, as he did not seem to be overpowered with grief, she went on, after a moment, "Isn't it funny how, when one has never heard a name, and then one does hear it, one is sure to hear it again in three or four different ways directly? Did you ever notice that?" Mr. Scarlett wasn't sure that he had, but he agreed that it was a very remarkable law. "Well it always is so - you notice," she said. "Now I don't remember that I ever knew of anybody of the name of Strange in all my life, and now the Ashfords have got a Miss Strange staying with them, and here your friend is a Miss Strange." "Very pretty," said Amy, taking a book from the table. "Yes, very pretty, for that style," Molly repeated. the room, sat gazing at the page which she did not read. She had seen how Adrian Scarlett could look, when he heard the name of Barbara. And she "And what is her particular style?" had thought, because he turned towards Adrian asked, keeping his eyes, which her when he read a sonnet - she had were growing eager, fixed upon the key- thought-what? A pink flush dyed her board. delicate skin. Our pardonable mistakes are precisely what we ourselves can never pardon. "Oh, I don't know she's rather small," said Molly lamely (Barbara was not as tall as Amy Wilton)," and she is dark too dark, I think." (Amy was decidedly fair.) "She has a quantity of black hair. Do you like black hair?" (Amy's was wound in shining golden coils), "and rather a color, and fine eyes. Oh dear, how difficult it is to describe people!" It might be so, and yet young Scarlett, as he listened, could actually see a pair of soft eyes shining under darkly pencilled brows, a cloud of shadowy hair, and lips of deep carnation. It would rather have seemed that Miss Molly Wilton excelled in the art of description. "Do you know what her name is?" he asked in an indifferent voice, stooping a little to look at a speck on one of the keys, and touching it with a neat fingernail. "What, do you think it may be your Miss Strange? "It's possible," he said. "Her people were somewhere in that part of the world." "I did hear her name - no, don't say it! Amy, do you remember Miss Strange's name? Adrian had lifted his head, and their eyes met. In that moment the girl saw what a glance could mean. It was just a flash of light, and then his ordinary look. "Yes," he said, "that's the name; it must be the Miss Strange I know." 66 The song being ended young Scarlett made his escape. He was half amused, half indignant. "Sandmoor near Ilfracombe ! Con. found the fellow, he knew where she was all the time, and I thought he was rather unwilling to give me her Devonshire address! Sandmoor near Ilfracombe indeed!" From The Contemporary Review. THE PURGATORIO OF DANTE. A STUDY IN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. THE somewhat trite saying that few English readers of Dante get beyond the "Inferno" and that few who talk of the "Inferno" know more than the Francesca and Ugolino episodes, is probably less true now than it was half a century ago. Cary and Longfellow, not to speak of other translations, each with merits of its own, have helped to familiarize men with the idea of Dante as a whole. Mr. A. J. Butler's admirable prose version of the Purgatorio" has done something to call special attention to the section of the great wasn't it "Commedia" of which I now propose to treat. I will state briefly why I have been led to make this selection. It has seemed to me, as I have read the "Purgatorio," that in it, far more than in the "Inferno" or the "Paradiso," the man Dante Ali ghieri reveals himself to us in all the distinctness of his personality, that the poem is essentially autobiographical. It is something more than a polemic against the crimes of the Roman curia or the citizens of Florence; something more than the summing-up of the creed of mediaval Christendom, or the veiled symbolism of a new and mystic heresy destructive of that creed. In the "Inferno" he passes on stern and ruthless, condemning sins which were not his, hardly touched, except in the Francesca story, with the thought of the pity of it all. In the "Paradiso" he paints a blessedness to which he has not attained, on which he gazes as from a far-off distance, which he can but "Dear me!" said Molly, "I hope I didn't say any harm of her just now! You'd better go and call. You remember the Ashfords; you went with us to a garden party at their place when you were staying here two years ago." Adrian smiled, and moved towards the window, forgetting his engagement at the piano. "Oh!" said the disappointed musician, "aren't we to have the duet then?" "I beg your pardon," he answered, coming back with bright promptitude, "I'm quite ready." But Amy, as their voices rose and filled despite. The planet love-inbreathing, sweet and fair, Made all the East to smile with her sweet grace. dimly apprehend. But in the "Purgato- | Soon as I passed forth from the deathlike air rio" he is with those who are not only of Which eyes and heart had filled with sore like passions with himself but are passing through a like stage of moral and spiritual experience. The seer paints the process of the purification of his own soul from the seven deadly sins that had eaten into his life. We might almost speak of this section of his poem as "the confessions of Dante Alighieri." We have scarcely entered on the thresh. old of the poem before this essentially self-scrutinizing analysis meets us. At first, indeed, his soul, as if in the joy of its escape from the darkness of the pit, exults in its recovered freedom, in its old joy, in itself a purifying joy, in light and the fresh breeze of dawn. If we would understand the opening of the " 'Purgatorio we must go back to the Stygian waters of the nether world, wherein were plunged by a righteous Nemesis the souls of those who had in the bitterness of their discontent lost the capacity for entering into that joy : Beneath the pool are those that sigh and groan, Where'er thou look'st, is at the surface shown. Of that sullen discontent Dante had not been guilty even under the heavy burdens of exile and poverty, and therefore he had not lost the capacity for hope which was denied to those who dwelt in the "dolo. rous city." And so when he has left the region where "silent is the sun " and can once more "look upon the stars," his spirit exults in its liberation: For fairer waters now before the wind tread. [Purg. i. 1-6.] Nowhere in the whole poem, one might almost say in all poetry, is the brightness of that dawn, at once of the earthly and the heavenly morning, more beautifully painted : The Orient sapphire's hue of sweetest tone, zone, Now to mine eyes brought back the old delight, [Purg. i. 13-20.] Or once again, in that marvellous picture of which it is hard to say whether it excels most in beauty or in truth: O'er morning's mist that vanished, so that I Just then the dawn its victory did gain Saw the light trembling on the open main. [Purg. i. 115-117.] But not the less, in the midst of this natural joy is there the thought present to the poet's mind that he is entering on a solemn work, that it is he himself, his own soul, that needs the cleansing which he is about to describe. Bearing that thought in mind, we shall be able to follow his progress through the seven circles of the Mount of Purification with a clearer insight, to note what were the sins that what were the healing remedies which he weighed most heavily on his conscience, had found most effective against them. I start with the words in which Virgil, as the poet's guide, sets forth to Cato, who, as the representative of the natural virtues of which the four stars that cast their light upon his face are symbols, is the errand on which they have come :— guardian of the entrance to Purgatory, the His life's last eve he hath not seen indeed, How I have led, 'twere long to thee to show, That he may see thee, hear thee, as we go; As we advance we note a more distinct confession. He is conscious of the oversensitiveness which makes him keenly alive to men's looks of wonder or their words of scorn, as the souls gazed at him, marvelling that his form, unlike theirs, cast a shadow: Mine eyes I turned on hearing him speak so, |