grine's horrors just yet!" cries Aunt | home in the T-cart and be glad to keep her Fanny. "You know they are always the a little longer.' same - claws, and teeth, and fusty bisonskins," and as she spoke the stable clock, soft and clear and deliberate, came to their ears, striking the three-quarters.

Presently a servant came out from the house with a message to Tempy under For once Mrs. Dymond had also enthe tree. Miss Bolsover wanted to speak|joyed her visit to Bolsover Hall. Aunt to her. Then Miss Bolsover herself returned again, leading little Phrasie by the hand.

Mrs. Dymond came in like a beautiful fate, in her long white dress floating sternly across the room. She set her light upon the table. "Tempy!" she said. "Oh! Tempy, I could not have believed it of you. And how can you come,” Susanna said, turning to Charlie Bolsover, "how dare you come," she repeated, "disturbing us, troubling us with your presence? Tempy has promised - has promised not to see you," she went on excitedly. Why don't you keep away? Do you not know that all our home peace and happiness depend upon your absence? You are not, you will never be, her husband. Do you want to part her forever from her father?" cried Susy passionately. "As for you, Tempy, I thought I could have trusted you as I trust myself. Was this why you stayed behind, why you deceived me?”

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fires at Crowbeck after the sun was set. | for she seemed to recognize Tempy's low She had no other company than that of answer. She opened the door. There Zillah lying asleep by the hearth, but she stood Charlie, who seemed to be destined wanted none other. She settled herself to disturb the slumbers of his family. comfortably in her sofa corner, where the There stood Tempy beside him, in the lamp shed its pleasant light, and after glow of the dying embers - the two sadly, writing a long, rambling pencil letter to happily miserable, and yet together! Susy her mother, Susy took up a novel and read could see poor Tempy's tears glistening assiduously for a time. Then she closed in the red firelight, and Charlie's rings the book. Her little Phrasie's eyes and and decorations, as they stood holding looks, and her button of a nose, and her each other's hands in parting grief. funny, sweet sayings, seemed to come between her mother and the print. What chance has a poor author with such a rival? "Funny gentypan," who could Phrasie mean by "funny gentypan "? her mother wondered. Then suddenly, as the baby herself might have done, Susanna, happy, thankful, resting, and at ease, dropped off into a sleep, sound and long and deep as these illicit slumbers are apt to be. I do not know how long her dreams had lasted; the nurse looked in, and not liking to disturb her went off to bed. The clock struck ten and the halfhour, and suddenly Mrs. Dymond started up, wide awake; she thought she had heard a sound and her own name called, and she answered as she sat up on the couch, bewildered. Was it her husband's voice? Was it Marney come home? Where was her mother? Susy rubbed her eyes. All seemed silent again, but she had been startled, and looking at the clock she flushed up, ashamed of the long nap. Then she crossed the room to the bell and rang it, but no one came, for the maids had gone to bed and the men were in a different part of the house. I don't know what nervous terror suddenly seized her, but as she listened still, she grew more frightened. Then she thought of calling the nurse, and looked into the nursery again for that purpose, but gaining courage from the calm night-light and the peaceful cradle, she came quietly away; only, as she crossed the passage, she now distinctly heard a low, continuous murmur of voices going on in some room not far distant. Then Susy reflected that housebreakers do not start long audible conversations in the dead of night, and summoning up courage, she descended the broad flight of stairs which led to the sitting-rooms below; the voices were not loud, but every now and then the tones rose in the silence. As she came to the half-open drawing-room door (it was just under her dressing-room) she heard a man's voice speaking in eager tones, and then the color rushed up into her face, and once more her heart began to beat,

Susy might have been kinder, she might have sympathized more, but that her own youth had taught her so sad, so desperate a lesson; and comfortable débonnair vices, easy-going misdeeds and insincerities, seemed to her worse and more terrible than the bitterest and most cutting truths, the sternest, baldest realities. That Tempy should deceive her, deceive her father, should be seeing Charlie by secret arrangement, seemed to Susy unworthy of them all.

Charlie turned round upon her in a sudden fury. Where was his usual placid indifference now?

"If you knew what you were saying, if you had ever been in love," he said in a rage, speaking bitterly, indignantly, "you would not be so cruel to her, Mrs. Dy. mond. You part us for no reason but your husband's fancy, and you divide us as if we were two sacks of potatoes 'Go,' you say, 'forget each other.' You don't know what you say. You might as well say, 'Do not exist at all,' as tell us not to love each other. It may be easy enough for people who marry not for love but for money, or because they want comfortable homes or housekeepers, to part, but —"

"Oh, for shame, for shame, Charlie," cried Tempy, starting away and pulling her hand from her lover.

"Let him speak, it is best so," said Susanna very stern, and pale, and uncompromising. "He has a right to speak."

"I speak because I feel, while you all seem to me stones and stocks," cried the poor fellow. "I speak because I love Tempy with all my heart, and you are condemning her and condemning me unheard to sorrow and lifelong separation."

Go! Why should I go?" cried Charlie exasperated, holding his ground. "I am not ashamed of being here," and as he spoke Susy heard the hall door open.

"He is right, Tempy," she cried, with a bright look, and then with a sudden im. pulse Susanna ran to the dining-room door, threw it open, and called her husband by his name as he came into his

There was something, some utter truth of reality in the young man's voice, some thing which haunted Susanna long after. This sharp scene had come upon her sud-house. denly, unexpectedly, but not for the first "John! come here! Charles Bolsover time did she feel uneasy, impatient with is here," said Susy, standing in the dinher husband. ing-room door.

A sudden indignant protest rose in her heart; for the first time since her marriage she questioned and denied his infallibility. It might be true that Charlie Bolsover had been foolish, true that he was in debt, true that Tempy was rich and young, but was it not also true that these two people were tenderly, faithfully attached to each other? It seemed a terrible responsibil. ity for the father to divide them; absolutely to say, "Death to their love, let it be as nothing, let it cease forever." Susy thought of the boy's sad, wild looks as he rushed past her in the passage of Eiderdown's Hotel.

Then she saw that her husband was looking very pale. Instead of coming up to her he stood by the staircase holding to the bannister. He looked very old suddenly, quite different somehow.

"I know Charles Bolsover is here," he said, looking hard at his wife. "I heard it just now before you told me. Tell him I will not see him. Tell him and Tempy to carry on their plots elsewhere. You, Susy, I can trust, thank God."

"Dear John, what is it?" Susy cried, running up to him. "Tempy, Tempy, come to your father! Come and tell him he can trust us all!" Susy cried in despair at her husband's strange manner and looks, and Tempy, hearing Susy's voice also, came out with her round face still bathed in tears.

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She looked at him again. He was changed somehow; he looked older, stronger, angrier, less desperate, more of a man. He stood fronting Tempy, not with the air of one who was ashamed and "Oh! papa, what is it?" she said genout of place, but as if he had a right to tly. I didn't know Charlie was to be at speak. Susy, Rhadamantine though she the Hall. Indeed, indeed, I didn't, though was, covered her face with her two hands perhaps if I had, I could not have kept for a minute. She could not meet the away. I hadn't seen him for, oh, so long; young fellow's reproachful look. It he walked back with me just now, that is seemed to her that it had all happened all! Are you very angry?" before, that she had known it all along, known it from the beginning, even when Charlie, exasperated, turned from her to Tempy, saying,

"Tempy, I can't bear this any longer, you must decide between us. Send me away, if you have the heart to send me away."

Still Susy seemed to know it all, to know that Tempy would say, "I shall never give you up, Charlie, all my life; but I cannot go against my father's cruel

will."

The sound of wheels, of a horse's hoofs stopping at the front door, brought the situation to a crisis.

The poor colonel's face altered, changed, softened, the color seemed to come back into his lips.

"I am not angry with you, my poor child," he said, and he sighed, and held out his hand. Tempy felt that it was cold like stone. "I am tired; another time I will speak to you. I cannot see him. I thought I thought you were all trying to deceive me," he repeated, with an attempt at a smile.

Tempy watched him step by step till he turned the corner of the staircase, still holding by the bannisters. Long, long afterwards she seemed to see him climbing slowly and passing on.

with ivy leaves. Beneath each natural the good company of great and lovely arch formed by the spread of the great things. Susy herself had not such easy branches, lay a most lovely and placid and dignified greetings for her guests, world of cool waters and gentle mountain such kindness and unspoken courtesy in mist, of valleys full of peaceful, browsing her ways, as that with which these two sheep. A strange cloud hung along the women now met her. crest of the Old Man flashing with light. Susanna remembered it long afterwards; every minute of that day seemed stamped and marked upon her mind. Phrasie went first, still chattering to her mamma, who followed quietly, looking out at the tranquil prospect; then came Wilkins. Once the nurse stopped short, and Susy, who had walked a little ahead, called to her.

Mrs. Dymond had come only intending to remain a few minutes, but from behind the Old Man some sudden storm began to spread, and in a few minutes, swiftly, rapidly, the clouds had gathered, and the rain had begun to pour very heavily all round about.

Perhaps half an hour went by—a strange half-hour, which ever afterwards Susy looked back to with a feeling half of "I thought there was a something on longing, half of miserable regret. It the other side of the lake, mem," says seemed to her as if some other Susanna Wilkins. "There's a boat and a crowd." had lived it, with its troubled apprehenSusy stopped, looked, moved on again sions, with a heart full of pain, of dull after an instant's pause. "I cannot see excitement. She could not bear to disclearly across the lake," she said; "but agree with her husband, but the sight of the rain is coming, we must not be long," Tempy's dull pain stung her. So long as and she went on her way, still holding it had been her own self in question, she Phrasie's warm little hand. The Fletch- had felt no disloyalty in suppressing her ers lived in a stone, slated cottage high own wishes, crushing down the instinctive up on the mountain-side; it was homely protest in her heart against the family enough, scanty, but exquisitely clean and thraldom and traditional subjection to in perfect order. The little garden, en- conventionality. But now that Tempy's closed by its stone walls, flashed lilac, happiness and honesty of mind were congold, and crimson with the cottage flow-cerned, it seemed to Susy that the time ers that were all ablaze convolvulus, had come to speak. Ah! John who was phloxes, sweet-william, and nasturtium, so good, so gentle and forbearing, he opening to the raindrops that were already would understand her, he would yield to beginning to fall. her entreaties, to Tempy's pleading.

--

Martha Fletcher, the younger sister who kept the school, was standing out in the porch as her visitors arrived somewhat breathless with their climb; and she came forward to welcome them with her smiling, peaceful looks and voice, and, calling to her sister, opened the cottage door and showed them in. There were two rooms on the ground floor, leading from one to another pleasant rooms, scantily furnished, with slated floors and lattice windows and cross lights, and a few geraniums in pots; they both opened to the garden. The first was a sort of kitchen, with a kettle boiling on the hob; the second was a parlor, with a few wooden chairs, an oak chest, and a quaint old cupboard that would have made the fortune of a collector. "It is old; it were never very much," said Martha. In front of the cupboard, Jane, the elder sister, was lying back in her big chair knitting, with a patchwork cushion at her back. She looked pale and worn by ill health, but she, too, brightened to welcome their visitors. Both these sisters had the calm and well-bred manners of people who live at peace, in

Susy sat paying her visit in a curious, double state of mind. The rain had ceased, the cottage garden was refreshed; the phloxes, the zinnias, the lupins, the marigolds, the whole array of cottage finery was refreshed and heavy with wet. The birds had begun to fly and chirp again; little Phrasie stood at the door, peeping out at an adventurous kitten which was cautiously advancing along the wooden bench. Martha sat erect on the wellrubbed mahogany settle, Jane lay back in her big chair with an invalid's gentle eyes full of interest, fixed on their young visitor.

"How comely Mrs. Dymond du look," thinks Jane the fanciful, "there side-byside wi' Martha on the settle."

Mrs. Dymond, dressed in some soft brown pelisse with a touch of color in it, her loose country gloves, her lace ruffles, her coquettish brown felt hat with the shining bird's breast, all seemed to make up a pleasant autumnal picture, even more interesting to Jane than that baby one in the doorway. After all, a tidy, well-dressed child is no prettier an object