"All-all," she whispered, softly. "For ever."

Duke Rutherford pressed her more closely to him, and left his first warm kiss upon her lips. She had found her haven at last.

it ever should, had conquered pride.

He gathered her into his arms.

"Yours, if you will take me."

Love, as

"And whose are you now?”

And Duke Rutherford forgot his animosity to England, and did not go abroad.

MY DOROTHY AND I.

WE sat together in the dusk, my Dorothy and I,
Not a breeze was in the trees, nor star out in the sky;

We had been talking at our work, but then a silence fell,

Save that her tale a nightingale poured out with yearning swell.

My Dorothy and I are friends: we met five years ago;
How she was bred and how bestead, the whole wide world
may know.
But I learned something that still night-that night we spake no word;
I know too well to ever tell the tale I never heard.

God speaks to us without a voice-our souls are one with Him :
Words are like rain upon a pane that makes the daylight dim.
And by the gladness of the glow He spreads on earth and sky
We know He bears all sins and fears, and knows how they must die.

Dorothy's face is keen and strong: her voice is glad and sweet-
Her walk is light as angels bright along the common street.
Dorothy's face that night was calm as theirs who look on Death,
Nor try to hide nor turn aside, nor even hold their breath.

Dorothy's mouth is firmly set, I know the reason why :
Some awful stroke her heart-strings broke, and yet she gave no cry.
I cannot guess to what grim pile her life was ever bound,
But by the sight I saw that night her soul was faithful found.

Strange thoughts half waken sometimes: and I wonder may it be
That angels' books are made of looks whose meaning angels see.
'Tis an old belief that in a hush the angels ever come-
And love, a flame, may show the name of tales they carry home.
ISABELLA FYVIE MAYO.

THE ARGOSY.

NOVEMBER, 1876.

EDINA.

BY MRS. HENRY WOOD, AUTHOR OF "EAST LINNE."

AG

CHAPTER XXXI.

HUMILIATION.

GAIN the weeks and the months went on, bringing round the autumn season of another year. For in real life-and this is very much of a true history-time elapses imperceptibly when it has little of event to mark its progress. Seasons succeed each other, leaving not much to tell of behind them.

It was but a monotonous life at best-that of the Raynors. It seemed to be spent in a quiet, constant endeavour to exist; a patient, perpetual struggle to make both ends meet: to be fed, and not to starve; to remain under that poor sheltering roof that covered Laurel Cottage, and not to have to turn out of it; to contrive that their garments should be decent, something like gentlepeople's, not in rags. But for Edina they would never have done it. Even with her fifty pounds a year, without her they would never have got on. She managed and worked, worked and managed, and had ever a cheerful word for them all. When their spirits failed, especially Mrs. Raynor's, and the onward way looked unusually dark and dreary, it was Edina who talked of the bright day-star in the distance, of the silver lining that was sure to be in every cloud. But for Edina they might almost have lost faith in Heaven.

The one most altered of all of them was Charles. Altered in looks, in bearing, in manners; above all, in spirit. All his pride had flown; all his self-conscious importance had disappeared, as does a summer wind; flown, and disappeared for ever. Had the discipline he was subjected to been transient, lasting for a few weeks, let us say, or even months, its impressions might have worn away with renewed favourable circumstances, had such set in again, leaving no trace for good. But

VOL. XXII.

Y

when this kind of depressing mortification continues for years, the lesson it implants on the mind is generally permanent. Day by day, every day of his life, and every hour in the day, Charles Raynor was subjected to the humiliations (as he looked upon them, and to him they were indeed such) that attend the position of a working clerk. He who had been reared in the notions of a gentleman, and had believed himself to be the undoubted future possessor of Eagles' Nest, found himself reduced by fate to this subordinate capacity, ordered about by the gentlemen clerks, and regarded as an individual not at all to be associated with them. "Raynor, do this; Raynor, do the other; Raynor, go thither; Raynor, come hither." He was at their beck and call, and obliged to be; he had to submit to them as his superiors, not only his superiors in the office, but his superiors as men; above all, he had to submit to their off-hand tones, which always implied, unwittingly perhaps to themselves, but all too apparent to Charles's ear, a consciousness of the distinction that existed between them. They were gentlemen; he was of the fraternity of those that labour for their bread as servants to others.

How galling this was to Charles Raynor, you, my reader, may imagine; but it can never be described. At first it was all but unbearable. Over and over again he thought he must run away from it, and escape to a land where these distinctions exist not. He might dig for gold in California; he might clear a settlement for himself in the backwoods of America: and the life in either place would be as paradise compared with this one at Prestleigh and Preen's. Nothing but the broad fact that the weekly wages he earned were absolutely necessary to aid in his mother's and the family's support, detained him. To give that aid was his imperative duty before God: for, had it not been through him and his supine carelessness that they were reduced to this extremity of need? So Charles Raynor, helped on by the ever-ready whispered word of counsel from Edina, endured his troubles, put up with his humiliation, and bore onwards with the best resolution he could call up.

:

And, as the time went on, he grew to feel them somewhat less keenly habit reconciles us in a degree to the worst of all things, no matter what that worst may be. But he had learnt a lesson that would last him for his whole life; never again could he be the arrogant young fellow who thought the world was made for his especial delectation. He had gained experience; he had found his level; he saw what existence was worth, and that those who would be happy in it must first learn and understand their duties in it. His very nature was changed: haughty self-sufficiency, selfish indifference had given place to modest self-containment, to a subdued thoughtfulness of habit, to an earnest sense of others' needs as well as his own, and to a settled wish to help them. Frank Raynor, with all his sunny-heartedness, his