Mr. Fisher looked a little disgusted and turned to the young lady of the party. "Have you been very musical lately, Miss Dunlop?" he inquired.

"No," she answered, “not very. But we enjoyed the concert. It was very kind of you to send me the tickets."

The editor's face lighted up.

"I am glad," he said; "and did you find a pleasant chaperon ?”

"Oh, yes, thank you. cousin George Dighton."

I went with my

the unsuccessful appeal to her rich rela tion, and of the port wine that had always proved pernicious to her digestion.

"Your cousin!" said Mr. Wimple, and he fixed another long, steady gaze upon Mrs. Baines, “that is very interesting; " and he was silent.

"Cousins seem to abound in our con. versation this evening," Miss Dunlop said to Mr. Fisher; "it must be terrible to be cousin to the lord mayor."

"Like being related to Gog and Magog," he whispered.

"Even worse," she answered, pretending to shudder.

But Mrs. Hibbert was looking at Aunt Anne, for it was time to go up-stairs. Mrs. Baines went out of the door with a stateliness that was downright courage considering how small and slight she was. Ethel Dunlop, standing aside to let her pass, looked at her admiringly, but the old lady gave her back, with the left eye, a momentary glance that was merely conde

"He is fortunate in having the privilege as well as the time to avail himself of it," the editor said formally. His manner was always reserved, sometimes even a little stately. Now and then, oddly enough, it reminded one of Aunt Anne's, though it was a generation younger, and he had not her faculty for long words.

"You never seem able to go to concerts. It is quite sad and wicked," Ethel said brightly.

He looked up as if he liked her. "Not often. Perhaps some day if you would honor me, only I am not a cousin; still I have passed the giddy age of Mr. Dighton."

"We will, we will," she laughed, and nodded; "but only relations are able to survive the responsibility of taking me about alone, perhaps Mrs. Hibbert would

fancy to people, or made a point of being agreeable, she was apt to be condescending. Her manner to young people was sometimes impatient, and to servants it was generally irritating. She had taken a dislike to Miss Dunlop-she considered her forward. She did not like the manner in which she did her hair. She was of opinion that her dress was unbecoming. All these things had determined Mrs. Baines to snub Miss Dunlop, who illdeserved it, for she was a pretty, motherless girl of one-and-twenty, very anxious to do right and to find the world a pleasant dwelling-place.

The old lady sat down on the yellow couch in the drawing-room again, the same couch on which, a fortnight before, she had sat and related her misfortunes. But it was difficult to believe that she was the same person. Her dress was spread out; her gloves were drawn on and carefully buttoned; she opened and shut a small black fan; she looked round the drawingroom with an air of condescension, and almost sternly refused coffee with a "Not any, I thank you," that made the servant feel rebuked for having offered it. Mrs. Hibbert and Ethel felt that she was indeed mistress of the situation.

"You are musical, I think, Miss Dunlop," she asked coldly.

"I am very fond of music, and I play and sing in a very small way," was the modest answer.

"I hope we shall hear you presently," Mrs. Baines said grandly, and then, evi

"My dear Florence," she said, "I think Mr. Wimple is charming. He has one of the most expressive countenances I ever beheld."

"Oh, Mrs. Baines, do you really think so?" Ethel Dunlop exclaimed.

66

Certainly I do." And Mrs. Baines turned her back. "Florence, are not you of my opinion?"

"Well, Aunt Anne, I hardly know and happily the entrance of the men prevented any further discussion. Somehow conversation flagged a little, and silence threatened to fall on the party. Florence felt uneasy.

"Are we to have some music?" Walter asked presently. In these days music after dinner, unless it is very excellent or there is some special reason for introducing it, is generally a flag of distress, a sign that dulness is near. Florence knew it, and looking at Ethel tried to cover it by asking for a song.

"Ethel sings German songs delightfully, Aunt Anne," she said; "I think you would enjoy listening to her."

"I should enjoy listening to any friend of yours," the old lady answered. But Miss Dunlop pleaded hoarseness and did not stir.

Mr. Wimple roused himself a little. "I am sure Mrs. Baines plays," he said, standing before her. Aunt Anne gave a long sigh.

"My playing days are over," she answered.

"Oh no, Aunt Anne," laughed Walter, "we cannot allow you to make that excuse."

In a moment she had risen.

"I never make excuses, Walter," she said proudly; "if it is your wish-if it will give you pleasure I will touch the keys again, though it is long since I brought myself even to sit down before an instrument."

She took her place at the piano; she pulled out her handkerchief, not one of the black-bordered ones that Florence had sent her a week ago, but a dainty one of lawn and lace, and held it for a moment to her forehead, then suddenly, with a strange, vibrating touch that almost startled her listeners, she began to play "Oft in the stilly night." Only for a moment did the fire last, her fingers grew feeble, they missed the notes, she shook her head dreamily.

"I forget I forget them all," she said

Mr. Wimple was near her chair, he bent down to her.

"You gave us a great treat,” he said, as if he were stating a scientific fact.

Mrs. Baines listened to his words gravely, she seemed to revolve them in her mind for a moment before she looked up.

"I am sure you are musical, Mr. Wimple," she said, "I can see it on your face." "Aunt Anne," Walter said, passing her, "should you mind my opening this window?"

"No, my darling, I should like it," she answered tenderly.

Mr. Wimple gave a long sigh. "Lucky beggar he is; you are very fond of him?"

"Oh yes," she answered, "he is like my own son," and she nodded at Walter, who was carrying on a laughing conversation with Ethel Dunlop, while his wife was having what seemed to be a serious one with Mr. Fisher. She looked round the room, her gaze rested on the open window. "I think the carriage must be waiting," she said, almost to herself.

"I will tell you," and Mr. Wimple went on to the balcony. "It is a lovely night, Mrs. Baines," he said, and turning back he fastened his strange eyes upon her. Without a word she rose and followed him.

"Aunt Anne," Florence said, “you will catch your death of cold; you mustn't go out. Walter, dear, get my thick white shawl for Aunt Anne."

"Oh no, my love, pray continue your conversation; I have always made a point of looking up at the sky before I retire to rest, therefore it is not likely to do me harm."

"I wouldn't let it do you harm for the world," Mr. Wimple whispered.

She heard him; but she seemed to digest his words slowly, for she nodded to herself before, with the manner and smile that were so entirely her own, she answered;

"Pray don't distress yourself, Mr. Wimple, I am accustomed to stand before the elements at all seasons of the year, and this air is not likely to be detrimental to me; besides," she added, with a gentle laugh, "perhaps though I boasted of my age just now I am not so old as I look. Oh, dear Walter, you are too good to me - dear boy," and she turned and let him wrap the thick white shawl about her. He lingered for a moment, but there fell the dead silence that sometimes seems to chase away a third person, so that feeling that he was not wanted, he went back to Ethel Dunlop. It was a good thing Aunt Anne liked Alfred, he thought. He had been afraid the latter would not wholly enjoy his evening, but the old lady seemed to be making up for Florence's rather scanty attentions.

"It is impossible to you to be old," Mr. Wimple said, still speaking almost in a whisper.

The old lady appeared not to hear him, her hands were holding the white shawl close round her neck, her eyes were following the long row of street lamps on the right. The horses, waiting with the carriage before the house, moved restlessly, and made their harness clink in the stillness. Far off, a cornet was playing as cornets love to do," Then you'll remember me." Beside her stood the young man, watching. Behind in the drawingroom, dimly lighted by the shaded lamp and candles, the others were talking, forgetful of everything but the subject that interested them. Cheap, sentimental surrounding enough, but they all told on the old lady standing out on the balcony. The stars looking down on her lighted up the soft white about her throat, and the outline of the shawl-wrapped shoulders, almost youthful in their slenderness. Mr. Wimple went a little closer, the tears came into her eyes, they trickled down her withered cheeks, but he did not know it.

voice that would have jarred horribly on more sensitive nerves"in reality I am older than you, for I have found the world so much colder than you can have done.” He said it with deliberation, as if each word were weighed, or had been learnt beforehand. "I wish you would teach me to live out of the abundance of youth that will always be yours."

She listened to him attentively; she turned and looked towards her left, far ahead, away into the distance, as if puzzled and fascinated by it, almost as if she were afraid of the darkness to which the distance reached. Then she gave a little nod, as if she had remembered that it was only the trees of the Regent's Park that made the blackness.

"If you would teach me to live out of the abundance of youth that will always be yours," he said again, as if on consideration he were well satisfied with the sentence, and thought it merited a worthy reply.

She listened attentively for the second time, and looked half puzzled :

"I should esteem myself most fortunate, if I could be of use to any friend of Walter's," she answered, with sad but almost sweet formality.

He stooped and picked up the handkerchief with the lace border.

"No," he said, "don't say that. Not the end, age is not counted by years, it is counted by other things," and he coughed uneasily and waited as if to watch the effect of his speech before continuing. "In reality," he went on, in the hard

"Aunt Anne, dear Aunt Anne," Florence said, "do come in, you will catch your death of cold."

"My love, the carriage is waiting and you must excuse me; it is growing late. It has been delightful to be with you, and to meet your friends."

She shook hands with Mr. Fisher, and bowed to Ethel Dunlop; then she went slowly out of the room on Walter's arm,

From Blackwood's Magazine. THE YARROW OF WORDSWORTH

SCOTT.

AND

NEARLY in the centre of the Borderland of Scotland, through the heart of the mountainous district known of old as the Middle March and The Forest, there flows, from the south-west to the northeast, a stream much spoken of for the last ninety years, and famous in story, song, and romantic ballad. This is "the Yarrow," literally, perhaps, "the rough stream." It is a broken water certainly, but a rough stream it is not in any proper sense of the word. From the point where it leaps from the Loch of St. Mary, fullborn, to where it is fused with its brother water, the Ettrick, not far below the battlefield of Philiphaugh and the grey ruins of Newark, it is usually bright and sparkling, passing from rapid stream to calm, reflective pool, but for the most part rippling, restless rushing down amid the smooth rounded stones of its softly musical strand. To the ear which listens and broods over its flow, there seems to be a suggestion of that cadence of the ballad measure, which is so appropriate to the pathos of its story. The valley of the Yarrow - which may be taken as beginning above the Loch of the Lowes, and running north-eastward for some twenty-five miles has hills on either side of the rounded, massive kind, that flow down to the stream in a consenting parallelism and harmony. Those in the upper reaches of the valley, especially if we take in the tributary Meggat Water, have a marked impressiveness and grandeur, rising with massive fronts to more than twenty-six hundred feet, their sides cut and cloven into deep grey heughs and

scaurs, where of old the red-deer herded; but from the outflow of the Yarrow from the Loch they are gently sloping heights of some fifteen hundred to eighteen hundred feet, green and wavy in outline. The valley has thus no Highland cliffs to show, no great height of mountain, no striking grandeur of peak or summit; it has nothing by which it can appeal with sudden and intense impression to the eye or the sensuous imagination. Yet it has a charm, has had a charm through many ages. People, even at first sight, look and wonder, are stirred and brood over the scene -over the lonely river, as it passes on amid those green, soft-sloping, wavy hills; the placid monotone of its bare, treeless scenery; the deep pastoral stillness of its braes and hillsides, broken only it may be by a fitful sway and sough of the water, or the bleating of the sheep that, white and motionless, dot the knowes. And if you stay there for some days, in summer or autumn, you will find that the stream and valley know well the mists and the sunshine, the rapid change of grey darkening cloud and bright gleaming sun-glimpses through the mottled heavens, that touch the heart to pathos and then to joy; it has, in a word, its "dowie dens" and its "bonnie houms," reflected it would seem in its sad and joyous song.

Around this stream, - this valley with its hills, its ruined towers, its storied names, there has grown, through the last three centuries at least, a fulness of stirring associations and of imaginative feeling, a wealth of romantic ballad and pathetic song, such as is not paralleled in Scotland; such as is only matched in some respects by the lyrics that rose in the time of Burns to life and beauty on the banks of the Lugar and the Doon. The Yarrow we see is thus not the Yarrow we feel. The bare stream has been uplifted to the heaven of imagination; to the dreamland of poetry and pathos. That quiet Border stream has flowed for many ages throughout the heart of the land of old romance; and it will flow in the time to come with a quickening power and thrill for all souls capable of being touched by the simplicity, the strength, the tragedy of our old-world life, and of love faithful to death. It belongs now to the realm of the ideal, and this encircles us as the heavens, and changes not, "whate'er betide." But its ancient story and ballad I cannot here touch in detail. I wish now only to look for a short time at a certain modern outcome of the older minstrels' lays, and try to realize that mysterious