Wadpole; they had discussed where he should go, and what he should do, and Georgy had promised that during his absence she would keep him posted up in all the news of the neighborhood. to gain time. He saw in Christopher's face that he had been witness to what had passed between him and Robin, and the knowledge made him feel much less at ease than he seemed. Rising, he stood up, and with a questioning look waited for Christopher to begin. How contrarily to anything we may conceive, are the tragedies in real life usually played out! accusation, invective, reproach, sound natural enough on the stage, but standing face to face the in What would she think now when she learned that Robin had gone with him? He could not tell her that a mere chance, an unforeseen accident had brought about an event which she would always believe must have been decided on at the very time they were conversing. Georgy's was not a disposition to overlook a de-jured and the injurer, the froth of many ception; he would, he felt, forfeit her friendship forever. The rector, too, what would he think of it, and the other friends he had made in the county among his neighbors? All would blame, all condemn him, and rightly too, because none knew the real facts of the story; if they did, whatever they might say, they would feel differently. How strangely inconsistent is human nature! Never before had Jack seemed to value the good opinion of others so highly. Not for worlds would he have acknowledged to himself that he regretted the step he had taken, but a thousand pricks of conscience came to torment him. A few words, two or three disjointed sentences dropped by Robin had given him the key to all he had made her sensitive heart suffer, and the thought of that newly-awakened love shrinking back with shame because of the fear that it had given itself to one by whom it was not wanted, stirred him with a compunction he had never felt before. It was true he had played with her, trifled with her, thinking of his own pleasure, not of her pain. Was this what he was still doing? His answer came in the vows he registered to protect her, to shield her, to devote his whole life in striving to make her happy. Could he do this? Suddenly the instinct that some one was near, rather than any sound he heard, made him look up and turn half round; it was Christopher standing close to him." "Have you been here long?" Jack asked, and supreme as seemed the moment, terrible as was the situation, Christopher could but marvel at the self-command shown in putting the question, no start, no change of countenance betrayed any emotion. "For some time behind the brushwood there, I have." No need to tell that; Jack had but asked words is out of place. So at least it seemed to Christopher. What he had to say needed no prelude to discover his outraged feelings. Indignation, wrath, suffering, what mattered it to the man who had planned to rob him of the one treasure dearer than life? He had to save Robin, that was the thought to be kept before him: time enough for self, when this horrible crisis was past. "I have heard you ask my wife to leave her home with you," he began, and it even struck Jack how different to his usual way was his manner of speaking. "You tell her you love her, and you seek to ruin her." Jack winced internally. "I loved Robin Veriker," he said, "before you ever saw her." you ? "And she-did she love "I was not in a position to ask her then, I was poor, penniless, and I gave a promise to her father that I would go away without speaking to her: although I kept my word, I thought she understood, and when by chance we met here on this very spot where we are standing now, I believed that she was bound to me as I felt bound to her." Jack made a pause as if to keep under his emotion, and then in a cold, dry voice he added, "You know what had happened in the mean time-how with poverty, sickness, starvation, staring at them, to save her father she had married, you." Ah! Jack, no need to fling such scorn into that word. The man before you feels to the full his inferiority: while you have been speaking, he has watched each turn of your mobile face, and summed up the scanty measure of his own merits. "I knew it was to save her father," Christopher said, "but your name was never so much as mentioned by either of them, until the day you called; when she told me she had seen you here I was ignorant that before she had been aware of your existence." "What could a girl say of a man who E had left her? She did not know that I was coming back. I did not realize myself then how I cared for her. I had known her so long as a child, a pet, a plaything, that the thought of anything more had hardly presented itself until in telling me of his illness, her father spoke of her being left in the world alone and friendless." "Was it you then, who suggested that he should write to us?" Jack gave an assenting movement. "It seemed horrible," he said, as if in excuse: "to picture a girl like Robin, without any natural protector. There was enough to shield her from while her father lived; he gone, what might not have befallen her?" 66 Hardly worse than threatens to befall her now," said Christopher sternly. For a moment Jack stood silent. "Your wife is perfectly innocent," he began: "and as far as that goes, this meeting which I asked of her, was but to bid her farewell. I could not stay here, and be silent any longer, and I was going away, my plans were settled and all arrangements made. If your father's brutality had not driven her into my arms, we should be parted now, I should have left her, I could have gone then with my secret, safe in my own keeping Christopher groaned audibly. "But now," continued Jack, his voice grown husky, his face working and troubled, "after seeing her on her knees before me, imploring help for our old friendship's sake, begging me to aid her in escaping from the insults and tyranny which are daily, hourly, heaped upon her, never! Whom has she to turn to if I fail her?" The eyes that met his gave the answer. "You are, I know, her husband, but" "I am, unfortunately," said Christopher, "for her and for me too; although I would never haye been so had a word been dropped of you. It was what 1 begged her father to tell me, was there any obstacle he knew of against our marriage, and he said no; in the anguish of his soul the words Christopher spoke came bitterly. "What motive had he to deceive me so cruelly? When I "He didn't know he was deceiving you," interrupted Jack chivalrously; "he but suspected that Robin cared for me, and he had no faith in my love for her." "But you did, you do love her?" Jack looked at him with surprise, but made no answer. "It is my one hope," Christopher continued; "if you love her you will spare her, I told you I had heard almost all that passed between you, and I know that she is in your power and I am at your mercy." Jack looked away, Christopher's face troubled him.. "Your father makes her life a very hell," he said. "I promise that they shall not remain another day under the same roof together; ask anything you will of me, and I swear to carry it out to the very letter." Jack looked at him fixedly, his eyes were strained to search him through and through. "And if so," he began," after what you know towards her could I trust you to be the same?" A flush deepened on Christopher's face. "In anything which concerns her," he said sadly, "you may trust me entirely; my misfortune is to love her, my crowning misery," he added bitterly, "that she does not love me. Did I know of any sacrifice by which I could ensure her happiness I should not hesitate to make it, but short of taking my own life, I cannot set her free; if I could - I would not come between you." Was he speaking the truth? Jack felt an inward conviction of his sincerity forced upon him in spite of the efforts he had made, he had never succeeded in thinking meanly of Christopher. "You must give me until to-morrow," he said, and the struggle he was making showed itself in his face and the hoarse, broken tones of his voice. "Will you keep silent about this meeting to her?" "If you desire it, from me she shall never hear that I have spoken to you." "A letter sent to your house it be delivered to you unseen?" "I will take care it is given to no other hand than my own." "And a letter to her?" would There was a moment of hesitation: Jack looked as if he was going to speak again, then of a sudden he wheeled round, and to Christopher's surprise, he was gone: the crackling of bough and branch told the hasty retreat he was making, then all was still, and Christopher was left standing alone. Like the rush of many waters desolation overwhelmed him. No one was near not an eye could see him, and casting himself on the ground he lay still and motionless. From Blackwood's Magazine. the inn-door, the weather had cleared a little. Well do I remember the drive: the cold, keen air; a pale half-moon lightSEVERAL years ago it fell to my lot to ing up the sombre landscape; dark islands be on the march with a subaltern of my of bog alternating with pools of shimregiment in Ireland. I was taking a de- mering water; hill-slopes near but mystetachment into a remote part of the coun-rious. As far as I can remember, we entry, where I believe some disturbances tered the grounds of Innishderry Hall were apprehended, and we had been about a mile and a half from the town. started off at pretty short notice. I have Already the country had begun to wear a even now a lively recollection of a long prettier aspect; patches of wood aprailway journey, the dingy stations we peared; and after passing the lodge-gate, passed, the tedious stoppages, occasional we began to descend a valley- - broken, plashes of rain against the carriage-win- rocky ground, with clumps of spruce and dows, and our final exit from the train in larch on either side till, suddenly a dark, draughty shed with a sloppy plat- emerging from this, the drive swept round form. From here we had a good long a corner, and we were in view of the sea. march to our halting-place, through a sad- A few minutes more, and we were looking colored waste, past hillsides of black bog, down over a charming little bay shut in hardly a fence worth calling one to be by cliffs, with a boat high and dry up the seen, now and then a tumble-down hovel beach; and from this point till we sighted by the roadside, and off and on the rain the lights of the house, copse, park, and pelting down in the sort of searching cold heather intermingled one with the other showers one gets in bleak parts of Ire- to our left, while on the right great white land in the autumn-time. The town where lines of surf quivered and broke in the we were to stay the night was no excep- moonlight. tion to the general dinginess. After setting the men down into their billets, we "prospected" the principal inn in the place, got a couple of very middling bedrooms, and made up our minds to make the best of the situation. We had divested ourselves of our wet uniform, entered our little sitting-room with its welcome, peat-piled fire, examined some hideous sacred prints hung round the walls - amongst them I remember one of St. Veronica displaying a large handkerchief with the Saviour's face upon it and were busy planning what to associate with whisky and the jacketed potato, when a note was brought in and handed to me, with a message that some one was waiting for an answer. It was addressed to "The officer commanding detachment, Regiment;" but one saw at a glance it was not an official communication, the envelope being a dainty white one, and the handwriting almost unmistakably that of a lady. It turned out to be a very courteous invitation from a Mr. and Mrs. M- of Innishderry Hall (we will call it), who, having heard that some troops were passing through Moynetown to-day, hoped for the pleasure of the officers' company at dinner that evening. This was really a timely as well as a hospitable offer, so A, my subaltern, and I, at once agreed to accept it. Fortunately, when evening came round, and the rickety-looking car that was to jolt us to our entertainers clattered up to It was a beautiful scene as it presented itself to us in the obscurity of the nighttime. Possibly by day some of its enchantment might have been missing, but we did not see it in daylight. Such as it was it probably impressed me and stamped itself in my memory, more on account of the subsequent incidents which ensued than anything else. The house, as we drew up to it, seemed a large and handsome one. It had a great many windows, a steep-pitched roof, and was partly ivy-clad. Two long ranges of out-buildings were attached to it, one at either end, and from that nearest us as we approached, ran out an old wall matted with ivy-stems, and forming an enclosure screened by a row of thorntrees, behind which one could just make out the ruined gable-end of a small building. Our driver, who had been most uncommunicative all the way out as to our host and hostess, condescended to tell us this was a very ancient chapel, which some ancestor of the family had pulled down and dismantled, "bad luck to him!" The fine entrance hall - I can recall it now- - warmed by an ample stove and well lighted up, with a few dressed skins lying about, and a huge ebon cabinet over against the door, made a cheery contrast to the outside car and surroundings we had just left. Round the walls were grouped a splendid pair of stag's horns, a fox's head and brush, a stuffed seal, and other trophies of a sporting life; and a black buffalo's massive frontlet, surmounting a sheaf of assegais, suggested at once what we afterwards learned to be the case, that our host had been in South Africa. "I wonder what sort of people they are, major?" were A's words to me, sotto voce, as he gave his sleeves a final jerk and glanced down critically at his boots, while we followed the butler to the drawing-room. A moment more, and we were face to face with our new acquaintances. up to him to ask what it all meant, when dinner was announced. 66 certain half-disagreeable sensations I experienced as her eyes occasionally rested on mine while we talked, and once or twice a flash as of something almost malevolent seemed to pass out of them. At the dinner-table I found myself on the left of our hostess, the baronet opposite me. A- was placed some distance down on the opposite side, so that I could keep an eye on him, which I soon began to think I must do. I had now an opportunity of noting more particularly Mrs. M- -'s personal appearance. Her age I should judge to have been somewhere about eight-and-twenty or thirty, I do not recollect anything very note- considerably under her husband's. Her worthy about our host. He was a tall figure was faultless; neck and arms of and rather handsome man, but of some that nameless tint one has so often seen what faded aspect- quiet and genial in imperfectly described in novels as his manner. "I am an old soldier my- creamy-white;" a corona of hair of that self," was his greeting to us, "and I never deep auburn-red which so sets off a fair like any one in the service to pass our woman; and a face of singular beauty, place on duty without our finding him of which you forgot everything but the out." But our hostess! As I shook eyes the moment you looked into them. bands with her she at once engrossed my Such eyes they were! Their particular attention. I am at a loss now, as I was size, shape, this or that color, would never then, to define the nature or cause of the occur to one; it was their strange, almost peculiar interest she seemed at once to weird, effect when turned on you, that excite in me. Certainly she was a re- one felt. It was as though they divined markably handsome woman, but my ob- what you were thinking of, and could anservation of her at the moment of intro-swer your thoughts. Yet it was not a duction was quickly diverted by the satisfactory or a restful face. I can recall strange demeanor of A. I had turned round and was in the act of presenting bim, when he suddenly started, stopped, and, without attempting a salutation or advance of any kind, stared at her. For the instant, the situation was embarrass- One incident I recollect. We were ing. Was the man going to faint, or was discussing pictures, and Mrs. Mhe off his head, or what? There he pointing to some fine family portraits stood, stock still, facing Mrs. M- till hung round the dining-room, said, "My in a severe tone I said, "A-, this is husband and I are distant cousins, Major our hostess." "Mrs. M- allow me to P-, so that you see we are mutually introduce Mr. A- "This appeared to represented here; and yonder is a lady of rouse him a little, for he made a sort of bygone days, supposed to have been very backward movement, which might do wicked, and to be like me." I looked up, duty for a bow, though a very poor apol and sure enough there gazed down on me ogy for it, and said, "III beg your from the canvas a woman's face strikingly pardon," retiring immediately into the like the speaker's so like, that except background. If this was bashfulness, it for the quaint costume, the portrait might was a curious form of it, I thought, and have been taken for her own. It was a certainly new in my knowledge of A- finer specimen than usual of the formal This little incident over, I had leisure to yet fascinating style in which our greatlook round the room. There appeared great-grandmothers have been depicted to be about a dozen people in all. Mr. for us a stately attitude, regular but M-introduced me to a relation of his, immobile features, and exuberant charms a baronet whose name I forget; to a par- sumptuously if somewhat scantily draped. son, who assured me in Hibernian ac- The lady's figure, as it chanced, was cents that troops had been down here turned towards our end of the table; she repeatudly;" and to a niece, whom I held a fan in her hand; the lips had a was to take in to dinner. I caught a mo- disdainful, almost derisive, smile; and mentary glimpse of A- and saw to my the eyes, which in such pictures usually surprise that he was furtively but intently appear to be contemplating the spectator, watching the lady of the house from an and to follow him about, seemed directed obscure corner. I was quietly slipping | full on our hostess. "There is certainly a likeness," I said, "but the lady on the | eign to him, for he was ordinarily a wall is entitled, I feel sure, to an entire cheery, common-sense fellow, not easily monopoly of the wickedness." Mrs. disturbed. At length it seemed that our M- laughed, and winged a glance at hostess became aware of the intent obme, and the smile and the eyes were those servation she was being subjected to; and of the portrait. before the ladies rose from the dinnertable, her handsome features had grown very white, there was a visible trembling movement in her hands, and her eyes took an uneasy expression not previously there. Another circumstance I remember discovering in looking round the table, which, had I been superstitious, might not have added to my comfort. We were sitting thirteen. Mrs. M-, I rather think, must have noticed me counting the numbers, for she made some remark, as if in reply to my thought, "So sorry we were disappointed of one of our party at the last moment." As soon as we men were left alone, and almost before we could resent ourselves, A-turned to our host, and in an odd, muffled voice announced that he felt unwell, and begged permission to take his Meanwhile A- was again attracting departure. Mr. M glanced at me my attention by his extraordinary behav- with a puzzled air. He was so very sorry. ior. His partner, a pretty-looking, lively Could he do anything? And, of course, girl, was evidently doing her best to make the carriage was entirely at Mr. A—'s herself agreeable, and he was answering service. By this time it was evident ber in an intermittent fashion; but I could something was really amiss with Asee he was eating very little, and crumbling his bread in a nervous, preoccupied manner, while every now and then his eyes wandered to Mrs. M—, with a curious, fixed stare that was positively illmannered and altogether unaccountable. Instinctively I turned to the same quarter to see what could be the object of this persistent scrutiny, but in vain. There, indeed, was a beautiful woman, dressed to perfection, and with those wonderful eyes; but what right had he to gape at her like that? I began to wonder if she or any other of the guests would observe A- -'s rudeness. I tried to catch his eye, but without success. In a little while I lapsed into comparative silence, and set myself to watch A- -'s movements more narrowly as well as I could, across the table. After a time it seemed to me that the direction of A so I made some sort of excuse that I -'s gaze must be at Mrs. M- -'s over. "Mr. Ahead or a little above it; but there was nothing I could see to account for this. To be sure, she wore, fastened into the thick top coil of her hair, a jewelled ornament of some kind that seemed to sparkle at times with intense brilliancy; but still, why this repeated and offensive contemplation at her own table of a married woman, on whom, so far as I knew, neither Anor I had ever set eyes before? Could these two have been known to each other in some bygone love-affair, or was the man gone out of his wits, or had he taken too much drink? How this memorable dinner struggled on to a conclusion, I hardly remember. The more fidgety I got, the more irresistibly was I drawn to watch A—. His face wore a pale, scared aspect quite for "The |