paces. It was not Herbert Spencer she was sailing with, it was Percival. It was not old Wootton that she was playing on the organ to, it was Percival. While she chattered with the sodden-faced man, her heart was thinking "What will Percival say of me?" There was an incentive to flirt then, it galled Percival. It was just a little tiny morsel wicked. There was the shadow of the red shawl over it.

But now all was dull, tame, monotonous. And Sir Theodore industriously piled up the coals of the fire, and raked out the ashes, and stirred up the embers, keeping the heat up, forcing the growth of this unnatural hothouse flower, and calling it to himself love. in-idleness. He was very happy in these days, was Sir Theodore. He had it all his own way. He felt that he was a person of importance at that great house in the Square at the back of the Parade. His arrival was an event, and his first advent an era. The triumph of his principles had been long in coming, but their truth was now manifest. He had not cultivated himself in vain. He felt that he had not hidden his light under

the traditionary bushel.

If he was right in this one matter, the most crucial test of allif he was irresistible here, it was clear that his views were correct in other quarters. A day would come yet when the name of Theodore Stanley would be high among the leaders of the nation: when his ideas would be put into practical form.

A proud time that for Nora. He knew that she was ambitious-he felt it. That low, broad brow was made for a coronetnarrower heads had worn a diadem. Sir Theodore, like other young men, identified himself with the whole world. Changes in his personal condition and state of mind were synonymous with a similar though future feeling among multitudes. He was strengthened in his own conceit. He was grateful to Nora for strengthening him; he felt able now to grapple with the difficulties. of political life. He should write his memoirs yet-memoirs that would be eagerly looked for; and in them he would do full justice to the influence she had exerted upon his career.

There was an exactness in Sir Theodore

before, now there was precision in everything he did. His letters were folded to a hair's-breadth; the stamp upon the envelope was in its proper place, with the head of the Queen upright; the address was clear, minute to a fault. In the very motions of his body there was a precision. The gesture of his hand went thus far, and no farther; his step was measured, his attitudes more decided. Insensibly the increased importance and confidence of the man filtered down into the minutest actions of daily life. Nothing was trivial to him. The old, old haunting fear lest Nora should have ever really cared for Percival-lest she should still have a lingering memory of him, was fast being lulled to sleep. It was an insult to himself even to think of such a thing. It was impossible. There was no comparison between him and that fellow. To hesitate, to falter, and to doubt his own power of attracting Nora's love, was undervaluing his own abilities. Sir Theodore was doing justice to himself, in fact, as we saw Percival do a little while ago.

CHAPTER XIV.

HE course of life is usually little better than a drifting upon the

current. Except to those bold navigators who, urged by passion, or by love of gain, stretch out straight into the pathless ocean, and so escape the tides and eddies of the shore, the greater part of the lives of most of us is spent in nothing but drifting this way and that, as the tide changes. It is only now and then that something pricks us to energy and to furious battling with the waves.

Nora was drifting; heedless of whither she was going. What gigantic latent power there is in every human being if they would but use it; but they will not. What is there that a man cannot accomplish if he will but put his whole soul and mind into

it? Yet, let the desire be never so strong, how feeble are the efforts commonly made to attain the object! They work but a few hours, and that in a grudging way; they employ their faculties only in part-only in the conventional manner. The time is mainly spent in sleeping, eating, and drinking-idling in a hundred shapes. But if the hand were used to its full extent, and the mind put on the strain, what could not be done? It is the prejudices, the narrowness of the circle in which we grow up, that blunts the power of most of us. We must not do this, and we ought not to do that; and society would elevate its eyebrows if we did the other; and so on ad infinitum. What we do is only done in the conventional manNow and then, once in a thousand years, there rises up a man who knows himself, and the enormous power which nature has gifted him with. He understands that mystic sentence which was written on the gate of the Grecian city-" But know thyself to be a man, and be a god."

ner.

Only thoroughly appreciate the forces with which nature has endowed you; feel