was the old family coachman of Aunt Milly's house-steady of course.

Nora looked down and set her lips as the carriage began to move. She was to be married at eleven by programme; it was already a quarter past. There was no time to be lost no time to linger on the way. The quicker over the better. As they rolled out of the square she heard the roaring of the sea upon the beach, and turned sharply to the uncle, and shouted in his ear that it was a beautiful morning.

HEN a man wants to get away from himself, he is pretty sure to go on

the Continent. Even in our highly civilized days the old instinct remains to flee from the surroundings which are associated with sorrow or disappointment. In the primeval times no doubt the savages actually did escape much misery in this way. So soon as the corpse of the loved one was disposed of in the traditionary way, and the proper sacrifices had been made to the rude gods of the period, they seized their bows and spears, and started away for distant woods and mountains, to begin a new life. Their memory was short; a few weeks spent in a place where there was no tangible signs to remind them of what they had lost sufficed to blot out all recollection.

They really did begin a new life. But in our time of highly cultivated minds it is of little use to travel-we carry our marks and signs with us. Yet the old instinct remains, and it is hard to resist the impulse to place distance between us and the scene of our grief.

Percival did not at first exactly comprehend the full extent of his disappointment when his letter was returned with Aunt

Milly's explanation. Even when he was most deeply devoted to the fascinating Pauline-when the scarlet shawl had thrown its glamour over him-there was still in his innermost heart a vein of tender recollection. However unfaithful he might be himself, he still believed that Nora would never desert him. She might flirt, and coquette, and go on to a disgusting length with Spencer and such fellows, but the idea of her ever actually separating herself from him never occurred to him. Perhaps if it had he would have been more cautious-he would not have treated her with such offhand disdain he would not have so openly followed Vietri. But, under all his jealousy

and suspicion, there was in his heart a deeply rooted faith in Nora's fealty. There was even a certain detestable pride in the thought that do what he might she would never leave him. She would follow him like a beaten dog. In a dim, rough sort of way he actually thought the better of her for this very cringing fidelity; he put her on a higher level for that very feature of her character. When he came back to his home, and found that letter of Nora's, and read it, and saw himself and all his meanness reflected as in a mirror, stricken down as he was, and, for the time at least, sincerely despising himself, he, even then, had a certain inner feeling of complacency. She was his still. He would make her amends -he would reward her he would spend the rest of his life in a devoted attempt to make her happy. He never for one moment dreamt that she would refuse to accept his ministrations, otherwise he would probably have written something more than a mere plain request for an interview.

It struck him like an irresistible blow, the news of her engagement. He turned

the letter-the returned letter-over and over in his hands like a man beside himself. He could not credit the evidence of his own senses. Yet there was no mistakThere was no construing these

ing it.

scratchy thin sentences of Aunt Milly's

any

other way.

in
own accord.

She had left him of her

He left the house almost immediatelyhe did not exactly know what he was doing. But, as hinted before, under this man's shirt-front and dress-coat the instincts of the old barbarism, the old hunter's life, were strong and irresistible. It was his instinct to get away from pain-to place as long a distance between him and it as possible. A few hours afterwards he found himself at Dover. Mechanically he took the first steamer--it was for Ostend. Early next day he was in Brussels.

These are not the days when men mark their disappointment or their rage by extraordinary exhibitions of themselves. It is no longer the fashion to do as Don Quixote did for Dulcinea's sake-to fast among rocks and woods, and flagellate the bare body. There