They find Gertrude playing hostess to Charlotte in the drawing-room. Miss Grange is the first to arrive. Her opal ring is on her finger, and she sees that Gertrude's eyes light on it instantaneously. The twin to mine," Miss Forest says, holding out her own hand.

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"Yes; but I have the whole set, brooch, bracelet, earrings, necklet, and all," Charlotte replies, triumphantly.

A shadow darkens Gertrude's face. She has quite regard enough for her brother to feel sorry that he should be spending his substance on this grasper, and, besides, she feels a little annoyed at Charlotte outshining her in the matter of the opals. "Can Frank afford it?" she asks rather sharply, and Charlottte says, insolently,

"Take my advice, and don't question him on the point, my dear. He does not bear interrogation on such matters well, even from me.'

“I am not in the habit of interrogating my brother about his private business,' Gertrude says coldly; and Charlotte feels with satisfaction that her galling warning has saved her from exposure for a time. As Gertrude's will is potent in the family just now, there will be nothing said about the set of opals in public. As for Frank's curiosity in private, "I'll baffle that through his vanity," she thinks, complacently; "and if I can't, and he will have an explanation, why Graham will be compelled to show a little courage for once in his life, that is all."

She hardly realises yet, that relying on Graham's courage in any emergency is about as insecure a proceeding as relying on the false light the will-o'-the-wisp shows.

CHAPTER XLIV. CISSY ONCE AGAIN!

"What a laggard in love,' you are, Harry!" Mrs. Durgan says, with impetuous zeal to her cousin, one day, when he comes back to her after a long ride with Kate, and answers, in reply to some eager questioning, that he has not said anything which directly or indirectly can. be construed into a declaration to Kate.

"The fact is the bloom is off the rye," he confesses.

"Nonsense! she's as beautiful in person, and as bright in mind, as she can ever have been," she rejoins.

"Yes, she's all that, but somehow or other the keenness of my appreciation for her beauty and her brightness is worn off. My heart remained very faithful to her during all those years when she was in

accessible; now that she's accessible I am conscious of being in a lowered temperature about her."

"Yet it has not wandered to any other woman?" she half asks, half asserts.

"You're right there; in fact I love her still in reality, but the glow is gone from it, and Kate's a girl to detect that directly, and to suffer from it, and to wear her own soul out first in efforts to rekindle it, and then in punishing me and herself when those efforts fail."

"that

Mrs. Durgan heaves a tired sigh. "The truth is, Harry," she says, you'll never be happy apart, and you'll never be as happy together as you thought you ought to be in the first flush of your love's young dream."

"It's exactly that; what on earth shall I do without her? but, on the other hand, what on earth should I do with her? Í love her still, and it still would be the greatest happiness I could know to make her my wife; but I should disappoint her at every turn, and her's is not a nature to bear pain and disappointment."

"Taste the greatest happiness, and don't fear your fate too much," Mrs. Durgan counsels, and he cannot help feeling that if he had only been in love with her, she would have suited him much better than Kate, who will expect so much more of him.

However, inclination, propinquity, a certain craving to know whether or not she is still passionately attached to him, and above all, that admiration for her which he has never cast out, all impel him on, and he pleads to her to give him her heart and hand, as ardently as if he had never thought that such pleading would be unwise.

There is something sadly prophetic in the way she answers him.

"Love you still,' Harry! yes, more than ever-why shouldn't I tell you the truth- -more than ever! But it will end badly, it's resuscitating a corpse."

He laughs away her fears, for he is a man who quickly throws aside an impression, whether it be pleasant or the reverse; and since he has brought himself up to the point of putting it to the touch, he has not feared his fate too much.

"I suppose it won't all be 'blue unclouded weather' with us any more than it is with other people," he says, "but we have a very fair prospect before us, Kate. After all, we have stuck to each other through a good many trials——”

"You will persist in affecting to forget that there have been interludes," she interrupts. "We shall never be exactly as we should have been to one another if we hadn't cared for other people in the meantime."

"You're a better lover than philosospher, Kate," he laughs, but in his heart he thinks, "I wish she wouldn't be so ready with her recollections; I'm quite willing to take things as they are, and to be perfectly happy and contented with them. We ought to leave the longing for the impracticable and the impossible to younger and less experienced people."

It is always a bitter drop in her cup to a woman, when her lover not only remembers that she is older than she was, but words his remembrance of the fact, and Captain Bellairs has an unhappy knack of doing this very often in the most unintentional way.

"On the whole I think it's a lucky thing for us both that circumstances compelled us to wait and sober down, and have done with the follies of youth before we came together," he says to her, one day, while their engagement is still quite a new thing.

"Yes, so do I," Kate says with that remarkable promptitude which is not at all the offspring of an acquiescent, but rather of a wounded, spirit. "For my own part I feel awfully old, much too old to have anything to do with the folly of marrying at all." "We have neither of us grown younger, he says sententiously, and the observation is not one tended to soothe the lovingly anxious spirit of an over-sensitive woman. "We are neither of us made exactly of the stuff to wear well' as people call it," he goes on; we neither of us belong to the lymphatic order of beings, and you especially intensify every emotion to such a degree that it must tell on you physically. Now that stolid creature Frank is going to marry will wax smoother and fatter, but she'll never have any lines of passion or of pain for anyone but herself, drawn on her fair face."

"I know, from the way in which you speak, that you dislike that type as much as I do, Harry," she says, and she feels consoled in a measure for his vivid recollection of Time having been a thief, and having robbed her of her freshest youth, by his scarcely veiled repugnance to the creaseless "well-liking" beauty who has tricked Frank into an engagement.

On his side he is rather pleased with the way in which he has expressed his im

pression of Miss Grange. It must be understood that Captain Bellairs is not a dogmatic man, nor is he a man addicted to the habit of speaking as if he were speaking to an audience. But he is human, and he likes to feel that when he talks well, he is listened to with attention by someone who is capable of giving a verdict on both the matter and the manner of his speech.

"There's another woman I could mention, who will never burn herself up," he goes on. "Cissy Angerstein will keep that pretty childishly flexible face to the end, and only look like an aged baby when she's eighty."

"I wonder what has become of her ?" Kate says meditatively. "Poor Cissy! we were so very much thrown together such a little time ago, and now we're nothing more to each other than if we had never suffered, and sorrowed, and cried, and laughed together; the reflection bothers me sometimes, Harry.”

"Rest assured it never bothers Cissy," he says, laughing. "My dear Kate, don't look vexed; it is weakness to be wrath with weakness. Cissy Angerstein hasn't the power of feeling strongly for any body who isn't conducing to her immediate comfort; we can no more censure her for the flaw than if she had been born blind, or deaf, or dumb. She hasn't the faculty, and you have it, that's all."

"That's all," Kate assents.

"It makes her very easy to deal with," he goes on. "Provided you give her everything that conduces to her own comfort or pleasure, she's happy."

"In fact, if every desire of her heart is gratified, she's satisfied."

"Precisely so."

"But, Harry," Kate goes on, feeling irresistibly impelled to argue the point, "how can you extol or even tolerate such unmitigated, unreasonable selfishness ?"

"I don't extol it; I have simply accepted it as the prominent characteristic of the case I undertook to guard some years since, as I have told you.'

"Hers is such an exacting nature," Kate says, thinking and speaking more petulantly about Cissy Angerstein than she had ever suffered herself to think and speak before.

"Well, yes it is," Captain Bellairs admits blithely. "Odd you should have said that of her to-day, for I've had a letter from her this morning, in which she prefers a most peculiar request."

"Yes?" Kate interrogates, trying not to let her tone sound too anxious.

66

It's one that I don't exactly see how I can refuse to grant," he goes on. "I can't plead want of space, or want of means, or any other insurmountable barrier. The fact is, poor Cissy has come to the end of her resources very nearly, and she wants me to let her come and live in some little house on my estate, as she understands she can live for nothing in Ireland."

He looks questioningly at Kate as he tells her this, and Kate discerns at once that he has no repugnance to the plan.

"And you have told her?" Kate begins, then she pauses and leaves him to supply the remainder of the sentence.

"I have not written to her yet; I waited to consult you. For my own part I see no objection to the plan; I could let her have that pretty little place belonging to the home farm at Lugnaquilla, and could look after her and see

"That she has every comfort and pleasure she may set her heart upon," Kate puts in coldly.

"Does she know of our engagement ?" "Her letter is partly an answer to one which I wrote to her announcing the fact." "Any message to me?"

"No," he says laughingly. "Just like Cissy that, to leave out the very point which she ought not to have omitted. She's thinking too much of her own pecuniary difficulties, I fancy, to have much thought for other people.'

have never aided her in the commission of one of them.”

She believes him thoroughly, believes most earnestly and implicitly in his honour and integrity. Nevertheless, she does wish that he did not deem that he was fulfilling his duty towards Cissy in the best and kindest way, by having her at the pretty cottage on the Lugnaquilla home-farm.

She mentions the subject casually, and with well-affected indifference, to Mrs. Durgan by-and-by.

"I shall have my old friend, Mrs. Angerstein, as my nearest neighbour at Lugnaquilla. Has Harry told you that she's going to live on the home-farm?"

"Good gracious! No," Mrs. Durgan replies. Why, I thought the woman was one of those pestilently selfish creatures whom all sensible people would keep at a distance, if possible. What has induced you to bring her upon yourself?"

"I didn't want her," Kate says, wincing. "Can't you understand?-She has asked for a home. She has asked to come to Lugnaquilla; and what can he do, and what can I say ?

"He had far better make her an allowance, and keep her the other side of the Channel. I should say exactly the same if she were his widowed, helpless, and most disagreeable sister; and Cissy Angerstein is not his sister. These family arrangements never answer. If you don't like to speak to Harry I will."

"I shall certainly never say a word about it," Kate says.

Well, dear, what do you think about it?" he asks, presently, in a cheerful tone, that shows he is utterly unobservant of the shadow of gloom that has fallen upon her. "Consult the dictates of your own judgment and heart, entirely without reference to me," she says, making an effort to be cheerful and magnanimous. 66 'As you say, it has fallen to your lot to be Cissy's guardian, you must be true to your trust in the way you think best."

"I have been that always, thank Heaven!" he says, frankly. "Whatever mistakes poor Cissy may have made, I

"I'm sure he's doing it for the best," Kate says; "but I honestly confess I don't like the anticipation."

"And you'll like the reality even less. Now, Kate, if I were in your place," (her checks flush as she says this, for she remembers how very recently she has been in Kate's place), "I'd tell Harry out openly that I didn't like it. it sentimentally; but tell him that it will be a bore to you to have a whining, weeping widow at your door when you can do just as well for her afar off."

Don't do

Things must take their course," Kate says; "if I said that to Harry, he would remind me that we had passed the golden age of romance, and had entered the leadenhued one of common-sense and expediency:

besides, he seems to think it expedient that Cissy should come.”

66

Resignation is an admirable quality, but resignation to a perpetual nuisance that you can avert, is nonsense," Mrs. Durgan says. "However, it's useless saying any more to you. But I will speak to Harry!"

Accordingly she speaks to Harry that very day, launching out into the subject with her customary fearlessness.

"Kate has been telling me about Mrs. Angerstein. What wild plans men make and carry out if they are not liable to feminine supervision!"

"You don't like the plan, then? Kate does."

"Oh! does Kate? Well, I won't drag Kate's name into the discussion, but I'll tell you openly I don't. This Cissy Angerstein has been as fetters on your feet ever since you undertook the charge of her, and now you want to plant her down at Lugnaquilla and make her a yoke on your wife's neck!"

"My dear Georgie, be reasonable," he says, in that magnificent tone of mental superiority which the best and most delightful of men are apt to indulge in at times. "Poor Cissy has come to the end of the wretched pittance left her by her husband, and I must do something for her, and see after her. Now it's easier for me to do something for her, and to see after her here at Lugnaquilla, than if she were at a distance. While I was unmarried I couldn't do it."

"And now that you're going to be married you oughtn't to do it."

"You

He laughs good - temperedly. women have such absurd notions," he says. "I have another and more cogent reason still to give you in favour of the plan; I'm bound to maintain the poor

thing if she were living elsewhere. Killing sheep and pigs as we do constantly at Lugnaquilla, and with that tremendous stock of poultry to fall back upon whenever she feels inclined, Cissy won't know what a butcher's bill is."

"I can say nothing against your argument; if you can't afford to keep her anywhere else, and can afford to keep her luxuriously on the Lugnaquilla homeproduce, at your gates,' as you say, then it would be cruel on my part to interfere further cruel at least to Mrs. Angerstein."

“I am glad I have convinced you," he says, affectionately, "I want to see all you women friendly and happy together. The children are dear little things, and poor Cissy, in spite of her foibles, has a very affectionate nature."

"You dear, generous, unwise fellow!" his cousin says, shaking her head at him. But he is too well pleased and satisfied with the way the matter has arranged itself, to ask her in what way she thinks him unwise.

"I shall write to Cissy Angerstein tomorrow, Kate, and tell her she needn't bother herself any more," Captain Bellairs says to Kate that night. "I'll tell her you'll see to any alterations that may be needed, and overlook the furnishing, and then she'll rest satisfied that it will all be done tastefully and well."

"If I were Kate I should just let Mrs. Angerstein come and exert her own lazy lymphatic little mind about it all herselfif she is to come," Mrs. Durgan says.

But Kate only bows her head and answers,

"As you please, Harry."

Now Publishing,

quilla coffers are not absolutely over-flowing. As a married man I shall have to keep up a very different establishment, and altogether live more expensively than I do now. If she's at our very gates I shall hardly feel the additional expense of her little ménage, but it would be a different

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