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did not speak. "And she said more than this. Oh, Mr. Incledon ! I must tell you everything, as if you were my own heart. She told me that papa had not been considerate for us, as he should have been; that he liked his own way and his own pleasure best; and that I was following him that I was doing the same ruining the boys' prospects and prolonging our great poverty, because I did not want to marry you, though you had promised to help them and set everything right."

Mr. Incledon dropped Rose's hand; he turned half away from her, supporting his head upon both of his hands, so that she did not see his face. She did

not know how cruel she was, nor did she mean to be cruel, but simply historical, telling him everything, as if she had been speaking to her own heart.

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"Then I saw you," said Rose, "and told you- - or else I thought I and you did not mind, but would not, though I begged you, give up. And everything went on for a long, long time. Sometimes I was very wretched; sometimes my heart felt quite dull, and I did not seem to mind what happened. Sometimes I forgot for a little while- and oh! Mr. Incledon, now and then, though I tried very hard, I could not help thinking of him. I never did when I could help it; but sometimes when I saw the lights on Ankermead, or remembered something he had said — And all this

time mamma would talk to me of people who prefer their own will to the happiness of others; of all the distress and misery it brought when we indulged ourselves and our whims and fancies; of how much better it was to do what was right than what we liked. My head got confused sometimes, and I felt as if she was wrong, but I could not put it into words; for how could it be right to deceive a good man like you - to let you give your love for nothing, and marry you without caring for you? But I am not clever enough to argue with_mamma. Once, I think, for a minute, I got the better of her; but when she told me that I was preferring my own will to everybody's happiness, it went to my heart, and what could I say ? Do you remember the day when it was all settled at last and made up?”

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This was more than the poor man could bear. He put up one hand with a wild gesture to stop her, and uttered a hoarse exclamation; but Rose was too much absorbed in her story to stop.

The night before I had gone down into the rectory garden, where he and I used to talk, and there I said goodby to him in my heart, and made a kind of grave over him, and gave him up for ever and everoh! don't you know how?" said Rose, the tears dropping on her black dress. "Then I was willing that it should be settled how you pleased; and I never, never allowed myself to think of him any

more. When he came into my head, I went to the school-room, or I took a hard bit of music, or I talked to mamma, or heard Patty her lessons. I would not, because I thought it would be wicked to you, and you so good to me, Mr. Incledon. Oh! if you had only been my brother, or my cousin (she had almost said, father or uncle, but by good luck forbore), how fond I should have been of you!- and I am fond of you," said Rose, softly, said Rose, softly, proffering the hand which he had put away, and laying it gently upon his arm. He shook his head, and made a little gesture as if to put it off, but yet the touch and the words went to his heart.

"Now comes the worst of all," said Rose. "I know it will hurt you, and yet I must tell you. After that there came the news of uncle Ernest's death; and that he had left his money to us, and that we were well off again better than we had ever been. Oh, forgive me forgive me!" she said, clasping his arm with both her hands, "when I heard it, it seemed to me all in a moment that I was free. Mamma said that all the sacrifices we had been making would be unnecessary henceforward; what she meant was the things we had been doing dusting the rooms, putting the table straight, helping in the house -oh! as if these could be called sacrifices! But I

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thought she meant me. You are angry- you are angry!" said Rose. "I could not expect anything else. But it was not you, Mr. Incledon; it was that I hated to be married. I could not could not make up my mind to it. I turned into a different creature when I thought that I was free."

The simplicity of the story disarmed the man, sharp and (bitter as was the sting and mortification of listening to this too artless tale. "Poor child! poor child!" he murmured, in a softer tone, unclasping the delicate fingers from his arm; and then, with an effort, "I am not angry. Go on; let me hear it to the end."

"When mamma saw how glad I was, she stopped it all at once," said Rose, controlling herself. "She said I was just the same as ever- always selfindulgent, thinking of myself, not of others and that I was as much bound as ever by honor. There was no longer any question of the boys, or of help to the family; but she said honor was just as much to be considered, and that I had pledged my word "

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"Rose," quietly said Mr. Incledon, spare me what you can of these discussions you had pledged your word?"

She drew away half frightened, not expecting the harsher tone in his voice, though she had expected him to "be angry," as she said. "Forgive me,"

she went on, subdued, "I was so disappointed that it made me wild. I did not know what to do. I could not see any reason for it now - any good

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in it; and, at last, when I was almos crazy with thinking, I ran away." You ran away?"- Mr. Incledas raised his head, indignant. "You mother has lied all round," he said, fiercely; then, bethinking himself, beg your pardon. Mrs. Damerel doubt had her reasons for what she said."

"There was only one place I could go to," said Rose, timidly, "Mis Margetts', where I was at school. went up to the station for the early train that nobody might see me. was very much frightened. Some one was standing there; I did not know who he was he came by the train,) think; but after I bad got into the carriage he came in after me. Mr Incledon! it was not his fault, neither his nor mine. I had not been thinking of him. It was not for him, but only not to be married — to be free"

"Of me," he said, with a bitter smile; "but in short, you met, whether by intention or not and Mr. Wode house took advantage of his opportu nities?"

"He told me," said Rose, not looking at Mr. Incledon, "what I had known ever so long without being told; but I said nothing to him; what could I say? I told him all that had hap pened. He took me to Miss Margetts', and there we parted," said Rose, with a momentary pause and a deep sigh. "Since then I have done nothing but think and think. No one has come near me-no one has written to me. I have been left alone to go over and over it all in my own mind. I have done so till I was nearly mad, or at least, everything seemed going round with me and everything confused, and I could not tell what was right and what was wrong. Oh!" cried Rose, lifting her head in natural eloquence, with eyes which looked beyond him, and a certain elevation and abstraction in her face," I don't think it is a thing in which only right and wrong are to be considered. When you love one and do not love another, it must mean something; and to marry unwillingly, that is nothing to content a man. It is a wrong to him; it is not doing right; it is treating him unkindly, cruelly! It is as if he wanted you, anyhow, like a cat or a dog; not as if he wanted you worthily, as his companion." Rose's courage failed her after this little outburst; her high looks came down, her voice sank and faltered, her head drooped. She rose up, and clasping her hands together, went on in low tones: "Mr. Incledon, I am engaged to you; I belong to you. I trust your justice and kindness more than anything else. If you say I am to marry you, I will do it. Take it now into your own hands. If I think of it any more I will go mad; but I will do whatever you say."

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He was walking up and down the room, with his face averted, and with pain and anger and humiliation in his heart. All this time he had believed

e was leading Rose towards the easonable love for him which was all e hoped for. He had supposed himelf in almost a lofty position, offering this young, fresh, simple creature more in every way than she could ever mave had but for him a higher posiion, a love more noble than any foolsh boy-and-girl_attachment. To find put in a moment how very different the meal state of the case had been, and to have conjured up before him the picture of a martyr-girl, weeping and strugling, and a mother with a host of petty maxims preaching down her daughter's heart," was intolerable to him. He had never been so mortified, so humbled in all his life. He walked up and down the room in a ferment, with that sense of the unbearable which is so bitter. Unbearable ! - yet to be borne somehow; a something not to be ignored or cast off. It said much for Rose's concluding appeal that he heard it at all, and took in the meaning of it in his agitation and hot, indignant rage; but he did hear it, and it touched him. "If you say I am to marry you, I will do it." He stopped short in his impatient walk. Should he say it-in mingled despite and love-and keep her to her word? He came up to her and took her clasped hands within his, half in anger, half in tenderness, and looked her in the face.

"If I say you are to marry me, you will do it? You pledge yourself to that? You will marry me if I please?"

"Yes," said Rose, very pale, looking up at him steadfastly. She neither trembled nor hesitated. She had gone beyond any superficial emo

tion.

Then he stooped and kissed her with a passion which was rough- almost brutal. Rose's pale face flushed, and her slight figure wavered like a reed; but she neither shrank nor complained. He had a right to dictate to her she had put it into his hands. The look of those large, innocent eyes, from which all conflict had departed, which

had

grown abstract in their wistfulness, holding fast at least by one clear duty, went to his heart. He kept looking at her, but she did not quail. She had no thought but her word, and to do what she had said.

"Rose," he said, "you are a cheat, like all women. You come to me with this face, and insult me and stab me, and say then you will do what I tell you, and stand there, looking at me with innocent eyes like an angel. How could you find it in your heart -if you have a heart- to tell me all this? How dare you put that dainty little cruel foot of yours upon my neck, and scorn and torture me how dare you, how dare you!" There came a glimmer into his eyes, as if it might have been some moisture forced up by means beyond his control, and he held her hands with such force that it seemed to Rose he shook her, whether willingly or not. But she did not

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shrink. She looked up at him, her eyes growing more and more wistful, and though he hurt her, did not complain.

"It was that you might know all the truth," she said, almost under her breath. "Now you know everything and can judge and I will do as you say."

He held her so for a minute longer, which seemed eternity to Rose; then he let her hands drop, and turned away.

"It is not you who are to blame," he said, "not you, but your mother, who would have sold you. Good God! do all women traffic in their own flesh and blood?

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"Do not say so!" cried Rose, with sudden tears 66 'you shall not! I will not hear it! She has been wrong; but that was not what she meant."

Mr. Incledon laughed-his mood seemed to have changed all in a moment. "Come Rose," he said, "perhaps it is not quite decorous for you, a young lady, to be here alone. Čome! I will take you to your mother, and then you shall hear what I have got to

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She walked out of the great house by his side as if she were in a dream. What did he mean? The suspense became terrible to her; for she could not guess what he would say. Her poor little feet twisted over each other and she stumbled and staggered with weakness as she went along beside him — stumbled so much that he made her take his arm, and led her carefully along, with now and then a kind but meaningless word. Before they entered the White House, Rose was leaning almost her whole weight upon his supporting arm. The world was swimming and floating around, the trees going in circles, now above, below her, she thought. She was but half conscious when she went in, stumbling across the threshold, to the little hall, all bright with Mr. Incledon's flowers. Was she to be his, too, like one of them -a flower to carry about wherever he went, passive and helpless as one of the plants - past resistance, almost past suffering?

now

"I am

afraid she is ill; take care of her, Agatha," said Mr. Incledon to her sister, who came rushing open-mouthed and open-eyed; and, leaving her there, he strode unannounced into the drawing-room to meet the real author of his discomfiture, an antagonist more worthy of his steel and against whom he could use his weapons with less compunction than against the submissive Rose.

Mrs. Damerel had been occupied all the morning with Mr. Nolan, who had obeyed her summons on the first day of Rose's flight, but whom she had dismissed when she ascertained where her daughter was, assuring him that to do nothing was the best policy, as indeed it had proved to be. The curate had gone home that evening obedient; but moved by the electrical impulse

which seemed to have set all minds interested in Rose in motion on that special day, had come back this morning to urge her mother to go to her or to allow him to go to her. Mr. Nolan's presence had furnished an excuse to Mrs. Damerel for declining to receive poor young Wodehouse, who had asked to see her immediately after breakfast. She was discussing even then with the curate how to get rid of him, what to say to him, and what it was best to do to bring Rose back to her duty. "I can't see so clear as you that it's her duty, in all the circumstances," the curate had said doubtfully. "What have circumstances to do with a matter of right and wrong of truth and honor?' cried Mrs. Damerel. "She must keep her word." It was at this precise moment of the conversation that Mr. Incledon appeared; and I suppose she must have seen something in his aspect and the expression of his face that showed some strange event had happened. Mrs. Damerel gave a low cry, and the muscles of Mr. Incledon's mouth were moved by one of those strange contortions which in such cases are supposed to do duty for a smile. He bowed low, with a mock reverence, to Mr. Nolan, but didn ot put out his hand.

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"I presume," ," he said, "that this gentleman is in the secret of my humiliation, as well as the rest of the family, and that I need not hesitate to say what I have to say before him. It is pleasant to think that so large a circle of friends interest themselves in my affairs."

"What do you mean?" said Mrs. Damerel. "Your humiliation! Have you sustained any humiliation? I do not know what you mean."

"Oh! I can make it very clear," he said, with the same smile. "Your daughter has been with me; I have just brought her home."

"What! Rose?" said Mrs. Damerel, starting to her feet; but he stopped her before she could make a step.

"Do not go," he said; "it is more important that you should stay here. What have I done to you that you should have thus humbled me to the dust? Did I ask you to sell her to me?

Did I want a wife for hire? Should I have authorized any one to persecute an innocent girl, and drive her almost mad for me? Good heavens, for me! Think of it, if you can. Am I the sort of man to be forced on a girl — to be married as a matter of duty? How dared you how dared any one insult me so!"

Mrs. Damerel, who had risen to her feet, sank into a chair, and covered her face with her hands. I do not think she had ever once taken into

consideration this side of the ¿ques

tion.

"Mr. Incledon," she stammered, "you have been misinformed; you are mistaken. Indeed, indeed, it is not so."

"Misinformed!" he cried; "mistaken! I have my information from the very fountain-head-from the poor child who has been all but sacrificed to this supposed commercial transaction between you and me, which I disown altogether for my part. I never made such a bargain, nor thought of it. I never asked to buy your Rose. I might have won her, perhaps," he added, calming himself with an effort, "if you had let us alone, or I should have discovered at once that it was labor lost. Look here. We have been friends, and I never thought of you till to-day but with respect and kindness. How could you put such an affront on me?"

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Gently, gently," said Mr. Nolan, growing red; "you go too far, sir. If Mrs. Damerel has done wrong, it was a mistake of the judgment, not of the heart."

"The heart!" he cried, contemptuously; "how much heart was there in it? On poor Rose's side, a broken one; on mine, a heart deceived and deluded. Pah! do not speak to me of hearts or mistakes; I am too deeply mortified too much wronged for that."

"Mr. Incledon," said Mrs. Damerel, rising, pale yet self-possessed, "I may have done wrong, as you say; but what I have done, I did for my child's advantage and for yours. You were told she did not love you, but you persevered; and I believed, and believe still, that when she knew better when she was your wife- she would love you. you I may have pressed her too far; but it was no more a commercial transaction no more a sale of my daughter". she said, with a burning flush coming over her face more than I tell you. You do me as much wrong as you say I have done you - Rose! Rose !"

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Rose came in followed by Agatha, with her hat off, which showed more clearly the waste which emotion and fatigue, weary anxiety, waiting, abstinence, and mental suffering had worked upon her face. She had her hands clasped loosely yet firmly, in the attitude which had become habitual to her, and a pale smile like the wannest of winter sunshine on her face. She came up very quietly, and stood between the two like a ghost, Agatha said, who stood trembling behind her.

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Mamma, do not be angry," she said, softly; "I have told him everything, and I am quite ready to do whatever he decides. In any case, he ought to know everything,

for it is he who is most concerned - he and I."

(To be continued.)

HIS TWO WIVES.1

BY MARY CLEMMER AMES.

CHAPTER XXI. MRS. PEPPERCORN'S ADVICE.

HUMAN experience holds no second blow so smiting as the first cruel words uttered by the one loved best. They may be repeated; but the benumbing shock of utter astonishment can never again add paralysis to their wound.

Cyril had spoken to Agnes thoughtlessly, unkindly, contemptuously even, at times; but never with cruel heartlessness before. Nobody on earth had the power to make her believe him capable of wanton cruelty of thought and speech. Nobody living could so convince her but himself, and he had done it. He had done so now rather than earlier, because now for the first time she had positively interfered with him, and placed herself in the way of his pleasures. He would forgive no one for that-least of any one his wife.

ner.

His words were less unkind than his look and manAs Agnes gazed and listened (it seemed to be with a suspended consciousness), she saw his eyes faded in color, fierce in light,—a pitiless, feline light, casting

1 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1874, by H. O. HOUGHTON & Co., in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.

its ire upon her, the cruelty of the thin-lipped, sneering mouth; and to her it was not Cyril, or if it could be, it was a Cyril whom she before had never seen or known. Nor could it be she, the Agnes of every day, who looked, listened and quivered beneath the lash of his scorning and remorseless tongue.

Had she been an ordinarily weak woman, stung by indifference and contempt she would have retorted, “I will get out of your way." Had she been what is termed high-strung in temper and feeble in conscience, she would have resolved to " pay him back in his own coin." She uttered no such word, she made no such resolve. She was conscious of nothing save the stunning blow which seemed to penetrate to every tissue and fibre of her being.

She still sat upon the edge of the couch, the gray, revealing light remorselessly bringing out every line and shadow of her face of her face lifted to his. At last she drew her hand slowly across her eyes as if to clear her vision.

"This is not you, Cyril," she said softly; "not you! If—if it can be, I know you will be sorry some day." "You can come no pathetic dodge over me," he answered. "That is all played out. Nor the lofty moral dodge either. I'm just as good as you are, though you have made it your business ever since we were married to assume a superiority of sanctity. It comforts you, no doubt, for you can't help knowing that you are my inferior in every other particular - yes, my inferior," his rage cumulating as he went on. "I shall never be sorry, never, that I told you the truth; that you heard it at least once in your life, madame."

Linda opened the door before this sentence ended, and as she heard it, and looked from the husband's to the wife's face, she was for the first time sure that that for which she had worked and watched so long in silence at last had come to pass.

She did not, however, by word or look betray this consciousness; the time had not come for that. Instead, she went directly to the sleeping child, and throwing back the covering from his face said to Cyril:

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"If you care to save him, you had better tell us to take him home.' "I have no objection to your taking him; and the sooner you both go, the better," was the answer.

It was now Linda's turn to be astonished, if she had flowed in her veins which flowed in his. not been so much more enraged. The same blood Far more

Rarely,

than he, she had felt the revengeful currents of its underflow; far more, because in her they had never ceased to beat against the barriers of her lot. perhaps never, had the "bad blood" in him turned against her; rather on its loftier level it flowed serenely with her. A mightier than she had arisen. Toward this new lode-star the tide of his nature had set. By instinct she knew it. He was further from her than he

had ever been before; further from her power over him. She knew this by instinct. Their eyes met in a single glance. How strangely alike was the expres Neither needed an added sign to inter

sion in each! pret the other.

She had triumphed surely, so far as Agnes was concerned. But what of it? Because of it she was no nearer to him. True to the fiat of her fate, she was seeing that she had missed him finally and altogether, still alone. And in that instant, seeing him as he was, in that concentrated glance she felt that she hated him.

Mechanically, as if moving in a dream, Agnes that ay folded and packed away her own and her children's arments before returning to Lotusmere. Moving in er dream, stunned and hurt, she hoped, faintly as er benumbed spirit compelled, still she hoped. She id not even know it. Yet no less she hoped. She oped that when the excitements of this new life which he had learned to loathe were past, this stranger Cyril would pass with it, and the early Cyril of her young ove would come back. For this youthful Cyril as she elieved him to be, as she loved him, and wedded him, he was forever looking and forever yearning.

No matter what the actual Cyril said or did, this wife f his youth, this playmate of his childhood, this first hampion between him and fate, who even as a tiny girl was brave enough and strong enough with her words of loving truth to put to rout all the sneerers and scorners of his boyish world she, through all stress of doubt and fear, of sorrow and neglect, swerved not in fidelity or love to this ideal Cyril, who through her childhood and youth had grown into a man whom she had never ceased in a wifely sense to worship.

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The actual Cyril caused her to suffer and to sorrow; he was veining all her life with pain; she saw him and knew him as he was; yet she saw no less clearly, though with spiritual vision, the glorious image of that earlier Cyril, in whose coming back she never ceased to hope or to believe. In this hope and faith she lived. This faith and hope were stirring and living now, under all her wounds. They held the tears back from her sad eyes, they thrilled the delicate hands to labor; sometime, sometime this fever in his veins would die, this delirium would end, and Cyril - her Cyril - would come back to his home, to his wife, to his children.

Of course the Hon. Cyril King accompanied his family to the railway station. It was a pleasant-looking carriageful which rolled past the early pedestrian on the avenue that morning, the handsome member and his delicate wife, and the two beautiful children, whose loveliness was sufficient to obliterate, in passing, the ominous-faced woman who held the boy on her lap. "I told you that she and I would soon go sailing away together in the same boat, and you said no, of course no," Linda managed to whisper in Cyril's ear as he bade her good-by.

Did he feel no tender compunction, as leaning down in the car he accepted his wife's parting kiss? Perhaps. But it was too faint to rise above the ascendant and overwhelming sensation that now now, for a time at least he was to be free. No Linda to dog his steps; no wife to "nag" him either with looks, tears, or sighs. "Liberty, thou art sweet!" he exclaimed in his melodramatic fashion, as he turned the first corner from the station, and threw up his arm as if he were apostrophizing the lamp-post, and his face to the sky as if he were making a proclamation to heaven. In a moment he was out of sight to the eager eyes peering through the car window, but not so was the capital. With all her heart-aching and longing, with all the pressing claim of her personal need, her soul continually went forth to that which was outside and beyond it. It brooded now over the city of the nation with love akin to that which moved our Lord to weep over Jerusalem. She saw the Virginia hills fade into blue air, and the white walls of the Capitol grow dim and die

out in the distance.

Should she ever see them again? What fate would time bring to them? Would the torch of revolution

ever flame beneath that stainless dome? Would it survive unscathed, the trophy of victorious war, the perpetual crown of triumphant freemen? Or would it be bruised by factions, broken by anarchy? How was the fierce strife beneath it to end? Would the passions of men yet destroy each other and their country, or would Truth and Justice survive all stress of struggle, to rise at last supreme? Would constitutional freedom live forever more? Would the republic never perish? Within its august Capitol gathered and concentrated this woman's deep and abiding love of country. To her it was the Caaba of liberty. Every stone in it was dear. She could forget for a time the pain in her own heart, in the thought of her country, and in forecasting its future. With a sigh and a prayer she saw the Capitol fade out of sight. How she would miss the Congressional Library with its exhaustless treasures, her chosen nook in its alcoves, the manna of wisdom which she had gathered there without stint! Yet she was glad that she was going home. The surface life of the capital oppressed, it was killing her. She did not love it. She did not believe in it. Yet the capital itself was dear. She loved its broad, river-bound vistas, its gardens of roses, its purple atmosphere, its Mediterranean airs. So she said to herself as she watched it till it was lost to her eyes in the green windings of the Bladensburg road.

But home was dearer, far dearer, she said as she sat with her children on the little pier of Lotusmere in the morning of another day. It was the first June morning. What can surpass the splendor of the Sound flashing in the atmosphere of early June! It was a scene of peace. Near by was a fisherman singing in his boat. Just below, in motionless calm, arose a great schooner at anchor. It seemed to merge into the water around, both were so still. Eager little ripples ran up to kiss its immobile bows, sliding swiftly and softly back into silence. The busy steamboat, puffing by in midwater, gave no token of haste as it neared its mooring wharf, while the great wave in its wake swelled on and on till it sank in peace at the bottom of the pier. A red pleasure-boat filled with gay girls went drifting by, and the air was glad with their laughter. A yacht, with all its white wings spread and a starry flag afloat, sped past, telling in itself its own story of beauty and pleasure and freedom. An armada of distant ships seemed merged in the horizon.

Yet a little farther up the Sound, a low line of hills melted into the sky, while still farther on, piles of cumulus clouds lifted their fleecy pinnacles into deeps of blue above. Far-off islands gleamed through auras of shining mirage. The peaceful hills wore veils of nebula shot with opaline tints, while here and there a single blue wave reaching upward bore trembling for an instant upon its creamy crest the same iridescent hue. The Sound in one long, loitering wave broke upon the beach below, then as slowly swashed back into its bed, leaving the reach of green and golden-brown sea-weed, of pearly pebbles and pinky shells, all glowing and waiting for its next caress.

A white gull circled above the singing fisherman's head. A kingfisher, poised on the rock near by, peered with dilated eyes and vibrating plumage into the flood beneath, full of eager and ecstatic life as he darted downward for his prey. In the little cove at the foot of the rock the light waves came murmuring in, with a stir of happiness, and the sparkling foam that broke upon its ledges seemed but the over-brimming, effer

vescing freshness of the delicious morning. An oriole sent down a note of triumph from the elm on the lawn. Agnes heard the doves stirring in their cotes, and one came and perched upon the pier, blinking its shy eyes and puffing out its lustrous breast with air, as if it could not take in enough. There was no purple mist in the atmosphere. It seemed a palpable body of luminous blue, infiltrated with sunshine. It was life-giving, intoxicating almost in its inundating brightness. Nature had mounted at once to her youth, and made life, love, beauty perfect again in the prodigal largess of her first June day.

Agnes sighed. As its sound stole on the rejoicing air it made her conscious that she alone gave out a dissonant note amid the consummate harmony surrounding her. In the abundant air, the overflowing sunshine, the all-pervading symphonies of the beautiful earth, what had she lost? "A believing, a happy heart," she inly said. God's fair world was just as fair: the flowing sea, the circling coast.

"Glory of the earth and air,

Do you miss what I have lost?"

she exclaimed, lifting her face upward. "Mamma, dit me one of dem."

Vida wanted a jelly-fish. Eight years before Agnes was child enough to sit where she now sat, watching these translucent creatures by the hour. It was her children that watched and wanted them now. There they were, gleaming and trembling in the clear water at the foot of the pier, the most exquisite and most perishable of all created things. Two little heads were bobbing through the bars, and four eager eyes were peering downward at the sun-shot jewels afloat in the

waves.

"I want 'un in my hand," said Vida. "If mamma should put one in your hand it wouldn't be pretty any more,' "said Agnes. "If Vida could touch it, 'twould melt and go away. Wouldn't you rather see it in the bright water, so pretty, than all melting in your hand?"

"No," said Vida emphatically, "I want 'un in my hand."

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"So did mamma once," said Agnes, "a long, long time ago;" and she looked with forecasting gaze upon this child, lifting up in miniature her father's beautiful, demanding face. "Put not your trust in the love of man," said the voice within her. But let no mother of a child say that she cannot live without man's love, however else bereft. She who has projected and perpetuated life in the being of another can never be alone. As she clasped the hand of each child, it seemed to her that she took another and a deeper hold upon life. Her life she seemed to see in their eyes. "One for life-one for immortality," said the soul within her that she could not silence. Her face blanched as she listened.

Old Doctor Bache came stamping down the lawn to the pier. Agnes had sent him word of her arrival, and he came at once to see her and the children.

"Welcome home," he said with real fatherly emotion, as he gave his hand to the young mother, and in the same breath arrested an instinctive shake of his head, lest she should see it, as his eyes fell upon the face of the boy.

"I can read in the Third Reader," said Cyril. "The -you can! You are not to read any more in it, I can tell you, sir. You are to stay out doors all

the time the sun shines.. I thought your mamma too wise a woman to shut you up to read, when she ought to have had you out, making a man of you"

"She didn't shut me up," said Cyril loyally. "I wanted to learn to read! my own self. She took me and Vida to a big garden. It was full of trees ever so high And I saw two rabbits. My mamma is goin' to buy me two rabbits. They are goin' to live in a green house. Colin is makin' me a snare to catch a water rat."

"You'll do for the present," said the old doctor, de lighted at any outburst of the primal Boy in the deli cate child

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"I couldn't help it, doctor," said Agnes. "I remem bered what you said about his studying, but as couldn't keep him from learning I thought it best to help him. Cyril, go, with Vida and see if Colin has your snare done."

When the children were beyond Hearing she said "I think I know, doctor, how very delicate he is. I feel sure that he will die a child. He will never grow up."

"Pho! pho! You kept him too long in Washing ton. How could any child live in a Washington boarding-house, or grown creature either, long? I spent a week in one once, and it was nearly the death of me. You've come home none too soon, young woman, I should say, for your own health," he said with one of his sudden, searching glances. "I think worse than ever of that hole of malarial and political iniquity. You've the half-dead look everybody has that comes out of it after one of its wearing, tearing seasons. I'm afraid you've been too gay, been to too many all-night hops and receptions. Čome, tell me all about 'em."

He sat down under the canopy of the little pier and she told him, not about hops or receptions, but about many things which really interested him; about public buildings and public men. Without knowing it she made vivid pictures of places and of some of the most exciting scenes in that most fateful Congress. One she never mentioned. She praised her husband's powers, was silent upon his politics.

"Doctor," she said, "men of mark, who really know, say that he has more than talent enough to become a leader in the House."

"Haven't a doubt of it," said the doctor.

Personal health and feeling were left behind in bright converse on topics of universal interest. Agnes' cheeks were flushed and her eyes aglow with her themes, when her good and wise friend arose to depart.

"Can't tell you how you've interested me. I can see more in one of your descriptions than I could in a newspaper in a month. Mind, plenty of air and sunshine, brown bread and cream, fruit fresh and ripe, and raw beefsteak scraped to a pulp, for that boy-and ditto for yourself. You need 'em all to cure you of Washington, and to make you plump as partridges; as for the girl, I believe she'd thrive on a door-nail;" and with a ringing laugh the doctor departed. But his back was not more than fairly turned before a deep soberness covered his face, and as he strode past the confines of the village street he struck his stout cane into Lotusport soil with a vim which seemed a constant escape-valve to overcharged feeling.

yes.

"There is no help for it, none," he said aloud. "I shall see the end, whatever it be. Talent! So has the devil plenty of talent, and too much. If he had, as well, truth, honor, decency, his talent would

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