"You are too good,, Captain Ben. I shall never forget your kinduess, never!" Captain Ben was a gentleman; he had not asked her a question. He stood watching her as her form receded from the pier, and as he turned to start on his errand to his wife, he sighed. "It's come," he said to himself. "I always knew that it would sometime. 1 only wonder it hasn't afore. Tortured to distraction, that's what she is; and she's goin', and I'll help her go. And I'll defend her with my last breath if she needs it. I'm dead agin him, the peacock, and always was." M Agnes went back to her home as quietly as she left it. 10 Cyril came home to tea, she would meet him as if nothing had happened, and her departure would be delaved "But he will not come to tea, I am sure of it," she said. She went to her own room, opened her desk, took fom its immer drawer her little manuscript book, the picture of Cyril, that he had given her before their marFiage, and placed both in a reticule which she could carry upon her arm. She went into the room which aho had made a shrine to her departed child, shut the door, and sat down in the low chair in which she had spent so many hours since his passing away. She kneeled down by it and begged God's mercy for herself, and for those whom she left. She went to the bureau, in which she had garnered the toys and garments of her boy. Here, for the first time, her heart's anguish swelled into tears. These were the treasures which it tore her heart to leave behind. Who would keep them always for his sake! Who but his mother? The reticule would hold so little of what once was a part of himself. She chose at last a single thing, a tiny cap of lace, the first that he had ever worn, whose delicate embroideries her own hand had wrought, before he was born. This, with his picture, and one shining tress of his hair, was all that she could carry away of her child. Again she sat down in the low chair, and here, taking in every object in one long, lingering, loving gaze, she bade farewell forever to her home Cyril did not come. The two women and the little girl sat at the tea-table as usual. Save a deeper pallor on her face, no one could have detected anything marked, either in Agnes' aspect or manner. Not till she took Vida at her early bed-time hour into her own room, did her face and movements betray excitement. Then it could be seen only in the quick breath and trembling hands. It was but usual that she should take off the little girl's white embroidered frock, with its shoulder-knots of violet ribbon; but entirely unusual that instead of her night-gown, she should put on the rosy, round little figure a flannel petticoat, and a warm merino frock. "What 'oo doin'?" inquired Vida wonderingly. "I'm dressing Vida to go and take a walk with mamma; don't she want to go?" "In de dark?" "Out under the bright stars. Vida will have hold of mamma's hand, and won't be afraid?" "No!" said Vida bravely. The stout little legs were soon encased in woollen stockings and thick boots by the trembling hands, whereupon legs and feet began to dance with delight. "Hush! Vida. If you want to go aud walk with namma under the stars you must be very quiet, so Auntie Linda will not hear you; for she would not want Vida to go." Vida remembered what Auntie Linda said in the window in the afternoon, and grew whist. She appreciated the difficulty of getting off without that lady's interference, and was not without her childish longing for victory. "Remember, now, Vida must not speak a word, or make a sound, and mamma will carry her out," said Agnes, taking the child in her arms before opening the door. Vida was dumb. She was delighted with the mys tery; it was much pleasanter than going to bed. Out on the lawn, Agnes set the child down, and took the little hand in hers. She led her down the broad walk toward the pier, till coming near it they turned into a side path, and there, out of sight of the house, beneath the great elm, beside the shining waves, the mother sat down by the graves of her children, while she drew her one living child close to her heart. 66 Say good night to brother," she murmured with broken voice. "Dood night, dood night, little brudder," said Vida with a sob. Agnes stooped low. She laid her cheek upon the turf of each little grave, as if it were the face of the child at rest beneath. She broke off a white daisy blooming on little Cyril's grave, and shut it in the reticule on her arm. She bent down and kissed the turf green above his face. "My boy!" She took Vida's hand and moved slowly on toward an unfrequented path running along the Sound. The distance was not long to the wharf. Before she had reached it two figures advanced toward her. They were Captain Ben and his wife. "Mary, is this you! How good of you!" as the eager hand of her friend seized hers in loving clasp. Captain Ben took Vida in his arms. His wife did not loosen her grasp. Thus between two true hearts Agnes was led on to the vessel that through the dark - · ness of the night was to bear her from her home. (To be continued.) FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD. CHAPTER XXXVII. THE STORM: THE TWO TOGETHER. phosphorescent wings crossing the sky, and a rumble filled A LIGHT flapped over the scene, as if reflected from the air. It was the first arrow from the approaching storm and it fell wide. The second peal was noisy, with comparatively little visible lightning. Gabriel saw a candle shining in Bathsheba's bedroom, and soon a shadow moved to and fro upon the blind. Then there came a third flash. Manœuvres of a most extraordinary kind were going on in the vast firmamental hollows overhead. The lightning now was the color of silver, and gleamed in the heavens like a mailed army. Rumbles became rattles. Gabriel from his elevated position could see over the landscape for at least half-a-dozen miles in front. Every hedge, bush, and tree was distinct as in a line engraving. In a paddock in the same direction was a herd of heifers, and the forms of these were visible at this moment in the act of galloping about in the wildest and maddest confusion, flinging their heels and tails high into the air, their heads to earth. A poplar in the immediate foreground was like an ink stroke on burnished tin. Then the picture vanished, leaving a darkness so intense that Gabriel worked entirely by feeling with his hands. He had stuck his ricking-rod, groom, or poniard, as it was indifferently called a long iron lance, sharp at the extremity and polished by handling into the stack to support the sheaves. A blue light appeared in the zenith, and in some indescribable manner flickered down near the top of the rod. It was the fourth of the larger flashes. A moment later and there was a smack - smart, clear, and short. Gabriel felt his position to be anything but a safe one, and he resolved to descend. Not a drop of rain had fallen as yet. He wiped his weary brow, and looked again at the black forms of the unprotected stacks. Was his life so valuable to him, after all? What were his prospects that he should be so chary of running risk, when important and urgent labor could not be carried on without such risk? He resolved to stick to the stack. However, he took a precaution. Under the staddles was a long tethering chain, used to prevent the escape of errant horses. This he carried up the ladder, and sticking his rod through the clog at one end, allowed the other end of the chain to trail upon the ground. The spike attached to it he drove in. Under the shadow of this extemporized lightning-conductor he felt himself comparatively safe. Before Oak had laid his hands upon his tools again out leapt the fifth flash, with the spring of a serpent and the shout of a fiend. It was green as an emerald, and the reverberation was stunning. What was this the light revealed to him? In the open ground before him, as he looked over the ridge of the rick, was a dark and apparently female form. Could it be that of the only venturesome woman in the parish Bathsheba ? The form moved on a step: then he could see no more. 66 'Is that you, ma'am?" said Gabriel, to the darkness. "Who is there?" said the voice of Bathsheba. "Gabriel. I am on the rick, thatching." "Oh, Gabriel! -and are you? I have come about them. The weather awoke me, and I thought of the corn. I am so distressed about it can we save it anyhow? I cannot find my husband. Is he with you?" "He is not here." "Do you know where he is?" Asleep in the barn." "He promised that the stacks should be seen to, and now they are all neglected! Can I do anything to help? Liddy is afraid to come out. Fancy finding you here at such an hour! Surely I can do something? "You can bring up some reed-sheaves to me, one by one, maʼam; if you are not afraid to come up the ladder in the dark," said Gabriel. "Every moment is precious now, and that would save a good deal of time. It is not very dark when the lightning has been gone a bit." "I'll do anything!" she said, resolutely. She instantly took a sheaf upon her shoulder, clambered up close to his . heels, placed it behind the rod, and descended for another. At her third ascent the rick suddenly brightened with the brazen glare of shining majolica - every knot in every straw was visible. On the slope in front of him appeared two human shapes, black as jet. The rick lost its sheen -the shapes vanished. Gabriel turned his head. It had been the sixth flash which had come from the east behind him, and the two dark forms on the slope had been the shadows of himself and Bathsheba. Then came the peal. It hardly was credible that such a heavenly light could be the parent of such a diabolical sound. "How terrible!" she exclaimed, and clutched him by the sleeve. Gabriel turned, and steadied her on her aërial perch by holding her arm. At the same moment, while he was still reversed in his attitude, there was more light, and he saw as it were a copy of the tall poplar tree on the hill drawn in black on the wall of the barn. It was the shadow of that tree, thrown across by a secondary flash in the west. The next flare came. Bathsheba was on the ground now, shouldering another sheaf, and she bore its dazzle without flinching thunder and all- and again ascended with the load. There was then a silence everywhere for four or five minutes, and the crunch of the spars, as Ga briel hastily drove them in, could again be distinctly heard. He thought the crisis of the storm had passed. But there came a burst of light. "Hold on!" said Gabriel, taking the sheaf from her shoulder, and grasping her arm again. Heaven opened then, indeed. The flash was almost too novel for its inexpressibly dangerous nature to be at once realized, and Gabriel could only comprehend the magnificence of its beauty. It sprang from east, west, north, south. It was a perfect dance of death. The forms of skeletons appeared in the air, shaped with blue fire for bones dancing, leaping, striding, racing around, and mingling altogether, in unparalleled confusion. With these were intertwined undulating snakes of green. Behind these was a broad mass of lesser light. Simultaneously came from every part of the tumbling sky what may be called a shout; since, though nó shout ever came near it, it was more of the nature of a shout than of anything else earthly. In the mean time one of the grisly forms had alighted upon the point of Gabriel's rod, to run invisibly down it, down the chain, and into the earth. Gabriel was almost blinded, and he could feel Bathsheba's warm arm tremble in his hand-a sensation novel and thrilling enough; but love, life, everything human, seemed small and trifling in such close juxtaposition with an infuriated universe. Oak had hardly time to gather up these impressions into a thought, and to see how strangely the red feather of her hat shone in this light, when the tall tree on the hill beforementioned seemed on fire to a white heat, and a new one among these terrible voices mingled with the last crash of those preceding. It was a stupefying blast, harsh and pitiless, and it fell upon their ears in a dead, flat blow, without that reverberation which lends the tones of a drum to more distant thunder. By the lustre reflected from every part of the earth and from the wide domical scoop above it, he saw that the tree was sliced down the whole length of its tall straight stem, a huge ribbon of bark being apparently flung off. The other portion remained erect, and revealed the bared surface as a strip of white down the front. The lightning had struck the tree. A sulphurous smell filled the air: then all was silent, and black as a cave in Hinnom. "We had a narrow escape!" said Gabriel hurriedly. "You had better go down." Bathsheba said nothing; but he could distinctly hear her rhythmical pants, and the recurrent rustle of the sheaf beside her in response to her frightened pulsations. She descended the ladder, and, on second thoughts, he followed her. The darkness was now impenetrable by the sharpest vision. They both stood still at the bottom, side by side. Bathsheba appeared to think only of the weather- Oak thought only of her just then. At last he said, "The storm seems to have passed now, at any rate." "I think so too," said Bathsheba; "though there are multitudes of gleams, — look !” They would have been here if they could," said Oak, in a hesitating way. "Oh, I know it all-all," she said, adding slowly: "They are all asleep in the barn, in a drunken sleep, and my husband among them. That's it, is it not? Don't think I am a timid woman, and can't endure things." "I am not certain," said Gabriel. "I will go and see." He crossed to the barn, leaving her there alone. He looked through the chinks of the door. All was in total darkness, as he had left it, and there still arose, as at the former time, the steady buzz of many snores. He felt a zephyr curling about his cheek, and turned. It was Bathsheba's breath she had followed him, and was looking into the same chink. He endeavored to put off the immediate and painful subject of their thoughts by remarking gently, "If you'll come back again, miss- ma'am, and hand up a few more; it would save much time." -- Then Oak went back again, ascended to the top, stepped off the ladder for greater expedition, and went on thatching. She followed, but without a sheaf. "Gabriel," she said, in a strange and impressive voice. Oak looked up at her. She had not spoken since he left the barn. The soft and continual shimmer of the dying lightning showed a marble face high against the black sky of the opposite quarter. Bathsheba was sitting almost on the apex of the stack, her feet gathered up beneath her, and resting on the top round of the ladder. "Yes, mistress," he said. "I must, I suppose, say more, now that I have begun. And perhaps it's no harm, for you are certainly under no delusion that I ever loved you, or that I can have any object in speaking, more than that object I have mentioned. Well, I was alone in a strange city, and the horse was lame. And at last I didn't know what to do. I saw, when it was too late, that scandal might seize hold of me for meeting him alone in that way. But I was coming away, when he suddenly said he had that day seen a woman more beautiful than I, and that his constancy could not be counted on unless I at once became his. . . . . And I was grieved and troubled." . . . . She cleared her voice, and waited a moment, as if to gather breath. "And then, between jealousy and distraction, I married him!" she whispered, with desperate impetuosity. .... Gabriel made no reply. .... "He was not to blame, for it was perfectly true about about his seeing somebody else," she quickly added. "And now I don't wish for a single remark from you upon the subject indeed I forbid it. I only wanted you to know that misunderstood bit of my history before a time comes when you could never know it. You want some more sheaves?" She went down the ladder, and the work proceeded. Gabriel soon perceived a languor in the movements of his mistress up and down, and he said to her as gently as a mother, "I think you had better go indoors now, you are tired. I can finish the rest alone. If the wind does not change the rain is likely to keep off." "If I am useless I will go," said Bathsheba, in a flagging cadence. "But oh, if your life should be lost!" "You are not useless; but I would rather not tire you longer. You have done well." And you better!" she said, gratefully. "Thank you for your devotion, a thousand times, Gabriel! Good-night -I know you are doing your very best for me." She diminished in the gloom, and vanished, and he heard the latch of the gate fall as she passed through. He worked in a reverie now, musing upon her story, and upon the contradictoriness of that feminine heart which had caused her to speak more warmly to him to-night than she ever had done whilst unmarried and free to speak as warmly as she chose. He was disturbed in his meditation by a grating noise from the coach-house. It was the vane on the roof turning round, and this change in the wind was the signal for a disastrous rain. (To be continued.) 1 THREE FEATHERS. BY WILLIAM BLACK, AUTHOR OF "A PRINCESS THULE,' ," "THE ADVENTURES OF A PHAETON," ETC. CHAPTER IV. THE LAST LOOK BACK. OF MR. ROSCORLA may be recommended to ladies generally and to married men who are haunted by certain vague and vain regrets, as an excellent example of the evils and vanity of club-life. He was now a man approaching fifty, careful in dress and manner, methodical in habit, and grave of asp ct, living out a not over-enjoyable life in a solitary little cottage, and content to go for his society to the good folks of the village inn. But five-and-twenty years before he had been a gay young fellow about town, a pretty general favorite, clever in his way, free with his money, and possessed of excellent spirits. He was not very wealthy, to be sure; his father had left him certain shares in some sugar-plantations in Jamaica, but the returns periodically forwarded to him by his agents were sufficient for his immediate wants. He had few cares, and he seemed on the whole to have a pleasant time of it. On disengaged evenings he lounged about his club, and dined with one or other of the men he knew, and then he played billiards til bed-time. Or he would have nice little dinner-parties at his rooms; and, after the men had changed their coats, would have a few games at whist, perhaps finishing up with a little spurt of unlimited loo. In the season he went to balls, and dinners, and parties of all sorts, singling out a few families with pretty daughters for his special attentions, but careful never to commit himself. When every one went from town he went too, and in the autumn and winter months he had a fair amount of shooting and hunting, guns and horses alike, and willingly furnished by his friends. Once, indeed, he had taken a fancy that he ought to do something, and he went and read law a bit, and ate some dinners, and got called to the Bar. He went the length of going on circuit; but either he travelled by coach, or fraternized with a solicitor, or did something objectionable: at all events h's circuit mess fined him: he refused to pay the fine, threw the whole thing up, and returned to his club, and its carefully-ordered dinners, and its friendly game of sixpenny and eighteenpenny pool. Of course he dressed, and acted, and spoke just as his fellows did, and gradually from the common talk of smoking-rooms imbibed a vast amount of nonsense. He knew that such a statesman professed particular opinions only to keep in place and enjoy the loaves and fishes. He could tell you to a penny the bribe given to the editor of the Times by a foreign government for a certain series of articles. As for the stories he heard and repeated of all manner of noble families, they were many of them doubtless true, and they were nearly all unpleasant; but then the tale that would have been regarded with indifference if told about an ordinary person, grew lambent with interest when it was told about a commonplace woman possessed of a shire and a gaby crowned with a coronet. There was no malice in these stories; only the young men were supposed to know everything about the private affairs of a certain number of families no more nearly related to them than their washerwoman. He was unfortunate, too, in a few personal experiences. | He was a fairly well-intentioned young man, and, going home one night, was moved to pity by the sobbing and exclamations of a little girl of twelve, whose mother was drunk and tumbling about the pavement. The child could not get her mother to go home, and it was now past midnight. Richard Roscorla thought he would interfere, and went over the way and helped the woman to her feet. He had scarcely done so when the virago turned on him, shouted for help, accused him of assaulting her, and finally hit him straight between the eyes, nearly blinding him, and causing him to keep his chambers for three weeks. After that he gave up the lower classes. Then a gentleman who had been his bosom friend at Eton, and who had carried away with him so little of the atmosphere of that institution that he by and by abandoned himself to trade, renewed his acquaintance with Mr. Roscorla, and besought him to join him in a little business transaction. He only wanted a few thousand pounds to secure the success of a venture that would make both their fortunes. Young Roscorla hesitated. Then his friend sent his wife, an exceedingly pretty woman, and she pleaded with such sweetness and pathos that she actually carried away a cheque for the amount in her beautiful little purse. A couple of days after, Mr. Roscorla discovered that his friend had suddenly left the country; that he had induced a good many people to lend him money to start his new enterprise; and that the beautiful lady whom he had sent to plead his cause was a wife certainly, but not his wife. She was, in fact, the wife of one of the swindled creditors, who bore her loss with greater equanimity than he showed in speaking of his departed money. Young Roscorla laughed, and said to himself that a man who wished to have any knowledge of the world must be prepared to pay for it. The loss of the money, though it pressed him hardly for a few years, and gave a fright to his father's executors, did not trouble him much; for, in company with a good many of the young fellows about, he had given himself up to one of the most pleasing delusions which even club-life has fostered. It was the belief of those young men that in England there are a vast number of young ladies of fortune who are so exceedingly anxious to get married, that any decent young fellow of fair appearance and good manners has only to bide his time in order to be provided for for life. Accordingly, Mr. Roscorla and others of his particular set were in no hurry to take a wife. They waited to see who would bid most for them. They were not in want; they could have maintained a wife in a certain fashion; but that was not the fashion in which they hoped to spend the rest of their days, when they consented to relinquish the joys and freedom of bachelorhood. Most of them, indeed, had so thoroughly settled in their own mind the sort of existence to which they were entitled — the house, and horses, and shooting necessary to them that it was impossible for them to consider any lesser offer; and so they waited from year to year, guarding themselves against temptation, cultivating an excellent taste in various sorts of luxuries, and reserving themselves for the grand coup which was to make their fortune. In many cases they looked upon themselves as the victims of the world. They had been deceived by this or the other woman; but now they had done with the fatal passion of love, its dangerous perplexities and insincere romance; and were resolved to take a sound, common-sense view of life. So they waited carelessly, and enjoyed their time, growing in wisdom of a certain sort. They were gentlemanly young fellows enough; they would not have done a dishonorable action for the world; they were well-bred, and would have said no discourteous thing to the woman they married, even though they hated her; they had their cold bath every morning; they lived soberly, if not very righteously; and would not have asked ten points at billiards if they fairly thought they could have played even. The only thing was that they had changed their sex. They were not Perseus, but Andromeda; and while this poor masculine Andromeda remained chained to the rock of an imaginary poverty, the feminine Perseus who was to come in a blaze of jewels and gold to the rescue, still remained afar off, until Andromeda got a little tired. And so it was with Mr. Richard Roscorla. He lounged about his club, and had nice little dinners; he went to other people's houses, and dined there; with his crush-hat under his arm he went to many a dance, and made such acquaintances as he might; but somehow that one supreme chance invariably missed. He did not notice it; any more than his fellows. If you had asked any of them, they would still have given you those devil-may-care opinions about women, and those shrewd estimates of what was worth living for in the world. They did not seem to be aware that year after year was going by, and that a new race of younger men were coming to the front, eager for all sorts of pastimes, ready to dance till daybreak, and defying with their splendid constitutions the worst champagne a confectioner ever brewed. A man who takes good care of himself is slow to believe that he is growing middle-aged. If the sitting up all night to play loo does him an injury such as he would not have experienced a few years before, he lays the blame of it on the brandyand-soda. When two or three hours over wet turnips make his knees feel queer, he vows that he is in bad condition, but that a few days' exercise will set him right. It was a long time before Mr. Richard Roscorla would admit to himself that his hair was growing gray. By this time many of his old friends and associates had left the club. Some had died; some had made the best of a bad bargain, and married a plain country cousin; none, to tell the truth, had been rescued by the beautiful heiress for whom they had all been previously waiting. And while these men went away, and while new men came into the clubyoung fellows with fresh complexions, abundant spirits, a lavish disregard of money, and an amazing enjoyment in drinking any sort of wine- another set of circumstances came into play which rendered it more and more necessary for Mr. Roscorla to change his ways of life. He was now over forty; his hair was gray; his companions were mostly older men than himself; and he began to be rather pressed for money. The merchants in London who sold for his agents in Jamaica those consignments of sugar and rum sent him every few months statements which showed that either the estates were yielding less, or the markets had fallen, or labor had risen - whatever it might be, his annual income was very seriously impaired. He could no longer afford to play half crown points at whist; even sixpenny pool was dangerous; and those boxes and stalls which it was once his privilege to take for dowagers gifted with daughters, were altogether out of the question. The rent of his rooms in Jermyn Street was a serious matter; all his little economies at the club were of little avail; at last he resolved to leave London. And then it was that he bethought him of living permanently at this cottage at Eglosilyan, which had belonged to his grandfather, and which he had visited from time to time during the summer months. He would continue his club-subscription; he would still correspond with certain of his friends; he would occasionally pay a flying visit to London; and down here by the Cornish coast he would live a healthy, economical, contented life. So he came to Eglosilyan, and took up his abode in the plain white cottage placed amid birch-trees on the side of the hill, and set about providing himself with amusement. He had a good many books, and he read at night over his final pipe; he made friends with the fishermen, and often went out with them; he took a little interest in wild plants; and he rode a sturdy little pony by way of exercise. He was known to the Trelyons, to the clergymen of the neighborhood, and to one or two families living farther off; but he did not dine out much, for he could not well invite his host to dinner in return. His chief friends, indeed, were the Rosewarnes; and scarcely a day passed that he did not call at the ion and have a chat with George Rosewarne, or with his wife and daughters. For the rest, Mr. Roscorla was a small man, sparely built, with somewhat fresh complexion, close-cropped gray hair and iron-gray whiskers. He dressed very neatly and methodically; he was fairly light and active in his walk; and he had a grave, good-natured smile. He was much improved in constitution, since he came to Eglosilyan; for that was not a place to let any one die of languor, or to encourage complexions of the color of apple-pudding. Mr. Roscorla, indeed, had the appearance of a pleasant little country lawyer, somewhat finical in dress and grave in manner and occasionally just a trifle supercilious and cutting in his speech. Miss Wenna - of course by a gasp or two, "of course you were surprised to get my letter- a letter containing an offer of marriage, and almost nothing about affection in it. Well, there are some things one can neither write nor say; they have so often been the subject of good-natured ridicule that, that " "I think one forgets that," Wenna said timidly, "if one is in earnest about anything." "Oh, I know it is no laughing matter," he said hastily, and conscious that he was becoming more and more commonplace. Oh! for one happy inspiration from some half-remembered drama- a mere line of poetry even! He felt as if he were in court opening a dreary case, uncertain as to the points of his brief, and fearing that the judge was beginning to show impatience. He had received Wenna Rosewarne's brief and hurriedly-written note; and if accident had not thrown her in his way, he would doubtless have granted her that time for reflection which she demanded. But happening to be out, he saw her go down towards the rocks beyond the harbor. She had a pretty figure, and she walked gracefully; when he saw her at a distance some little flut-cult to say what I should like to say: That letter did not er of anxiety disturbed his heart. That glimpse of her he possibility of securing as his constant companion a girl who walked so daintily and dressed so neatly - added some little warmth of feeling to the wish he had carefully reasoned out and expressed. For the offer he had sent to Miss Wenna was the result of much calculation. He was half aware that he had let his youth slip by and idled away ¡his opportunities; there was now no chance of his engag ng in any profession or pursuit; there was little chance f his bettering his condition by a rich marriage. What ould he now offer to a beautiful young creature possessed of fortune such as he had often looked out for, in return for herself and her money? Not his gray hairs, and his asthmatic evenings in winter, and the fixed, and narrow, and oftentimes selfish habits and opinions begotten of a solitary life. Here, on the other hand, was a young lady of pleasing manners and honest nature, and of humble wishes as became her station, whom he might induce to marry him. She had scarcely ever moved out of the small circle around her; and in it were no possible lovers for her. If he did not marry her, she might drift into as hopeless a position as his own. If she consented to marry him, would they not be able to live in a friendly way together, gradually winning each other's sympathy, and making the world a little more sociable and comfortable for both? There was no chance of his going back to the brilliant society in which he had once moved; for there was no one whom he could expect to die and leave him any money. When he went up to town and spent an evening or two at his club, he found himself among strangers; and he could not get that satisfaction out of a solitary dinner that once was his. He returned to his cottage at Eglosilyan with some degree of resignation; and fancied he could live well enough there if Wenna Rosewarne would only come to relieve him from its frightful loneliness. He blushed when he went forward to her on these rocks, and was exceedingly embarrassed, and could scarcely look her in the face as he begged her pardon for intruding on her, and hoped she would resume her seat. She was a little pale, and would have liked to get away, but was probably so frightened that she did not know how to take the step. Without a word, she sat down again, her heart beating as if it would suffocate her. Then there was a terrible pause. - Mr. Roscorla discovered at this moment and the shock almost bewildered him. that he would have to play the part of a lover. He had left that out of the question. He had found it easy to dissociate love from marriage in writing a letter; in fact he had written it mainly to get over the necessity of shamming sentiment, but here was a young and sensitive girl, probably with a good deal of romantic nonsense in her head, and he was going to ask her to marry him. And just at this moment, also, a terrible recollection flashed in on his mind of Wenna Rosewarne's liking for humor, and of the merry light he had often seen in her eyes, however demure her manner might be; and then it occurred to him that if he did play the lover, she would know that he knew he was making a fool of himself, and laugh at him in the safe concealment of her own room. "Of course," he said, making a sudden plunge, followed "Miss Wenna," he said, “ you know I find it very diffi tell you half-probably you thought it too dry and business-like. But at all events you were not offended?" "Oh, no," she said, wondering how she could get away, and whether a precipitate plunge into the sea below her would not be the simplest plan. Her head, she felt, was growing giddy, and she began to hear snatches of "Wapping Old Stairs" in the roar of the waves around her. I "And of course you will think me unfair and precipitate in not giving you more time—if I ask you just now whether may hope that your answer will be favorable. You must put it down to my anxiety; and although you may be inclined to laugh at that ". "Oh, no, Mr. Roscorla," she said, with her eyes still looking down. "Well, at all events, you won't think that I was saying anything I did n't believe, merely to back up my case in that letter. I do believe it I wish I could convince you as I certainly know time would convince you. I have seen a great deal of that wild passion which romance-writers talk about as a fine thing; I have seen a great deal of it in circles where it got full play, because the people were not restrained by the hard exigencies of life, and had little else to think about than falling in love and getting out of it again. I would not sadden you by telling you what I have seen as the general and principal results. The tragedies I have witnessed of the young fellows whose lives have been ruined the women who have been disgraced and turned out into the world broken-hearted — why, I dare not sully your imagination with such stories; but one who has had experience of men and women, and knows the histories of a few families, would corroborate me." He spoke earnestly; he really believed what he said. But he did not explain to her that his knowledge of life was chiefly derived from the confidences of a few young men of indifferent morals, small brains, and abundant money. He had himself, by the way, been hit. For one brief year of madness he had given himself up to an infatuation for somebody or other, until his eyes were opened to his folly, and he awoke to find himself a sufferer in health and purse, and the object of the laughter of his friends. But all that was an addition to his stock of knowledge of the world. He grew more and more wise; and was content to have paid for his wisdom. "My knowledge of these things may have made me suspicious," he continued, "and very often I have seen that you considered me unjust to people whom you knew. Well, you like missionary work, Miss Wenna, and I am anxious to be converted. No- no; don't imagine I press you for an answer just now, I am merely adding a little to my letter." "But you know, Mr. Roscorla," the girl said, with a meekness that seemed to have no sarcasm in it - "you know you have often remonstrated with me about my missionary work. You have tried to make me believe that I was doing wrongly in giving away little charities that I could afford. Also, that I had a superstition about selfsacrifice although I am sure I don't consider myself sacrificed." He was a little embarrassed, but he said in an off-hand way: |