that sudden storm which imprisoned Mary Lennox at Chesterhaugh added, while it lasted on hill and moor, double desolation to her heart, for the gloom of the weather adds keenly to the grief of the imaginative and impressionable.

Where was now the future she had pictured, with Cyril's children crowing and nestling upon her knee? Robert, her younger son—the future Baronet yet was left to her; but at present all her sorrow, tears, and regrets were for the lost

one.

CHAPTER XIV.

AN UNWELCOME VISITOR.

"THE fifth day, and no news of him yet-no trace, save the dead horse! By Jove! what can have happened? I meant only to break a few of his bones, or spoil his pretty face, perhaps, for Mary, and nothing more. Where the devil can he have drifted to the coast of Holland perhaps? Handsome of the old boy to cash up the IO U. Wish it had been for six hundred, though!"

Thus thought Ralph Rooke Chesters, when on the afternoon of the fifth day-the Mondayafter the disappearance of Cyril he dismounted at Lonewoodlee, under the door which bore the quaint legend, and presenting his card, asked for Miss Lennox.

"Miss Lennox was at home," Alison said, and ere long she received him in the gloomy apartment which passed for her drawing-room, with its chintz-covered furniture, its chiffonnières of painted wood, its old-fashioned girandoles, and the meagre finery of her mother's bridal days, to

which her own eyes had become accustomed. Her piano stood open, for though her heart was full of grief, she had been compelled to sing and play to amuse her father.

"To what do I owe the-the pleasure of this visit?" said Mary, politely yet coldly, for the memory of yesterday's snare haunted her unpleasantly, and secretly she resented it.

"My anxiety lest you should have suffered from the snow (now nearly gone, by-the-bye) and the cold drive in an open waggonette," replied Chesters, with as soft a smile as his face could

assume.

66 Thanks; I am well," said Mary, still more coldly, for there was something in the manner of Chesters which inspired doubt and dislike. Yet he placed his hat on the table, brushed a speck off his tweed knickerbockers with his handkerchief, and quietly seated himself with the air of a man who meant to remain.

"And the old gentleman. How is he?"

"As usual," sighed Mary; "very weak and ailing. I know not with what; and I don't think that Doctor Squills knows either."

"Get some other skill than this cub of a

parish doctor possesses. Send to town-to London or Edinburgh."

But Mary shook her head and sighed again as she thought of their slender means; and there was a pause, during which she hoped that

he would soon go, as she had to be at the railway station at a certain hour to receive certain medicines which the Doctor had ordered from Edinburgh for her father's use.

She was conscious that Chesters was regarding her earnestly; indeed, he had been unable to get out of his evil mind the effect of her pretty and ladylike little figure while she sat so many hours in his dining-room last night; so he had come in the prosecution of his nefarious suit; but old as he was in the ways of the world he lived in, he felt an awkwardness in his mode of advancing it; for Mary looked so provokingly calm and composed, and so exquisitely ladylike; her beautifully dressed hair so gorgeous in colour and quantity, with her plain but perfect toilette, and her only ornament, a simple brooch, nestling at her pretty neck.

To Mary's eye he looked older to-day and less careful in his costume; his nose was certainly redder, and the blotches on his cheeks were deeper in colour; his watchful and sinister grey eyes were more restless in expression, and it soon became evident that he had been imbibing freely, though the day was yet young. Wine, or something worse, alone could have made him depart from his policy of yesterday and blunder on as he did while the young girl's grief was so fresh and keen.

He rose, and coming close to the chair in

which she was seated, laid his hand on the back of it, touching her rounded shoulder as he did so; and lowering his voice, he said

"Miss Lennox ; or may I call you Mary?" You have known me

"Yes, if you choose.

since I was a mere child."

"I have served in India since then," said he, with an ill-concealed grimace; for he winced at the remark, or what it inferred; and oblivious of the tender scene he had witnessed in the thicket, and the grief which filled her heart, he said

"I am come to ask you if you will allow me to love you, Mary Lennox ?"

"I can neither prevent people from loving or hating me," she replied, evasively; for she remembered the bill which he possessed; the power it gave him over her father, and she trembled in her heart.

"Ah, Mary, who could hate you?" he whispered, bending still nearer her face.

"But I beg that you will not speak of love to me."

"Why?"

"For a reason I care not to give. Pray let that suffice," urged Mary, as she bit her lip and kept her pale face averted to hide the tears with which her eyes were filled.

"Then you love another?" said Chesters, bluntly.