CHAPTER VI.

TWO LOVERS.

"BEEN fishing to-day, Cyril ?" asked Robert Wedderburn, with a quizzical expression in his face, as his brother assumed his hat, gloves, and whip in the hall prior to riding out.

"No," replied Cyril, curtly, and colouring with some reason, as he had gone forth for four consecutive days with his rod, and returned with his basket empty; the fishing was merely a pretext to be alone, for he would have been clever indeed to have found trout or perch on the upland slopes of the Lammermuir, where Horace and Robert had seen him, while shooting hares and rabbits near Lonewoodlee. "I dine with Chesters to-day," he added.

"You go betimes?" said Robert, suspiciously. "I want to give my new bay nag a breather -to have a few miles' gallop ere I go to Chesterhaugh," replied Cyril, as he rode off.

It was one of those dull March evenings when the sun sets at six o'clock, as Captain

Wedderburn dashed on at a rapid pace towards Lonewoodlee. The more fertile part of the Merse was soon left behind, and after a ride of three or four miles among heathy and grassy slopes, striped here and there with bright green where the track of the Lammas floods had run towards the Leader or the Whitadder rivers, he saw the old grey Tower, whose four round turrets, cope-house, and chimneys stood clearly defined against the evening sky, overtopping even the ancient timber that grew around it.

Thatched cottages with whitewashed walls, and the ruddy firelight glowing through their small square windows; hedgerows that were in process of being lopped and trimmed; gardens where the fragrant earth had been newly turned up, and where tufts of the white snowdrop and rows of the yellow crocus or purple violets were appearing, had all gradually vanished, and Cyril found himself amid a voiceless and pastoral solitude, dotted only by black-faced sheep, or huge round boulder-stones, and where here and there a sable gled or raven hung aloft in mid air-a black speck amid the amber glory of the twilight sky-as if on the outlook for the dead wedder or other carrion that might be lying in some moss-hole or mountain burn.

"By Jove, this place is well named the Lonewoodlee, for it could not well be lonelier !" thought Cyril, as he rode into the thicket of

trees.

There was no obstruction, for the enclosure or boundary, once a dry stone dyke, had fallen down, and all the place was bare and open. He threw the bridle of his horse over a branch, and, as the twilight deepened, he turned very deliberately towards the mansion on foot, and as he did so, the rabbits and hares flitted before him from among the deep rank grass.

In spite of the coldness-almost amounting to hostility-between their families, Cyril Wedderburn and Mary Lennox loved each other dearly. He had met her from time to time at races and country balls, occasionally in the houses of mutual friends. These meetings had not always been pleasant, for latterly they were at times the result of contrivance, as Mr. Lennox, from the peculiarities of his temper, would not have heard of this intimacy with patience.

On the other hand, Cyril was dependent on his father for his allowance-no man can live on his pay in any regiment now, so least of all was it possible in the Royal Fusileers;—and while her father lived, Mary, under any circumstances, could not think of marriage, and so some three years of a secret and undecided engagement between these young people had slipped away at the period when this story opens.

Cyril did not enter the desolate looking courtyard, lest he might be seen by either of the two female domestics who now composed the sorely

reduced household of Oliver Lennox.

All was

silent in the empty stables and ruined coachhouse, and the entire place looked gloomy in the extreme to the eyes of the young officer, accustomed to his father's more spacious and magnificent mansion, with its great oriels of plateglass, and he sighed when he thought of Mary.

Suddenly, through an open window on the second story, there came the swelling notes of a beautiful and tender soprano voice-a girl's-as she sang the grand old Christmas hymn, accompanying herself upon a piano, which, though a fine one, was nevertheless somewhat old-fashioned and not exactly a grand trichord.

"Poor thing! God bless her kind heart! she is singing to the old man," said Cyril, while he listened intently, with his head reclined against the wall, as if to absorb every sound. "So my little fairy sings in Latin!"

It was a strange song for a young girl; but, in fancy, Cyril could see the old man listening, and perhaps beating time with his fingers on the

coverlet or pillow of his bed, as he was soothed away to sleep. The notes pealed out on the calm evening air with a startling effect, each one stirring a chord in the loving heart of the listener without; for as his own soul-yea, and dearer than his own soul-did he love the singer, who, after a pause, dashed into a plaintive little Scottish song, and then, quite as suddenly, into the beautiful solo, Cujus animam, from the "Stabat Mater" of Rossini,

At last she ceased. He heard, or thought he heard, the piano closed softly; and in a minute more, with her eyes beaming, her damask cheek glowing with pleasure, as she threw up the veil of her smart little hat, Mary Lennox glided round the corner of the Tower, with her cloak on and her little hands in her muff.

"At last, my darling-at last we meet !" said Cyril, as he drew one of her hands through his arm, and believing that no human eye saw or ear heard them, led her into a denser and darker portion of the grove that grew about her old paternal home.

"I have been singing to poor papa."

"So I thought, Mary; and he is now asleep?" "Yes," replied Mary Lennox, with a bright smile; for her meetings with Cyril, though stolen and hasty, were the only bright spots in the usually dreary tenor of her life, and she looked up at her lover admiringly and tenderly. His