herself; "the fever and the weakness are of the mind rather than the body."

In the first week of summer Mr. Desmond gave himself a brief respite from the cares of the Pallas, and secured bachelor lodgings at Sunbury, where he kept his boat, and whence he rowed to and from River Lawn.

"And this week you are really going to give to me?" said Mrs. Jerningham.

"To you and to Father Thames. I hope you are as fond of the river as you were last summer."

"O yes. The river has been my companion upon many a lonely summer day. I have reason to be fond of the river."

She glanced with something of sadness to her favourite seat under the drooping boughs of a Spanish chestnut. Her summer days had been very lonely, lacking all those elements which make the lives of women sweet and happy. For her had been no murmur of children's voices, no pleasant cares of household, no daily expectation of a husband's return from club or senate, office or counting-house; no weekly round of visits among the poor; no sense of duty done: only a dull listless blank, and the last new novel, and the last new colour in gros de Lyons, and the last new monster in scentless gaudy horticulture, a chocolate-coloured calceolaria, a black dahlia, a sea-green camellia japonica.

"You are going to give me the whole week," she said. "O Laurence, I will try to be happy!"

She said this with unwonted earnestness, and with eyes that were dim with unshed tears. And she kept her word. She did honestly try to be happy, and she succeeded in being-gay. If the gaiety were somewhat feverish, if her harmonious laugh bordered on that laughter whereof Solomon said "it was mad," she did for the moment contrive to escape thought. This was something; for of late thought had been only another name for care.

Mr. Desmond had rowed stroke in the University Eight, and shared the Oxonian fallacy that to scull from ten to twenty miles under a broiling sun is the intellectual man's best repose. He rested his brain from the labours of the Pallas, and spent his days in pulling a roomy wherry to and fro between Hampton and Maidenhead, with Mrs. Jerningham and Lucy Alford for his passengers, and a dainty little hamper of luncheon for his cargo.

The weather was lovely. The landscape through which the river winds between Hampton and Chertsey, between Chertsey and Maidenhead, is a kind of terrestrial paradise, and a paradise peopled with classic shades; and all along those pastoral, villa-dotted banks nestled little villages and trimly-furnished inns, within whose hospitable shade the wanderers might repose, while the smart maple-painted boat bobbed up and down at anchor in the sun. These peaceful rovers kept no count

of the hours. They left River Lawn at early morning, lunched among the reedy shores below Chertsey, took their five-o'clock tea at Staines, and went home with the tide to a compound collation, which combined the elements of dinner, tea, and supper.

Mrs. Colton was but too glad to forego the delights of these waterparties in favour of Lucy; nor was Laurence sorry to resign a passenger who weighed some twelve or thirteen stone, who at every lurch of the boat entertained fears of drowning; to whom every weir seemed perilous as Niagara, and every lock a descent into Hades; and whose shawls and wraps, and carriage-rugs and foot-muffs, were insufferable to behold under the summer sun.

To Lucy the delight of these excursions was a single ineffable pleasure. She knew that this bright brief existence in his company was to occur once in her life, and once only. Again and again she told herself this; but she could not help being dangerously happy. The river, the sunshine, the landscape, the perfumed air that crept over banks of wild-thyme,-for, thank Heaven, in spite of the builder the wild-thyme does still blow on banks we know not twenty miles from London,-all these things of themselves would have made her happy; but to these things Laurence Desmond's presence, his low kind voice, his everthoughtful care, lent a new sweetness.

In plain truth, this penniless orphan-girl had most innocently and unconsciously fallen in love-or learned to love the man who had befriended her. Of that kindly, compassionate assistance which Mr. Desmond had given in all singleness of heart this was the fatal fruit. From the first he had felt a vague consciousness that danger might lurk in this association; but the full extent of that peril he had never foreseen. It was danger to himself he had dreaded. The girl's helplessness had touched him, her gratitude had melted him, her pretty, innocent, almost reverential looks and tones had flattered him.

He knew now that the hazard of his own feelings had been less than the peril of hers. By signs and tokens, too subtle and too delicate for translation into words, the fatal secret had been revealed to him. He knew that he was beloved; that this affectionate, innocent heart was his; that this fresh young life might be taken into his keeping to-morrow, to brighten and bless his own until the end of his earthly pilgrimage. Yes; this dear little creature, with her soft winning ways and dove-like eyes, he might have claimed for his wife tomorrow: if he had been free. But on him there was a tie more binding than marriage, a chain that no divorce could break-the bondage of his honour. As Lancelot sadly bade farewell to the lily maid of Astolat, so Laurence, in the silence of his heart, put away from him the dream and the hope that he would fain have cherished.

And all the time he thought of his bondage, the oars dipped gaily into the water, and the editor and Mrs. Jerningham talked of literature and art, and fashion and horticulture; and Lucy was satisfied with the de

light of hearing that one dear voice which made the most commonplace conversation a kind of poetry. There are no limits to the sentimentality of inexperienced girlhood. Young ladies in society had calculated Mr. Desmond's income to a sixpence, and had assessed all the advantages of his position, his chances of going into Parliament by and by, with every remote contingency of his career. But if he had indeed been Lancelot, and herself Elaine the fair, Lucy Alford could scarcely have regarded him with more reverent affection. And all this he had won for himself by a little Christianlike compassion, and an expenditure of something under fifty pounds.

CHAPTER XXXII.

66 COULD LOVE PART THUS."

THE happy week went by, and at the close of it came the end of the world, as it seemed to Lucy Alford.

"Good news, Lucy," Mrs. Jerningham said one morning as she opened her letters at the breakfast-table; "good news for you."

"For me," faltered Miss Alford, blushing; "what good news can there be for me?"

What indeed? Was not Laurence Desmond's holiday to end to-morrow? This afternoon they were to have their last row on the Thames.

"Yes, Lucy. You remember what I told you about Mrs. Fitzpatrick, that delightful person in Ireland. I wrote to her a few days ago, you know, telling her of my plans for you; for she is just one of those good motherly creatures who are always ready to help one; and it happens most fortunately that she can take you herself. Her own governess-a young person who had been with her five years-has lately married, and she has tried in vain to find any one she likes. You are to go to her at once, dear, with a salary of sixty pounds. The situation will be a delightful one; you will be quite one of the family; and they live in a noble old stone-house, in a great wilderness of a park, only fifteen miles from Limerick."

"Only fifteen miles from Limerick." If the noble old stone-house had been fifteen miles from Memphis, or fifteen miles from Timbuctoo, the name of the locality could scarcely have conjured up more dreary ideas in the mind of Lucy Alford. She involuntarily made a rough calculation of the mileage between Limerick and Mr. Desmond's chambers. Him she could never hope to see again if she went to those unknown wilds of Ireland. And yet what did it matter? A world seemed to divide them, as it was. Sitting in the same boat with him, the abyss that yawned between them was profound and immeasurable as eternity. At Limerick or at Hampton it must be all the same. He was nothing to her at Hampton; at Limerick he could be no less than nothing. Something in her face, as she mused thus, told Mrs. Jerningham that the delight afforded by these tidings was not altogether unalloyed.

"I daresay the notion of such a journey alarms you," said Emily kindly; "but I will see that all is arranged for your comfort. And I am sure you will be happy at Shannondale Park. I could not have wished you better fortune than such a home."

No what could fortune give her brighter than this? A pleasant home and a kind mistress. She felt like some poor little slave sold to a new master, to be sent to a strange country. She tried with a great effort to express some sense of pleasure and thankfulness, but she could not. The words choked her. Happy, in barbarous wastes of unknown Hibernia, while he lived his own life in London, serenely forgetful of her wretched existence!

"O, how ungrateful I am!" she said to herself, while Mrs. Jerningham watched her sharply, and guessed what thoughts were working in that sorely-troubled brain.

"Perhaps a situation nearer London would have suited you better, Miss Alford," Emily remarked with biting acrimony; "where your old friends could have called upon you from time to time."

Lucy flushed burning red, and anon burst into tears.

"I have no friend in the world but you," she said piteously. "I know it is wicked of me not to be pleased with such good fortune; and I-am-truly-ger-ger-grateful to you, dear Mrs. Jerningham; but Ireland seems so very far away."

The piteous look subdued Emily's sternness. She took the girl's hand in her own tenderly.

"Yes, it seems far away," she said cheerfully; "but I know you will be happy there. You cannot imagine anything more beautiful than the river Shannon."

Lucy thought of Father Thames and his dipping willows, deep shadows of woody island, silver plash of dancing river, and his grave face sadly regardful of her in the pauses of his talk. She thought of these things, and shook her head. Ah, no, it was impossible; for her, Shannon could never be what Thames had been. Mrs. Jerningham comforted her in a grand patronising manner, and promised her unbounded happiness on the banks of the Shannon.

"You do not know what the Irish are," she exclaimed; "so kind, so hearty, so genial. With them a governess is received as one of the family. The children love her, and cling to her as if she were an elder sister. And the Fitzpatricks are of the vieille roche, you know; you will find no parvenu gentility there."

Yes, the picture was a fair one; but, for lack of one feature, it seemed cold and dreary to Lucy Alford. She managed, however, to appear contented, and thanked Mrs. Jerningham prettily for the kindness which had procured her this strange distant home. After this Emily went out alone to her garden and hothouses, to inspect the latest ugliness in calceolarias; and Mrs. Colton held her morning conference with the housekeeper, and received a solemn embassy from the kitchen-garden and forcing-houses. Lucy sat listlessly in the drawing-room, meditating