so much care about telling poor mamma; for she does exclaim and wonder so about things, that it is quite fatiguing to hear her. But please let me tell Valentine?"

Miss Halliday pursed-up her lips and offered her stepfather one of those kisses which she had of late been prompted to bestow on him out of the gratitude of a heart overflowing with girlish joy. He took the kiss as he might have taken a dose of medicine, but did not grant the request preferred by it.

"If you want to be a fool, you can tell your lover of this windfall; but if you wish to prove yourself a sensible girl, you will hold your tongue. He has saved forty pounds by hard work in the last three months, you say: do you think he would have saved forty pence if he had known that you had five thousand pounds at his disposal? I know that class of men; look at Goldsmith, the man who wrote the Vicar of Wakefield, and Rasselas, and Clarissa Harlowe, and so on. I have read somewhere that he never wrote except under coercion-that is to say, want of money."

Charlotte acknowledged the wisdom of this argument, and submitted. She was not what is called a strong-minded woman; and, indeed, strength of mind is not a plant indigenous to the female nature, but an exceptional growth developed by exceptional circumstances. In Charlotte's life there had been nothing exceptional, and she was in all things soft and womanly, ready to acknowledge, and to be guided by, the wisdom of her seniors. So Valentine heard nothing of the undertaking executed by his lady-love.

After this, Mr. Sheldon took counsel's opinion, and set to work in real earnest to recover the estate of the deceased John Haygarth from the yawning jaws of that tame but all-devouring monster, the Crown. The work was slow, and the dryasdust details thereof need not be recorded here. It had but just begun when Horatio Paget suddenly returned from his Continental expedition, and established himself once more in the Omega-street lodgings.

BELGRAVIA

JUNE 1868

DEAD-SEA FRUIT

A Nobel

BY THE AUTHOR OF "LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET," ETC.

MRS

CHAPTER XXXIII. A SUMMER STORM.

RS. COLTON entered the drawing-room by the door as Laurence Desmond came in by the window. "I have given you the sparkling Rüdesheimer instead of champagne, Mr. Desmond," she said cheerily: "Donner has put it in a basket of rough ice; and Vokes has brought me in the finest peaches I have seen this year, Emily. He is quite proud of them."

After this came Lucy, pale and grave, but looking the picture of innocent prettiness in her white dress, and little sailor hat with ribbon of Oxford blue.

"Not dressed, Emily!" exclaimed Laurence, as he shook hands with Mrs. Jerningham.

The exclamation was purely mechanical. His mind must indeed have been preoccupied, or he would have noticed the icy coldness of the hand that lay so listlessly in his own.

Wilson has seen to the shawls

"I have only my hat to put on. and cloaks, no doubt. I am quite ready."

Mrs. Jerningham took her hat from the sofa where she had thrown it an hour before; a very archetype of hats, bordered with the lustrous plumage of a peacock's breast. Of these glories she had tasted to satiety; all the bliss that millinery can give to the heart of woman had been hers. But there comes a time when even these things seem vanity. To-day the peacock's plumage might have been dust and ashes for any pleasure it afforded her.

They went out to the boat. The day was warm to oppressiveness, and Mrs. Jerningham's attire of the thinnest.

"I hope you have plenty of wraps," said Laurence; "there's rather an ugly cloud to windward."

VOL. V.

GG

"O yes; Wilson always gives us an infinity of that kind of thing," Mrs. Jerningham answered, glancing at the bottom of the boat, where lay a heap of shawls and cloaks of the bernous order, just a little less gauzy in texture than the dresses of the two ladies.

"I really am almost afraid of the day," muttered Laurence, looking to the south-west, where a stormy darkness brooded over the landscape. "I am not afraid," replied Emily; "it is to be our last day, remember, Laurence. Let us have our last day together."

Something in her tone startled and touched him. He looked at her earnestly, but the proud face gave no sign.

"It shall be as you please," he said; "but I must not forget that you are not out of the hands of Dr. Leonards, and you have told me he enjoined you to be careful."

"O yes; a physician always says that, when he can find nothing else to say."

There was a little more discussion, and presently the boat shot away, swift as a dart, with the strong sweep of the sculls. They were to land at Chertsey, picnic at St. Ann's-hill, and come home to Hampton in the evening. Laurence Desmond had the proprietorial mandate in his pocket, that for him and his friends the gates of St. Ann's should be opened.

Only a few big splashing drops of rain overtook them between Hampton and Chertsey, and when they landed the stormy darkness seemed to have vanished from the south-western horizon. Mr. Desmond had made all his arrangements; a fly was in waiting, and in half an hour the little party were wandering in the groves which have been sanctified to history by the name of Fox.

The almost feverish

The picnic was to all appearance a success. gaiety which had distinguished Emily Jerningham of late was especially noticeable in her manner to-day. Carpe diem was the philosophy which sustained her in this bitter crisis. This last day would she snatch. It was her festive supper on the eve of execution. Like that bright band whose laughter echoed in Trophonian caves of grim Bastille before the dawn that was to witness their slaughter, did Emily Jerningham pour out the sparkling vintage of the Rhineland as a libation upon that altar where she was so soon to sacrifice her selfish love.

The western sky was dark and louring when the revellers left the groves of St. Ann, to be driven back to the boat-builder's yard, where they had landed.

"I really think it might be better to go back by road," Laurence said doubtfully, as he looked at the cloudy horizon. Six o'clock chimed from the tower of Chertsey church as he spoke. "It will be nearly nine before I can get you home, you see," he added; "and if

there should be rain-"

"We will endure it without a murmur," interposed Emily. "I am bent on going back by water."

"Would Dr. Leonards approve ?"

"I will not hold my life on such terms as Dr. Leonards would dictate. We shall have moonlight before we reach Hampton. Come, Laurence, I am quite ready."

Mr. Desmond submitted, and placed his fair companions in the boat with all due care. Then, after the preliminary pushing-off, the oars dipped softly in the water, and the boat sped homewards.

Mrs. Jerningham's gaiety left her with a strange abruptness. She leant back against the cushioned rail of the boat, silent and thoughtful, with fixed dreamy eyes.

"You are tired, I fear," Laurence remarked by and by, wondering at her silence.

"Yes; I am a little tired."

It would seem as if Lucy too were tired, for she also was silent, and sat watching the changing landscape with a thoughtful gaze. But upon her silence Laurence Desmond made no remark. She had indeed been silent and thoughtful all the day, and yet not unhappy. Unhappy! -he loved her! She had been telling herself that fact over and over again with ever-delightful iteration. He loved her! To know that it was so constituted an all-sufficient happiness.

The water-journey with one pair of sculls between Chertsey and Hampton is a long one, and many are the locks which arrest the swift progress of the voyager, and often echoes the cry of "Lo-o-óck!" over the quiet waters; but so bright and changing is the landscape, so soothing the influence of the atmosphere, that the voyager must be dull indeed who finds the way too long.

The changing banks shifted past Mrs. Jerningham like pictures in a dream. A profound silence had fallen upon the boat. The rower dipped his oars with a measured mechanical motion, and his grave face might have been the countenance of Charon himself conveying a boatload of shadows to the Rhadamanthine shore. To Emily it seemed as if they were indeed voyagers on some mystic symbolical river rather than on the friendly breast of Thames. The end of her life had come. What had she to do but die? All that she held dear,-the one sustaining influence of her weak soul, the very keystone of the edifice of her life, this she was to lose. And what then?

Beyond this point she could not look. That a dismal duty, a bitter sacrificial act, must be performed by her, she knew. But that by the doing of that act she might possibly attain peace, consolation, release from a long and harassing bondage, she could not foresee.

"I will give him up," she said to herself; "soon-to-night. It is like the bitter medicine they made me take sometimes when I was a child. I cannot take it too soon."

And then she looked at Lucy, and her lip curled ever so little as she scrutinised the fair but not altogether perfect face.

She measured her charms against those of her happier rival, and

told herself that all the advantage was on her own side. And yet, and yet this fair-faced girl was dearer to him, by an infinite degree, than she who had loved him nearly ten years.

While silence still held the voyagers as by a spell, the rain came splashing heavily down, and the perils of the journey began. They had not yet reached Sunbury, and some miles of winding water lay between them and Hampton.

"I am afraid we are in for it," Laurence said. "We had better land at Sunbury, and get back in a fly."

Mrs. Jerningham was opposed to this. She declared that she had not the slightest objection to the rain; she was wrapped up to an absurd degree; and she drew her gauzy burnous round her in evidence of the fact, while Lucy adjusted a second cloak of thin scarlet fabric over the gauzy white burnous. Laurence, however, insisted on landing, and did his utmost to procure a vehicle; while the two ladies shivered in a chilly hotel-parlour, their garments already damp with the heavy rain. He came back to them in despair. No fly was to be had at Sunbury for love or money. There was a Volunteer ball at Chertsey that very evening, and every vehicle was engaged.

"I had much rather go back in the boat," said Emily.

“But the doctor said you were to be so careful," suggested Lucy. "I do not believe in the doctor. Come, Laurence, it is better to encounter another shower than to wait shivering here for unattainable flies."

To this Mr. Desmond unwillingly assented. There was a pause in the summer storm,—a faint glimmer of watery sunlight low in the cloudy west. The boat seemed the only possible means of getting home.

"If you would stay here all night," he suggested, "it would be better than running any risk."

"I could not exist a night in a strange hotel," replied Mrs. Jerningham, glancing round the bare bleak-looking room with a shudder. "Please take us home, Mr. Desmond, if you are not afraid of the rain yourself."

There seemed no alternative, so Laurence assented to an immediate return to the boat, comforting himself with the hope that the gleam of sunlight was the harbinger of a fine evening. He insisted, however, upon borrowing a thick shawl and a railway-rug from the landlady at Sunbury, in case of the worst.

For half a mile the faint streak of sunshine lighted the voyagers; and then the worst came; the floodgates of the sky were opened, and a summer deluge descended upon the quiet river. Mr. Desmond packed his two charges in the borrowed wraps, and sculled with a desperate vigour.

"It's most unlucky," he said; "there's nothing for it between this and home."