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he and Circe Sutherland were already engaged for the first dance.

"You will come and speak to me sometimes between the sets, Cyril? that will keep me from feeling lonesome."

"Oh, of course," said Cyril, more and more puzzled at her evident determination to go. Until now he thought it a mere passing fancy, and had not believed her in earnest.

"At first, I thought I could not go, on account of my dress. It seemed foolish for me to have a dress made expressly for the occasion. It would be so expensive. I doubt if I could, now, the Star says so many new dresses are being made and that all the modistes are driven for the ball. I'll tell you what I can do, Cyril. The skirt of my wedding silk is pretty, yet. It is long, and I don't believe it will look old-fashioned. I will go to Williams's and get a pretty muslin overdress trimmed with Valenciennes lace. That will be simple, and quite stylish enough for me. Of course I shall make no attempt to compete with the costumes there. If I can only make myself look well to you, Cyril, that will be quite enough."

"You know that you always look well to me, Aggie," said Cyril, with an honest attempt at gallantry of speech, if only to hide the chagrin that he felt at Agnes' going to the ball at all. Not that he was ashamed of her personally. If not in the fashionable sense elegant or showy, she would be marked as a lady in any company. But he felt in advance that her mere presence would be a restriction upon himself. He had been into society so long and so much alone, had been so long the central object of worship to groups of admiring women, as free, to all society appearance, as if he were a single man, it suddenly struck him that it might be awkward to be this hero with his wife looking on, and certainly he could not come down from his throne because his wife might be looking at him. What had got into Agnes, any way! The purpose to go to the ball had without doubt gotten into her mind, and apparently, by no manner of means was to be extracted.

"Linda, can't you talk Agnes out of the idea of going to the ambassadors' ball?" said Cyril to his cousin, as he paused at the door of the boxy hall bedroom which was now her room in lieu of the sunny chamber at Lotusmere.

"No indeed," answered that imperious young woman, "and I wouldn't if I could. Let her go and see, with her own eyes, the truth and nothing but the truth. I could have told it to her years ago, but she wouldn't have believed it. If nothing will satisfy her but the sight of her own eyes, let her go and use them; she won't go again."

"What in the world are you talking about Linda?" "You know perfectly well what I am talking about, Cyril King. You are in love with that Creole widow. That you would be in love with somebody, beside your wife, was only a matter of time. I knew that from the beginning. She wouldn't have believed it; she don't believe it now, at heart thinks if she goes with you that she will avert what danger there is. She is an idiot."

"Why do you speak in such a way of Agnes?" said Cyril, instinctively wishing another to be loyal, in proportion as he felt himself to be disloyal.

"Why do you act so to Agnes?" she asked, as she ought her eyes to a level gaze with his, filled with pression of steady triumph. "Agnes and I will Agnes and I will

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Good night." And Linda with"She has had her day," she said, "It will be easier for me to lose "How glad I

as she shut her door. mine in her company."

In the morning Linda said to Agnes, am that you are going to the ambassadors' ball. What a pity you did not begin such going long ago. No man is safe, not in society, without his wife to look after him. Be sure to give that Creole widow to understand that she is not to monopolize all your husband's attention. Washington is full of stories about her, and the latest is your husband's fascination for her. Of course there is no truth in that; just show the world that there is not, by claiming him in public, yourself. Why, the house is full of the sensation that he and she made together at Willard's last night. That's where he was when you were asleep at the Capitol. He never got back till twelve o'clock."

Agnes had become too inured to years of thrusts like these to do more than writhe under them in silence. She made no reply for an instant, then said:

"The wife of a public man, especially of a man so personally popular and attractive as Cyril, must make up her mind to share, to some degree, his attentions. It certainly would be impossible for any man or woman not to admire the beauty of Mrs. Sutherland. It is very remarkable." "Do

you admire it?" "I certainly do." "Do you admire her?” "I do not, Linda."

"You will admire her less, some day."

"Possibly. It is not in my power to admire any person whose entire life is devoted to self-gratification. Still, Cyril says that she is very amiable. I have no doubt that she is. Linda, will you go with me to Williams's and help me select my overdress? The children will be perfectly safe with Chloe, for an hour or two." No matter how deep down Linda's stabs struck this morning, she was resolved to give no sign.

Circe Sutherland's heartless words in the alcove in their very smiting, penetrated to the foundations of strength in her nature.

It did not suit Linda to obey Cyril's injunction. She had her own reasons for wishing Agnes to attend the ambassadors' ball, and did all she could to assist her.

"You have been very kind, Linda," said Agues. "The next time I will help you to go to some pleasant place that you may like."

"Pleasant places are not for the like of me," said Linda, in a tone that would have been moving in Mrs. Gummage.

"Now don't assume that you are 'a poor creetur,' Linda, for you know well that you manage us all." "Do I!" said Linda, in an incredulous tone. "It is news to me."

"Cyril King! don't be a noodle to-night," she got a chance to whisper in his ear in her frequent dartings between the two dressing-rooms. "Don't let a sudden compunction tie you to your wife's girdle all night. It would only make the snapping to-morrow the harder. You know perfectly well that you can't stay tied, and that she is a goose and wants you at her elbow forever."

HIS TWO WIVES.

“Linda, do you know for once I think I don't need your advice," said Cyril tartly.

“Oh, you don't! you'll follow it just the same," and she left him with a low laugh, half irony, half mockery, peculiarly her own.

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It was certainly the most resplendent and bewildering scene of its kind that Agnes had ever beheld, ladies' dressing-room at the ambassadors' ball. Softeyed, low-voiced slaves took each lady's wrappings and with its duplicate number laid it in the special honeycomb receptacle prepared for it. Others on their knees were buttoning white satin boots, and putting on dainty silken slippers of every imaginable tint. The room was lined with mirrors and dressing tables, and thronged with women bedecked in every hue. Such sheen of silk, such foam of lace, such splendor of gems, Agnes had never seen before. The ladies in a gentle way were pushing toward the mirrors, to give the finishing look and touches to their attires before entering the ball-room. They looked so dazzling, so beautiful, so overpowering, as they pressed down upon these luminous centres, and Agnes felt so like a little russet wren amid them all, that it did not occur to her that she, as well as they, might look into a mirror to see that the scarlet geranium in her hair was not awry, or her airy muslin rumpled or distraught. She simply sank into a chair beside a dressing-table and opposite the main door, where she could see Cyril issue from the gentlemen's dressing-room.

Near her, giving the finishing touches to her toilette was the wife of the English minister, stately as a palm, fair, graceful, and gentle, in a robe of rosecolored silk flounced with a fortune in black lace. Near her was the Countess ter from France, dark beauty of an illustrious race, wife of the minisresplendent in azure, white lace, and diamonds. Next her was the young daughter of a senator, perfect in her type of national loveliness; stately, pure, and classic as a white lily in June. Englishwoman, graceful and soft-eyed as a fawn, whose With her was a young historic name and marvellous face had made her famous in two continents. These were but a few on whom Agnes' eyes rested with unfeigned and unalloyed delight. She never thought of her own appearance till she caught a glimpse of Cyril's noble head towering above those of other men, as he emerged from the gentlemen's dressing-room across the hall.

"He looks grander than they all," she thought"and I!" She gave one glance toward the mirror and caught a glimpse of the scarlet blossom nestling safely in her dark locks, - and of the white face beneath. She looked down upon herself. The wedding silk, that looked ample enough in the little cramped chamber of the lodging-house, certainly seemed scanty and pinched here, beside these court trains and flowing and garlanded waves of lace; but the pure muslin over-dress, though by no means one of Williams's rarest imports, with its breast-knot and loopings of natural flowers, she hoped softened the defects of the passée wedding silk, and made her presentable. She hoped so she by no means felt sure of it. "I shall never look distinguished enough to be Cyril's wife," the loving heart said with a sigh, as she advanced to meet him. He noted two things in the single glance which he bestowed upon her gave her his arm. One, that her dress, plainer that he saw, was worn with a grace it the impression of simple elegance; and that the face, that gave Worn though it was, bore the stamp of high intelligence,

as he

than

any

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lit by a pair of soft brown eyes whose appealing glance in itself was enough to make the face noticeable and attractive.

The broad staircase which they ascended was covered with crimson cloth, and lined on either side by great classic vases filled with growing and blooming exotics. Though this arcade of blossoming fragrance ascended the dazzling throng to the ball-room above. like a realm of enchantment. The flags, colors, and It was a long and lofty hall, and opened upon the guests floated from the ceiling. Hanging baskets laden with emblems of many nations festooned the walls and blossoms, and censers filled with perfume, floated out alcoves; garlands of fresh flowers were suspended in into space. Jars of rare plants filled windows and mid air from end to end of the hall. Below the emhundreds of free canaries disported and sang, perched pyrean of light in which blazed the crystal chandeliers, upon the baskets, nestling in the garlands; their fine notes, piercing sweet, rose above the music of the Marine Band in the gallery. At the opposite end of the hall was the raised dais for the "court" guests of this republican assembly. Here were the hosts of the evendors, in their court attire, glittering with the orders ing and their especial guests, the European ambassaand insignia of their rank, accompanied by ladies decked in fortunes of lace and jewels. Here also was

the President of the United States with his family, surrounded by his Cabinet and their accompanying ladies, all grouped beneath a canopy of drooping international banners and garlands of flowers. every guest passed, to pay respect to the President and Up to this dais to make obeisance to the foreign ambassadors. Cyril looked sufficiently distinguished to be a high grandee of the occasion. Nevertheless his spirit chafed within the dais, across it, and down, to think that after all he him as he passed with the throng who filed up to was only one of the "mob," invited by a committee of aristocrats solely as a member of the Lower House, and not for any acknowledged personal prestige of his own, ing the bitterness of this thought, Agnes, dazed slightly either social or intellectual. While Cyril was swallowby the sudden light and splendor which enveloped her, was wondering how she ever found the resuscitate the faded limpness of her wedding silk with courage to the belief that it could be made fine enough to appear in such a place and in such company.

The greetings past, they proceeded down the hall most resplendent occasions wait to receive the inevitaand took a seat on one of the side sofas which upon the ble "wall-flowers." Agnes had come to the ball with could not dance, and as Cyril said, "Not to dance at a a full knowledge that she must be one of these, for she ball is to be a wall-flower." She knew also that Cyril danced with ease and elegance; that Circe Sutherland was to be there, and thought that she had "nerved herwith outward calmness any sight of the sequence of self," as Mrs. Twilight used to say, to behold at least these facts. To be patient, to be pleased, at any cost, such a place as this she only came by Cyril's sufferance, was the resolve of Agnes, who knew inwardly that in not by his desire.

"You know I don't expect or wish to keep you
himself by her on the sofa.
chained to my side," she said with a smile, as he seated
quainted with so many people with whom you will
I were not here. You dance, you know, and are ac-
"Do just as you would if
wish to speak. It's a great deal for me, Cyril, to look

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It's better than opera," she was about to say, when the memory of the last night at the Academy came into her mind, and she stopped.

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"I doubt if the dancing begins for an hour," said Cyril, leaning back as if he intended to remain where he was. I don't see any one yet that I care to go and speak with. When I do I will introduce to you some one in my place, so you will not feel alone, Aggie," he said kindly.

Perhaps he was not conscious himself that he was already all eyes for one who had not yet appeared. Even as he spoke a change passed over his face, as appeared above the crimson staircase in the open door of the ballroom she who was to be preeminently the belle and queen of the occasion. She was leaning upon the arm of the Senator from Louisiana, whose dark beauty in masculine form was the type of her own, and whom she resembled nearly enough to be his daughter. Her dress was like the foam of the sea; pale green in shadow, with a floating mist of lace flecked with crystal spray. In her dark hair she wore a star of diamonds, and diamonds and emeralds blazed upon neck and arms. Her appearance made a sensation even in that assemNo one of them bly of exceptionally beautiful women. all was so preeminently beautiful, so distinguished, as she.

Agnes felt the blood ebb out of her face, and her heart seem to grow still, while she watched Circe Sutherland move on as if she were floating in a cloud of spray toward the dais. "What grace," she said silently, just, in spite of her pain. "Sitting here I could rejoice in her beauty," she went on to say to herself, "if it would not take him from me. If both together we could behold and admire it, as we do a Psyche in marble, then I should be happy in it: but alas! she is not Psyche, she is Circe."

(To be continued.)

FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD.

CHAPTER XXXI. BLAME: FURY.

THE next evening Bathsheba, with the idea of getting out of the way of Mr. Boldwood in the event of his returning to answer her note in person, proceeded to fulfil an engagement made with Liddy some few hours earlier. Bathsheba's companion, as a gage of their reconciliation, had been granted a week's holiday to visit her sister, who was married to a thriving hurdler and cattle-crib maker living in a delightful labyrinth of hazel copse not far from Yalbury. The arrangement was that Miss Everdene should honor them by coming there for a day or two to inspect some ingenious contrivances which this man of the woods had introduced into his wares.

watching how the day was retreating, and thinking how the time of deeds was quietly melting into the time of thought, to give place in its turn to the time of prayer and sleep, when she beheld advancing over the hill the ver man she sought so anxiously to elude. Boldwood wis which was his customary gait, in which he always seem t stepping on, not with that quiet tread of reserved streng to be balancing two thoughts. His manner was stunned and sluggish now.

Boldwood had for the first time been awakened

woman's privileges in the practice of tergiversation without regard to another's distraction and possible blight That Bathsheba was a firm and positive girl, far less incon sequent than her fellows, had been the very lung of hope for he had held that these qualities would lead her to adhere to a straight course for consistency's sake, and accept him, though her fancy might not flood him with the iridescent hues of uncritical love. But the argument now came back as sorry gleams from a broken mirror. The discovery was no less a scourge than a surprise. Bathsheba till they were less than a stone's throw apart He came on, looking upon the ground, and did not see He looked up at the sound of her pit-pat, and his changed appearance sufficiently denoted to her the depth and strength of the feelings paralyzed by her letter.

"Oh! is it you, Mr Boldwood?" she faltered, a guilty warmth pulsing in her face.

Those who have the power of reproaching in silence may find it a means more effective than words. There are accents in the eye which are not on the tongue, and more tales come from pale lips than can enter an ear. It is both the grandeur and the pain of the remoter moods that they avoid the pathway of sound. Boldwood's look was unanswerable.

Seeing she turned a little aside, he said, "What, are you afraid of me?"

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"Why should you say that?" said Bathsheba. "I fancied you looked so, " said he. strange, because of its contrast with my feeling for you." "And it is most She regained self-possession, fixed her eyes calmly, and waited.

"You know what that feeling is," continued Boldwood deliberately. "A thing strong as death. No dismissal by a hasty letter affects that."

"I wish you did not feel so strongly about me," she murmured. "It is generous of you, and more than I deserve, but I must not hear it now."

"Hear it? What do you think I have to say, then? I am not to marry you, and that's enough. Your letter was excellently plain. I want you to hear nothing-not I." Bathsheba was unable to direct her will into any definite groove for freeing herself from this fearfully awkward position. She confusedly said, "Good evening," and was mov ing on. Boldwood walked up to her heavily and dully. "Bathsheba - darling — is it final indeed?" "Indeed it is." "Oh, Bathsheba

have pity upon me!" Boldwood burst out. "God's sake, yes I am come to that low, lowest stageto ask a woman for pity! Still, she is you—she is you."

Bathsheba commanded herself well. But she could hardly get a clear voice for what came instinctively to her lips: "There is little honor to the woman in that speech." It was only whispered, for something unutterably mournful no less than distressing in this spectacle of a man showing himself to be so entirely the vane of a passion enervated the feminine instinct for punctilios.

"I am beyond myself about this, and am mad," he said. "I am no stoic at all to be supplicating here; but I do supplicate to you. I wish you knew what is in me of devotion to you; but it is impossible, that. In bare human mercy to a lonely man don't throw me off now!"

Leaving her instructions with Gabriel and Maryann that they were to see everything carefully locked up for the night, she went out of the house just at the close of a timely thunder-shower, which had refined the air, and daintily bathed the mere coat of the land, all beneath being dry as ever. Freshness was exhaled in an essence from the varied contours of bank and hollow, as if the earth breathed maiden breath, and the pleased birds were hymning to the scene. Before her, among the clouds, there was a contrast in the shape of lairs of fierce light which showed them- "I don't throw you off—indeed, how can I? I never selves in the neighborhood of a hidden sun, lingering on to had you." In her noon-clear sense that she had never the farthest northwest corner of the heavens that this mid-loved him she forgot for a moment her thoughtless angle summer season allowed.

She had walked nearly three miles of her journey,

on that day in February.

"But there was a time when you turned to me, before I

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What you call encouragement was the childish game of an idle minute. I have bitterly repented of it—aye, itterly, and in tears. Can you still go on reminding ne?""

"I don't accuse you of it I deplore it. I took for carnest what you insist was jest, and now this that I pray to be jest you say is awful, wretched earnest. Our moods meet at wrong places. I wish your feeling was more like mine, or my feeling more like yours! Oh, could I but have foreseen the torture that trifling trick was going to lead me into, how I should have cursed you; but only having been able to see it since, I cannot do that, for I love you too well! But it is weak, idle drivelling to go on like this ... Bathsheba, you are the first woman of any shade or nature that I have ever looked at to love, and it is the having been so near claiming you for my own that makes this denial so hard to bear. How nearly you promised me ! But I don't speak now to move your heart, and make you grieve because of my pain; it is no use, that. I must bear it; my pain would get no less by paining you."

"But I do pity you deeply - oh, so deeply!" she earnestly said.

Do no such thing-do no such thing. Your dear love, Bathsheba, is such a vast thing beside your pity that the loss of your pity as well as your love is no great addition to my sorrow, nor does the gain of your pity make it sensibly less. Oh sweet-how dearly you spoke to me behind the spear-bed at the washing-pool, and in the barn at the shearing, and that dearest last time in the evening at your home! Where are your pleasant words all gone your earnest hope to be able to love me? Where is your firm conviction that you would get to care for me very much? Really forgotten? — really?"

She checked emotion, looked him quietly and clearly in the face, and said in her low firm voice, "Mr. Boldwood, I promised you nothing. Would you have had me a woman of clay when you paid me that furthest, highest compliment a man can pay a woman - telling her he loves her? I was bound to show some feeling, if I would not be a graceless shrew. Yet each of those pleasures was just for the day-the day just for the pleasure. How was I to know that what is a pastime to all other men was death to you? Have reason, do, and think more kindly of me!" "Well, never mind arguing. never mind. One thing is sure you were all but mine, and now you are not nearly mine. Everything is changed, and that by you alone, remember. You were nothing to me once, and I was contented; you are now nothing to me again, and how different the second nothing is from the first! Would to God you had never taken me up, since it was only to throw me down!"

Bathsheba, in spite of her mettle, began to feel unmistakable signs that she was inherently the weaker vessel. She strove miserably against this femininity which would insist upon supplying unbidden emotions in stronger and stronger current. She had tried to elude agitation by fixing her mind on the trees, sky, any trivial object before her eyes, whilst his reproaches fell, but ingenuity could

not save her now.

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was to be, how I would have avoided you, and never seen you, and been deaf to you. I tell you all this, but what do you care? You don't care."

She returned silent and weak denials to his charges, and swayed her head desperately, as if to thrust away the words as they came showering about her ears from the lips of the trembling man in the climax of life, with his bronzed Roman face and fine frame.

"Dearest, dearest, I am wavering even now between the two opposites of recklessly renouncing you, and laboring humbly for you again. Forget that you have said No, and let it be as it was. Say, Bathsheba, that you only wrote that refusal to me in fun- come, say it to me !"

You

"It would be untrue, and painful to both of us. overrate my capacity for love. I don't possess half the warmth of nature you believe me to have. An unprotected childhood in a cold world has beaten gentleness out of

me."

He immediately said with more resentment: "That may be true, somewhat; but ah, Miss Everdene, it won't do as a reason You are not the cold woman you would have me believe. No, no. It isn't because you have no feeling in you that you don't love me. You naturally would have

me think so- you would hide from me that you have a burning heart like mine. You have love enough, but it is turned into a new channel. I know where."

The swift music of her heart became hubbub now, and she throbbed to extremity. He was coming to Troy. He did then know what had transpired! And the name fell from his lips the next moment.

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Why did Troy not leave my treasure alone?" he asked, fiercely. "When I had no thought of injuring him why did he force himself upon your notice! Before he worried you your inclination was to have me; when next I should have come to you your answer would have been Yes. Can you deny it I ask, can you deny it?"

She delayed the reply, but was too honest to withhold it. "I cannot," she whispered.

"I know you cannot. But he stole in in my absence and robbed me. Why didn't he win you away before, when nobody would have been grieved? - when nobody would have been set tale-bearing. Now the people sneer at me - the very hills and sky seem to laugh at me till I blush shamefully for my folly. I have lost my respect, my good name, my standing lost it, never to get it again. Go and marry your man

go on!"

"Oh sir-Mr. Boldwood!"

"You may as well. I have no further claim upon you. As for me, I had better go somewhere alone, and hide, and pray. I loved a woman once. I am now ashamed. When I am dead they'll say, miserable love-sick man that he was. Heaven heaven-if I had got jilted secretly, and the dishonor not known, and my position kept! But no matter, it is gone, and the woman not gained. Shame - shame!" upon him

His unreasonable anger terrified her, and she glided from him, without obviously moving, as she said, "I am only a girl do not speak to me so!"

All the time you knew how very well you knew— that your new freak was my misery. Dazzled by brass and scarlet — oh, Bathsheba - this is woman's folly indeed!”

She fired up at once. "You are taking too much upon yourself!" she said, vehemently. "Everybody is upon me- everybody. It is unmanly to attack a woman so! I have nobody in the world to fight my battles for me, mercy is shown. Yet if a thousand of you sneer and say things against me, I will not be put down!"

you.

but no

"You'll chatter with him doubtless about me. Say to him, 'Boldwood would have died for me.' Yes, and you have given way to him knowing him to be not the man for He has kissed you claimed you as his. Do you hear, he has kissed you. Deny it!" The most tragic woman is cowed by a tragic man, and although Boldwood was, in vehemence and glow, nearly her own self rendered into another sex, Bathsheba's cheek quivered. She gasped, "Leave me sir - leave me! I am nothing to you. Let me go on!"

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"Ha-- then he has!" came hoarsely from the farmer. "He has," she said, slowly, and in spite of her fear, defiantly. "I am not ashamed to speak the truth." "Then curse him; and curse him!" said Boldwood, breaking into a whispered fury. "Whilst I would have given worlds to touch your hand you have let a rake come in without right or ceremony and kiss you! Heaven's mercy kiss you!... Ah, a time of his life shall come when he will have to repent and think wretchedly of the pain he has caused another man; and then may he ache, and wish, and curse, and yearn - as I do now! "Don't, don't, oh, don't pray down evil upon him!" she implored in a miserable cry. "Anything but that thing. Oh, be kind to him, sir, for I love him dearly!" Boldwood's ideas had reached that point of fusion at which outline and consistency entirely disappear. The impending night appeared to concentrate in his eye. He did not hear her at all now.

-any

“I'll punish him- by my soul that will I! I'll meet him, soldier or no, and I'll horsewhip the untimely stripling for this reckless theft of my one delight. If he were a hundred men I'd horsewhip him " He dropped his voice suddenly and unnaturally. "Bathsheba, sweet lost coquette, pardon me. I've been blaming you, threatening you, behaving like a churl to you, when he's the greatest sinner. He stole your dear heart away with his unfathomable lies. It is a fortunate thing for him that he's gone back to his regiment - that he's in Melchester, and not here! I hope he may not return here just yet. I pray God he may not come into my sight, for I may be tempted beyond myself. Oh, Bathsheba, keep him away—yes, keep him away from me!"

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For a moment Boldwood stood so inertly after this that his soul seemed to have been entirely exhaled with the breath of his passionate words. He turned his face away, and withdrew, and his form was soon covered over by the twilight as his footsteps mixed in with the low hiss of the leafy trees.

Bathsheba, who had been standing motionless as a model all this latter time, flung her hands to her face, and wildly attempted to ponder on the exhibition which had just passed away. Such astounding wells of fevered feeling in a still man like Mr. Boldwood were incomprehensible, dreadful. Instead of being a man trained to repression he was what she had seen him.

The force of the farmer's threats lay in their relation to a circumstance known at present only to herself; her lover was coming back to Weatherbury the very next day. Troy had not returned to Melchester Barracks as Boldwood and others supposed, but had merely gone for a day or two to visit some acquaintance in Bath, and had yet a week or more remaining to his furlough.

She felt wretchedly certain that if he revisited her just at this nick of time, and came into contact with Boldwood, a fierce quarrel would be the consequence. She panted with solicitude when she thought of possible injury to Troy. The least spark would kindle the farmer's swift feelings of rage and jealousy; he would lose his self-mastery as he had this evening; Troy's blitheness might become aggressive; it might take the direction of derision, and Boldwood's anger might then take the direction of revenge.

With almost a morbid dread of being thought a gushing girl, this guideless woman too well concealed from the world under a manner of carelessness the warm depths of her strong emotions. But now there was no reserve. In her distraction instead of advancing further, she walked up and down, beating the air with her fingers, pressing her brow, and sobbing brokenly to herself. Then she sat down on a heap of stones by the wayside to think. There she remained long. The dark rotundity of the earth approached the foreshores and promontories of coppery cloud which bounded a green and pellucid expanse in the western sky; amaranthine glosses came over them then, and the unresting world wheeled her round to a contrasting prospect

eastward, in the shape of indecisive and palpitating stars. She gazed upon their silent throes amid the shades of space, but realized none at all. Her troubled spirit was far away with Troy.

(To be continued.)

JOHN SELDEN.

WHEN some one, who had just been reading the lives of Izaak Walton, was commending their idyllic freshness to Arnold of Rugby, the schoolmaster answered, “He was an odious fellow; he fished through the civil wars."

There is no more singular contrast in history than England in the first half of the seventeenth century and England in the second half. In the first half almost everybody was a partisan, and alternately a confessor and a persecu tor. There was no place for a neutral. Half the nation was pitted against the other half, and the struggle was car ried on in the parliament, in the church, in the family. Sects which have generally been characterized by their toleration or their non-resistance were, during this fierce time, aggressive. The sect of Independents has generally, and justly, boasted that it has from its foundation maintained liberty of conscience, and the right of free speech. It had little respect for either during the last five years of the Long Parliament. The Quakers of the earlier time were wholly different from the men who, after the Restoration, gradually won concession and admiration by their patience and benevolence. Fox and his followers were intrusive fanatics, who dressed in leather, or went about naked, who rebuked the parson in the midst of his congregation, who railed at steeple-houses, mocked the liturgy, and were zealous even unto slaying.

The literature of the time was as characteristic. The drama was not reformed, it was proscribed. The age had its poet, some of whose best poems were written, but lying in manuscript, for the activity of Milton's genius was suspended during the great struggle. There were no newspapers, but a prodigious crop of pamphlets. The chief works of that time, however, were huge folios of sermons, and equally massive volumes of constitutional history. The industry of authors was prodigious. The titles of the books written by Prynne (who provoked the anger of Henrietta by an unlucky paragraph in the index of one among those vast volumes), would fill a good-sized pamphlet. The writer did not spread out his matter over his pages by spaced printing and broad margins, but resolutely filled hundreds upon hundreds of sheets with closely packed type. If one wonders at the industry of the author, one is wholly puzzled in guessing where the readers came from. Who could have bought Prynne's books? No man ever wrote so many. And no man ever wrote anything so arid and uninviting.

After the Restoration all is changed. All seriousness passes away. The reign of the second Charles is one long, obscene, delirious revel, uninterrupted from the day when he landed at Dover to the Sunday night when, surrounded by gamblers and courtesans, he was stricken with mortal sickness. The drama revived - but such a drama! It is wholly devoid of decency, and at first almost of wit. It mocked all virtue, honor, truth. If it was a picture of manners, the Englishman of the Restoration was a filthy baboon, whom Swift has hardly caricatured in his sketch of the Yahoo. Swift himself was thoroughly impregnated with the nastiness of the age. The plays of Dryden were as coarse and as hateful as those of any among his contemporaries. The languor which succeeded to the violence of the seventeenth century was a reeking, sodden orgy.

During the reign of Charles the First, the English nation had much to occupy its attention at home and abroad. It fought one religious war, and it witnessed another. Germany was desolated by the Thirty Years' struggle. England was divided into two factions. The victorious party overthrew monarchy, church, and aristocracy. The premature death of Cromwell interrupted the restoration of all

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