Walden kept his promise and duly arrived to tea at the Manor that afternoon. He found his hostess in the library with Cicely and Julian. She was showing to the latter one or two rare 'first editions,' and was talking animatedly, but she broke off her conversation the moment he was announced, and advanced to meet him with a bright smile.

"At last, Mr. Walden!" she said—"I am glad Cicely has succeeded where I failed, in persuading you to accept the welcome that has awaited you here for some time!"

The words were gracefully spoken, with just the faintest trace of kindly reproach in their intonation. Simple as they were, they managed to deprive John of all power to frame a suitable reply. He bowed over the little white hand extended to him, and murmured something which was inaudible even to himself, while he despised what he considered his own foolishness, clumsiness and general ineptitude from the bottom of his heart. Maryllia saw his embarrassment, and hastened to relieve him of it.

"We have been talking books,"—she said, lightly—"Mr. Adderley has almost knelt in adoration before my Shakespeare 'first folio.' It is very precious, being uncalendared in the published lists of ordinary commentators. I suppose you have seen it?"

"Indeed I have"—replied Walden, as he shook hands with Cicely and nodded pleasantly to Julian—"I'm afraid, Miss Vancourt, that if you knew how often I have sat alone in this library, turning over the precious volumes, you might be very angry with me! But I have saved one or two from the encroaches of damp, such as the illuminated vellum 'Petrarch,' and some few rare manuscripts—so you must try to forgive my trespass. Mrs. Spruce used to let me come in and study here whenever I liked."

"Will you not do so still?" queried Maryllia, sweetly—"I can promise you both solitude and silence."

Again a wave of awkwardness overcame him. What could he say in response to this friendly and gentle graciousness!

"You are very kind,"—he murmured.

"Not at all. The library is very seldom used—so the kindness will be quite on your side if you can make it of service. I daresay you know more about the books than I do. My father was very proud of them."

"He had cause to be,"—said Walden, beginning to recover his equanimity and ease as the conversation turned into a channel which was his natural element—"It is one of the finest collections in England. The manuscripts alone are worth a fortune." Here he moved to the table where Adderley stood turning over a wondrously painted 'Book of Hours'—"That is perfect twelfth-century work"—he said— "There is a picture in it which ought to please Miss Cicely," and he turned the pages over tenderly—"Here it is,—the loveliest of Saint Cecilias, in the act of singing!"

Cicely smiled with pleasure, and hung over the beautifully illuminated figure, surrounded with angels in clouds of golden glory.

"There's one thing about Heaven which everybody seems agreed upon,"- -she said—"It's a place where we're all expected to sing!"

"Not a doubt of it!" agreed Walden—"You will be quite in your element!"

"The idea of Heaven is remote—so very remote!" said Adderley—"But if such a place existed, and I were bound to essay a vocal effort there, I should transform it at once to Hell! The angels would never forgive me!"

They laughed.

"Let us go into the garden"—said Maryllia—"It is quite lovely just now,—there are such cool deep shadows on the lawn."

Cicely at once ran out, beckoning Adderley to follow. Maryllia tied on her hat with its pink strings and its bunch of pink hyacinths tumbling against her small shell-like ear, and looked up from under its brim with an entrancing smile.

"Will you come, Mr. Walden?"

John murmured something politely inarticulate in assent. He was, as has already been stated, apt to be rather at a loss in the company of women, unless they were well-seasoned matrons and grandames, with whom he could converse on the most ordinary and commonplace topics, such as the curing of hams, the schooling of children, or the best remedies for rheumatism. A feminine creature who appeared to exist merely to fascinate the eye and attract the senses, moved him to a kind of mental confusion, which affected himself chiefly, as no one, save the most intimate of his friends, would ever have noticed it, or guessed that he was at any sort of pains to seem at ease. Just now, as he took his soft shovel-hat, and followed his fair hostess out on the lawn, his mind was more or less in a state of chaos, and the thoughts that kept coming and going were as difficult to put into consecutive order as a Chinese puzzle. One uncomfortable memory however sat prominently in a corner of his brain like the mocking phantasm of a mischievous Puck, pointing its jeering finger and reminding him of the fact, not to be denied, that but a short while ago, he had made up his mind to dislike, ay, even to detest, that mysterious composition of white and rose, blue eyes and chestnut- gold hair, called Maryllia Vancourt,—that he had resolved she would be an altogether objectionable personage in the village—HIS village—of St. Rest,—and that he had wished—Ah! what had he wished? Back, O teazing reminder of the grudging and suspicious spirit that had so lately animated the soul of a Christian cleric! Yet it had to be admitted, albeit now reluctantly, that he had actually wished the rightful mistress of Abbot's Manor had never returned to it! Smitten with sorest compunction at the recollection of his former blind prejudice against the woman he had then never seen, he walked by her side over the warm soft grass, listening with a somewhat preoccupied air to the remarks she was making concerning Cicely Bourne, and the great hopes she entertained of the girl's future brilliant career.

"Really," she declared, "the only useful thing I have ever done in my life is to rescue Cicely from uncongenial surroundings, and provide her with all she needs for her musical studies. To help bring out a great genius gives ME some little sense of importance, you see! In myself I am such an utter nonentity."

She laughed. Walden looked at her with an earnestness of which he was scarcely conscious. She coloured a little, and her eyes fell. Something in the sudden delicate flush of her cheeks and the quick droop of her eyelashes startled him,—he felt a curious sense of contrition, as though he had given her some indefinable, altogether shadowy cause for that brief discomposure. The idea that she seemed, even for a second, not quite so much at her ease, restored his own nerve and self-possession, and it was with an almost paternal gentleness that he said.

"Do you really consider yourself a nonentity, Miss Vancourt? I am sure the society you have left behind you in London does not think you so."

She opened her sea-blue eyes full upon him.

"Society? Why do you speak of it? Its opinion of me or of anyone else, is surely the last thing a sensible man. or woman would care for, I imagine! One 'season' of it was enough for me. I have unfortunately had several 'seasons,' and they were all too many."

Again Walden looked at her, but this time she did not seem to be aware of his scrutiny.

"Do you take me for a member of the 'smart' set, Mr. Walden?" she queried, gaily—"You are very much mistaken if you do! I have certainly mixed with it, and know all about it—much to my regret— but I don't belong to it. Of course I like plenty of life and amusement, but 'society' as London and Paris and New York express it in their modes and manners and 'functions,' is to me the dullest form of entertainment in the world."

Walden was silent. She gave him a quick side-glance of enquiry.

"I suppose you have been told something about me?" she said—
"Something which represents me otherwise than as I represent myself.
Have you?"

At this abrupt question John fairly started out of his semi- abstraction in good earnest.

"My dear Miss Vancourt!" he exclaimed, warmly—"How can you think of such a thing! I have never heard a word about you, except from good old Mrs. Spruce who knew you as a child, and who loves to recall these days,—and—er—and—-"

He broke off, checking himself with a vexed gesture.

"And—er—and—er—who else?" said Maryllia, smiling—-"Now don't play tricks with ME, or I'll play tricks with YOU!"

His eyes caught and reflected her smile.

"Well,—Sir Morton Pippitt spoke of you once in my hearing"—he said—"And a friend of his whom he brought to see the church, the Duke of Lumpton. Also a clergyman in this neighbourhood, a Mr. Leveson—rector at Badsworth—HE mentioned you, and presumed"—here John paused a moment,—"yes, I think I may say presumed—to know yon personally."

"Did he really! I never heard of him!" And she laughed merrily. "Mr. Walden, if I were to tell you the number of people who profess to know ME whom I do not know and never WILL know, you would be surprised! I never spoke to Sir Morton Pippitt in my life till the other day, though he pretends he has met me,-but he hasn't. He may have seen me perhaps by chance when I was a child in the nursery, but I don't remember anything about him. My father never visited any of the people here,—we lived very much to ourselves. As for the Duke of Lumpton,—well!—nobody knows him that can possibly avoid it—and I have never even so much as seen him. Aunt Emily may possibly have spoken of me in these persons' hearing—that's quite likely,—but they know nothing of me at first hand." She paused a moment, "Look at Cicely!" she said—"How quickly she makes friends! She and Mr. Adderley are chattering away like two magpies!"

Walden looked in the direction indicated, and saw the couple at some distance off, under the great cedar-tree which was the chief ornament of the lawn,—Cicely seated in a low basket-chair, and Adderley stretched on the grass at her feet. Both were talking eagerly, both were gesticulating excitedly, and both looked exactly what they were, two very eccentric specimens of humanity.

"They seem perfectly happy!" he said, smiling—"Adderley is a curious fellow, but I think he has a good heart. He puts on a mannerism, because he has seen the members of a certain literary 'set' in London put it on—but he'll drop that in time,—when he is a little older and wiser. He has been in to see me once or twice since he took up his residence here for the summer. He tries to discuss religion with me—or rather, I should say. irreligion. His own special 'cult' is the easy paganism of Omar Kayyam."

"Is he clever?"

"I think he is. He has a more or less original turn of mind. He read me some of his verses the other day."

"Poor you!" laughed Maryllia.

"Well, I was inclined to pity myself when he first began"—said Walden, laughing also—"But I must confess I was agreeably surprised. Some of his fancies are quite charming."

They had been walking slowly across the lawn, and were now within a few steps of the big cedar-tree.

"I must take you into the rose-garden, Mr. Walden!"—and she raised her eyes to his with that childlike confiding look which was one of her special charms,—"The roses are just budding out, and I want you to see them before the summer gets more advanced. Though I daresay you know every rosebush in the place, don't you?"

"I believe I do!" he admitted—"You see an old fogey like myself is bound to have hobbies, and my particular hobby is gardening. I love flowers, and I go everywhere I can, or may, to see them and watch their growth. So that for years I have visited your rose-garden, Miss Vancourt! I have been a regular and persistent trespasser,—but all the same, I have never plucked a rose."

"Well, I wish you had!" said Maryllia, feeling somewhat impatient with him for calling himself an 'old fogey,'—why did he give himself away?—she thought,—"I wish you had plucked them all and handed them round in baskets to the villagers, especially to the old and sick persons. It would have been much better than to have had them sold at Riversford through Oliver Leach."

"Did he sell them?" exclaimed John, quickly—"I am not surprised!"

"He sold everything, and put the money in his own pocket"—said Maryllia,—"But, after all, the loss is quite my own fault. I ought to have enquired into the management of the property myself. And I certainly ought not to have stayed away from home so many years. But it's never too late to mend!" She smiled, and advancing a step or two called "Cicely!"

Cicely turned, looking up from beneath her spreading canopy of dark cedar boughs.

"Oh, Maryllia, we're having such fun!" she exclaimed—"Mr. Adderley is talking words, and I'm talking music! We'll show you how it goes presently!"

"Do, please!" laughed Maryllia; "It must be delightful! Mr. Walden and I are going into the rose-garden. We shall be back in a few minutes!"

She moved along, her white dress floating softly over the green turf, its delicate flounces and knots of rosy ribbon looking like a trail of living flowers. Walden, walking at her side, nodded smilingly as he passed close by Cicely and Julian, his tall athletic figure contrasting well with Maryllia's fairy-like grace,—and presently, crossing from the lawn to what was called the 'Cherry- Tree Walk,' because the path led under an arched trellis work over which a couple of hundred cherry-trees were trained to form a long arbour or pergola, they turned down it, and drawing closer together in conversation, under the shower of white blossoms that shed fragrance above their heads, they disappeared. Cicely, struck by a certain picturesqueness, or what she would have called a 'stage effect' in the manner of their exit, stopped abruptly in the pianissimo humming of a tune with which she declared she had been suddenly inspired by some lines Adderley had just recited.

"Isn't she pretty!" she said, indicating with a jerk of her ever gesticulating hand the last luminous glimmer of Maryllia's vanishing gown—"She's like Titania,—or Kilmeny in Fairyland. Why don't you write something about HER, instead of about some girl you 'imagine' and never see?"

Adderley, lying at his ease on the grass, turned on his arm and likewise looked after the two figures that had just passed, as it seemed, into a paradise of snowy flowers.

"The girls I 'imagine' are always so much better than those I see,"- -he replied, with uncomplimentary candour.

"Thank you!" said Cicely—"You are quite rude, you know! But it doesn't matter."

He stared up at her in vague astonishment.

"Oh, I didn't mean you!" he explained—"You're not a girl."

"No, really!" ejaculated Cicely—"Then what am I, pray?"

He looked at her critically,—at her thin sallow little face with the intense eyes burning like flame under her well-marked black eyebrows,—at her drooping angular arms and unformed figure, tapering into the scraggy, long black-stockinged legs which ended in a pair of large buckled shoes that covered feet of a decidedly flat- iron model,—then he smiled oddly.

"You are a goblin!"—he said—"An elf,—a pixie—a witch! You were born in a dark cave where the sea dashed in at high tide and made the rough stones roar with music. There were sea-gulls nesting above your cradle, and when the wind howled, and you cried, they called to you wildly in such a plaintive way that you stopped your tears to listen to them, and to watch their white wings circling round you! You are not a girl—no!—how can you be? For when you grew a little older, the invisible people of the air took you away into a great forest, and taught you to swing yourself on the boughs of the trees, while the stars twinkled at you through the thick green leaves,—and you heard the thrushes sing at morning and the nightingales at evening, till at last you learned the trill and warble and the little caught sob in the throat which almost breaks the heart of those who listen to it? And so you have become what you are, and what I say you always will be—a goblin—a witch!—not a girl, but a genius!"

He waved his hand with fantastic gesture and raked up his hair.

"That's all very well and very pretty,"—said Cicely, showing her even white teeth in a flashing 'goblin' grin,—"But of course you don't mean a word of it! It's merely a way of talking, such as poets, or men that call themselves poets, affect when the 'fit' is on them. Just a string of words,—mere babble! You'd better write them down, though,—you musn't waste them! Publishers pay for so many words I believe, whether they're sense or nonsense,—please don't lose any halfpence on my account! Do you know you are smiling up at the sky as if you were entirely mad? Ordinary people would say you were,—people to whom dinner is the dearest thing in life would suggest your being locked up. And me, too, I daresay! You haven't answered my question,—why don't you write something about Maryillia?"

"She, too, is not a girl,"—rejoined Adderley—"She is a woman. And she is absolutely unwritable!"

"Too lovely to find expression even in poetry,"—said Cicely, complacently.

"No no!—not that! Not that!" And Adderley gave a kind of serpentine writhe on the grass as he raised himself to a half-sitting posture— "Gentle Goblin, do not mistake me! When I say that Miss Vancourt is unwritable, I would fain point out that she is above and beyond the reach of my Muse. I cannot 'experience' her! Yes—that is so! What a poet needs most is the flesh model. The flesh model may be Susan, or Sarah, or Jane of the bar and tap-room,—but she must have lips to kiss, hair to touch, form to caress—-"

"Saint Moses!" cried Cicely, with an excited wriggle of her long legs—"Must she?"

"She must!" declared Julian, with decision—"Because when you have kissed the lips, you have experienced a 'sensation,' and you can write—'Ah, how sweet the lips I love.' You needn't love them, of course,—you merely try them. She must be amenable and good-natured, and allow herself to be gazed at for an hour or so, till you decide the fateful colour of her eyes. If they are blue, you can paraphrase George Meredith on the 'Blue is the sky, blue is thine eye' system— if black, you can recall the 'Lovely as the light of a dark eye in woman,' of Byron. She must allow you to freely encircle her waist with an arm, so that having felt the emotion you can write—"How tenderly that yielding form, Thrills to my touch!' And then,—even as a painter who pays so much per hour for studying from the life,— you can go away and forget her—or you can exaggerate her charms in rhyme, or 'imagine' that she is fairer than Endymion's moon-goddess- -for so long as she serves you thus she is useful,—but once her uses are exhausted, the poet has done with her, and seeks a fresh sample. Hence, as I say, your friend Miss Vancourt is above my clamour for the Beautiful. I must content myself with some humbler type, and 'imagine' the rest!"

"Well, I should think you must, if that's the way you go to work!" said Cicely, with eyes brimful of merriment and mischief—"Why you are worse than the artists of the Quartier Latin! If you must needs 'experience' your models, I wonder that Susan, Sarah and Jane of the bar and tap-room are good enough for you!"

"Any human female suffices,"—murmured Julian, drowsily, "Provided she is amenable,—and is not the mother of a large family. At the spectacle of many olive branches, the Muse shrieks a wild farewell!" Cicely broke into a peal of laughter.

"You absurd creature!" she said—"You don't mean half the nonsense you talk—you know you don't!"

"Do I not? But then, what do I mean? Am I justified in assuming that I mean anything?" And he again ran his fingers through his ruddy locks abstractedly. "No,—I think not! Therefore, if I now make a suggestion, pray absolve me from any serious intentions underlying it—and yet—-"

"'And yet'—what?" queried Cicely, looking at him with some curiosity.

"Ah! 'And yet'! Such little words, 'and yet'!" he murmured—"They are like the stepping-stones across a brook which divides one sweet woodland dell from another! 'And yet'!" He sighed profoundly, and plucking a daisy from the turf, gazed into its golden heart meditatively. "What I would say, gentle Goblin, is this,—you call me Moon-calf, therefore there can be no objection to my calling you Goblin, I think?"

"Not the least in the world!" declared Cicely—"I rather like it!"

"So good of you!—so dear!" he said, softly—"Well!—'and yet'—as I have observed, the Muse may, like the Delphic oracle, utter words without apparent signification, which only the skilled proficient at her altar may be able to unravel. Therefore,—in this precise manner, my suggestion may be wholly without point,—or it may not."

"Please get on with it, whatever it is,"—urged Cicely, impatiently- -"You're not going to propose to me, are you? Because, if so, it's no use. I'm too young, and I only met you this morning!"

He threw the daisy he had just plucked at her laughing face.

"Goblin, you are delicious!" he averred—"But the ghastly spectre of matrimony does not at present stand in my path, luring me to the frightful chasms of domesticity, oblivion and despair. What was it the charming Russian girl Bashkirtseff wrote on this very subject? 'Me marier et'—-?"

"I can tell you!" exclaimed Cicely—"It was the one sentence in the whole book that made all the men mad, because it showed such utter contempt for them! 'Me marier et avoir des enfants? Mais—chaque blanchisseuse peut en faire autant! Je veux la gloire!' Oh, how I agree with her! Moi, aussi, je veux la gloire!"

Her dark eyes flamed into passion,—for a moment she looked almost beautiful. Adderley stared languidly at her as he would have stared at the heroine of an exciting scene on the stage, with indolent, yet critical interest.

"Goblin incroyable!" he sighed—"You are so new!—so fresh!"

"Like salad just gathered," said Cicely, calming down suddenly from his burst of enthusiasm—"And what of your 'suggestion'?"

"My suggestion," rejoined Adderley—"is one that may seem to you a strange one. It is even strange to myself! But it has flashed into my brain suddenly,—and even so inspiration may affect the dullard. It is this: Suppose the Parson fell in love with the Lady, or the Lady fell in love with the Parson? Either, neither, or both?"

Cicely sat up straight in her chair as though she had been suddenly pulled erect by an underground wire.

"What do you mean?" she asked—"Suppose the parson fell in love with the lady or the lady with the parson! Is it a riddle?"

"It may possibly become one;" he replied, complacently—"But to speak more plainly—suppose Mr. Walden fell in love with Miss Vancourt, or Miss Vancourt fell in love with Mr. Walden, what would you say?"

"Suppose a Moon-calf jumped over the moon!" said Cicely disdainfully—"Saint Moses! Maryllia is as likely to fall in love as I am,—and I'm the very last possibility in the way of sentiment. Why, whatever are you thinking of? Maryllia has heaps of men in, love with her,—she could marry to-morrow if she liked."

"Ay, no doubt she could marry—that is quite common—but perhaps she could not love!" And Julian waved one hand expressively. "To love is so new!—so fresh!"

"But Maryllia would never fall in love with a PARSON!" declared Cicely, almost resentfully—"A parson!—a country parson too! The idea is perfectly ridiculous!"

A glimmer of white in the vista of the flowering 'Cherry-Tree Walk' here suddenly appeared and warned her that Maryllia and the Reverend John were returning from their inspection of the rose-garden. She cheeked herself in an outburst of speech and silently watched them approaching. Adderley watched them too with a kind of lachrymose interest. They were deep in conversation, and Maryllia carried a bunch of white and blush roses which she had evidently just gathered. She looked charmingly animated, and now and then a light ripple of her laughter floated out on the air as sweet as the songs of the birds chirming around them.

"The roses are perfectly lovely!" she exclaimed delightedly, as she came under the shadow of the great cedar-tree; "Mr. Walden says he has never seen the standards so full of bud." Here she held the cluster she had gathered under Cicely's nose. "Aren't they delicious! Oh, by the bye, Mr. Walden, I have promised you one! You must have it, in return for the spray of lilac you gave me when I came to see YOUR garden! Now you must take a rose from mine!" And, laying all the roses on Cicely's lap, she selected one delicate half-opened, blush-white bloom. "Shall I put it in your coat for you?"

"If you will so far honour me!" answered Walden;—he was strangely pale, and a slight tremor passed over him as he looked down at the small fingers,—pink-tipped as the petals of the flower they so deftly fastened in his buttonhole; "And how"—he continued, with an effort, addressing Cicely and Julian—"How have Music and Poetry got on together?"

"Oh, we're not married yet,"—said Cicely, shaking off the dumb spell which Adderley's 'suggestion' had for a moment cast upon her mind—"We ought to be, of course,—for a real good opera. But we're only just beginning courtship. Mr. Adderley has recited some lines of his own composition, and I have improvised some music. You shall hear the result some day."

"Why not now?" queried Maryllia, as she seated herself in another chair next to Cicely's under the cedar boughs, and signed to Walden to do the same.

"Why, because I believe that the tea is about to arrive. I saw the majestic Primmins in the distance, wrestling with a table—didn't you, Mr. Adderley?"

Adderley rose from his half recumbent position on the grass, and shading his eyes from the afternoon sunshine, looked towards the house.

"Yes,—it is even so!" he replied—"Primmins and a subordinate are on the way hither with various creature comforts. Music and Poetry must pause awhile. Yet why should there be a pause? It is for this that I am a follower of Omar Kayyam. He was a materialist as well as a spiritualist, and his music admits of the aforesaid creature comforts as much as the exalted and subtle philosophies and ironies of life."

"Poor Omar!" said Walden,—"The pretty piteousness of him is like the wailing of a lamb led to the slaughter. Grass is good to graze on, saith lambkin,—other lambs are fair to frisk with,—but alas!— neither grass nor lambs can last, and therefore as lambkin cannot always be lambkin, it bleats its end in Nothingness! But, thank God, there is something stronger and wiser in the Universe than lambkin!"

"True!" said Adderley, "But even lambkin has a right to complain of its destiny."

Walden smiled.

"I think not,"—he rejoined—"No created thing has a right to complain of its destiny. It finds itself Here,—and the fact that it IS Here is a proof that there is a purpose for its existence. What that purpose is we do not know yet, but we SHALL know!"

Adderley lifted dubious eyelids.

"You think we shall?"

"Most assuredly! What does Dante Rosetti say?—

'The day is dark and the night
To him that would search their heart;
No lips of cloud that will part
Nor morning song in the light;
Only, gazing alone
To him wild shadows are shown,
Deep under deep unknown,

And height above unknown height
Still we say as we go:
"Strange to think by the way
Whatever there is to know
That shall we know one day."'"

He recited the lines softly, but with eloquent emphasis. "You see, those of us who take the trouble to consider the working and progress of events, know well enough that this glorious Creation around us is not a caprice or a farce. It is designed for a Cause and moves steadily towards that Cause. There may be—no doubt there are—many men who elect to view life from a low, material, or even farcical standpoint—nevertheless, life in itself is serious and noble."

Cicely's dark face lightened as with an illumination while she listened to these words. Maryllia, who had taken up the roses she had laid in Cicely's lap, and was now arranging them afresh, looked up suddenly.

"Yet there are many searching truths in the philosophy of Omar Kayyam, Mr. Walden,"—she said—"Many sad facts that even our religion can scarcely get over, don't you think so?"

He met her eyes with a gentle kindliness in his own.

"I think religion, if true and pure, turns all sad facts to sweetness, Miss Vancourt,"—he said—"At least, so I have found it."

The clear conviction of his tone was like the sound of a silver bell calling to prayer. A silence followed, broken only by the singing of a little bird aloft in the cedar-tree, whose ecstatic pipings aptly expressed the unspoilt joys of innocence and trust.

"One pretty verse of Omar I remember," then said Cicely, abruptly, fixing her penetrating eyes on Walden,—"And it really isn't a bit irreligious. It is this:—

'The Bird of Life is singing on the bough,
His two eternal notes of "I and Thou"—
O hearken well, for soon the song sings through,
And would we hear it, we must hear it Now!'"

A white rose slipped from the cluster Maryllia held, and dropped on the grass. John stooped for it, and gave it back to her. Their hands just touched as she smiled her thanks. There was nothing in the simple exchange of courtesies to move any self-possessed man from his normal calm, yet a sudden hot thrill and leap of the heart dazed Walden's brain for a moment and made him almost giddy. A sick fear— an indefinable horror of himself possessed him,—caught by this mmameable transport of sudden and singular emotion, he felt he could have rushed away, away!—anywhere out of reach and observation, and have never entered the fair and halcyon gardens of Abbot's Manor again. Why?—in Heaven's name, why? He could not tell,—but—he had no right to be there!—no right to be there!—he kept on repeating to himself;—he ought to have remained at home, shut up in his study with his dog and his books,—alone, alone, always alone! The brief tempest raged over his soul with soundless wind and fire,—then passed, leaving no trace on his quiet features and composed manner. But in that single instant an abyss had been opened in the depths of his own consciousness,—an abyss into which he looked with amazement and dread at the strange foolhardiness which had involuntarily led him to its brink,—and he now drew back from it, nervously shuddering.

"'And would we hear it, we must hear it Now!'" repeated Adderley, with opportune bathos at this juncture—"As I have said, and will always maintain, Omar's verse always fits in with the happy approach of creature comforts! Behold the illustration and example!—Primmins with the tea!"

"It is a pretty verse, though, isn't it?" queried Cicely, moving her chair aside to make more space for the butler and footman as they nimbly set out the afternoon tea-table in the deepest shade bestowed by the drooping cedar boughs—"Isn't it?"

And her searching eyes fastened themselves pertinaciously upon
John's face.

"Very pretty!" he answered, steadily—"And—so far-as it goes—very true!"