It was the anniversary of Twelfth-night, and the feast of the Bean was in act of celebration with great glee and splendour when the English Minister and his companion entered the reception-rooms of the Palace. This favourite pastime, borrowed from the Court of France, has come down to us in modern days under the form of ‘drawing for king and queen;’ the bean was concealed in the twelfth cake, and the dame to whose share it fell was chosen with much mock solemnity as queen of the night. On the present occasion the lot had fallen to Mary Beton, and her indulgent mistress, with that playful good-humour which so endeared her to her attendants, had insisted on decking the leader of the revels with the most splendid attire her own royal wardrobe contained.

In case that any lady should condescend to look into the dry pages of a historical novel, we will endeavour to the extent of our poor abilities to present the details of a ‘grande toilette,’ of the fifteenth century.

A sweeping robe of cloth of silver, heavy with embroidery and ornamented with medallions of pearls down the front of the dress, which was looped backwards at the knee and fastened with bunches of red and white roses, disclosing a petticoat of white silk damask, long and ample so as to cover the feet encased in their satin shoes; at the waist a girdle of precious stones arched over the hips, and coming downwards to a point in front, marked the outline of the figure; while a collar of sapphires and rubies, close round the neck, lurked and sparkled under the clouds of scalloped lace that composed the ruff; the sleeves of the gown, open at the elbow, terminated in ruffles of the lightest gauze, and thick gold bracelets on the wrists; the hair, gathered into heavy masses at the back of the head, was dragged somewhat off the temples, so as to show the delicate ears with their glittering ear-rings; whilst over the whole figure, relieving its dazzling whiteness, was thrown a satin mantle or scarf of cramoisie, the well-known deep rich hue, something between crimson and plum-colour, which was such a favourite with the elaborate coquettes of that sumptuous period.

Thus attired, majestic Mary Beton looked every inch a queen, and had it not been for the presence of her mistress, simply dressed in her usual morning garb, yet ‘beautiful exceedingly’ where all were beautiful, the maid-of-honour would have riveted every eye on her magnificent exterior. Randolph felt a thrill of triumph and gratification when she caught his attention, something akin, perhaps, to that which is experienced by the wary deer-stalker while he contemplates the royal stag with his branching antlers, the pride of the forest, within point-blank range of his rifle. The Ambassador, however, had but little time to admire, for the Queen called him to her with such marked favour immediately on his entrance, that he felt convinced something of more importance than usual was in the wind, and resolved, from whatever quarter it blew, that at least it should not throw any dust in his eyes.

After receiving very graciously the compliments which Mr Randolph proffered on the splendour of the entertainment, Mary darted at him a keen glance of mingled watchfulness and amusement, then observed carelessly—

‘What think ye of this chamber for a real King and Queen to hold their state in, Master Randolph? Since it hath been newly decorated, methinks a King-Consort might be satisfied with his lodging. Ere another Twelfth-night comes round, the lot may have fallen, who knows? and these faithful damsels of mine may have been released from their vow.’

He stole a look at Mary Beton, surrounded by her mock courtiers, and immersed in the game of forfeits which they were all playing with the eagerness of children, and wondered whether he would like to marry her or not; but he answered the Queen as if the subject she had broached, so far from being unexpected, had occupied his attention for days.

‘Your Majesty anticipates the congratulations I am but waiting an opportunity to offer. May I give my own mistress joy on your acceding so cordially to her views for your welfare?’

‘You may do what you have authority for, and no more,’ replied the Queen severely. ‘My cousin can scarce spare me that master of the horse of hers, whom she so much regardeth herself, nor am I so scantily supplied with suitors that I need trespass on her generosity for so precious a bridegroom. Come, Mr Randolph,’ she added gaily, ‘this is Twelfth-night, and we read riddles and play at forfeits. Can you not read me mine?’

‘Your Grace must condescend to instruct me,’ replied he, running over his information and calculating probabilities with inconceivable rapidity in his own mind; also studiously abstaining from the guess he thought most likely to hit the mark. ‘Where the prize is of such value, all are so unworthy that it reduces the competitors to a level. I can aim no nearer the white than my first shaft, your Grace. A suitor for such a hand as yours should have some weighty influence to back him, in addition to unbounded merits of his own.’

‘You seem to have considered the subject deeply,’ said the Queen, laughing. ‘Come, Mr Randolph, for very pastime let us hear the qualifications you deem indispensable to an admirer of Mary Stuart.’

He paused for an instant, enumerating in his own mind the different qualities of the nobleman whom he was instructed, at least ostensibly, to put forward, and then proceeded with an air of the utmost deference and humility—

‘He should be a gentleman of admirable presence; of skill in courtly exercises; of varied accomplishments; familiar with the customs of palaces; brave, noble, and learned; he should be of no foreign extraction, neither Frenchman, Spaniard, nor Italian; suitable in point of years, of language, and of country.’

She nodded archly every time he paused in his catalogue; then added with an inquiring look—

‘And of royal lineage as well? Surely like pairs with like, and a Stuart should only mate with a Stuart.’

It was a home thrust. It corroborated much that he had already suspected, and explained a good deal that had sufficiently puzzled even Randolph, but he never winced or started; to judge by his face it was the communication, of all others, for which he was best prepared, and whilst he ran over, as quick as thought, the different combinations to which such a projected alliance might give rise, and already, in his mind’s eye, saw the young Lord Darnley, the suitor to whom Mary alluded, helpless in his toils, he bowed humbly to the Queen, and begged her to accept his heartfelt congratulations that she had made her choice at last.

Mary laughed more than ever.

‘Not so fast,’ said she, ‘not so fast. I am discussing possibilities, Master Randolph, and you are accepting them for certainties; but enough of this—amusement is our chief business to-night. See, the queen of the revels is looking anxiously this way, and you have not been to pay her your homage yet. Delay no longer, her displeasure to-night is far weightier and more implacable than mine.’

As she spoke she dismissed him with a courteous gesture, and Randolph, nothing loth, commenced paying his court most assiduously to Mary Beton, with the double object of spending his time agreeably and worming out of her, ere the night was past, some corroboration of the Queen’s vague hints as to her approaching marriage.

It was with secret pride and exultation the Twelfth-night queen, in all her assumed splendour, beheld the ambassador approach the circle that formed her sham Court. It would be too much to say that Mary Beton was deeply in love with Randolph, but she experienced from his attentions certain agreeable feelings, that originated in gratified vanity and a sense of her own superiority to her companions. It was indeed no petty triumph to have secured the homage of the fastidious and cynical Thomas Randolph: the man who was the type of refinement and the incarnation of selfishness, avowedly a despiser of women and a free-thinker in love. The pleasure, too, was doubtless in no small degree enhanced by the care-worn face of Alexander Ogilvy, who continued to haunt the Court, with a hopeless perseverance truly edifying, and made himself miserable with the self-immolating regularity peculiar to a lover, and totally inexplicable on any grounds of reason or expediency.

Mary Beton had no objection in the world; she liked to have two strings to her bow. Two! Where is the woman who would refuse half-a-dozen? With all their vanity and all their libertinism, thus much we may safely say in favour of the ruder sex—a man is usually indisposed to have more than one attachment on his hands at a time. He may behave ungratefully, unfeelingly, brutally, to Dora, but it is for the sake of Flora. For however short a period it may be, yet, while he wears those colours, Nora looking out for prey in every direction, shall strive to fascinate him in vain. But how different is the conduct of the last-named personage: brilliant and seductive, it is no reason, because she is herself in love with Tom, that she should refrain from the massacre of Jack, Dick, and Harry; nay, if Bill be fortunate enough to spend an hour or two in her company, away with him to the shambles too! Shall we pity Nora so very much when she wears the willow for the faithless Tom, and finds out too late that she never really cared a pin for the other victims who, more or less damaged, have made their escape from the toils?

The wrongs of the sexes towards each other are of the crudest, and it is generous and manly that our sympathy should be given to the weaker portion, but the injuries are not all one way. Many a rugged face is only so grave and stern because it dare not, quivering there behind its iron mask, lose for one instant its self-command; many a kindly heart has turned to gall, many an honest nature been warped irrevocably to evil, because the pride of manhood forbids it to ask for that relief which never comes unsought; of course it serves them right: of course we do not pity them; but are they the less lost on that account?

It would have moved even a courtier to witness the expression of sharp pain that swept over Ogilvy’s face when Randolph led Mary Beton out to dance, but it was gone in a moment, and nobody detected it save the fair cause herself, who moved, we may be sure, all the more proudly through the measure in consequence, and listened, well-pleased as ever, to the mingled honey and vinegar of the ambassador’s flatteries and sarcasms.

Meanwhile the Queen, followed by her other maidens, glided through the throng, dispensing her notice graciously to all her guests, and more especially those whom she had reason to consider somewhat wavering in their loyalty—a distinction not lost upon Mary Seton, who whispered to her companion—

‘This would be a fine time for poor Bothwell now to come back again; see, my dear, even Lord Ruthven has had soft words and kind looks to-night.’

To which the lady addressed, no other than Mary Carmichael, only answered by a smothered sigh, for that nobleman was popularly believed to tamper with the Black Art, and to be an especial adept in the compounding of charms and potions both for friend and foe. She was thinking how delightful it would be to have one of his specific love-philters to do what she liked with, and to whom she would give it. Certainly not to the stranger in the Abbey garden; he loved her quite well enough already.

Somehow at this moment her eye sought out the figure of Walter Maxwell, who was standing apart in the recess of one of the windows, and looking at her with a kind of pitying sadness, as men do on an object once dearly prized which they will never see again. It was so unusual now for them to exchange glances, much less words, that the sight troubled her; she turned red first and then very pale. He stirred and made a step forward, as if to advance and speak to her, but seemed to think better of it, crossed his arms upon his breast, and resumed his former position. Following the Queen, she was obliged to pass very near him, and lowering her eyes to avoid meeting his glance, she was distressed and ashamed to find that they were full of tears.

There is a mysterious kind of sympathy often existing between those who have some common cause of suffering. Two gouty old gentlemen are never tired of detailing to each other their respective symptoms of podagra; and weak-minded ladies subject to ‘nervous attacks’ have been overheard to interchange the most surprising confidences regarding that remarkable ailment; in the same manner a couple of lovers, not a pair, are drawn towards each other by a community of sorrow.

Alexander Ogilvy took his place by Mary Carmichael’s side, and sought in that lady’s blue eyes, at least commiseration for his sorrows. Placing a chair for her a little out of the crowd, he conversed with her on the heat of the room, the beauty of the dresses, her own successful toilet, and such like topics, gradually lowering his voice and bringing the conversation round to the subject nearest his heart.

‘A bird hath whispered in my ear,’ said he, ‘that we must look ere long to have a king-consort at Holyrood. The Maries are more interested in the matter than the whole of Scotland besides. You will be freed from your vow: choose each of you a mate, and pair off, like the fowls of the air, ere another St Valentine be past. What say you, Mistress Carmichael? sings my little bird true or false? I am no courtier, you know.’

‘And yet you are much at Court,’ she answered, absently, ‘particularly of late, Master Ogilvy; it was but yesterday the Queen, pointing you out to Mary Beton, commended the bravery of your attire.’

Ogilvy coloured, looking very much alarmed, yet not altogether displeased.

‘And what said Mistress Beton?’ he asked anxiously.

His discomposure was so obvious, that it was well for him he had not to do with mischievous Mary Seton, or even with his present companion, had she been in other than a subdued and melancholy frame of mind. In most women the temptation to mockery would have been irresistible, but Mistress Carmichael only replied carelessly—

‘That you were the properest man at Holyrood, and that she thought our gallants of the Court wore the French air more naturally than did the Southrons.’

‘Did she really say so?’ he exclaimed eagerly; ‘and do you believe she meant it? You know her well, Mistress Carmichael; is it not true that she is herself too irresistibly attracted towards the Southron? Do you not think that when hood and jesses are fairly doffed once for all, she will fly her pitch toward the border, aye, and strike her quarry far on the southern side?’

Mary Carmichael followed the direction of his glance to where Mistress Beton stood radiant in her Twelfth-night bravery, and listening with a heightened colour and a well-pleased air to Randolph’s flatteries; but she pitied whilst she marked the suffering that was too apparent in her questioner’s gaze, and replied gently to his thoughts rather than his words—

‘Gratified vanity is one thing, and real preference another. A women oft-times likes that suitor best whom most she seems to avoid. Perhaps for that very reason, perhaps because she is weak at heart and cannot help herself.’

She spoke the last sentence low, and more to herself than to him. She was willing to console him, for the deeper a kind nature is wounded, the more it feels for the sorrows of others. Also, it may be that she found a certain relief in repeating the lesson it had cost her so much pains to learn.

He drew closer to her.

‘Thank you,’ said he, with a beaming look of gratitude. ‘You are a true friend! Believe me, Mistress Carmichael, I am not ungrateful. Can I serve you in any way in return?’

‘It is no question of that,’ she replied. ‘Our positions are so different. I only say to you, remember your own motto—“To the End.” If I were a man I think I could trust and hope for ever. I think I could be staunch and unselfish and true, in defiance of sorrow, suffering, opposition, nay, even of ingratitude and neglect I would prove to the woman whom I had chosen that at least she must be proud of my choice, that a man’s honest affection was no vacillating fancy, but an eternal truth; and even if she did not love me, I would force her to confess that it was her own inferiority of nature that could not mate with mine. But why should I talk thus to you?’ she added, breaking off with rather a bitter laugh. ‘You are a man: you cannot understand me; you will not believe in anything unless you can see it with your two eyes, and grasp it in your two hands, and be told by all your friends besides that it is there. If you had but one gold piece in the world, you must beat it out thin, and lacker it over your spurs, and your housings, and the hilt of your sword; you could not hide it away in your bosom, and keep it unspent and unsuspected next your heart!’

‘I know not,’ he said with a brightening face; ‘your words give me hope. I seem to see things differently since you have been speaking to me. You are my good angel. Help me; advise me; tell me what I had better do.’

‘In the first place, go and talk to somebody else,’ she replied, laughing. ‘You will scarcely advance the cause you have at heart by whispering with me in a corner. Looks of inquiry, if not displeasure, have been already shot this way; and although, perhaps, we are the only two people in this room who never could be more than friends, courtiers’ eyes are so sharp and their inferences so good-natured, that they have probably ere this made their usual grand discovery of that which does not exist. And so, good Master Ogilvy, my last word is, think of your motto and speed you well!’

Thus speaking, she made him a stately curtsey and withdrew towards the Queen; but Mary Carmichael was right, and their interview, short as it was, had been remarked by more than one interested observer.

Though it costs the animal many stripes and much vexation doubtless to acquire the accomplishment, we have seen a dog so well broke as to forego at his owner’s word a tempting morsel placed within his reach, licking his lips indeed and looking longingly after it, yet exhibiting, nevertheless, a noble mastery over his inclinations. But let another dog come by and snatch the bone thus ceded to a sense of duty, and all his self-restraint vanishes on the instant. Open-mouthed he rushes to wrest it from the intruder, and that which but a moment ago was an advantage he could philosophically resign, becomes immediately a necessity that he will break through all bounds to attain. So is it with mankind. We can give up, or rather we fancy we have given up, the one bright hope that gilded our existence. We see the dear face that used to make the very sunshine of our heart altered and estranged, perhaps cold and distant, perhaps turned scornfully away. We think we can bear our burden resignedly enough. There is a great blank in our lives, felt less in the time of sorrow than at those seasons when, were it not for our loss, we think we should be so contented, so happy. There is a sense of desolation, a consciousness of old age coming on and being welcome—a morbid inclination to receive adversity with open arms; but yet we man ourselves against the calamity, strong to oppose and constant to endure. We have not felt the sting yet. Whilst we are in the cold shade let the dear face beam upon another; let the tones, so cruel now and hard to us, fall with the well-remembered cadence on his ear; let him be the recipient of the thousand tender cares and winning ways that used to bring tears of affection into our eyes; then, and not till then, have we sustained the sharpest pain that life has to inflict; then, and not till then, do we feel that there is no sorrow like to our sorrow, and that it is well for us it is transient from its very nature, or heart and brain would give way under the stroke.

Mary Beton was well satisfied to receive the homage of her English admirer, and, in order to ensure it, was perfectly willing to discard her sincerer suitor. Poor Ogilvy might pine and sigh as he pleased, without gaining so much as a kind word or an approving glance; but this rigorous treatment was only to endure so long as she felt he was her property; the dog’s wages were to be given to the dog’s honest obedience and fidelity. It was quite a different matter when he appeared to have transferred his allegiance to another. Though she did not like him well enough to give up Randolph for his sake, she had no idea of losing him altogether. Even if she had no use for him, he had no right to belong to any one else, and it was with far more of anxiety and concern than usually overspread those calm features that Mistress Beton glanced continually towards the corner where he was whispering with Mary Carmichael, while she listened to the smooth phrase of the English ambassador with an absent air and a forced smile.

Nor was the stately maid-of-honour the only person in that noble assemblage who felt acutely the difference between the active and passive moods of the verb ‘to give up.’ Walter Maxwell, hurt, jealous, and indignant, had for long accustomed himself to look upon Mary Carmichael as one who was dead to him for evermore; had trained himself to meet her coldly and calmly when their respective duties brought them unavoidably together, and to shun her on all other occasions with scrupulous self-denial; nay, was beginning to find a certain gloomy satisfaction in the violence he was capable of doing to his own feelings, and a certain savage triumph in the reflection that he, too, could be as unkind and heartless and indifferent as a woman! But when he saw her thus engrossed with Ogilvy’s conversation, evidently of a mysterious and interesting nature; when he marked, as he did at a glance, the softened expression of her face and the wistful tenderness in her blue eyes, he experienced a sensation of pain once more, to which he had thought he was henceforth to be a stranger, and felt again for an instant as he had felt that well-remembered night when he came upon her so unexpectedly at her tryst in the Abbey garden.

The same cause produces strangely different effects upon different individuals. Whilst Mary Beton, under the influence of jealousy, was becoming restless, captious, and even irritable (much, it must be confessed, to the secret amusement of Mr Thomas Randolph), Walter Maxwell felt a fresh impulse given to that generosity, which prompted him to put an end to-night to his anxieties and misgivings once for all.

The Queen, in the meantime, seeking, in her innocence and gaiety of heart, to keep up the characteristic merriment of the feast, was unconsciously exciting the displeasure of her nobility, and unwittingly preparing the downfall of her versatile little favourite—the Italian Riccio.

Disregarding the coarser witticisms and grotesque antics of James Geddes, who indeed had become a duller fool day by day, since the shock his feeble intellect sustained on the morning of ChastelÂr’s death, Mary had summoned her private secretary into the centre of the illustrious circle which surrounded her, and, with a familiarity exceedingly displeasing to the haughty Scottish barons, bade him improvise, after the manner of his country, for their amusement. Nothing daunted by bent brows and scornful looks, the glib foreigner, placing himself on a cushion at the Queen’s feet, commenced a lively tale, of which the incidents and the language, for it was related in French, were most displeasing to his audience. It turned upon one of those fables so popular at the time in Italy, and was, indeed, both in its details and its catastrophe, especially unsuitable to the practical nature and affected asceticism of the Scottish character at that period.

‘There was a beautiful flower,’ said he, his little black eyes twinkling at the Queen while he spoke, ‘growing in a fair garden, through which ran a mountain stream, and the birds of the air and the insects of the noontide came to pay their court to this flower and to win a breath of her fragrance, for she was the pride of all earthly plants and the queen of the garden. So the humming-bird flitted by in his bravery, and she marked not his liveries of blue and gold, nor bent her head towards him, but let him pass on to court the flowers of his own tropical land, gorgeous without perfume, dazzling but loveless, like a fair woman without a heart. And the nightingale sang his life away to please her, and, wooing her with his last notes, died hungering when the evening star shone out above the trees. Then the butterfly brought his painted coat and his gay manners and fluttered about her, making sure that a courtier like himself must prevail; but she bent not her head nor moved one of her leaves towards him, though the breeze was sighing softly around her and shaking the dewdrops from her stem.

‘None of the gay and gaudy seemed to win the favour of that queenly flower. At length a bee came buzzing home from his labours, laden with the honey-dew that he had been gathering far and wide. He thought to rest on her petals and distil fresh treasures from her chalice, but she shook her beautiful blossoms merrily in the breeze and waved him scornfully away.

‘All the birds of the air and the noontide insects marvelled that she would have none of them, for they deemed her haughty and unsociable, whispering to one another of the pride that goeth before a fall.

‘Now, even as she shook her petals in disdain, she opened her heart to the daylight, and at its very core lay concealed a lazy useless drone. Then the humming-bird and the butterfly and the bee laughed together, for they said—

‘“Of what avail are beauty and bravery and worth, against possession? And if she have taken the dullest of all insects to her heart, we have but lost our time in suing her, and the nightingale, on the cold earth yonder, hath given his life in vain.”

‘There is a moral in my fable, ladies!’ added Riccio, with a smile and a shrug of his crooked shoulders—‘a moral that you will all of you acknowledge if you tell truth.—Who shall dictate to a woman’s fancy, or reduce to rule the wandering inclinations of a woman’s heart?’

The ladies laughed and whispered, some protesting against the conclusion, others pitying the poor nightingale, but all uniting in condemnation of the useless drone.

Lord Ruthven, who had been eyeing the narrator with looks of fierce scorn, strode up to where he was sitting at the Queen’s feet, and asked him, in a loud, contemptuous voice,—

‘Were there no Wasps in yonder garden of which you spake, Master Tale-teller,—wasps that might give the drone a lesson, and teach him his place was somewhat lower than the bosom of its choicest flower?’

The Italian looked up somewhat scared in his grim questioner’s face.

‘Nay, signior,’ he replied humbly, ‘in courtly gardens the wasps must leave their stings behind.’

‘Aye! sticking in the carcase of the drone!’ returned Ruthven, with a brutal laugh, which was echoed by Morton, and one or two other savage-looking noblemen who stood near.

The Queen seemed highly displeased, but, true to her conciliatory principle, hastened to change the subject ere these turbulent spirits should further forget their own dignity and the respect due to her presence. Calling her maidens around her, she bade them bring her harp, a beautiful instrument, highly ornamented, and proposed it should be the prize of any lady in the company who could sing to it an impromptu measure on a subject she would herself propose.

‘I shall play on it no more,’ said Mary, with a half-melancholy smile. ‘It is only maiden-queens who have time for such follies. A busier day, for aught I know, may be about to dawn, ere long, on Mary Stuart’ (here she cast a sly glance at Randolph, who, without seeming to heed her, was listening, all attention), ‘and I cannot leave my favourite instrument in better hands than hers who wins it fairly by her skill. Behold! which of you, ladies, will undertake to strike these strings and improvise a song, as deftly as our little secretary here has told us a story?’

It was an attempt requiring considerable confidence in such a presence. The ladies gazed on one another in obvious hesitation. Presently a handsome, intellectual-looking woman stepped forward, and curtseying to Her Majesty, bent gracefully, without speaking, over the instrument.

‘Beatrix Gardyn!’ exclaimed the Queen, with a bright smile, ‘the Sappho of the North! I know of none better qualified to do justice to my poor harp; will you begin, Beatrix, at once? Are you waiting for inspiration?’

‘The theme, an’t please your Majesty?’ said Beatrix, bowing her classic head with the utmost composure, and sweeping a masterly prelude over the strings.

The Queen gave another meaning glance at Randolph, and laughed again.

‘What say you to my marriage, my possible marriage, and the consequent release of my four bonny maidens from their celibacy? The subject, methinks, is a noble one; and see, the Maries are listening all attention for your strains.’

Beatrix Gardyn struck a few wandering chords, then with bent brows and kindling eyes fixed on vacancy, broke into a melody to which, with but little hesitation, and now and then a meaning smile, she adapted the following words:—

THE MAIDENS’ VOW.

Rounds of applause followed the conclusion of the song. The approval with which Mary received it was tantamount to an acknowledgment of its truth; and the courtiers scarce refrained from cheers and such noisy demonstrations of their acquiescence in its purport.

Congratulations were freely tendered to the Maries on their coming release from the vows by which it had been long understood they were bound; and many facetious remarks were directed at those young ladies on a topic, which although next to death the most serious and important in the human destiny, has been considered, from time immemorial, as a fitting subject for stale witticisms and far-fetched jokes.

In the midst of all this clamour and merriment, Walter Maxwell slipped quietly out of the presence; and when Mary Carmichael, wondering how he would be affected by the news that thus seemed to stir the whole Court, stole a wistful look towards the corner he had lately occupied, behold, he was gone!

After this the buzz of conversation, the rustle of ladies’ dresses, the strains of the Queen’s musicians, seemed to strike wearily on her ear; how pointless seemed the jests that yet provoked bursts of laughter from the bystanders; how uninteresting the vapid compliments that were yet paid with such an air, and received so graciously; how dull and uninteresting the whole routine of a courtier’s life, and the individual items that composed a courtly assemblage! As we must all do sooner or later, for the moment the girl saw life without the varnish, and wondered it had ever looked so bright; she longed for the hour of dismissal, when she, too, had a tryst to keep, a duty to perform. In the meantime we must follow Maxwell into the Abbey garden.