"I shall not trouble myself to guess. I shall never reach sixty." "Twaddle! I hate to hear a young girl threaten herself with a short life. You are as good for sixty as the best of us. What's more, you are just as willing to reach it, too."

I preserved the dignity of my sentiment by keeping silence.

"And yet," he continued, suddenly lowering his voice, "I don't think you have passed a very happy life, Maggie. You may be sincere in not wishing to live it twice over again. Mother's got a queer temper and has made Ivy Lodge a rat-hole for you both-for me too, sometimes."

use.

"But it's of no

It will soon be a matter of the past for Kate." "I've done my best to sweeten her," he went on. She is like a powerful acid, which absorbs and transforms into acidity whatever sweet stuffs you may throw into it. Would'nt you be glad to marry and get out of it yourself? Confess."

"I should be glad, very glad, to leave Ivy Lodge. I'll not conceal the truth from you. I'm not happy-never have been happy-with your mother. She is altogether too severe. She has many virtues, but they are all of a prickly sort. They stand out upon her like quills upon a porcupine."

"True, true. She's stuffed with virtue like a bolster made rigid. by over cramming. There's no rest to be got out of it. How would you like to be an emigrant's wife?"

"How can I answer such questions? If you want the truth you must let me presuppose love. But I am no hand at fiction; and even had I any inventive powers, I should not believe in the sequel they might suggest."

"O, Mag! what a girl you are for answering questions! To talk with you is like mounting a rocking-horse; there's plenty of movement but not an inch of progress. Can't you answer me simply? How would you like to marry a man who sails for. 'foreign parts' in search of fortune ?"

He relapsed into silence; presently commenced to whistle with curious shrillness; then ceased with a melodramatic jerk, and exclaimed:

"Whatever you may say, nothing shall ever convince me that you would not make a first-rate emigrant's wife."

"I am not likely to attempt to convince you one way or the other. And please do not talk of me as first-rate."

"You are just the sort of girl for a colony-quick, severe, deter

mined."

me.

I looked at him with amazement. His odd compliments astonished

"I hope," I said, "that you have not been privately transferring me

to some friend of yours meditating a life in the backwoods, and on the look out for a wife ?"

He broke again into his shrill whistle. This time he concluded it with a prolonged and peculiar curve, so to speak, of the notes. The finale was irresistibly suggestive-was perfectly Shandean.

"You are mentally turning up your nose at your thoughts."

"How do you know?" he asked, with laughing eyes.

'By your retroussé whistle."

"You have hit my mood. I acknowledge that I was mentally turning up my nose at my thoughts, or rather at yours. You suggested them; and they belong to you. I am irritated."

"Ah! and by what?"

"At your imagining for a moment that I am capable of negociating a match between two people."

"I merely intended my remark as a reprimand for your flattery." "Then you don't think me capable of a matrimonial agency?"

"Most decidedly I do not. He must be a hardened wretch indeed who is capable of such a profession. A returned convict who has picked out his sensibility with his oakum might do. You are too tender-hearted to become an instrument of more marriages than can be helped."

"There you go, Mag, with your inane cynicism. There is no wit in this sort of misanthropy, because there is no nature. Take my short sermon to heart.”

"Sermonise as you like, I am in earnest. I look upon your matrimonial agent-professional or not-as a monster of iniquity.” "I agree with you."

"Let people find each other out who want to be married. Couples who are left alone will go to each other naturally, and live smoothly, perhaps happily, after. But your forced marriages-marriages worked by a third person—are always miserable affairs. They remind me of a seidlitz draught. Two opposite chemicals never designed for combination are brought together; whereupon ensues a plentiful hissing, which, subsiding, leaves behind it the most unpalatable deadness." immediately added: "This is no recrimination. Only you told me to take your short sermon to heart, and I wanted to discharge the obligation."

I

George and I often indulged in such skirmishes. My prononcé language seemed to amuse him. Perhaps he enjoyed his conflicts with me because he so often triumphed. My aunt's example had had some influence with me. In recurring to the past I find that my somewhat sour sentiments had been largely indebted for their acidity to my epigrammatic relative. On the other hand, there was in George's character an element of idealism that kept him sweet. But though there was no lack of cleverness in him, the narrow horizon of Lorton had given him

but little opportunity for development. Is there anything more cramping than the routine of thorough-bred provincialism? Bucolic habits resemble the bandages which the Chinese tie round their women's feet; the feet are perfect enough when first swathed; it is the growth that produces the deformity.

The stile over which it was necessary to climb to enter Lorton Wood was reached. I bade George good-bye and turned my face homewards.

It was half-past two. I thought of Kate; recalling my promise to her, my resolution to sacrifice my feelings to her happiness, I could not make up my mind to return to Ivy Lodge. My love, so long secretly cherished, now that I was alone, now, too, that the reaction of feeling following my frivolous talk with George had set in, welled up and flooded my heart. I felt angry, full of bitterness. A sense of humiliation seized me. My love had been snatched from me; I thought my superiority—that superiority of mind, of affection, of instinct, which I claimed with cynical egotism for myself—had been defeated without a struggle triumphed over by the merest of physical attributes— yellow hair that would turn grey, lustrous eyes which would grow dim, pouting lips which would become parched. My evil spirit for the time possessed me-made foolish, contemptible, my resolution to be true to my sister-that sister who was now my rival-nay, who

was worse-who was my victor. Was it possible that she had guessed my love? Most possible that she had; most possible that she had dissembled her discernment the better to woo from my heart the love that had made it light-the hope that had turned its thoughts into song.

How unreasonable I was! But are we not all unreasonable when we are disappointed? For a long time a storm raged within me. I felt myself to be the most wretched, the most humiliated of women. Sometimes I hoped that Major Rivers had never guessed my love; sometimes I hoped that he knew it. My aspirations vibrated between passion and reason. Eventually my very inconsistency calmed me by an abrupt exposure of my folly. Who has not heard in moments of idle passion a peremptory "Peace!" commanded? The inexplicable accents sounded, and the tumbling ocean of my thoughts grew smooth. I seated myself on a mound beneath the shade of a tree on the roadside, and fixed my eyes on the sky with a gaze soliciting for my heart something of the serenity of the deep darkling blue.

The silence, the rich ripe autumnal smell upon the air, the splendour of the sun's light, made solemn by being the effulgence of a dying glory, completed the conquest of my passion commenced by my reason. This acknowledgment of the beauty with which I was surrounded was the expression of my repentance. The repose took an almost articulate expression; I seemed to listen with steadfast eyes and

pallid face to reproving accents made sad by sympathy with my own melancholy.

Presently I rose. The time was long past three. I walked slowly along the somewhat devious road and gained the garden-gate as a church clock struck four. As I closed the gate after me the hall-door opened, and Major Rivers came out. Behind him I saw the gleam of Kate's hair. There seemed a fatality in this abrupt rencontre. Had I been five minutes earlier I might have slipped to my bedroom without my arrival being guessed.

Nature's adjustments are always unexpected. There are persons to whom every movement of her's comes like the confrontment of a formidable exigency.

Picture to yourself a middle-aged man, tall, dark, keen-eyed, with the firm mouth and composure of face and manner which a clever American writer considers to be the chief mark of a gentleman. He was dressed in a frock-coat that fitted his symmetrical and muscular form to perfection. He raised his hat with a singularly graceful gesture as he saw me.

"We were speaking of you but a minute ago, Miss Holmes," he said, shaking my hand with the composure of a courtier. "Kate was quietly reproaching you for your prolonged absence."

This was the first time I had heard him call her Kate. It sounded oddly on my ears, like a human voice at sea, or the song of a bird at night.

"We have done without you though, Maggie," said Kate, with a happy smile.

"I suspected you would,” I said.

"I was just about leaving," remarked the Major; "but now that you have come I hope I may be permitted to remain a little longer. Kate, shall we go into the garden with your sister, and tell her all the news?"

"By all means. But first let me fetch my hat." And she bounded out of sight like a child acting on a promise.

"I have secured your sweet sister for my wife, after a tough conflict with your aunt," said the Major, approaching me by a stride. "Have I your congratulations ?"

"You both have," I replied, trying to return his steady gaze, but finding my glance wander to the skies beyond.

"Were you surprised when you heard I had proposed ?"

"No."

"Ah! now you are going to be cynical.

I am never surprised at

any folly.' Is that what you were going to say? "Here is Kate," was my answer.

?"

She came through the door, and stood by the side of her betrothed. She had fixed a small Italian velvet hat on her head with a black

feather that curled like a swart shadow round the back of her shining hair. She had never looked more sweetly pretty. Her beautiful eyes seemed filled with a constant surprise, and her half-parted lips helped out the expression of girlish wonderment. She reminded me of a dove soothed into pleasurable alarm by the caressing of a gentle hand. "Kate," said the Major, as we moved away, "is it not fair, now that I am to be your sister's brother, that she should be polite to me? Don't open your eyes so wide. They are too anticipatory. They make me think I say more than I mean."

"How can I help opening my eyes when you ask such questions?" answered Kate. "Has Maggie been rude to you?"

"By implication. That is, she gave me a short answer with a long meaning.

"I said No when I meant No," I exclaimed.

"I asked her," continued the Major, " if she had been surprised to hear of my offer of marriage. 'No!' she answered, with the same depth of meaning in the monosyllable as the parish clerk gives to the word Amen."

'If you continue to be personal, Major Rivers," I said, “I shall leave you. I am quick at taking a hint, and shall conclude you want to terrify me off the preserves of love."

He laughed, and Kate looked grave, not clearly apprehending my meaning.

"I shall suspect," I went on, "that you want to quarrel with one sister that you may turn with additional relish to the other; like the man who burnt his mouth that he might enjoy the luxury of iced water."

Reader, you may be surprised at my volubility. But it was obvious I could not remain silent since I had volunteered to accompany them into the garden. It was imperative that I should reply to questions that I should defend myself from friendly assaults; that, in short, I should act in such manner as if I had the freest, lightest heart in the world. It required an effort to do so, and the very effort made the result extreme.

"Don't accredit me with courage enough to quarrel with you, Miss Maggie," said the Major. "I am too old a hand at fighting not to know that the policy of war is the policy of life. I always conciliate

the powerful."

I disliked the turn the conversation was taking. It was always my misfortune as a girl to provoke personalities. The merest dialogue generally ended with me in a sort of colloquial hand-to-hand fight, and my victories were always humiliating. I caution my sex against the reputation of wit. A witty woman is looked upon by men as a sort of intellectual Aunt Sally, whom they consider themselves privileged to pelt with sticks.