possible, Lenore?" (catching her roughly by the hand). "Turn your face to the light; let me see your eyes-I do not believe your words; it seems so unnatural to hear any kind ones from your lips. God! when I think that it is less than a week ago that I saw you standing here together, and you giving him such soft kind looks, to get one of which I would have sacrificed twenty years of my life, and thought it a cheap bargain-you, who never threw me anything but mocks and jeers and ugly names-I cannot believe it. Say what you will to meswear it, asseverate it-I cannot, I cannot !"

She does not answer: for the moment, I think, she finds speech difficult; she stands rigidly still; her face turned towards the bitter winter landscape, with lips tightly compressed, as one resolved not to weep.

"When I think," continues the young man vehemently, "of how you smiled-of how happy you looked if he only touched in passing the border of your gown, less than a week ago-less than a week ago --can I believe that such love has all gone? Gone? Where can it have gone to? Tell me that! Does love disappear like a morning mist?"

"Hush!" she says, hoarsely, putting her fingers in her ears. "How many times must I tell you not to drag him in? If I ever cared for him" (she stops, for a second, unable to manage her voice), "if I ever cared for him, that was between him and me; you had no concern in it; but now it is all over, dead; and when things are dead what is there to do but to bury and forget them? Take me or leave me, as you choose, that is your business-I know which you would do if you were wise but for God's sake leave that old story alone. It is my old story, not yours, and I—I have a short memory," smiling faintly, "I am fast forgetting it."

"But are you," he cries, with a painful scepticism, hardly to be wondered at," are you sure of that? Are you sure that if you saw him coming in now, this minute, at that door, you would not run to him— as you ran out into the cold to meet him that first night he cameand leave me to cut the brilliant figure I have always done, ever since the unlucky day at Guingamp, where I first saw you?"

At his words she shivers again, and shrinks, as if touched by a hot iron. "What are you talking about?" she cries, passionately. "Why do you persist in indulging in these idiotic suppositions? He will not come back, I tell you. Do dead people ever push up their coffin-lids, and come walking back again? If they do, I never saw them. Well, they are more likely to come back than he is-much more likely. He is done with," spreading out her hands, "so for God's sake try and help me to forget that there ever was such a person, instead of always throwing him in my teeth." At the last words she catches her breath sobbingly, but resolutely forces back the tears that come crowding thickly under her hot lids. He stares at her stupidly still, "He

only liked me when I was on my good behaviour," she continues, with a hard-won smile, "and you know how seldom that is. I had an idea that you would take me whether I behaved well or ill, or not at all; and so and so I sent for you."

She stretches out her hand to him, smiling friendlily, and he, catching it between both his own broad ones, covers it with silent kisses; then, after a while, speaks slowly, and diffidently, blushing like a school girl:

"And you-you can tolerate the idea of being my wife? Youlike me a little ?"

"Like you?" she says carelessly, with a forced laugh. "Of course I do. What a question? Have not I asked you to marry me? What better proof could I give? Why should not I like you? You are young, good-looking, and a parti. Of course, I like you."

He does not look very much satisfied with this expression of faith. "You do not believe me?" she says, interrogatively. "Well, I have already given you one proof; I will give you another. I have asked you to marry me. I now ask you to marry me soon. I'm aware," laughing, "that it is not usual for such a proposition to come from the lady, but as I have begun by taking the initiative I suppose I must go on."

The look of wild, incredulous astonishment intensifies on his face and in his bold bright eyes. Are his ears faithful carriers of the words entrusted to them, or does his brain interpret them untruly?

"Lenore," he says impetuously, throwing himself on his knees. beside her, as she sits, leaning back in an arm-chair; "forgive me for being such a fool, such an unmannerly brute, as to disbelieve what you say to me, but are you sure—I will not be angry if it is so-upon my soul I will try not to be-but are you sure that it is not a joke? --that you have not made me the subject of a bet; that this is not some trap that you are drawing me into? Confess-confess that it looks like it. Five days ago, you told me that the only boon you had to ask of me was that you might never see my face again-and, by heaven, if ever any woman looked as if she meant what she said you did then and now-now-did I hear aright?—I am afraid to think so-you ask me to marry you soon?"

She hangs her head a little, as if ashamed, but says nothing.

"Is it any wonder," he continues, excitedly, "that when I have been crying for the moon for the last six months, and hating my life and myself, and even all my own people, because I could not get it, that when it falls down on a sudden at my feet I should wish to know what brought it there?-is it any wonder that I should wish to see the dessous des cartes?"

"There is no dessous," she says gravely. "What can I say? I am sick of asseverating! As I believe in God, and am unutterably

afraid of him," (looking solemnly up, and shuddering,) "I am speaking truth! What reason can I give? I have none. I am tired of being Lenore Herrick, that is all. It is a name that has brought me no luck; perhaps Lenore Scrope will bring me better."

"God grant that it may!" he says, earnestly, drawing her towards him, into his arms and to his broad breast. "Sweet, give me one kiss, and I shall believe you."

So she gives him one kiss. Only five days ago! Only five days ago!

CHAPTER XIV.

WHAT JEMIMA SAYS.

MR. SCROPE returns to the drawing-room, as he left it, alone. As he enters, we both look up and smile, as one does smile with vague complacency at the sight of anything young and specially comely. "Did you find her?" I ask, as I kneel before the fire, giving it a vigorous and searching poke, for his benefit.

"Yes."

He says merely this-almost the shortest of all monosyllables; but there is something in the tone in which he says it that makes me pause, poker in hand, from my noisy toil, to examine him more narrowly.

"You have been quarrelling, as usual, I suppose?" I say, with a wily attempt to come at the matter of their conversation without seeming too indecently curious.

"Lenore always quarrels with everybody," says Sylvia, patting the pug's fat stomach, as he lies on his back, with his eyes rolling awfully and a bit of rosy tongue showing between his black lips, in a state of Sybaritic enjoyment on her lap. "I tell her it is her way of flirting. She always maintains that she cannot flirt-does not know how; but of course that is nonsense. I suppose we can all do a little in that way, if we try?"-holding her smooth head rather on one side, and looking arch.

"Has she been saying anything unusually exasperating?" I ask, as, under my successful labours, the frosty fire spires and races upwards. "Never mind if she has; she is not in very good tune just now, poor soul, and one can hardly wonder at it."

While he speaks, Mr. Scrope has been stalking up and down in a fidgety way, making the boards creak. At my words he stops, and says abruptly, "Why?"

"Have not you heard? Oh, of course not! Stupid of me! She would not be likely to mention it herself-it is not a very pleasant subject to talk about-but her engagement is all off, and she is naturally rather low about it."

"She is not in the least low; I never saw her in better spirits in

my life," says Scrope, with a brusqueness that amounts to incivility; and having delivered himself of this speech, he marches off to the window and turns his back to us.

"It must be your coming, then, that has cheered her," says Sylvia, laughing lackadaisically; "and indeed to tell you the truth, at the risk of making you atrociously conceited, I must say I don't wonder at it. It is a shockingly fast sentiment, I suppose, but there is something in the timbre of a man's voice that quite invigorates me; I suppose it is always having been so much used to men's society. I get on with them so much better than with women; I understand them, and they understand me."

"Have you had any talk with her?" I ask, rising precipitately, and following him to the embrasure of the window, perfectly heedless of the fact that my sister is comfortably mounted on her pet hobbyself, and is cantering complacently away on him. "Did she say any

thing to you?"

"Listen!" he says, putting a hand on each of my shoulders, quite unconscious of the familiarity of the action-and indeed they might be posts for all he knows about them-and looking me redly and triumphantly in the face. "She has been saying this to me: 'I will marry you as soon as you like!" "

“WHAT! ! ! ! ! !" Six marks of admiration but poorly render the expression I throw into this innocent monosyllable. I feel my face becoming a series of round Os-astonishment stretching and opening every feature beyond its natural destiny.

Why do you keep staring at me?" says the young man, petulantly, giving me a little shake; "why do you stand with your mouth wide open? Why should not I marry? What is there to prevent me? Does not everybody do it? What is there so very surprising in it ?"

Still I maintain an absolute silence; his hands have dropped from my shoulders, but I still stand before him, like a block of stupid stone. Neither does Sylvia speak; she is affecting to blow her nose, and has covered the more part of her face with her pocket-handkerchief; what yet remains is excessively red. For once her hobby-horse has given her a nasty fall.

"Why do you stare at me like a wild beast?" cries Scrope angrily. "Is this the way you always take a piece of news? Pleasant for the person who tells you, if it is. If I had told you that she had just fallen down dead in the next room you could not look at me with greater dismay."

I cannot contradict it. Sputtering and breathless, I still face him, trying hard to speak; but in all the wide range of good, noble, and useful words that the English tongue affords, I can find not one that suits the present crisis.

"Why don't you say something?" says the young man, with cheeks

on fire and lightning eye. "The most disagreeable sentence you could invent would be better than this. Oh, come! I cannot stand it any longer-to be stared at by two perfectly silent women with their mouths open; it would make "-laughing fiercely-"it would make the bravest man in Europe run like a hare!"

He turns quickly to the door as he speaks. Then I find my tongue; its hinges are not well oiled, and it does not run smoothly, but it goes somehow. I catch hold of his arm or his coat tail-I am not quite sure which, in my excitement. "Stop, stop!" I cry incoherently; "don't be cross!—I mean to say something-I am going to say something-but-but-you take my breath away! It is so sudden-so unnaturally sudden !"

Unnaturally?" repeats he tartly; the painful consciousness that I have hit upon the joints of his harness making him defend the weak part with all the greater acrimony. "Why unnaturally, pray? If it does not seem too sudden to her or to me, I do not see why it need appear so to any one else."

"But-but-are you sure you are not mistaken ?" I say, disbelievingly, mindful of the tear-swollen desperate face I had seen lying among its tossed hair on my sister's bedroom floor; "are you quite sure she said those words? She is an odd girl-Lenore-very odd, and sometimes she has a random way of talking; I do not think she quite knows always what she is saying."

"Thank you," replies he, bowing formally, though his face flames. "You are--if not polite-at least candid. I understand. A woman must be slightly deranged to consent to be my wife?"

My wits are still too far out woolgathering for me to be able to summon them back to compose some civil explanation and apology. "You disbelieve me still?" cries my future brother-in-law, greatly exasperated by my silence. "All right! do-it does me no harm; but if it should happen to strike you at any time that I may, by accident, be speaking truth, you have only to send for Lenore, and ask her."

"Poor dear Lenore!" says Sylvia, speaking for the first time, and smiling sweetly. "She has not been long in consoling herself, has she? I am quite glad."

Mrs. Prodgers has finished blowing her nose, and her face has laid aside its transient redness, but she now holds her head quite straight, nor does she look at all arch. "You know, Jemima, if you remember, you laughed at me-but I always maintained that Paul Le Mesurier did not care two straws about her. I am sure I am the last person to pretend to unusual clearsightedness, but one has one's instincts!"

"It is sudden, of course!" burst out Scrope, boyishly, not paying any attention to my sister, but looking straight and defiantly at me. "What is the good of telling me that? How can I help it? Tell me that January is colder than July-I know it is; but it is not my