sedulously quiet voice. "Your polite speeches had effectually rid you of me. A man would not willingly listen twice to some of the compliments you paid me at that ball. I had no intention of coming back; why did you send for me?"

Still no answer, no attempted defence.

"I can at least" (with a bitter smile, that sits ill on his fair smooth face,)"pay you the compliment of saying that you are not a good liar. You are not apt at the trade; you bungle. Every day, and fifty times a day, your mouth has said to me, 'I like you-you are a good fellow we shall be happy together;' and every day, and fifty times a day, your eyes and every movement of your body have said, 'I loathe you. I can hardly bring myself to speak civilly to you.'

Still silence.

"Did it ever occur to you" (taking her by both slender wrists) "to make a rough calculation how many falsehoods you have told me during this last month?"

"Stop!" she cries, wrenching away her hands from his grasp, which has more of the gaoler than the lover in it. "Stop! you are very bitter to me-very. I can hardly believe that it is you; but you speak truth. I have told you many, many lies, but at least I have told them to myself too. I have said them over and over again, in the hope that they would come true at last."

He smiles a dry smile of utter incredulity.

"That was very probable."

"You do not believe me?" she says passionately. "Well, I take God to witness-you will hardly disbelieve me now-that ever since that day in the library, when I thrust myself so immodestly on you (she is crimsoner than any closed daisy's petals at the words), "I have longed and striven with all my heart and soul and strength to-tocare for you-as-as-you wish to be cared for."

"Well ?"

"I have said over and over to myself all your good qualities, like a lesson. I have tried" (her face contracts with an agony of shame) "to wrench away all the love I ever had to give from-the-the person who once had it, and to give it to you instead."

"Well ?"

Sometimes, when I was away from you, I thought I had succeeded; but when you came near me, when you touched me, good and kind and handsome as you are

She stops abruptly.

"Go on," he says, in a hoarse whisper. "Do not let any consideration for my feelings stop you; it would not be you if you did— good and kind and handsome as I am" (ironically repeating her words).

"It was too soon-too soon," she cries, clasping her hands in deep

excitement, while the large scalding tears drop hotly over her cheeks. "Jemima was right, it was indecently soon. In the grief and shame of being so treated, I wonder, Charlie" (smiling painfully) "that you are so anxious to marry a jilted woman. I thought I could forget all in a minute, but I cannot; nobody could. If I were to go away to-day, and throw you over for ever, could you forget me all in a minute ?"

"I would try my best," he says, with a fierce white smile. "Perhaps it would be more correct to say, 'I will try my best.""

"Do you think I do not wish to forget ?" she says, taking his hand of her own accord, while her wet eyes gaze wistfully upward, into the deep angry blue of his. "Do you think I remember on purpose? Does one enjoy not sleeping and not eating, and being in miserable uneasy pain all day and all night?"

He keeps silence.

"I am no great prize at the best of times," she says, half sobbing. "My sisters-all my people--will tell you that; but what sort of woman should I have been if I could have jumped straight out of one man's arms into another's, quite easily and comfortably, without feeling any shame? It was bad enough to be able to do it at all. Oh, Charlie! Charlie! knowing what you did about me, how could you think me worth taking? How could you take me?"

"How could I take you?" he says, with a harsh low laugh, as unlike the jocund sound of his usual boyish mirth as possible. "Do not you know that when a man is starving he is not particular as to having a whole loaf? He says 'thank you' even for crumbs. I tell you, Lenore, that morning in Ireland, when I got your note, I had as little hope of ever holding you in my arms as my wife, as I had of holding one of God's angels. When I found that there was a chance of my so holding you, judge whether I was likely to throw it away."

He has put one of his hands on each of her shoulders, and stands gazing steadfastly at her with a bitter yearning in his eyes.

"I knew that your soul was out of my reach," he continues, sadly; "that I should get only your body, and even that shrank away from Shall I ever forget those first two kisses that you gave me that I made you give me? They were colder than ice."

me.

A little pause. The fire-flame quivers and talks to itself; the pug plucks up heart again, and, returning, lies down, with his nose resting on his bowed forelegs.

"I suppose it is all for the best," says Scrope, presently, with a forced smile; "at least it is as well to say so, is not it? I was so idiotically fond of you that, if you had been decently civil to me, I suppose I should have been happier than any man can be and live." No answer. "Do you know," he resumes, in a tone of deep and

VOL. XXXIV.

2 G

sombre excitement, "what has kept me up all this month, what has hindered me from cutting my own throat or yours-it was a toss-up which-what has made me smile and seem pleased at words that bit and looks that stung? Well, I will tell you-listen, and laugh if it amuses you; it is true, all the same. I knew" (lifting his hands from her shoulders, and framing her drooped face with them,) "I knew that, if once I could get you all to myself, I could make you love me; you would do your best to thwart and hinder me, but I could make you. Lenore, I know it still."

"Do you?" she says sadly. "I wish you could; but I doubt it." "Tell me," cries the young fellow, emboldened by her gentleness to take her once more in his arms, as if she were his own, "it will do me no good to hear-be tantalising, rather-but still I think it would ease my pain a little; tell me, if you had met me first-met me before you came across him-do you think you could have liked me a little then? Say 'yes,' if you can, Lenore!" (with a suffering accent of entreaty).

"How do I know?" she says sharply, for once not shrinking from his contact not struggling in his embrace, but rather coldly taking it for granted. "What is the good of looking back? It seems to me now, that if I had not met him I should have gone on always, as I had gone on before, laughing and amusing myself, and being happy in my way, and not loving anybody much. I never was one to fall in love easily-never!"-(drawing herself up with a little movement of pride).

"You fell in love with him easily enough," says Scrope, roughly.

Yes," she answers, almost humbly, though her face flames, "you are right, so I did; it was a boast I had no right to make."

"How can I tell? Perversity, I think; I always was perverse from a child; they said I should pay for it, sooner or later. I think I have now, have not I?" (smiling drearily). A moment's pause. "Other people cared for me of their own accord," she continues, sighing; "as for him, almost every word I said grated upon him; I had to fight and battle even for his toleration."

"And that pleased you?"

"Does one ever care for the things that one can stretch out one's hand and take?" she asks, bitterly. "I do not, neither do you that is evident, or you would not be here." After a little After a little pause: "He thought very meanly of me from the first-very. He almost told me so in so many words, and I—I—well—I only meant to make him alter his mind; that was how it began. Bah!" (breaking off suddenly, with a tempest of angry pain in her voice,) "what does it matter how it began? Is not it enough that it did begin, that it went on, and that now it is ended?"

At the last word her raised voice sinks down, and dies in a sob. His hold upon her grows lax, he gives a long sigh of astonished indignant grief.

"If that was the way to your heart," he says with a sort of scorn, "no wonder I missed it." Silence. "Merciful heavens!" cries the young man, smiting his hands together in a sort of wondering frenzy, "did one ever hear the like? Must one hold you cheap, and have the ill manners to tell you so; must one cut you to the heart with frosty looks and words that stab like your own; must one love you tardily and leave you readily, before you will give one your affection? If so, Lenore, I tell you candidly that-stark staring mad about you as I have been for the last six months-I tell you candidly that I had rather be without it."

"You are right," she says, coldly; "it is not worth having. After all, you agree with him; he thought it was not worth having, and so threw it away."

The moments flash past; the little moments, that tarry not to listen to brisk wedding chimes, or the slow passing-bell. The two young people still stand opposite one another, each buried in thoughts, whereof it would be hard to say whose share was the bitterer. Scrope is the first to break the silence that has fallen on them.

"Tell me, Lenore," he says, breaking out into impetuous speech, 'you have said so many disagreeable things to me in your time that one more will not matter; yes, tell me I will promise not to burst out into violence, I will even try to look pleased" (smiling sardonically)— "is there is there-any talk of his coming back? Have you any hope of it, that you are getting rid of me so quickly, all of a sudden ?"

"What do you mean?" she says harshly, with a shrinking shiver, as if one had torn open a great gaping wound in her tender body. "Do you think that if I had had any hope I should have sent for you? He is not one to speak lightly, to say one thing to-day and one to-morrow; I should wear out my ears with listening before I heard the wheels of his carriage coming back. No, no!" (with a low sobbing sigh) "I have no hope! It is humiliating to speak of hope in such a case, is not it? I suppose I should not, if I had any spirit."

"If you have really done with him for ever, then," says the young man, in a voice which is still half doubting, "Lenore-I do not want to be glad at what makes you sorry; but how can I help it?-then, for God's sake, come to me; what is there to stand between us? I know I can make you forget him; even to-day-perhaps you will laugh at me for saying so-you seem to hate me a shade less than you did. Oh, beloved! out of the great harvest of love that you lavished on him-him who did not take it, who hardly stooped to pick it up, who tossed it carelessly back to you-have not you saved one grain. for me, who have been hungry and famished so long?"

There are tears in his shaken voice, though none in his eyes; and indeed a man who weeps in wooing mostly damns himself. In a hairy blubbered face there must always be less of the moving than the ridiculous.

Say 'yes,'" he cries, with a passionate agony of pleading, twining both his arms once more about her. 'I will hold you here until you say it. I will let no sound but 'yes' pass those lips that have never yet given me a kind word or a kiss worth the taking."

"What am I to say 'yes' to?" she asks, holding aloof from him, as much as may be, with the old gesture of shrinking distaste. “Am I to say that I will marry you? Well, I said that a month ago; that is settled. Why must we go over all the old story again?"

"But do we mean the same thing?" asks Scrope, with distrustful vehemence. "That is the question. Will you marry me now-at once, without any senseless, causeless delay ?"

She has drawn herself away from him, and now turns, and walking to the window, looks blankly out on the drear, white, snow world-on the long sharp icicles hanging from the leaves.

"Speak," he says, his voice sharpened and roughened, following her to the other side of the room.

"I am waiting-I will wait on you as long as you please; but if I keep you here to the Judgment Day I will not go unanswered! Will you marry me to-morrow?—great Heavens! if it had not been for this unhappy contretemps, by tomorrow you would have been four days my wife!-or will you

not?"

She is trembling all over, and her cold white face is twitched with pain and wet with unwiped tears.

"Not to-morrow!" she says, with an involuntary shudder; "not so soon-not quite so soon. Let me have time to draw my breath! I am not well; as I live I am not well. See how thin I have grown (holding out a hand, on which the wandering veins and the small bones indicate their places more clearly than they did last year). "I, who" (smiling) " used to be so afraid of growing too fat! I do not think I need be afraid of that now, need I? Let me get quite well-quite strong first. I shall be better worth your taking then."

"Lenore!" cries the young man, seizing her by the arm, in an access of sudden and uncontrollable passion, "did you ever in all your life think of any one but yourself? What business have you to spoil my life for me? What business have you to make me a laughingstock for everybody ?-tell me that ?"

"I have no business-none," she answers, drooping her long neck and sobbing.

"Will you marry me to-morrow, Lenore ?" (speaking with the stern quiet of self-constraint).

"Not to-morrow-not to-morrow," she answers wildly, turning