"Do you?" (rather coquettishly).

"Lenore, how many men do you call by their Christian names?" She laughs mischievously. "Ever so many; but I only do as I am done by; almost every man I know calls me Lenore. No! no!! no!!!" (her tone suddenly changing to one of repentant alarm); "do not look so furious-I am only joking; nobody does that I am aware of-hardly anybody!"

CHAPTER VII.

WHAT JEMIMA SAYS.

"A CHILD might play with me to-night, I feel so bland," says Lenore. "Tommy, Bobby, now is your time; never, probably, will you find Aunty Lenore in such a frame of mind again; drive her hair-pins into her skull, throttle her with your fat arms, ride roughshod over her prostrate body; she will not utter a groan!"

It is the day following Sylvia's dinner-party. Lenore is sitting on the white hearthrug of our sister's boudoir, an immoral-looking little upstairs room. Looped rose curtains; lazy low chairs; mirrors gleaming through festooned white muslin; flowers that give out their scent delicately yet heavily to the warmed air; and outside the storm-rain scouring the pane, and the wind shaking the shutters with its strong rude hands. "Had ever any one better cause to be happy than I?" says the girl, while her eyes dance in the firelight. “I am nineteen, I am handsome, I am going to a ball, and shall dance all night, and eat ices, and sit in corners with the dearest fellow in all the world, who is extremely pleased with me."

"Instinct tells me that he dances like a pair of tongs," reply I, amiably.

Lenore reddens.

"Poor Jemima!" she says, with a sort of resentful pity. "No wonder you say spiteful things! You are twenty-nine; you are first with nobody! how can you bear to go on living? what can you have to think about all day and all night?"

"Think about!" repeat I, cynically. "Oh! I do not know. Sometimes my latter end, and sometimes my dinner."

"Poor old Jemima !"

"It is a mercy," continue I, reflectively, "that one's palate outlives one's heart; one can still relish red mullet when one has lost all appetite for moonshine."

"Bravo, Miss Herrick,' cries a voice, as Scrope emerges from behind the portiere, which hides a little inner room, and lounges with something of his old sleepy manner to the fire. We both start.

"Who gave you leave to come here?" asks Lenore, sharply.

Why did not you cough, or sneeze, or sigh, to let us know you were there, instead of meanly listening to all we had to say?"

66

Neither of you said anything either confidential, or that demanded contradiction," replies the young man, leaning his back against the chimney-piece, and looking down with insouciant defiance on the girl at his feet. "You, Miss Lenore, modestly observed that you were nineteen and very handsome, while Miss Jemima remarked that red mullet were better than moonshine, and that Le Mesurier danced like a pair of tongs; in both cases I have the good fortune to agree with her."

"You have, have you?"

"You are roasting all the life out of that bit of deutzia in your dress," says the young man, indicating with a slight motion of the hand the white flower that, resting on Lenore's breast, contrasts the dark folds of her serge gown; "suppose you give it me?"

Suppose I do not!"

"You will really, won't you?" (stooping forward a little, and stretching out his hand to receive the demanded gift).

"Most certainly not!"

"All right!" (resuming his former position, and speaking with languid indifference); "it is a half-withered little vegetable, and I am not sure that I would take it now if you offered it me; but all the same, I have a conviction that before the evening is over it will be mine."

"You have, have you?" cries Lenore, with flashing eyes; sooner than that you should ever have it-look here!"

She runs to the window, unbolts the shutters, and opening the casement throws the flower out into the wild sleet. Thrice the winter's cold gust drives it back against her, but the third time it disappears. Then she shuts the window, and returns to the fire.

What a fine thing it is to have a spirit!" says Scrope, walking to the door. He does not look particularly vexed, but his cheek is flushed. When he is gone, I retire behind the portière to write letters; Lenore maintains her former position, thinking, smiling to herself, and curling the pug's tight fawn tail round her fingers. In about ten minutes the door re-opens, and Mr. Scrope again enters. His boots are miry, his shooting-coat is drenched, large rain drops shine and glisten on his bare gold curls, but in his hand he holds the bit of deutzia, muddied, stained, dis-petaled almost past recognition, but still the identical spray that floated out on the storm blast through the opened window.

My presentiments seldom deceive me," says the young man, advancing to the fire, speaking with his old drawl, and wiping the luckless flower with his pocket-handkerchief; "feel how wet I am" (extending his coat sleeve).

Silence.

"I am sorry I was so long," continues he, spreading his hands to the blaze; but it was ill work grubbing among the dark wet gardenborders; the rain put out my eyes, and hissed in my ears, but, don't you know one hates to be beaten ?"

I peep at them through the portiere. Lenore has sprung to her feet, and stands facing him. "Give it me back!" she cries, imperiously. "Most certainly not, as you tersely observed just now."

"Give it me this instant!" with a stamp, advancing a step nearer, and trying to snatch it out of his hand.

"Au contraire" (holding it high above her head). "I mean to dry it in silver paper, and inscribe upon it, 'Souvenir from Miss Lenore !'"

"I will give you any other instead of it," says Lenore, dropping her Xantippe tone, and growing conciliatory. "I will even pin it in your coat to-night. There!"

"Thanks. I have contracted a particular penchant for this one." She does not repeat her entreaties, but I see her face working.

Why are you so anxious to have it back ?" asks Scrope, tormentingly, standing close to her on the hearthrug; "don't snatch-it is unladylike-it is wet, it is limp, it is deader than a door-nail."

"Paul gave it me!" cries the girl, bursting into a storm of tears, "You know he did; and he will be so angry when he sees you with it."

He tosses it contemptuously to her: "Take it! I would not have it at a gift. You told me once that you never cried, and this is the second time in two days that I have seen you in tears."

They have forgotten all about me. He is leaning his elbow on the mantelshelf, and staring morosely at her, as she wipes her eyes.

"The second time!" (looking up at him with the tears still sparkling on her lashes). "What do you mean ?"

"Do you think I did not see your red eyes at luncheon yesterday asks Scrope, scornfully. "You sat with your back to the light, and laughed more than usual, but you did not deceive me."

She turns half away, looking put out at the accusation, which she is unable to rebut.

"What had you been quarreling about ?" asks the young man, eagerly; "as usual, about me?"

"You are right," she answers, turning her great angry grey eyes upon him; "it was about you; it is always about you; if it were not for you, we should never have a word! Why do you insist on

thrusting yourself between him and me? Why do you not go away? There are a dozen other places where, I daresay, you would be welcome. Why cannot you leave this one, where you must see that you are in the way?"

"May I ask how?" His voice is cold, but it is the cold of strangled emotion.

"Did not I tell you a hundred times at Dinan what a bore and a nuisance I thought you?" asks the girl, half in bitter jest, half in earnest. 66 'Why do you make me say these rude things to you over

again ?"

He looks at her steadfastly. "You mean them now; you did not mean them then."

"Did not I?" (indignantly) "ask Jemima."

"Lenore" (his lips growing white) " you said 'go,' but, as I stand here, I swear your eyes said 'stay.'"

"They did not!" she cries, passionately; "they never did; if they had-if they ever had been so unfaithful to him, I would have torn them out!"

"Did you think me a bore and a nuisance, when I lay at your feet those summer mornings under the chestnuts on Mont Parnasse, and read Manfred' to you?"

"Why I

"That I did," she answers, with vicious emphasis. slept half the time, and dislocated my jaw with yawning the other half! Not one man in a hundred can read poetry, and you" (bursting out into angry laughter)" you rolled your R's, and ranted with

the best of them."

Mr. Scrope turns sharply away, to hide his bitter mortification.

"Why do not you go?" continues Lenore, with her startling candour; "it cannot be very amusing to you being here now; the partridges are so wild that you cannot get near them, and Sylvia never has any pheasants-go! go!"

Again he turns and faces her. "Are you serious?" he says, while all his boyish face twitches. "I know you never stick at saying anything that will hurt your fellow-creatures' feelings, but do you really mean that you wish me to leave this house?"

"I do, distinctly."

"That the sight of me takes away your appetite, or his, which is it?" "Both."

"Miss Lenore" (dropping his sneering tone, and trying to take her hand), "I have been impertinent to you. I own it. I had no right to sneer at him behind his back-it was mean and womanish of me; but-but-you were a little friendly to me at Dinan, and it is hard to be shelved all in a minute."

"At Dinan you were never anything more than a pis aller.”

"If I promise never to address you unless you first speak to me,' says the young fellow, entreatingly; "not to look at you more than I can help; to be no more to you than the footman who hands you soup, will you let me stay then?"

"Fiddlesticks!" replies she, with plain common sense; "nobody

can efface themselves in the way you describe; staying in the house with a person one must be brought into constant contact with them. I say again-I say it three times-go! Go! GO!"

"I will go, then," answers Scrope, steadying his voice with a great effort, and speaking with cold quiet; "but I will not go unpaid. Yes; I will go, but on one only condition."

"What is it?"

"That you dance with me to-night-not a beggarly once, as you might with Webster, or any other bowing acquaintance, but threefour times."

"I will do nothing of the kind, I will have no bargaining with you," replies Lenore, with dignity.

"Miss

"Then I will stay," cries Scrope, with angry excitement. Lenore, it is not your house; you cannot have me turned out of doors, much as you would wish it; eyesore as I am to you, I will stay!"

"Do!" she says, with a contemptuous sneer; "it will be a gentlemanlike act, of a piece with the rest of your conduct."

("That was a nasty one," think I, from behind the portiere.) There is a moment's silence.

"Say no more bitter things," says Scrope, in a changed, rough voice; "if you tried from now till the judgment-day, you never could beat that last; and the worst of it is that it was true; it was ungentlemanlike; but when one has gone mad, one is not particular about one's manners, as perhaps you will discover some fine day."

Lenore is silent.

"Make your mind easy, I will go: to-night if you wish."

"There is no such wonderful hurry to-morrow will do perfectly." "To-morrow, then."

"Thanks."

"Lenore" (speaking with cutting emphasis), "you are the handsomest woman in the world, and the one who has the knack of saying the nastiest things: if your face drives men mad, your tongue brings them back to sanity pretty quickly; other women's sharp speeches pour off one like water: yours bite and sting."

"Perhaps " (indifferently).

A little stillness.

Again I peep. Scrope has sat down by the table: his elbows rest on the Utrecht velvet cover, among all Sylvia's silly little knickknacks: his hands shade his face.

"Don't look so tragic!" says my sister, in a mollified voice, sidling up to him; "I own that I thought of myself first; I always do; it is my way; but if you could have sense to perceive it, you would see that it is quite as much for your interest as mine that you should go;-my dear boy" (laying her hand on his coat-sleeve), "I have a horrible suspicion that you are crying! please disabuse me of it,"