fault. If I had had my way it would not have been sudden-it would have happened full six months ago. No one ought to know that better than you."

"Ought I?" say I vaguely. "I dare say-but to tell you the truth -so many incoherences about Lenore-her eyes, her ankles, and her inhumanities have been poured into my ears, that I get them muddled together; I cannot, at a moment's notice, assign to each lover his own several Jeremiad."

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You are spiteful," replies the young fellow, laughing a little, but looking offended. "If I had known how little you were listening to me I would not have talked to you about her.”

Poorest, dearest Lenore!" repeats Sylvia, smiling a little patronisingly. "Quite the dearest thing in the world, and, mercifully for her, incapable of fretting much about anything or anybody. What a gift! -if she could but give one the receipt"-sighing and pensively passing through her fingers the beads of a great jet rope, that she wears round her neck.

"Jemima!" says Scrope, impulsively, putting his hand again fraternally on my shoulder. "I do not suppose that they will do me any good-not a barleycorn; but still I have a morbid desire for your good wishes; they will be tardy and lugubrious, I am aware, but such as they are, give them me. If I" (reproachfully) "had heard that you were going to be married I should not have been so slow or so dismal in offering mine."

"That is a very safe position," reply I drily; "if you had seen me flying towards the moon you would have complimented me on the ease and grace with which I flapped my wings. I do wish you good luck -there-but whether you will get it or not is another matter."

"But-but-you-think that it will be?" says Scrope, with his whole eager heart in his voice. "Now that you have shut your mouth, and that your eyes no longer look as if they were falling out of your head, and that you can talk rationally-you believe it?”

Upon my honour I cannot say," reply I, laughing uncomfortably, "Lenore, as Sylvia truly observed just now, is quite the dearest thing in the world, but sometimes she goes round and round, like the sails of a windmill. I have a good mind to go and ask her myself." So I go.

CHAPTER XV.

WHAT JEMIMA SAYS.

"Up and down, up and down, up and down, with her hands behind her back, I find her marching in the ordered solitude of her own room, as I had expected.

"Good heavens!" say I, entering, with my shoulders raised nearly to my ears, and my hands spread out.

She stops in her persevering trudge, looks me coolly over, and says, "Après ?"

I throw my eyes up to the ceiling, and shake my head several times, but words utter I none.

"You have heard, I suppose," she says quietly. "I see he is running all over the house button-holing everybody, as the Ancient Mariner did the Wedding Guest. I hope he has told Norris, and William, and Frederic-it would be a sad oversight if he has not."

"It is true, then ?" I say, gasping. "When he told me I would not believe it-I said so-I said I would ask you myself."

"You might have saved yourself the trouble of the journey upstairs," replies she, calmly, "but as you are not fat and scant of breath,' like Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, I suppose it does not matter much."

"Good heavens!" say I, for the second time.

"Try a new ejaculation," suggests my sister, smiling; "I am tired of that one."

"And-and-and your reason?"

"Reason?" repeats she, laughing rather harshly. "What extraordinary questions you do ask! Is not it on the surface? I am in love, to be sure-deeply in love."

I am on the verge of being delivered of a third "Good heavens!" but, recollecting myself, suppress it.

"If you remember, you did not approve of my first choice," says Lenore, with a bitter smile; "are you any better pleased with my second ?"

"Much better," I answer emphatically; "far better-only it is horribly and indecently sudden-that is all!"

Silence.

"As for the other," I continue, "you are right. I never could understand what you saw in him: a long nose, a yard of scarlet beard, and a sulky temper, seemed to me his whole stock-in-trade." For one second her eyes flash with a furious pain, then grow quiet.

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Exactly," she says, composedly. "Now in the case of the present nose there is nothing to be desired, is there?-nice and short, and runs straight down the middle of his face, without deviating a hair's breadth to right or left; such nice curls, too, all over his head, as if they were put in curl papers every night-and such dear little teeth!"

"For shame!" cry I, indignantly; "you are describing a doll. Lenore! Lenore! what are you made of? Beauty and love are thrown away upon you, and you have a perverted taste for ugliness and indifference."

She shrugs her shoulders.

"One may abuse one's own property, I suppose. If you remember he is my doll now-curls and dear little teeth and all!"

I turn away, pained and disgusted.

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Stay," she says, laying her hand on mine; "do not be cross. I am serious-look at me! I am sure I do not feel as if there were a joke to be got out of the whole of me."

I look at her, as she tells me-look with uncomfortable misgivings at the bright beauty that has prospered her so little her cheeks are crimson, and the hand which holds mine burns, burns.

"Attend to me," she says imploringly. "I am very much in earnest. I have done better this time, have not I? I have been more wise at last ?"

"This one is much more suitable to me, is not he? I—I” (laughing feverishly) “I begin to think that I did not care really for the other so much after all; it was only fancy-it was only my perversity. I wanted to get him because I thought nobody else could. I-I was not really fond of him, was I ?"

She looks with a sort of wild wistfulness into my face for confirmation of her words, but I do not think she finds any.

'He is much more suitable to me," she repeats vaguely, as if trying to convince herself by iteration; " much more in every respect. So much better-looking."

"Immeasurably," say I emphatically; "not that I see what that has got to say to it."

"And better off," she continues, still holding and unconsciously pressing my hand with her hot dry fingers. "We should have been miserably poor, Paul and I—miserably; and I hate poverty; I hate trying to make both ends meet. They will meet now and lap over without any difficulty, will not they ?"

"I imagine so."

"And in age, too," she goes on eagerly, "we are far better fitted; is it not so? Paul was old-older than his age even-old in himself."

"He might well have been your father," I say, laughing vindictively, "except that no one would have accused you of emanating from so hard-featured a stock."

"No," she says, not in the least attending to my sarcasm, "of course not; altogether, you see," smiling mechanically—“ altogether you see, Jemima, it is all for the best. I am nearly quite convinced of it now, and of course I shall grow more and more convinced every day, shall not I?”—looking at me with imploring inquiry.

I make no response, and we both lapse into silence-a silence spent by Lenore in wandering aimlessly about, pulling the blinds up and down, disarranging the few wintry flowers in the vase on the toilet

table, altering the furniture. At last she speaks with sudden abruptness:

"It is to be soon-very soon!"

"He is wise there, I think," I answer, following her doubtfully about with my eyes. 'Poor boy, he has not studied you for the last six months to no purpose; he knows what a weathercock you are, and is bent on making sure of you while you are in the vein. Who can tell when the wind may change?"

"You are mistaken," she says quickly, "it was not his idea at all; it was my suggestion. I suppose" (laughing with the same forced and hollow sound that had before pained me)—“I suppose it is the first instance on record of such a proposition emanating from the lady, but it was. Yes, you may look as if you were going to eat me-I cannot help that it was!"

"Good heavens!" repeat I devoutly, lapsing unintentionally, for the third time, into my favourite ejaculation.

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Yes, soon-very soon !" she says, half to herself, pulling her rings on and off, lacing her fingers together and then again unlacing them; "and we will have a very smart wedding-very! I hate sneaking to church with only the clerk and the beadle, as if one were ashamed of oneself. We will have all the neighbours, and men down from Gunter's, and a ball."

I stare distrustfully at her: her eyes are sparkling like diamonds at night, the splendid carnation that fever gives paints her cheeks. "And you will have it put in all the papers," she says, laughing restlessly; "all of them-you must not forget-a fine long flourishing paragraph-do you mind ?-in all of them."

"What an extraordinary thing to give a thought to!" I say, suspiciously. "If you had two columns of the Times devoted to you, how much good would it do you?"

"Good? Oh, none at all; but it is amusing. Flowers of newspaper eloquence are always entertaining, don't you know? And one likes one's friends-one's friends at a distance-to know what is happening to one."

A light begins to break upon me, but it is such an unpleasant one that for the moment I ask no more questions. A pause. There are so many things-true, yet eminently disagreeable-to be said, that I hesitate which to begin upon. Lenore presently saves me the trouble.

"If-if-he were to see me now," she says, sitting down at my feet, and smiling excitedly up at me, "he could not think I was pining much for him, could he?"

The unpleasant light grows clearer.

"When he sees the account of my wedding in the papers-so soon so immediately-such a brilliant marriage, too; I am so glad it is

a good one-he will realise" (laughing ironically) "how irreparable an injury his desertion has inflicted on me, will not he?"

"Is it possible?" say I, with shocked emphasis. "I suspected it when you began to talk to me; I am sure of it now. Lenore ! Lenore! you are going to be madder than all Bedlam and Hanwell together!"

"I am am I?" speaking with listless inattention to my words, and still pursuing her own thoughts.

"Marrying one man to pique another always seemed to me the most thorough'pulling your nose to vex your face," I continue, in great heat.

No remark, no comment on my homely illustration.

'Suppose he does hear of your marriage; suppose he does read every paragraph in all the papers about it; suppose he reads that you had twelve bridesmaids, and that you went off in a coach-and-six, how much the worse will he be or how much the better you?"

Still no answer; but she listens.

"He will feel a little stab of pain, perhaps of mortified vanity, more likely; but it will be a very little one, not big enough to spoil his dinner (he likes his dinner); while you, my poor soul, where will you be ?" She has been lying with her head in my lap; at these last words she snatches it hurriedly up.

"What do you mean ?" she cries, in a fury. "How dare you pity me? I am not a 'poor soul.' I am a very fortunate person-very much to be envied. Hundreds of people would change places with me; so would you, if you could."

"Hm! I don't know."

A pause.

"Lenore," say I earnestly, putting my hand under her chin, and lifting her unwilling face towards mine, "listen to me, for I am talking sense. I never had a husband, which is more my misfortune than my fault, but all the same I know what I am about. If you marry Charlie now you will like him at last; I am sure of that. I do not believe in the most perversely faithful woman always hating, always having a distaste for a handsome, manly, loving husband. Yes, you will end by liking him even better than he does you. It is always the way. But you will have to go through purgatory first; and, what is more unfair, you will have to drag him through too, poor boy!"

"Bah!" she says, with a scornful laugh; "it is nothing when you are used to it. If I have not been there, I am sure I do not know where I have been, ever since that accursed ball. Shall I ever again hear those detestable fiddles squeaking, and those vile wind instruments blowing and blaring, without going mad? I doubt it-I doubt it!"-putting her hands wildly to her ears, as if to shut out sounds of utter pain and horror.