rected to "Mrs. Galton, Haversham Grange, Haversham, Norfolk." After that Mr. Ffrench went to bed in a low-pitched room, and dreamt that he was in a boat that was being pulled round a headland by two long-dead friends of his. In his arms a woman was lying, and she wore the Greek costume, and her face was the face of Theo Leigh. This mingling of the real and the ideal discomposed him sorely in his sleep, and finally caused him to wake with a start and a curse. After remaining intensely wide awake for a time, he got up and destroyed that letter which he had written with so much care and thought, and resolved to leave Houghton to-morrow.

But with the dawning of that morrow came the death of the resolution. The bright clear April air, the appetite which it engendered, the difficulty of finding in broad daylight a reason why he should do so, and above all the habit he had of always doing as he wished, decided him upon remaining yet another day in the village to which he had drifted aimlessly, the village that had shown him that which he had never thought to look upon again-something that had the power to stir him.

He may readily be forgiven for not remaining at the Bull long after breakfast. He stayed just long enough to write another letter to Mrs. Galton, and this time he wrote it in haste and gave no pains to its composition. Then, when he had given the epistle into the hands of a trusty-looking idler, who made many promises as to its rapid delivery at the post-office, he walked up to the Leighs', for the sake of borrowing the Dollond and going upon the look-out.

Had Theo expected him? He almost longed to ask her, there was so full an assurance of what her answer would be in the vivid brightness of her face when he appeared. It was the flush of blissful realisation more than gratified surprise. It was such a flush as a woman can flame out upon the man who moves her in very truth alone. Harold Ffrench was a man, nothing more nor less, and he read it aright.

She was far too open a book, this girl of nineteen, for him not to read, and read aright at a glance. It had been the expectation, the hope of seeing him which had robed her this morning with a grace a woman never can attain until the spirit of love bestows it upon her. There was a seductive softness about the folds of the muslin bodice this day that could come only from the softened touch of the hand that had learnt to tremble at a heart thrill, a very tenderness of treatment about the flow of the skirt that could only be the result of that visual accuracy which is solely her portion who would adorn still more what may perchance

seem beautiful already in the eyes of him who is now the world to her. There was all this, and Harold Ffrench saw that there was all this, and still more besides. For on the face of Theo Leigh there had come a light which was a revelation to him of the heart that dwelt in the girl; and he knew that this light beams only once in a life-time, and then for the man who first thoroughly awakens that heart, and causes it to know that it beats for some other purpose than that of mere existence.

The heroines of old romance were always dressed in white muslin at most incongruous times and seasons. White muslin represented purity, poverty, grace, and guilelessness, and they one and all wore it. But we costume in these days with a more rigorous eye and a more correct taste. We go back to the fashion books of the year in which the events we relate occurred, and so in these minor matters are rarely caught tripping. This confession may weaken the interest of those readers who decline to believe that novels are built up bit by bit, and who elect to favour the supposition that they are struck out of nothing in a white heat of inspiration. But those who care for correctness of detail will be glad to learn that when we give a full description of the ball-dress of our heroine, we do so on unimpeachable authority.

On this April morning Theo had dressed herself in a muslin that was a muslin of muslins, a very miracle of clearness and fiueness. It had a white ground, powdered thickly with black dots that rendered the white ground still clearer and whiter, as does the patch on the cheek of beauty; over and above these black dots there was a violet something that might be a leaf or a beetle or a mere invention of the designer, and the effect of this when hung upon Theo Leigh, and tied in round her waist and neck and wrists, was something that muslin might well feel proud of itself for attaining.

There had been a little comment at the breakfast-table on this appearance of Theo when she came down that morning so radiant with joy.

66

Why, Theo! how's this?" her mother had said; and her father even had looked up proudly at his darling, and remarked, "Halloa, Theo! how fine you are!" To which Theo had replied, "It is so hot, you know, not too hot at all, but quite warm enough to make me take the coolest dress I had into wear." As the coolest dress was likewise uncommonly becoming, who could say aught against the selection, whatever the cause of it?

They kept early hours at Houghton, and Theo had plenty of time to feel remorse, and cry, oh! the folly of it! (as to the musli

It was a luscious morning, this first summer day that Theo Leigh and Harold Ffrench spent together. What matter the girl being young and the man no longer so? She had the heart of a woman, and he the soul of a connoisseur for whatever was beautiful in nature or art. That summer morning was luscious to them both, the sweetness of it mounted like wine to their brains, and soon it was a silent enjoyment of it that they felt as they sat and rested on the bank of marsh rushes after the prolonged stroll, in the course of which her little hand had more than once found a resting-place and support on his arm.

How came she to be out with the stranger alone? It would have been a breach of etiquette had they been in a town, but in that rugged little village to defer to etiquette would have been a profanation. He had asked Theo to go down and look at the rising tide with him, and Theo had gone without a word of objection, and remained there in that open familiar solitude without a particle of fear-a shadow of suspicion.

Nor was there cause for either. The most rigid could have been defied to cast a stone at him for what he had said to, and thought of, this girl as yet. There was no harm done, not a particle that could have been taken hold of, as yet. He had spoken to Theo Leigh of literature, of art, of famous men and foreign places. Theo had listened, and thought it passing sweet, that was all. He had said no word of love, he had refrained from the slightest look of it. Through the whole of that bright spring morning he had remembered his own age and her youth, and some far more insurmountable barrier than either to anything but friendship between them.

But guarded as he was, that sunny morning was very sweet to them both.

It was very pleasant to the girl, whose intercourse alike with men and books had been rather limited, to hear him speak of great names, which were but names to her and nothing more. We had no shilling magazines in those days to keep country people au courant with those who give us of their best in monthly parts. Moreover, there were no railwaystation libraries, and lieutenants of coastguard stations were not likely to be the possessors of an exhaustless choice of books. Therefore was Theo's reading range a limited one, and her

She

But all that she had found to read she had read with understanding. The reading had been desultory and promiscuous, but it had been dear to her, and was consequently well remembered. She was better up in Scott and James, in Bulwer Lytton and Shelley, than Mr. Ffrench himself. She was brimming over with quotations from Shelley, in fact, and some of them in their fiery force fell very strangely from her fresh young mouth. was wonderfully skilled in the art of separating the moral from the merit, and dwelling entirely upon the latter. From her own frank confession he learnt that she had seen little of the world--nothing of "society," according to his acceptation of the word. her perceptive faculty enabled her to coin from the coarser metal which had been around her tangibly, responses that were golden in the perfection of their propriety to all he said, to all he suggested.

Yet

Harold Ffrench found himself talking to Theo as he had never talked to a woman before, and yet his intercourse with her sex had been of no restricted order. He had talked about love often, but he had kept what lore was his for the solace of his solitary hours, for the benefit of his few male friends. Never a woman had come into his possession or crossed his path before who had been capable or ambitious-which was it?-of making him feel that she was on a mental equality with himself. They had been satisfied with the manner of his words and the languishing of his eyes, and had lightly regarded his matter and language.

But Theo, clever in her very ignorance, pandered to his vanity unsuspectingly. She showed such deep interest in what he said, that the man could not but feel desirous of saying it well. She kindled so brilliantly, that it was well worth his while to strive to make her kindle still more. He had an artist's soul and an artist's eye, and was always on the look-out for studies from nature. Theo was

the fairest that fate had thrown in his path for many a long day.

Nature herself had a share in the evil that was eventually wrought. Had April been herself this year, he would have been chilled maybe into prudence. But she was all smiles, all warm dazzling smiles and early fruit-blossoms and premature roses. All things develop more quickly under the sun. The feeling that would have been long in maturing itself in a dull small room by a fire that would never burn properly by reason of its being suffered to get very low indeed, because it might "come

warm in the afternoon," the feeling that would have been of slow growth under these circumstances, sprang up speedily in the chequered shade, in the hum of sun-born insects, and the fragrance of sun-born flowers. The day, the hour was enough for the girl. All joy, all that made her know how sweet a thing life was, pervaded her spirit in his presence, and in her ecstasy of bliss she took no heed of what the morrow might bring forth. And he ! Who can tell "what idle dream, what lighter thought, what vanity full dearly bought, joined to her eyes' dark witchcraft," chained him to the village in which Theo Leigh underwent her transformation ?

For chained there he was, apparently; he took a sketch of "the Point" the second day of his sojourn at Houghton, and when that was done, there was no good and valid reason why he should have remained there any longer. But still he stayed on yet another day, and yet another, till the days grew into a week, and the week into a fortnight, and at the end of the fortnight he called Miss Leigh "Theo " in a tone that made her love her name.

The cold in clime are cold in blood.

Their love is scarcely worth the name; will all my English readers feel disapprovingly towards my heroine because this love of hers was no time-ripened one, but a thing that flooded her soul like a sun-burst in a moment? I own that it was reprehensible not to put out the light for sweet prudence' sake for awhile, but she did not, she could not. The statement is true, and must stand; at the end of a fortnight Harold Ffrench called Miss Leigh "Theo," and Theo rejoiced in his so calling her.

CHAPTER III. KATE GALTON.

THAT letter-successor to the one whose composition cost Harold Ffrench so much care and thought-which we saw last in the hands of the trusty idler upon Houghton, arrived at its destination about ten o'clock on the following morning, and was read by its recipient over her solitary breakfast-table.

"How disgusting of Harold!" was her exclamation, as she concluded the perusal of the epistle, which ran as follows:

"Houghton, 8th April, 1851. "DEAR KATE,—The headland will be the very thing for our picture. I shall have to avail myself of the courtesy of the officer in command of the station here in order to get put over to the beach. By the way he happens curiously enough to have been in Greece with

me.

"I wish you would show any civility you can to his wife and daughter. I think they would like to see the Grange, and to know you ; and as Mr. Leigh intends taking his little girl to town in May, you might act as her chaperone if you knew her before. Couldn't you call? Yours always,

"HAROLD FFRENCH."

"How disgusting of Harold! he doesn't say a word about coming back here. No, I won't call on his friends; I'll see them anywhere first."

She was a very pretty woman, this cousin of Mr. Ffrench's, of whom he had said to himself that it would please her to please him. A fair, tall woman of thirty with loosely arranged nut-brown hair, and liquid blue eyes, and an espiègle face. A pretty woman and a fascinating one-not the ideal British matron, but still a mighty pleasant one if nothing that was very dear to you was in her keeping.

"Dull as I am here! so heartless of him," she muttered after once more reading the letter; men are so horribly selfish.” Then a few tears of weariness and spite welled up into her liquid blue eyes, and Mrs. Galton rose up and walked to the window.

It was a French window, and it opened on a flight of steps which led down into a garden, gorgeous even at that early season with the brightest flowers. Beyond the flower beds and the lawn there was an invisible fence and a haha, and away from this a timbered meadow that kept up the park-like and pleasure-ground appearance of the place.

By-and-by across that meadow and over the ha-ha and along the lawn and up the steps came a man whose progress towards her she watched indifferently at first and then with contemptuous eyes. But as he came near enough to read them Kate banished the contempt and reinstated the normal expression of innocence so successfully that Mr. Galton had not the smallest occasion to be dissatisfied with his wife's matutinal welcome.

"I'm sorry I could not get down in time to pour out your coffee, dear," she said, holding up her cheek to be kissed as he entered. He was a tall well-looking man of five or six and thirty, with a florid, good tempered face, and close cropped auburn hair and whiskers.

"Look here: don't pore over your painting to-day," he said blithely; come out with me ; I want to go to Norwich to look at a young horse Jack Able has, and I thought I'd drive you and the kid if you'd go."

"Much too long a ride for that child, John. I'll go with you, of course. As to the painting, I'm sick of it."

"Already?"

She looked up into his eyes, and laughed. "I do tire of most things soon, don't I, dear?"

"As Haversham and I are not amongst them, I can't say I care very much." He bent over her and kissed her as he said these words: his brow was wet with the exertion of walking rapidly home over rough fields to tell her of his plan for the day as soon as he had formed it, and the embrace with which he accompanied the kiss was a rough one.

The woman he embraced and kissed so confidingly would have deceived the father of deceit himself had he come in her way. John Galton's salute revolted her, but she checked all outward signs of it, and replied,

"Tired of you and of Haversham !—my dear John, tired of heaven and happiness sooner. But listen here. Couldn't we get up something that would amuse that poor cousin of mine? We bored him, dear, evidently, with our conjugalities, for I have had a letter from him this morning, bemoaning as usual: a plague he is, isn't he?"

where's the kid? I have not seen her today."

"Out in the garden, I hope, this fine morning-in the south garden, dear; if you'll go and look for Bijou I will write to poor Harold, and be ready to go to Norwich with you in half an hour."

Then the husband and wife separated, he to look for his child, she to write to her cousin, to whom she would not have written without her husband's sanction-for Kate Galton was very wary.

Wary even in her treatment of the husband upon whom such wariness was thrown away, for it was in his nature to trust blindly and wholly when he loved. Wary in her present conduct towards the man who had failed her as cousin, friend, lover, and to whom she had been most unguardedly frank in the past. If experience had not taught this woman anything else, it had taught her to be most wondrously cautious cautious, that is, about many things

about the majority of her acts and the whole of her correspondence. Of her spoken words she took less heed, provided none other than

"No, I needn't, as far as duty goes; for he isn't my brother, though I've always looked upon him as one; but he has always been most affectionate and generous to me, and I should like to see him happy."

66 'Well, what does he want now?" "He doesn't 'want'-that is, he don't say that he wants anything; but he's evidently bored where he is-at some dirty inn in a dirty village; and he doesn't seem to like to come here, poor fellow, without an excuse. I wish you would give him one, John."

"Pooh! An excuse-what can he want of an excuse for coming to a house where he has always been made welcome?"

"Ah! but that's been by me, and I am his sister-I mean his cousin, you know. You must write and ask him to come back to help you in something; that will make him think that you really want him, and that you don't only tolerate him because you're fond of me."

"I daresay he's happy enough where he is; if he were not he'd go somewhere else."

"No, he isn't happy, John. His letter (I wish I'd not torn it up) is written in such a doleful strain; do get him back here."

"I have nothing more alluring to hold out to him than the prospect of seeing the hay cut by-and-by, and the young horse I'm going to Able about to-day broken."

were by. But in her letters she was careful, very careful.

Fourteen years before, when she was a girl of sixteen, very vain and very impressionable, her cousin Harold Ffrench had come back to England after a prolonged absence, during which he had been a myth to her, so little had his family heard of his doings. But when she was sixteen, Harold came home and took up his residence at her father's house, and devoted himself in a sort of elder-brotherly way to his

cousin Kate.

The elder-brotherly manner, admirably as it was designed and carried out, broke down after a period. Kate's cheek did not exactly

grow pale and thinner than was well for one so young," nor did her eye hang with a mute observance on all his motions, but she grew desperately fond of him and showed it in her own way and he, being unable either to reciprocate fully or to tear himself from the girl who was developing fresh fascinations every day, tried to cure her with calmness, and he failed.

His habits of intimate intercourse with her had come on so gradually that at the end of three years he was startled to find that others —their relations, mutual friends, the world at large, indeed-were deceived into supposing that which he had sedulously refrained from giving the girl herself just cause

her-for up to a certain point he had been very

confess that he had been very injudiciousas injudicious as the girl herself; and that, considering how much she knew how well she was cautioned, was saying not a little. But this confession to his own heart and to her did not mend matters, for Kate refused to aid him in making it patent that it had been in all fraternal kindness, and nothing more, this intimacy of theirs. Young girl as she was, she was very wary even then; and she thought that the world's opinion might do what her charms had been powerless to effect-namely, coerce him into a course of conduct in which there would be both wrong and risk.

"What is it that makes you eternally swear that you never can be more than a brother to me, Harold?" she asked him once. " I will look over the impertinence, if you will tell me the cause. Is it that you care more for another woman?"

He shook his head.

"Don't tempt me, Kate-for your Own sake."

"Not tempt you to tell?—but I will, dear. If you had commenced your cautions at an earlier stage, I might have accepted them and your resolve in silence; but after letting people think for so long that we are engaged, I think I ought to be told the reason why we cannot be."

“I didn't mean don't tempt me to tell that; but don't tempt me in any other way. My fate is devilish hard as it is, without a girl like yourself showing me constantly how much brighter it might be.”

Harold Ffrench had been more winningly handsome and attractive when he said this than at the later date when I introduced him

and Theo Leigh to my readers. He might

His

have won the heart of the hardest in those earlier days, had he essayed to do so. cousin Kate was a vain girl; not one burdened with deep feeling, but she was young and impressionable, and she abominated being baffled. She knew that he liked her, and in that he was better looking than any other of her acquaintances she liked him too. So when he pleaded that she should not tempt him, and declared that his fate was hard already, she grew very daring-daring as only an insatiably vain, cool-headed, unimpassioned woman may be with impunity.

"Harold, I could bear anything—I could stand anything for you or from you," she exclaimed; and her looks were more eloquent than her words.

"You don't know what you are saying, Kate," he replied almost coldly.

"Yes, I do; I know full well what I am saying, and I mean it."

Then, despite the dangerous flattery contained in those words, and that meaning of hers, this man, who was no better and no worse than thousands of his class and age, said words for her good that were very hard to utter to so fair, so winning a woman.

"My dear Kate, how you have deceived yourself and me for four years."

"Deceived you? No."

"Indeed you have, to the extent of making me believe that you really loved me, and almost making yourself believe it too. Accept the tribute of my unbounded astonishment and admiration. I had no idea you were a young lady of such resource." Then he added, fearing that she might press him again on this point, and judging that the cause justified a little bitterness :

"O little Kate, forgive me if I am bitter, but you have shown me what I ought to have known before-that all women are as deceitful as the devil. You might as well have let me think well of you." Then he muttered words to the effect that "women had been his bane, some with the love they bore him, and others with their hate," the sound of which reached Kate's ears.

"Don't trouble yourself to taunt in poetry; that's not necessary for my complete cure," she said in a tone that made Harold exclaim, "Gad! you cold-blooded women have the best of it. Women are as deceitful as the devil. Curse it, you might as well have let me think well of you."

Shortly after this conversation, Harold Ffrench had gone away roaming no one knew whither again, and soon after his departure Kate went down to stay at Newmarket for the race week. She was in rare spirits and high beauty at the time, for Harold's abrupt departure was attributed to her having refused him. This created a fictitious interest in the minds of men about her, and brought her a certain popularity that was as pleasant to her vanity as had been Harold's love. At Newmarket the chief object of interest was the winner of the "cup," "Beelzebub;" and next in the order of the talked-about was "Beelzebub's" owner and breeder, a Mr. Galton, a Norfolk squire, who lived on his own estate, and just escaped being a county man.

He was a pleasant, good-tempered, goodlooking man, not too intelligent, Kate thought, but not stupid by any means, for he soon made it evident to the young lady herself and all around that he admired her very much. Had he not been the chief object of interest in that sporting circle through being "Beelzebub's owner, Kate would have turned up her nose at him. As it was, she was gracious