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she disturbed this arrangement, and uttered a graphic incisive denunciation against that offender who had caused it to have been maintained so long for worse than nothing.

"That little monkey! if she has wheedled Harold into staying, she shall crawl on her hands and knees in penitence for it."

Having uttered this amiable sentiment, Mrs. Galton felt better, and put on her hat and went forth, as has been stated, along the turfed avenue in the hopes of seeing her cousin coming along the highroad and intercepting him at the side-gate.

They had no lime-trees at Haversham; but the want of the fragrant linden was not felt in that avenue, it was so thickly studded between the trunks of its forest trees with lilacs and with hawthorn bushes in their sweetest, earliest bloom.

And if their odour caused the absence of the linden blossoms to pass unremarked, so did the verdure of the elm-trees leave little room for wishing for the linden's lovely green. Of just the same fair pale hue, with just the same indescribable air of freshness and grace about them, the colour of those leaves brought to her mind a day long passed by, when she, a girl, had listened to Harold Ffrench's stories of lazy hours he had known Unter der Linden in Berlin.

Hours that he had passed there and not alone. But with whom, or whether happily or not, she could never gather, though in these minor matters she was much in his confidence in those days. Walking there, some of the old curiosity as to what this man's secret was arose in her mind, and a new one that had relation to Theo Leigh grew more poignant still.

"Past five" she muttered as she gained the gate and rested her arms upon it; "if he's coming at all he will come soon ;" and she looked anxiously along the dusty road that was rendered unpicturesque by reason of its hedges being clipped to the smallest proportions for the furtherance of agriculture.

He came at last. She, still leaning on the gate, hailed him as he was passing, and the trap was stopped and Harold Ffrench descended from it to join his cousin. It was a hired trap, ill hung, and it had jolted heavily over the roads, and the horse had been a trial also, for it was slow in pace and by no means sensitive to the whip. Altogether he was rather glad than otherwise to descend and join his cousin at the outlet to the shady odoriferous avenue.

"You know the way up to the house? Oh, you don't; well, never mind, you cannot miss it; go on and wait in the yard till I see you," he said to the boy who was let out with the trap. "I wish I had come with you yesterday, Kate," he continued as he took Mrs. Galton's

hand and placed it on his arm. "I have had a terrible time of it with that horse; he's accustomed to considerate people, who get out to relieve him at every hill and dip, and whenever the road is rucky and he ''pears to flag,' and under sundry other circumstances that make travelling with him unpleasent."

"And it is a long way from Houghton," Mrs. Galton replied sympathetically. Now that she had Harold back with her, she did not desire to travel Houghton-wards again. "I thought I should never have reached home yesterday; going it was different, I had something to look forward to-but coming home——"

She paused, and Harold made no answer. What was there to say to a woman-a pretty woman too-who implied that it was returning to a blank when she came to her home and her husband and her child! There was nothing to say-so Harold Ffrench said nothing.

"I have been expecting you all the afternoon, Harold," she went on presently; "and the afternoon has seemed so long; it always does when one is expecting an uncertainty."

"What do you mean by expecting an uncertainty?"

“I did not feel sure that you would come. I suppose my heart was very much set upon it, and that made me fear; Harold, you don't know what it is to me to have you here."

"Rather a bore, I should say, if Mrs. Galton were not far too well-bred a woman to suffer any guest to perceive that he bored her."

She laughed. "Ah! Harold a bore? Well, think that you bore me if you like; perhaps it is as well that you should think so."

"What the devil's she driving at?" he thought. Then a faint idea of the truth dawned upon him-she was trying to drive Theo Leigh out of his head.

"Woman, thy name is- -Kate; you can't resist attempting to be pleasant, even though you're quite pleasant enough without the attempt. Where is Galton? when do you dine?"

"John is on his farm-where else does he care to be? He's particularly entertaining at this present time; his crops are in his mouth morning, noon, and night."

"I'm glad to hear you say that you derive entertainment from the discussion of the source of your husband's property; some women are weak enough to affect to despise it," he replied, as gravely as if her speech had been made in all good faith.

"The bullocks were absorbing in the winter, and the pigs will come on in the autumn ; you will be glad to hear of my prospects of ɛalvation from stagnation.'

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She said it in a little piqued tone, and a temporary flush that was of an entirely differ

ent shade to the permanent one dyed her cheeks for a moment. He noticed neither the tone nor the flush, but after a few moments' pause he went on as if she had not spoken.

"For there's nothing more disheartening to a fellow than to find that his wife does not care about his pursuits, whatever they may be."

"Fortunately, John is not so easily disheartened; he has inoculated Bijou with a taste for his hobbies: the little monkey talks quite learnedly on various farm-yard topics."

"Katy's a dear little thing, by Jove! In a few years she will be grown up, and you'll be 'living your old triumphs over again in your daughter; Kate, you'll have plenty to interest you then."

"I am not quite old enough to take comfort for many things in the thoughts of dowager delights yet, thank you, Harold; and in the meantime, until my daughter is of an age to give me six months' trouble and anxiety perhaps, and then marry and be less to me than ever, you will permit me to remark that my 'lot is not too brilliant,' without giving me a veiled lecture. It's very hard indeed," Mrs. Galton continued, bringing the tears up into her eyes for an instant, and then banishing them abruptly as she reflected on the susceptibility of her lashes, Ivery hard indeed that the only one to whom I have dared to speak as I feel since my marriage should deem me unreasonable, and chill me by cut-and-dried speeches."

"I am oppressed with remorse. Though I don't know what I have done, still I feel that I'm in the wrong."

"Let us sit down here," Mrs. Galton hurriedly exclaimed; and then she planted herself on a mound at the base of a tree, and he stretched himself along on the turf at her feet. "Harold!" she said softly, drooping her head towards him, "nine years ago you ought to have felt remorse."

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He took her hand and brushed his moustache across its firm rosy dimpled palm, but he uttered no word of inquiry, or compliment, or refutation.

"Do you ever think of those days, Harold!" "Occasionally. They were uncommonly pleasant ones: good cook your father had then, to be sure."

"Is it only the cook who lives in your memory as an element of the pleasure you derived from your residence with us? Thank you, Harold."

"No, I have a kindly recollection of the wine also, of which he had good store; what else do you want me to say, Kate? You don't want compliments from me, you don't want me to tell you such truisms as that you are remem

bered by me, do you? How the deuce should you be forgotten?"

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They were my happiest days-and I dwell on them far too often for my peace of mind," she said rising. "Come, Harold, let us go in to dinner." Then she heaved a sigh, and looked resigned and very pretty.

"What do you want me to say?" he asked, as they went on towards the house; and he drew her hand more closely within his arm and pressed it with as much tenderness as he had pressed Theo's but yesterday. "You put strange fancies in my head, my cousin, mine no more; you make me feel that it is well that I should do as I have resolved, and leave Haversham to-morrow."

She had looked forward to a period of uninterrupted intercourse and semi-friendly semisentimental flirtation with him. He was an adept in the art of saying the things she loved to hear,-namely, that she was fair and fascinating. Her husband never complimented her on her good looks, on her grace, or her seductive bearing. John was affectionate, generous, trusting, and considerate to hernothing more. She wanted to inspire a grande passion and see some one very miserable,some one who would be the victim of the first, and exhibit the latter in good style. This resolve of Harold's to leave Haversham so soon was extremely disappointing to her.

"Why go, Harold? You were to stay and go up to town with us; can't you wait for a few days? I shall be quite ready to start in a few days.'

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She paused, and portrayed confusion at having been led by irresistible impulse to the brink of the confession of finding it dull with her husband. Harold Ffrench's determination to leave Norfolk as soon as possible was a fixed one, and had nothing whatever to do with Mrs. Galton. But he knew that it would be soothing to her to fancy, or at any rate to be told, that she had the power to move him in any way. So he soothed her.

66 Why Total abstinence is easier than moderation; that's why."

Then Kate Galton enacted modest embarrassment in a way that was infinitely amusing to the man who knew she did not feel it ; and felt but one regret, which was, that for her own credit's sake she dared not tell of this confession of weakness which Harold Ffrench had made.

"Don't forget to show any attention you may be able to show to Miss Leigh, Kate," said Harold Ffrench the next day, as he was standing before Mrs. Galton's easel correcting the touches she had given to her picture during his absence. He wanted to win some kind of promise from her that she would show kindness to this girl, to whom he had been aught but kind, when he was gone.

"Forget! Am I likely to forget any request of yours?"

"She took an immense liking to you, fell in love with your beauty, and your way,' as she called it. You will be kind to her, won't you?" and then he felt a certain awkwardness when he reflected how indignant Theo would be, if she could but know that he had pleaded to any one to show her kindness.

"Girls of that age are generally bores," Mrs. Galton replied, coolly. "I'll be as civil as the distance will allow."

"She is not a bore." He could not say any more, he dared not trust himself to utter a defence of Theo to his cousin.

"Oh, isn't she? How I shall hate the sight of my tubes and brushes and easel when you are gone, Harold."

"Get Miss Leigh over here and give her some lessons, you're quite capable of doing it."

"I am getting weary of Miss Leigh before I know her. No, Harold, I couldn't desecrate the taste you have developed in me by turning it to account in that way. I will be kind to Miss Leigh in a way that a chit of a girl will appreciate far more fully. I will ask her here, and invite some good parti to meet and fall in love with her.

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The brush trembled in his hand. It was horrible to him to hear Theo spoken about in such a way, and yet what right had he to feel or resent aught on her account?

"Don't make jokes of that sort. You do injustice to your own delicacy as well as Miss Leigh's by the suggestion."

"Do you think Miss Leigh's delicacy would revolt at a good marriage, Harold? Poor fellow! how completely your flower of the wilderness has deceived you. Trust me, if I bring her out and give her the chance, I shall have a nice little list of her conquests to forward you in six months."

"Then in God's name don't bring her out. I can't paint any more this morning," he exclaimed abruptly. He left the room with a darkened brow and an ill-tempered haste, and Mrs. Galton resolved that the chance should be given Theo ere long, for the mention of it moved Harold more than was becoming in her, "Kate's," vassal.

He was to leave the Grange by the three-o'clock

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"That's sketchy.

What street?"

"I have not decided yet. I shall look about to-morrow; to-night I shall put up at an hotel; so you see that I can give you none other than the club address," Harold said hastily to John Galton, though it was John Galton's wife, and not John himself, who had asked for another address than the usual one.

"And your engagements? Are you going to stay with any one, or to travel with any one, or what are you going to do?"

"Nothing. Some people I knew on the Continent are coming over to the raree-show, and I have promised to meet in them in town; that is all."

"Nice people?”

He shrugged his shoulders. "Nice enough." "Then introduce them to me, and I'll do the honours of our great metropolis to them, and save you the trouble."

"You are very kind. I will see about it." "And, Harold, get us an opera-box next Saturday; if you can I will go up on Friday." “You shall have your opera-box on Saturday. By the way, some time or other I wish you would take Miss Leigh to the Opera, she's passionately fond of music."

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"Did Kate suspect such infatuation on my part?" Harold Ffrench asked. And Kate blushed slightly as her husband answered.

"Well, I don't know that she did, only she wants to see you married, and so, I suppose, suspects you to be infatuated before you are." "I must be off; I shall only just catch the train. Good-bye, Galton, good-bye, Kate. Don't plot for me." He whispered the last words as he bent over his cousin's head, and discreet Mrs. Galton answered aloud :

"No, no, John is wrong. I don't venture to suspect you of infatuation, Harold, any more. I made a mistake once. Good-bye."

"What mistake did you ever make about your cousin, Kate?" John Galton asked of his wife when he came back into her presence after seeing his guest off. "Did you ever think he cared for anybody?"

"Yes, it was long ago, dear, when I was a mere child, he seemed to admire a fashionable girl whose name was-but what matters? you are not interested in fashionable girls, nor am I any more (till our Bijou is grown up); but it passed off."

"Oh, did it?" John Galton replied, thoughtfully, and then he took both her sleuder white hands in his and drew her towards him. "Do you know, for half a minute I thought you mean't yourself, Kate. I'm glad you didn't."

CHAPTER VI. LOVE'S YOUNG DREAM. THEO remained in the room alone where he had left her after bestowing upon her that one impassionate kiss in which he had declared there was no harm; remained there alone for an hour after his departure, trying to think, and feeling too happy to accomplish it.

She heard Harold Ffrench's voice out in the garden, and she knew that he had joined her father and mother, who were strolling about in the soft evening air. But she judged him to be her own more especially now, and she could not bear to share him with others, even with them, just yet. So she sat still on the couch upon which he had placed her when he was bidding her adieu, and wondered why he had found her fair, and how this marvel had come to pass.

Her heart was throbbing audibly, but there was no pain in the flutter; it came from a very fulness of joy, and was a commentary on the tidings that she would not venture to tell to another, that she was not ill pleased to hear. He had told her he loved her! he had shown her that he loved her! and he had said that he would come to-morrow when the rest would be told, and would see it too, and the joy would be a secret no longer, though not one whit less sweet.

It never occurred to the girl to give forth the story at once in either a vaunting or an affectedly indifferent spirit. She had lived a very quiet life, and had not been lightly won and lightly lost half a dozen times in the course of it. Lively and light-hearted, and daring as none but a country-bred girl and only daughter can be, she was subdued and gentled and rendered diffident at once by the truth, the reality, and almost solemnity, of the feeling that had grown up in her heart for this stranger. Her first love was a genuine one, and Theo blushed at the influence it had already gained over her, and wondered at the vastness of the chasm it had left at once between the past and present.

She had no very definite ideas as to what might be expected to take place to-morrow. She only felt that he would come and say something which would entitle him to hold her hand in his own through all time if he liked, and leave her free to call him “Harold.” Then she murmured his name, first taking the precaution to bury her head in the sofacushion in order that no one might by any chance hear what would sound" so silly." She pictured him at his easel while she read poetry to him through endless summer days, never thinking, poor child, that it can be aught but pleasant for a man to listen to metrical effusions from the lips of his wife while he is endeavouring to compose a picture.

Her

The hours passed quickly in the indulgence of these happy visions, and then she was summoned to supper, and she went in half-shrinking from the light, and strangely tremulous in eye and lip, all happy as she was. happiness was as the down on the butterfly's wing to her she dreaded touching upon it lest one particle might be destroyed. It was so new, so fresh, so delicate-so unlike anything that she had known before.

Despite the wealth of womanly feeling that had been aroused in her recently, she was more of a child than ever in her manner to her parents that night. Perhaps it was the knowledge that she was longing to try her wings abroad that made her fold them so softly now. She sat at her father's feet and rested her loving head on his knee, and held his hand between those two which had known for the first time this day the pressure of another love than his. Her mother, sitting opposite, marked the brilliant colour in her face, and marvelled that Theo should so soon have recovered from that absolute fatigue which Harold Ffrench mentioned as the cause of her not joining them in the garden.

"You don't look tired now, Theo." "No, ma, I am not a bit tired."

"Ah, I thought the reason you didn't come was that you were gone to see after Miss Watson, instead of being 'knocked up,' as Mr. Ffrench said, when your father asked why you didn't come out." "Did he say that? No, I didn't go near Miss Watson; she gets on better without me.' "She will have to get on better than she does if your things are to be ready by Tuesday; this is Wednesday evening, and Saturday she can't come to me. I wish a later day had been fixed for your going."

"Have you asked for leave, papa?" "Yes, and got it,” he replied.

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“Oh dear; do you know, after all, I don't much care about going up," said Theo, throwing her head back against her father's arm. She was thinking how pleasant it would be to meander about those marshes with Harold Ffrench in the glorious summer days that were coming. "If you had not written for leave, papa, I believe I should say don't go.”

"The child's crazy," Mrs. Leigh said, rising and beginning to put away her work.

"No, she's not; she is only showing how magnanimous she can be when her magnanimity can't be accepted," her father said, kissing her. "Good-night, my child; Ffrench is going in the morning; did you know it?"

"Yes; that is, he told me he was going, but I don't think he will go," Theo answered; and then she went off to bed, and prayed for and dreamt of Harold Ffrench, while her father and mother pondered over how much money might in prudence be drawn from his agents to expend in giving Theo a taste of relaxation in London.

This going to London, which had been a dream of delight for some time past, sank now into absolute unimportance by the side of this new delight which had arisen. She did not care an atom any longer about those specimens of the arts and sciences which were collected by the enterprising and shown to the curious in Hyde Park. It would be pleasant to look at them with Harold Ffrench; but the dead level of the salt marshes would be equally agreeable objects of contemplation in such companionship; therefore the tedious journey might be saved. Then she remembered that the leave had been asked for and granted, and that some of her father's brother officers in the district might be put to inconvenience as to their own contemplated absences, if he did not take his when he could have it, and come back at the appointed time. She also remembered that the giving this pleasure to her would be the best pleasure her father had known for a long time. So, remembering these things, she resolved to go with all the glee she could

muster, and show gratitude for the plan, and gratification in realising it, whatever fate might hold in store for her of far brighter things.

"Dear papa, he means me to enjoy it, and he shall see that I do enjoy it thoroughly," she murmured to herself in her latest moments of coherency that night. On that resolution she fell asleep and dreamed away the hours till the dawn broke-the dawn of the day that was to hear said those words whose promise had been given to her heart already.

It was not an easy thing to behave as if nothing had happened or were going to happen the following morning. She knew that the hour or two which would probably elapse before Mr. Ffrench, in accordance with his usual practice, found his way up from the Bull would appear interminable if she were not employed. She knew this, and yet she was incapable of originating any employment of an absorbing nature, or indeed of doing anything save look out of the window and wonder when he would come.

"There are those frills to be hemmed for the blue muslin, Theo," her mother said to her once when she came into the room and found Theo at that occupation which I have just described.

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"But you don't do them."

"I will presently, mamma-this evening." "This evening you will be wanting to go out, and then the frills will be forgotten; they wouldn't take you an hour, you lazy child, and when they were hemmed I would put them on, and the blue muslin would be finished."

"Bother the blue muslin!" Theo thought; but she only said, "Yes, mamma, I'll get them directly; I am busy just now."

"What are you looking at?" Mrs. Leigh asked, coming to the window.

"An energetic fly dodging a spider," Theo replied, promptly pointing out the spectacle she described in the crevice of some rock-work.

"You may see dozens of them any day," Mrs. Leigh rejoined.

Then, Theo's day-dream being dispelled, she went in search of the frills for peace' sake.

He had said that he would come, and it never occurred to Theo to doubt him; and this, not so much that she was dominated by her passion for him, as that it would have seemed incredible to her that a gentleman should lie. That men break every spoken and implied vow, and still hold their honour stainless; and that women transfer their hearts and caresses from one lover to another, and still consider themselves chaste, she had yet to learn. The majority of young girls believe what is said to

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