kees say, I suppose," the Islander went on, impervious to satire.

"That's about the size of it,” answered Gray, without halting. Two of the men looked after him with no little concern in their eyes. Others hailed him as he passed them by. Gray was evidently popular. A woman, in billowing laces and a parasol chair, smiled largely upon him as he raised his straw hat, and bade him pause, but prevailed not. Two younger women, in trim walking attire, nodded coquettishly and said it was the very day for the trip; them, too, he answered only vaguely, and, with a far-away look in his deep blue eyes, he passed on to the telegraph office, and the group of smoking men broke up.

"Something's amiss with Gray," said one of the party, a New-Yorker. "I'll go see."

"I don't see what there was in the size of the letter to upset him," said the Englishman, unconscious of slang that was not Britannia ware. 'Gray's a good sort, though. Could a fellow do anything, do you suppose?''

"

But the pursuer was slow. Seeing him coming, and divining his object, Mr. Gray slipped out of the side door, dived through the shrubbery that bordered a winding drive-way to the west, and took himself off through the crowded Place. He had need to be alone,-to face his changed fortunes fair and square.

Twenty-five years old, and up to the midweek mail from America he had never known

a care since boyish days, unless it was some momentary heart-pang when Amy Langdon proved unkind. In a dawdling, amateurish way he had read the daily papers and signed some letters and reports laid before him by an attentive clerk in the office of the Eastern traffic manager of a great road of which his uncle was a heavy stockholder and prominent director. The most serious thing he had ever undertaken was his membership in a crack city regiment, wherein he had served through the ranks and really earned a commission. But both these avocations he had quitted during the previous winter, and all because Amy Langdon was reported flirting dangerously at Nice and Mentone, and if she were not actually engaged to Darcy Gray he at least felt so far engaged to her that flirtation was denied him.

As pretty a girl as ever rode in Central Park was Amy, and as dashing a horsewoman, and it was Gray's admirable riding and universally acknowledged prospects that made him for the time so acceptable a parti. He could manage a horse far better than he could a woman, however, and Miss Langdon kept him at her side when in saddle and subject to call at all other times. But she had, not unkindly, laughed off his protestations and dissected his offers. "It's absurd, Darcy. You haven't a cent in the world that doesn't come from your uncle, and who knows what his wife will do with his fortune,—

or he himself, for that matter? As for me, I'm a beggar with social aspirations. Come, be sensible, and I'll like you better. Be a soldier, Darcy, and face the facts. That's the one thing

you're cut out for."

'You're hard-hearted, Amy," he had answered.

"No; only hard-headed. I'm soft-hearted enough to like you too well to spoil both our lives."

Gray believed himself much in love when she went abroad in November, and took it much to heart that she should be so constantly attended by Fred. Smythe, who had no atom of sense in his head, but no end of dollars in his pocket. But when a lordling-a younger son of an older house than ever dwelt in Gotham-an Honorable, between whom and the title and estates was a lord with only one lung and that fast going-had opposed his sighs to those of Smythe, and there came rumors that Locksley Hall was to be enacted over again with an American Amy in the foreground, Darcy Gray believed it time to rush for the Riviera, and a worried old uncle most unwillingly let him go. Hunter loved that boy, his sister's son, as the apple of his eye. There wasn't anything he wouldn't have given him but the means of earning his own living. All that he proposed to settle magnificently. But the bottom began to drop out of the market in

mid-January, and left him stranded high and

dry by the middle of May.

Two million dollars, said Wall Street, had "gone where the woodbine twineth."

He

Over beyond the hurly-burly of the public Place, crowded with townfolk and children, the road-way wound along the water's edge Gray strode rapidly westward, his head bowed, his hands thrust deep in his trousers-pockets. missed his usual companions, a heavy stick and a nimble fox-terrier, but both had been left with the portier as inappropriate to a voyage to Chillon. They were to have started, a merry party it promised to be, by the early boat from Geneva, and he could see her now cleaving the limpid waters around the headland of Morges. It was time to warn his companions that he could not go. One girl, at least, might miss him, and she should be accorded opportunity to name some other escort, Amy,

"Amy, shallow-hearted." She had disappeared with that brainless ass half an hour ago, possibly to console him for the fact that he was not one of the dozen bidden by Madame la Comtesse to be of the party to voyage with her to the famous castle, breakfast with her aboard La France, and dine en fête at Montreux. Vane, the Briton, was one, and small comfort did he afford Smythe by bidding him jolly up, and perhaps Madame would let him in for post-prandial coffee at Montroo.

Gray had never been able to stomach Smythe; he called him an insupportable cad; but when, at a turn in the path, he came suddenly upon the combination of brainless ass and insupportable cad squatted on a stone, elbows on knees, his fuzzy jowls deep sunken in his hands, his eyes on the far-away line of the Savoy shore, the intruder relented. was woe perhaps as deep as his own.

Here

But in this case misery loved not company, and Smythe was surly. No; there wasn't anything Gray could do for him, thanks. He was feeling seedy, that was all. It was plain to see that the interview with Miss Langdon had left him sore at heart. Gray stood another moment, irresolute. There was absolutely no reason why he should do the fellow a good turn. Smythe hated him and plainly showed it. But Gray had ignored his spleen, and ever good-humoredly tolerated him. It is easy for a man to forgive another's jealousy. But Gray had suffered too much from Miss Langdon's caprice not to know the symptoms when so patent as they were in Smythe. Ill fortune makes some natures magnanimous,tures,—and Gray turned again.

-rare na

"Look here, old man" ("old chap" had not then come into vogue), "if I can't do anything for you, you can for me. I was to have gone with that party, you know, to Chillon this morning. Yonder comes the boat now.