idea that a closed carriage would have been more comfortable than this high open one, and pull up the warm seal robes about me, I see far away down the line the red lantern on the rear platform of the train which brought me thus far growing gradually less and less, as the engineer with full steam up is hurrying on in the eager hope of regaining his lost twelve minutes.

Then my portmanteau is lifted in behind, the groom springs lightly to his place, the gray at the first sign from the decorous driver steps spiritedly away, and a moment later we are bowling briskly along a country road. The wind has gone down considerably, and, though it is still blowing, there is no anger in it, no "unkindness," as the poet has it; its fury has, it seems, blown itself out. The air is, however, quite cold, but the robes are ample, and I am not in the least uncomfortable.

The horses' hoofs beat a lively tattoo on the frozen ground as we spin on at a brisk trot past long stretches of rail fencing, on the top bars of which the snow is glinting spotlessly white in the starlight. Then through dark, gloomy woods, where the tall trees with their gaunt, bare branches sway dismally back and forth in the wind with a sighing, moaning sound, that is far from being conducive to jollity.

Coming out into the open again we thunder over a narrow wooden bridge which stretches across a frozen stream, whose bed lies cosily down in a valley, and then go bobbing up a not very steep hill.

The lamps now throw their radiance over hedgerows instead of rail fences, and I know by this that we are nearing a residence.

Presently we turn off to the right, whirl quickly around a small lodge, the outline of which is decidedly Gothic, pass in between two heavy wroughtiron gates, and then roll on smoothly up a well graded avenue, under great towering beeches and chestnuts, whose topmost branches greet each other in friendly embrace.

In the distance I see the lights of Scarborough House, and a few moments later the dog-cart stops in front of the hall door, which is swung hospitably open, and I, stepping down, run up the broad stone steps, and go in at the wide portal.

The butler announces me with the usual correctness of pronunciation, as I, having taken off my greatcoat in the hall, enter the drawing-room.

There are several people sitting about in evening dress, all of whom look up as I make my appearance. Then a tall, thin man, with a light mustache, whom I recognize as my host, Scarborough, rises and comes toward me.

"How are you, Beauclerc ?" he says; "awfully glad to see you. Train was a little late, wasn't it ?"

"A few minutes," I reply, taking his proffered hand

"Beastly cold out, isn't it? Almost too cold for outside riding; but then I thought you wouldn't care to be cooped up in the brougham."

"The ride was very pleasant, I assure you. Americans are more used to such weather than Englishmen, you know."

"Yes, I suppose so. Come," he says, leading me across the room toward the fireplace, where a coal fire is burning brightly in a dog-grate, “I fancy, though, you don't mind warming up, eh?" A gentleman, rather short and stout, with a very red face, and a bald crown, over which, for appearance sake, he has brushed a few straggling locks of hair, sits with his feet on the fender. A few steps away two ladies, one very fair and very stout, with a face too chubby to be pretty, and one rather slight and dark-complected, with sparkling, almost wicked, black eyes, and bright red lips, are playing backgammon.

To these I am of course introduced. The gentleman's name is Condert, the dark lady is his wife, and the fair lady is she of whom I have heard so much-Mrs. Scarborough.

"You see," says the latter, with a smile, "our party is not very large yet; most of them come to-morrow."

"I was led to suppose," I reply, "that you had quite a houseful, and I can't say that I am disappointed. I would much sooner be the man that arrived first at the dinner party, than the one who didn't get there until dinner was waiting."

"Oh, yes," puts in Scarborough, "I forgot that you were of that retiring disposition. However, I dare say we'll bring you out. We've a very pleasant girl coming that I'm sure you'll fall in love with-Mary Earlcliff. Don't you think he'll be charmed with Mary, Joe?" he asked, turning to Mr. Condert.

"Sure to be, sure to be," replies that gentletleman, with confidence; while I cannot help

thinking that he knows nothing at all about it, and make up my mind that I will not fall in love with Miss Earlcliff out of mere spite.

"She is an English girl, you know," says Mrs. Scarborough, who is English herself, "and is of course charming."

"A natural consequence?" I ask, laughing. "Certainly."

"I have taken you off at two points," says Mrs. Condert, who seems as unsociable as myself, and has not yet offered a remark; "will you kindly play ?"

So the ladies go on with their game, while we gentlemen talk of the country, the city, the prices of stocks, and the prospects of trade, until the butler makes his appearance and announces that supper is served.

The ladies decline to partake of any refreshment, so we gentlemen leave them to their own devices, and retire to the supper-room, where we regale ourselves with cold meats and salads, and then sit for an hour sipping brandy and water and smoking cigars.

When at last I have retired to rest, and am snugly wrapped in downy quilts, try as I will I cannot fall into a peaceful sleep. No sooner do I close my eyes than visions of the woman I met, radiant in all the beauty that moment's glimpse indelibly imprinted on my memory, rises up before me. Now she is struggling in the hurrying eddies of a black whirlpool, from which I am vainly trying to free her; now she is cowering under the ill-treatment of the person who opened the door to admit her to the dingy place she called home; and then again she is shivering in the cold wind that plays pranks with her scant garments.

Dryden, I think it is, who says,

"Dreams are but interludes which fancy makes." My fancy to-night then must be extraordinarily active; for the dreams are both many and complex. At last, however, near morning, I think it must be, when, I suppose, the lobster, the tongue, and the boned turkey have been digested, my dreams assume a more pleasant character, and no longer disturb my rest. To be sure the fair stranger is still with me, but she is peacefully resting in my arms, her head is lying contentedly on my shoulder, and her sweet face is smiling sweetly, lovingly up to mine. I am in no hurry that this dream should cease, and am almost tempted to quarrel with the sunshine when it comes intrusively into

VOL. XIV.-2

my chamber, peeping between the heavy curtains, and falling across the floor to my bed, where it sets in a blaze the polished brass tubing.

Going down stairs half an hour later, I find Mr. Condert in the library, his gold-rimmed glasses astride his nose, reading the Tribune.

The library at Scarborough House is a bright, cheery room, decorated in olive green and gold, with furniture and fittings of rich old oak.

"Good morning, Beauclerc," Mr. Condert says, dropping his paper to his knee as I enter; “you're an early riser, I see, like myself."

"Early!" I exclaim, glancing at the clock on the mantel shelf, which indicates ten minutes of nine, "rather late, I should say.”

"Late! Not a bit of it. Why, no one here, except myself, ever thinks of coming down stairs. before ten."

"What a lazy set you must be !" I say, laughing, and taking a seat by a table on which lie several books. I pick up one, which proves to be a photograph album, and begin to look through it. Mr. Condert, however, does not seem inclined to go on reading.

Beauclerc is a French name," he says, "like my own. I suppose you are of French descent."

"Yes," I reply, looking up from the pictures of two English officers in full regimentals, "my ancestors were Huguenots, I believe."

"Ah! Protestants, eh? Well, I think the Conderts were always Catholics, that is, up to the last generation; but as for myself, I don't believe much of anything in that line. Darwin and Huxley are far ahead of the old-fogyish priests and parsons with their worn-out superstitious ideas."

Such, then, were Mr. Condert's opinions. I make no reply, beyond a simple, "Do you think so?" and go on turning the leaves of the album.

Suddenly my eyes fall on a photograph of a young lady with fair hair, which immediately recalls to me the subject of my dreams. She is rather fuller-faced, however, but there is still that transcendent beauty which I noticed in my chance acquaintance. Of course I am interested, and inquisitive to know who it is.

"Will you kindly tell me this lady's name, if you happen to know?" I ask of Mr. Condert, rising and stepping towards him, book in hand. As he sees which it is I designate, his florid complexion grows a shade brighter, and I notice that

and the conversation proved she is as much in the dark as any of us as to the cause, and is very angry that her lord and master will not divulge the secret to her confiding heart.

"It does not concern you in the least, Emily," he says, his frown darkening as he stands with his back to the fire in the hall. (I am hunting for a book in the library, which is not three steps away, and cannot help hearing him, especially as he speaks rather loudly). "I am very much troubled and vexed, and scarcely know how to act; but you cannot aid me, and it is much better that you know nothing of the cause."

"You are very unkind, John," she says, pouting. "You do not know how I could aid you, and I think you might at least tell me what it is about."

"I shall tell you nothing."

At which words, spoken firmly, Mrs. Scarborough turns and walks angrily away, while her husband still stands with his hands under his coat-tails, looking intently at the tiles in the hall. floor, his forehead contracted in deep thought.

During the two days I have been in the house, Mrs. Condert has been extremely sociable, at which, when I remember her cold, icy manner on the evening of my arrival, I am much astonished. I notice, however, that it is generally when her husband is out of sight that she ventures to address me, and have come to the conclusion that it must be that he is very jealous of her, and that she is much afraid of him.

This evening, the night before Christmas, I am suffering considerably from a headache, which I imagine the tobacco smoke after dinner is doing its share to increase. I therefore excuse myself, and leaving the gentlemen, go alone into the drawing-room among the ladies. It is not every gentleman of a "retiring disposition" like my own, that would thus beard the lion in his den; but I am comparatively well acquainted with all, and have very little hesitancy in opening the door, and by my manly presence interrupting their gossip.

Mrs. Condert, her dark eyes sparkling, is on her feet in an instant. She is very pretty, I say to myself, as I see her smiling and beckoning to me, and cannot imagine why she wishes to speak to me. I cross the room and take a seat on the ottoman at her side, which she kindly pushes forward for me.

"There," she says, with a charming smile, "sit there, Mr. Beauclerc, and give me just ten minutes' chat, won't you ?”

I say something about it being a pleasure, and she goes on in her merry, clear voice. She is an American, the only American lady in the party; and a true type of the American society woman : gay, conscienceless, charming.

"I'm so glad to get to see you to-night, and have a chance to speak to you before Mr. Condert appears. He's awfully jealous, you know; so I never talk to any gentleman when he's about; it pleases him, and that's all I care for, you know."

"May I ask why you care so much to please him?" I inquire. "I shouldn't think from appearances, begging your pardon, that you were such a very devoted wife."

"Oh, I am; I'm awfully devoted" (dropping her voice to a whisper); "I'm devoted to him now; when he's gone I'm going to marry some nice young man—like you.”

I smile as best I can with a terrible racket going on inside my head, and thank her kindly for the compliment.

"Do you know anything about the mysterious gloom?'" she asks, at last, when she has finished telling me how she married the old gentlemanshe thus speaks of her consort-for his means, and not his good looks.

"I do not," I reply, rather interested. "Hav'n't you ladies fathomed its depths?"

"Oh, dear, yes! We know all about it. Mr. Scarborough don't open his mouth to the old gentleman, so you see he's angry at him to begin with; and he's out with Mrs. Scarborough, so you see he believes my husband and his wife to have been flirting, and he's as jealous as ever he can be; that's what its all about. There! don't you thank me for telling you? For my part I don't care how much the old gentleman flirts, dear old soul! so he leaves me all his property when he dies."

This explanation is not very assuring to me; nevertheless I do not think it necessary to inform the dashing matron that such is the case, and accept it as the correct solution of the great problem. As the rest of the men begin to come straggling in, Mrs. Condert leaves me seated on the ottoman by myself, and goes off to sit lonely and dejected in one corner awaiting her husband's entrance, a picture of wifely devotion.

It is not long before I slip away, my headache becoming almost unbearable; and taking a candle from the hall table, light it, and start up to my room. I stumble on up the broad stairway with its great, flat, polished oak steps, cross the landing, dim and ghostly now, lit only by my glimmering candle and the moonbeams which fall pale and blue through a large stained window, emblazoned with the monograms and arms of our host and his family. Then as I go up to the corridor above, where a few candles in brackets are casting grim shadows, I think I detect a rustling sound near me. I am not naturally nervous or cowardly, but the dark and gloomy surroundings and my aching head seem to combine to unnerve me for the moment, and I find myself trembling violently. Suddenly I start back with a short, hoarse shriek, as a figure, white as the new-fallen snow, darts past me, and is in a second lost in the darkness of the corridor. As I step back my foot turns under me, and I fall headlong on the floor. I am conscious for an instant of a sharp pain running up my right leg, and then a great blackness drops down as a curtain before me, and I know no more.

A sprained ankle is by no means a pleasant companion, and when accompanied with a nervous headache its desirability is not enhanced. All Christmas day I lie on a lounge in my room, unable to read, not caring to talk, and heartily wishing I could banish the apparition of the corridor from my mental vision, where it persists in framing itself.

I am not so superstitious as to believe in ghosts. so I dismiss all supposition that such was the white figure; I am quite sure it was no one of the ladies, for I had just left them all in the drawing-room; and what one of the servants should be doing in such attire in that part of the house at such an hour is beyond my comprehension. Try as I will, I am unable to account for it, except that it was a myth formed by my own diseased imagination, and due entirely to the nervous headache from which I was and am suffering.

The week has dragged six of its long, thoroughly tiresome, disagreeable children, at least so they seem to me, after it, and now it is the last day of the old year.

I am able to go down stairs with the help of a cane, and have this morning taken up a position on the library sofa.

Some of the guests have gone by this. The widow and the two facetious young men have departed; Mr. and Mrs. Condert, Dick, and Mary Earlcliff, are still here.

Miss Earlcliff is very kind, and does her best to make my long days of hobbling about the house and reclining on lounges agreeable.

"Have you ever seen the album ?" she says to me this morning, as she sits near the table on which it lies, and looks searchingly about to find something to amuse her charge, for such indeed she seems to consider me.

Scarborough is at the window reading the Herald, and Mr. Condert is sitting opposite him, as usual deeply interested in the weighty editorials of Jay Gould's sheet. They have to a degree made up their differences, and are on rather good terms again.

"I have seen it," reply I to the lady's question, "but that is all. I should very much like to look over it with you, and have you name the photographs."

So she brings her chair alongside the sofa, and we begin looking over the pictures together; she naming them as far as she can, and she seems to know nearly all of the Scarborough family's rela tives and friends.

Presently we come to the officers in regimentals, who I am told are Scarborough and his brother. I am very anxious now to get to the photo of the young lady who so interested me, who so resembled my chance acquaintance; but as we turn to the page on which it was, I find the space empty.

"Oh, it has been taken out," say I, disappointedly. "I should have liked so much to have known who it was." "Let me see if I can remember," says Miss Earlcliff, biting her pretty little red lip.

I asked Mr. Condert who it was, once," I say, "naybe he will remember. He said he thought it a relative of Mr. Scarborough's," so I turn to the gentleman with the vague ideas of religion, and ask: "Condert, you remember that photo I asked you about, don't you? I see its gone now. Can you give Miss Earlcliff an idea who it was ?"

Mr. Condert's face reddens just as it did before; this time, I think, more than on the previous occasion.

"I have no recollection of it whatever," he