lips. He is just the person to do full justice to a tale of tragedy."

"De-ar Mrs. Egerton!" interrupted Nina, getting up a blush, and pillowing her cheek on that lady's shoulder, "I am so very, very happy to think that you and the Archdeacon so fully approve of dear Herbie. He is so, so kind and loving, and yet so thoroughly the priest ! And I do indeed share your joy, dearest Mrs. Egerton, that Geraldine should have gained the heart of so very zealous a church-helper as Lord Rotherhame. It does all seem so truly nice and satisfactory."

Miss Nutting's fits of enthusiasm often had the effect of rubbing her hearers the wrong way up. Mrs. Egerton received her felicitations without much responsive warmth, enduring her caresses, and responding to them in a manner so pre-occupied as presently to draw from the little governess an apology more provoking than the offence for which it was offered.

Absorbed by a mental scheme she was concocting for lionising a distant part of the country during her stay at Rotherhame, Mrs. Egerton was only vaguely conscious of a distracting buzzing in her ears; and ere long, absently pushed off the intruding cheek as she might have repelled the encroachments of a persistent mosquito. Thus repulsed, Nina settled herself upon the Archdeacon, and compelled him to drop an interesting article

he was perusing to listen to various edifying, but pointless little extracts from her new number of the Earnest Churchwoman. She read on perseveringly till she discovered that she had read him to sleep, and then persecuted Geraldine, who sat silently indulging a delicious day-dream, with anxious numberless enquiries as to whether the Archdeacon had not thought her forward. Geraldine armed her soul with patience. She felt that Nina no longer regarded her as a pupil, but rather as a sister bride-elect, and that she reckoned upon finding sympathy and fellow-feeling in her. Fortunately, there was no rivalry between the two young ladies. Geraldine was fully satisfied with her own choice, and as for Nina, she would not have exchanged her High Church curate for the greatest lay bridegroom in Europe. The holy horror with which the members of her family, from their varying ecclesiastical standpoints, united in regarding Herbie's priestly pretentions, served but to heighten the romance of the situation; and she entertained a sublime pity for all the forlorn young persons who, like poor Miss Bartholomew, must now be mourning him as one for ever lost to them. Ever and anon, as they discussed the Reverend Herbert's perfections and chances of preferment, Geraldine's heart would throb wildly at the prospect of the fast approaching meeting with her future husband. She was a little afraid of him-of this reserved,

peculiar man, so much older and more cultured than herself, who hid beneath a gentle exterior passions so strong, and whose heart, as he had himself confessed, was not entirely hers. Was it not something of a risk to leave her peaceful, indulgent home, for all life, to give herself to one for whose deeper requirements she might prove inadequate ? To all misgivings, however, her answer was that she loved, and that apart from him who was her sun, existence would be an arctic waste.

It was a mournful evening for a first arrival at a new home. The clouds were parting a little in the west, and the sunset was of a dull and angry red. In the forest it was nearly dark. A rotting scent arose from the soaked bracken and dead leaves drowning in the rain pools. Two black ravens swept on their gloomy way above the carriage, and seemed to pursue it with their warning croak. The wind was rising, and all the branches groaned and creaked. Whether it was the knowledge that the children whose young presence had filled it with mirth were absent, and their rooms deserted, which gave her the impression, she could scarcely tell, but the Castle, as they approached, seemed to wear an exceptionally lonely and forsaken air. The flag, that announced the presence of its master, drooped disconsolately on the Keep, and through the intervening rain-clouds scarce a ray was

visible of the red fire and candle-light that, here and there, between the mullions of the ivied casements, stole forth into the autumn evening.

A silence fell, as by general consent, upon the travellers. The grim walls, that had witnessed the rise and fall of so many centuries, so many human lives, with all the loves and sorrows they enshrined, seemed to be watching the opening of this new episode in their history with a sardonic silent mockery.

Or was it Old Time himself, whose sarcastic smile, playing upon the senseless stone and mortar, imparted to them apparent consciousness-Old Time, who with capricious tenderness had long spared this relic of past ages from the wanton stroke of his fatal hand, and who now, hiding among its turrets, grinned maliciously at the fresh tragi-comedy he was to watch to its close on the stage of human life. The players, at all events, as is the duty of their calling, played their parts as if it were all serious earnest, and the curtain would never fall upon the drama.

Before the carriage stopped, the footman had sprung down from the box, and rung the bell; the next moment the heavy door was opened, and behind the servants, who came hurrying forward, Geraldine discerned the figure of her betrothed husband.

For an instant his appearance startled her, he looked so marble-pale, and there was such a smileless gravity in his sunken eyes.

He had been passing through a day of awful pain, one of those days which came to him at intervals like recurrent attacks of ague, in which Fate seemed to require of him. with interest his intervening periods of comparative immunity. These storms, when they passed, left exhaustion behind, and gave him for awhile the look of one whom lightning has scathed. It was his custom, when they overtook him, to shut himself away from every human eye, and endure alone; and it was only a sense of the absolute necessity of welcoming his guests, which this day gave him force to leave his wretched privacy. But neither the warm greetings of the Archdeacon, nor Mrs. Egerton's demonstrative geniality, could avail to bring a smile to his lips, and the touch of his hand, as Geraldine took it, chilled her to the marrow.

She

answered his greeting with a few timid commonplaces about the journey and the weather, and then, impelled by a rush of pity, strong and untutored as the heart from which it sprang, she took his hand and kissed it.

In that house, where demonstration of feeling had long been at a discount, this spontaneous act of love came like a sudden thaw. Lord Rotherhame started as though a touch had been laid on his inward wound, but it had been a touch of healing. Warmth and life seemed to pass from her lips into the fibres of his being, and a wistful gladness