aware that my grandmother was in the room. 'Then you are engaged?' she said, half-aloud. Arthur turned round upon her suddenly, releasing me.

'Mrs. Fortescue, it must not be so understood.'

'Sir, as an honorable man, with what

intentions are you playing with this

child ?'

My intentions are honorable; you will do us all the justice to assume they could be no other; but not matrimonial, for the

present. I do not intend to marry for some years, and then, if I should be so fortunate as again to meet Miss Fortescue still free-but that is not likely; she will certainly have it in her power to choose one nearer to her in years, and in every way more suited to her. It is right that she should be unfettered in her choice. Leila must remain perfectly free.'

6

That is plain enough to be thoroughly understood. Good morning, sir.' She curtsied, grasped my arm, and tottered out of the room, dragging me along with her. 'Leila,' he cried, pleadingly, 'you will bid me good-bye,' striving to reach my hand,

VOL. I.

8

but she snatched it from him.

I could not have resised her will without restorting to violence, from which I shrank. I had but a look to give him; but that look!

We were parted, and he was gone. I watched him until he was out of sight, and saw him looking back, myself unseen, then sat down to weep my fill-I stole back to the room where I had left him, where there was no one now to watch me as I sank down in my passion of woe, hearing nothing, feeling nothing, until he was there, come back again to feast upon my humiliation and weakness, Ah no! he caught me in his arms, and then-and then-he tore himself away with one last kiss, and the indescribable low murmur' My own, my own,' of a love that can be felt, not told.

NURK

CHAPTER VIII.

OR NOT AT ALL.

He would write to me, surely, I thought; he did not, though months went by, and a rumor reached us that he was ere long to fill a high post in India. As days went on the chill of despair entered into my heart. I felt as if all was over between

us.

Does a man reflect when he gives way to his fancy for a young girl, not taking thought at the time for the stronger motives that must in the end sway him back from his passing preference-does a man consider how awfully he compromises her, if not before the outer world, yet surely with that small inner round of her nearest relatives, her home, her actual daily life,

where it is far worse to be pitied and despised? I did not show what I felt, while my grandmother-having first bitterly blamed me for what we had both tried and failed in-sought to comfort me after her fashion. 'It was a case that cured itself,' she said; the man evidently never cared for you, and there's an end of it. Of course, you don't care any more than he did, being the daughter of a much greater man-if your father had lived---' And so the proud old lady reasoned on my feelings as though they must be the same as

her own.

I thought she wronged Arthur, that her want of patience, if not mine, was to blame for our defeat; it was borne in upon me with stronger conviction day by day, that Arthur was fettered by some imbroglio which he could not in a moment shake off, that he was making efforts, only to be effective with time, to work himself clear, and through all, doing his best to act honorably towards me. One thing I not only believed but knew-he had loved

me.

I was expected to join in reprobation of

him, to believe every impossible slander that the good folk of Stormouth were not slow to devise or circulate against him; such stories as crop up in the London clubs concerning every great character prominently set in the world's eye, and are eagerly caught up and detailed (with additions) by the envious and malicious, by way of compensation to themselves for their own inferiority of nature.

Lady

Diana, it was said, and openly reported, was in fact Arthur's mistress, had been so for years, with the connivance of Sir John Hope Trevor; the two men finding it their interest to keep close friends on political grounds, the husband conveniently shut his eyes to what he must know, and the couple were invited everywhere to meet Arthur; to festivities, public and private, on visits to noblemen's houses-Stormouth Park, to wit-society by general consent blinking with complacent eyes at the illustrious sinner, as well as at the frail wife of a too easy husband.

Had they said but half as much I should have believed more; as it was I hated the woman, but only trembled for Arthur.