morning light-if there be any-upon an untidy room, an undusted carpet, an unblackleaded grate, unpolished furniture, curtains tied up in knots, cushions thrust into by-corners, and those multitudinous symptoms of uncomfortableness which reign paramount in the lower regions before the matutinal avocations of the housemaid have commenced. Appalling, even to the stoutest heart, is the thought of being aroused from dreamy slumbers by the stroke of three, four, or five o'clock, and having to turn out unbreakfasted and half dressed to contend with the vicissitudes of another day. There is a sorrow, known only to those who have experienced it, in groping with half-dazed faculties one's weary way to bolted doors, and through dark passages, and down unaccustomed staircases, in quest of bread loaves and cold milk; stumbling helplessly along the terra incognita of the culinary regions, and vainly endeavouring to collect one's slumberous energies for the unwonted tax upon them. Verily and truly, if ever I feel a more than ordinary degree of thankfulness to our little maid Joan, it is when she saves me the trouble of getting up in a morning.

And yet Maud did it all for Stephen Roden. Don't let me laugh at her: I would have done it myself, I know I would, for Philip Lowe, and oh how glad I should have been to have the chance of doing it! There, then! I cannot jest any more after that name; it brings too much of the past, of four little months of hope which will never, never come back any more.

Well, I will not complain; at least I will try not. I often say that, but somehow or other the feeling comes over me again, and all that I might have been, all that I might have done, rises so very clearly before me. Henceforth I will be very contented, I will take what good is left me, and be thankful for it. The end comes to all in time, and what we have to do, what I have to do, is to attend it quietly and patiently. Only, when I see Maud so happy, when I watch her life go rippling on so calmly, so peacefully, when I look into that still face of hers, and see there no trace of anything but a joy which I can never know again, it does seem very hard,

.

I won't write about it any more; I won't think about it either, for that is just as bad. Yonder is

Maud pacing up and down in the sunshine. The white jasmine flowers shower thickly upon her as she comes past that long branch up here, beside the drawing-room window. There, they are dropping round her now, and crushing under her feet; before the last of them has fallen, before the first tinge of brown has crept out upon that long branch, my little sister Maud will be Stephen Roden's wife.

It is very calm to-night. This half-blown rose, looking in at the window upon me, has not the slightest sway, but rests poised and motionless upon its stem. How bonnie it looks the leaves almost white as they grow out into the sunshine, but deepening to pure brilliant red as they fold closer and closer down upon each other away from the light! Is it so with other things besides roses, I wonder-the finest colours always farthest in the shade? I like to sit here and think about these things, and dream over them for long together. I like to look out on such a tranquil, sunshiny night as this, over this June landscape, with the feeling that I have nothing else to do but look; that I may sit here for hours and hours,

me.

and nobody will miss me, nobody will ask for I like to study this nature picture, to take it in and fill myself with it; to let the feeling of it just flow upon me and around me, without my taking the trouble to think why it is so beautiful, or why it is that it rests me so to look upon it. I like to look out over that long range of distances that we get from this side the house, past those two great beech trees; they standing foremost, dark and clear, and well defined, their network of interlacing branches peering out through a veil of greenery. Beyond them, a little way off, the old grey church, clustered round with foliage, just near enough for me to distinguish the characteristic sway of the branches and the manifold changeful tints of the leaves. Past that again, the sweep of Braeton plantation, with a beautiful soft blue haze of atmosphere lying upon it, and breaking down its outline. Behind it the craggy moorland rises, purple, black, and brown, with rifts here and there where the heather grows in channels that winter torrents have worn. And then, farther away still, past all these, our Downshire hills

peaking up along the horizon, steeped in the softest, tenderest, grey-like tints, melting away fainter and fainter, until I cannot tell them from the clouds.

Yes, it is very beautiful. It makes one feel quiet to look at it. If only we would match it in our own hearts; if only we could be so calm, so at rest. And still Maud walks up and down here; and still the jasmine flowers fall upon her and drop to her feet; and still that utter calm shines through her face; and, looking at her, the old feeling comes over me again, and again I say it is hard, it is very hard.

But, after all, it is only a little while. The weariness will be past by and by. There will be nothing of this to think of, nothing of this to murmur over, in that glorious coming time

"When, in the great eternity,

We shall awake and find it day."