far from strong, and he feels the work really more than he can get through without my help." "Then let me get a competent assistant at once," Mr. Stewart-Carr said, quickly. "I am afraid that would be of no avail," Catherine said, quietly. She wondered mechanically as she spoke what had happened to her voice; it sounded so cold and so far-away. "I fear-indeed I am sure that it will be necessary for my brother to resign his post here; he finds himself unequal to it. I have had no final consultation with him as yet; but he will, I believe, write to you on the subject without delay." "Resign his post!" exclaimed Mr. Stewart-Carr in undisguised amazement. "Miss Maidment, I do trust your brother does not seriously contemplate such a step; I cannot tell you how I value his services, nor how distressed I should be to lose him." He stopped short, and a perplexed frown came on his brow; he turned quite round to face Catherine, and stood still. He looked straight towards her but he could not see her face. She held her sunshade so that it was hidden from his eyes. "Miss Maidment," he said, very earnestly, "you cannot-it is not possible that I that you have misunderstood me in any way that this is a sudden determination taken by you because of anything I may have said, or failed to say. I express myself horribly awkwardly, always," he added humbly, almost deprecatingly. Catherine raised her sunshade and he could see her face. It was white, and it looked thinner, somehow, than usual. "No, indeed," she said, in a tone quite as eager as his own; "no, indeed, you must not think that. It is no sudden resolve. I-my brother has been really unequal to his work for some time; and there is no course open to him but to give it up, I assure you." Catherine walked on more quickly as she spoke, and he, perforce, followed her example. "I am deeply concerned to hear it," he said," and then he paused for a moment, thoughtfully. "Have you thought of trying a change, a rest for him, Miss Maidment?" he went on. "It sometimes works wonders. I could quite easily get some one to see after the work for a time -I'll do so to-morrow, if you will let me." swered, with a little, almost imperceptible quiver in her voice, "very good; but, indeed, we cannot make any temporary arrangement. Don't think me ungrateful for your kind consideration-I am not, indeed. But it will be best for him to give it up." Catherine was beginning to get terribly afraid of her voice; the long, hot walk, the strain of her whole position, and another thing that she did not realise, the still abiding presence of those thoughts which had seemed burnt out of her life, told upon her endurance. They had left the high road and entered a lane, and she rapidly made up her mind to end the interview by taking a short cut from there across the fields, which Mr. StewartCarr would be unable to follow on horseback. "This is my nearest way," she said, standing still again at the gate which would lead her into the first field. "My brother-Frank will write or speak to you himself. Good-bye," and she held out her hand. Mr. Stewart-Carr took it; he held it for a moment or two firmly, looking into her face, which she could not well conceal from him now. "Good-bye," he said, slowly. "I do trust your brother will reconsider his decision." Then he loosed her hand, and Catherine passed through the small gate, and was immediately hidden from his sight by the hedge. Left alone, Mr. Stewart-Carr did not remount his horse. He threw the bridle over the gatepost and stood leaning against a large tree that grew beside it, his arms folded, and his head bent. The lane was a very lonely one, and there was no great likelihood of the approach of any passerby. But any one who had chanced to arrive would have been surprised at the expression on Mr. Stewart-Carr's face as he stood there alone. He looked very anxious, and deeply agitated. All the lines of his pleasant face were broken up by strong, unwonted emotion. He was thinking, and thinking very intently. The village report of his engagement to Grace Arbuthnot was, like most reports of the kind, so premature as to be absolutely untrue. It was nearly a month since his first attempt to propose to her, during their interview about the fishingrods, in his room; and though all the other guests except Captain Carnforth, who stayed on on one pretext or another, You are very good," Catherine an- I had left, Mrs. Arbuthnot's slight accident yet. Each moment, however, as he thought of her, there in the lonely lane, his love for Catherine Maidment rose higher and higher above that ordinary self, till he felt as if, then and there, in that hour, his whole life were being changed by it. Every line of her face, every tone of her voice, every gesture of hers, came before him with scrupulous exactness; and every detail seemed more perfect than the one before. So vivid was the picture his newly-arisen love created for him, of the woman who inspired it, that he suddenly let fall his arms, turned to the gate and looked over it, feeling as if she must be actually there. and consequent indisposition had kept and strong; a force the strength of which her and her daughter still at the Castle. he himself neither gauged nor realised as During this month, it is hardly necessary to say, many other opportunities of proposing to her had come in his way; but he had let them all go by, without attempting to use them, or attempting to alter much further the still extremely simple and friendly relations subsisting between Grace and himself. He could not tell why he had done this. He, indeed, had never asked himself. He had just gone on, from day to day, thinking every night, indefinitely, that he would propose next day, and thinking every morning that he would still wait. But not until this very afternoon, half an hour before, had the true reason of his apparent procrastination and delay taken definite shape in his mind. Now, however, he understood it perfectly well; saw it before him in the clearest possible light. And he only wondered, helplessly and half-contemptuously, why he had not realised it long before. He had known, for the first time, when she spoke to him of leaving Moreford, that he could not propose to another woman because he was in love with Catherine Maidment. Little by little, as he stood there, thinking, it all grew clear before him. He knew how Catherine's quiet, gracious, womanly manner had impressed itself upon him at their first meeting. He re membered how he had left the White House that day with a strong feeling of attraction towards her in his mind; he remembered their interview in the library, he remembered the hot afternoon under the mulberry-tree, and he understood all at once, now, how it was that that afternoon had stood out so persistently in his memory through the month that had elapsed since then. He remembered all their many chance meetings. As if he were unconsciously obliged to recount them every one, one after another they recurred to his mind with vivid clearness. He knew now, that, as after every one he seemed to know her a little better, and the thought of her seemed more and more a part of his daily life, he had been growing all the time not only to like her, but to love her. Mr. Stewart-Carr's love was character. istic. It had never been waked to life before by any woman. But it was there, below his controlled, ordinary self, deep But Catherine was entering the White House at the moment, with a very heavy, aching heart, little dreaming of the part she was playing in Mr. Stewart-Carr's life. With his sudden movement towards the gate, the current of his thoughts seemed to receive a check-something cut across them and stemmed the tide that was rising so fast and so forcibly within him. He remembered Grace Arbuthnot. Before this hour, in which he had learned, as he told himself, what love was, he had believed that he could be very happy with her. He had intended, fully intended, to ask her to be his wife. He had asked her and her mother to his house with that end before him. He had so treated her as to give rise to reports-he knew of their existence well enough-that she was already engaged to him. The thought came to him like icy cold water on a burning flame. Was he in honour bound to put away for ever the love he had only just realised? Was he, or was he not, bound to Grace Arbuthnot? As he realised the whole position, he laid his arms along the top of the high gate and let his head fall on them, with a sigh that was very nearly a groan. When he lifted it, half an hour later, there was no change in the heavy trouble and perplexity of his face, and the question was still as utterly undecided in his mind as when he first began to think it out. He looked at his watch hurriedly, and finding it was seven o'clock, mounted his horse and rode rapidly away in the direction of the Castle. The Right of Translating Articles from ALL THE YEAR ROUND is reserved by the Authors. Published at the Office, 26, Wellington Street, Strand. Printed by CHARLES DICKENS & EVANS, Crystal Palace Press. 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