attraction? Well, certainly the man who could square the circle to mathematical accuracy would acquire abundance of fame -if no fortune. And yet what can that man want with money who is able to achieve the impossible?

CATHERINE MAIDMENT'S

BURDEN.

A STORY IN TWELVE CHAPTERS. BY MARGARET MOULE.

CHAPTER IX.

MR. STEWART CARR rode his horse round to the stables, and dismounted there. He walked back very quickly through the gardens. The flowers were looking almost as if, after the heat and glare of the sun, they were resting now in its lowered rays. But their colours, though less vivid, were clearly outlined against the grey background of the Castle walls, and the stocks and mignonette were beginning to smell deliciously with the evening air. But Mr. Stewart-Carr observed neither scents nor colours. He entered the hall, laid his hat and whip in their accustomed places, and was preparing to go hastily upstairs to his dressing-room, when the door of the drawing-room suddenly opened, and Grace Arbuthnot came out and crossed the hall towards him.

"It is you," she said. "I thought so. May I speak to you for a moment?"

She was in her dinner-dress, a pretty silk frock of pale green, with a great deal of soft frilling about it; and it was, possibly, the soft setting to her face and shoulders, and the green colour, which was becoming to her, that made her look prettier than usual, and showed off the colour in her cheeks and the sparkle in her eyes. She stretched out one hand and played nervously with some carving on the balustrade of the stairs as she spoke.

"To me!" he said, looking at her in surprise. He was utterly at a loss to imagine what she could want to say to him, "What can I do for you?" he added, courteously.

"May I speak to you?" Grace repeated, fingering the bit of carving still more nervously.

He looked at her again, in greater astonishment. It was evident, from her manner, that she wished to speak to him alone. The request struck him as, to say the least of it, unusual, but he answered, instantly:

"Certainly. I am at your service." He glanced round the hall, trying to decide whether he would take her to one of the easy-chairs or to the centre ottoman; but, as he glanced, a servant appeared and passed through the hall into the dining. room. He suddenly remembered that dinner was being laid, and for the next half-hour this passing would be continuous.

"Will you come into my room," he asked her "where we looked at the fishing-rods?"

"Thank you," she said, quickly. He led the way towards it. Half-way along the passage he stopped and turned. "Mrs. Arbuthnot is not worse, I trust?" he said, quickly.

"Oh, no!" Grace replied. "She is so much better, thank you, that I believe we shall not have to trespass on your hospitality for more than a few days longer."

"It's not 'trespassing on my hospitality," he said; "don't, please, use words that are so meaningless!"

He opened the door of his room as he spoke. Grace entered; he followed, and shut it behind them. She looked around her in a perplexed, confused way; and then she suddenly sat down on a chair close to the table. He stood leaning back against the door-frame, waiting, in wonder that grew stronger and stronger, for her to speak.

There was an odd little pause, while Grace played with her handkerchief, which she had taken from the folds of her dress. At last, with her head bent down, she said, very abruptly:

"Mr. Stewart-Carr, you know Captain Carnforth very well, don't you?"

"Captain Carnforth !" echoed Mr. Stewart-Carr, with the rapid reflection that women were indeed incomprehensible, and that he had not the faintest idea what this particular woman could mean by such a query.

"I mean," Grace went on, tearing off little bits of the lace edge on her handkerchief, "you've known him a long time, haven't you?"

Mr. Stewart-Carr, hopelessly mystified, resolved to take refuge in plain statement.

"Yes," he answered, "I have known him for six or seven years. We met in Malta, first; yes, it is seven years ago, this summer."

"And," continued Grace, rolling the handkerchief into a minute ball in her hot fingers, "you know he's a very nice

don't you'

u?" He stared at her uncompromisingly. For one moment he thought Grace Arbuthnot had suddenly gone out of her senses; then, in mercy to her visibly increasing confusion, he said, quickly :

"He is my intimate personal friend, and I have never known anything but good of him, if that is what you mean. But, Miss Arbuthnot," he said, breaking off suddenly, "may I ask what it is you do mean by these questions?"

Grace rose suddenly from her chair, and took two steps towards him. Then she suddenly sat down again, and leaning both elbows on the table, ran her hands up into her pretty hair, distractedly.

"Oh!" she said, with a little sigh, "why do men understand so slowly? I don't mean to be rude," she said, with a pretty glance up at him; "but don't you see? Oh don't you see?"

"I don't," he replied, with straightforward directness. "I'm afraid I'm stupid, but I don't."

Grace tore her little handkerchief right across; then she turned round and looked up at him with a face and neck scarlet, from her brow to the edge of the frilling of her gown.

"I-I-he cares for me, he says," she cried, in a low tone; "and I-care for him. We're engaged," she added, desperately; "we were engaged yesterday."

Mr. Stewart-Carr caught hold of the handle of the door and grasped it firmly in his strong brown hand. But he did not speak, he made no attempt to help Grace. And after a pause, during which she seemed to collect her energies for a final statement, she said, looking at him pleadingly "He must tell mother, you know. He's going away to-morrow, and he must tell her, first, of course, I haven't told her yet," Grace put in, parenthetically and fearfully; "and mother doesn't much like him," she continued. "She'll say all sorts of things. She'll say she doesn't know him enough; and I thoughtI thought" Grace stammered with the haste with which she tried to get through her words. "I thought if you would tell mother that you know him so well, and that he's-as nice as he is, you know, she'd listen to you, and let us be engaged. I know she'd listen to you," Grace ended, breathlessly.

Mr. Stewart-Carr rallied all his forces, which had been scattered completely by

was trying, in an aimless way, to put together the two pieces of her handkerchief, and looking hard at it as it lay on her knees.

He took her hand in both his, very gently, It was the action of a much older man, and yet it seemed to be the natural gesture for the man who did it at the moment.

"Miss Arbuthnot," he said, and his voice was as gentle as his touch, "thank you very much for telling me. I am so sorry I was so dense as not to understand sooner. I will say everything and anything I can to Mrs. Arbuthnot whenever you like. I will do all I possibly can; and I think you need have no cause to fear." She looked up at him very gratefully, and he went on:

"I wish you every happiness, and I believe with all my heart you'll have it. Carnforth is one of the best fellows going."

"Thank you," she said, in a very low little voice. Then suddenly taking her hand from his, she put both hands over her face and burst into tears. But she checked herself again in a moment, and proceeded laughingly to dry the tears with the torn fragments of her handkerchief. "What an idiot I am!" she said. "I can't think what made me. But I was anxious, you see, and you were very kind. And now," she said, looking up at him with a piteous, mischievous little twinkle in her tearful eyes," my pocket-handkerchief is in bits, and I can't get another without meeting mother or my maid."

Mr. Stewart-Carr looked about desperately, as if he trusted that a keen glance would evolve a clean pocket-handkerchief out of the surrounding air. "I'm sorry I can't offer you one," he said, distractedly.

She stood up with a gay little laugh. "There are none here, I imagine !" she said. "Don't mind, my tears are dry! I won't keep you any longer. Is my face all right?" she said, turning it to him for inspection.

'Quite," he said, looking at the pretty eyes from which the traces of tears had completely vanished. "You won't worry or fret ?" he went on, earnestly. "I'm sure we can make things straight."

"You are very good indeed," she said, holding out her hand to him as she turned to the door. "Very good."

"I've done nothing," he said, simply; "but I will do my best." Then he opened the door for her, and they left the room

together, Grace to return to the drawingroom, singing a little light-hearted song as she went; and he to rush towards the stairs, and ascend three steps at a time. Mr. Stewart-Carr's manner that evening was unusual. He seemed almost excited; his quiet courteousness gave way to a cordiality which, though he had always made his guests feel it, he had never before so unreservedly displayed, and under his ordinary self-possession a kind of irrepressible buoyancy continually showed itself.

Grace, every time she glanced at him, became more and more confident of his persuasive powers; and, radiantly happy in that conviction, she caught the infection of his high spirits and laughed and talked brilliantly all the evening.

Captain Carnforth, who, at a word or two of invitation after Grace and her mother had left the dinner-table, confided instantly in his host, came to the conclusion that well as he had always thought he knew Mr. Stewart-Carr, he had never till now known how "awfully good" he was. Mrs. Arbuthnot, who, tired and rather fractious, had come down to dinner that day for the first time since her accident, left the drawing-room at ten o'clock in a thoroughly happy frame of mind with herself and all the world, and firmly convinced that the only thing wanting to complete her satisfaction was that Grace should marry a man who was, as she expressed it to herself that night, quite the most charming man she had ever known."

Next day Mr. Stewart-Carr was as good as his word. He, having first arranged the time with Grace, sought out Mrs. Arbuthnot at twelve o'clock; but no one ever heard the details of that episode except the two immediately concerned. Grace had early that morning broken the fact of her engagement to her mother, to be met by considerable contempt and strong opposition, but she only knew that when Mr. Stewart-Carr came out of the drawing-room and sent her to her mother, the contempt and opposition were as completely gone as if they had never existed. Mrs. Arbuthnot could not have kissed her daughter more sympathetically, or sympathised with her more tenderly, if Grace had met her wishes, and had been going to marry Mr. Stewart-Carr himself.

Captain Carnforth, when he wrung Mr. Stewart-Carr's hand as they parted that same evening at the little country

station, had come equally successfully through his own ordeal.

"I don't know how to thank you," he said, enthusiastically, as he got into the train.

"Ask me to the wedding!" responded Mr. Stewart-Carr, laughingly,

Two days later Mrs. Arbuthnot and Grace also left the Castle. During the days that followed their departure, Mr. Stewart-Carr's buoyant, excited frame of mind seemed to undergo a change. The reaction came to him.

Every tangible obstacle in the way of his going to Catherine Maidment and asking her to be his wife was now removed; but the first blissful consciousness of that fact was now suddenly succeeded by the acute consciousness of a hundred intangible obstacles, which, in the shape of doubt, hesitancy, and diffidence, rose up and stood in his path.

He told himself one day that it was not likely she would ever care for him-he was very modest and did not believe in any merits on his own part-the next, he made up his mind that he was certainly too late; a woman so sweet as Catherine was must have been asked the question he was longing to ask her, and must have been won by some other man, long before.

But on the third day, perhaps because his accumulated feelings of the two preceding days were beginning to make him feel as if the obstacles in his way were such as he could never overcome, he suddenly determined to turn and face them. He resolved that very afternoon, or never, he would ask Catherine Maidment to be his wife.

CHAPTER X.

THE afternoon was hotter than ever, and Catherine Maidment, as she sat with her work-basket before her, in the quiet dining-room of the White House, was very glad she was there, and not out in the glaring sunlight which lay in such broad, hot streams over their garden and the park beyond.

Catherine had not stayed indoors, however, simply on account of the heat. There were two distinct errands she meant to have accomplished that day; one to a distant brickyard, to give an order for the purchase of some drain-pipes, which were wanted at once, for some draining that was going forward on the estate; and one to Fisher, the carpenter, from whom she had been returning when

Mr. Stewart-Carr met her a few days before. But she had let both wait, though both were pressing, and stayed at home, because she did not like to leave her brother by himself for so long a time as either of these walks would take.

Frank Maidment had been worse for the two last nights; it was because Grace Arbuthnot had left Moreford, Catherine thought to herself, wearily. This morning, the headache with which he came down had not, as usual, worn off after breakfast. He had spent a desultory morning in gardening lazily, keeping Catherine beside him to help him; and since luncheon, he had made several listless attempts to go on with it, interrupted by aimless wanderings into the dining-room. But they were more and more listless, and at length he had given it up, and, at Catherine's persuasion, had gone upstairs to his room to lie down, Catherine having first tried to make sure that all temptation was out of his reach. She had crept upstairs once more, half an hour after he laid down, and had found him asleep, quite peacefully and, apparently, dreamlessly. She knew, from terrible experience, that he was likely to sleep very long, and she came downstairs again, and took up her work, with a mind temporarily at ease about him,

It was very quiet outside and inside the White House. It was the hottest hour of the summer afternoon, and every living thing seemed silenced by the heat. Not a breath of air stirred the drooping leaves of the trees, and only the sound of a very distant sheep-bell broke the silence every now and then.

Inside the silence was still deeper. Margaret had gone into Moreford, and the only sound to be heard was the distant crackle of the fire through the open kitchen door, and the little click of Catherine's thimble, as she stitched a collar on her brother's shirt.

From the corner where she sat she could see the garden gate; but her head was bent over her stitching, and the sudden slight click of its latch-a sound so slight as to be only noticeable by contrast with the great stillness-made her start violently. She raised her head with her start, and saw Mr. Stewart - Carr coming through the garden to the door. Her first impulse was to prevent her brother from being awakened-partly for his own sake, and partly because she could not be sure of the impression his appearance might make to-day.

With a little shiver, arising from this last thought, she hastily put all her work into its basket, and going out of the room, met Mr. Stewart-Carr on the doorstep.

"I came out because my brother is not well," she said, hurriedly; "he is lying down, asleep, and I thought the bell would wake him.'

"I am very sorry," he said.

"Do come in," Catherine continued; "perhaps I can tell him what you wanted, or help to arrange it."

"Thank you," he replied, gravely, following her quietly into the drawing-room. He sat down, opposite her work-table, before he spoke again. "I came to see you, Miss Maidment," he said.

"To see me !" Catherine said, with some surprise. "Oh, is it about Fisher ? He is really most trying. I meantFrank meant to go to him this afternoon again. But he has one of his worst headaches, and I had to send the servant out, and could not well leave the house. Frank will go to him to-morrow."

But

"No; not about Fisher," he said. then he paused; and Catherine looked at him with a face that had grown white and very anxious.

His manner was strange, she thought. What could have happened? Could he possibly have found out anything? she asked herself, with a feeling of terror. But, though she collected herself again hastily, the strangeness of his manner affected her; and all her conversational ideas seemed to desert her, wholly and at once. Before she could recover any of them, Mr. Stewart-Carr suddenly rose, crossed the little space that had divided them, and stood before her chair. Catherine looked up at him with wide, wondering eyes; but, as she met his, something in them made her drop her own, and made her heart beat violently.

"Miss Maidment," he said, "I came, this afternoon, to ask so much that I do not know how to put it into words. The only thing I can do is to speak plainly, at once, at the risk of being abrupt and hasty. If I do not, I shall not be able to say it at all."

He paused for one moment, and glanced down at her; but Catherine did not move or lift her eyes, which she had fixed on her clasped hands.

"You must know, I think, what I am going to say," he went on, speaking very slowly from agitation. "I am going to tell you I love you. I do tell you so.