"Then we are to consider this as a further, unprovoked, unmitigated insult for which you will give neither reason nor satisfaction!" cried Rossitur. "I have already disclaimed that, Mr. Rossitur."

"Are we, on mature deliberation, considered unworthy of the honour you so condescendingly awarded to us yesterday?"

"My reasons have nothing to do with you, sir, nor with your friend; they are entirely personal to myself."

"Mr. Carleton must be aware," said Capt. Beebee, "that his conduct, if unexplained, will bear a very strange construction."

Mr. Carleton was coldly silent.

"It never was heard of," the captain went on, "that a gentleman declined both to explain and to give satisfaction for any part of his conduct which had called for it."

"It never was heard that a gentleman did," said Thorn, removing his cigar a moment for the purpose of supplying the emphasis which his friend had carefully omitted to make.

"Will you say, Mr. Carleton," said Rossitur, "that you did not mean to offend us yesterday in what you said?"

66

No, Mr. Rossitur."

"You will not!" cried the captain.

"No, sir; for your friends had given me, as I conceived, just cause of displeasure; and I was, and am, careless of offending those who have done so.

"You consider yourself aggrieved, then, in the first place?" said Beebee. "I have said so, sir."

"Then," said the captain, after a puzzled look out to sea, "supposing that my friends disclaim all intention to offend you, in that case

"In that case I should be glad, Capt. Beebee, that they had changed their line of tactics; there is nothing to change in my own."

"Then what are we to understand by this strange refusal of a meeting, Mr. Carleton? what does it mean?"

"It means one thing in my own mind, sir, and probably another in yours; but the outward expression I choose to give it is that I will not reward uncalled-for rudeness with an opportunity of self-vindication."

"You are," said Thorn sneeringly, probably careless as to the figure your own name will cut in connection with this story?"

Entirely so," said Mr. Carleton, eyeing him steadily.

"You are aware that your character is at our mercy?'

A slight bow seemed to leave at their disposal the very small portion of his character he conceived to lie in that predicament.

"You will expect to hear yourself spoken of in terms that befit a man who has cowed out of an engagement he dared not fulfil ?”

"Of course," said Carleton haughtily, "by my present refusal I give you leave to say all that, and as much more as your ingenuity can furnish in the same style; but not in my hearing, sir." "You can't help yourself," said Thorn, with the same sneer. "You have rid yourself of a gentleman's means of protection; what others will you use?"

"I will leave that to the suggestion of the moment. I do not doubt it will be found fruitful."

Nobody doubted it who looked just then on his steady sparkling eye. "I consider the championship of yesterday given up of course," Thorn went on in a kind of aside, not looking at anybody, and striking his cigar against the guards to clear it of ashes; the champion has quitted the field;

and the little princess but lately so walled in with defences must now listen to whatever knight and squire may please to address to her. Nothing remains to be seen of her defender but his spurs.'

"They may serve for the heels of whoever is disposed to annoy her," said Mr. Carleton. 66 'He will need them."

He left the group with the same air of imperturbable self-possession which he had maintained during the conference. But presently Rossitur, who had his private reasons for wishing to keep friends with an acquaintance who might be of service in more ways than one, followed him and declared himself to have been, in all his nonsense to Fleda, most undesirous of giving displeasure to her temporary guardian, and sorry that it had fallen out so. He spoke frankly, and Mr. Carleton, with the same cool gracefulness with which he had carried on the quarrel, waived his displeasure, and admitted the young gentleman apparently to stand as before in his favour. Their reconciliation was not an hour old when Capt. Becbee joined them.

"I am sorry I must trouble you with a word more on this disagreeable subject, Mr. Carleton," he began, after a ceremonious salutation. My friend, Lieut. Thorn, considers himself greatly outraged by your determination not to meet him. He begs to ask, by me, whether it is your purpose to abide by it at all hazards."

"Yes, sir.

"There is some misunderstanding here, which I greatly regret. I hope you will see and excuse the disagreeable necessity I am under of delivering the rest of my friend's message.'

"Say on, sir."

"Mr. Thorn declares that if you deny him the common courtesy which no gentleman refuses to another, he will proclaim your name with the most opprobrious adjuncts to all the world; and in place of his former regard he will hold you in the most unlimited contempt, which he will have no scruple about showing on all occasions."

Mr. Carleton coloured a little, but replied coolly-"I have not lived in Mr. Thorn's favour. As to the rest, I forgive him!-except indeed he provoke me to measures for which I never will forgive him.

"Measures!" said the captain.

"I hope not! for my own self-respect would be more grievously hurt than his. But there is an unruly spring somewhere about my composition that when it gets wound up is once in a while too much for me.

"But," said Rossitur, "pardon me,-have you no regard to the effect of his misrepresentations?"

"You are mistaken, Mr. Rossitur," said Carleton slightly; "this is but the blast of a bellows,-not the Simoon."

"Then what answer shall I have the honour of carrying back to my friend?" said Capt. Beebee, after a sort of astounded pause of a few minutes. "None, of my sending, sir."

Capt. Beebee touched his cap, and went back to Mr. Thorn, to whom he reported that the young Englishman was thoroughly impracticable, and that there was nothing to be gained by dealing with him; and the vexed conclusion of Thorn's own mind, in the end, was in favour of the wisdom of letting him alone.

In a very different mood, saddened and disgusted, Mr. Carleton shook himself free of Rossitur, and went and stood alone by the guards looking out upon the sea. He did not at all regret his promise to his mother, nor wish to take other ground than he had taken. Both the theory and the practice of duelling he heartily despised, and he was not weak enough to

And

fancy that he had brought any discredit upon either his sense or his honour by refusing to comply with an unwarrantable and barbarous custom. he valued mankind too little to be at all concerned about their judgment in the matter. His own opinion was at all times enough for him. But the miserable folly and puerility of such an altercation as that in which he had just been engaged, the poor display of human character, the little low passions which had been called up, even in himself, alike destitute of worthy cause and aim, and which had perhaps but just missed ending in the death of some and the living death of others,—it all wrought back to his old wearying of human nature and despondent eyeing of the everywhere jarrings, confusions and discordances in the moral world. The fresh seabreeze that swept by the ship, roughening the play of the waves, and brushhis own cheek with its health-bearing wing, brought with it a sad feeling of contrast. Free, and pure, and steadily directed, it sped on its way to do its work. And like it all the rest of the natural world, faithful to the law of its Maker was stamped with the same signet of perfection. Only man, in all the universe, seemed to be at cross purposes with the end of his being. Only man, of all animate or inanimate things, lived an aimless, fruitless, broken life,- —or fruitful only in evil. How was this? and whence? and when would be the end; and would this confused mass of warring elements ever be at peace? would this disordered machinery ever work smoothly, without let or stop any more, and work out the beautiful something for which sure it was designed? And could any hand but its first Maker mend the broken wheel or supply the spring that was wanting?

Has not the Desire of all nations been often sought of eyes that were never taught where to look for him?

Mr. Carleton was standing still by the guards, looking thoughtfully out to windward to meet the fresh breeze, as if the Spirit of the Wilderness were in it and could teach him the truth that the Spirit of the World knew not and had not to give, when he became sensible of something close beside him; and looking down met little Fleda's upturned face, with such a look of purity, freshness, and peace, it said as plainly as ever the dial-plate of a clock that that little piece of machinery was working right. There was a sunlight upon it too, of happy confidence and affection. Mr. Carleton's mind experienced a sudden revulsion. Fleda might see the reflection of her own light in his face as he helped her up to a stand where she could be more on a level with him; putting his arm round her to guard against any sudden roll of the ship.

"What makes you wear such a happy face?" said he, with an expression half envious, half regretful.

"I don't know!" said Fleda innocently. "You, I suppose."

He looked as bright as she did for a minute.

"Were you ever angry, Elfie?"

"I don't know," said Fleda.

"I don't know but I have."

He smiled to see that although evidently her memory could not bring the charge, her modesty would not deny it.

"Were you not angry yesterday with your cousin and that unmannerly friend of his?"

"No," said Fleda, a shade crossing her face, "I was not angry."

And as she spoke her hand was softly put upon Mr. Carleton's; as if partly in the fear of what might have grown out of his anger, and partly in thankfulness to him that he had rendered it unnecessary. There was a singular delicate timidity and tenderness in the action.

"I wish I had your secret, Elfie," said Mr. Carleton, looking wistfully into the clear eyes that met his.

"What secret?" said Fleda smiling.

"You say one can always do right-is that the reason you are happy?— because you follow that out?"

"No," said Fleda seriously. "But I think it is a great deal pleasanter." "I have no doubt at all of that, neither, I dare say, have the rest of the world; only somehow when it comes to the point they find it is easier to do wrong. What's your secret, Elfie?"

"I haven't any secret," said Fleda. But presently, seeming to bethink herself, she added gently and gravely

"Aunt Miriam says

"What?"

دو

"She says that when we love Jesus Christ it is easy to please Him." "And do you love Him, Elfie?" Mr. Carleton asked after a minute. Her answer was a very quiet and sober "yes.'

He doubted still whether she were not unconsciously using a form of speech the spirit of which she did not quite realise. That one might "not see and yet believe," he could understand; but for affection to go forth towards an unseen object was another matter. His question was grave and

acute.

By what do you judge that you do, Elfie?"

Why, Mr. Carleton," said Fleda, with an instant look of appeal, "who else should I love?"

"If not Him"-her eye and her voice made sufficiently plain. Mr. Carleton was obliged to confess to himself that she spoke intelligently, with deeper intelligence than he could follow. He asked no more questions. Yet truth shines by its own light, like the sun, He had not perfectly comprehended her answers, but they struck him as something that deserved to be understood, and he resolved to make the truth of them his own.

The rest of the voyage was perfectly quiet. Following the earnest advice of his friend Capt. Beebee, Thorn had given up trying to push Mr. Carleton to extremity; who, on his part, did not seem conscious of Thorn's existence.

TH

CHAPTER XIII.

There the most daintie paradise on ground
Itselfe doth offer to his sober eye,-

The painted flowres, the trees upshooting hye,
The dales for shade, the hills for breathing space,
The trembling groves, the christall running by:
And that, which all faire works doth most aggrace,

The art which all that wrought appeared in no place.-Faery Queene.

HEY had taken ship for London, as Mr. and Mrs. Carleton wished to visit home for a day or two before going on to Paris. So leaving Charlton to carry news of them to the French capital, so soon as he could persuade himself to leave the English one, they, with little Fleda in company, posted down to Carleton, in

-shire.

It was a time of great delight to Fleda, that is, as soon as Mr. Carleton had made her feel at home in England; and somehow he had contrived to do that and to scatter some clouds of remembrance that seemed to gather about her, before they had reached the end of their first day's journey. To be out of the ship was itself a comfort, and to be alone with kind friends was much more. With great joy Fleda put her cousin Charlton and Mr. Thorn at once out of sight and out of mind; and gave herself with even more than

her usual happy readiness to everything the way and the end of the way had for her. Those days were to be painted days in Fleda's memory.

She thought Carleton was a very odd place; that is, the house, not the village, which went by the same name. If the manner of her two companions had not been such as to put her entirely at her ease, she would have felt strange and shy. As it was, she felt half afraid of losing herself in the house; to Fieda's unaccustomed eyes it was a labyrinth of halls and staircases, set with the most unaccountable number and variety of rooms, old and new, quaint and comfortable, gloomy and magnificent; some with stern old-fashioned massiveness of style and garniture; others absolutely bewitching (to Fleda's eyes and understanding) in the rich beauty and luxuriousness of their arrangements. Mr. Carleton's own particular haunts were of these; his private room, the little library, as it was called, the library, and the music-room, which was, indeed, rather a gallery of the fine arts, so many treasures of art were gathered there. To an older and nicejudging person these rooms would have given no slight indications of their owner's mind; it had been at work on every corner of them. No particular fashion had been followed in anything, nor any model consulted but that which fancy had built to the mind's order. The wealth of years had drawn together an enormous assemblage of matters, great and small, every one of which was fitted either to excite fancy, or suggest thought, or to satisfy the eye by its nice adaptation. And if pride had had the ordering of them, all these might have been but a costly museum, a literary alphabet that its possessor could not put together, an ungainly confession of ignorance on the part of the intellect, that could do nothing with this rich heap of material. But pride was not the genius of the place. A most refined taste and curious fastidiousness had arranged and harmonised all the heterogeneous items; the mental hieroglyphics had been ordered by one to whom the reading of them was no mystery. Nothing struck a stranger, at first entering, except the very rich effect and faultless air of the whole, and perhaps the delicious facilities for every kind of intellectual cultivation which appeared on every hand, facilities which it must be allowed do seem in general not to facilitate the work they are meant to speed. In this case, however, it was different. The mind that wanted them had brought them together to satisfy its own craving.

These rooms were Guy's peculiar domain. In other parts of the house, where his mother reigned conjointly with him, their joint tastes had struck out another style of adornment, which might be called a style of superb elegance. Not superb alone, for taste had not permitted so heavy a cha racteristic to be predominant; not merely elegant, for the fineness of all the details would warrant an ampler word. A larger part of the house than both these together had been left as generations past had left it, in various stages of refinement, comfort, and comeliness. It was a day or two before Fleda found out that it was all one; she thought at first that it was a collection of several houses that had somehow inexplicably sat down there with their backs to each other; it was so straggling and irregular a pile of building, covering so much ground, and looking so very unlike the different parts to each other. One portion was quite old; the other parts ranged variously between the present and the far past. After she once understood this, it was a piece of delicious wonderment and musing and great admiration to Fleda; she never grew weary of wandering round it, and thinking about it, for from a child fanciful meditation was one of her delights. Within doors she best liked Mr. Carleton's favourite rooms. Their rich