impression of a naturally truthful person who had once deliberately and wilfully told a great falsehood, and lived ever after with the consciousness of the taint of it, and a dread of its spreading. But suddenly it struck her as somewhat unfair to be imputing motives and actions in this way to one of whose real character they knew so little, and with the thought she involuntarily recalled the scene at the dinner-table the night before. She did not want Raymond to put the two together, even though she had done so. What if Maurice had winced under Mr. Pymont's injudicious pressure as if he had some secret which made the mere thought of confession unpleasant to him? So have most men, and it is only those who are perfect in deception who can appear to have nothing to hide.

Raymond looked round as if wondering why she did not finish her sentence.

.

'Do you remember young Fielding?' she said with a soft halflaugh. He had, I think, what you might call "a habit of lying," but they were the most harmless and obvious of lies. And when he wished very much to be believed he used to say, "Pon honour now, and no humbug, don't you know!"'

'I remember. But that formula used to preface some statements that tried one's powers of belief somewhat severely.'

Raymond winced a little secretly as he answered. For young Fielding's good-natured vacant face was inseparably connected with that time upon which he was so unwilling to look back—the time of their engagement.

He was staying more than once in the house where they too were staying, and was always bursting in upon them at inappropriate moments-making a third in their walks-and adding to his offences by profuse apologies, well-meant but ill-timed.

Raymond turned from the blurred rainy landscape and looked at Agnes. How old she was getting! It was a long while, certainly, since those bright days of their engagement; but there were some ladies of his acquaintance who still looked much the same as they had done then. And Agnes had changed from a girl into a woman— and not even a particularly young woman-had gained every charm that a woman need have, and had lost those of youth and beauty for

ever.

'She would have looked older if we had been married,' he said to himself. 'And she would not have been so well-dressed.

are always ugly, after their first youth, if they are poor.' Do you know where Day is?' he asked aloud.

Women

In what was the schoolroom, probably. She and Dick make that their haunt upon wet days.'

'I shall go and see what they are about. Day's ideas of useful and interesting employment must needs be original.'

He sauntered from the room as he spoke. He did really want to go and see Dagmar; to turn the current of his thoughts from the

old love to the new; but he would have been better pleased not tɔ have found Dick there.

That lively young gentleman seriously added to the difficulties of a by no means easy task. Dagmar Tyndal could seem, at times, so soft and sweet and womanly that to woo her was pure pleasure; but those moods were rare and fleeting.

She was always liable to change, as it were, at a moment's notice, from a romantic, even tender-hearted girl, into a mocking, unsentimental, quick-witted boy; and Dick's appearance on the scene was always the signal for the change.

It was not she who changed her mood, the mood changed her; and Raymond could not even flatter himself that there was any coquetry in the dainty elvish malice with which she tormented him at these times.

The two were sitting by the large ink-stained table in the old schoolroom, which had been Dagmar's a few years back, and where Dick now did his lessons.

They were busy over some occult affair in wood and wire, at which Raymond looked in uncomprehending wonder, and seemed almost too busy at first to pay any attention to him.

'What are you making?' he asked, as he strolled round the room which had been so familiar to him once, languidly studying the contents of the well-filled untidy bookshelves.

'A mouse-trap!' answered Dagmar, with a wicked glance that made Dick give a sudden snort of ill-suppressed laughter.

'No! not really?' said Raymond, with a slight shudder. 'Hallo, here's one of my old favourites, "The Cruise of the Midge." I have not thought of it since I was Dick's age; but I used to be awfully fond of it then.'

'You had better renew your acquaintance with it now,' said Day, and she bored a hole in a tiny piece of wood, and fitted a peg to it with accuracy, chanting softly to herself

'Oh! we be three poor mariners,

Newly come from the seas;
We spend our lives in jeopardie
While others live at ease.'

"Thank you! You might as well offer me a slab of toffee to match that which I saw Dick devouring yesterday.'

'I will if you like,' she answered demurely, leaning back to open a cupboard behind her, and reaching from it a large dish half full of almond-rock of a very home-made appearance.

Raymond recoiled in some dismay, as she held it towards him; but she tossed a piece to Dick, with a caution not to mistake it for the Russian glue, and set her own pretty white teeth into another piece, with an air of enjoyment purposely pronounced.

'Really,' she said, 'if our entertainment is so little to your taste, you had better have stayed in some more civilised region. Did you find no one in the morning-room?'

'Agnes was there, but I preferred coming here. I was always fond of this old schoolroom. I used to work here occasionally in that long summer that I spent here, when you were a tiny little creature in short frocks, reading words of three letters in a high chair by that table.'

'Yes, I can just remember. Agnes was here then, and she used to do German and French with Miss Spence. Poor Miss Spence! I remember how annoyed she used to be, because she felt sure that you were wasting your time, and studying in a desultory fashion-and you were beyond her jurisdiction.'

'There are a lot of boys' books here,' said Raymond, still keeping his face towards the bookshelf. This seems to be Dick's domain,

rather than yours.'

'No, indeed! Those are all mine, every one of them. Michael Scott, Marryatt, Cooper, and all.'

Raymond looked over the well-worn volumes, smiling. He knew nothing, even in literature, of the healthy, omnivorous appetite of a creature so happily constituted as Dagmar, and he was even more surprised as he looked at the shelf above, where stood a goodly array of poets, all in the easy undress of old and familiar friends.

The rain fell steadily against the window-pane, Dick polished and cut and glued in absorbed silence, and Dagmar twisted off short lengths of wire with a pair of pincers, and sang, half under her breath—

'Come, rede me my riddle, dear mother (he said),

And rede it me all in one;

Whether I shall wed with faire Ellinor,

And let the brown girl alone.'

'Dick, that corner isn't square!'

'Oh, isn't it, though?' cried the boy, surveying his work in dismay. 'Not a bit of it! Get my set-square out of that drawer behind you and look.'

'The brown girl she has got houses and lands,

Fair Ellinor she has got none;

Wherefore, I charge you, upon my blessing,

Bring me the brown girl home."

Raymond shut up the book at which he was looking with an impatient gesture, and came to a seat by the table.

'What is that thing you are toiling at so busily?' he asked.

It started in life with the ambition of becoming a bird-cage,' answered Dagmar gravely. 'Whether it will ever realise that ideal or not, I cannot tell. Oh, Dick, you are an owl! Don't you see that those two sides cannot by any possibility come together properly?' 'I don't know what possesses the thing!' sighed Dick, giving it up into his cousin's hand.

She bent her pretty brows over it, mechanically going on with her 'doleful ditty,' while Raymond looked at her half-amused, halfprovoked, at the impossibility of making her sensible of his attentions.

'Is this your bride, Lord Thomas? (she sayd)
Methinks she looks wondrous browne.

'Give me the knife, Dick; this corner must be cut to fit.'

'Wondrous browne?' thought Raymond. No! No one will ever say that I have married for money. In a few years' time this face will be more than a sufficient excuse for any act of folly. And I, unfortunately, am no longer capable of committing an act of folly; we grow so wise as we grow old !'

'I shan't offer to assist,' he said aloud, in his laziest tone. 'I was never good at that kind of thing. Isn't it-less trouble—to buy your bird-cages ready made?'

Possibly. It certainly costs less!' answered Dagmar coolly; and there was another pause.

Despise her not, faire Ellin (he sayd),
Despise her not unto me,

For better I love thy little finger

Than all her whole bodie.'

In the middle of this chanson the knife slipped, but Day, with characteristic pride, completed it with more than usual clearness. Then she remarked composedly

Talking of fingers, I have cut mine.'

'I should think you have!' cried Raymond indignantly, springing up and taking possession of the little brown hand. Dick! go and fetch something to bind it up with-and be quick about it.'

'It is nothing to mind,' said she; but she stood still and let him hold her hand, lightly but firmly, to check the little wound from bleeding.

Why don't you let Dick do the rough part of the work?' he asked, still indignant.

'He would only cut himself much more often than I do.'

'Better for him to chop his hands to pieces than for you. What was that you were singing just now—

"Better I love thy little finger,
Than all- -?" "

They were standing close together; her hand, by the exigencies of the situation, surrendered to both of his; and he looked at her with something more like passion in his eyes than had been there for years, and yet, even then, in the bottom of his heart, he was remembering that it was to his first love that the ballad-hero spoke those impassioned words.

Dick came bouncing into the room, with old linen enough-begged from the housekeeper-to have bound up the wounds of a regiment that had been in action, and Raymond bound up the little wounded finger with an air of proprietorship that was half provoking to the real owner thereof.

'Do be more careful another time,' he said. 'You might hurt yourself in good earnest some day, and you can't suppose all this carpentering business is worth such a risk.'

Dagmar thanked him, but made no promises, and did not laugh at him, which was perhaps more surprising.

Perhaps she was too much taken back,' for before her cousin relinquished the little ill-used hand he lifted it to his lips, more with the air of one who takes payment than one who solaces a childish injury, with a kiss to make it well.'

The rain did not abate; but after luncheon Maurice Claughton put on his macintosh and faced the elements. He was not accustomed to spending the whole day indoors, and had already perhaps had enough of the Squire's company and advice, while the rest of the party had all letters to write, except Dagmar, who had disappeared, and Dick, who was buried in a book.

So Maurice went out, and up the road towards the Court. He must by this time have got over his nervous shrinking from the deserted home of his ancestors, or he would never have cared to face it on such a day as this, when the wind sighed through the deserted rooms, and spots of damp came out everywhere like ineffaceable bloodstains, and even the little cheery room that Dagmar had approved looked a very temple of dreariness.

He walked through the rooms, making another tour of inspection, with more care and more personal interest than he had shown upon the former occasion. But there was an odd questioning look upon his face all the while. He might have been debating with himself whether it had been wise to have left the sunny foreign shores for this.

He went into the garden and greenhouses, and stood about a long while in the rain, talking to the gardener and planning alterations. Then he went out into the park and up into the hanging woods above the house woods that to-day were wrapped in mist, with every decaying leaf heavy with clinging raindrops.

Maurice splashed on, unheeding discomfort, perhaps not feeling it. Of all things he hated to feel himself a coward, and he was conscious now of having been one. Carefully as he had inspected the house he had not entered the large drawing-room, nor so much as opened its door, from sheer unwillingness to meet the eyes of that portrait of his father that hung above the tall carved mantelshelf.

Next

This is pure unreason!' he said to himself impatiently. time I will go in there, and face it, and have done with it once for all.'

He turned downwards to get out of the wood, and struck into a winding sandy road, that led steeply down the outer ridge of the hill, skirted the churchyard, and so went downward to the village.

He was striding along, aware of being in the right direction, and careless of how long the way might be, so long as it gave him leisure