fore Dr. Antonio made it known to the world, lay among its olive gardens on the edge of the sea, which grew bluer and bluer as it crept to the feet of the human master of the soil, a delight to behold, a little picture which memory cherished. Wide promenades flanked with big hotels, with conventional gardens full of green bushes, and a kiosk for the band, make a very different prospect now. But then, in the old days, there could have been no music-sellers with pianos to let or sell; no famous English chemist with colored bottles; no big shops in which travellers could be tempted. Constance forgot Captain Gaunt when she found herself in this atmosphere of the world. She began to remember things she wanted. Papa, if you don't despise it too much, you must let me do a little shopping," she said. She wanted a hat for the sun. She wanted some eau de Cologne. She wanted just to run into the jeweller's to see if the coral was good, to see if there were any peasant ornaments which would be characteristic. At all this her father smiled somewhat grimly, taking it as a part of the campaign into which his daughter had chosen to enter for the overthrow of the young soldier. But Constance was perfectly sincere, and had forgotten her campaign in the new and warmer interest.

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their progress been along the dullest | process. San Remo in the old days, bestreets. It was only Waring's eyes, disgusted by the prospect before him of his daughter's little artifices, and young Gaunt's imbecile subjection, which turned with any special consciousness to the varying blues of the sea, to the endless developments of the landscape. Flirtation is one of the last things in the world to brook a spectator. Its little absurdities, which are so delightful to the actors in the drama, and which at a distance the severest critic may smile at and forgive, excite the wrath of a too clever looker-on in a way quite disproportioned to their real offensiveness. The interchange of chatter which prevents, as that observer would say, all rational conversation, the attempts to charm, which are so transparent, the response of silly admiration, which is only another form of vanity how profoundly sensible we all are of their folly! Had Constance taken as much pains to please her father, he would, in all probability, have yielded altogether to the spell; but he was angry, ashamed, furious, that she should address those wiles to the young stranger, and saw through him with a clear-sightedness which was exasperating. It was all the more exasperating that he could not tell what she meant by it. Was it possible that she had already formed an inclination towards this tawny young stranger? Had his bilious hues affected her imagination? Love at first sight is a very respectable emotion, and commands in many cases both sympathy and admiration. But no man likes Captain Gaunt was not a victim who reto see the working of this sentiment in the quired many wiles. He was less amuswoman who belongs to him. Had Con- ing than she had hoped, in so far that he stance fallen in love? He grew angry at had given in, in an incredibly short space the very suggestion, though breathed only of time. He was now in a condition to be in the recesses of his own mind. A girl trampled on at her pleasure, and this was who had been brought up in the world, unexciting. A longer resistance would who had seen all kinds of people, was have been much more to Constance's it possible that she should fall a victim mind. Captain Gaunt accompanied her in a moment to the attractions of a young to all the shops. He helped her with his nobody? a young fellow who knew nothing advice about the piano, bending his head but India? That he should be subjected, over her as she ran through a little air or was simple enough; but Constance! War two, and struck a few chords on one after ing's brow clouded more and more. He the other of the music-seller's stock. kept silent, taking no part in the talk, and They were not very admirable instruthe young fools did not so much as remark ments, but one was found that would do. it, but went on with their own absurdity more and more.

"So long as you do not ask me to attend you from shop to shop," he said. "O no; Captain Gaunt will come," said Constance.

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"You can bring your violin," Constance said; we must try to amuse ourselves a little." This was before her father left him, and he heard it with a groan.

The transformation of a series of little Italian municipalities, although in their nature more towns than villages, rendered Waring took a silent walk round the less rustic by the traditions of an exposed bay while the purchases went on. He coast, and many a crisis of self-defence, thought of past experiences, of the atinto little modern towns full of hotels and traction which a shop has for women. tourists, is neither a pleasant nor a lovely | Frances, no doubt, after a little of her

in vain to collect his thoughts and do his work! Mr. Waring's work was not of the first importance, but still it was his work, and momentous to him. He bore, however, a countenance unmoved, if very grave, and even endured without a word the young man's entrance with them, the consultation about where the piano was to stand, and tea afterwards in the loggia. He did not himself want any tea; he left the young people to enjoy this refreshment together while he retired to his bookroom. But with only two rooms between, and with his senses quickened by displeasure, he heard their voices, the laughter, the continual flow of talk, even the little tinkle of the teacups - every sound. He had never been disturbed by Frances's tea; but then, except Tasie Durant, there had been nobody to share it, no son from the bungalow, no privileged messen. ger sent by his mother. Mrs. Gaunt's children, of whom she talked continually, had always been a nuisance, except_to the sympathetic soul of Frances. But who could have imagined the prominence which they had assumed now?

mother's training, would be the same. | himself only two rooms off, endeavoring She would find out the charms of shop ping. He had not even her return to look forward to, for she would not be the same Frances who had left him, when she came back. When she came back? if she ever came back. The same Frances, never; perhaps not even a changed Frances. Her mother would quickly see what an advantage she had in getting the daughter whom her husband had brought up. She would not give her back; she would turn her into a second Constance. There had been a time when Waring had concluded that Constance was amusing and Frances dull; but it must be remembered that he was under provocation now. If she had been amusing, it had not been for him. She had exerted herself to please a commonplace, undistinguished boy, with an air of being indifferent to everything else, which was beyond measure irritating to her father. And now she had got scent of shops, and would never be happy save when she was rushing from one place to another to Mentone, to Nice, perhaps, wherever her fancied wants might lead her. Waring discussed all this with himself as he rambled along, his nerves all set on edge, his taste revolted. Flirtations and shops was he to be brought to this? he who had been free from domestic incum brance, who had known nothing for so many years but a little ministrant, who never troubled him, who was ready when he wanted her, but never put forth herself as a restraint or an annoyance. He had advised Constance to take what good she could find in her life; but he had never imagined that this was the line she would take.

The drive home was scarcely more satisfactory. Young Gaunt had got a little courage by the episode of the shops. He ventured to tell her of the trifles he had brought with him from India, and to ask if Miss Waring would care to see them; and he described to her the progress he had made with his violin and what his attainments were in music. Constance told him that the best thing he could do was to bring the said violin and all his music, so that they might see what they could do together. "If you are not too far advanced for me," she said with a laugh. "Come in the morning, when we shall not be interrupted."

Her father listened, but said nothing. His imagination immediately set before him the tuning and scraping, the clang of the piano, the shriek of the fiddle, and he

Young Gaunt did not go away until shortly before dinner; and Constance, after accompanying him to the anteroom, went along the corridor singing, to her own room, to change her dress. Though her room (Frances's room that was) was at the extremity of the suite, her father heard her light voice running on in a little operatic air all the time she made her toilet. Had it been described in a book, he thought to himself it would have had a pretty sound. The girl's voice, sweet and gay, sounding through the house, the voice of happy youth brightening the dull life there, the voice of innocent content betraying its own satisfaction with exist ence-satisfaction in having a young fool to flirt with, and some trumpery shops to buy unnecessary appendages in! At dinner, however, she made fun of young Gaunt, and the morose father was a little mollified. "It is rather dreadful for other people when there is an adoring mother in the background to think everything you do perfection," Constance said. don't think we shall make much of the violin."

"These are subjects on which you can speak with more authority than I - both the violin and the mother," said Waring.

"Oh," she cried, "you don't think mamma was one of the adoring kind, I hope! There may be things in her which might be mended; but she is not like

that. She kept one in one's proper place. "And therefore you think a girl can And as for the violin, I suspect he plays do it like an old fiddler in the streets."

shot; their skins sell for a few pence, yet the Boers are shooting them down so rap idly that in some years hence the race will be extinct.

A few miles farther I came upon another valley, also holding a lake in its hollow, altogether different from the first. Here was fringe of rocks, black and jagged, sticking out in points against which the waves splashed. The lake was about two miles long, divided by a bridge of rocks, level with the water and eaten into countless holes, telling of the old giants who had been blowing rock-bubbles long ago in this neighborhood, when the bubbles bursting, had hardened, and filled with water.

I rode for many miles, the turf gemmed with flowers, a light yellow star in clusters more common than the rest.

In front had been growing up a line, darker than the everlasting veldt, which I knew to be the bank of the next lake. The turf was soppy with bright-green patches. In one of them a couple of grey geese eyed me solemnly; a pair of Kaffir cranes not far off, the feathery plumage of their wings, soft dove color, drooping behind them like a tail. When I was under the ridge I dismounted, knee-haltering my pony, and, creeping behind a clump of rushes, stole up to get my first glimpse of the Great Salt Lake.

In my excitement I scarcely breathed. On the side farthest from me was a rank Quite close to me, below the rushes, I saw of tall, white birds, four deep, something a sheet of silver, reflecting the clouds, like storks, but which turned out to be dotted with wild-fowl; the divers in pairs, flamingoes. In every pool were ducks, the geese and ducks in fleets, and just unpaddling in pairs; waders stalked in the der where I lay two flamingoes and three shallows; the centre given up to black geese pluming themselves, unconscious of and white geese. But of all the birds the intruder behind the rushes. The there the flamingoes were the strangest. silver reflecting them doubled the number Their legs were so thin and so straight, of the birds, the ripple adding life and their necks so absurdly unequal to their motion to the group. The flamingoes clumsy heads, the scraps of red plum- were snowy white, their wings and heads age so marked a contrast to their snow- dabbed with pink; the geese, comfortable white feathers, their solemnity ridiculous. | black and white fellows, larger than the Though there must have been a hundred of them, I could not detect a movement in a single flamingo. Every bird was devoured with curiosity about myself. Every eye was watching me; I don't believe one of thom winked. Then, all at once, the flock rose like a great white cloud now white, and now pink again.

The contrast between the lake and the veldt around it was very striking. Here all was life and motion; the water-birds darting ceaselessly, leaving wakes like silver lines that broadened and died out; the geese sailing far out of reach, calmly observant; the flamingoes overhead manœuvring against the sky; on the beach at my feet the sand-pipers running races after the worms.

A dozen steps up the bank and I looked over a sea of grass across which the wagon track wound away to the sky-line; and it was over this dreary waste that I now turned reluctantly. There were more heaps of bones, and a few bucks scattered widely. A fat hare jumping up under my pony's feet was startling. Here and there lay an ox, dead long ago, its framework, dried to a mummy, attractive to the vultures - dirty brown birds, which craned their necks and sidled away from their feast as I rode past; sights which a traveller in South Africa knows too well. So

familiar Michaelmas bird. Everywhere the air was filled with the cries of other water-birds, a constant chattering, contented or quarrelsome, hurrying after a scrap of food, disappointed when it es caped them, happy when it was captured. Then down the wind came the whirr of many wings as the newcomers splashed into the lake.

The water stretched as far as I could see for about four miles, ending in a line of boulders, piled loosely one upon the other, and dotted with brushwood, forming a promontory stretching nearly across the lake, which had got to be named after it, Island Lake Pan -"salt pan" is the local term for a salt lake. I was loth to disturb the peaceful home I was looking into, but time was flying, the lake was long, and to miss exploring it was out of the question. So I jumped up. The faces of those birds were comical; they were so astonished, they could not believe their own eyes; if ever birds were taken aback, it was the five below me. The flamingoes were the most ludicrous; their little eyes twinkled, and stared, and blinked again; if they had owned pocket handkerchiefs they would have taken them out and wiped away the wonder that was in them. As it was they gathered their wits together, and spreading their wings