arrival at the hotel, he applied for leave, and went away. He called to say goodbye, but only saw Miss Goldsmith. Goldsmith missed him dreadfully, as he had spent every spare moment of his time in talking about Clarice to him. A week after Trevor's departure, he was coming down the road that led past Lady Bellairs's house. Clarice had not been to see his aunt for three days. As he passed through the lane on the other side of the hedge which bordered the lawn, he caught sight of her. Oddly enough, she was standing in just the same position on the doorstep as that in which he and Trevor had first seen her, looking west, and shading her eyes from the rays of the sun. "She is like an enchanted princess look ing for the coming prince," Goldsmith had said. As he saw her again now, he remembered his first fancy, and the next moment the fancy had passed into a great desire which mastered all prudence, all thought of anything save his own love and her. A few more minutes, and he stood by her side. She had not heard him come, but as he spoke her name, she dropped her hand, and turned quickly. The sight of her eyes, dimmed and red as if she had been crying, broke down the last barrier. "Grandmother is out," she said, "but she will not be long. Will you come indoors, or stay here?" He said he would go indoors, and she led the way to the drawing-room. Then, before he quite knew what he was doing, he was standing before her, and pouring out in broken, disconnected phrases, all the love he had forced back for so long. She stood looking at him as if turned to stone. She did not attempt to stop him. It seemed as if she were too shocked-as if she had found herself suddenly in some terrible trap. Her face was perfectly white, her eyes almost dazed with a kind of horror which he could not understand. "Clarice! Oh, my little love! Don't you understand me?" He put out his hand as if to touch hers. Then she shrank back a little. "And my grandmother said it was not true," she said in a low voice; "that I was "What do you mean, dear?" asked the young man gently, trying hard for her sake to be quiet, fearing that he had terrified her with his passion. "Oh, Mr. Goldsmith, what have I done?" she cried. "But I-indeed-indeed, I did not know. I was afraid sometimes. And when she told me that I must try to make you all like me, I told her, but she only laughed at me. She said it was all my foolish fancy. That when I had lived a little longer in the world, I should not imagine that every man who paid me attention wanted to marry me. That you were too rich, too far above me, now that we were so poor, for you to care for me. But she told me that there was a reason that I should do what I could to She was red enough now. Her face was flushed with such a scarlet wave of shame and pain, that the young man, dimly seeing it through the awful mist of fear and doubt which seemed suddenly to have wrapped him in, tried to spare her. "Tell me," he said quietly, though his voice sounded strange in his own ears, "what reason did your grandmother give for wishing you to be kind to us?" She said that once-long ago, she did your aunt a great injury; that she was tired of such long years of hate. That when she met you she was glad to do what she could, and that for her past sin I must help, too, to teach you and your aunt to forgive." "When did she tell you all this?" he asked again, still with the same strained quiet. "After your aunt came. It was then that, when she mentioned your name, I told her- Ah, how can I speak of it? How foolish-how wicked I have been!" "Neither foolish nor wicked," Goldsmith tried to smile. "But-was it then that your grandmother told you that I was too rich to care— "Yes." "Heaven help me! And she knew it all along. She knew how I loved you!" He could not help the exceeding bitter cry. Then he turned back swiftly to her. "Tell me," he said, "just one thing. I have been foolish. I have spoken too soon. If I had waited-if I wait "Ah! But that's just it. Oh, if there were any hope I would give it, for the wickedness I have done you. Yes; it was wicked. I ought to have known. I ought not to have been so blinded. But I was always thinking of something else. And so I went on, doing all I could to make you and your aunt forget that wicked past. And now I can only make it worse a hundredfold." "No-no. Give me one hope. Just say, 'I will try—' He did guess, and for a moment the discovery was more almost than he could bear. Then he suddenly turned to her again and caught her hands in his, kissing them as he had done his aunt's six weeks ago. The decision of his life had been made at last. "You have decided for both our lives," he said gently, though his voice was still hoarse. "Heaven bless you, dear, whatever pain it may have cost me !" The next moment he had gone. That night, as Goldsmith sat with his great-aunt, he told her what had happened. She listened without a word. She sat so still and so silent for so long after he had spoken that, at last, he was afraid, and, rising from the dusky corner where he had been sitting to tell her his story, he came over to her and knelt down by the side of her as he used to do in his old schoolboy days, putting his arm round her neck. CHAPTER V. one "JAMES," said Miss Goldsmith morning, three days later, as she was making her final preparations for leaving the hotel," I am going to take Clarice back with me. She has been having a fearful time of it since-this last day or two. She looks almost dead." The young man was gazing moodily out of the window of the private sitting-room into the street below. He started as his aunt spoke, and turned round, looking at her in a strange way. "It is no use," said Miss Goldsmith quietly, but looking steadily into his face with an expression so full of grave tenderness that he saw how foolish his sudden hope had been. "I saw the girl yesterday, and found out something. It will be still better for you to go abroad for a little." His face turned white, but he made no remark. And Miss Goldsmith, knowing that it was best that he should hear everything now, went on : "I have found out that you and I are not the only ones who have suffered. Poor little Clarice! She, too, is loving without hope, and that added, too, to the sorrow she is feeling for us. But the child was right. She has been honest and true, even at the cost of such suffering to herself. And do you know, James "-she did not look at him now-"I am beginning to read another Then she turned her face to him and he saw that it was stained with tears, yet transfigured by a strange look that was reverence, and pain, and wondering sub-page in this enigma of cross-purposes. mission all in one. "My dear," she said softly, "we have many lessons to learn. I had thought that in you two I might live over again the old love. I believed that human hands might undo some of the wrong that human hearts have done, and I thought that my hands might do this-that in some way the happiness of you two might atone for the years of hate and malice which I have borne against those who wronged me. And it is not to be. Perhaps it is my punishment. If so, it is a bitter one. Yet the pain of it is light compared to my grief for you, my dear boy!" Then she bent forward and kissed him very gently, with lips still unsteady from the shock of pain, but sweet and grave with a beauty such as had never been there before. "Thank you, aunt," said the young man simply, after a pause which neither could break. But there was a touch of reverence in the quiet words. While we have been only thinking of ourselves, another was sacrificing himself like the hero that he is. We have been so blind, and he so faithful, James; I did not know that your friend was so true. Cannot you guess now why Captain Trevor went away? It was a terrible shock. She knew that by the heavy drawn breath, by the strained silence that followed. She went on quietly arranging her writing-case, not to look at him. "Clarice cares for him, though he has never given sign or word. And now, holding the clue as I do, I can understand him. Having no longer our own interests to blind me, and looking back to his behaviour, I know that he loves her. But I did not tell Clarice this. It was best. She herself feels there is no hope. Her grandmother will not let her marry a poor man." "But, aunt," after another pause, "you are rich, and you say that what you have "Heaven bless you, my boy!" The old lady rose, and came towards him with outstretched hands. "What a foolish old woman I am to ask for anything more, save the love of a child such as you. Ah, James, there is nothing on earth I care for now, but your happiness." He took the trembling old hands in his, and looked down into the love-lighted face. "And you will not think any more," he asked, smiling slightly, though his face had not quite recovered its colour, "that I believe my happiness would be made by marrying a woman who did not love me?" He and Miss Maria Goldsmith had a little longer talk; then he left her to go back to barracks. She and Clarice were to leave the next morning. Lady Bellairs had been only too glad to let the girl go. She had been perfectly furious when she discovered what Clarice had done, and the thought of the visit to The Chase seemed her only hope for the girl changing her mind. Clarice was to go with her boxes up to the hotel in the afternoon, and spend the night there so as to be ready to start early the next morning. Captain Trevor had returned to Horton the day before. He looked ill and worried, as if his leave had not done him much good; but Goldsmith, too much troubled himself, had not taken much notice of his friend's looks. As he remembered them now, he was filled with remorse. He had said nothing of his own trouble to him. He had felt that he could not bear yet to mention it, even to his closest friend. Now, perhaps, one of the hardest parts of the whole hard business had to be gone through. Only the thought of what that rival must have gone through himself gave him courage to go straight to his quarters, and have it out at once. Trevor, who was reading the paper, looked pleased to see him as he entered, but at the sight of Goldsmith's face his own grew a little alarmed, and he rose hastily from the lounging-chair in which he was lazily taking his ease. "What's up?" he asked a little quickly. "Been run over? I know that brute of yours will finish you off one of these days." "Unless my friends do it first for me! Oh, Trevor, how could you have treated me so shamefully?" 'Yes, you do. I have found it all outI and my aunt together Without her I should have gone blundering on to the end of the chapter. Trevor, you shouldn't have done it! I was a brute just for that one night; but do you think I was mean enough not to let you have your innings at the same time. And Clarice"And Clarice?" asked the other with pale lips, as Goldsmith stopped abruptly. It was hard to say. "Clarice! Well, I have asked her, and she is too good for me. I am not to have her." "But you will one day. She will find out." Trevor was trying to speak in his usual tones; but Goldsmith could see how terribly moved he was. It filled him with such remorse that he could only take his hand again, and give it a wring which sent all the blood tingling. "Will you ever forgive me, old fellow!” he asked a little unsteadily. "Forgive you! There was nothing to forgive; but Miss Bellairs—” Oh, Miss Bellairs!" then he stopped again. Clarice's secret was not to be dis cussed between two men. His friend must find out for himself. "You must try your luck. And as for Lady Bellairs "I am not afraid of her," said the other simply. "I am rich For "Rich! Why, I was afraidgive me, but you know you always talked as if you were poor," said his friend, confused at his apparent impertinence. "So I was till the morning you received Miss Goldsmith's letter. I had one, too, telling me that an uncle of mine was dead in America, leaving me his heir. He was very rich, and I— "Heaven forgive me, for I don't think I shall ever forgive myself! And you kept this back, too, so that I might have this one chance as well. Don't tell me any. thing more, or I shall go off and wring my own neck." "Don't!" Trevor laughed. But as the two men looked into each other's eyes they read something in them that made it difficult to utter another word. Captain Trevor went up to the hotel about five that afternoon. He was shown into Miss Goldsmith's private sitting-room. There was only one person in it, Miss Maria having announced, a few minutes before his arrival, that she was going up to her room for a nap before dinner. She had kissed Clarice in an odd, lingering kind of fashion which had brought tears into the girl's eyes. They were still there when Captain Trevor entered, for life seemed so hard just now to the lonely girl that every little act of kindness from those she imagined she had so deeply wronged overcame her. Ah yes! she had learned already that the world, of which she had had only as yet a mere glimpse, had terrible drawbacks! And that her life, closed in as it had been in that dreary old house, with that unlovable old grandmother as her only companion, had never had such bitter pain as that she was now enduring. Was it because he, too, had found life like this that he had warned her that night at her grandmother's? But as, startled at the sound of a footstep near her, she turned her tear-stained face to look, she saw that the prince had come at last! Miss Maria Goldsmith assisted at the wedding that followed. She seemed to have acquired a new dignity, which lasted on through all the following years. MADAME LAURE. By MARION F. THEED. I. "I CAN'T make it out, Mary; if the tidaltrain were ever so late, she ought to have been in long before this." "Yes, I suppose she ought," my sister said reluctantly. "The only thing is, you see, she is so strange to everything, and I don't suppose she speaks much English; it would be only natural for her to be a little delayed." "A little delayed!" I exclaimed. "My dear Mary, have you any idea of the time? It is past ten o'clock, and she ought to have been here between seven and eight." My sister raised her eyebrows in mild astonishment. added with a wistful look up at me, where I lay back in my own special easy-chair, resting my tired head after a hard day's work. It always seemed to be her one ambition, that, just to have the little spare time we could call our own in the midst of our busy lives quite to ourselves. But I did not know when it would be possible to gratify it. School-keeping is arduous, precarious work; it had been so in our case, at any rate; and even now, when Mary, who wa; a good deal younger than I, had entered into the forties, I did not see my way to any such radical change in our mode of life. On the whole I was fairly satisfied with the progress we had made and the position we held. If our establishment was not a very large one, it was at least more select than nineteen out of twenty in an age which is nothing if it is not levelling; and we had never to our knowledge admitted the daughter of a tradesman within the charmed circle of our young ladies. People had begun to talk already of the higher education of women, and of preparing girls for university examination as if they were their own brothers; but we set our faces against it from the first. We had no greater ambition for the dear children committed from time to time to our charge, than that they should be fitted to adorn and elevate society as helpmeets to men-not as their rivals. "You dear, good, old-fashioned souls! You are half a century behind the times," Lady Gay Spanker said to me once; "but if I had any girls of my own, I should send them to you, nevertheless." And we found that was the way with a good many people. They laughed at us, but they believed in us. I do not see myself how they could have done otherwise than believe in Mary. If ever there was an angel upon earth she was one. She was simply like the grandmother in the French poem the girls in the first class used to read and recite - Charity personified. Whenever they came to the line "O grandmère," dit-il, "la charité c'est toi "--I used to find myself looking round involuntarily to the table at which she sat; but though she may have seen the look and returned it with that ready smile of hers, the thought that was in my mind would never have occurred to her. "I did not know it was so long since you read prayers," she said; "the time always seems to fly so when we are by ourselves. I wonder if we shall ever be rich enough to do without parlour boarders?" she was not written of such as my Mary. Oh, wad some fay the giftie gie us She sat opposite me on that September there had existed for some years past a evening of which I am writing, embroider- friendly rivalry-had started a Parisian, ing some delicate blue flannel, the colour and this time we had thought it advisable of which, as it lay massed together in her to follow her example. So we had written lap, threw up the soft tints of her com- direct to the first educational bureau in plexion in a wonderful way. She had one Paris, and stipulated for as pure an accent of those lovely, creamy skins into which the and as thorough a knowledge of elementary least heat or excitement brings a flush like music as could be reasonably expected for the first flush of morning, and what with a comfortable home and a small salary. the beauty of that, and the brilliancy of her The result had been the recommendation soft, brown eyes contrasting with them, I of Madame Laure-a young widow, whose used to think that the white hairs, at which French and music we should find above she had arrived so early, only constituted the average, and whose friendlessness and a fresh claim to admiration. Everybody want of experience in teaching would make said "Miss Mary" had such a sweet face. it a charity upon our parts to take her. It was not merely a matter of chiselling We thought the want of experience might or colouring. There was upon it that enable us all the more easily to get her beautiful calm and tenderness which can into our own method, and we wrote to only come of a heart at peace with itself, engage her. and at leisure from itself. I cannot describe it, but I always think it must have been that expression in it which drew Madame Laure to her that first night. There was nothing striking or artistic in any way in our surroundings. The small, square sitting-room, with its green paper sparingly relieved with gold, and its sombre, dark-green hangings, with mahogany bookshelves fitted into the recesses on either side of the fireplace, and the round table in the centre with the lamp upon it, and the half-chiffonier, halfsideboard, in the glass back of which I saw myself reflected—a tall, spare, elderly woman, hard-featured rather than other wise, and as unlike Mary as I could possibly be-all this formed surroundings than which nothing could have been more commonplace. But there was a bright fire burning in the grate, and I remember thinking to myself drowsily, that to the poor little French teacher this first introduction to English comfort would seem something too good to be true. I held indeed I always have heldforeigners of all sorts in a certain contempt. I have endeavoured to avoid imparting it, but, in myself, I have never been able to overcome it. There is no reason that I know of why we English-speaking folk should be better than our neighbours, and I know that nowadays it is the fashion to be cosmopolitan, as they call it, but I am too old to rid myself of my prejudices. We had always had a mademoiselle. As a rule she had been of mixed nationality, the Swiss article being the cheaper, and, on the score of a joint interest in the two languages, the more useful; but, latterly, Miss Pettitt-between whom and ourselves It was nearly eleven o'clock that night when the cab containing her at last drove up to the door. In spite of my sister's gentle suggestions and excuses, I felt a little ruffled and annoyed at so late an arrival, and as one means—in all probability quite lost upon her-of marking my disapproval, I did not go out into the hall to meet her. We heard the luggage deposited there, and the cabman dismissed, and then the little parlour-maid showed her in. I can see her now, in my mind's eye, standing, framed by the doorway, which would not, by the way, have allowed of her being many inches taller, even in that low turban-hat, than she really was; a slight, erect figure, wrapped from head to foot in a dark waterproof cloak, her face fair and refined, but of a deathly pallor, lighted up by a pair of most wonderful eyes-eyes, her possession of which I felt myself resenting and inwardly protesting against on the spot as unbecoming any governess in existence. "I am so sorry," she said, speaking in French, in a particularly pretty voice, but with a nervousness which pleased me better than her appearance, "but it is not my fault I have kept you up so late, and perhaps caused you anxiety. The tidaltrain came into collision with another, between twenty and thirty miles from town, and there was no means of sending any the passengers on for some time. At one time," she added, "I did not think I should have arrived here to-night." "That would have been dreadful!" my sister said, coming forward from behind me it was always she who was first to do the right thing-and taking the stranger's " |