With a shrill, demoniac snort the train moves off, and Jack's wistful face, Plant's laughing one, Gus and Cissy's red cheeks, the carriage and the familar road winding away into the lovely Arcadian woods vanish like a dream.

Val is not given to pathos, yet she murmurs to herself "When shall I see them again? So many things can happen in a month, even; and if I return safely, how much I may be changed! Poor old Jack! I wonder if I shall like him better, or shall I have ceased to like him at all ?" and she is conscious of a little pang-only a little one. Vive la bagatelle! As the train speeds on, her fancy flies forwards instead of backwards. Within and without there is a good deal to "distract," and "distraction" is a luxury of which she is now taking the first sip.

Inside the carriage there is a crowd of

people with different peculiarities of appearance, manner, and costume, that afford the young rustic a wide field for observation and conjecture. Outside, the richness of Summer landscape, the glint of sunshine touching up all around, radiance, freshness, life everywhere. As the hours wear on, dust and heat rather obliterate the couleur de rose aspect, but Val bears her share of discomfort with proper patience. She feels that, after all, dust and heat are a very small price to pay for the great novelty which is to enter her life-that mature life of seventeen years that stands so deeply in need of experience. Cramped in between the green hills of Fernlee, she has been denied expansion of both heart and brain.

Through all the glare of the day she travels, save one short half hour, during which her young and healthy appetite finds satisfaction in an antediluvian sandwich.

Dover is not reached till late, in time to cross the Channel by the night packet. She ploughs the briny deep in unimpaired health, and after a huge bowl of boiling bouillon at the Calais buffet, the travellers are off again. They are going right through like a tailor's needle.

Val draws her wraps around her, for the air grows chilly, settles her little brown head comfortably into a corner, and with the aid of fatigue and a placid conscience, falls fast asleep, until a hand laid on her arm, and an arbitrary shake, partially arouse her.

"Don't, Jack!-leave me alone!" she cries, throwing off the touch.

"It's not Jack-you had better put him out of your head now," says Mr. Egerton's cold voice, thoroughly awakening her, to see a cynical smile on his thin lips. "Get your traps together, Val, for here we are,"

and he hastily loads her with shawls, umbrellas, sticks, books, and other travelling accompaniments, and quietly prepares to descend, with nothing to look after but "himself."

The pale dawn is breaking in the eastern sky, and, even as he speaks, the train stops with a violent jerk, and they alight at the Station du Nord, Bruxelles.

VOL. I.

G

82

CHAPTER IV.

A PAIR OF DARK GREY EYES.

"Just now I met him-at my sight he started,
Then, with such ardent eyes he wandered oe'r me,
And gazed with such intensity of meaning,
Sending his soul out to me in a look."

I'

T is like a dream to Val to feel that she

is "Abroad." There is a charming freshness and balminess in the air that betokens a cooler latitude, and bright as a rose and brisk as a bee, she sits vis-à-vis to Mr. Egerton, at the Hôtel de Flandre, and asks him in the middle of breakfast what his plans are for the day. To solve this problem-for problem it is to the valetudi