any words that I can find to describe, to my
approaching return to the solitude and the despair
of my lonely London home. Thoughts of my
kind old mother, and of my sister, who had
rejoiced with her so innocently over my prospects
in Cumberland—thoughts whose long banishment
from my heart it was now my shame and
my reproach to realise for the first time—came
back to me with the loving mournfulness of old,
neglected friends. My mother and my sister,
what would they feel when I returned to them
from my broken engagement, with the confession
of my miserable secret—they who had
parted from me so hopefully on that last happy
night in the Hampstead cottage!

Anne Catherick again! Even the memory of
the farewell evening with my mother and my
sister could not return to me now, unconnected
with that other memory of the moonlight walk
back to London. What did it mean? Were
that woman and I to meet once more? It was
possible, at the least. Did she know that I
lived in London? Yes; I had told her so,
either before or after that strange question of
hers, when she had asked me so distrustfully
if I knew many men of the rank of Baronet.
Either before or after—my mind was not calm
enough, then, to remember which.

A few minutes elapsed before Miss Halcombe
dismissed the maid and came back to me. She,
too, looked flurried and unsettled, now.

"We have arranged all that is necessary,
Mr. Hartright," she said. "We have understood
each other, as friends should; and we may
go back at once to the house. To tell you the
truth, I am uneasy about Laura. She has sent
to say she wants to see me directly; and the
maid reports that her mistress is apparently very
much agitated by a letter that she has received
this morning—the same letter, no doubt, which
I sent on to the house before we came here."

We retraced our steps together hastily along
the shrubbery path. Although Miss Halcombe
had ended all that she thought it necessary to
say, on her side, I had not ended all that I
wanted to say on mine. From the moment
when I had discovered that the expected visitor
at Limmeridge was Miss Fairlie's future
husband, I had felt a bitter curiosity, a burning
envious eagerness, to know who he was. It was
possible that a future opportunity of putting
the question might not easily offer; so I risked
asking it on our way back to the house.

"Now that you are kind enough to tell me
we have understood each other, Miss
Halcombe," I said; "now that you are sure of my
gratitude for your forbearance and my obedience
to your wishes, may I venture to ask who" — (I
hesitated; I had forced myself to think of him,
but it was harder still to speak of him, as her
promised husband) — "who the gentleman
engaged to Miss Fairlie, is?"

Her mind was evidently occupied with the
message she had received from her sister. She
answered, in a hasty, absent way:

"A gentleman of large property, in Hampshire."

Hampshire! Anne Catherick's native place.
Again, and yet again, the woman in white. There
was a fatality in it.

"And his name?" I said, as quietly and
indifferently as I could.

"Sir Percival Glyde."

Sir—Sir Percival! Anne Catherick's
question—that suspicious question about the men of
the rank of Baronet whom I might happen to
know—had hardly been dismissed from my mind
by Miss Halcombe's return to me in the summer-
house, before it was recalled again by her own
answer. I stopped suddenly,  and looked at
her.

"Sir Percival Glyde," she repeated, imagining
that I had not heard her former reply.

"Knight, or Baronet?" I asked, with an
agitation that I could hide no longer.

She paused for a moment, and then answered,
rather coldly:

"Baronet, of course."

A MORNING WITH SOME PRUDENT MEN.

WE had heard much about the Prudent Men
who regulate quarrels between master and man
in Paris, Lyons, and other great cities of France,
and determined to come face to face with workmen
sitting upon the judgment seat, and see
how they deport themselves; to watch the
tendency of this mixed court of masters and men,
and learn whether justice is done on all sides.
To resolve was easy; it was easy also to inquire;
but, to succeed in obtaining the information
desired, was not the labour of an hour. With a
kind letter from a powerful gentleman in
England to a powerful gentleman in Paris; with a
portmanteau full of books on the working
population of France; the facts, observations, and
dicta of Audiganne and Le Play thoroughly
studied; descriptions of Lyons tumults, and all
the evils of the ignorance of the working classes
—and, let me add, of their employers—stored
up, we were armed at all points for the journey
to the palace of the Prudent Men.

The reply of the powerful gentleman in
Paris to our letter of introduction from the
powerful gentleman in England came promptly,
and it introduced us to the ministry under
the control of which sat the Prudent Men.
It did more; it referred us to a great
authority on the working classes of France
and all the laws which affect them: to M.
Audiganne himself. Brought into direct
contact with the people who were concerned in the
doings of the Prudent Men, our course became
easy and pleasant. Facts were supplied readily.
We consulted intelligible tables, by the aid
of which we could see at a glance what the
Prudent Men of every town in France had been
about. A card, with a polite message to the
President of the Prudent Men, sent us to the
Rue de la Douane, behind the Château d'Eau.

As we trudged on the long tramp from the
depths of the Faubourg St. Germain, through