young man; have a little faith in such a father,
and believe that he does not interfere now but
for your good, and under a stern necessity; and
that, when he does interfere for once, and say,
'this thing shall not be,' it shall not be—by
God!"

Alfred was overpowered by the weight and
solemnity of this. Sorrow, vexation, and despondency
all rushed into his heart together, and
unmanned him for a moment; he buried his
face in his hands, and something very like a sob
burst from his young heart. At this Hardie senior
took up the newspaper with imperturbable coldness,
and wore a slight curl of the lip. All this
was hardly genuine, for he was not altogether
unmoved; but he was a man of rare self-command,
and chose to impress on Alfred that he
was no more to be broken or melted than a mere
rock.

It is always precarious to act a part; and this
cynicism was rather able than wise: Alfred
looked up and watched him keenly as he read the
monetary article with tranquil interest; and
then, for the first time in his life, it flashed into
the young man's mind that his father was not a
father. "I never knew him till now," thought
he. "This man is ????????."*
* Without bowels of affection.

Thus a gesture, so to speak, sowed the first
seed of downright disunion in Richard Hardie's
house—disunion, a fast growing plant, when
men set it in the soil of the passions.

Alfred, unlike Julia, had no panacea. Had
any lips, except perhaps hers, told him that "to
be good is to be happy here below," he would
have replied, "Negatur; contradicted by daily
experience." It never occurred to him therefore
to go out of himself, and sympathise with
the sordid sorrows of the poor, and their bottomless
egotism in contact with the well to do. He
brooded on his own love, and his own unhappiness,
and his own father's cruelty. His nights
were sleepless, and his days leaden. He tried
hard to read for his first class, but for once even
ambition failed: it ended in flinging books away
with a curse. He wandered about dreaming and
hoping for some change, and bitterly regretting
his excessive delicacy, which had tied his own
hands and brought him to a stand-still. He lost
his colour and what little flesh he had to lose:
for such young spirits as this are never plump.
In a word, being now strait-jacketed into feminine
inactivity, while void of feminine patience,
his ardent heart was pining and fretting itself
out. He was in this condition, when one day
Peterson, his Oxonian friend, burst in on him
open-mouthed with delight, and, as usual with
bright spirits of this calibre, did not even notice
his friend's sadness. "Cupid had clapped Peterson
on the shoulder," as Shakespeare hath
it; and it was a deal nicer than the bum-bailiff
rheumatism.

"Oh, such a divine creature ! Met her twice;
you know her by sight ; her name is Dodd. But
I don't care ; it shall be Peterson ; the rose by
any other name, &c."  Then followed a rapturous
description of the lady's person, well worth
omitting. "And such a jolly girl! brightens
them all up wherever she goes; and such a
dancer; did the catchouka with a little Spanish
bloke Bosanquet has got hold of, and made his
black bolus eyes twinkle like midnight cigars:
danced it with castanets, and smiles, and such a
what d'ye call 'em, my boy, you know; such a
'go.'"

"You mean such an 'abandon,'" groaned
Alfred, turning sick at heart.

"That's the word. Twice the spirit of Duvernay,
and ten times the beauty. But just you
hear her sing, that is all; Italian, French, German,
English even."

"Plaintive songs ?"

"Oh, whatever they ask for. Make you laugh
or make you cry— to order; never says no. Just
smiles and sits down to the music-box. Only
she won't sing two running: they have to stick
a duffer in between. I shall meet her again next
week; will you come? Any friend of mine is
welcome. Wish me joy, old fellow; I'm a gone
coon."

This news put Alfred in a phrensy of indignation
and fear. Julia dancing the catchouka!
Julia a jolly girl! Julia singing songs pathetic
or merry, whichever were asked for! The heartless
one! He called to mind all he had read in
the classics, and elsewhere, about the fickleness
of woman. But this impression did not last long;
he recalled Julia's character, and all the signs of
a love tender and true she had given him; he
read her by himself, and, lover-like, laid all the
blame on another. "It was all her cold-blooded
mother. Fool that I have been. I see it all now.
She appeals to my delicacy to keep away; then
she goes to Julia and says, ' See, he deserts you
at a word from his father. Be proud, be gay!
He never loved you; marry another.' The shallow
plotter forgets that whoever she does marry I'll
kill. How many unsuspicious girls have these
double-faced mothers deluded so? They do it in
half the novels, especially in those written by
women; and why? Because these know the perfidy
and mendacity of their sex better than we
do; they see them nearer, and with their souls
undrest. War! Mrs. Dodd, war to the death!
From this moment I am alone in the world with
her. I have no friend but Alfred Hardie: and
my bitterest enemies are my cold-blooded father,
and her cold-blooded mother."

The above sentences, of course, were never
uttered. But they represent his thoughts accurately,
though in a condensed form, and are, as it
were, a miniature of this young heart boiling
over.

From that moment he lay in wait for her, and
hovered about the house day and night, determined
to appeal to her personally, and undeceive
her, and baffle her mother's treachery. But at
this game he was soon detected: Mrs. Dodd
lived on the watch now. Julia, dressed to go