"How will that console him? Such a brave,
honest, faithful man. Ah, Violet, you don't
know what you are doing!"

"He is, indeed," said the young girl, eagerly,
and in some confusion; " and he has been so
good to me! And I have behaved very cruelly.
But I did not mean it, and I am sure—I know
—he has such a sensible, manly heart—after a
little time he will——"

"Ah! exactly," said her brother, excitedly;
"it is these sensible manly hearts that feel these
things. No, no; I know him by this time.
This will spoil some good years of his life.
This is not a mere scrape or scratch. Poor
Hanbury!"

"I am very unfortunate! I am very
miserable!" she said, looking from one to the other
in great distress. " I never thought—I never
meant it; indeed, I did not;" and her soft round
eyes began to grow dim with coming tears.

The elder girl, who, up to this moment, had
been supporting all that her brother had been
saying, now suddenly deserted him, and running
to her sister, put her arms about her.

"No, no," she said; "things will turn out
much better. Poor John is sensible, as you
say, and will suffer a little at first, like all men.
He is strong. Come, darling, don't think of
him. We shall see him in the morning, and
set it all right. After all, the point is that
you are to be happy—and you are to be happy."

The brother, still gloomy, sighed. " All! that
is the point," he said, dejectedly; "we know
so little of this man."

The elder girl had made her protest, as a
duty. She now cast away her grim
grandmother's cloak and hood and crooked stick.
Shutting her eyes, she got rid of the gravities
of judgment and sage counsel; and the two
talked the new engagement over when they
were going to bed—rapturously, as sisters do,
in council. Alone together, letting their hair
fall, and undressing by slow lingering stages,
everything was gold and colour: the richest
gold and the richest colour. The future was
Bathed in the glowing Turner tints—lakes
and crimsons—but neither of them dreamed for
a moment of their being mere opera skies, and
ingenious effects of the electric light. The
little scene at Major Carter's party was acted
all over again, and over again after that, with
pre-Raphaelite detail.

Violet had soon swept away any momentary
clouds. She was walking up and down, full
of enthusiasm, and telling all to her sister
with charming confidence. "From the first
day he spoke to us, you recollect, dear, out
near the gate, I someway felt, I can't describe
it, a sort of sensation that he was to be—
something to me. It came on me like a flash. There
was something in his eyes, and you recollect how
he came to me straight—I understood him—and
he almost told me," she added, shyly, "he had
much the same feeling about me."

"And you never told me," said her sister, " to
whom you tell everything, or say you tell
everything, you quiet, sly child, whom I thought so
innocent. I suppose you were afraid about poor
John."

"Ah, yes," said Violet, dropping her eyes;
"you were all such friends of his."

"And I suppose," said her sister, "it was on
the same day poor John's fate was sealed."

"Why, I am afraid so," said Violet, still
looking down. "And, O! Pauline, dear, it was
the most curious thing in the world. For I did
like him so, and admire him up to that day, I
did, indeed. And he really seemed quite handsome
until——"

"Until the other came," said Pauline. " Well,
you won't be angry, but, someway, if I were to
compare the two, in point of looks——"

"No, no!" said Violet, with childlike eagerness,
"indeed he's not. There's something so
refined, and so calm and quiet about him, and
so intellectual."

"Say perfect at once, darling," said her sister,
kissing her.

"Ah, that is the thing," said the other, sighing.
"What will he say when he finds out how
much below him I am in knowledge. Indeed, I
told him as much. But he has promised," she
said, brightening, " to teach me himself, and to
' form my mind,' as he says."

"Your poor little mind!" said her sister. And
presently they were both asleep.

Not until he got to his own room that night,
when the footlights were out, and the linen
covers put round the boxes, did Fermor awake.
Daylight, grey and cold, mixing oddly with his
lamp, was coming in at his window. He felt a
sort of guilty sensation that he had taken some
fatal step, and could not turn back.

He turned, almost shivering, from himself.
"I must have been mad," he said, and half
groaned. After every step of any decided sort
this indecision comes. It rises from the feeling
that it is impossible to go back. Perhaps this
acts on the vanity, as being a curtailment of the
will, an interference in one direction at least
with the power of doing as one might please.
Fermor sat long in that mixed light, gazing a
little stupidly at his watch and guard- chain.
"How could I have been so hasty," he said.
"I might have waited a little."

Then he thought of his mother at Nice, Lady
Laura Fermor, a cold woman of fashion, of
reduced means. Perhaps this was the spectre
that was threatening him. And he had to
reassure himself with his Spanish Castle, setting
that Miss Manuel walking through the grounds
in shadow and in rich light; but somehow his
building seemed of lath and canvas.

However, self-confidence came to help him.
"A good sensible letter," he said ("one of
my good sensible letters," was the special shape
of the thought), " will set the thing in its
proper light before her. After all, a man can't go
on in this unprofitable way, neit her good nor useful
to himself, nor to others. I should be ashamed
to descend into the grave after such a selfish
career. No, she is charming! such devotion, such
pretty devotion, I have never seen." And the
recollection of it, with his own excellent playing