smooth my hair and put on a clean muslin gown,
before Willie and his friend should arrive.

They came laughing up the drive, just as I
had gone into Mr. Ray's room to give a last
look, and see that everything was ship-shape.
My heart beat, and I felt so foolishly fluttered,
that I dared not go down at once and meet the
stranger in the hall. I stole to the window, and
peeped through the roses; his face was turned
upwards at that moment, looking at them, I
fancy, and, though he could not have seen me,
I started back, as if I had been caught in some
guilty trick. But the glance, brief as it was,
that I had of his face, reassured me. Still I
lingered, till Willie's voice, calling me from the
foot of the stairs, brought me down to the
presence of our guest.

I don't know how it was, but in half an hour
I had quite forgotten that Walter Ray was a
stranger, and found myself chatting to him
almost familiarly. Dinner passed delightfully;
he was more amusing than any one I had ever
met in my life, not that that is much to say.
He had been in all sorts of out-of-the-way places
—South America, the shores of the Bosphorus,
the Isles of Greece, and he intended in another
year to start for Australia, and, if he liked it,
settle there.

It was Willie's custom, be it known, to take
a nap after dinner.

Poor dear, his long ride home used to tire
him just enough for this, and he used to drop off
like a child, as I sat with my work, talking to
him. I had hoped he would keep awake
tonight, it would look so uncivil, and when I saw
him settling down in the arm-chair, and heard
him flag in the talk, I fidgeted in my seat, and
coughed and cleared my throat; in vain, his
eyelids would droop and droop, and quite drop,
and his head fall helplessly aside against the
back of the chair. I coughed louder, and let
fall a book, but Willie's eyes just opened for a
moment, and then closed again.

I glanced towards Mr. Ray; he was watching
my manœuvres with some amusement.

"Are forty winks tabooed in your house,
Miss Osborne?" he asked, smiling.

"Oh no; I don't mind Willie's sleeping in
general, but——"

I felt I was saying something stupid, and
stopped.

"But you don't like him to betray the weakness
to me? I'm afraid I've set him the
example before now, so pray don't let that disturb
you. But how do you pass your evenings? do
you never find it hard to get through them, after
the long lonely day?"

"Oh no; I am used to this kind of life and
no other, and I would not change if I could."

"And yet," he said, half to himself, half to me,
"what a life it is to one of your age! I know
what the force of habit is; how prisoners learn,
after long years of confinement, to dread
removal; how women can fit themselves into the
niche that is made for them, however narrow it
be. Yet such a life is not natural, till the
years that have brought the stormier experiences
of life to them have ended by bringing
the desire for rest. It can't last for ever, you
know," he continued, looking at me.

"But I think it will. I don't see what is to
change it."

He shook his head.

"When one of you marries, how then for the
other?"

"We never mean to marry, either of us."

He smiled.

"You think so? Why not?"

"Oh, that we decided on when first—we were
left alone."

"I know you are in earnest. But you will
see. If one of you kept such a vow even, it is
impossible both should. Ah, how little you
know of life!"

A sudden pang shot across me.

"You know something?" I said, glancing
across at Willie; I dared not mention his name,
knowing such utterance always disturbs a
sleeper.

"No, I give you my word. I only speak
from what I know of life. Besides, he is but a
boy! At twenty there is little chance of such a
change. I am five years older, but I have no
present prospect of becoming a Benedick. I
must wait for my unknown Beatrice, till I have
a home to offer her, and till I am quite sure she
is the real Beatrice. Don't despise us for the
confession, but most of us meet a good many
Rosalines before we discover Juliet."

Whether it was conveyed to Willie by the
instinct a sleeper generally has of his being the
subject of conversation, or what, I can't say;
but at this point he woke, and the talk ran on
the cricket match till bedtime.

After that Walter came often; I need not
pretend that I did not learn ere long to see he
came for me. And then rose in my heart a
great struggle. This must not be: yet how
prevent it?

Inexperienced as I was in the ways of the
world, I should hardly have understood how to
signify—as some women can by a hundred little
nameless indications, without giving offence—to
a lover I cared not for, that his pursuit was a
vain one. How then assume an indifference I
did not feel? How keep the boundary line I
knew he would soon seek to overstep, when my
heart rose up to welcome him over it?

Think what my life was, and what his coming
made it! Think of the long, solitary days,
which, whatever I did, left me more or less free
to think of him. How his image became
associated with everything around me, every
occupation. Nothing to take me out of myself
and him, no change of scene to divert my
thoughts, no society to divide my interest. He
was coming, and I longed for and dreaded it!
he was gone, and left me a world of thoughts
and recollections, to turn over and fill and feed
my heart with, so that I hardly missed him ere
he returned.

And all this was vain, idle, hopeless must be
kept down and put away. But how? Ah,
how?