one of the lowliest and most timid hearts that
ever beat in a woman's breast.

Thus it was that Lord Holmes became the
father of two daughters, and was twice a
widower. And thus it was that Captain Holme-
Pierrepoint of Sowerby escaped first Scylla and
then Charybdis, and remained heir presumptive
to his cousin's coronet after all.

No two girls ever grew up more unlike each
other than the Honourable Miss Holme-
Pierrepoints. There was a difference of nearly six
years in their age to begin with; but this was
as nothing when compared with the difference
in their appearance, dispositions, and tastes.

The elder was tall, stately, and remarkable
from very early girlhood for that singular
resemblance to Marie Antoinette, which became
so striking in her at a later period of life. The
younger, on the contrary, was pretty rather
than beautiful, painfully sensitive and shy, and
as unpretending as might have been the lowliest
peasant girl upon her father's lands. Alethea
never forgot that she was noble on both sides;
but Elizabeth seemed never to remember that
she was noble on either. Alethea was cold and
ambitious; but Elizabeth's nature was as clinging
and tender as it was unselfish Elizabeth
looked up to Alethea as to the noblest and most
perfect of God's creatures; but Alethea, who
had never forgiven her father's second marriage,
held her half-sister in that kind of modified
estimation in which a jeweller might hold a
clouded diamond, or a sportsman a half-bred
retriever.

Years went by; and as the girls grew to
womanhood their unlikeness became more and
more apparent. In due time, the Honourable
Miss Holme-Pierrepoint, being of an age to take
her place in society, was presented at court by
her aunt, the Countess of Glastonbury, and
"brought out" after the sober fashion that
prevailed in the days of George the Third. Before
the close of that season she was engaged to
Harold Wynneclyffe, fourth Earl of Castletowers,
and early in the spring-time of the following
year, while her young sister was yet in the
schoolroom, the beautiful Alethea was married
from her aunt's house in Somersetshire, where
the ceremony was privately performed by the
Bishop of Bath and Wells.

In the mean while, it was arranged that Lord
Holmes' younger daughter was to be spared
all those difficulties and dangers that beset a
matrimonial choice. Her lot was cast for her.
She was to marry Captain Holme-Pierrepoint
of Sowerby.

A more simple and admirable scheme could
not have been devised. Captain Holme-Pierrepoint
was her father's heir, and it was of course
desirable that Elizabeth's dowry should remain
in the family. Then Elizabeth was very young,
young even for her age, and her character needed
to be judiciously formed. Captain Holme-
Pierrepoint was the very man to form a young
lady's character. He was a man who got
through a great deal of solid reading in the year;
who delighted in statistics; who talked
pompously, was a strict disciplinarian, and had
"views" on the subject of education. In
addition to these qualifications, it may be added
that Captain Holme-Pierrepoint was still handsome,
and only forty-eight years of age.

Incredible as it may seem, however, Lord
Holmes' second daughter was by no means so
happy as she ought to have been in the
contemplation of her destiny. Like most very
young girls she had already dreamt dreams, and
she could not bring herself to accept Captain
Holme-Pierrepoint as the realisation of that ideal
lover whom her imagination had delighted to
picture. Her loving nature sorely needed
something to cling to, something to live for,
something to worship; but she knew that she
could not possibly live for, or cling to, or
worship Captain Holme-Pierrepoint. Above all,
she shrank from the prospect of having her
character formed according to his educational
"views."

In order, therefore, to avoid this terrible
contingency, the younger Miss Holme-Pierrepoint
deliberately rejected her destiny, and ran away
with her drawing-master.

It was a frightful blow to the pride of the
whole Pierrepoint family. The Talbots and the
Wynneclyffes were of opinion that Lord Holmes
was simply reaping what he had sown, and that
nothing better was to be expected from the
daughter of a nursery governess; but Lord
Holmes himself regarded the matter in a very
different light. Harsh and eccentric as he was,
this old man had really loved his younger child;
but now his whole heart hardened towards her,
and he swore that he would never see her, or
speak to her, or forgive her while he lived. Then,
having formally disinherited her, he desired that
her name should be mentioned in his presence
no more.

As for Lady Castletowers, her resentment
was no less bitter. She, too, never saw or spoke
to her half-sister again. She did not suffer, it is
true, as her father had suffered. Her heart was
not wrung like his—probably because she had
less heart to be wrung; but her pride was even
more deeply outraged. Neither of them made
any effort to recal the fugitive. They merely
blotted her name from their family records;
burned, unread, the letters in which she
implored their forgiveness, and behaved in all
respects, not as though she were dead, but as
though she had never existed.

In the mean while, Elizabeth Holme-Pierrepoint
had fled to Italy with her husband. He
was a very young man—a mere student—rich
in hope, poor in pocket, and an enthusiast in all
that concerned his art. But enthusiasm is as
frequently the index of taste as the touch-stone
of talent, and Edgar Rivière, with all his
exquisite feeling for form and colour, his
worship of the antique, and his idolatry of Raffaelle,
lacked the one great gift that makes poet and
painter—he had no creative power. He was a
correct draughtsman and a brilliant colourist;
but, wanting "the vision and the faculty divine,"
wanted just all that divides elegant mediocrity