long walks, he certainly must feel rather wretched,
I should imagine."

Nelly thought about it a little more, and then
went to feed her poultry. But there was a
young cock whose false and painful position in
the poultry-yard would somehow bring back to
her mind the recollection of Mr. Graham. He
had not long come to cock's estate, and he was
thin and not very sleek in his plumage; and the
older and stronger cock had bullied him and put
him down, till he hardly dared to call his life his
own. He was not naturally a coward; he had
made a good fight for it at first, and indeed it
was his asserting himself against the supremacy
of King Chanticleer that had first awakened that
arrogant bird's wrath against him. But he was
no match for Chanticleer, and had, after
innumerable defeats and sore maulings, been
compelled to succumb; and he now loitered about
in corners, and moped about in sheds, and took
snatches of food in a wary fashion, on the
outskirts of the group gathered round Nelly, ready
to fly if ever Chanticleer looked his way, and
even nervous if the hens pecked at him.

"Poor fellow," Nelly said, throwing him a
handful of barley, and cutting off Chanticleer in
his instant attempt to drive him away from it;
"you certainly are very like Mr. Graham—very
like. I think I shall call you Andy; get away,
Chanticleer; I won't have Andy bullied and his
life made miserable, poor fellow!" and another
handful of barley fell to his share. From that
day Nelly took Andy under her especial care
and patronage, and fed and petted him till he
grew fat and well-liking, and learned to play
his second fiddle so creditably that Chanticleer
held him in sufficient respect no longer to molest
him.

Meanwhile the months were lengthening into
years, and Andrew Graham plodded on at the
old work, in the old way. But a change had
come within, though the outer man showed
nothing of it—as yet. The cause may as well
be told at once; the poor student had fallen in
love, with the sort of love that is certain to
awaken in the hearts of such men when it does
awake, with Lady Agnes, now sixteen.

The word love is used in so many phases of
the passion, and indeed in so many cases where
there is no passion at all, that it fails to convey
any notion of the feeling that possessed the
whole being of the poor tutor. It is nothing to
say it was part of himself; the old man was lost
in the new identity it gave birth to. Day and
night it was the one ever-present reality, all
else fading into shadowy insignificance.

Lady Agnes was a pretty girl, very much like
a thousand other pretty, well-brought-up, simple
girls.

She had large limpid grey eyes, and a fair
pure skin, and her colour went and came easily
in sweet girlish blushes, and all her thoughts
and ways were innocent and natural. She was
not the least clever, and but moderately
accomplished; for Mrs. Brereton wisely thought that
good general culture was more to be desired
than the attempt to force mediocre abilities
into the painful acquirement of arts, in which
her pupil never could hope to excel, and in this
view Lord Leytonstone fully coincided.

It was probably the charm of this very girlish
simplicity that in reality captivated Andrew's
heart; but his imagination acted the part of a
fairy godmother, and bestowed on the idol every
gift of mind and body that woman could possess
and man adore.

This love, that dared not relieve itself by any
outward expression, that entertained no prospect
in the future, that hoped for nothing, that aspired
to nothing tangible, that was all concentrated in
the breast of him who conceived it, rode him
like a beautiful nightmare, lovely in itself, but
to him cruelly, pitilessly tyrannous, taking
possession of all his faculties, goading him into a
sort of abiding frenzy that made him wild and
haggard and distracted.

At times, while giving the usual daily lessons
to his pupil, the boy would look up to his
instructor, wondering at the trembling hand, the
husky voice, the working features, and
sometimes at the strangely absent words that fell
from him. Then Andrew would try to recal his
senses, nail his attention to the work he was
engaged in, and, the task completed, rush forth
and wander alone for hours among the pine-
woods and on the hill-sides, striving by movement
and fatigue to still the spirit that possessed
him.

Such a condition of things could hardly fail
to escape Mrs. Brereton's quietly observant eye,
nor was it long before she guessed something of
the real state of the case, and great was the
perplexity into which it threw her. Lord Leytonstone
was abroad, and though she might have
spoken to him on the subject, she hardly knew
how to put it in writing. Lady Agnes must,
of all others, be kept in ignorance of the passion
she had inspired; and though Mrs. Brereton
had sufficient confidence in Andrew to feel
pretty well assured that he would not seek to
make it known to her, she dreaded, seeing the
nature of the man, some involuntary outburst,
some accidental circumstance occurring to bring
it to light. Should she speak to himself? Yet,
though in her own mind almost persuaded of
the truth of her suspicion, he had done nothing
to justify her in opening the matter to him,
while it rested on no more tangible grounds
than it did at present. So the good woman
turned the matter over in her mind, waiting for
some feasible mode of solving the difficulty to
present itself.

One morning her pupil said, after having, as
it seemed to her, cogitated over the subject for
some time, "Mrs. Brereton, do you know I
think there's something wrong with Mr. Graham."
The governess felt the blood rise to
her cheek, but she replied quietly, "Yes?
What makes you think so, my dear?"

"Sometimes he looks so wild. And, do you
know," with a mysterious and somewhat alarmed
air, "he walks about the garden at night when
we're all in bed."

"How do you know, my child? That must be
a fancy."

"No. I've fancied I've heard footsteps more