during the pause whose termination Dallas
dreaded. After a little, she said:

"There is a very fine picture-gallery at the
Sycamores, and I am sure it would give
my uncle great pleasure to show it to you.
whenever any gentlemen from London are
staying at Amherst, or passing through, Mr.
Page at the inn tells them about the
picture-gallery, and they come to see it, if they care
about such things; perhaps it was he who told
you?"

"No," said Dallas, " I am not indebted for
the pleasure—for the happiness—of this day to
Mr. Page. No one guided me here, but I
happened to pass the gate, and a very civil old
gentleman, who was doing some gardening at
the lodge, asked me in." His looks said more
than his words dared to express, of the feelings
with which his chance visit had inspired
him. But the girl did not see his looks; she
was idly playing with Sir Lancelot's mane, and
thinking.

"Well," she said, at last, settling herself in
the saddle, in a way unmistakably preliminary
to departure, "if you would like to see the
picture-gallery, and will walk round that way,
through those trees, to the front of the house"
—she pointed out the direction with the handle
of her riding-whip—" I will go on before, and
tell my uncle he is about to have a visitor to
inspect his treasures."

"You are very kind," said Dallas, earnestly,
"and you offer me a very great pleasure. But
Sir Thomas Boldero may be engaged—may think
it an intrusion."

"And a thousand other English reasons for
not accepting at once a civility frankly offered,"
said the girl, with a delightful laugh. " I
assure you, I could not gratify my uncle more
than by picking up a stray connoisseur; or
my aunt than by bringing to her a gentleman
of sufficient taste to admire her trees and
flowers."

"And her niece, Miss Carruthers" thought
George Dallas.

"So pray go round to the house. Don't forget
your coat. I see it upon the ground—
there. It has got rubbed against the damp
bark, and there's a great patch of green upon
it."

"That's of no consequence," said George,
gaily; "it's only an Amherst coat, and no
beauty."

"You must not make little of Amherst," said
the girl, with mock gravity, as George stood
rubbing the green stain off his coat with his
handkerchief; " we regard the town here as a
kind of metropolis, and have profound faith in
the shops and all to be purchased therein.
Did dear old Evans make that coat?"

"A venerable person of that name sold
it me," returned George, who had now thrown
the coat over his arm, and stood, hat in hand,
beside her horse.

"The dear! I should not mind letting him
make me a habit," she said. " Good-bye, for the
present—that way," again she pointed with her
whip, and then cantered easily off, leaving
George in a state of mind which he would have
found it very difficult to define, so conflicting
were his thoughts and emotions. He looked
after her, until the last flutter of her skirt was
lost in the distance, and then he struck into the
path which she had indicated, and pursued it,
musing.

"And that is Clare Carruthers! I thought I
had seen that head before, that graceful neck,
that crown of golden hair. Yes, it is she; and
little she thinks whom she is about to bring
into her uncle's house—the outcast and exile
from Poynings! I will see it out; why should
I not? I owe nothing to Carruthers that I
should avoid this fair, sweet girl, because he
chooses to banish me from her presence. What
a presence it is! What am I that I should
come into it?" He paused a moment, and a
bitter tide of remembrance and self-reproach
rushed over him, almost overwhelming him.
Then he went on more quickly, and with a
flushed cheek and heated brow, for anger was
again rising within him. " You are very clever
as well as very obstinate, my worthy
stepfather, but you are not omnipotent yet. Your
darling niece, the beauty, the heiress, the great
lady, the treasure of price to be kept from the
sight of me, from the very knowledge of
anything so vile and lost, has met me, in the light of
day, not by any device of mine, and has spoken
to me, not in strained forced courtesy, but of
her own free will. What would you think of
that, I wonder, if you knew it! And my
mother? If the girl should ask my name, and
should tell my mother of her chance meeting
with a wandering artist, one Paul Ward, what
will my mother think?—my dear conscientious
mother, who has done for me what wounds her
conscience so severely, and who will feel as if it
were wounded afresh by this accidental meeting,
with which she has nothing in the world to do."
He lifted his hat, and fanned his face with it. His
eyes were gleaming, his colour had risen; he
looked strong, daring, active, and handsome—a
man whom an innocent girl, all unlearned in
life and in the world's ways, might well exalt
in her guileless fancy into a hero, and be
pardoned her mistake by older, sadder, and wiser
heads.

"How beautiful she is, how frank, how graceful,
how unspeakably innocent and refined! She
spoke to me with such an utter absence of
conventional pretence, without a notion that she
might possibly be wrong in speaking to a
stranger, who had offered her a civility in her
uncle's park. She told that man on the
balcony that night that Sir Thomas Boldero was
her uncle. I did not remember it when the
old man mentioned the name. How long has
she been here, I wonder? Is she as much here
as at Poynings? How surprised she would be
if she knew that I know who she is; that I
have heard her voice before to-day; that in the
pocket-book she held in her hand a few minutes
ago, there lies a withered flower, which she once
touched and wore. Good God! What would a