blue eyes, or a flush upon her white cheek;
yet she was not cold, not uninterested, and if
the answers she made, and the interest she
manifested, were unreal, and the result of effort,
at least she concealed their falsehood well. He
talked of his mother and of his uncle, and told
her how Mr. Felton had made him a present of
a handsome sum of money only that morning.

"And, as if to prove the truth of the saying
that ' it never rains but it pours,' " said George,
"I not only got this money from him, which a
little time ago would have seemed positive
riches to me, and a longer time ago would
have saved me from— well, Mrs. Routh, I need
not tell you from what it would have saved me;
but I got a handsome price for my story, and a
proposal from The Piccadilly people to do a serial
for them, to commence in November."

"Do you really think, George," Harriet
said, as if her attention had not extended to the
concluding sentence— "do you really think
that money would have kept you all right?"
George reddened, and looked disconcerted; then
laughed uneasily, and answered:

"I know what you mean. You mean that I
know myself very little if I lay the blame of my
sins and follies on circumstances, don't you?"

She did not answer him, nor did she remove
her serious fixed gaze from his face.

"Yes," he said, " that is what you mean, and
you are right. Still, I think the want of money
made me reckless, made me worse than I should
otherwise have been. I might not have spent it
badly, you know, after all. I don't feel any
inclination to go wrong now."

"No; you are under your mother's influence,"
said Harriet. And then George thought how
much he should like to tell this woman— for
whom he felt so much regard and such growing
compassion, though he could not give any
satisfactory reason for the feeling— about Clare
Carruthers. He thought he should like to
confess to her the fault of which he had been guilty
towards the unconscious girl, and to ask her
counsel. He thought he should like to acknowledge
the existence of another influence, in
addition to his mother's. But he restrained the
resolution, he hardly knew why. Harriet might
think him a presumptuous fool to assign any
importance to his chance meeting with the young
lady, and, besides, Harriet herself was ill, and
ill at ease, and he had talked sufficiently about
himself already. No, if he were ever to mention
Clare to Harriet, it should not be now.

"Routh is too rich now, too completely a man
of capital and business, for me to hope to be of
any use to him with my little windfalls," said
George, heartily; " but of course he knows, and
you too, I shall never forget all I owe him."

Harriet forced herself to smile, and utter some
common-place sentences of deprecation.

"There is one thing I want to do with some
of the money I have been paid for my story,"
said George, " and I want to consult you about
it. I have to touch on a painful subject, too, in
doing so. You remember all about the bracelet
which my dear mother gave me? You remember
how we broke it up together that night?"

Harriet remembered. She did not tell him
so in words, but she bent her head, and turned
it from him, and set her face towards the street.

"You remember," he repeated. "Pray
forgive me, if the allusion is agitating. We little
thought then what had happened; however, we
won't talk about that any more. What I want to
do is this: you have the gold setting of the bracelet
and the blue stones, sapphires, turquoises:
what do you call them? I want to replace the
diamonds. I can do so by adding a little of my
uncle's gift to my own money, and, when you
return to England, I shall get the gold and things
from you. I can easily procure the Palais Royal
bracelet— Ellen will get it for me— and have the
other restored exactly. If my mother is ever
well enough to be told about it— and there is
every probability that she will be, thank God— I
think she will be glad I should have doue this."

"No doubt," said Harriet, in a low voice.
She did not start when he spoke of the strange
task they had executed in concert on that memorable
night, and no outward sign told how her
flesh crept. "No doubt. But you will not
have the bracelet made in England?"

"No," said George; " I shall have it made in
Paris. I will arrange about it when my uncle
and I are passing through."

"When does Mr. Felton go to England?"

"As soon as he gets his letters from New
York, if his son does not turn up in the mean
time. I hope he may do so. When do you
think of returning?"

"I don't know," said Harriet, moodily. " If it
depended on me, to-morrow. I hate this place."

Energy was common to Harriet's mode of
speech, but vehemence was not; and the
vehemence with which she spoke these words caused
George to look at her with surprise. A dark
frown was on her face— a frown which she
relaxed with a visible effort when she perceived
that he was looking at her.

"By-the-by," she said, rising and going to a
table in a corner of the room, " you need not
wait for my return to have the bracelet made.
My desk always travels with me. The little
packet is in it. I have never looked at or
disturbed it. You had better take it to Paris with
you, and give your directions with it in your
hand. There will be no occasion, I should
think, to let the jeweller see the other."

She opened the desk as she spoke, and took
from a secret drawer a small packet, folded in
a sheet of letter-paper, and sealed. George
Dallas's name was written upon it. It was
that which she had put away in his presence
so many months before (or years, was it, or cen-
turies?) He took it from her, put it into his
pocket, unopened, and took leave of her.

"You won't venture out this evening, Mrs.
Routh, I suppose?" said George, turning again
to her when he had reached the door.

"No," said Harriet. " I shall remain at
home this evening." When he left her, she
closed and locked her desk, and resumed her
place at the window. The general dinner-hour
was drawing near, and gay groups vere passing,
on their way to the hotels and to the