all of which I could only answer that I was
very grateful to him for all his goodness—the
usual song in short.

But my lord had not done yet. There was
something to add which seemed very hard to
make its way out. "You see," said he, still
smiling so pleasantly, "what a fine position
this will be for you. Young men are not so
started every day, Constance, too, so amiable
and good! Likes you, on my soul I believe
to distraction! Bear in mind, too," my lord
added hastily, "that you may have the
barony within a month from this date. My
honour as a nobleman you may!"

My lord's lips were all this while opening
and shutting nervously.

"By the way," he went on hastily, " I
should tell you—for between us persons of
rank and so intimate there should be no
concealments—and a young man in your
position should not be too thin skinned—"

Here he stopped to pick out a walnut.

"Not too thin skinned, I say."

What was he driving at?

"You see, my dear Sundon, we are all
frail creatures, even the best of us, at one
time of our lives. Young men will be young
men to the end of the world. Yes, we will
have that barony for you. My wife, poor
soul (you never knew her) died long since—
long before Constance up-stairs was born."

"What," said I rising up, "do you tell me
that ——"

"Precisely," said my lord, showing his
white teeth, " you understand me I see. But
the barony recollect!"

I could not believe what I heard, but he
spoke even more plainly. I lost all self-
command. To think me capable of being
bought with such a lure. It maddened me.
I struck him across his white-toothed mouth
with my hand. Then rushed from the house.
The night was dark and stormy, and I scarcely
knew the road. But I could not rest until I
was free of that hateful place. The wind
howled, and there were great drops of rain
falling at intervals. I scarcely heeded them.
The bitter feeling that my faith in the pure
honour of aristocracy was too cruelly shaken
to feel aught else.

All this, as I struggled through the storm
along the high road to Holm Hollies.

lf I had been so deluded in the one respect,
what safeguard had there been against my
going astray in another? There was the
pale face of the baronet now visiting me
reproachfully. All was perplexity—all darkness.
All had come of the promptings of
that specious well-born villain, and who
should tell how much of truth or falsehood
lay mixed together! And she of the
golden hair!—despised, abandoned—cast
from me like a weed of her own sweet
garden. O fool! fool! noble blooded,
aristocratic, deluded fool!

But it was not too late. There were
sounds as of wheels approaching—the carriage
that was to have taken me home, going
for me to Lord Willoughby's. Nothing could
be so opportune.

XIII.

IT was not more than ten o'clock when I
drove up to the Villa Reale. The
unexpected visitant made his way in and told
his tale to the quiet baronet and to the
golden-haired. It all came out as I had
thought. Noble blood and aristocracy had
descended even to imposture and to telling of
low lies. It was the baronet, indeed, who
had received the strange men and sent them
away satisfied. "I told you," he said, in his
gentle way, "I would leave it all to time."

Later on, when I had asked and found
forgiveness for that cruel misjudging of mine,
both from him and from the golden-haired;
—when I was striving to win my way back
to that old footing I well nigh hopelessly
lost—he said to me in his old, quiet, melancholy
way, "I have never had thoughts of
lifting my poor child into a station above her
own. Since coming to riches, this is what I
have laid out for her and for me. I do not
believe in that bettering of one's condition by
a lofty marriage. We shall all do best in that
walk wherein we have been placed. And so,
at that season when you were so harshly
judging of us, it was my firm resolve never to
sanction such an alliance as you were then
seeking. In this humble creed I have
brought her up; and she holds to it as
firmly as I do now. In this humble creed I
hope to live and die. We have our little
plebeian honour to hold by, as well as the
nobler classes. Therefore, sir, we will never
come back again to this subject."

These were the words of the Baronet;
every one of which dealt a sharp pang. O!
the golden- haired was gone from me for
ever!

And so it is left to me to drag on a
life of bitter sorrow and vain yearnings.
Yearnings after what my own wild folly has
taken from me. If nothing else, it has been
a school of bitter teaching.

Whether, in course of time, which works
great marvels, the golden-haired will ever
be given to me again, is yet in a deep cloud.
So I drag on my weary life with some light
figment of hope before me. I look to the
future. My faith in the past is broken utterly.

WATER MUSIC.

'TWAS in summer—glorious summer—
Far beyond the smoky town.
Weary with a long day's ramble
Through the fern and blooming bramble,
Needing rest, I sat me down.
Beetling crags hung high above me,
Ever looking grandly rude;
Still there was some trace of mildness
In this scene so weird: its wildness
Might be sought for solitude.