'Do I understand you to imply, and not of yours?' inquired the other lightly.

'Certainly not. I have a great regard for him: we were brought up together almost like brother and sister."

'Indeed! I should never have guessed that, since he did not speak of you. To be sure he had doubtless heard all about you that I could tell from his father. And besides he was very reticent; hardly spoke a word.'

He was well, I hope?' said Nelly, conscious of her rising colour, and unable, as it seemed to her, to speak with the indifference she intended.

'Oh yes, he seemed well enough; but if it is not his nature to be silent, he must have been out of spirits. It struck me that the father and son did not hit it off together quite comfortably.'

'Raymond is not a man to quarrel with his father,' said Nelly gravely. She resented her companion's light way of talking of him and of that sorrow which she understood so well. You talked just now of duty; he is the most dutiful man I know.'

No doubt he is a good fellow,' said Milburn hastily; and indeed, since you say so, it must be so. I have not a word to say against him. I did not mean that he and his father quarrelled, only it seemed to me that there had been some recent misunderstanding between them-in fact what, in ignorance of his being such a good young man, I might have profanely called "a row," and that the son had had to give in, but as it were under protest. It was perhaps about money matters, and in that case the old fellow was the one in fault, no doubt; for we all know he is a screw. That reminds me of something that I wished to tell you. Mr. Pennicuick, as I have said, was not a screw in connection with one matter, indeed as respects all that occurred at Dhulang. I dare say you wondered why I would not let you have that portfolio at the time when you were so good as to call on us, and that I insisted on sending it later to your room. The reason was, that it contained two sketches which, if you had come upon them unexpectedly, would have caused you pain.'

"That was very kind and thoughtful of you,' said Nelly gratefully.

Nay, it would have been very thoughtless had I not taken the precaution. The fact is that, while at Dhulang, though my visit was very short, I drew a sketch of the Mandarin's house from which your poor father was committed to the prison. But I am afraid' -for she had turned pale-I am doing the very thing I would have avoided-giving you the heartache.'

No; it was just for the minute. I should like to see the sketch.'

"You shall not only see it, but possess it. It is not worth your thanks, for since it is my own handiwork, it is not-like the other -of any value.'

'I shall value it nevertheless,' answered Nelly simply, 'upon that very account. I should think of the kindness of the donor, whenever I look at it.'

"Your words make me very happy,' answered the young man earnestly. The other sketch will speak for itself. It is

6

'O Herbert dear, do pray come and tell us about this starfish,' broke in Miss Milburn; it is quite different from the common ones, and Mrs. Wardlaw is dying to know about it.'

If Mrs. Wardlaw's decease had depended solely upon her curiosity remaining unsatisfied upon any point of science whatever, whether ichthyological or otherwise, it is probable she would have lived for many hundreds of years; but as a pretext to cut short the conversation between the two young people, Miss Milburn's speech fulfilled its intention. They had no further chance for private talk that day, and Milburn secretly congratulated himself that he had not wasted his time while the opportunity lasted. His sister's suspicions, though she would have probably entertained them had Nelly been infinitely less attractive, were in her case well-founded; ' dear Herbert' was really smitten by that Miss Conway,' and much more seriously than his self-constituted guardian and protectress imagined. He had left her with very great reluctance for his two days' business in town, and as it happened she had been there the topic of Mr. Pennicuick's talk. Of course Milburn did not need any corroboration of the view he had taken of her character, but somehow the eulogies he had heard from his host's lips had increased his own admiration of their object. He had no respect for Ralph Pennicuick's opinions, as we have seen; but still, when he found so acute and experienced a man of the world speaking in such high terms, not only of a girl's grace and beauty, but of her talents and good sense, it had not been without its effect upon him. He could not know that every word the other said had been spoken with a purpose, namely, to urge Milburn on to offer himself as her lover, and thereby, as he trusted, to extinguish the dying embers of Raymond's hopes at once and for

ever.

As to Nelly, she was quite unconscious of Mr. Milburn's feelings towards her, notwithstanding his sister's warnings. Sh liked him exceedingly, but her liking was due to his relations with her father, and to the evident regard he had entertained for him,

quite as much as to his own attractions. If he had had those alone to recommend him, he would have found her-doubly oppressed as she was by her recent loss, and by her renunciation of Raymond-very difficult of approach and anything but demonstrative. Even as it was, his presence, though agreeable to her, rather increased her melancholy than otherwise, by perpetually reminding her of her father.

The chief interest attaching to the young man in her eyes was that he had gone to Dhulang and been one of the three Englishmen who had seen their dead comrade laid in his grave. The promised sketches were brought to her that afternoon, while she happened to be alone, and she had carried them up to her own room without even mentioning their arrival to her hostess.

Her curiosity respecting them was overpowered by a deeper and more solemn feeling, and she did not open the little packet till she retired for the night. The evening had been very still, and nothing was then heard but the gentle kiss of the wave, or its sigh as it withdrew from the yielding sand; the sky was black and starless, and the quiet and the darkness renewed that sense of solitariness from which she had of late been slowly emerging. She felt again how lonely her life was doomed to be, and her thoughts did not need the association which Mr. Milburn's gift must needs possess to turn them to those who had departed and left her thus alone. Did her father see her now, she wondered, and was he conscious how great a void his death had made for her, and how she yearned to join him in the land of shades? She sat down with a certain sense of expectation, but also with one of weariness and woe that dulled its edge, and opened the packet. The first sketch depicted the house of Twang-hi, the Mandarin, taken from the garden where we saw poor Conway and his companion-the former so unconscious of coming trouble-on the morning after their visit to the Temple. It was a bright and cheerful scene, with the light of summer shining upon the velvet lawn and the gilded pinnacles of the Joss-house, with its flowing lines of roof and tiny balconies. It was difficult to imagine that those gay and glittering gates could have been the portals of death-and such a death! If Nelly imagined that this very contrast gave her greater pain, she found out her mistake when her eyes rested on the second sketch, which, as Milburn had said, spoke for itself. It had been apparently taken by moonlight, and represented an abrupt hill thickly covered with pine-trees. The whole scene was black and gloomy to an extreme degree, save the Lamp of Night in the heavens and one white spot on some level ground at the foot of the hill-which was a tombstone.