fascinating description of it, you know, in your usual off-hand way. I should like to have seen it."

"There is nothing worth seeing, my dear. It is a nice, oldfashioned place, smothered with roses; but you may see half a dozen such in every rural neighborhood. You'd better not trouble yourself going to look at it. I believe the people I staid with have left the country."

"Did you inquire?" asked Mr. Harcross, with a splendid indifference; the bar had made him an accomplished actor. "No. There was no time. We had to get to your romantic Brierwood by all manner of cross-roads, and we were afraid of being late for dinner, at least the colonel evidently was; and I didn't like to press the point, though I had quite a fancy for seeing the inside of the old house where you staid so long.

"There are tempests that tear up the strongest oaks. "That sounds as if there were some romantic story connected with the people."

"Nothing more romantic than insolvency. The farmer had been doing badly for some years when I was there, and I believe he got tired of failure at last, and shipped himself and his family to one of the colonies."

"How very sad!" exclaimed Mrs. Harcross, an I the subiect was exhausted.

It was not quite done with in the mind of Hubert Harcross, however. He had but a slippery hold on facts and figures that night as he sat alone, pretending to work, in his gloomy den. The memory of the past was strong upon him-alas, when was it ever weak? But to-night it was stronger than usual.

Kingsbury church! How the very name of the place brought back the memory of that first Sunday! the very atmosphere with its balmy warmth and rustic quiet; the fair young face looking up at him in that homeward walk by the fragrant hedgerows; the utter peacefulness in his own heart, which had not yet gone astray! Yet was not that guiltless Sabbath afternoon the commencement of his undoing? Kingsbury church! | Would to God he had married her there, and so escaped the horror of knowing himself her murderer, and so won her for the joy and comfort of his days!

"I would not have let her die," he said to himself. "I would have made her life so bright and happy. What a sweet flower it was, lying in my hand, and I flung it away! Yet, oh, God! how could I dream that I should kill her? How could I tell that she was of so much finer a clay than other women?" Mrs. Harcross came back from the Bungalow directly after the wedding, much pleased with her entertainment. There was a little dinner in Mastodon Crescent that evening-a small and careful banquet made for two or three legal luminaries whom it suited Mr. Harcross to gratify by such trivial amenities. Weston was there, in his capacity of cousin and tame cat, and to Weston and her husband Mrs. Harcross gave an animated account of the interesting ceremony, in the back drawing-room after dinner, while the legal luminaries were disputing over their tea-cups in the front, and Mr. Harcross, in his office of host, was for the moment off duty.

"Georgina looked lovely," she said. "There was the usual string of bridesmaids, but the only pretty one among them was Sir Francis Clevedon's sister. You ought to know her, Weston; such a nice girl, and a capital match, no doubt."

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'Everything was charming, Hubert. That Kingsbury church is the dearest place in the world; such a perfect bit of rustic architecture, set in such a delicious landscape. You were not half enthusiastic enough about it in your letter; but, then, you never are enthusiastic."

"What, you know the neighborhood?" asked Weston. "Yes. It was near Kingsbury that Hubert found the funny old farm-house where he recruited his health three years ago," replied Augusta. "I referred to one of your letters, Hubert, and discovered the name of the place," she went on, to her husband. "It is called Brierwood. I made the kind old colonel drive me to see it yesterday afternoon. Such a sleepy old place, and with quite an uninhabited air. I suppose the people have emigrated, as you said."

weeks?"

"I wanted rest, you see, Augusta; and it was an advantage to be remote from society."

"And then there may have been some accidental relief to the dullness," said Weston, with his favorite snigger;" 8 rustic flirtation, perhaps. A man does generally get up some kind of flirtation in that sort of place. It is a natural product of the soil."

Mrs. Harcross gave him a withering look, but Mr. Harcross vouchsafed no notice.

"I am glad things went off pleasantly," he said to his wife, with a glance at the group in the next room, holding himself ready to spring in upon them the moment their conversation flagged.

"I never saw a sweeter wedding, so rustic; the church was decorated with flowers, all white and pink. I think I never saw so many azaleas, not even at St. Sulpice's on Whit Sunday."

"Where do they go for their honeymoon?" inquired Weston, languidly.

"To Switzerland. Georgie has traveled so little, and Sir Francis is to show her everything she is most anxious to see. But they are to be at Clevedon early in August, and I have made a promise for you, Hubert."

"Indeed! you should never promise anything except for a godchild. What pledge have you taken on my behalf?" "I have promised that we will spend the last two weeks in August with the Clevedons. Now, there's no use in shrugging your shoulders like that, Hubert. The session will be over, no committee-rooms, no law-courts. You can have no possible excuse for objecting."

"Only that I detest staying in other people's houses." "Why?" asked Mrs. Harcross, looking fixedly at him with her cold hazel eyes. "Do you feel so much out of your element among county people?''

It was a little involuntary burst of that slow fire which had smoldered in her heart of late. She was vexed with herself the moment after she had spoken.

“Well, no; I am not the kind of person to torment myself with an idea of my own inferiority, even to county people ; and I certainly should not consider myself the inferior of Sir Francis Clevedon."

"The Clevedons seem to think themselves very great people, at least Sibyl told me a good deal about their ancestors when she was showing me the family portraits."

"Did she favor you with a sketch of her father's character ?'"' asked Mr. Harcross, coldly.

"No; the father appears to have been hardly a nice person. Neither Francis nor his sister talk much of him. Now mind, Hubert, I have set my heart on this visit, and I hope you will not oppose me."

"I think I rarely oppose you in any reasonable desire. But it's hardly worth while laving out our campaign for the end of August at the beginning of June. I must go and talk to old Shepeskinn. Won't you sing, Augusta ?”

"In order that those horrid lawyers may talk all the louder. I'll play, if you like. Will you get me a volume of Mendelssohn out of the stand, Weston ?-the blue morocco volume."

Weston found the volume, and stood by his cousin as she played, turning the leaves correctly to a crotchet, and talking to her in the pauses of the music. He asked a good many questions about Kingsbury, and the old farm-house in which Hubert had stopped, and seemed singularly interested in this episode in the life of Mr. Harcross. But he contrived to put his questions in the airiest manner, and Augusta's only idea upon the subject was a conviction of her cousin's frivolity.

"I shouldn't wonder if there was something mysterious in

that farm-house business," Weston Vallory said to himself, as he smoked a midnight cigar during his homeward journey to the Surrey hills. "Harcross looked rather glum when I mildly suggested a possible flirtation in that quarter. Did ever any man on the right side of forty live six weeks at a farm-house without a stronger motive th in the desire for fresh air and newlaid eggs? And I remember how uncommonly close my friend was on the subject of his rustic excursion when I met him in Acropolis Square, the day after his return. I am inclined to think there is something; and if there is, look out for squalls, Mr. Harcross. I've had a trifle too much of your de haut en bas manner, to say nothing of your having swindled me out of the woman I meant to marry, and I should vastly like to drop down upon you unexpectedly some fine morning."

Christian meditations to carry through the soft Summer night, but they were hardly unpleasant to the soul of Weston Vallory; they did not gnaw or rend his vitals with a vulturelike rending, but agreeably titillated his senses, and gave a zest to his contemplation of the future. He felt so sure that, sooner or later, he should be able to drop down upon his fortunate rival.

"That little account has been a long time standing, my friend, Harcross," he said to himself, "but I mean to square it."

CHAPTER XXVII.

HANGES at Brierwood. The land was let off to a sturdy red-faced farmer, sprung from the peasant class, who lived with his numerous progeny in a roomy cottage remote from the old homestead-a substantial tenement, which had been built for the occupation of a bailiff in the days when the Brierwood people were gentry. The house and garden remained, cared for by Mrs. Bush, the charwoman, and her husband. No item of the old furniture had been removed, but the rooms were for the most part tenantless.

For the last twelve months Richard Redmayne had been across the seas, at Bulrush Meads, where James and Hannah's industry had created quite a model domain. He had been to see how they thrived, but the prosperity of his estate gave him little gladness. She who was to have been the glory of his home could never look upon those fertile valleys, could never wander by his side across those breezy hills. The brightness and the beauty of his life had vanished; he lived on, ate, drank, slept even, very much as he had done before, and did not always dream of her. But, oh! how often-how often in his slumbers the pale sweet face smiled at him! He heard her voice, felt the touch of the clinging hand, and told himself that it had all been a delusion, a false alarm-she was not dead. And then came the waking and the dreary reality. She was gone!

"God's curse light on her murderer!" he said to himself, as my hate and vengeance shall follow him to the end!" Time had not dulled the edge of his hatred. Of the man who had tempted Grace away from her home he never thought but one thought. That man had slain her-killed her as surely, and with as deep a villainy, as if he had planned and executed a deliberate murder.

"He would have slain her soul," he told himself. "There was no earthly friend to save her. God sent his angel Death to snatch her from him. But that man would have killed her soul. Is he less guilty of her death because he did not mean to kill her body? And when his fancy had tired of her, would he have cared in what river she hid her dishonor?'

James tried his hardest to detain his brother on that side of the world.

"You've no call to go back, Rick, old fellow," he said. "You've let the land to a good tenant. Why shouldn't you stop with us for the rest of your days, and take your own place as owner of the property? The climate suits you. There's

plenty for you to look after here, a good horse for you to ride, and friends to keep you company within a day's easy journey. What have you got to do in England?"

"To find the man who murdered my daughter."

"Poor Gracey! Well, it was the next thing to a murder," said James, who had shed not a few quiet tears over his niece's fate, brushing a rough hand across his eyes many a time when Grace's image rose before him, as he walked alone in the sunshine. He had children of his own, and loved them heartily, but not as he had loved Gracey. She seemed so different from them-like a moss-rose in a cabbage-garden.

"It was a cruel thing to tempt her away, Rick; but, you see, we don't know. He may have meant better than we think; he may have meant fairly by her; there's no knowing." "Don't talk like a fool, Jim. Does a man ever mean honestly who acts as that man acted? Mean fairly by her! Why, he lied about her when she was dead, as he had lied to her when she was alive-perjured himself, and called her his sister, because he knew himself to be a villain, and hadn't the manhood to speak the truth, even when she was dead, even when she lay dead under his roof. Thank God, she died! It is hard to lose her; yet I say, thank God, she died! And, oh, Jim, if you know me at all, you know that I would barter all the rest of my life against one year with her."

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'Stay with us, Rick-stay, and be master here, where it's all your own."

"No, Jim. I'll get a lawyer to draw up a deed of gift, and make you a present of this place. I may come back some day, when my business is done, and end my days in peace among you. I can never know peace at Brierwood any more. But I'm bound to go back there for a little while. I've something to do."

"Come, Rick, be reasonable. What's the good of hunting after a needle in a bundle of hay? You'll never find that man, and if you did find him, what then?"

"I'll settle that when I have found him. That's enough, Jim; I'm bound to sail in the Lucy Ashton next Thursday week."

He sailed in that teak-built clipper, made the homeward voyage once more prosperously, and came to Brierwood one bright June afternoon, when Kingsbury joybells were ringing as if they had gone mad.

"What's all that row about?" he inquired of Mrs. Bush, the housekeeper, as he walked in at the open itchen-door with the air of having come home from a day's outing. He had crossed the fields, and come in by the garden. There was no pleasure in such a coming home-no expectation. His fields were in the possession of others; his house was kept only in memory of the dead, as he would have kept a tomb.

"Lor', Mr. Redmayne!" cried Mrs. Bush, letting fall a loaf which she was in the act of taking from the oven; "what a turn you did give me, to be sure !"

"I told you I should come back some day."

"Yes, to be sure; and we've looked for you many a time, but not expectin' to see you so suddint, without so much as a line to say you was coming, and your bed not aired nor nothink. But we'll soon get things straight. There's a beefsteak in the larder, as I got for my Sam to-morrow, and I can cook a bit of dinner for you, and have everythink comfortable. And I hope you've kept your health while you've been in foreign parts."'

"I've been tolerably well; the climate yonder suits me. What are those confounded joybells ringing for?''

"Don't you like 'em, Mr. Redmayne? I think they're so cheerful when they ring like that. I don't much care for them of a Summer's evening rung slow; they make me feel solid. Don't you know about the wedding? It's a great day for Kingsbury, and there's a dinner at Clevedon-my good man's gone there. Sir Francis Clevedon was married at Kingsbury church this morning."

"Oh, Sir Francis is come home, is he?" said Richard, listlessly, looking round the familiar room, with its heavily timbered ceiling, and lattice windows looking out on a spacious stone yard, and tumble-down, low-roofed outhouses, a pump, an empty dog-kennel, and half a dozen fowls scratching on a shrunken manure-heap

"Sure to goodness, Mr. Redmayne, didn't you know about Sir Francis?" exclaimed Mrs. Bush, who evidently supposed that English newspapers would have made it their business to supply the colonies with the latest news of Clevedon Hall. "How should I know?"

Deary me! He's been back going on for a year. Let me see, it was last August as he come, and you not to know any think! He was married this morning to as sweet a young woman as you ever see-Colonel Davenant's daughter of The Wells. I went over to see the wedding, but it was as much as I could do to get inside the church-door. I don't suppose as Kingsbury church

was ever so full since

it was built."

Richard Redmayne seemed quite indifferent to Sir Francis Clevedon and his affairs; he left the kitchen, and roamed through the old house, unlocking the doors of the rooms, which had been kept carefully locked in his absence, and going into one after anoth er, only to stand for a little while looking round him, with a slow, half-wondering gaze, as if he could hardly believe he had ever lived there. The rooms were all faultlessly clean, but had a damp, chilly atmosphere, and a certain dreariness of aspect, as if they had been thus shut and thus disused for the last fifty years.

If Richard Redmayne had been a believer in ghosts, he might almost have expected to see one in those dusky chambers, where the half-open shutters let in the afternoon light grudgingly,

his side, loving her with all the force of his strong heart, the recollection of that loss was as fresh in his mind as it had been in the first week of bereavement. And now that Grace was gone, he forgot the tranquil years that had intervened between those two great sorrows. It seemed to him rather as it an angry Deity, with one sweep of His hand, had left him desolate, robbed him of all hope and comfort.

If he had any virtue, it was that of Job. He did not curse God and die. He lived; but he lived to cherish a purpose which, perhaps, was worse than the suicide's desperate sin. He lived on in the hope that fate would give his child's false lover into his hands-a vague, blind hope at the best, but strong enough to keep him alive.

Sorely had he changed since that day when, dashed a little by misfortune, but still daring and hopeful, he had asked the in

dulgence of his creditors before he sailed across the world to redeem his misfortunes. In mind and body the man was alike altered: moody where he had been social-doubtful and suspicious where he had been open and trusting as a child-brooding alone over his injuries, angry with the very world for having held such a traitor, rebellious against his God for having permitted

such a wrong.

In his outward aspect even the change was striking. It was not so much that his dark-brown hair was streaked with iron-gray, that there were deeper lines than his actual years would have warranted upon the handsome, rugged face the change of expression was a greater change than this. The face had hardened, the eyes and mouth had grown cruel. At its best now the expression was at once gloomy and reckless; at its best the

He had lived and been happy in those rooms once upon a time; his thoughts went back to the days of his early manhood, before his wife's death; to pleasant, peaceful days, when his worst care had been a doubtful harvest or sickness among his cattle, and from that quiet time they went to the Summer afternoon on which his young wife left him smoking his pipe in the garden, left him with a light word and a loving smile, a little look back at him which he remembered to this hour, and thus left him forever

Bitter memories! Can any life into which death has once entered ever again be perfectly happy? Rick Redmayne had outlived the sharpness of his grief. but not the grief itself. Ten

He came back to his old home, but not to his old habits, or his old friends. The friends had fallen away from him long ago, chilled and repelled by a change so obvious. Of the details of that sorrow which had changed him, the outer world, his small world, knew very little.

People in Kingsbury knew that Grace Redinayne had gone away from home, and had died away from home, but when and where she had died had been told to none.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

RICHARD REDMAYNE sat in the old rooms, and paced the old garden, or lay smoking his pipe on the grass under the cedar day after day and made no attempt to occupy himself, physically