her. "Do you not feel that you are tempting me beyond what a man can endure? Do you not know that you are trying to deceive me and yourself? You cannot love Allan again-you know that you cannot. You know that you love me-yes, me! You do not dare deny it, Clare-you do not dare deny it. And I-traitor as I am-I love you with a love that has burnt up the unselfish love of which I made my boast-a love of which it is shame for me to speak, and for you to hear but I love you, Clare, I love you." Having wrung her

of me.

me go."

But Allan, who did not know if this were earnest or some bitter jest, passed his arm through his friend's, and held him fast.

"What has happened? Something, I am sure. Do not jest with me. Tell me what has happened?" "A mere trifle-a most ordinary occurrence. A man who thought himself of stainless honour and disinterestedness, has proved himself a selfish traitor. A mere trifle. Quite a jesting matter."

Mr Smith laughed.

"We are long past the dog-days, or I should be alarmed for your sanity," Allan said.

"I am not mad, most noble Allan." 'John, my dear fellow, speak to me soberly. What has occurred? Have you had bad news? To whom did you-who is the traitor ?"

"Listen and judge." But Mr Smith paused a while, choking down some pang of bitterness, before he continued. "I am just come from your cousin Clare. I found her in

the yew walk, and left her there. I love her ; I have told her so." He looked in Allan's face-it whitened to the lips, and the features sharpened.

"And Clare?" was all Allan

said.

"Loves me. Beggar and blackguard as I am, she loves me." "She told you so ?" "Let me remember. No, not in words.'

"But you do not doubt it?" "I do not doubt it. Take your hand from my arm, boy; let me go.'

Allan paid no heed; arm in arm they walked on in silence; a low, sardonic, self-scorning laugh from Mr Smith was the first sound that broke this silence.

"You have been amusing yourself at my expense in rather a sorry manner!" Allan said, as this sound roused him from the sort of nightmare in which he had been walking, and raised a sudden hope in his mind.

"Would to God it were so! It is not. Let me go-I say, let me go. I shall hate you now, Allan; now I have injured you. Let me go.' Mr Smith spoke fiercely, and struggled to release his arm from Allan's hold; but the clutch that held him, mechanical and almost involuntary as it was, was like the convulsive clutch of the dying; he could not escape from it.

"You shall not hate me!" Allan said, firmly. "I will let you go, for I want time to think-but not till you have promised to do nothing rash-to sleep under that roof at least one night longer."

"I promise anything to get away from you." Allan's hold relaxed, and Mr Smith was off towards the river. A few moments afterwards, a boat shot swiftly forth from the alder creek. Allan watched it fly down the river, disappearing, to appear again in one shining reach after another. Allan watched without knowing that he watched: the rhythm of the oars gave rhythm to his thoughts-if what went on within him, beating in his brain, hammering at his heart, could be called thought.

Of course there was pain, exceeding bitter pain, dominating all.

The river looked like a chain of pools reflecting the last light of day, while darkness had settled down upon the woods and plain, when the boat came back. Allan had seen it, a black speck upon the gleaming water, a long way off he was at the landing-place when it came in.

"I am glad you are back at last -the river is not safe in this uncertain light." He helped to moor the boat, then led the way to the house. Mr Smith staggered rather than walked. Allan was not sorry to see how thoroughly used up and tamed he was. When they entered the library, Mr Smith threw himself into a chair, laid his folded arms on the table, and his head upon them: he had not spoken.

Leaving him so, Allan went to look for Clare. Till dusk she had been locked into her own room; by that time the storm had spent itself for the present; she had washed out the worst sting and stain, quenched the first burning sense of insult, and was comparatively calm. Allan found her in the unlighted drawing-room, to which she had come for space to move and breathe. Several of the many lattices were open wide, the stars looked in upon her, the summer wind whispered to her-without all was peaceful, with

a holy peace. Clare had walked to and fro till she was tired; she was leaning in one of the windows, looking out, when Allan came in: he was close to her before she knew it. They could each see the other's face by the starlight, as they stood there close to the window; pale, resolute young faces were both.

"Sister Clare, my poor little sister Clare," Allan said, speaking to her, as he had never spoken before, as a gentle-hearted elder brother to a suffering sister.

With a low cry Clare leant towards him-he opened his armsshe rested her head against his breast; there he held her pressed against his heart, as he thought, for the last time.

Clare clung to him, and her tears fell again, but very softly; she was soothed and comforted-inexpressibly soothed and comforted; and yet something in Allan's tone, something in his face, seemed to penetrate to her heart's core, paining her with such aching, boding pain as one feels when a loved voice says, "Farewell," and we know that for us can be no well-faring when that voice is no longer heard.

"You need not speak one word. Trust all to me: I know all; you need not speak one word," Allan said.

Then Clare lifted her head, looked up into his face he did not read her face aright; to her his seemed as the face of an angel.

"Come with me now," he whispered; she obeyed him unhesitatingly, with no thought of where he would take her, only feeling that she might follow him anywhere.

But when he opened the library door, and she saw the lamplight falling on Mr Smith's bent head, she shrank back, clinging to Allan.

"Go to him, Clare-comfort him -you only can," Allan said. He led Clare forward with gentle violence, disengaged himself from her hold, disregarding her low-spoken entreaty," Do not leave me,”-perhaps not hearing it, he went away.

Mr Smith had looked up, when the door opened, vacantly, stupidly at

first, then he sprang up, exclaiming "Allan, you are mad! what are you doing?" But passionate hope flamed up in his eyes as he spoke, and looked at Clare.

Clare stood motionless just where Allan had left her. In spite of eyes reddened by weeping, and cheeks tear-stained and bloodless, yet not whiter than her lips, she had perhaps never looked so beautiful. When she spoke, it was with the coldest gentleness.

"I did not know where my cousin was bringing me! I can only guess under what mistake he brought me here-perhaps it is as well as it is. You told him all that passed this afternoon?"

"I told him that I loved you, and had confessed it. I told him what, by your manner, I fancy you are going to deny now, that you love me that you had not confessed it in words, but that I did not doubt it: nor, if you now deny it, shall I now doubt it I shall only think that your pride, being too little, thinks the sacrifice too great." He was stung by her changed manner, which showed him his lost supremacy.

"Then my cousin renounces me -gives me up to you, believing that I love you."

"Believing that you love me, he leaves you free to marry me. Of this, that you would marry me, I had never dreamt, wildly as I may have dreamt. I should have been far from here by this time, had not your cousin extracted from me a promise to remain one more night under this roof. In remaining I had no hope. Wildly as I have dreamt, I did not, I repeat, dare dream that you would marry John Smith-wellnigh a beggar!"

"Yet you dared tell me that I loved you! throwing the accusation at me in a way to make it most bitter insult."

"When a man is maddened by self-reproach and the conflict of passions, he cannot stop to be choice of manner or of words. To tell you of your love and of mine was one thing; to ask you to marry me,

knowing as I do the conditions on which

"You heap one insult after another upon me,-but perhaps I have merited them all."

"I do not wish to be harsh-I have cause enough to be humblebut you cannot deny that you have loved me," he demanded.

"I confess that for some time I half believed that I might come to care for you. I believed it till this afternoon. I must confess more, and what is far more to my shame, that before I believed it possible that I should care for you, I strove to win your admiration-to fascinate you, even to make you believe that I loved you

from motives of revenge. My revenge has recoiled on me-recoils on me doubly. I have wronged you, and you have done me service, taught me many lessons. I must ask your pardon; I do so very humbly-not as I could have done, had you acted differently; but still, very sincerely and very humbly, I desire your forgiveness of any injury I may have done you."

Imprecations were on Mr Smith's lips, but there was something pure and noble in Clare's face that checked them. Refusals to believe the truth of what she said he could not bring himself to utter, for there was something calm and truthful in Clare's manner that, against his will, impressed him.

A few seconds Clare waited to see if he would speak; he did not -he could not; so she left him, going straight to her own room, to which she presently summoned Mrs Andrews.

It

"I have been false, and I have been fooled," was Mr Smith's explanation to Allan-"fooled by a woman, and false to my friend. I am learning to know myself. was quite fair, your cousin's game. Tell her I said so- that she has my forgiveness, if she cares for it. Now if this were a comedy, I see an opening for a fine wind-up. It would turn out that I had been a most subtle and successful metaphysician, 'whose skill was only exceed

ed by his benevolence'-that my only aim had been, by contrast, to win your lady's heart to you. Would to Heaven it were so! I began by trying to play Providence for your benefit certainly; but in real life circumstances are apt to sway the man more than the man circumstances. False to my friend, fooled by a woman; these two little facts from the history of the last few weeks-months, which is it? I will lay to heart."

Allan did and said all that was manly and Christian, striving to soothe the pangs of mortification and self-reproach, which he knew were indeed, to such a nature as his friend's, more bitter than death; but the present result of his efforts was to aggravate rather than assuage the fierceness of these pangs.

"You heap coals of fire on my head," were Mr Smith's parting words.

Having seen his friend off-driven him to the nearest railway stationAllan on his return was met by the news that Clare had left her home, with no intention to return to it.

Mrs Andrews was her accomplice: she had gone, properly escorted and attended, to "some of Mrs Andrews's friends in the north," people in humble circumstances; with them she was to remain till she could meet with a suitable situation as governess.

Clare had left a letter for Allan, explaining why she acted thus, telling him that it would be useless for him to try to learn where she was -useless for him to try and change her resolution or frustrate her plans. "I am not worthy of you, Allan, or I should have loved you in spite of everything. I am not humbled enough yet, or-I will not say what I was going to say; but I know I am not worthy of you, and should not make you happy. When you have been married some years, and I am an old maid,' I may perhaps come and live in that little WestEnd cottage which my father or dained should be my home in such case. Till then we will not meet."

VOL. XCII.-NO. DLXVI.

It was no use for Allan to storm or to entreat; Mrs Andrews was a trustworthy accomplice; for the present she would not reveal the secret of Clare's hiding-place.

Three months with those poor people in the north, to whom she was nothing but a governess out of place, some experience of the life of a governess, and then ?—a most lame and impotent conclusion — a humiliating surrender. Like a heroine, she battled with the growing certainty that she loved her cousin Allan passing well, with "love of men and women when they love the best ;" that she reverenced him as nobler, wiser, better-far nobler, far wiser, far better than herself; that to submit to him with absolute submission, to depend on him with absolute dependence, would be rest and happiness. She battled with herself-she mistrusted herself — she suffered greatly. When she had left home, she had begged Mrs Andrews not to mention Allan's name when she wrote; she began to think that she must recall this requestthat she could no longer bear this silence.

One dreary winter night she sat alone in a large, bare schoolroom, writing to Mrs Andrews, when a visitor was announced. She had given in; she had just written Allan's name. "Where is he? How is he? Oh, tell me something about him!" she had written. The door opened; she looked up; there stood Allan.

Must not Clare's pride have become very weak, or her love grown very strong, if she yielded then?then, when the world might say that poverty and hardship and the hankering after the flesh-pots of Egypt had brought her to her senses? She knew the world would have a right to say this. She humbled herself to this humiliationglad to find how light, for love's sake, it was to bear.

The beautiful Mrs Watermeyr of the next summer could hardly have been other than Clare, yet the beauty was of a different typesofter, sweeter, more submissive.

3 A

WHEN war is raging throughout the greater part of North America, desolating some of its finest provinces, convulsing the governmental institutions, and arresting the progress of the entire region extending southward from the Lakes to the Isthmus, the fortunes of the British provinces look brighter by the contrast, but, at the same time, they demand our careful regard, owing to the new influences which, for good or for evil, will speedily be brought to bear upon them. The deplorable dissensions in the United States, and the great burden of debt which that hitherto lightlytaxed country is incurring, not only tends to turn the tide of emigration towards the north instead of to the south of the St Lawrence, but not a few even of the people of the States will probably prefer to seek new homes in Canada, rather than submit themselves to the heavy taxation and other inconveniences which are so rapidly accumulating in the territories of the now disrupted and disunited American republic. It may seem, too, that the disruption of the United States into two separate and rival confederacies relieves our American provinces of their greatest peril the peril consequent upon having a vast and ambitious Power for their immediate neighbour. But there is another side of the question which ought not to be overlooked. The serious complications and further secessions from the Union which will probably ensue, upon the establishment of the South as an independent Power, must bring new influences to bear upon British America, which will be either mischievous or the reverse, according as their coming is timeously prepared for or foolishly disregarded.

There is, moreover, a new and highly interesting event which makes more than usually seasonable a survey of the position of

our colonies in the New World. British America has just completed herself by the establishment of a fully-organised colony at her western extremity, on the shores of the Pacific Ocean. Our dominion, which was but nominal and de jure over the vast territory that lies to the west of the great lakes, has suddenly, and by a bound, reached its utmost limit, and become a substantial fact on the further side of the continent. And on that extreme frontier of our power, we, singularly enough, find a province which, in its geographical position, commercial opportunities, and mineral wealth, reminds us of the parent Isles, and bids fair in future times to occupy the same distinguished position in the new world of the Pacific which England does in the older world on the shores of the Atlantic.

The recent establishment of British and Anglo-American States on the shores of the Pacific, is an event which commences a new epoch in the world's history. For four thousand years has the White race of Europe, the aristocracy of the globe, been journeying westward to the land of the setting sun, and ever, like the sunset, has the goal of their wanderings receded as they advanced. Over the Ural Mountains, and winding round the Black Sea, they passed into Europe before the light of history could reveal their march. The sunny shores of the Mediterranean tempted them onward to the Pillars of Hercules; the icy Baltic repelled them to seek a kindlier region westward on the banks of the Rhine and the valleys of France. And now, after nearly forty centuries of growth and vicissitude in Europe, overleaping the ocean channel of the Atlantic, they have peopled a new world, and are settling on the shores of another great ocean beyond. Year by year, though the present dreadful turmoil in the