stout, comfortable-looking dame, richly dressed, with a face as red as it was good-natured, and a curiously-fine lace cap, standing on end with yellow ribbon. Mrs. Gass had neither birth nor breeding: she had made an advantageous match, as you will hear further on; she possessed many good qualities, and was populary supposed to be rich enough to buy up the whole of Dallory Ham. Her late husband had been the uncle of Oliver Rane; but neither she nor Oliver presumed upon the relationship; in fact, they had never met until two years ago.

"I knew your knock, Doctor Rane, and came to the door myself. Step into the parlor, I want to speak to you."

The doctor did not want to go in by any means, and felt caught. He said he had no time to stay; had merely called in passing to ask how she was.

"Well, I'm better this evening; the swimming in the head's less. You just come in, now. I say yes. I won't keep you two minutes. Shut the door, girl, after Doctor Rane."

This was to a smart housemaid, who had followed her mistress down the wide and handsome passage. Doctor Rane perforce stepped in; very unwillingly. He felt instinctively convinced the woman had heard of the calamity at the Hall and wished to question him. To avoid this he would have gone a mile any other way.

"I want to get at the truth about Edmund North, doctor. One of the maids from the Hall called in just now and said he had been frightened into a fit through some letter; and that you were fetched in to him."

in this terrestrial world. Good-night to you, doctor; you're in a mortal hurry." He strode to treet-door and shut it after him with a bang. Mrs. Gass looked out of her parlor and saw the same smart maid hastening along the passage; a little too late. "Drat it, wench! Is that the way you let gentlefolks show theirselves out-scuttering to the door when they've got clean away from it. D'ye call that manners?''

CHAPTER II.-ELLEN ADAIR.

HE day promised to be as warm as the preceding one. The night and morning mists were gone; the sun shone hot and bright. Summer seemed to have come in before its time.

Two white Gothic villas stood side by side just within the neck of Dallory Ham, a few yards of garden and some clustering shrubs lying between them. They were built alike. The side windows, facing each other over this strip of ground, were large, projecting bay windows, and belonged to the dining-rooms. These houses were originally erected for two maiden sisters; hence their relationship (if such a term may be applied to dwellings) one with the other. A large and beautiful garden lay at the back, sur

might have stepped over, dividing it. In the first of these houses (entering the Ham from the direction of Dallory) lived Mrs. Cumberland, the mother of Oliver Rane. She had been married twice, hence the difference in name. The second house was occupied by Doctor Rane. They lay back with a strip of grass before them, the entrance doors being level with the

Let us go into the doctors: turning the handle of the door

The hall is very small, narrowing off at the upper end to a passage, and lighted with stained glass. On the left of the entrance door is the consulting-room, not much bigger than a closet; beyond it is the dining-room, a good spacious apart

other house. Opposite the dining-room across the passage, narrow here, is the white-flagged kitchen; and the drawing-room

"It is, indeed.'

"And Mr. Richard was not at home," the girl said.

it is mostly kept shut up. A back-door opens to the garden. Oliver Rane sat in his consulting-room, the Whitborough Journal, damp from the press, in his hand. It was just twelve

Mrs. Gass would fain have kept him longer; he told her the sick man, Ketler, was waiting for him. This man was one of the North workmen, who had been terribly injured in the arm; Doctor Rane hoped to save both the arm and the life.

"That receipt for the rhubarb jam Mrs. Cumberland promised is it ever coming?" asked Mrs. Gass, as Doctor Rane was quitting the room.

Turning back, he put his hat on the table and took out his pocketbook. Mrs. Cumberland had sent it at last. He selected the p per from amongst several others, and handed it to her.

him. By seven o'clock that morning he had been at the Hall, and learnt that there was no material change in the patient, lying there he had then gone on, early though it was, to see the man, Ketler. The Journal gave the details of Mr. North's seizure with tolerable accuracy, and concluded its account in these words: "We have reason to know that a clue has been obtained to the anonymous writer."

"A clue to the writer!" repeated Doctor Rane, his eyes seeming to be glued to the words. "I wonder if it's true? No, no; it is not likely," came the quiet, contemptuous decision. "How should any clue-''

A tall, slender, and very handsome man, younger than Doctor Rane, opened the door by slow degrees. There was a peculiar cast of proud refinement on his features, and a dreamy look in his dark blue eyes. An attractive face at all times and seasons, whose owner it was impossible to mistake for any but an upright, well-bred gentleman. It was Arthur Bohun-Captain Bohun as he was ver- generally called. He was the only son

"No; or you'd be at the opposition shop over the way.” Arthur Bohun laughed.

"It was of the opposition shop I came to speak to you-if I came for anything. Where's Alexander? Is he keeping out of the way, or is he really gone to London, as people say?"

"I know nothing of him," returned Doctor Rane. "Look here I was reading the account they give in the newspaper. Is this last hint true?"-holding out the journal-" that a clue has been obtained to the writer of the letter?''

A natural arbor of trees and branches had been formed overhead where she sat on the garden-bench, behind a rustic table. Before her, at a short distance, a falling cascade trickled down the artificial rocks, and thence wound away, a tiny stream, amidst ferns, violets, primroses, and other wild plants. A plot of green grass, smooth and soft as the moss of the rocks, lay immediately at hand, and glimpses of statelier flowers were caught through the trees. Their rich perfume came wafting in a sudden breeze to the girl's senses, and she looked up gratefully from the work she was busy over, some small matter of silken embroidery.

And now you could see the exceeding refinement and delicacy of the face, the pleasant expression of the soft bright eyes. A bird lodged itself on a branch close by, and began a song. Her lips parted with a smile of greeting. By way of rewarding it, off he flew, dipped his beak into the running stream, and soared away out of her sight-as is the case sometimes in life.

On the table lay a handful of violets, picked short off at the blossoms. Almost unconsciously, as it seemed, her thoughts far away, she began toying with them, and fell insensibly into the French schoolgirls' play, telling off the flowers. "Est-ce qu'il m'aime ?" was the first momentous question, and then began the pastime, a blossom being told told off with every answer. "Oui. Non. Un peu. Beaucoup. Pas du tout. Passionnément.” And so the round went on and on again, until the last violet was reached. It came, as chance had it, with the last word, and she, in an access of rapture, her soft cheeks glowing, her sweet lips parting, caught up the flower and put it into her bosom.

"Il m'aime passionnément !''

Ah, foolish girl! The oracle seemed as true as if it had come direct from heaven. But can we not remember the ecstacy such necromancy once brought us!

With her blushes deepening as she awoke, starting, into reality; with a smile at her own folly, with a shrinking sense of maiden shame for indulging in the pastime, she pushed the violets into a heap, threaded a needleful of green floss silk, and went on with her work soberly.

A few minutes, and then either eye or ear was attracted by something ever so far off, and she sat quite still. Quite still outwardly; but, oh! the sudden emotion that arose like a lightning flash within!-for she knew the footsteps. Every vein was tingling, every pulse was throbbing; the pink on her cheeks deepened to a very sea of crimson; the life-blood of her

"No; this has no foundation," he promptly answered. "At least so far as the Hall is concerned. As yet we have not found any clue whatever."

"I thought so. These newsmongers put forth lies by the bushel. Just as we might, if we had to cater for an unsatiably curious public. But I fear I must be going out."

Arthur Bohun brought down the fore-legs of the stool, which he had kept on the tilt, rose, and said a word of apology for having kept him from his patients. His was essentially a courteous nature, sensitively regardful of other people's feelings, as men of great innate refinement are sure to be.

They went into the dining-room, Doctor Rane having left his hat there, and passed out together by the large bay-window. The doctor crossed at once to a door in the wall that bound the premises at the back, and made his exit to the lane beyond, leaving Arthur Bohun in the garden.

A garden that on a summer's day seemed as a very paradise. With its clustering shrubs, its overhanging trees, its leafy glades, its shrubberies, its miniature rocks, its sweet repose, its sweeter flowers. Seated in a remote part of it was one of the loveliest girls that eye had ever looked upon. She wore a morning dress of light-colored muslin, with an edging of lace on her neck and wrists. Slight, gentle, charming, with a very peculiar look of grace and refinement—a stranger would have been almost startled at her beauty. It was a delightful face, the features clearly cut, the complexion soft, pure, and delicate, paling and flushing with every emotion. In the dark-brown eyes there was a singularly sweet expression; the dark-brown hair took a lustrously bright tinge in the sunlight.

He was passing straight on from Doctor Rane's to the other house, when he caught a glimpse of her dress through the trees, and turned aside. Nothing could have been quieter or more undemonstrative than the meeting; and yet a shrewd observer, skilled in secrets, had not failed to read the history-that both alike loved.

Captain Bohun went up, calm, as befitted a well-bred man, shaking hands after the fashion of society, and apparently with as little interest; but on his face the flush also shone in all its tell-tale brightness; the hand that touched hers, thrilled almost to pain. She had risen to receive him; she was just as calm outwardly, as he, but her senses were in one maze of wild confusion.

She began to go on with her work again in a sort of hurried, trembling fashion, when he sat down. The day for her had turned to Eden; the flowers were brighter, the song of the birds was sweeter, the trees were of a golden green, like unto emeralds; all things seemed to discourse a sweet music.

True love-idealistic, passionate, pure love-is not fluent of speech, whatever the world may say, or poets teach. Doctor Rane and Miss North thought they loved each other; and so they did, after a sensible, sober, plain manner: they could have conversed with mutual fluency for ever and a day; but their love was not this love. It is the custom of modern writers to ignore it; the prevailing fashion is to be matter-of-fact, realistic. People don't talk of love now, and of course don't feel it; the capability of it has died out-modes have changed. Ah, me! what a false age it is! as if we could put off" human nature as we do a garment!

Captain Bohun was the first to break the silence. She had

"What a fine day it is, Ellen!"

En

"I think summer has come; we shall scarcely have it warmer than this in July. And oh, how lovely everything is !" "It was hot yesterday. I had a ride of ten miles between green hedges on which the May is beginning to blossom vious darkness had shut the world out before I got home." "And I sat out here all the afternoon," she answered-and perhaps she unconsciously spoke more in pursuance of the thought that she had sat out, waiting and hoping for him, than to give information. "Where did you go, Arthur?"

"To Bretchley. Some of my old brother-officers are quartered there, and I spent the day with them. What's that for?"

He alluded to the piece of work. She smiled as she held it out in her right hand, on the third finger of which was a plain gold ring. A small piece of white canvas, with a pink rose and part of a green leaf already worked upon it in bright floss silk.

gan it yesterday."

"Well, what's it for?" he asked, putting his band underneath it, as an excuse perhaps for touching the fingers it was in. "A fire-screen for pretty faces?''

The young lady shook her head. "It is for a kettle-holder." "A kettle-holder! What a prosy ending!"

"It is for Mrs. Cumberland's invalid kettle that she keeps in her bedroom. The handle got hot a day or two ago, and she burnt her hand. I shall put it on some morning to surprise her."

There ensued a pause of silence. Half their intercourse was made up of pauses: the eloquent language of true love. Captain Bohun, thinking how kindly-natured was the girl by his side, played abstractedly with the heap of sweet blossoms or the table.

"What have you been doing with all these violets, Ellen?" Nothing," she replied; and down fell the scissors. But that she stooped at once, Captain Bohun might have seen the sudden flush on the delicate face, and wondered at it: a flush of remembrance. Il m'aime passionnément. Well, so he did. "Please don't entangle my silk, Captain Bohun."

He laughed as he put down the skein, one of a bright goldcolor. "Shall I help you to wind it, Ellen?"

"Thank you, but we don't wind floss silk. It would deaden its beauty. Arthur! do you know that the swallows have come?"

"The swallows have! Then this summer weather will stay with us, for those birds have a sure instinct. It is early for them to be here."

way, she was glad to see him: that is, she had no objection to see him; but gladness and Mrs. Cumberland seemed to have parted company. The suffering that arises from chronic pain makes a selfish nature doubly selfish.

letter to Mr. North; the angry, passionate spirit in which Ed

"What a shocking thing this is about Edmund North!" “What is a shocking thing?” she asked with indifference, going on with her work as she spoke. Arthur Bohun, who was busy again with the pale blue violets, scarcely more blue than his own eyes, lifted his face and looked at her.

surgeon, Alexander; the subsequent attack, and the hopelessness in which he was lving. For once, Mrs. Cumberland was aroused to feel sympathy in another's sufferings; she listened with painful interest.

"And it was Oliver who was called in first to Edmund North!" she presently exclaimed, with inquiring emphasis, as if unable

Why, what has Rane beer about, not to tell you?' "I don't know. What is the matter with Edmund North ?'' Captain Bohun explained the illness and its cause. Her work dropped on her knee as she listened; her face grew pale with interest. She never once interrupted him; every sympathetic feeling within her was aroused to warm indignation.

"An anonymous letter!" she at length exclaimed. worse than a stab."

"A fellow, writing one of malice, puts himself beyond the pale of decent society: shooting would be too good for him," quietly remarked Captain Bohun. "Here comes a summons for you, I expect, Ellen."

"But, dear Mrs. Cumberland, Doctor Rane has not neglected you," said Ellen, struck with the injustice of the complaint. "He is ever the first to come in and amuse you with what news he knows."

Putting her work away in her pocket, she took the arm that was held out, and they went wandering through the garden. Lingering by the cascade dreaming in the dark cypress walk, standing over the beds of beautiful flowers. A seductive time; life's gala summer; but a time that never stays, for the biting frosts of winter and reality succeed it surely and swiftly. Nothing had been said between them, but each was conscious of what the other felt. Neither had whispered in so many words, "I love you." Ellen did not hint that she had watched for him the whole of the past live-long day with love's sick longing; he did not confess how lost the day had been to him, how worse than weary, because it did not give him a sight of her. These avowals might come in time, but they would not be needed.

Stepping in through the middle doors of the bay-window, as Arthur Bohun had made his exit from the opposite one, they looked round for Mrs. Cumberland, and did not see her. She was in the drawing-room on the other side of the small hall, sitting near the Gothic windows that faced the road. A pale, reticent, lady-like woman, always suffering; but making more of her sufferings than she need have done-as her son, Doctor Rane, not over-dutifully thought. Her eyes were light and cold; her flaxen hair, banded smoothly under a cap, was turning gray. But that Mrs. Cumberland was entirely occupied with self, and but little with her ward, Ellen Adair, she might have noticed before now the suggestive intimacy between that young lady and Arthur Bohun.

"True, true," murmured Mrs. Cumberland, her mind taking a more reasonable track. "Oliver has always been dutiful." On departure, Captain Bohun crossed the road to Mr. Alexander's; a slight limp being visible in his gait. The mystery that appeared to be surrounding the surgeon's movements at present, puzzled him not a little; his prolonged absence seemed unaccountable. The surgery through which he entered, was empty, and he opened the door leading from it to the house. A maidservant met him.

แ

"Is Mr. Alexander at home?" “No, sir."

"Papa's gone to London," called out a young gentleman of ten, who came running along the passage, cracking a whip. "He went last night. They sent for him."

"Who sent for him?" asked Captain Bohun.

"The people. Mamma's gone too. They are coming home to-day, and mamma's going to bring me a Chinese puzzle and a box of chocolate, if she had time to buy them."

Not much information, this. As Captain Bohun turned out again he stood at the door, wishing he had a decent plea to make to take him over to Mrs. Cumberland's again. He was an idle man, living only in the sweet pastime of making that silent love.

But Mrs. North never suspected that he was making it, or knew that he was intimate at Mrs. Cumberland's. Still less did she suspect that Mrs. Cumberland had a young lady inmate named Ellen Adair. It would have startled her to terror.

CHAPTER III.-IN MRS. GASS'S PARLOR.

EARLY on the following morning, the ringing out of the death-bell from the church at Dallory proclaimed to those who heard it that Edmund North had passed to his rest. He had never recovered consciousness, and died some thirty-six hours after the attack.

Amidst those who did not hear it was Oliver Rane. He had

been called out at daybreak to a country patient in an opposite direction, getting back between eight and nine o'clock. He sat at his breakfast in the dining-room, unconscious of the

"She has done it too much-stupid thing!" exclaimed Doctor Rane, cutting the slice of ham in two, and apostrophising his unconscious servant. "Yesterday it was hardly warmed through. Just like them!-make a complaint, and they rush to the other extreme. I wonder how things are going on there this morning?"

He glanced up toward the distant quarter where the Hall was situated, for his query had reference to Edmund North; and this gave him the opportunity of seeing something else. A woman getting on for forty, tall enough for a may-pole, with inquisitive green eyes, sallow cheeks, remarkably thin, as if she had lost her back teeth, and a bunch of black ringlets on either side her face. She wore the white apron and cap of a servant, but looked one of a superior class. Emerging from the opposite window, she stepped across the wire fence, and approached Doctor Rane.

"What does Jelly want now?" he mentally asked.

Jelly! A curious name, no doubt, but it was hers. Fanny Jelly. When Mrs. Cumberland had engaged her as upper maid, she decided to call her the latter name, Fanny being her

"She has had a good night, and is pretty tolerable this morning," replied Jelly, giving a backward fling to her flying capstrings-for she did not follow the new fashion of a round bit| of net on the back hair, and call it a cap. "The foreign letters have come in; two for her, one for Miss Adair.”

Doctor Rane, not particularly interested in the said foreign letters, went on eating his breakfast. Jelly, with characteristic composure, stood at ease just inside the window watching the process.

"So that poor young man's gone!" she resumed, as he cracked an egg.

The doctor lifted his head quickly. "What young man ?'' "Edmund North. He died at half-past seven this morning." "Who says it?" cried Dr. Rane, a startled look crossing his face and eyes.

"The milkman told me; he heard the passing-bell toll out. You needn't be surprised, sir; there has been no hope from the first."

"I ought to call. It will look well for me to call. It is a civility I owe them," he kept repeating at intervals, as he strode along-just as though he thought in his inmost heart he ought not to call, and were seeking arguments to excuse to himself his doing so.

How eager he was to be there and see and hear all that was transpiring, he alone knew. No power could have stopped him, whether to go were suitable or unsuitable, for he had a strong will. He did not take the lane this time, but went straight along the high road, turning in at the iron gates, and up the chestnut avenue.

The young green of the trees was beautiful; birds sang on their branches-the blue sky flickered through the waving leaves. Wending on, Doctor Rane met Thomas Hepburn, the undertaker and carpenter—a sickly-looking, but very intelligent and respectable man."

"Is it you, Hepburn ?"

'Yes, sir; I've been in to take the orders. What an awful thing it is," he continued, in a low tone, glancing round at the closed windows, as if fearful they might detect what he was saying. "The scoundrel that wrote the letter ought to be tried for murder when they discover him. And they are safe to do that, sooner or later."

"The writer could have done no great harm but for Edmund North's allowing himself to go into that fatal passion.” "An anonymous writer is-an anonymous writer," rejoined Hepburn, with scorn. "They say there'll not be an inquest." "An inquest!" repeated the doctor, to whom the idea of one had never occurred. "There's no necessity for an inquest."

"Well, I suppose the law would in strictness exact it. But Mr. North is against it, and it's thought his wishes will be respected."

"But there has been hope," disputed the doctor.

"There was

"Well, sir, then you must disbelieve it," equably answered Jelly but she glanced keenly at him from her green eyes. "Edmund North is as certainly dead as that I stand here."

He seemed strangely moved at the tidings; a quiver stirred his lips, the color in his face faded to whiteness. Jelly, having looked as much as she chose, turned to depart. "Then, we are to send in the fowl, sir?" "Yes, yes."

"Tell Phillis it will be all ready for the spit."

He watched her, dreamily, as she crossed the low fence and disappeared within her proper domains; he pushed the ham, not eaten, from him; he turned sick at the underdone egg, whose shell had just been broken. What though he preferred eggs underdone in calm times ?-calm times were not these. The news did indeed trouble him in no measured degree. It was so sad for a man in the prime of early life to be cut off thus! Edmund North was but a year or two older than himself; two days ago he had been as full of health and life, deep in the plans and projects of this world, thinking little of the next. Sad? it was horrible! And Doctor Rane's breakfast was spoiled for that day.

He got up to walk the room restlessly; he looked at himself in the chimney-glass, possibly to see how the news might have affected his features; in all he did there was a hurried, confused kind of motion, betraying that the mind must be in a state of

feeling that an unmistakable enthusiasm was aroused, and from that day her name was made. By the year 1809 she held the first position in France as a comic actress-a position she maintained for many years, and, indeed, for the last thirty years of her life she was without a rival in genteel comedy, every new part increasing her reputation; and even in the year 1839, when she played Mademoiselle de Belle Isle, though past sixty years of age, she showed so much grace and animation, and so skillfully concealed the inroads of time, that she appeared more like a girl of twenty than a tottering sexagenarian. She bade fare well to the stage on the night of March 7th, 1841, in the "Misanthrope," of Molière, and the Fausses Confidences," of Mari

vaux.

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