named by Mr. Dawson; but Miss Graham seemed perfectly well | young (nobody exactly knew her age, but she looked little more satisfied with her situation, and she taught the girls to play than twenty), she might never have formed any attachsonatas by Beethoven, and to paint from nature after Creswick,ment, and that he, being the first to woo her, might by and walked through the dull, out-of-the-way village to the tender attentions, by generous watchfulness, by a love which humble little church three times on Sunday, as contentedly as should recall to her the father she had lost, and by a proif she had no higher aspiration in the world than to do so all tecting care that should make him necessary to her, win her the rest of her life. young heart, and obtain from her fresh and earliest love alone the promise of her hand. It was a very romantic day dream, no doubt; but, for all that, it seemed in a very fair way to be realized. Lucy Graham appeared by no means to dislike the baronet's attentions. There was nothing whatever in her manner of the shallow artifice employed by a woman who wishes to captivate a rich man. She was so used to admiration from every one, high and low, that Sir Michael's conduct made very little impression upon her. Again, he had been so many years a widower that people had given up the idea of his ever marrying again. At last, however, Mrs. Dawson spoke to the govern

schoolroom busy at work, while Lucy was putting the finishing touches to some water-colored sketches done by her pupils.

People who observed this accounted for it by saying that it was a part of her amiable and gentle nature always to be light-hearted, happy and contented under any circumstances. Wherever she went she seemed to take joy and brightness with her. In the cottages of the poor, her fair face shone like a sunbeam. She would sit for a quarter of an hour talking to some old woman, and apparently as pleased with the admiration of a toothless crone as if she had been listening to the compliments of a marquis; and when she tripped away, leaving nothing behind her (for her poor salary gave no scope to her benevolence), the old woman would burst out into senileness on the subject. The surgeon's wife was sitting in the raptures with her grace, her beauty and her kindliness, such as she never bestowed upon the vicir's wife, who half fed and clothed her. For you see Miss Lucy Graham was blessed with that magic power of fascination by which a woman can charm with a word or intoxicate with a smile. Every one loved, ad-girl." mired and praised her. The boy who opened the five-barred gate that stood in her pathway ran home to his mother to tell of her pretty looks, and the sweet voice in which she thanked him for the little service. The verger at the church who ushered her into the surgeon's pew; the vicar who saw the soft blue eyes uplifted to his face as he preached his simple sermon; the porter from the railway-station who brought her sometimes a letter or a parcel, and who never looked for reward from her; her employer; his visitors; her pupils; the servants; everybody, high and low, united in declaring that Lucy Graham was the sweetest girl that ever lived.

Perhaps it was this cry which penetrated into the quiet chambers of Audley Court; or perhaps it was the sight of her pretty face, looking over the surgeon's high pew every Sunday morning. However it was, it was certain that Sir Michael Audley suddenly experienced a strong desire to be better acquainted with Mr. Dawson's governess.

He had only to hint this to the worthy doctor for a little party to be got up, to which the vicar and his wife and the baronet and his daughter were invited.

That one quiet evening sealed Sir Michael's fate. He could no more resist the tender fascination of those soft and melting blue eyes; the graceful beauty of that slender throat and drooping head, with its wealth of showering flaxen curls; the low music of that gentle voice; the perfect harmony which pervaded every charm, and made all doubly charming in this woman; than he could resist his destiny. Destiny! Why, she was his destiny! He had never loved before. What had been his marriage with Alicia's mother but a dull, jog-trot bargain made to keep some estate in the family that would have been just as well out of it? What had been his love for his first wife but a poor, pitiful and smouldering spark, too dull to be extinguished, too feeble to burn? But this was love-this fever, this longing, this restless, this uncertain, miserable hesitation; these cruel fears that his age was an insurmountable barrier to his happiness; this sick hatred of his white beard; this frenzied wish to be young again, with glistening raven hair and a slim waist, such as he had had twenty years before; these wakeful nights and melancholy days, so gloriously brightened if he chanced to catch a glimpse of her sweet face behind the window curtains as he drove past the surgeon's house; all these signs gave token of the truth; and told only too plainly that, at the sober age of fifty-five, Sir Michael Audley had fallen ill of the terrible fever called love.

I do not think that throughout his courtship the baronet once calculated upon his wealth or his position as a strong reason for his success. If he ever remembered these things, he dismissed the thought of them with a shudder. It pained him too much to believe for a moment that any one so lovely and innocent could valus herself against a splendid house or a good old title. No; his hope was that as her life had been most likely one of toil and dependence, and as she was very

"Do you know, my dear Miss Graham," said Mrs. Dawson, "I think you ought to consider yourself a remarkably lucky

The governess lifted her head from its stooping attitude and stared wonderingly at her employer, shaking back a shower of curls. They were the most wonderful curls in the world—soft and feathery, always floating away from her face, and making a pale halo round her head when the sunlight shone through them.

"What do you mean, my dear Mrs. Dawson ?" she asked, dipping her camel's hair brush into the wet aquamarine upon the the palette, and poising it carefully before putting in the delicate streak of purple which was to brighten the horizon in her pupil's sketch.

"Why, I mean, my dear, that it only rests with yourself to become Lady Audley, and the mistress of Audley Court."

Lucy Grabam dropped the brush upon the picture, and flushed scarlet to the roots of her fair hair; and then grew pale again, far paler than Mrs. Dawson had ever seen her before.

"My dear, don't agitate yourself," said the surgeon's wife, soothingly; "you know that nobody asks you to marry Sir Michael unless you wish. Of course it would be a magnificent match; he has a splendid income, and is one of the most generous of men. Your position would be very high, and you would be enabled to do a great deal of good; but, as I said before, you must be entirely guided by your own feelings. Only one thing I must say, and that is that if Sir Michael's 'attentions are not agreeable to you, it is really scarcely honorable' to encourage him."

"His attentions- encourage him!" muttered Lucy, as if the words bewildered her. "Pray, pray don't talk to me, Mrs. Dawson. I had no idea of this. It is the last thing that would have occurred to me." She leaned her elbows on the drawingboard before her, and clasping her hands over her face, seemed for some minutes to be thinking deeply. She wore a narrow black ribbon round her neck, with a locket or a cross, or a miniature, perhaps, attached to it; but whatever the trinket was she always kept it hidden under her dress. Once or twice, while she sat silently thinking, she removed one of her hands from before her face, and fidgeted nervously with the ribbon, clutching at it with a half-angry gesture, and twisting it backwards and forwards between her fingers.

"I think some people are born to be unlucky, Mrs. Dawson," she said, by-and-bye; "it would be a great deal too much good fortune for me to become Lady Audley."

She said this with so much bitterness in her tone, that the surgeon's wife looked up at her with surprise.

"You unlucky, my dear!" she exclaimed. "I think you're the last person who ought to talk like that—you, such a bright, happy creature, that it does every one good to see you. sure I don't know what we shall do if Sir Michael robs's of you."

After this conversation they often spoke upon the subject, and Lucy never again showed any emotion whatever when the baronet's admiration for her was canvassed. It was a tacitly

1

An elderly woolstapler, returning to his native country with his wife and daughters, after having made a fortune in the colonies; a governess of five-and-thirty years of age, going home to marry a man to whom she had been engaged these fifteen years; the sentimental daughter of a wealthy Australian wine merchant, invoiced to England to finish her education, and George Talboys, were the only first-class passengers on board.

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"Yes," said Miss Morley, sighing. "Do you wish the time shorter?"

"Do I?" cried George; "indeed I do. Don't you?"
"Scarcely."

"But is there no one you love in England? Is there no one you love looking out for your arrival?"

"I hope so," she said gravely. They were silent for some time, he smoking his cigar with a furious impatience, as if he could hasten the course of the vessel by his own restlessness; she looking out at the waning light with melancholy blue eyes: eyes that seemed to have faded with poring over closelyprinted books and difficult needlework; eyes that had faded a little, perhaps, by reason of tears secretly shed in the dead hours of the lonely night.

"See!" said George, suddenly pointing in another direction "there's the new

from that to which Miss Morley was looking,

This George Talboys was the life and soul of the vessel; no body knew who or what he was, or where he came from, but everybody liked him. He sat at the bottom of the dinner table, and assisted the captain in doing the honors of the friendly meal. He opened the champagne bottles, and took wine with every one present; he told funny stories, and led the laugh himself with such a joyous peal, that the man must have been a churl who could not have laughed for pure sympathy. He was a capital hand at speculation and vingt-et-un, and all the merry round games, which kept the little circle round the cabin lamp so deep in innocent amusement, that a hurricane might have howled overhead without their hearing it; but he freely owned that he had no talent for whist, and that he didn't know a knight from a castle on the chessboard. Indeed, Mr. Talboys was by no means too learned a gentle- said George, "I know what I wish.'' man. The pale governess had tried to talk to him about fashionable literature, but George had only pulled his beard, and stared very hard at her, saying occasionally, "Ah, yes!" and, "To be sure, ha!"

The sentimental young lady, going home to finish her education, had tried him with Shelley and Byron, and he had fairly laughed in her face, as if poetry were a joke. The woolstapler sounded him upon politics, but he did not seem very deeply versed in them; so they let him go his own way, smoke his cigars and talk to the sailors, lounge over the bulwarks and stare at the water, and make himself agreeable to everybody in his own fashion. But when the Argus came to be within about a fortnight's sail of England everybody noticed a change in George Talboys. He grew restless and fidgety; sometimes so merry that the cabin rang with his laughter; sometimes moody and thoughtful. Favorite as he was amongst the sailors, they grew tired at last of answering his perpetual questions about the probable time of touching land. Would it be in ten days, in eleven, in twelve, in thirteen ? Was the wind favorable? How many knots an hour was the vessel doing? Then a sudden passion would seize him, and he would stamp upon the deck, crying out that she was a rickety old craft, and that her owners were swindlers to advertise her as the fast-sailing Argus. She was not fit for passenger traffic; she was not fit to carry impatient living creatures, with hearts and souls; she was fit for nothing but to be laden with bales of stupid wool, that might rot on the sea and be none the worse for it.

The sun was dropping down behind the waves as George Talboys lighted his cigar upon this August evening. Only ten days more, the sailors had told him that afternoon, and they would see the English coast. "I will go ashore in the first boat that hails us," he cried; "I will go ashore in a cockle-shell. By Jove, if it comes to that, I will swim to land."

His friends in the aft-cabin, with the exception of the pale governess, laughed at his impatience; she sighed as she watched the young man, chafing at the slow hours, pushing away his untasted wine, flinging himself restlessly about upon the cabin sofa, rushing up and down the companion ladder, and staring at the waves.

As the red rim of the sun dropped into the water, the governess ascended the cabin stairs for a stroll on deck, while the passengers sat over their wine below. She stopped when she came up to George, and standing by his side, watched the fading crimson in the western sky.

moon.

She looked up at the pale crescent, her own face almost as pale and wan. "This is the first time we have seen it. We must wish!"

"What?"

"That we may get home quickly."

"My wish is that we may find no disappointment when we get there," said the governess, sadly. "Disappointment!"

He started as if he had been struck, and asked what she meant by talking of disappointment.

"I mean this," she said, speaking rapidly, and with a restless motion of her thin hands; "I mean that as the end of this long voyage draws near hope sinks in my heart; and a sick fear comes over me that at the last all may not be well. The person I go to meet may be changed in his feelings towards me; or he may retain all the old feeling until the moment of seeing me, and then lose it in a breath at sight of my poor wan face, for I was called a pretty girl, Mr. Talboys, when I sailed for Sydney, fifteen years ago; or he may be so changed by the world as to have grown selfish and mercenary, and he may welcome ine for the sake of my fifteen years' savings. Again, he may be dead. He may have been well, perhaps, up to within a week of our landing, and in that last week may have taken a fever, and died an hour before our vessel anchors in the Mersey. I think mind, and feel the anguish of them twenty times a day. Twenty of all these things, Mr. Talboys, and act the scenes over in my times a day!" she repeated; "why, I do it a thousand times a day."

George Talboys had stood motionless, with his cigar in his hand, listening to her so intently that, as she said the last words, his hold relaxed, and his cigar dropped into the water.

"I wonder," she continued, more to herself than to him, "I wonder, looking back, to think how hopeful I was when the vessel sailed; I never thought then of disappointment, but I pictured the joy of meeting, imagining the very words that would be said, the very tones, the very looks; but for this last month of the voyage, day by day and hour by hour, my heart sirks, and my hopeful fancies fade away, and I dread the end as much as if I knew that I was going to England to attend the funeral."

The young man suddenly changed his attitude, and turned his face full upon his companion with a look of alarm. She saw in the pale light that the color had faded from his cheek.

"What a fool!" he cried, striking his clenched fist upon the side of the vessel, "what a fool I am to be frightened at this! Why do you come and say these things to me? Why do you come and terrify me out of my senses, when I am going straight home to the woman I love; to a girl whose heart is as true as the light of heaven; and in whom I no more expect to find any change than I do to see another sun rise in to-morrow's sky? "Does my cigar annoy you, Miss Morley?" he said, taking it Why do you come and try to put such fancies into my head, out of his mouth.

The lady was very quiet and reserved, seldom sharing in the after-cabin amusements, never laughing, and speaking very little; but she and George Talboys had been excellent friends throughout the passage.

when I'm going home to my darling wife?"

"Your wife," she said; "that is different. There is no reason that my terrors should terrify you. I am going to England to rejoin a man to whom I was engaged to be married fifteen years ago. He was too poor to marry then, and when I was offered a situation as governess in a rich Australian family, I

persuaded him to let me accept it, so that I might leave him free and unfettered to win his way in the world, while I saved a little money to help us when we began life together. I never meant to stay away so long, but things have gone badly with him in England. That is my story and you can understand my fears. They need not influence you. Mine is an exceptional case."

"So is mine," said George, impatiently. "I tell you that mine is an exceptional case, although I swear to you that, until this moment, I have never known a fear as to the result of my voyage home. But you are right; your terrors have nothing to do with me. You have been away fifteen years; all kinds of things may happen in fifteen years. Now, it is only three years and a half this very month since I left England. What can have happened in such a short time as that?''

Miss Morley looked at him with a mournful smile, but did not speak. His feverish ardor, the freshness and impatience of his nature were so strange and new to her, that she looked at him half in admiration, half in pity.

My pretty little wife! My gentle, innocent, loving little wife! Do you know, Miss Morley," he said, with all his old hopefulness of manner, "that I left my little girl asleep, with her baby in her arms, and with nothing but a few blotted lines to tell her why her faithful husband had deserted her?" "Deserted her!" exclaimed the governess.

"Yes. I was an ensign in a cavalry regiment when I first mét my little darling. We were quartered at a stupid seaport town, where my pet lived with her shabby old father, a halfpay naval officer; a regular old humbug, as poor as Job, and with an eye for nothing but the main chance. I saw through all his shallow tricks to catch one of us for his pretty daughter. I saw all the pitiful, contemptible, palpable traps he set for big dragoons to walk into. I saw through his shabby-genteel dinners and public-house port; his fine talk of the grandeur of his family his sham pride and independence, and the sham tears in his bleared old eyes when he talked of his only child. He was a drunken old hypocrite, and he was ready to sell my poor little girl to the highest bidder. Luckily for me, I happened just then to be the highest bidder; for my father is a rich man, Miss Morley, and as it was love at first sight on both sides, my darling and I made a match of it.

6

have married her if I could give her nothing but poverty and misery; and that I had done her a cruel wrong in making her my wife. By heaven! Miss Morley, her tears and reproaches drove me almost mad; and I flew into a rage with her, myself, her father, the world, and everybody in it, and then ran out of the house. I walked about the streets all that day half out of my mind, and with a strong inclination to throw myself into the sea, so as to leave my poor girl free to make a better match. If I drown myself, her father must support her,' I thought; 'the old hypocrite could never refuse her a shelter, but while I live she has no claim on him.' I went down to a rickety old wooden pier, meaning to wait there till it was dark, and then drop quietly over the end of it into the water; but while I sat there smoking my pipe, and staring vacantly at the seagulls, two men came down, and one of them began to talk of the Australian gold-diggings, and the great things that were to be done there. It appeared that he was going to sail in a day or two, and he was trying to persuade his companion to join him in the expedition.

"I listened to these men for upwards of an hour, following them up and down the pier with my pipe in my mouth, and hearing all their talk. After this I fell into conversation with them myself, and ascertained that there was a vessel going to leave Liverpool in three days, by which vessel one of the men was going out. This man gave me all the information I required, and told me, moreover, that a stalwart young fellow such as I was could hardly fail to do well in the diggings. The thought flashed upon me so suddenly that I grew hot and red in the face, and trembled in every limb with excitement. This was better than the water at any rate. Suppose I stole away from my darling, leaving her safe under her father's roof, and went and made a fortune in the new world, and came back in a twelvemonth to throw it into her lap; for I was so sanguine in those days that I counted on making my fortune in a year or so. I thanked the man for his information, and late at night strolled homewards. It was bitter winter weather, but I had been too full of passion to feel cold, and I walked through the quiet streets, with the snow drifting in my face, and a desperate hopefulness in my heart. The old man was sitting drinking brandy-and-water in his little dining-room; and my wife was up-stairs, sleeping peacefully, with the baby on her breast. I sat down and wrote a few brief lines, which told her that I never had loved her better than now when I seemed to desert her; that I was going to try my fortune in a new world; and that if I succeeded I should come back to bring her plenty and happiness, but that if I failed I should never look upon her face again. I divided the remainder of our money-something over forty pounds-into two equal portions, leaving one for her and putting the other in my pocket. I knelt down and prayed, with my head upon the white counterpane that covered them. I wasn't much of a praying man at ordinary times, but God knows that was a heartfelt prayer. I kissed her once and The diningthe baby once, and then crept out of the room. room door was open, and the old man was nodding over his paper. He looked up as he heard my step in the passage, and asked me where I was going. To have a smoke in the street,' I answered; and as this was a common habit of mine, he believed me. Three nights after this I was out at sea, bound for Melbourne-a steerage passenger, with a digger's tools for my baggage, and about seven shillings in my pocket."

"No sooner, however, did my father hear that I had married a penniless little girl, the daughter of a tipsy old half-pay lieutenant, than he wrote me a furious letter, telling me he would never again hold any communication with me, and that my yearly allowance would stop from my wedding-day. As there was no remaining in such a regiment as mine, with nothing but my pay to live on, and a pretty little wife to keep, I sold out, thinking that before the money was exhausted I should be sure, to drop into something. I took my darling to Italy, and we lived there in splendid style as long as my two thousand pounds lasted; but when that began to dwindle down to a couple of hundred or so, we came back to England, and as my darling had a fancy for being near that tiresome old father of hers, we settled at the watering place where he lived. Well, as soon as the old man heard that I had a couple of hundred pounds left, he expressed a wonderful degree of affection for us, and insisted on our boarding in his house. We consented, still to please my darling, who had just then, a peculiar right to have every whim and fancy of her innocent heart indulged. We did board with him, and finally he fleeced us; bnt when I spoke of it to my little wife, she only shrugged her shoulders, and said she did not like to be unkind to 'poor papa.' So poor papa made away with our little stock of money in no time; and as I felt that it was now becoming nccessary to look about for something, I ran up to London and tried to get a situation as a clerk in a merchant's office, or as accountant or book-ground gnawing a mouldy crust in the wilds of the new world. keeper, or something of that kind. But I suppose there was › the stamp of a heavy dragoon upon me, for do what I would I couldn't get anybody to believe in my capacity; and tired out and down-hearted, I returned to my darling, to find her nursing a son and heir to his father's poverty. Poor little girl, she was very low-spirited; and when I told her that my London expedition had failed, she fairly broke down, and burst into a storm of sobs and lamentations, telling me that I ought not to

"And you succeeded?" asked Miss Morley.

"Not till I had long despaired of success; not until poverty and I had become such old companions and bedfellows, that, looking back at my past life, I wondered whether that dashing, reckless, extravagant, luxurious, champagne-drinking dragoon could have really been the same man who sat on the damp

I clung to the memory of my darling, and the trust that I had in her love and truth, as the one keystone that kept the fabric of my past life together-the one star that lit the thick black darkness of the future. I was hail fellow well met with bad men; I was in the centre of riot, drunkenness and debauchery; but the purifying influence of my love kept me safe from all. Thin and gaunt, the half-starved shadow of what I once had been, I saw myself one day in a broken bit of looking-glass,

and was frightened of my own face. But I toiled on through, copper; even into those dim recesses of briar and brushwood, all; through disappointment and despair, rheumatism, fever, starvation, at the very gates of death, I toiled on steadily to the end; and in the end I conquered."

She drew silently away from him, and seated herself by the gables. "I saw you sitting here, and came down to have à side of the vessel, looking over into the water.