fore we must take up the cross.

If all were

enjoyment, if our duty were always our pleasure, there would be no need of suffering, no need of an atonement."

"Ah, you have introduced yourselves to each other," said Charlotte, as she entered the

room.

"No, we are above that," he said, taking Charlotte's hand with a look of cold indifference; "we have already plunged into a disquisition on poetry and metaphysics, and now you are come in to remind us of this earth; and to make our poetry reality," he continued with a bow of mock homage to Charlotte.

That evening, after dinner, Frederick asked Charlotte to sing. She would willingly have avoided doing so, but her mother had taught her never to refuse when asked, and she slowly walked to the piano.

Although it was delightful to hear her war

bling about the house, yet whenever she sat down to sing a regular song, Charlotte's faculties seemed to leave her, particularly when anybody was listening, of whom she was afraid.

She was sure to play wrong notes in the accompaniment, to neglect the pianos and fortes, and to hurry through her task with out giving the melody any expression or feeling.

Frederick stood behind her, apparently enjoying, as Mary thought, the poor girl's embarrassment; and when she had concluded he came up to her cousin and asked her to sing. Mary had never tried, she knew not a note of music, and she had had no spirit to attempt it yet so she said that she could not.

"Do try," he said in an insinuating voice. "Do sing, to please me."

Mary looked up at him with surprise, and a peculiar expression in her eyes which seemed

to say, this ? "

"What motive can you have for

He was rather amused, for he saw what she was thinking of, but persisted still more earnestly in entreating her to sing, although without success.

As the evening passed on Mary saw the habitual contempt with which Frederick treated Charlotte, and heard him often repeat her rather common-place remarks in a mocking tone.

The young man soon saw, however, by the indignant flash of Mary's eyes, that, far from being flattered at the predilection he showed for herself, and the deference with which he listened to her when she spoke, she only resented his treatment of her cousin, and despised him for it.

Therefore he changed his manner to Charlotte in such a way as to make Mary think he had hitherto been only teazing her out of fun;

for his ready tact and long practice in the art of pleasing made him expert in regulating all he said and did, so as to please those whom he wished to fascinate.

He had secretly determined that Mary should love him, should be his devoted slave, -not because as yet he loved her, but because he wished to make use of her in some way, -to draw out her talents for his own advan

tage.

CHAPTER XXIII.

THE ORDEAL.

FREDERICK paid a longer visit than usual at Ilminster, and devoted all his varied powers to fascinate Mary. But he saw that he made little or no progress. Perhaps because her goodness and purity were so real that unconsciously she was not taken in by the counterfeit he offered her, perfect though it was of its kind.

Still, though she did not trust him, she felt that he was very fascinating-she saw that if she