"And as for unhappiness setting one against all creation, on the contrary, it ought to make one better and kinder."

"You must relinquish the idea of the bar, and declare for the Church; but wait till the bishop has said, 'Go forth and preach'-for the present, don't do it, like a good fellow. Why didn't write to M'Killop at once, from Edinburgh?

you

"I was nearly out of my mind at first; then you know I was ill; and then, afterwards, I thought silence was best. I fancied the young lady would take her own way of telling her father; and she must have been deceiving him all along." Evidently; how she has out - manoeuvred herself! Fancy the row she'll get into with her own people!"

66

66

That depends on how I answer her letter, and how I write to them. If I leave her to make her own story, no doubt she'll get out of it cleverly enough."

66

Yes, and the next act in the piece will be a breach-of-promise case instituted by the unconscious M'Killop, and perhaps a second disinheritance by his amiable Excellency; that would be quite in keeping with your old style. Place aux dames in all things, even if they

should wish to walk into our reputations and our fortunes without an equivalent!"

"No, no, I would not consider myself bound to make any sacrifice for her; still, unnecessary cruelty is not in my line. We must talk this matter over seriously, however, before I write. To-night I am too tired; I must go to bed. And, of course, I must see Miss Grant to-morrow, for it will not do to have her publishing this fiction all over the place."

79

CHAPTER XXXIII.

WE must leave our friends in Bournemouth for a little, and turn back some space in time, to trace the adventures of the M'Killop family since we last saw them the day after the military ball in Edinburgh. They did not remain in the northern capital more than a week or two after that event. M'Killop stuck to the programme he had indicated to Bertrand, and took his family to Pau, where Sir Roland had announced his intention of passing the spring months, on his return from his colony.

Mrs McKillop was not averse to this arrangement. Edinburgh was not altogether to her mind. Society did not open its arms to her as she had expected. By dint of elaborate dinners, and asking right and left, she managed, indeed, to get about her a certain set of people who were willing enough to go anywhere for a dinner, but

whose presence at her board shed no lustre thereupon. They were not the people she wanted, by any means. Her battered, semi-mythical old pedigree was a drug in the Edinburgh market, and her wealth was an object of suspicion, and perhaps of some other feeling, in that not very opulent city. She could not get on, in fact, and early became convinced that to sit all night long at public balls alone and supperless, amid a crowd of acid dowagers who would none of her, for all her diamonds, while her step-daughter danced and flirted, was a game that was decidedly not worth the candle.

Therefore M'Killop's suggestion, that they should go abroad, was grateful to her. She had never been out of Scotland, but she felt that to be on the Continent, at this time of year, was highly comme il faut, and that opportunities of making "nice friends" were not among the least of the advantages to accrue from a residence in some pleasant Continental town, where, she understood, the English visitors, even of the highest distinction, fraternised without any "stiffness," and "liked you for your own sake," which the Edinburgh Goths could not, in her case, be induced to do, either for that or any other con

sideration. So she gladly shook the snow off her feet against the Modern Athens, and departed rejoicing for pastures new. The plan did not suit Eila at all. She was getting on very well in Edinburgh. An occasional glimpse of her stepdame's sulky countenance, solitary in the bank of chaperones, rather added a zest to the pleasures of a ball; and she had several promising things in hand, some one of which, time might develop into a golden certainty. She shone among the military. Many artless youths of the profession glared on each other with hot eyes for her sake, and dreamed champagny dreams of matrimony and bliss on 5s. 3d. per diem; and although men more amply provided, and therefore of a greater retenue, curiously scrutinised Mrs M'Killop's florid equipments, and pondered whether bliss would not be rather heavily handicapped with a mother-in-law of that pattern, still such ponderings end generally in declaring for the match, handicap and all.

So here Eila was enjoying a triumph and playing a good game; whereas at Pau,—mindful of her guilty secret, she shuddered as she thought how the cards might run for her there. Sanguine she might be, but there was always a doubt, and

VOL. III.

F