on general subjects, which is always difficult; about books, the universal resource; and about the park, and the beauties of nature, and the difference of things in Canada; and about the music in Masterton church, and whether the new vicar was High or Low, which was a very difficult question for Powys, and one to which he did not know how to reply.

"I am sure he is High," said Sara. "The church was all decorated with flowers on Ascension Day. I know, for two of the maids were there and saw them; and what does it matter about a sermon in comparison with that?”

"Perhaps it was his wife's doing," said Mr Brownlow, "for I think the sermon the best evidence. He is Low-as Low as you could desire." "As I desire!" cried Sara. "Papa, you are surely forgetting yourself. As if I could be supposed to like a Low Churchman! And Mr Powys says they have good music. That is proof positive. Don't you think so, Jack?"

This was one of many little attempts to bring back Jack to common humanity; for Sara, womanlike, could not be contented to leave him disagreeable and alone.

"I think Mr Powys is extremely good to furnish you with information; but I can't say I am much interested in the question," said Jack, which brought the talk to a sudden pause.

"Mr Powys has not seen our church, papa," Sara resumed. "It is such a dear old place. The chancel everybody says is pure Norman, and there are some bits of real old glass in the west window. You should have gone to see it before dinner. Are you very fond of old glass?"

"I am afraid I don't know," said Powys, who was bright enough to see the manufactory of conversation which was being carried on, and was half amused by it and half distressed. "We have no old churches in Canada. I suppose they could scarcely be looked for in such a new world."

"Tell me what sort of churches you have," said Sara. "I am very fond of architecture. We can't do anything original nowadays, you know. It is only copying and copying. But there ought to be a new field in a new world. Do tell me what style the people there like best."

"You strain Mr Powys's powers too far," said Jack. "You cannot expect him to explain everything to you from the vicar's principles upwards-or downwards. Mr Powys is only mortal, I presume, like the rest of us. He can't know every

thing in heaven or earth."

"I know a little of that," said Powys. "Out there we are Jacksof-all-trades. I once made the designs for a church myself. Miss Brownlow might think it original, but I don't think she would admire it. We have to think less of beauty than of use."

"As if use and beauty could not go together," said Sara, with a little indignation. "Please don't say those things that everybody says. Then you can draw if you have made designs? and I want some cottages so much. Papa, you promised me these cottages; and now Mr Powys will come and help me with the plans."

"There is a certain difference between a cottage and a church," said Mr Brownlow; but he made no opposition to the suggestion, to the intense amazement and indignation of Jack.

"You forget that Mr Powys's time is otherwise engaged," he said; "people can't be Jacks-of-alltrades here."

Mr Brownlow gave his son a warning glance, and Sara, who had been very patient, could bear it no longer.

"Why are you so disagreeable, Jack?" she said; "nobody was speaking to you. It was to Mr Powys I was speaking. He knows best whether he will help me or not."

am a very unimportant person, and I am sorry to have interposed.' Then there came a very blank disagreeable pause. Powys felt that offence was meant, and his spirit rose. But at the same time it was utterly impossible to take offence; and he sat still and tried to appear unconscious, as people do before whom the veil of family courtesy is for a moment blown aside. There are few things which are more exquisitely uncomfortable. He had to look as if he did not observe anything; and he had to volunteer to say something to cover the silence, and found it very hard to make up his mind as to what he ought to say.

If it

Perhaps Jack was a little annoyed at himself for his freedom of speech, for he said nothing further that was disagreeable, until he found that his father had ordered the dogcart to take the visitor back to Masterton. When he came out in the summer twilight, and found the mare harnessed for such an ignoble purpose, his soul was hot within him. had been any other horse in the stable-but that his favourite mare should carry the junior clerk down to his humble dwelling-place, was bitterness to Jack. He stood and watched in a very uncomfortable sort of way, with his hands in his pockets, while Powys took his leave. The evening was as lovely as the day had been, and Sara too had come out, and stood on the steps, leaning on her father's arm. "Shall you drive, sir?" the groom had asked, with a respect which sprang entirely from his master's cordiality. It was merely a question of form, for the man expected nothing but a negative; but Powys's countenance brightened up. He held out his hands for the reins with a readiness which perhaps savoured more of transatlantic freedom than ought to have been the case; but then he had been deprived of all such pleasures for so long. "Good heavens!" cried Jack, "Tomkins, what do you mean? It's the bay mare you have

And he went up to the side of the dogcart, almost as if he would have taken the reins out of Powys's hand. The Canadian grew very red, and grasped the whip. They were very ready for a quarrel-Jack standing pale with anger, talking with the groom; Powys red with indignation, holding his place. But it was the latter who had the most command of himself.

"I shall not lame her," he said, quietly, nor let any one be lamed; jump up." He was thus master of the situation. The groom took his place; the mare went off straight and swift as an arrow down the avenue. But Jack knew by the look, as he said, of the fellow's wrist, by the glance in his eye, that he knew what he was about, though he did not at this moment confess the results of his observation. They stood all three on the steps when that fiery chariot wheeled away; and Jack, to tell the truth, did not feel very much satisfied with himself.

"Jack," said Mr Brownlow, calmly, "when I have any one here again, I must require of you to keep from insulting them. If you do not care for the feelings of the stranger, you may at least have some regard for yourself."

"I had no intention of insulting any one, sir," said Jack, with a little defiance; "if you like him to break his neck or the horse's knees it is not my affair; but for a fellow who probably never had the reins in his hand before, to attempt with that mare

"He has had the reins in his hand oftener than either I or you," said Mr Brownlow. The fact was, he said it at hazard, thinking it most likely that Powys could drive, but knowing nothing more about it, while Jack knew by sight and vision, and felt himself in his heart a snob as he strolled away from the door. He was uncomfortable, but

he succeeded in making his father more uncomfortable still. The mare, too, was his own, though it was Jack's favourite, and if he liked to have her lamed he might. Such was the Parthian arrow which Mr Brownlow received at the end of

the day. Clearly that was a distant land-a land far removed from the present burden of civilisation-a primitive and blessed state of existence, in which a man could be permitted to do what he liked with his own.

Jack Brownlow was having a very hard time of it just at that moment. There had been a lapse of more than a week, and he had not once seen the fair little creature of whom every day he had thought more and more. It was in vain that he looked up at the window-Pamela now was never there. He never saw her even at a distance-never heard so much as her name. Sara, who had been ready enough to speak of her friend-even Sara, indiscreet, and hasty, and imprudent-was silent. Poor Jack knew it was quite right -he recognised, even though he hated it, the force that was in his father's arguments. He knew he had much better never see hernever even speak of her again. He understood with his intelligence that utter separation between them was the only prudent and sensible step to be taken; but his heart objected to understand with a curious persistency which Jack could scarcely believe of a heart of his. He had found his intellect quite sufficient to guide him up to this period; and when that other part of him, with which he was so much less acquainted, fought and struggled to get the reins in hand, it would be difficult to express the astonishment he felt. And then he was a young man of the present day, and he was not anxiously desirous to marry. A house of his own, with all its responsibilities, did not appear to him the crown of delight which perhaps it ought to have done. He was content to go on with his life as it had been, without any immediate change. It still appeared to him, I am sorry to

VOL. CIL-NO. DCXXI.

admit, that for a young man, who had a way to make in the world, a very early marriage was a sort of suicidal step to take. This was all very well for his mind, which wanted no convincing. it was very different. That newly discovered organ behaved in the most incomprehensible sort of way. Even though it possibly gave a grunt of consent to the theory about marriage, it kept on longing and yearning, driving itself frantic with eagerness just to see her, just to hear her, just to touch her little hand, just to feel the soft passing rustle of her dress. That was all. And as for talking reason to it, or representing how profitless such a gratification would be, he might as well have preached to the stones. He went back and forward to the office for a whole week with this conflict going on within him, keeping dutifully to his work, doing more than he had done for years at Masterton, trying to occupy himself with former thoughts, and with anticipations of the career he had once shaped out for himself. He wanted to get away from the office, to get into public life somehow, to be returned for the borough, and have a seat in Parliament. Such had been his ambition before this episode in his life. Such surely ought to be his ambition now; but it was amazing, incredible, how this new force within him would break through all his more elevated thoughts with a kind of inarticulate cry for Pamela. She was what he wanted most. He could put the other things aside, but he could not put her aside. His heart kept cry

But for his heart

B

ing out for her, whatever his mind might be trying to think. It was extraordinary and despicable, and he could not believe it of himself; but this was how it was. He knew it was best that he should not see her; yet it was no virtue nor selfdenial of his that kept them apart. It was she who would not be visible. Along the roads, under the trees, at the window, morning or evening, there was no appearance of her. He thought sometimes she must have gone away. And his eager inquiries with himself whether this separation would make her unhappy gradually gave way to irritation and passionate displeasure. She had gone away, and left no sign; or she was shutting herself up, and sacrificing all that was pleasant in his existence. She was leaving him alone to bear the brunt; and he would gladly have taken it all to spare her-but if he bore it, and was the victim, something at least he ought to have had for his recompense. A last meeting, a last look, an explanation, a farewell-at least he had a right to that. And notwithstanding his anger he wanted her all the same-wanted to see her, to speak to her, to have her near him, though he was not ready to carry her off, or marry her on the spot, or defy his father and all the world on her account. This was the painful struggle that poor Jack had to bear as he went back and forward all those days to Masterton. He held very little communication with his father, who was the cause of it all. He chose to ride or to walk rather than have those tête-àtête drives. He kept his eyes on every turn of the way, on every tree and hedge which might possibly conceal her; and yet he knew he must part from her, and in his heart was aware that it was a right judgment which condemned him to this sacrifice. And it was not in him, poor fellow, to take it cheerfully or suffer with a good grace. He kept it to himself, and

scorned to betray to his father or sister what he was going through. But he was not an agreeable companion during this interval, though the fact was that he gave them very little of his society, and struggled, mostly by himself, against his hard fate.

And probably he might have been victorious in the struggle. He might have fought his way back to the high philosophical ground from which he was wont to preach to his friend Keppel. At the cost of all the first freshness of his heart, at the cost of many buds of grace that never would have bloomed again, he might have come out victor, and demonstrated to himself beyond all dispute that in such matters a strong will is everything, and that there is no love or longing that may not be crushed on the threshold of the mind. All this Jack might have done, and lived to profit by it and smart for it, but for a chance meeting by which Fate, in spite of a thousand precautions, managed to balk his philosophy. He had gone home early in the afternoon, and he had been seen by anxious eyes behind the curtains of Mrs Swayne's window-not Pamela's eyes, but those of her mother-to go out again dressed, about the time when

a

man who is going to dinner sets out to fulfil his engagement. And Jack was going out to dinner; he was going to Ridley, where the family had just come down from town. But there had come that day a kind of crisis in his complaint, and when he was half-way to his friend's house a sudden disgust seized him. Instead of going on he jumped down from the dogcart, and tore a leaf out of his pocketbook, on which he scribbled a hasty word of apology to Keppel. Then, while the groom went on with his note, he turned and went sauntering home along the dusty road in his evening coat. Why should he go and eat the fellow's dinner? What did he care about it? Go

and make an ass of himself, and laugh and talk when he would much rather run a tilt against all the world! And what could she mean by shutting herself up like this, and never so much as saying goodbye? It could harm nobody to say good-bye. Thus Jack mused in pure despite and contrariety, with out any intention of laying a snare for the object of his thoughts. He had gone a long way on the road to Ridley before he changed his mind, and consequently it was getting late when he drew near Brownlows coming back. It was a very quiet country road, a continuation of that which led to Masterton. Here and there was a clump of great trees making it sombre, and then a long stretch of hedgerow with the fragrant meadow on the other side of it, and the cows lowing to go home. There was nobody to be seen up or down the road except a late carter with his horse's harness on his shoulder, and a boy and a girl driving home some cows. In the distance stood Swayne's Cottages, half lost in the twilight, with two faint curls of smoke going up into the sky. All was full of that dead calm which chafes the spirit of youth when it is in the midst of its troubles-that calm which is so soothing and so sweet when life and we have surmounted the first battles, and come to a moment of truce. But there was no truce as yet in Jack Brownlow's thoughts. He wanted to have his own way and he could not have it; and he knew he ought not to have it, and he would not give it up. If he could have kicked at the world, and strangled Nature and made an end of Reason, always without making a fool of himself, that would have been the course of action most in consonance with his thoughts.

And it was just then that a certain flutter round the corner of the lane which led to Dewsbury caught his eye, the flutter of the soft evening air in a black dress. was not the "creatura bella vestita

It

in bianca" which comes up to the ideal of a lover's fancy. It was a little figure in a black dress, with a cloak wrapped round her and a broad hat shading her face, all dark among the twilight shadows. Jack saw, and his heart sprang up within him with a violence which took away his breath. He made but one spring across the road. When they had parted they had not known that they were lovers; but now they had been a week apart and there was no doubt on the subject. He made but one spring, and caught her and held her fast. "Pamela!" he cried out; and though there had been neither asking nor consent, and not one word of positive love-making between them, and though no disrespectful or irreverent thought of her had ever entered his mind, poor Jack, in his ardour and joy and surprise and rage, kissed her suddenly with a kind of transport. "Now I have you at last!" he cried. And this was in the open road, where all the world might have seen them; though happily, so far as was apparent, there was nobody to see.

Pamela, too, gave a cry of surprise and fright and dismay. But she was not angry, poor child. She did not feel that it was unnatural. Her poor little heart had not been standing still all this time any more than Jack's. They had gone over all those tender, childish, celestial preliminaries while they were apart; and now there could not be any doubt about the bond that united them. Neither the one nor the other affected to believe that further preface was necessary: circumstances were too pressing for that. He said, "I have you at last," with eyes that gleamed with triumph; and she said, "Oh, I thought I should never, never see you again!" in a voice which left nothing to be confessed. And for the moment they both forgot everything-fathers, mothers, promises, wise intentions, all the secondary lumber that makes up the world.