6

been too much for Mr. Perry; men of his class can seldom stand against a woman's righteous indignation, unless she happens to be his wife. He had come to the Laurels ' under a vague sense of ill-treatment, he was indignant at Sophy's absence from the ball, and wanted to know the reason why,' partly perhaps because he suspected the reason; he knew that he had earned her reproaches by drinking her health on the river, and therefore wished to establish a grievance on his own account. But Jeannette had routed him. He took up his battered college cap, and, muttering a grudging apology about 'not knowing it was quite so late,' and an ungracious hope that the young lady's head would not be so bad but that she could be seen the next day, he passed out into the night.

With a swift hand Jeannette locked the door behind him, and stood listening for his heavy step upon the iron stairs.

'Thank Heaven, that's over!' she ex

claimed, with a great sigh of relief. 'Drat I wish he was drownded!'

the man,

The aspiration was a pretty strong one, but there was little doubt of its genuineness. Her eyes had still the fire of indignation in them, her cheeks were still flushed with it; her bosom still palpitated with it, quite as much as with her late passionate eloquence. 'How Miss Sophy can stand it,' she went on,' amazes me. It would wear me

to skin and bone. And to think that there must be twelve months of it, and that much worse things may happen in twelve months, and at the end of them she will be his for life! I wouldn't be in her shoes, no, not for all her money, which-if she gets it at all, poor soul -will be his. If I were in her place the perlice would never suspect me, and I'd poison him. And yet, when he don't actually kick over the traces, as he has done to-day, how mighty cool she takes it! she'd a gone to the ball to-night-if it hadn't been for that other

young fellow-as sure as fate, aye, and have enjoyed herself too, and danced like a queen of the May. She'd dance on the brink of a precipice. For my part, I can think of nothing so horrid as running the risk of losing one's character, when one has done nothing to deserve it. No one can say that I ever played into Mr. Herbert Perry's hands; a close-fisted fellow, which is a thing I despise; but there's nothing I so much regret as having listened to Miss Sophy's entreaties (as though I hadn't known what a fool every girl is when she is in love), and for her sake- -oh, Jemimaram,

if he hasn't come back again!'

The interjection was caused by the same sharp tapping on the door-lock without, that had already summoned Jeannette from her duties about her young mistress. She had little doubt that she had heard aright, but she was very willing to believe herself deceived, The wind was still roaring and raging, and it was just possible that what she had just heard

VOL. I.

M

was but the swinging of the iron gate of the balcony. Surely, surely, after that piece of her mind had been given him, and apparently with such excellent effect, Mr. Herbert Perry could not desire admittance a second time. Yet, as she listened with painful intentness, with her ear at the keyhole, there came again the well-known summons. 'It is him, drat him!' she murmured; and with the same precautions as before, but rendered more difficult by the angry trembling of her limbs, she opened the door a little space, when, without making it any wider, to her horror and amazement there slipped in, like a serpent, the attenuated frame of Mr. John Adair.

163

CHAPTER X.

VISITOR NUMBER TWO.

THE apparition of a total and unexpected stranger, under the circumstances we have just described, would have been alarming enough to any young woman; while the appearance of the intruder himself-limp, bedraggled, livid-was not calculated to restore confidence. One side of him was covered with mud (where he had lain on the ground, pending Mr. Perry's investigation of the garden gate); the other in sodden evening clothes, was hardly more respectably attired; his sole protection against the wild weather an undergraduate's gown, tied round his neck like a shawl-the only thing that could be said to the advantage of the