"I'm not one of the family yet, you'll say, and have no business with the family secrets, especially as it appears you have not been intrusted with them; but if you haven't been told about Kate"

"That she broke a blood-vessel in the autumn." "That was the beginning of it. No uncommon thing either; but the fact is, she has always been excitable and queer, and whether it was the loss of blood, or something of the kind-that's what the doctors say, at least she's been as mad as a March hare ever since. Stop-I don't quite mean that," for Evelyn had sprung from his chair,— "she's not wrong except on certain points. If you were to meet her, you would think her as sane as anybody; but touch her on-well, I'll show you how it was. She had only just got home when I went down, and she behaved like other people, I thought, and I had no notion of anything wrong; but she nearly played the very deuce with me afterwards, for it turns out that her craze is, that everybody she meets is in love with her; and no sooner did I appear than she began making eyes at me, and following me everywhere, and pestering my life out! That wouldn't have mattered, although it was a nuisance; but what must she do next but go to Alice, to the girl I was courting, d'ye see? -and make believe that I was the offending party!-I! There was quite a scene. Poor Alice was the one to be pitied the most-for of course at that time she hadn't had proof positive that I was on the square with her; and though she knew well enough the state her sister was in, she couldn't at first take in all that she was up to. Oh, Kate was violent and positive to a degree, Alice told me afterwards. Luckily, I got an inkling of what was going on, for she took me to task herself when Alice tried to put her right. Ha, ha, ha!-upon my word, I felt quite the gay Lothario;-but I can tell you it was no joke to my own poor girl. Why, we were all but engaged before ever she left Brighton! I had been after her from the very first, dangling at her heels the whole time she was there, and had made no bones about it! A fellow there,-a Captain Defour, tried to cut in before me, but he soon had his nose put out of joint, I can tell you. Alice would not look at him! He

"Let Defour alone. Go on."

"Oh yes, I'll go on.

Well, I tell you, I went straight

ahead from the very first. As soon as they left Brighton, so did I; and as soon as ever they were ready for me, I went to Carnochan. Everybody supposed it was Alice who took me there-and a deuced good right they had to suppose it, too. Well, that's about all; for directly I got the hint, as I say, I went for it at once. I wasn't going to stand any nonsense, and that sort of thing, though I was sorry for the poor simpleton, who-who-well, we won't be too hard upon her, only it was uncommonly nasty for us all, you know."

"Well?" said Evelyn, in a hard, dry tone.

"Kate doesn't speak to me now, and just as well she doesn't! Alice says she will hardly yet allow that I haven't used her badly. Look here," pulling a letter out of his pocket, which he had carefully placed there some days before, -"look here,—oh, you may see the whole letter if you like-only miss out the little bit of affection at the end," with a smirk; "but here's the part I want you to see, because you ought to know that I'm telling you only the plain truth, and that Alice will back me up. This came to-day from Alice. See," pointing with his finger. "Now read that."

Evelyn read in Alice's unmistakable large sprawling hand, of which he had had a specimen only the week before: "Kate is more extraordinary than ever about you. She would stop our marriage even now, if she could. But we don't need to mind, do we, dear? No one can come between us now."

That was all. It had been penned in a cross fit, consequent on finding that her exuberant anticipations of a blissful career as Mrs Pollaxfen had been met only by a mournful gravity on the part of her sister. It had given a little malicious pleasure to confide to Harold that Kate was "extraordinary."

"And so you see," proceeded the owner of the letter, recovering it, "that I aint speaking off the book. Alice knows what she's talking about when she says Kate would stop our marriage yet if she could. I suppose she thinks that I am hers by right, and she does not stop to consider where poor Alice would be if that were the way. Was it likely that I would have gone all the way to Kirkcudbright if I hadn't been in downright earnest about Alice? Lady Olivia knows how I took up with her from the first, danced with her, rode with her, tooled her about to churches on

Sundays, and went the whole bag of tricks. I had no more idea of not having Alice than of jumping over the moon! I never once gave a thought to Kate."

"You-did-not?" "No, rather. Before I would have taken up with such a cursed shrew" he stopped, recollecting himself. "A fellow can't help being riled a bit,"-every minute his language grew more offensive, as though to keep pace with the grossness of the sentiments for which it was a medium,— 66 when you remember, Evelyn, that she had nearly done me as bad a turn as woman could do, you can't wonder that, though she is only an imbecile-well, of course, I shouldn't say that

"Have the goodness not to say it again."

"Well, I won't; but you mustn't be down on me for a word. I make all the allowances I can, but I was put into a pretty hole as it was, nearly choused out of my girl, and made a fool of before everybody! Who's to be cool and easy upon that? It's about as much as I can do to keep in, when I'm at Carnochan; and if you had not begun about her looks, and her I don't know what all, and put my back with your

up

"Let me alone, will you? There is no need to bring me in." "I only wanted to point out why I spoke, Evelyn; you It's hard lines when a fellow

needn't snap me up like that.

is trying to do you a kindness, that you should treat him as if he were a cur."

"You are a cur."

"Sir!” cried Pollaxfen, starting.

"I say you are a cur, and you ought to have a muzzle put upon your confounded mouth for the rest of your days. How many more people have you gone to, bragging of your conquest, curse you? It was a nice thing to do to go to a house, and have both sisters at your beck and call, wasn't it? I wonder you were content with only the two! There's another not much younger, and if you had played your cards well, she might have made a figure in the tale too."

"Captain Evelyn," said Pollaxfen, with a vain attempt at being dignified, "this is not wh-wh-what I can possibly submit to. I m-m-make allowances

“Oh, you have made allowances all round, we know -allowances for Alice, allowances for Kate, and now for me. Confound your allowances! Be off!"

R

"You will be sorry for this, Captain Evelyn."

"Or you will."

"What I have done to deserve this at your hands, I cannot imagine," said Pollaxfen, desperate at the sight of such an ending to all his machinations. "It was you yourself who obliged me to speak-to tell you the story

"Which I don't believe a word of."

"You listened, at any rate."

"Listened? I had to listen. How should I know what I was going to hear?"

'Why should it put you out so?" Even yet he clung to hope, and kept his tongue civil from sheer despair of the success of any other course. "Why should you mind? It was all hushed up and kept quiet. No one knows a thing about it,-about our-our interest in the case, except Alice and me. She won't thank me for telling you,-for they are all determined to let out to no one what is the matter, but then what could I do? I'm going,—you need not point at the door,-but if you will only think it over quietly, Evelyn

"No more of that. Don't you call me 'Evelyn' again. 'Think it over quietly'? This is what I'll think when I think it over quietly, that if what you have told me has a grain of truth in it, you are the meanest hound on the face of the earth ever to let it blister you lips; if you have made it up, you're a liar. Go out of that door, and never let me set eyes on you again."

66

Certainly I shall never tr-trouble you more, CaCaptain Evelyn."

The door closed behind him.

Evelyn rose, bolted it, and staggered back to the mantelpiece. There he laid down his head upon his arms, crying like a child.

CHAPTER XXIV.

AND HAS BOTH FAILURE AND SUCCESS.

"But it is not the lie that passeth through the mind, but the lie that sinketh in and settleth in it, that doth the hurt."-BACON.

He tried not to believe the story, but alas! it was too plausible.

Loathing as he did the vile informer, he could not, when freed from the contamination of his presence, preserve the aspect of disdainful incredulity which had served him in such good stead for the hour of trial.

For this was what he thought-" Of that disturbed brain, of that unhinged mind, I am the cause."

The thought was torture.

He it was who had led his poor Kate on to the knowledge of good and evil, instructed her in the great arts of love and misery. She had learned easily; he had taught thoroughly. He had found her a simple school-girl; he had left her an agonised woman.

And the result was this. She had come to fear every man who approached her; to fear, not to love, as Pollaxfen would have had him believe, but to fear and to shrink from.

As she had found Evelyn acting a part up to the very moment of his declaration, it had seemed to her that others, whilst feigning themselves to be mere neighbours, friends, relations, might, with equal suddenness, reveal a passion. Could this lover of Alice's, this goggle-eyed, pig-headed toad, have dared to assume towards the beautiful Kate some of those brotherly ways which-pah! was it possible that he had? And could she, poor, bewildered, dazed child, have fallen into the cruel mistake which had revealed her state to him, from any odious pleasantries of his ?

He thought it over, writhing every new moment under a new torment. But, think as he might, it seemed as though no other explanation was possible.

Alice's letter, and Pollaxfen's frequent reference to her,the facts that were all too patent to be disputed,—one after another wrung his heart with throes indescribable.

And there were other features of the case which had terrible power to bear it out, as they recurred to memory.