him from God and from his temple, like the thief who, proclaiming himself the enemy of Heaven, robs the sacred monstrance of its most precious jewel. To commit this theft, I have put off the mourning garments of the widow and orphan, and have decked myself with profane adornments; I have abandoned my seclusion, and I have sought and gathered around me society. I have tried to make myself look beautiful; I have cared for every part of this miserable body—that must one day be lowered into the grave, and be converted into dust - with an unholy devotion; and, finally, I have looked at Don Luis with provoking glances, and on shaking hands with him I have sought to transmit from my veins to his the inextinguishable fire that is consuming me.

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"Alas! my child, what grief it gives me to hear this! Who could have imagined it?" said the vicar.

"But there is still more," resumed Pepita; "I succeeded in making Don Luis love me. He declared it to me with his eyes. Yes, his love is as profound, as ardent, as mine. His virtues, his aspirations toward heavenly things, his manly energy, have all urged him to conquer this insensate passion. I sought to prevent this. One day, at the end of many days during which he had stayed away, he came to see me, and found me alone. When he gave me his hand, I wept; I could not speak, but hell inspired me with an accursed, mute eloquence that told him of my grief that he had scorned me, that he did not return my love, that he preferred another love—a love without stain-to mine. Then he was unable to resist the temptation, and he approached his lips to my face to kiss away my tears. Our lips met. Our lips met. If God had not willed that you should approach at that moment, what would have become of me?"

"How shameful! my child, how shameful!" said the reverend vicar.

Pepita covered her face with both hands and began to sob like a Magdalen. Her hands were, in truth, beautiful, more beautiful even than Don Luis had described them to be in his letters. Their whiteness, their pure transparency, the tapering form of the fingers, the roseate hue, the polish and the brilliancy of the pearl-like nails, all were such as might turn the head of any man.

The virtuous vicar could understand, notwithstanding his eighty years, the fall, or rather the slip, of Don Luis.

"Child!" he exclaimed, "don't cry so! It breaks my heart to see you. Calm yourself; Don Luis has no doubt repented of his sin; do you repent likewise, and nothing more need be said. God will pardon you both, and make a couple of saints of you. Since Don Luis is going away the day after to-morrow, it is a sure sign that virtue has triumphed in him, and that he flies from you, as he should, that he may do penance for his sin, fulfill his vow, and return to his vocation."

"That is all very well,” replied Pepita; "fulfill his vow, return to his vocation, after giving me my death wound! Why did he love me, why did he encourage me, why did he deceive me? His kiss was a brand, it was as a hot iron with which he marked me and stamped me as his slave. Now that I am marked and enslaved, he abandons and betrays and destroys A good beginning to give to his missions, his preachings, and gospel triumphs! It shall not be! By Heaven, it shall not be !"

me.

This outbreak of anger and scorned love confounded the reverend vicar.

Pepita had risen. Her attitude, her gesture, had something in them of tragic animation. Her eyes gleamed like daggers; they shone like two suns. The vicar was silent, and regarded her almost with terror. She paced with hasty steps up and down the apartment. She did not now seem like a timid gazelle, but like an angry lioness.

"What!" she said, once more facing the vicar, "has he nothing to do but laugh at me, tear my heart to pieces, humiliate it, trample it underfoot, after having cheated me out of it? He shall remember me! He shall pay me for this! If he is so holy, if he is so virtuous, why did he, with his glance, promise me everything? If he loves God so much, why does he seek to hurt one of God's poor creatures? Is this charity? Is this religion? No; it is pitiless selfishness."

Pepita's anger could not last long. After she had spoken the last words, it turned to dejection. She sank into a chair, weeping bitterly, and abandoning herself to an anguish heartbreaking to witness.

The vicar's heart was touched with pity; but he recovered himself on seeing that the enemy gave signs of yielding.

"Pepita, child," he said, "be reasonable; don't torment yourself in this way. Console yourself with the thought that

it was not without a hard struggle he was able to conquer himself; that he has not deceived you; that he loves you with his whole soul, but that God and his duty come first. This life is short, and soon passes. In heaven you will be reunited, and will love each other as the angels love. God will accept your sacrifice; he will reward you, and repay you with interest. Even your self-love ought to be satisfied. How great must be your merit, when you have caused a man like Don Luis to waver in his resolution, and even to sin! How deep must be the wound you have made in his heart! Let this suffice you. Be generous! be courageous! Be his rival in firmness. Let him depart; cast out from your heart the fire of impure love; love him as your neighbor, for the love of God. Guard his image in your memory, but as that of the creature, reserving to the Creator the noblest part of your soul. I know not what

I am saying to you, my child, for I am very much troubled ; but you have a great deal of intelligence and a great deal of common sense, and you will understand what I mean. Besides, there are powerful worldly reasons against this absurd love, even if the vocation and the vow of Don Luis were not opposed to it. His father is your suitor. He aspires to your hand, even though you do not love him. Does it look well that the son should turn out now to be the rival of his father? Will not the father be displeased with the son for loving you? See how dreadful all this is, and control yourself for the sake of Jesus and his blessed Mother."

"How easy it is to give advice!" returned Pepita, becoming a little calmer. "How hard for me to follow it, when there is a fierce and unchained tempest, as it were, raging in my soul! I am afraid I shall go mad."

"The advice I give you is for your own good. Let Don Luis depart. Absence is a great remedy for the malady of love. In giving himself up to his studies, and consecrating himself to the service of the altar, he will be cured of his passion. When he is far away, you will recover your serenity by degrees, and will preserve in your memory only a grateful and melancholy recollection of him that will do you no harm. It will be like a beautiful poem whose music will harmonize your existEven if all your desires could be fulfilled-earthly love lasts, after all, but a short time. The delight the imagination anticipates in its enjoyment—what is it in comparison with the bitter dregs that remain behind, when the cup has been

ence.

drained to the bottom? How much better is it that your love, hardly yet contaminated, hardly despoiled of its purity, should be dissipated, and exhale itself now, rising up to heaven like a cloud of incense, than that, after it is once satisfied, it should perish through satiety! Have the courage to put away from your lips the cup while you have hardly tasted of its contents. Make of them a libation and an offering to the Divine Redeemer. He will give you, in exchange, the draught he offered to the Samaritan — a draught that does not satiate, that quenches the thirst, and that produces eternal life."

It

"How good you are, father! Your holy words lend me courage. I will control myself; I will conquer myself. would be shameful-would it not?-that Don Luis should be able to control and conquer himself, and that I should not be able to do so? Let him depart. He is going away the day after to-morrow; let him go with God's blessing. See his card. He was here with his father to take leave of me, and I would not receive him. I do not even want to preserve the poetical remembrance of him of which you speak. This love has been a nightmare; I will cast it away from me."

"Good! very good! It is thus that I want to see youenergetic, courageous."

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Ah, father, God has cast down my pride with this blow. I was insolent in my arrogance, and the scorn of this man was necessary to my self-abasement. Could I be more humbled or

more resigned than I am now? Don Luis is right: I am not worthy of him. However great the efforts I might make, I could not succeed in elevating myself to him and comprehending him, in putting my spirit into perfect communication with his. I am a rude country girl, unlearned, uncultured; and he - there is no science he does not understand, no secret of which he is ignorant, no region of the intellectual world, however exalted, to which he may not soar. Thither on the wings of his genius does he mount; and me he leaves behind in this lower sphere, poor, ignorant woman that I am, incapable of following him even in my hopes or with my aspirations.

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"But, Pepita, for Heaven's sake don't say such things, or think them! Don Luis does not scorn you because you are ignorant, or because you are incapable of comprehending him, or for any other of those absurd reasons that you are stringing together. He goes away because he must fulfill his obligation toward God; and you should rejoice that he is going away, for

you will then forget your love for him, and God will reward you for the sacrifice you make."

Pepita, who had left off crying, and had dried her tears with her handkerchief, answered quietly :

"Very well, father; I shall be very glad of it; I am almost glad now that he is going away. I long for to-morrow to pass and for the time to come when Antoñona shall say to me on awakening, 'Don Luis is gone.' You shall see then how peace and serenity will spring up again in my heart.'

"God grant it may be so!" said the reverend vicar; and, convinced that he had wrought a miracle and almost cured Pepita's malady, he took leave of her and went home, unable to repress a certain feeling of vanity at the thought of the influence he had exercised over the noble spirit of this charming

woman.

THE TRIAL AND THE VERDICT.1

BY MAARTEN MAARTENS.

(From "The Sin of Joost Avelingh.")

[MAARTEN MAARTENS: A Dutch novelist whose real name is J. M. W. van der Poorten-Schwartz; born at Amsterdam, August 15, 1858. He spent a part of his boyhood in England, was educated in Germany, and studied law at Utrecht University. He traveled much, and though intending to enter a political life, he finally drifted into literature. His novels, which are written in English, are strong, dramatic, and true to life. Their titles include: "The Sin of Joost Avelingh "(1890), "An Old Maid's Love" (1891), "A Question of Taste" (1891), "God's Fool" (1892), "The Greater Glory" (1894), and "My Lady Nobody (1895).]

THE Court was crowded. Any one could have foreseen that this would have been the case; and accordingly ticket holders had begun to form in line almost an hour before the doors were opened. As for the ticketless, their chance seemed of the smallest. The trial itself was naturally on all lips and on all ears. The opinion of great and small, rich and poor, was unanimously against the accused. The mere fact of his being a gentleman proved his guilt to the crowd. No gentleman was ever accused of crimes unless he had really committed them, and the pity which one might naturally mete out to a poor man and brother, victim of plutocratic legislation, was changed to execration and righteous vindictiveness now the

1 By permission of the Publishers, Macmillan & Co., Ltd.