CHAPTER X.

HE sunny nature, as we call it, is one so greatly lauded and envied that it

goes to one's heart to criticize it. Nevertheless, the truth is that "sunniness" very often comes from sheer insensibility, and a dislike to disagreeable things. I fear that the sweet good temper always shown by Fred Revel, and his affectionate behaviour to his sisters, took their origin in these natural causes. He had small capacity for sympathy, a profound inability to calculate the chances of the future, and was impressed to so high a degree with a sense of the beauty of things beautiful, that it was, with him, almost a disease. Naturally, therefore, it cost him no effort to regard his sisters with affection, especially the younger, whose beauty he

could see was a thing quite rare and unapproachable.

He thus made up in a measure for his laziness by his affection. He repaid devotion by gentle words, and even caresses. When he was at home -which was not often-he was at the orders of his sisters. He had been known to spare Marion a journey to Burls's shop; he would sometimes lie on the sofa and read to them; on Sunday he had occasionally gone to church with them; and on Sunday evenings, when Winifred Owen always came upstairs to have tea with his sisters, he stayed with them, helped in the preparation of the simple banquet, sang with Adie afterwards, and comported himself with all the steadiness of a Sunday-school teacher.

Unfortunately, these loving natures are like bindweed, convolvulus, or clematis, inasmuch as they are apt to spread the tendrils of affection in unexpected directions—other, in fact, than those of sisterly affection. It was not enough that the young man should be loved by his sisters-that is a kind of affection which does not satisfy; he craved for the deeper and fuller stream of passion. He found it with Winifred

Owen; and at this period of the history their love passages had already gone a very great deal farther than even Mr. Owen, jealous for his daughter, suspected. It is not, therefore, surprising to hear that, when Winifred's work at the telegraph office was finished, it often happened to her to find Fred Revel waiting to take her home.

The same thing happened to many of the young ladies in the department, and was indeed so common an occurrence as to excite no other feeling with those who went home unaccompanied than that of envy. None of these telegraph clerks, however, were waited for by persons of their own sex. It was also remarked that the gentleman who came for Winifred Owen possessed personal attractions of a higher order than most of the cavaliers in waiting. The girls of her Majesty's telegraph department are not, it must be understood, given to the dangerous practice of casual and meaningless flirtation. You will not meet them at theatres with gentlemen who hail from the Temple, nor are they to be accosted in Westbourne-grove by invincible young City men. Not at all: their behaviour is

as circumspect as their position is respectable. There is no line of work in which a girl's reputation is safer than in the telegraph offices. Add to this, if you please, that her Majesty's Government-which is piling up pyramids of material for repentance in making contracts for work, which ought to be done at first hand, with people who get their profit out of the underpaid women in their employ-has not yet, happily, applied the dire and dreadful rule of supply and demand to the telegraph service. The girls are honestly paid and fairly worked, and they are not bullied like the poor girls in shops; so that they retain their self-respect.

Of course it was the one piece of folly wanting to fill Fred's cup that he should fall in love. Perhaps, if he had done it a year or two before this, when his indolence was not as confirmed as a bodily blemish, it might have been good for him. In a healthy state of education we shall train up the boys to fall in love as a duty at two or three and twenty. As it is, those of our youth who permit themselves this natural emotion at so early an age are the uncalculating and the sanguine, like Fred Revel.

How handsome he was, as he waited for the girl clerks to come out, and watched for Winifred among them! As yet, their wooing had the subtle charm of secrecy; and Fred belonged to the girl, though she alone knew it, by ties that could not be broken.

Her pulse beat higher with pride as she took his arm, and walked with him down the unfashionable street of Newgate. She loved him. It is assuredly not the first time that a woman has given her heart to a man whom she knows to be -soften it-deficient in the more robust virtues. The worthless ne'er-do-well has for her some secret charm of manner which the world fails to detect. Was not Mrs. Medlar in love with Dicky Carew? Was not Bluebeard idolized by every one of his wives in turn? Did not Acte, the sweet and pure-minded Christian, love Nero, the Anti-Christ? As if we wanted examples! Winifred loved this handsome and indolent young Absalom, who, for his part, loved the bright-eyed little telegraph girl as much as it was in his nature to love anybody.

"We must be more careful, Winifred," said Fred, in his airy manner. "You know what