Mrs. Hamerton lay back in her chair, and, while she drank her tea, watched the girl's face,-every dimple and smile spoke only of a happy soul; and so at last the dim presentiment passed out of the mother's heart.

When they went down dressed at last, to find Mr. Hamerton waiting in the drawing room and the carriage at the door, they were laughing together like two children; and the sound of their voices was so agreeable to Mr. Hamerton's ears, that he forgot to scold them for being, as usual, very late.

"Now," he said, as they settled themselves in the carriage, "close your eyes, and get yourself into a properly pre-Raphaelite state of mind. Turn on the aesthetic tap to the full, else the McClintocks will think your education has been neglected."

"I dare say," said Mrs. Hamerton from out of a depth of furs, "that Clotilda Raymond may be dining there to-night. If so, shall I ask her to come and stay with us for a little while?"

"Yes, do," said Mr. Hamerton. And so the matter was left.

CHAPTER II.

ARRIVED at the McClintocks' house, and, it is to be hoped, having got themselves into a properly aesthetic state, they were ushered into a drawing room, where subdued lamps with rose-coloured shades gave the dimmest of religious lights. A faint odour of incense pervaded the room; there was a sound of voices, but even that was a solemn sort of murmur, as of awe-struck votaries at a shrine. The chatterers were gathered in a group around a lady, who seemed to be in some sort the goddess at whose shrine they worshipped. She was not prepossessing in appearance, having a kind

of roll of the eye that to most persons unacquainted with her would have suggested incipient insanity. She was lounging elegantly in a very low chair. She was clothed magnificently in a very low-necked dress. She rose from her chair, when the Hamertons were announced, in a studied manner. "Dear Mrs. Hamerton,

how good of you. I am so glad to see you and your charming daughter. daughter. Rollo, take Miss Hamerton nearer the fire; she is quite cold." Rollo, a highly educated and intensely profound youth, with all the Oxford stiffness in his back, and all the newest nonsense on the tip of his tongue, obeyed with as much alacrity as his elegant manners allowed, for he very much admired Miss Merry. There was no great natural gaiety in the McClintocks' house-they were all too refined; but they were not too obtuse to admire pure gaiety of heart when that rare and charming quality came in their way. So Rollo regaled Miss Merry with various rather high-flown remarks during the waiting for the announcement of dinner. He always felt it his duty to be as sentimental as possible in the presence of a pretty woman. He amused Merry very much. She had a natural sense of humour, and delighted in the two McClintock sons, and the affectation with which they persisted in hiding some genuine ability. To-night for the first time she experienced faintly a slight sensation of boredom: the man wearied her with his nonsense, and she yawned behind her fan. "I wonder why I feel so tired," she said to herself in some amazement. Her emotions had all been so unconscious hitherto that she was quite perplexed by this new sense of realising her own mental fatigue. She was delighted when dinner was announced, and the gal

her

lant Rollo's mind was a little distracted from sentiment to the more serious matter of handing her down. She found herself at dinner opposite Clotilda Raymond, and as glance fell on her, she remembered that her mother had said she would ask her to come and stay with them. Instantly the thought passed through her mind, "I shall have to go about with her. I shall not see Arthur so often." Just then Clotilda looked up and smiled her recognition. She and Merry She and Merry were great friends, though of a very different order of girlhood. Merry suddenly became conscious of the thought in her mind as she met Clotilda's smile. Her answering smile was lost in a blush so vivid, so intense, so painful, that she thought the eye of every person at the table must be upon her, and that everyone would guess at what seemed to her in her innocence her shame and her

agony; for, in that sudden, half-unconscious thought, she was forced into an awakenment so strange to her, that it made her heart beat and her head throb. Rollo McClintock, turning to speak to her, was startled by the expression of her face and the passionate flush which still lingered even upon her forehead.

"You are not well, Miss Hamerton," he said; "this room is too hot." Merry assured him she was all right, and indeed her sudden colour was rapidly giving place to a degree of paleness not common with her. She made an effort and went on with her dinner and her artistic

gossiping with Rollo. Very soon she was herself again, and had almost conquered her rush of feeling when, glancing across the table, she met Clotilda Raymond's eyes full upon her. They were always soft, sweet eyes, but now they appeared as though filled with a new and inexplicable sympathy.

Clotilda was a poetess of the emotional order; but, surely, thought Merry to herself, she could not have divined any need of her sympathy. Can a blush speak in words? wondered poor Merry, overcome by her new consciousness. Clotilda's earnest gaze was easily explained. She was a student of human faces, and to-night she was filled with the idea that there was some change in Merry's expression. Her next impulse, as an avowed reader of human souls, was to discover the meaning of this new look in her friend's eyes, the added sweetness which hovered about her lips and gave them a look more soft and delicate than even that which is given by the freshness of perfect youth. youth. "It is only that Merry is developing, I suppose," she concluded; "her mind is opening, and she is beginning to taste of the bitters and sweets of life." This idea decided Clotilda to accept Mrs. Hamerton's invitation at once when it was given later in the evening, especially as it was earnestly pressed by Merry herself. Mrs. Hamerton was charmed by Merry's warmth. "How is it possible," she thought, "that she could care for a young fellow like Arthur if she can love a girl so intellectual as Clotilda Raymond ?" Mrs. Hamerton had a bad habit of undervaluing Arthur Wansy, as most mothers undervalue their daughters' early admirers.

"Little girl," said Mr. Hamerton to Merry after they were in the carriage and driving home, "you have looked very pale to-night. Do you feel well?"

"Yes, papa, thank you," said Merry, with a little undertone in her voice of something which was new to these two who were so familiar with its every ring and change.

"Are you sure you feel well?" he repeated, leaning forward to try

and see her face by the lamp light. His answer was a sudden passion of tears, something so strange and unusual in Merry that it startled them both inexpressibly. Mrs. Hamerton put her arms out and drew her close, nursing her as though she were a baby in some depth of childish distress; but well the mother knew, as she felt the rise and fall of that throbbing young heart, that this was no babyish storm. She said nothing, however; the girl was only treated as if she were over-tired, and when she got home, was petted like a weary child. Merry had always been "the baby," and to-night she accepted this tenderness in thankful silence, feeling simply that it wrapped around and comforted her startled soul.

"What do you suppose is the matter with our Merry?" asked Mr. Hamerton, when at last his wife came back from soothing the girl to sleep.

"I don't know," said Mrs. Hamerton, not caring to give her ideas that definiteness which comes with explanation; "perhaps she has been dull lately, wanting companionship. We are too fond of her perhaps, and keep her too much to ourselves. Young people need the companionship of young people.

Clotilda comes to-morrow; we must take them out as much as possible. I daresay it will do Merry good."

"Yes, we can see if it does," said Mr. Hamerton, who also did not care to form his thoughts by putting them into words. "If not, we must take her away from home for a while, and see what a change will do."

The next morning Merry seemed quite herself again, and she played one of those little tricks on Arthur which only a woman is capable of. He wanted to take her to one of the winter exhibitions in the after

noon; he had asked her, and had trusted to her persuading her father or mother to go, or,

as

more often happened, both. Merry chose to forget all about it, and when he came in, after lunch, expecting to find her, as usual, waiting for him, she had gone in the carriage to fetch Clotilda Raymond. He was very much disgusted, but said nothing, as Mr. and Mrs. Hamerton had evidently never heard of the proposed expedition. He soon betook himself home again, for the two elder Hamertons, though perfectly polite, were never very warm to him. It was Merry who was his friend in the house, and whose child-comradeship with him had admitted him through that front door, which in his earlier boyhood had seemed like some enchanted portal, so delicious even to his partially educated sensibilities, was the luxurious artistic atmosphere within it. The drawingroom windows of the two houses were only divided by an iron bar; the small gardens were separated by a very low wall. In early childhood these solitary children had, out of the sociable disposition of their age, amused themselves by holding confab over the garden wall; as they grew older they would sit on the balconies in the dusk of the summer evenings. It was impossible to keep them apart, so the heads of the two families, though by no means naturally sympathetic, made the best of the circumstances by politely pretending to be so. The acquaintance gradually resolved itself. into formal calls at long intervals between the two ladies; and in Arthur's pervading the Hamerton's house-spending half his time there, in fact, when at home. Arthur was one of those persons who cannot endure to be alone for a moment, and who

simply will not stand being bored. His own parents bored him exceedingly, and ever since he had entered upon the dignity of breeches he had made a point of avoiding their society as far as possible. To-day he went home in very ill-humour. He had not anticipated Merry's forgetting her engagement in this way. He did not quite know what to do with himself. He went back home, and entered the dining-room with his hands in his pockets (that most impudent of all masculine attitudes), and a not over-amiable expression on his face. Mrs. Wansy was sitting by the fire, dressed to go out.

She was waiting for the carriage, and was fidgeting and getting more angry every second because it was so long in coming. She opened her eyes in some surprise at Arthur's appearance, but did not concern herself about it, for her mind was too full of the more important matter of the coachman's delay to admit of considering anything else at the moment. She was a woman who habitually took in ideas very slowly.

"It is really too annoying," she said, fretfully, "the way that man keeps me waiting. He is positively growing into a tyrant. I shall be afraid to order the carriage when I want it soon, but shall have to ask him if I may go out. I do think, Arthur, that you might speak to him."

"I speak to him," said Arthur, with that lordliness of manner which the modern young man knows so well how to assume towards his elders; "thank you, I should get into a row with the governor then. I believe that coachman of ours is the only man in the world the governor's afraid of. What a thousand pities when people keep horses who don't understand them!"

"Arthur, don't speak so of your father," said Mrs. Wansy, in a

tone of timid severity. She was arriving at a very trying period for the maternal feelings. It was a point of honour with her to maintain an appearance of authority with her son, and yet she was beginning to be afraid of him. It mattered little to Arthur what tone she took; he seldom paid any attention to her. Just now he was disposed for a wrangle and a jar of tongues, and would probably have succeeded in goading her into a fury in another ten minutes; but, fortunately for her, the carriage was announced, and Mrs. Wansy, who, despite all her secret rebellion, dared not have kept the carriage waiting at the door, hurried out. Arthur stood at the window, and watched the carriage drive away with something very like a sneer on his face. When it was out of sight he turned from the window with a of disgust. "What a prosgroan pect to gaze upon,” he said aloud; "dead trees, a dirty road, a leaden sky, and all the ugliness of London walking and driving past. Confound it, why don't we have stained glass windows, like the Hamertons ?"

He threw himself into a large easy chair close by the fire. He enjoyed the sun or the fire just as a spaniel does; he basked in it with the deepest physical satisfaction. But, though he liked to be warm, he also liked to be amused; and there was very little in that handsome dining room to afford amusement or interest of any kind. It was one of those sort of rooms which a valuer or house agent can describe admirably. Everything in it was of the very best, the handsomest, the heaviest t; the silk window curtains hung in splendid folds from the thickness of their make; the table stood like a rock in the middle of the room; the sideboard shone with perfectly polished silver. It was a room to

dine your friends in, with dignity; to eat turtle soup in, drink old port, and to entertain solemnly. But who dare be witty in such a room as this? who dare look on life as a light thing, or make merry with fate, in the presence of these substantial upholsterings? Here you were associating with the votaries of Wealth, and must needs be deferential to that great deity. The people who own these solid signs of riches would surely be shocked at the very atmosphere of a man who could be light-hearted amid debt and difficulty. There is a religion of riches as well as a religion of art; but of all the worshipped task-masters of the earth none is so hard on those who really serve him as Wealth. It is not difficult to understand this: money should be a servant; make of it a master and you will be tyrannised over as people always are who allow their servants to rule them. The home of the person who is avowedly and deliberately rich generally exhibits a strange absence of prettiness. This was very conspicuous in the Wansies' diningroom, where everything was sternly solid.

Arthur sat and looked about for awhile, and then relieved his feelings by a vast yawn. His next proceeding was natural enough under the circumstances. He put on his hat, took a hansom, and went into town in search of amusement, and did not return home until just eight o'clock, in time for dinner. Mrs. Wansy had come in from her calls, and was re-arrayed in a subdued splendour for the evening. Mr. Wansy had returned from the City, where he buried himself from early morn till dewy eve. It did not appear to hurt him, however. He was a man who maintained an incessant flow of good animal spirits and never allowed anything to interfere with

his enjoyment of life, except on those occasions when he found it necessary to get into a violent temper. Probably he enjoyed this also, or he would not have done it so well or so often, but other people did not generally find much amusement in these exhibitions. His clerks, his servants, his wife, regarded his anger with an awe which only can be inspired by a tyrant. His coachman and his son were the only two persons under his roof for whom he had a certain secret respect, and he did his best to keep that secret locked in his own breast. Wilkins, his coachman, understood horses, and he did not; his horses had cost a great deal of money, which was a sufficient reason for him to be intensely proud of them, and he really did not know when they would or when they would not catch cold. For Arthur he had a certain secret respect, because he had paid enormous sums for his education and college expenses; while he himself had acquired his limited learning at a country dayschool, and the only accomplishments he possessed were reading, writing, and making money. He was perfectly conscious that Arthur entered a world of which he himself knew nothing and cared to know nothing; business fully occupied his whole mind, and he considered that his whole duty to his son was fulfilled when he yearly paid all his expenses. There is evidently some attractiveness in the idea that parental duty consists simply in supplying a young man with enough money to pay for any vices he may choose to develop, seeing that so many parents are content with such a view. There is some justification perhaps for business men in the fact that they, as a rule, really have no leisure, and (more important still) no brains, to spare for attention to their children.