"K"

ITTY, my dear," Aunt Mary said in the course of the evening of my arrival in town from Oxford, "I want to ask you to be particularly careful about something. I want you not to laugh at Robert."

"Is there anything very serious the matter with Robert, then?" I inquired.

"Oh, no; nothing at all serious. At least, I suppose it is serious, and I hope it is," Aunt Mary answered. "It's a secret, but, of course, everyone knows it. Robert is in love."

"Naturally," I said. "He's been in love these seven years."

"That's

"He has," Aunt Mary agreed. why I'm so anxious about it. We've had so much trouble with Robert. He seems to have no sense at all about these matters. Even at school he was very nearly expelled for falling in love with a young woman in a confectioner's shop, and there was that photographer's girl at Oxford that cost us so much money, and-dear me! there have been so many of them, haven't there?"

"There have," I said. "I have been at different periods the unfortunate recipient of his rhapsodies about most of them."

"That is the worst of Robert," my aunt continued, "he is so very good that he believes in anybody. It would be almost better in some ways if he were not quite so good-not better, perhaps no, I don't mean better, but more convenient, though perhaps I oughtn't even to say that. But, at any rate, I do hope we are at an end of our difficulties now.

She is a very

nice pretty girl, quite the kind of girl I

'Very likely not," she ran on. "I'm not surprised, but you see you know all about Robert, and if he gets engaged to any other girl she may be so shocked to hear that he's been engaged so often before, and then some of the other girls are enough to annoy any girl. I can only hope and trust that Miss Miller may have sense enough to see that they were only boyish follies, though if I had found out that your uncle had been engaged to a girl like that photographer girl, I am not at all sure that I would have married him. Robert's sure to tell her too, because he's so foolish and has such romantic notions about honour and all that."

"Who is Miss Miller?" I inquired.

"She's a daughter of a barrister," my aunt explained, "a very clever man, who practises in the Divorce Court. I should have liked it to be any other court, because it can't be good for any man to spend all his time in a place like that. It must in the end have a bad influence on the character, and these modern doctrines of heredity are so funny, though I daresay she was born before he'd practised very long."

"And is the engagement imminent ?" I asked.

"I hope so," Aunt Mary continued. "Robert doesn't generally take very long to get engaged when he falls in love, but then it's easier to get engaged quickly to a girl in a photographer's shop. My

own opinion is that even that nursery governess, who was a very good, respectable girl in her way"

"Don't let's discuss those unfortunate episodes," I suggested. "What is she like?"

"Oh, she's a charming girl," my aunt explained, “and as far as I can see she likes Robert; but then she's got beautiful blue eyes, and I always think girls with eyes like that are flirts. It may be prejudice. But I can only hope for the best. He's

at a dance to-night, where he hopes to meet her. She dances beautifully, he tells me, though some of these modern dances seem to me only romping and scarcely even nice."

By the subtle train of thought which governs my aunt's mind, she traversed the kindred subjects of American dances, bicycling, bicycling on Sunday, Ritualism, vestments, the latest fashions, birds in hats, her canary, her dog's health, and influenza. I went to bed without being much the wiser about Miss Miller, of whom I desired to learn more. My cousin Robert was a rather nice boy, except for his unfortunate habit of becoming engaged to the most impossible young persons, and I should have been very glad to see him safely married.

The next morning he came down early to breakfast. That might mean excess either of joy or despair, but a glance at Robert's countenance revealed the fact that it meant despair of an acute type. The gloom with which he refused any food was positively Byronic, and when subsequently, overcome by fleshly weakness, he ate two eggs and a large quantity of grilled bones, he did it with a touching air of martyrdom. He was too deeply dejected even to pour out his confidences to me, and I saw him retire with an armful of Browning to the smoking-room, where he spent the rest of the morning. My aunt was much distressed, and her morning discourse embraced the topics of suicide, consumption, its cure and its causes, and therein of excessive smoking; thence of fires, fire insurances, litigation, the muzzling order, what we are coming to, servants, and her young days.

After lunch my aunt suggested to Robert that he might take me out for a walk, and he did so resignedly, in awful silence, only broken by spasmodic commonplaces, delivered manifestly by sheer will-power. We turned into the Park, and he viewed the giddy throng in a spirit which appreciated its own agony adequately. Several times he said bitter, bitter things.

All at once I noticed him start and put on a ghastly smile. I concluded that the object of his affections was in sight, and, as I followed his gaze, I saw two ladies in a victoria talking to a man by the railings. One of the ladies was a pretty girl, and the man was a tall, strikingly handsome man. Robert took off his hat with an air of excessive nonchalance and we passed on.

"Kitty," he said in a hollow voice, “we must go home."

What's the matter?" I inquired. "I'm I'm not feeling well," he stammered.

"Who was that very pretty girl?" I inquired innocently.

"Her name is Dorothy Miller, and she is the only girl I have ever loved. That's all," he said in tragic tones.

"Oh, is that all?" I replied with some

amusement.

"Can't you see what I'm suffering?” he went on. "I'll tell you what has happened when we get home."

"Control yourself. Be calm," I said with the utmost gravity.

When we reached the house, he took me into the smoking-room and began his tale of woe with some prefatory remarks about our long friendship and his fears that I might think him absurd and unmanly and mawkish. I assured him that nothing was further from my thoughts. Then he began his narrative. Having expatiated

for a while on the perfection of Miss Miller (she shared all the qualities which her predecessors had enjoyed), he recounted how for a while he wooed her with diffidence, but hope. Afterwards, in an evil day, the tall handsome man, whom I had seen, had crossed her path. "An ass," he said, "a silly. conceited ass named Wonziloe."

"No," I agreed, "of course, that would be quite a different thing. But why are you in such despair?"

"They're always about together now, and last night," he explained in a climax. of sorrow, she cut one of my dances and danced with him."

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"Perhaps it was a mistake," I suggested comfortingly.

knows her business. She may be carried away by the glamour of that confounded fool Wonziloe, but she is not a coquette. Oh no, it's quite plain, only too plain."

"So you're going to retire gracefully?" I inquired.

"No," he replied; "it's hopeless in one way, but I shall try to save her from that confounded idiot."

He babbled for a while longer, and I left him in dire dejection; but while we had been talking, an idea had been wandering round my mind. It was a mere whimsical notion at the time, but two days afterwards it took further shape. We all went to a dance together, and Miss Miller and Mr. Wonziloe were there, too.

Robert accompanied us, full of his disinterested plan of saving her from the base adventurer's clutches. I studied the situation with interest. I did not agree with Robert that Miss Miller was a girl who did not understand her business. She appeared to me to be playing Robert and Mr. Wonziloe off against each other rather skilfully, though it seemed a shade of odds on the latter. My special attention, however, was directed to him. He certainly was an unusually handsome man, and a handsome man is not a common occurrence, nor, whatever people may say, unappreciated by girls; but the oftener I looked at him, the stronger my idea grew. Early in the evening I had been introduced to him, and I was engaged to him for a dance later on. After two or three moments of that dance I became certain that my suspicion was correct. He was Ethel Wonziloe's brother. I questioned him on the point, and he admitted it with some hesitation and then passed hastily to another subject. The case was clear.

Ethel Wonziloe is a friend of mine at Somerville, and is the plainest girl I know. The odd fact is that she has lovely eyes, a faultless complexion, pretty hair, and at fine figure, but then there is her mouth. It is a mouth beyond description. It is not even grotesquely ugly, but just irredeemably, hopelessly repulsive. Properly speaking, it is not even a mouth at all, but just a gap of cavernous proportions and irregular shape, with long gaunt teeth below it. Children refused to kiss her. I have seen men in a tramcar at Oxford gazing at her with eager admiration while she has had a wrap on over her mouth, and then, when she has removed it, turning away almost in anger. And I felt perfectly certain that Mr. Wonziloe possessed that mouth too. Feature for feature he and his sister were the same, except that a

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"I was not begging, Robert," I said, but supposing I took the trouble to remove Mr. Wonziloe from your Miss Miller's path?"

"Kitty," he said apprehensively, "you're not thinking of going in for him yourself, are you?"

'Don't be a fool, Robert," I answered severely. "But about the bicycle?"

"If you could only save her," he said, "I would give you five hundred bicycles." "One will be enough, thank you," I answered.

"What is it, Kitty?" he inquired mysteriously. "Have you found out-do you know something about him?" 'I do," I said.

"Something dreadful?"

"Something very hideous, Robert." "Kitty," he said, "you must not write an anonymous letter. I disapprove of anonymous letters?"

You're

"Good heavens!" I said. beginning to reek of melodrama, Robert. I shall tell you nothing more till it's over."

He pestered me with asinine conjectures during the following morning, but I refused any enlightenment. In the afternoon I went to call on Ethel Wonziloe, whose address I fortunately knew, and found her at home. After discussing other things for some time, I mentioned that I had met her brother at a dance the night before.

"Did you?" she said, somewhat grimly. "Yes, Henry goes to a good many dances. I do not."