So many a soul, o'er life's drear desert faring,

Love's pure, congenial spring unfound, unquaff'd,—
Suffers, recoils, then, thirsty and despairing

Of what it would, descends and sips the nearest draught."

Beneath, directly under Harold, was his mother's bedroom, and the azure-roofed recess wherein before the silver cross Mrs. Leyne prayed for him, unconscious of his need of her prayers, and the softly shining lamp ever burning there revealed the expression of her face, which was one of childlike delight.

G

CHAPTER VII.

MADELEINE AND NOEL.

"They seem'd to those who saw them meet
The casual friends of every day;

Her smile was undisturb'd and sweet,
His courtesy was free and gay.

"But yet if one the other's name

In some unguarded moment heard,
The heart you thought so calm and tame
Would struggle like a captured bird."

R. MONCKTON MILNES.

NO word of love was yet uttered, but they were not

as acquaintances or as friends or as brother and

sister, and she felt that the moment was coming when he would ask from her the heart which was already his. From that pure heart she daily prayed for him, and she loved him the more because of her purity. How she rejoiced, watching that smile of his which she knew so well! And many a dream she wove of evenings spent with him in their mutual home, wherein taking upon herself the gentle lot of domestic duty, the unassuming endeavour to endear herself to him, she would prove to him that when he hastened

back to her from the law-courts, tired after his toiling there, that he was returning not to the lifeless home of a fashionable wife, but to the healthy atmosphere of a hearth that derived its wholesome influence from the unobtrusive presence of a true woman. Sitting with him by that pleasant fireside, she pictured herself often and often, long ere he ever spoke of love, listening in imagination to him as he told her of his difficulties in the world outside and asked the helping advice of her lesser experience. She seemed to see, too, in the years that were expected to come, a farspreading vision of honours, of splendid fortune, of political greatness. In her eyes he possessed the qualities which surely secure success; and so picturing hopefully many bright things for him she thought a little-a very little-of her own unsuspected share in this, and her heart beat quickly with the contemplation of it all. But it was for him chiefly she visioned that brilliant future; beginning thus even now the noviciate of the self-forgetfulness which beautifies married and single life, and is a condition of happiness in either.

One night he was with her in the breakfast-room, where a wood-fire threw its flames about in the darkness, for there was no other light save the moon's rays through the undrawn purple curtains. It was the time approaching the joyous feast of Christmas. The snow outside crisped and glistened upon the

housetops. She pointed to the peaceful scene beyond the window, so lovely and calm! The sparkling snow hung upon the motionless trees, and a long line of light lay across Dublin Bay, revealing the ropes and sails of vessels passing across that shining streak, while from one ship not far away arose the sturdy voices of her running sailors hauling up the anchors to prepare for sea.

"That picture is beautiful, Noel!" she exclaimed, wondering at it, though it was so familiar.

"And you too are beautiful, Madeleine," he answered quietly.

She started back, fixing her fawn-like eyes upon him, and her bosom quickly heaved.

He took her hand gently but very firmly in his own, and softly said, "Are you angry with me for saying what is true?" He bent towards her and listened seriously for the lingering answer. She confronted him stedfastly, and her bosom did not heave so quickly now, while her tremulous lips settled into an assured smile.

"No, I am not angry with you. How could I be?" she replied gravely.

She had withdrawn her hand from his; and he went on, "Madeleine give me back your hand again— and give it for ever to me!"

She did give it back to him, childlike and lovingly. "You do not ask me for my heart, Noel, because

you know it is yours already. You have my hand and my heart now!"

Then they told each other the double history of their love the familiar story which need not be rewritten here; for who does not know it, either from books, or from experience, or instinctively? They stood together by the window, two true united hearts, half in wonder at their great happiness, and silently grateful to God for it. Higher in the sky rose the

moon,

"as some fair saint,

Serenely moving on her way"

in "the calm majestic presence of the night," while each within them felt and said it inwardly, though not in words, that their love is

"love indeed

No childish day-dream, but a life intense
Within our hearts."

From Harold Leyne's room there was a fine view of the sea, which appeared so blue and bright in the long mornings of the summer season, when he rose lightly to his day's study with a hopeful heart. Tonight, regarding it with lips compressed, he paid no heed to its moonlit beauty-the silver streak across it lighting up the rippling waves, the ships gliding majestically, the distant stars, the silence of rest. The peaceful stillness of the night irritated him, for it was not akin to the angry storm raging within him.