and I think he must have heard them; but he was happily quite unaware of the nature of a "duffer," or what the word meant, and to tell the truth, so am I.

Miss Susan was not able to come down to dinner, a marvellous and almost unheard of event, so that the party was still less lively than usual. Everard was so concerned about his old friend, and the strange condition in which she was, that he began his attack upon the old shopkeeper almost as soon as they were left alone. "Don't you think, sir," the young man began in a straightforward, unartificial way, "that it would be better to take your daughter-in-law with you? She will only be uncomfortable among people so different from those you have been accustomed to; I doubt if they will get on."

"Get on?" said Monsieur Guillaume pleasantly. "Get on what? She does not wish to get on anywhere. She wishes to stay here."

"I mean, they are not likely to be comfortable together, to agree, to be friends."

"Mon

M. Guillaume shrugged his shoulders. Dieu," he said, "it will not be my fault. If Madame Suzanne will not grant the little rente, the allowance I demanded for le petit, is it fit that he should be at my charge? He was not thought of till Madame There is nothing for him.

Suzanne came to visit us.

He was born to be the heir here."

But

"But Miss Austin could have nothing to do with his being born," cried Everard laughing. Poor Miss Susan, it seemed the drollest thing to lay to her charge. M. Guillaume did not see the joke, he went on seriously. "And I had made my little arrangement with M. Farrel. We were in accord, all was settled; so much to come to me on the spot, and this heritage, this old château-château, mon Dieu, a thing of wood and brick!—to him, eventually. But when Madame Suzanne arrived to tell us of the beauties of this place, and when the women among them made discovery of the petit, that he was about to be born, the contract was broken

with M. Farrel. I lost the money-and now I lose the heritage; and it is I who must provide for le petit ! Monsieur, such a thing was never heard of. It is incredible; and Madame Suzanne thinks, I am to carry off the child without a word, and take this disappointment tranquilly! But no! I am not a fool, and it

cannot be."

"But I thought you were very fond of the child, and were in despair at losing him," said Everard.

"Yes, yes," cried the old shopkeeper, "despair is one thing, and good sense is another. This is contrary to good sense. she has good sense.

Giovanna is an obstinate, but They will not give le petit anything: eh bien, let them bear the expense of him! That is what she says."

"Then the allowance is all you want?" said Everard, with British brevity. This seemed to him the easiest of arrangements. With his mind quite relieved, and a few jokes laid up for the amusement of the future, touching Miss Susan's powers and disabilities, he strolled into the drawing-room, M. Guillaume preferring to betake himself to bed. The drawing-room of Whiteladies had never looked so thoroughly unlike itself. There seemed to Everard at first to be no one there, but after a minute he perceived a figure stretched out upon a sofa. The lamps were very dim, throwing a sort of twilight glimmer through the room; and the fire was very red, adding a rosy hue, but no more, to this faint illumination. It was the sort of light favourable to talk, or to meditation, or to slumber, but by aid of which neither reading, nor work, nor any active occupation could be pursued. This was of itself sufficient to mark the absence of Miss Susan, for whom a cheerful full light of animation and activity seemed always necessary. The figure on the sofa lay at full length, with an abandon of indolence and comfort which suited the warm atmosphere and subdued light. Everard felt a certain appropriateness in the scene altogether, but it was not Whiteladies. An Italian palace

"She looked at him by the dim light with a look half provoking, half inviting."

or an eastern harem would have been more in accordance with the presiding figure. She raised her head, however, as he approached, supporting herself on her elbow, with a vivacity unlike the eastern calm, and looked at him by the dim light with a look half provoking half inviting, which attracted the foolish young man more perhaps than a more correct demeanour would have done. Why should not he try what he could do, Everard thought, to move the rebel? for he had an internal conviction that even the allowance which would satisfy M. Guillaume would not content Giovanna. He drew a chair to the other side of the table upon which the tall dim lamp was standing, and which was drawn close to the sofa on which the young woman lay.

"Do you really mean to remain at Whiteladies ?" he said. "I don't think you can have any idea how dull it is here."

She shrugged her shoulders slightly and raised her eyebrows. She had let her head drop back upon the sofa cushions, and the faint light threw a kind of dreamy radiance upon her fine features, and great glowing dark eyes.

"Dull! it is almost more than dull," he continued 1; though even as he spoke he felt that to have this beautiful creature in Whiteladies would be a sensible alleviation of the dulness, and that his effort on Miss Susan's behalf was of the most disinterested kind. "It would kill you, I fear; you can't imagine what it is in winter, when the days are short; the lamps are lit at half-past four, and nothing happens all the evening, no one comes. You sit before dinner round the fire, and Miss Austin knits; and after dinner you sit round the fire again, and there is not a sound in all the place, unless you have yourself the courage to make an observation; and it seems about a year before it is time to go to bed. You don't know what it is."

What Miss Susan would have said had she heard this account of those winter evenings, many of which the