ing. No, don't interrupt me," he said (my uncle having, I suppose, shown an inclination to do so). "Hear me out, and then you can decide. Perhaps you will be surprised to hear that my plans are all arranged. Katie has promised to elope with me, to be privately married, and, for sage reasons which I have explained to her, to be my wife secretly until such time as the death of an imaginary individual shall enable me to declare her as such. In fact, the day and hour for the elopement are already fixed. So far so good. But then it occurred to me that, should you raise a tremendous storm, and seek the aid of the police, it might result in very unpleasant consequences for me; so now I make you this offer,-Let me have my own way, and I will free you: refuse, and I will have the last farthing, and expose you as well."

"You may have the girl, and welcome," replied my uncle, in a tone of relief; "only promise me one thing."

"What?"

"That you won't cast her entirely adrift afterwards."

"No, I won't do that-I'm not quite so bad as that. I suppose my devotion may cool in time, though I don't feel as if it would; but in that case I promise you I will make some provision for her."

"And you will keep me clear, will you ?-never let her know?" "Not a word. All is perfectly safe. You see all has really been settled without you. She will disappear, and in a day or two you will receive a note from her, dictated by me, informing you that she has become the wife of Vincent Trevor, privately, for various excellent reasons; and further detailing how she had constantly met the said Vincent Trevor, after that first encounter, and learnt to love him, and all that. Neither you, nor any one else in the neighbourhood, ever having heard of Vincent Trevor, save her mention of him to you some months since, you will of course be completely thrown off the scent, and the whole thing will look extremely natural. I, in the meantime, shall convey my prize to France, where I shall devote myself to her education for a short time, and then leave her in safe keeping while I come over to England to be married; and then I shall make such arrangements for her as shall seem best afterwards."

A little further discussion followed as to arrangements about making over the papers, and then they separated, and my uncle returned to the house.

I sat motionless for some time after they had parted, and

when I got up I staggered so much, I had to grasp a branch for support; and it was some little time before I could steady myself enough to dare to attempt reaching the house. When I did attempt it my course was a very unsteady one. By aid of the balustrades I crawled up to my room, and then threw myself down on my bed. I cannot tell what I felt, but I don't think I felt anything very distinctly. I was too much stunned to be conscious of anything beyond a sense of utter, hopeless desolation. Little as I was capable of understanding then the the full meaning of all that I had heard, I knew enough to know that I had been infamously sold to pay some debt, by the man whom I had regarded in the light of a father, and that the man who had proposed the vile bargain was the man to whom I had given my whole heart, against which his likeness was resting at that moment; that all his professed love had been assumed to lure me on to ruin; and that he was on the eve of becoming the husband of another woman. Just as I had found before that great danger, in imagination, was a very different thing from the same thing in reality, so did I now feel how different the tender, gilded vice of romance was from real cold-hearted villany, such as that with which I now stood face to face. There was nothing attractive about the substance, however much there might be in the gorgeously arrayed shadow. Gradually, amid my bewilderment, rose the remembrance that I was completely in the power of these two men. My heart seemed almost to stand still with terror at the thought; but how could I escape? I sat up and tried to think, but my head throbbed, and I felt giddy and confused. I had read of novel heroines being carried off by force; and my imagination, quickened by terror, suggested that men capable of arranging such an infamous scheme as I had heard settled that day would not be likely to stop short at any means for carrying it out. Then suddenly hope came,-General Fairfax would save me"Sybil's child" was in danger now. Amidst all the wreck of my trust in human beings, I never doubted him, and my dread

subsided a little.

It was drawing near dinner-time. Go down I could not. But how avoid it? Then I remembered that, as no one had seen. me come home, they would think I had stayed at Deanswood; though General Fairfax had never, since his return, allowed me to stay there in the evening; why I did not know. Still they would think I was there; so I lay down again on my bed, and

"The sudden revulsion of feeling produced by the conviction of safety, which the mere sight of General Fairfax brought me, was too much. I threw myself into his arms in strong hysterics."-Page 339.

buried my throbbing head in my pillows. I think I must have sunk into a sort of stupor, for the dinner-bell made me start. I jumped up, and gently opening my door, I listened. I heard

my uncle ask, as he crossed the hall, "Where is Miss Katie ?" and to my great satisfaction I heard old Andrew answer, "She hasn't come back from Deanswood, sir;" and then the door closed. I was safe now, and it was quite dark. I put on my hat with a trembling hand, and gliding down the stairs, I fled as if my dreaded foes were close behind. Then my excited imagination presented another phantom, what if General Fairfax should have been kept late, and not have returned home yet? The thought made me shiver.

At last I reached the house and rang the bell.

The footman started as he saw me.

"Miss Legh!" he exclaimed.

"Is General Fairfax come home?" I asked, in an almost choked voice.

"Yes, Miss. The General has just finished dinner."

"I must see him directly," I said. "Is he in the dining-room?" "Yes, Miss."

I crossed the hall without waiting to be announced, and entered the dining-room. General Fairfax was sitting with dessert still on the table, reading. He looked up as I entered, and then started from his seat with an exclamation of astonishment.

"Katie, my child, what is it?"

I had made a tremendous effort to appear calm and collected in the presence of the servant, but the sudden revulsion of feeling produced by the conviction of safety, which the mere sight of General Fairfax brought me, was too much. I threw myself into his arms in strong hysterics.

He gently soothed my excited entreaties that he would save me, with promises of protection; but it was some time before I could give him even an incoherent account of what had passed. It was so hard to tell it. I soon saw that he was thoroughly alarmed, though my account was too confused to let him clearly understand what the danger was. I forgot, in my excitement, how much that had been every-day life to me was entirely unknown to him.

"Katie, my dear child," he said at last, "you must contrive to make all this more clear. Begin and tell me all about it from the very beginning, just as if I knew nothing."