Only tell me, Elizabeth—and forgive me for asking the question are you tiring of Cyril?"

"No, not tiring; oh, no! How can you think of such a thing? But still"

"Still what?" I was determined I would not help her. Still, I am not sure that Cyril is the match for me." "O Elizabeth! you should have thought of that twelve months ago."

"How could I? I had seen no one else; I was like Miranda, and thought the first man I saw that was not quite a Caliban, a thing divine!"

"Not quite a Caliban? Elizabeth!"

66

'Why do you say my name in that tone, with at least twenty notes of interrogation after it, and as many more of exclamation? Why, even Miranda cried, after a little while.

'How many goodly creatures are there here!

How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,
That hath such people in 't.'"

life;

"You are talking wildly. You are not Miranda, you have seen men all your if not Ferdinands, certainly not Calibans. If Cyril could hear you, he would be wounded most cruelly."

To my surprise she burst into tears; but I did not feel that I could pet and comfort her, as I should have done an hour ago. "It is too bad of you to scold me so!" she cried; "and you look as if I had done some very wicked thing."

"You will do a very wicked thing if you play Cyril Denham false."

She looked appalled, and the lovely roses faded from her cheeks. I felt I was too harsh; and yet, Cyril, my friend, my brother, I could not bear that your happiness should be so lightly handled by a careless girl, who seems inclined to wear her lovers as she wears her gloves and bonnet-till she wearies of them, and wishes for "something new." "O Agnes!" she sobbed out, "you know I would not for the world be really wicked. But you should remember there was no engagement. Papa emphatically said we were

not to consider ourselves affianced, and if either of us changed our minds during the year of probation, neither of us was to blame the other. I am sure if Cyril wanted to marry you, I would not say an unkind word to him. It was part of the agreement that we both should be left at liberty. Papa insisted on it." "Does your papa know that you are unwilling to recognise the understanding there has been between you and Cyril Denham, as a decisive engagement?"

"No, Agnes! neither does Mamma, nor Janet, nor anybody that I know, and I dread to tell them; and Cyril will be here on the 3rd of May. I want you to say a word to Mamma for me, just a word."

"Not a syllable, Elizabeth! You have tangled the skein yourself, and no one else can wind it off. Only be candid, be merciful; remember that Cyril is not a Persian cat, or a Pomeranian dog; he has a human heart, and is gifted, if I mistake not, with great capabilities of suffering: do not torture him!"

"What ought I to do?"

"In the first place, know your own mind, and be sure you really do know it; and next, communicate that knowledge to your parents—and to Cyril.”

I never can! Oh, why did they listen to me, and allow me to entangle myself in what was tantamount to an engagement? and I only seventeen!"

I could have smiled at her plea of youth, had not my heart been so very sore. I could not help saying rather sarcastically, "A warning to parents not to give their daughters of seventeen their own way, though they be dying for it. But let me understand you, Elizabeth; do you really, actually desire not to enter upon a recognised engagement with the man who has been your accepted lover all these months?"

How you put it, Agnes! Really, you are a little coarse !"

"I think not; but I am very frank! In a matter of such terrible moment, one had better be a little coarse than make more mistakes under cover of refinement. But if you do not like to answer my question, never

mind. I had no right to ask it, and should not have done so had you not given me so far your confidence."

"Well, then! I am convinced that it would not be for my happiness to marry Cyril Denham; and of course, the sooner this implied engagement is broken off the better."

"What has made you change your mind? This time last year all your happiness was centred in him?"

"I mistook a sisterly love for the other sort of love. I am not the first who has fallen into such an error. I see now that Cyril and I are, as Mamma says, too much alike; we both lack energy: and I am told that Cyril is not going on in London very satisfactorily." "Who could tell you that?"

"I may not say; but I have heard. He is wearying of his office-duties: he is frightfully extravagant !" "And you believe it? How could you listen to the base traducer, the cowardly, mean slanderer?"

"It is no traduction, no slander; it is true! And there is much more that I was not told-that could not be told, I fear, to you and to me!"

I exclaimed with horror. No, no! Cyril might be vacillating and impulsive, even weak and lazy now and then; but immoral? Never! never! It was the singular purity of his nature, a purity that shone out in every lineament and feature, that had at first attracted my regards. I said as much to Elizabeth. She coolly replied, "Ah! but then he had not encountered the temptations of a bachelor-life in town."

I turned away angrily, and replied, "I will not discuss this matter, Elizabeth; it is not a fitting theme for either of us. And it is utterly unworthy of you to bring unfounded accusations against your friend, to justify your own capricious temper. Yes! I am angry; I do not deny it. It was enough that you should make Cyril miserable through want of faith, but it is horrible that you should in extenuation of that faithlessness charge him with such faults."

"Agnes! Agnes! you are mad! What fault did I charge him with?"

"You hinted at faults of the very gravest nature. If he be guilty of sins that could not be retailed to us, because we are young women, his conduct must indeed be culpable and shameful! But again I say who told you this?"

"And again I say I cannot answer. The information was given me in confidence; I may not mention names."

"I scarcely need to ask. I know but one man who has access to your ear who would stab another man in the dark, and that man is Vivian Gower!"

I saw Elizabeth turn deathly pale, and then turn flaming scarlet. She was too excited to speak, and her eyes were sparkling with indignation, as were I my own. My very finger-ends were tingling with the strong emotion, and I dared not trust myself to say another word. I felt sure that if then I uttered what was seething in my mind, I should bitterly regret it. I should say what could not be unsaid, and do what could not be undone. As Cyril's trusted friend and sister, I must be calm and self-possessed. I must not fight his battles in such a spirit. So I turned away, and went to my own room; but not to sleep. O Cyril! my dear friend Cyril! how darkly are the clouds gathering about you! and I cannot help you, I cannot comfort you. I can only pray for you day and night: but, O Cyril, my brother, it is very hard! All the wealth of your great love is lavished upon her, and she despises it, while I am thankful for the merest crumbs of your affection. But, O Elizabeth, you will rue the day you listened first to Vivian Gower; you have flung away the virgin ore to pick up miserable gilded pinchbeck! A costly jewel was confided to your keeping; you should have worn it silently and jealously in your bosom, till such time as God should have seen fit to set it in your matron-crown of womanhood; but you drop it heedlessly, and flaunt the tawdry, glittering ornaments, that will tarnish ere you tire of them! Foolish Elizabeth! Unhappy Cyril!

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CHAPTER XVIII.

MR. RATTENBURY.

I MUST ask you to go back a little while; for the curtain rises now on a scene that transpired some weeks before the events recorded in Miss Craven's diary; and the scene is no longer at Forest Range, or melancholy Monkswood, but in the busy haunts of London life. It is time we followed more particularly the career of the young man concerning whose fortunes I write professedly; it is time to inquire whether there were any just grounds for those aspersions which had grieved the very soul of Agnes Craven,-aspersions she ascribed, and most correctly, to Vivian Gower.

It was the close of a miserable February day, nearly the last of the month, and the clerks in the office in Parliament Street-that special office where Cyril had found a post-were shutting up their desks, putting books away, locking safes, and the junior portion of them chaffing each other as young men will in the absence of their chief. Cyril was in an inner office, a sort of private room, which he shared in common with a Mr. Rattenbury, his senior in years and standing, but, thanks to Government influence and Sir John Ashburner, his junior in position. Mr. Rattenbury was a gloomy man of five-and-forty, a singularly reserved man, morose in his bearing, saturnine in speech, and generally shunned, if not detested, by his coworkers in Parliament Street. Still, no one could say a word against Mr. Rattenbury; he always fulfilled his duties, scrupulously avoided giving direct offence, and had once or twice done the youngsters about the place some trifling service, which led them to say, " Ratten