and had been as much interested about Heldigrade as ever."

"I envy you, dear. No; after all, perhaps I don't, since I can re-enjoy one of the old hours nearly as well without the book as with it; and memory is so much more nimble than one's eyes, that I can remember a chapter in far less time than it would take me to read it again."

"I wonder now, Marian, if that faculty will make your real friendships-of course I mean friendships with real flesh-and-blood people-much more enduring than mine, when the friends are not seen for a few years. Suppose, now, I were married, and that my husband went abroad for four or five years, do you think I'd forget him pretty much as I sometimes forget the hero of a novel ?"

"I should hope your husband would keep you in mind of him by writing now and then," said practical Marian, with much gravity.

"Ha, ha! to be sure. But suppose, Marian, that he were to die, what would he be to me in five years, do you think?"

"Well, if you quite forgot him, not very much, I should say !"

"And don't you think that that might happen? You know poor Mary Loyd hadn't known her husband when he was killed in the Punjab much longer than it took me to read the ten volumes of Les Misérables, so that if her memory is no better than mine, need she remember-Why do you laugh, Mar? If there had been an interesting hero in Victor Hugo's book, mightn't I have been devoted to him all the time I was reading it ?"

I should think, Edith, that though her mind and heart may have been brought no longer into contact with her husband's than yours might happen to be with the interesting hero (not a Jean Valjean!) of a very long story, she will all the rest of her life feel a previously unknown kind of loneliness and a sad void in her heart that will keep him in her thoughts," answered Marian, looking as if she were realizing such a void with her fervid imagination.

Ah, that is perhaps why Angus remembers his poor dead wife so painfully," sighed Edith. "It is the sense of a void in his heart which a sister somehow cannot fill. Do you know, Marian, my brother is almost as much devoted to his wife at this moment as he could be were she alive.”

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From what I have seen of him, I should think he will continue so even though married again."

"Would that be right?"

"Yes, I think it would. So far polygamy is lawful!"

"What a strange idea!

And do you think the second wife could get as much love as she might deserve?" asked Edith, with a look of great interest in her question.

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How can I tell, Edith?

What I think is that his memory will be faithful to his wife; and that all the more from his having made her unhappy, as I've heard. He has suffered so much on her account, that his ideal of her must be woven, as it were, through every fibre of his heart, and become through long years of meditation even more a part of himself than it might have been had she lived till now with him."

"But surely he may still be able to receive a new

impression, when, in fact, he is only about thirty, Marian?"

"Well, that's middle age."

"Nonsense, dear, you may as well say that you are middle-aged at twenty, because you are abundantly old enough to marry equally with a man of thirty, women coming to maturity so much sooner than men."

"I don't think they do so a bit, except, as Aurora Leigh says, 'in the cheeks'

'A woman's always younger than a man
At equal years, because she's disallowed
Maturing by the out-door sun and air,

And kept in long-clothes past the age to walk ;'

that is, fed on milk-and-water literature long after the age when men have gathered fruit and ashes from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. My cousin Major Melville is only twenty-one, but he is five or six years older than me in experience, knowledge of the world, and in character; and I believe he would have. been so, even had he not seen service and reached his majority, before he was of age! However, my father, who knows all about everything, says that though a man's mind, when he is knocked about the world, matures sooner than a woman's, he, when unmarried, may remain longer youthful in his feelings; so I have no doubt that Captain Calvert, who, begging your pardon, is probably much riper in mind and in knowledge of the world than you are, may be as fresh-hearted as yourself."

"You rambler! we were talking of Angus Lockart." Let me hook you, dear. What a beautiful maroon ! It is quite like claret with the grounds shaken up. Did you get it at Renton's ?"

"Yes; my brother chose it one day he took a fancy to drive along Princes Street. He saw it in the window, and said it would go with my hair better than anything I had."

"So it does. Your hair is just a little dim, as you're fond of complaining, and this brings out a faint golden tinge. I think you'd better come to breakfast tomorrow with it, as somebody has taken up his abode with us!"

"Goosie, how you chatter!"

"I declare you are very ungrateful, Edith; you'd hardly guessed his fancy when I told you of it, even though you had given him more than half your heart already."

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Oh, indeed! my heart is still at home, and beating away as contentedly as ever,--just feel it.”

"That's because you think it's all plain sailing now, Edith; but let me tell you that Miss Bracy—”

Oh, you will tease me, will you, just because I won't say how much I love you, as I did at the foot of the crag before the little bunch of flowers came down and told their story. But I won't hear a word about Miss Bracy, or any other miss. I wonder when the dinnerbell will ring. Aren't you hungry, dear?"

Mary Melville's coming to the breakfast to laugh at the critics, and I daresay she'll bring Bracy. Indeed, Bracy will come over to play head nurse if she hears of the accident in time. I always think she bitterly regrets that she was not one of the Lucknow ladies after that mining adventure of Archer's. Wasn't it lucky we had him all to ourselves this afternoon?"

"Now, Marian, that's really too bad. I won't tell you things again if you quiz me so. I didn't know you were

given to quizzing one. character, indeed it does."

It throws a new light on your

"You provoked me to it. I don't fancy being shut out of your confidence so soon, and all just because you've found what I predicted come true quicker than might have been expected. It makes me selfish, and almost inclined to-"

"No, I am sure it doesn't. You never were selfish, dear; and you would not balk me, even if I were to quarrel with you, I do believe. But I never meant to hide anything from you. One can't be always kissing and confiding, you know."

No; especially when things have gone so far."

Now, Marian, I tell you truthfully that Archer did not say a single word on the lawn that he mightn't have said as well to you; and I, for my part, just chafed him about his way of nursing the baby when it screamed so up on the crag."

"You dear Edy, how you take things to heart! You're not used to be bantered; your poor brother is so grave. Let's shake hands!"

"With all my heart, Mar. As for Angus, I think you are every bit as serious-minded as he is. That's why I think you'd probably suit him. There, it's out at last. Now, don't look alarmed. It would comfort me so to find some one who could chime in with his strange moods better than I can, who am as unlike him as a sister could well be. Not that I don't love him with all my heart as the truest-hearted brother that ever lived. But you can't say, Marian, that I try to make you feel some sympathy for him under false pretences, for I told you a few minutes ago, candidly, that he thinks of that unfortunate sister-in-law of mine as VOL. II.

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