have to sing to amuse this young man, as | Miss Eliza's cut-and-dried little remarks she generally did when guests were stay- upon men and manners and the growing ing there. If so, she must put a new rib- ingratitude of the world. bon on her guitar and have that out too. They never had music when they were alone, for her father did not like it; but if he went out, then Mrs. Aylmer and her daughter always sat in the big drawingroom, where a harp and a grand piano stood; and then Joyce's clear voice would fill the room and chase away the dreary memories that haunted it, and unawares she peopled it for her mother with friends and reminiscences of earlier days.

Once, Joyce, looking up she had been singing one of the old songs before me "Un jeune troubadour qui chante et fait la guerre, se venait chez son père révant à son amour saw that her mother, instead of going on with her knitting, had laid her work aside, and yes, surely there were some tears quietly stealing down her face.

"Oh, mother dear! Dear, dearest mother! What is the matter?" she cried in her impetuous way, throwing down the stand with her book on it as she rushed to her mother.

Joyce rose up too, sorry and perplexed. Here had been the beginning of such a pleasant evening, and now it was all over, and her mother was offended, and the music was stopped, and she must go to the other room and wait till bedtime, with endless colors of silk for her embroidery, or yawn through a dreary book till ten o'clock struck, and then they were all ushered into the hall, where the servants were assembled at the end, and where Mrs. Aylmer nervously read prayers when her husband was away.

CHAPTER II.

FOR Some few weeks after my poor heroine's unlucky little song of the trouba dour she left the book alone, and her music was silent, and life grew more stagnant than ever.

One fine spring morning, however, the sun was beginning to shine and the birds to sing, and nature seemed suddenly to awake, with her many gay colors all alight, as if she would start up and cry, "Winter is gone the long dreary waiting winter; and spring is come-the happy, bright spring with its new world of love and joy and gladness."

"It is nothing, dear; nothing," she said; "but I was thinking of that song, and of some one some one - and here the poor lady blushed almost guiltily "who once sang it, years ago, dear. I "Bother take that fellow!" cried the never saw him again. He went off sing-squire. "Here is a letter from young ing it, and I was quite a girl, as young as you are, and ah! I was a happy girl."

Joyce had never seen her mother moved like this before, and she drew a footstool to her feet and laid her pretty, yellow head on her mother's knees.

"Tell me about it, dear," she said, almost in a protecting tone; it was one she always used to her mother, as if she were some poor pet that she was shielding and caressing.

"It?" said her mother, half-startled. "There is nothing to tell, Joyce. I am a very happy woman, and I married your father when I was eighteen, and I don't know what to tell."

Ah, but he was not 'le jeune trouba dour qui chante et fait la guerre,'" said Joyce persistingly. "He had amiable manners, and was not cross and disagreeable all day long. I should have gone mad before a year was over. I know I

should."

"Joyce! Joyce! I can't let you say such things. You must never speak like that to me again." And pour Mrs. Aylmer rose horrified, and rustled herself out of the room to take the safer shelter under

Cotterville. He is leaving Oxford, and he is on his way to join his father in Scotland, and he proposes to come here for a day or two on Wednesday on his way up. Confound his impertinence! I don't want him. No time to put him off either. Just like people. No consideration whatever!"

"But you invited him, father," Joyce interrupted.

"Take me up before I am down, Joyce. That's right, always contradict your father; you would not be your mother's child if you did not. I beg to be allowed to say I did not invite him," thumping his hand on the table till all the cups and saucers rattled as if they also lived in fear and trembling of the master and his temper. "I simply said to his father I should be glad to see the young man some day when he was near here. That is a very different thing from expressing a wish that he should come here now. If it had been winter I should have mounted him and shown what real hunting is. A poor sawney lad from the south would rather open his eyes, I expect, at one of our runs."

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"Well, we will amuse him the best way we can," said Mrs. Aylmer.

"Yes, you women must see to that. I can't go bothering about all day after him. I am far too busy," said the squire, as he got up and left the room.

I don't think any young girl could have been in a greater flutter of excitement than Joyce was before this wonderful stranger appeared. A thousand times in the day she wondered what he would be like. Would he ever speak to her? or would he, like most of their guests, almost ignore her? He must of course be very nice to her mother, but he need not pay too much attention to her cousin Eliza; in fact, he might sometimes overlook her, and perhaps he might like music; but this was too much to hope.

With this last thought in his head he made himself so much at home, that before an hour was over they all felt they had known him all their lives. The squire went to his armchair, where very soon loud snores were heard from behind the upheld Times. Mrs. Aylmer laid aside the bit of worsted work, that was only brought out when visitors were present. Joyce found herself lighting the candles in the drawing-room ready for the music; only Miss Eliza preserved her frigid, onyour-guard manner.

"That young man is sent to look at Joyce," she began, as soon as Henry Cotterville left the room.

"Oh, no, I am sure he is not," Mrs. Aylmer said.

"Stuff and nonsense!

Don't tell me. I am not a fool. I know men well enough. They are always after something, and this young man is after Joyce's money. Jane always was a designing woman, and she has sent him."

"Don't say so before Robert, even if you think it. He would be so angry, he would order him out of the house at once," Mrs. Aylmer whispered.

When Henry Cotterville really appeared, he was like no hero in Joyce's favorite books; he was only a simple, nice young man with a good-natured face, which looked as if he could not say no to any one, and as if he must be "all-hail-fellowwell-met" to everybody in the world. It was impossible not to like him, he was so genial to all. He was not over-wise or briliant, but he had a great stock of little Miss Eliza kept a dignified silence, but kindly words and deeds which often go a her knitting-needles gave the ominous little great deal farther than cleverer ones. click they always did whenever she conNeither was he fair, as Joyce had imag-sidered people were making fools of themined him, but dark brown, and rather short. In fact, I must confess she was rather disappointed in him; for she measured him by the Aylmer standard, who judged all race according to their own image: tall, slight, fair hair, blue eyes, and a high Grecian nose. "These showed blood," the squire would remark, stroking his own Jewish-looking nose.

All Joyce's prejudice melted when, the first evening, dinner being over, Henry Cotterville came across to her and asked her if she sang.

"Oh, yes," she said, and then looked to where her father was standing, "but he does not like music."

"Oh, ho! there is the tartar. Guessed as much by those steel-blue eyes," thought Henry Cotterville; and then he said aloud, "We will wait till he goes to sleep I suppose he does; most elderly people do and then we could go and sing.' "What a pretty girl she is!" he went on with his thoughts. "I wonder my mother never mentioned her. I wonder if this place goes to her. There is no son. It would be a nice property to have. I shouldn't object to it. It would make a very comfortable home for a poor younge, fellow like me."

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'Perhaps I had better go and sit in the drawing-room if you think so, Eliza," said Mrs. Aylmer; "but I don't think he means anything, and Joyce is so very young."

"You were only a year older when you married, and I myself had several offers before I was her age." And so meek Mrs. Aylmer went, and she only found, as she expected, the son of that very designing woman quietly turning over a musicbook on the table, while Joyce, sitting at the piano, was playing some airs out of her head.

"Hulloh! what have you got here? Duets, by Jove! that is jolly! Now look here, Miss Aylmer, we must try themOh, bother! they are all Italian. Why, what a learned young lady you must be! Pray, who do you sing duets with here? Does your aunt -no, cousin - no - who is she? She looks as if once upon a time she had swallowed a whole canful of vinegar, and had not got over it yet. She does not sing, does she?"

Joyce laughed at this weak little joke as if it were the finest in the world, and she brightened up and laughed again. Her laugh was the one thing that spoilt her;

it was so unlike herself, it was so hard and | men at Oxford, and come home. I have loud. Henry Cotterville looked up rather a charming party for the end of this month, astonished, but the next moment she was and some people coming I particularly looking so pretty, the laugh went entirely wish you to meet. My love to the Aylout of his head. mers. Your affectionate mother,