discouraged by this demonstration. She endeavoured to argue with him; and ventured to hint that probably he might find everything turning out for the very best when he came to speak with Minola.

"You think so?" he asked, with a laugh. "Very well, Mary, I will go; it may as well be got done with once for all. Come, my sister, let us go. Are you to be present at the interview, Mary ?"

"No, Herbert; oh, no! She wants to speak to you alone first. But I dare say I shall know some time."

"I dare say you will; I only wonder you have not known it already. Tell me, Mary; don't you think one had best tell the truth when it is certain that he must be found out if he tells a lie?"

"Oh, Herbert, what a question!"

"You think it very absurd, don't you? Well, Mary, there is some sense in it, too. You may be sure I shall answer Miss Grey's question very truthfully to-day.”

CHAPTER XXXII.

LEFT LONELY.

THAT was a time of strange and painful emotion during which Minola waited for the coming of Blanchet and his sister. There were moments when she would have given all the world to be able to recall what she had said and done. There were even moments of agonising reaction, when she felt inclined to descend the stairs softly, and open the door, and go into the street, and disappear for evermore somehow from the sight of all who knew her. Once or twice she covered her face with her hands as if she felt an intolerable shame. Once or twice she burst into tears. She was only sustained by the thought that the extraordinary step she had resolved on would secure poor Lucy's happiness, and that it would make both Mary Blanchet and her brother very happy. Other way to make her wretched failure of a life useful to any human creature she saw none. She got up and walked about the room like some half wild and caged creature, whose limitations sometimes become almost unbearable. She was terrified at the fate she had brought upon herself; she looked back with miserable regret to the few free and happy days she had spent when she first came to London. "Let no wretched woman ever try to be independent!" she cried out in her bitterness.

What a long time they were in coming! for now she began to wish that the interview were over, and anything resolved upon that

could not be undone. Trifling little things came into her mind, and perplexed and distressed her. If, for instance, Mary Blanchet should remain in the room! "If she is there I shall not be able to say out what I want to say," Minola thought; "and if she wishes to remain, will she think it strange and wrong if I ask her not to stay? If it is all settled, how shall I have to behave to him? Will he understand that I am not going to play any love part? If he comes, and I tel him all this, and he is content, then will he kiss me, and must I seem willing to be kissed? Will he accept me at all on such terms?” A wild gleam of hope lit up within her for a moment, and then died "Oh, yes, he will accept me-he does not care!" she said: and she trembled with pain and shame at the strange humiliation she had brought upon herself. She will never forget the agony of that hour while she waited there alone.

out.

At length they are come. She heard the voice of Mary apparently reasoning with Blanchet. Then one point of perplexity was presently settled for her, because the door opened and Mr. Blanchet came in, and he was alone. Minola heard the soft patter of Mary's receding feet. Then a sudden revulsion took place in her feelings, and she wished that Mary had come in with her brother. It was too late now, however, to think of that, for Blanchet was in the room unaccompanied, and came towards her.

Minola was greatly surprised and even shocked at the appearance of Blanchet. She would have been still more pained if she could have persuaded herself that his present aspect and manner were the result of his love, and that she was to blame for having brought him to this pass. But there was something sullen and almost fierce about him which did not seem to her inexperienced eyes to speak merely of the pangs of misprized love. He looked like a man who has come to meet an accusation and is determined to brazen it out. His very manner of saluting her had in it something of defiance which was strangely unlike his old ways of poetic devotion, when he used to place himself, metaphorically at least, at her feet, and look up to her as his patroness and saint.

Perhaps Minola now wished she had not sent for him. Perhaps her mind misgave her as to her purpose of self-sacrifice. Perhaps she would gladly have had Mary Blanchet or anyone else in the room, to bear her company.

She had sent for Mr. Blanchet, however, and she had to receive him becomingly. It seemed marvellous to her now how she ever could have invited him with the intention of offering herself to him to be his wife. Taking her courage, as the French phrase has

it, in her two hands, she went to meet Herbert with a friendly greeting.

To her surprise Blanchet did not take her hand when she offered it, but made a bow, and placed himself at some distance from her, standing near the chimney-piece.

I know why you have sent for me, Miss Grey," he said, " and I had better not take your hand until we understand one another. I am told by Mary that you wish to ask me a question. Well, let me save you trouble and myself too. I answer the question at once. I say yes yes!"

Then the poet threw back his dark hair, and stood as one who cares not now what is to follow. If he had ever been a reader or a stage-struck admirer of Shakespeare, one might have supposed that the attitude and look were got up after Othello, when he says, "Twas I that killed her," and is thenceforth prepared for the worst.

This was a mystery to Minola. It seemed absolutely impossible that he could have learned or guessed at the nature of the question she had meant to put to him. It had only been settled in her own mind the evening before, and was never whispered, even to the reeds along the canal. Nor even if he had known it by supernatural inspiration did his tone and manner seem appropriate to the occasion, and to the answer he had given.

"I don't understand you, Mr. Blanchet, and you can't, I think, have any idea of the reason why I asked you to come and see me."

"Yes, yes; I know it very well-only too well."

"Then you must tell me what it is; for, really, Mr. Blanchet, it you know it I don't."

Minola seated herself quietly on a little sofa, and waited for him to explain all this. His theatrical ways were so absurd and offensive in her eyes that they impelled her to fall back upon a reserved and distant demeanour. He could hardly have gone mad, she thought; and in any case she now only wished to be well out of the whole affair. Minola could not believe that real emotion and stage-play could go together in the one part in private life, and she judged Blanchet wrongly for this reason. There are people in whom the instinct of the theatrical is as strong as the common instinct of selfpreservation. Blanchet was as much in earnest now and as near to actual despair as he could be in this life.

"Oh, yes, I know!" he said, "and I may as well save you all trouble in reproaching me. You need not tell me you despise me, Miss Grey; you can't despise me more than I despise myself. You

need not tell me I have been ungrateful; I know that there never was a more ungrateful wretch on earth. If you could care for any thanks from me or believe in their sincerity, I would thank you for one thing-for not telling poor Mary anything about this. It was like your magnanimous nature to do this. She will come

to know of it some time, I suppose; but not from you-not from you."

Minola began to be really alarmed and shocked. This was no play-acting. His eyes were burning with wild emotion. He was in thorough earnest. Her idea was that he must have committed some crime and got it into his head that she knew of it. She got up and went kindly over to him. He shrank away.

"We are talking at cross-purposes, Mr. Blanchet; and I am afraid you are going to tell me something I ought not to know. You must not say any more—at least, without thinking of what you are saying. I have no reproach to make against you, Mr. Blanchet; what could I have? If you have done anything that deserves all the reproach you are giving to yourself, I don't know anything of it-and indeed I don't believe it."

"You don't know; you really don't know?" and his eyes lighted up with a momentary ray of surprise and hope. Then he became despairing again. "You are sure to know before long; and I may as well tell you myself."

"No, no, Mr. Blanchet, I don't want to know; I have no right to know. Pray don't say any more-let us ask Mary to come in." He put his hand upon her arm and stayed her.

"No, no, you must hear it all now; we had better have an end to it. It concerns you, Miss Grey, and you have a right to know of it. 'Twas I who saw you and Heron in St. James's Park; it was I who told Lucy Money, and made you seem a treacherous friend to her; 'twas I who did mischief that I suppose can never be set right, and did it all to the only woman in the world who ever was really kind to me. Yes-what do you think of me now?"

Minola felt herself growing giddy and sick as he talked on in his wild way. Little as she understood of what he was saying, yet she knew enough to make her feel as if the ground reeled beneath her. It was enough that Victor and she had been seen and watched and misunderstood by somebody, and that all her efforts to make things happy for Lucy were in vain. For the moment she did not think of herself. She knew that there was nothing she had done to be ashamed of, or which two simple words to Lucy would not explain. But when that explanation once began, where was it to stop? For