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 tell 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 out. "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. 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

the moment she did not even think of the degradation to herself in having her movements watched, and reported, and misrepresented; or of the shameful ingratitude of Blanchet, whom, an hour ago, she almost looked upon as her destined husband.

Blanchet now stood leaning both his elbows on the chimneypiece, his head turned away from her.

"Mr. Blanchet," Minola said quietly, "you say you have done me some great wrong. There is just one favour you can do me now, and that is, to tell me in the simplest words what you saw, and what you said of it, and why you came to say it."

She stood and waited, with a manner seemingly of the most perfect composure. Within her breast all was pain, shame, anger, and distraction. But she contrived to keep an air of entire self-restraint and calmness. It appeared to her that the mere dignity of womanhood exacted from her that much of self-control at least.

Then Blanchet told his story. It was a little incoherent here and there, and dashed with theatric expressions of passion and despair. But its general purpose was only too clear. He was going to call on Mrs. Money that unhappy day, and as he was crossing the park he saw Victor Heron seated, and apparently waiting for some one. The poet confessed that, prompted by some demon of jealousy and suspicion, he watched, and he saw Minola come up, and he saw them meet and saw them walk together. Then, still and further inspired by the demon on whom he was disposed to throw so much responsibility, he hastened to Mrs. Money's house; he learned that Heron had left a full hour before Minola; he even found out that they had parted formally from each other; and then he told Lucy for her private information that he had just seen them together in the park, an hour after Heron had left Lucy declaring that he must hasten to the House of Commons.

Minola heard all this, bending her head slightly every now and then to signify that she understood his meaning. At the end she quietly asked what Lucy had said to the story he told her.

She looked very pale, Blanchet said; but she only begged of him not to say anything to her mother, and then she went away. But he saw too well, he added, that she was struck to the heart by what she had heard. Then first, when his rage of jealousy and madness had passed away, he began to understand the full measure of his shame. When Minola sent for him-to ask him a question, as Mary had told him he felt sure it was to put the question of guilty or not guilty. He might as well plead guilty at once. It must all come out. There must be explanations, and he must stand confessed. That did not

trouble him now, he said. His one only thought was that Minola had been his best friend in all the world, and that he had betrayed her.

Minola listened to these explanations with a heart in which scorn and anger were longing for utterance, but with serene and imperturbable composure. Once again she thought to herself, "Yes, it is truewomen are born hypocrites ;" and she thought, too, "I am glad of it just now."

66

Things are not quite so bad as your excited conscience would make them out, I hope, Mr. Blanchet," she said, with a half smile of contempt. "It was not well done of you to play such a part, nor exactly what I should have expected; but I hope it will prove that you have not done much harm to anyone-except to your own feelings and conscience, of course. I met Mr. Heron by the merest chance that day in the park, and I never met him there or anywhere else except by chance. That can be explained in two words if Miss Money thinks any explanation necessary. She will believe anything I tell her or that Mr. Heron tells her."

Blanchet shook his head.

"You think she will not believe him or me?" Minola asked, with quiet contempt. "Oh, yes, Mr. Blanchet, you are mistaken!"

"I didn't mean to doubt that," the poet said, with downcast head. To do him justice he had not the least doubt that either Minola or Heron would tell the truth; his doubt was whether the full acknowledgment would be entirely satisfactory to Lucy Money; and Minola guessed his meaning.

“That, at any rate, can be left to Miss Money's own judgment, Mr. Blanchet. I was only anxious to assure you that you have not after all done so much harm as you seemed to fear just now."

She looked very cold and cruel. As he turned his eyes to hers he caught no light of ancient kindness or pity in them; only a cold and merciless dislike and contempt. He cast one abject, penitent glance at her, a glance that seemed to implore for some merciful consideration.

"You don't even reproach me," he said, appealing to her with outstretched hands of sudden passion and despair.

"Oh, no! I have no right to complain of anything you may choose to say. You did see me in the park with Mr. Heron; it is quite true. You have said nothing untrue of me; what right have I to complain ?"

Then she made a slight, hardly perceptible movement-one of those movements which it comes by nature to even the least affected