"That is of no consequence. He has seen you."

"I wonder where. Do you really suppose that Mr. Marlboro' would give Vane to me?"

"Miss Éloise, I will see what I can do about it first."

"How kind you are! Thank you!" And Éloise was about to go.

"One moment, if you please," said the other.

And Mr. St. George remained in meditation. When he spoke, it was not in too assured a tone.

"I am quite aware," said he, "that you consider me in the light of an enemy. Perhaps it is a magnanimity that would be pleasant to you, should you in turn grant that enemy a favor."

"I should like to be able to serve you, Sir."

66

Well, then, I spoke very unwisely a few moments since,-promise me now, that, if Hazel and Vane do not marry till Doomsday, you will not ask Marlboro' for the gift. It places you, an unprotected girl, too much under the weather with such a man as Marlboro'. You promise me?"

And he rose opposite her, smiling and gazing.

"A whole promise is rash," said Eloise, laughing. "Half a one I give you."

"It is for yourself,” said Mr. St. George, grimly; and he turned abruptly away, because he knew he lied, and was afraid lest she would know it too.

It was two or three weeks after this, that Mr. St. George, returning one chilly night from some journey, found Mrs. Arles asleep in her chair, a fire upon the hearth, and Éloise sitting on the floor before it with her box and brushes, essaying to catch the shifting play of color opposite her, and paint there one of the great cloven tongues of fire that went soaring up the chimney.

"In pursuit of an ignis-fatuus?" asked he, stooping over her an instant, and suddenly snatching himself erect, as she looked up with a certain sweetness in her smile, and pushed back the drooping tress,

It would doubtless have relieved Mr. St. George of much annoyance and perplexity, if Eloise would have assumed her old place in welcoming the guests; but that was not set down in her part, and Eloise rightly felt that it would be a preposterous thing for her to do. And though, when she heard their voices in the hall, she longed just to open the door and give one glance at Laura Murray sweeping by, or draw Lottie Humphreys in through the crack and indulge in one quick squeeze, she heroically bent herself upon the debit and credit beneath her eye, and tried to forget all about it, -succeeding only in remembering who had lived and who had died since the last time that hall had rung with their voices.

It was past noon when Éloise, having finished her ask, and having remained for a long time with her arms upon the desk and her hands upon her eyes, suddenly glanced up and saw a gentleman entering the cabinet, where no gentleman but one was ever allowed to enter. He was in search of a book; and scanning the shelves, his eye fell on her.

He hesitated for a single atom of time, then stepped rapidly forward, and said,

"Miss Changarnier, I am quite sure." "Allow me," said quickly another voice at his shoulder, "to present to Miss Changarnier Mr. Marlboro'." For Mr. St. George had entered just in time.

Mr. Marlboro' was a slight man, hardly to be called tall. He wore black, of course, the coat fastened on the breast and letting out just a glimpse of ruffled linen and glancing jewel below, while the lofty brow, set in its fair curling hair, and the peaked beard curling and waving about the throat, gave him the appearance of a Vandyck stepped from the frame. He had the further peculiarity of eyes, dark hazel eyes, that would have glowed like fever, if they were not perpetually wrapped in dream. There was a certain air of careful breeding about him, different from Earl St. George Erne's

high-bred bearing, inasmuch as he insisted upon his pedigree and St. George forgot his. Too fiery a Southerner to seek the advantages of Northern colleges, he had educated himself in England, and had contracted while at Oxford the habit of eating opium. Returning home at his majority, and remaining long enough to establish his own ideas, which were peculiarly despotic, upon his property, through many subsequent travels, tasting in each an experience of all the folly and madness the great capitals of the world afford, through all his life, indeed, this habit was the only thing Marlboro' had not mastered. One other thing, albeit, there was, of which Marlboro' was the slave, and that was the Marlboro' temper.

Éloise returned his salutation cordially, and with a certain naughty pleasure, since Mr. St. George was looking on, and since that person, constituting himself her grim guardian, had in a manner warned her of the other. Then she displayed her pretty little ink-stained hands, and ran away.

Mr. Marlboro' looked after her, and then turned to survey St. George.

"Who would not be the Abélard to such an Éloise?" he said.

There was no answer. St. George was filling a pipe, and whistling the while a melancholy old tune.

"I'll tell you what, St. George ".

Here he paused, and thrummed on the book in time to the tune.

"You were about to impart some information ? "

"Has your little nun taken the black veil ? "

"It is no nun of my shriving."

"Are you King Ahasuerus himself, to have lived so long in the house with Miss Changarnier, may I ask, and to have thrown no handkerchief?"

thrones, too. I am afraid we are neither of us very well up in our Biblical history. She is the Grand Unapproachable." "Tant mieux. My way is all the clearer."

"Your way to what?" "To the altar!"

Yes, you should have married long ago, Marlboro'," said Mr. St. George, the pipe being lighted, the face looming out of azure wreaths, and the heels taking an altitude.

"I came home," said Marlboro', "to marry Eloise Changarnier."

said Éloise, turning with her smile, as radiant for Lottie as for Marlboro'.

"St. George," said Marlboro', with a beaming face bent over his shoulder, as he took Éloise out to dinner, "my intention was the earlier; it will succeed!"

"As being the eldest born and heir to the succession. Does the good general expose his campaign?"

"There we are quits. It is precisely as a good general that I exposed it." "But did the Levites unveil the sacred ark?" said Mr. St. George, severely. "We are talking freemasonry, Miss

"You!"

Mr. Marlboro's eyes glistened like a topaz in the sun; but just then a new guest arriving demanded Mr. St. George's attention.

Meantime Éloise had found a feminine conclave assembled in her room, all having prepared their own toilets, and ready 'to inspect the preparation of hers; and as the work proceeded, Lottie Humphreys added herself to the group, in grand tenue, and pushed Hazel aside, that she might bind up Eloise's already braided hair, and indulge herself in the interim with sundry fervent ejaculations.

"Isn't he splendid?" whispered Lottie, while Laura compared bracelets with Emma Houghton. "Oh, there, is n't he splendid? It's like the king coming down from his throne, when he speaks to you; it puts my heart in a flutter. How do you dare ask him to pass the butter? Now just tell me. Are you engaged to him? Tell me truly, only shake your head, yes or no. No? I don't believe a word you say. Mean to be? Then, I declare Suppose now, only just suppose, suppose he'd look at me?"

Oh, what a silly little goose you are, Lottie Humphreys! And you 've put geraniums in my hair, when I meant to wear those beautiful blue poisonbells!"

"I never saw any one so dark as you are wear so much blue."

"But it's becoming to me, is n't it?"

moved on.

Whether she would or not, Eloise found herself in exactly the same position in the house as before her adopted father's death, partly because almost all the company, being old friends, recognized no difference, partly because Mr. St. George silently chose it should be so. She soon forgot herself entirely in the pleasure of it, and was unconsciously, even towards Mr. St. George, so sweet and genial, so blithe and bewitching, that his scanning glance would suddenly have to fall, since an expression, he felt, entered it that he dared not have her see. There was always a certain disarray about the costume of Éloise; one tress of her hair was always drooping too low, or one thrust back behind the beautiful temple and tiny ear, or a bracelet was half undone, or a mantle dropping off, - trifles that only gave one the desire to help her; she constantly wore, too, a scarf or shawl, or something of the kind, and the drapery lent her a kind of tender womanliness, which only such things do; then, too, she garnished her hair with flowers always half falling away, somewhat faded with the warmth, and emitting strong, rich fragrances in dying. When she laughed, and the brilliant little teeth sparkled a contrast with the dark smooth skin, when she thought, and her eyes glowed like tear-washed stars, Mr. St. George was wont to turn abruptly away

from the vision, unwilling to be so controlled. But of that Éloise never dreamed.

As for Marlboro', on the other hand, he was the moth in the candle. Of Mr. Marlboro's devotion Éloise was quite aware,—and whereas, playing with it the least bit in the world, she had at first enjoyed it, it grew to irk her sadly; she used to beg her friends, in all manner of pretty ways, to take him off her hands, and would resort from her own rooms to theirs, assisting at their awful rites, and endeavoring to get them up as charmingly as possible, that they might lure away her trouble. It was in vain that Marlboro' tried to reopen the subject of their mute warfare with St. George. St. George would not condescend, neither would he sully Éloise's name by bandying it about with another lover. If Marlboro' begged him to toss up for chances, St. George answered that he never threw up a chance; when he went further and offered to stake success or loss, St. George told him he had cast his last die; when he would have spoken her name to him directly, St. George withered him with flamy eyes, and let his manner become too rigid for one to dare more with him. But the ladies had already caught the spirit of the thing, and made little situations of it among themselves. Then when St. George became impregnable to his attacks, Marlboro' pulled his blonde moustache savagely, and grew sullen, and fortunately Eloise did not try to dispel the cloud. Nevertheless, Marlboro' fancied that he perceived victory hovering nearer to St. George than himself, and a rivalry begun in good-humor was likely to take a different cast. In his pique, Marlboro' bade his host farewell, and returned to Blue Bluffs; but it was idle riding, for every day found him again at The Rim, like the old riddle,—

"All saddled, all bridled, all fit for a fight," and constant as the magnet to its poles.

It was still the steps of Éloise that Marlboro' haunted. Yesterday, he brought songs to teach her, and among them the chant to which long ago they had once

listened together in the old Norman cathedral; to-morrow, he would show her a singular deposit on the beach, of rare silvery shells underflushed with rose, kept there over a tide for her eyes; today, he treated her to politics condensed into a single phrase whose essence told all his philosophy: "The great error in government," he said, "is also inversely the great want in marriage: in government, individuality should be supreme; in marriage, lost. In government, this error is a triple-headed monster: centralization, consolidation, union."

Mr. St. George heard him, and paused a moment before them, one evening, as Marlboro' thus harangued Eloise.

"Consolidation? Centralization?" said he. "The very things we all oppose." "Nullification is a good solvent."

66

A ghost that is laid. There's a redder phantom than that on the horizon, man!"

"What are you talking about, politics or marriage?"

"God forbid that I should soil a lady's ears with the first!" said Mr. St. George, bowing to Éloise; "and as to the last, I'll none of it!"

And after Mr. Marlboro' had gone that night, as Éloise was about to ascend to her own rooms, Mr. St. George came along again, and, lightly taking the candle, held up the tiny flame before her face.

"What has that contrabandista been

saying to you?" demanded Mr. St. George.

Éloise looked ignorantly up.

"Gilding hell? Do not believe him! Never believe anything any one says, when you know he is in love with you! Slavery is a curse! a curse that we inherit for the sins of those drunken Cavaliers, our forefathers! Let us make the best of it!"

"Ah, Mr. St. George," said she, gayly, "this from you, for whom the disciples claim Calhoun's mantle? For what, then, do you contend?"

"For the right of being a free man myself! for the right of enduring the

dictation of no man in Maine or Louisiana! for the right to do as I have the mind!" exclaimed Mr. St. George, in a ponderous and suppressed under - voice that rang through her head half-way up-stairs.

Long before, Mr. St. George had very courteously begged Éloise to take a vacation during the stay of their friends, but she had so peremptorily and utterly refused to do so that it ended by his spending the long morning with her in the cabinet, either over certain neglected arrears, or while she wrote letters under his royal dictation, and Hazel sewed a laborious seam between them, as always. Here, at length, after sufficient tantalization by its means, Marlboro' venturously intruded himself every day. Too familiar for interruption, he took another seat, and watched her swift hand's graceful progress. If her pen delayed, she found another awaiting her,

her posture wearied, a footstool was rolled towards her feet,-her side cramped, behold, a cushion, — she looked for fresh paper, it fell before her: all somewhat slavish service, and which Hazel could have rendered as well. Used to slaves, would she have preferred a master? Whether Miss Changarnier relished these abject kindnesses better than Mr. St. George's imperious exactions was precisely the thing that puzzled the two gentlemen.

Meanwhile, during all this gay season, if Éloise had thought of once looking about her, which she never did, she would have seen, that, in whatever group she was, there, too, was Mr. St. George,— that, if they rode three abreast down the great park-avenues, though she laughed with Evan Murray, it was to Mr. St. George's horse that her bridle was secured, and that, when she sang, it was St. George who jested and smiled and lightly talked the while, not that her music was not sweet, but that its spell was too strong for him to endure beneath his mask. Yet Éloise drew no deductions; if at first she noticed that it was he who laid the shawl on her shoulders,

if she remembered, that, when he fastened her dropping bracelet, biting his lip and looking down, he held the wrist an instant with a clasp that left its whitened pressure there, she remembered, too, that he never spoke to her, were it avoidable, that he failed in small politenesses of the footstool or the fan, and that, if once he had looked at her in an instant's intentness of singular expression, and let a smile well up and flood his eyes and lips and face, in a heart-beat it had faded, and he was standing with folded arms and looking sternly away beyond her, while she caught herself still sitting there and bending forward and smiling up at him like a flower beneath the sun;—to atone for her remissness, she was frowning and cool and curt to Earl St. George for days.

It was about this time, that, one night, when Hazel passed the tea, Éloise's eye, wandering a moment, suddenly woke from a little apathy and observed that there was no widow's cap on Mrs. Arles's hair, that it had refined away through various shades of lace till at last even the delicate cobweb on the back of the head was gone and the glossy locks lay bare, that the sables had become simply black gauze over a steely shine of silk, that the little Andalusian foot lay relieved on a white embroidered cushion, that its owner was glancing up and smiling at a gentleman who bent above her, and that that gentleman was Mr. St. George. When this change had taken place, and whether it had been abrupt or gradual, her careless eye could not tell; and, forgetting her own part momentarily in order to take in the whole of the drama in which they were all acting, Éloise spilled her tea and made some work for Hazel. As the girl rectified her mishap, it flashed on Éloise that she had done nothing more about her suit; she noticed, too, how pale Hazel was, and how subdued and still in all her movements; she remembered that probably Vane had found it impossible to see her and to elude his ever-present master; and she