"You must see the rest of the house," she cries, beginning to talk rapidly and rather loudly, and absolutely ignoring the question addressed to her; "you must see my room; your own room-yours looks upon the tennis-ground. Have you brought your racquet and your shoes? we must have some tennis!"

Sarah does not press the subject so obviously avoided, but as she follows her sister upstairs she repeatedly shakes her head.

"This is my room," says Belinda, as they reach the landing, throwing open doors as she speaks. "This is-his" (with a slight hesitation before the pronoun, that shows that only the dread of a repetition of her sister's ridicule has kept her from designating her husband by the formal style and title which she habitually employs towards him); "and this! (not opening, but simply indicating a third door), “this is old Mrs. Forth's."

"Oh, do take me in! do introduce me !" cries Sarah eagerly; "it has been the

dream of my life to see his mother! You will not mind my saying so, but there is something so humorous in his having a mother."

"It would be no use," replies Belinda, not offering to comply with this request; "she would probably mistake you for her son."

Well, we have a look of each other," cries Sarah delightedly; "but is she as bad as that?" arching her eyebrows till they almost meet, and are lost in her hair.

Belinda nods in acquiescence,

"And does she never stop asking questions ?"

"Never."

"And do you always answer them ?” "Poor old woman! why not? if I were not answering hers I should only be answering some one else's."

There is such a weary, devil-may-carishness in her tone, that again her sister's eyes flash investigatingly upon her; but this time Belinda has been too quick for her,

and, avoiding their scrutiny, is doing the honours of a fourth room.

And this is yours," she says, a smile such as the one with which she had welcomed her sister sweetening and gentling the now habitual sullenness of her face; "it smells good, does not it?"

Why, you have given me all your flowers!" cries Sarah, burying her face in a bowl of freshly picked narcissus. "I noticed that there was scarcely one in the drawing-room."

"Mr. Forth dislikes the smell of flowers," replies Belinda. She says it in a tame level voice; not as making a complaint, but simply as stating a fact.

"He seems to have a good many dislikes," says Sarah drily.

Belinda lets the remark fall

upon silence.

INNER has been early, and is over. The sisters stand, each

cooling a fiery cheek against the woodwork of the drawing-room window, while the latest blackbird is singing his version of "Glory to Thee, my God, this night," and the laburnum's lithe bunches hang yellow against almost as yellow a sun

set.

"Does he never open a window?" asks Sarah, greedily thrusting out her head into the cool greenness of the very respectably grown clematis and jessamine that climb the house-wall.

"Never!"

off

my chair in a faint regularly every day, at dinner, until he did."

"You would fall off your chair in a faint every day until the Day of Judgment, in that case," replies Belinda, with stony quiet.

"But for the stewpan atmosphere," continues Sarah, heaving her white chest in a deep and vigorous inhalation, "it really did not go off so badly; at first there seemed a trifling awkwardness—I think, Punchy, that you would have done as well on the whole to remain at your town house-but my fine tact soon smoothed it over."

"You did not call him 'James,' however," replies Belinda, with a short sarcastic laugh.

"Well, no," replies Sarah a little blankly, and for once in her life making no attempt at repartee or explanation. "I did not."' But the next moment- "How soon do we go?" cries she joyously. "St. Ursula's is the largest college in Oxbridge, is it not? Will all Oxbridge be there to meet the Duke? But I suppose you are all much