"I distrust, and have cause for distrusting, professions of affection," he answers drily.

A certain flavour of rancour in his tone tells his hearer that he is thinking of her sister, and a trivial passing wonder crosses her mind as to how far Sarah had carried her nefarious simulation of an unlikely passion. Never has it seemed so unlikely

as at this moment.

'All that I ask, all that I wish to obtain, is an intelligent, sympathetic companion." Sympathetic!" she repeats reflectively. "I am not sympathetic; I should be deceiving you if I were to let you suppose that I am. No! let us be sure that we understand each other; I have as little sympathy to give as I have-love!" Again that slight hesitation.

Possibly!" he answers, with a stiff impatience, looking rather annoyed at her opposition; "on my side, I think it right to tell you of what you may perhaps be already aware, that the press of my occupations and the condition of health forbid my

my

indulging in many amusements enjoyed by other persons, but from which I shall be compelled to require you, as well as myself, to abstain."

"I do not want amusements!" replies Belinda gloomily; "amusements do not amuse me. I want occupation; can you give me plenty of that?"

His face unbends with a slight smile.

"I think I can promise you that in the life you will share with me, you will find no lack of that. My mother

"Your mother!" repeats Belinda brusquely; "she is still alive then ?”

"She is still spared to me," replies he piously; but a tone in his voice, striking upon her fine ear, tells her that he would not have quarrelled with the will of Heaven, had he not been so successful in keeping awhile "one parent from the skies."

"She must be very old," says Belinda thoughtfully, not reflecting on the unflattering inference to be drawn from this remark.

He assents: "She is somewhat advanced

in years."

Belinda is silent for a moment or two. Her eyes are still vacantly fastened on the Hobbema; and a vague, absent wish to be walking with that man along that quiet road to that red village is playing about the surface of her preoccupied mind.

"Is she――" she begins, and then breaks off.

Across her memory have darted various facts communicated by Sarah about her future mother-in-law; facts of a not altogether satisfactory complexion; something about her being out of her mind, and never ceasing asking questions.

"Is sheIt is so difficult to word it civilly; "doting," "imbecile," "off her head"-she tries them all, but none sounds polite enough. "Is she" (she has it at last) "in full possession of her faculties?" He hesitates a moment.

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'She is somewhat deaf."

"Is her sight good?"

"I regret to say that it is almost gone."

"But she keeps her faculties? her mind?" pursues Belinda persistently.

"Her intellect is not what it was!" he answers, so shortly that Belinda feels that it is impossible to pursue her catechism further.

And, indeed, why should she? Has not the tone of his answers sufficiently proved to her that, for once in her life, Sarah had spoken unvarnished truth.

My mother's bodily health is excellent," he continues presently; "I only wish that my own constitution were half as vigorous as hers; but her infirmities are such as to need a great deal of loving care; more,” with a sigh, "than I am able to spare from my own avocations!"

Belinda is silent, drawing the obvious but not particularly welcome inference that the loving care is henceforth to be given by her.

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'I am not naturally fond of old people," she says slowly. "I have been very little thrown with them; the only old person whom I know intimately, granny, is a great

deal younger in herself than I am. I will be as kind as I can to your mother; but that is not the sort of occupation I meant. I meant," turning her restless large look away from the restful picture to his face, at which she has hitherto hardly glanced"I meant something that would fill the mind—some hard study!"

There is nothing that I am aware of to prevent your pursuing any line of study you may choose to select," he answers rather pettishly.

"And you think that the taste—the zest for it will certainly come―certainly ?" pursues she eagerly. "Did you ever know a case of its failing? I must not deceive you; it has not come to me yet; I take no pleasure in learning; I think that I have as little real aptitude for study as" (Sarah, she is going to say, but stops in time)—“ as the veriest dunce. But you think that I shall succeed if I persevere, do not you ?" (plying him both with her feverish questions, and with the plaintive importunity of her

eyes); "that perseverance must bring suc