calling imperatively peevish from the house. A week! One poor week! week! What can one week matter? manner has suddenly changed. Only a Her "It is Mr. Forth!" she says hurriedly. "I called you back," reddening like the western cloud-fleeces, and throwing a guilty look over her shoulder, "to ask you whether, if you were not going to leave Oxbridge to-morrow, you-you would join our party on the water ?" "Lieb' Liebchen, leg's Händchen auf's Herze mein; "Er hämmert und klopfet bei Tag und bei Nacht, Er hat mich schon längst um den Schlaf gebracht; Ach, sputet euch, Meister Zimmermann, Damit ich balde schlafen kann." nobly fair. the case. N other climes, a sunset of suave sublimity usually means that it will be followed by a sunrise as But in our free isle this is not Even the weather will submit to no tyranny, but follows its own wild and freakish will. You may close your eyes upon a distant steady heaven of molten copper and speckless blue; and open them VOL. II. 37 upon a soaked-blanket sky, half an inch above your head. During the many wakeful patches that vary the sameness of her night, Belinda has full time to repent of her evening's doings; but not once does it occur to her that the weather may possibly intervene to prohibit the excursion. Among all her half-sincere plans for evading the expedition, the alternative of a wet day has not once suggested itself; and when the morn comes, dim and sad, the poignancy of her disappointment at sight of the dripping bushes and filled flower-cups shows her how much of veracity there was in her projects of abstinence. Now she will have to endure the pang of renunciation, without having enjoyed the merit of self-conquest. And yet it is a lovely rain, not harshly driving, nor rudely strewing the earth with a ravin of torn-off petals; but gently stealing down from the cloud-roof overhead, softly thrusting itself between the blossom-lips, feeding the juicy leaves, healthful, wealthful, beneficent, yet execrated by two young It is eyes that are morosely watching it. execrated by two old ones also. The Professor tentatively throws out an idea as to the advisability of telegraphing to the Archæological Society his inability to preside over its deliberations. "But you are not sugar or salt!" cries Belinda impatiently, as she stands, a comforter thrown over her arm, and a mackintosh extended to receive her husband's meagre person; "you will be in cabs and trains all day." "It is not always easy to secure a cab at a moment's notice on a wet day!" replies he, demurring. "As I have often explained to you, it is upon trifles that the laws of health depend; there may be delay enough to allow of my getting my feet thoroughly wet-a circumstance amply sufficient to throw a chill upon a liver already predisposed." "But will not you be putting the Society to great inconvenience? will not its members be very much disappointed?" asks she, reddening consciously as she speaks. What is she saying? What does she care whether they are disappointed or not? To what depths of disingenuousness has she-truthful as she has been hitherto counted her life long-already descended? But it may clear-it may clear! "I might obviate the difficulty by taking an extra pair of socks in my pocket to change at the Club," he says thoughtfully ; and then her spirits rise, for he extends. his arms, not to take a parting embrace, but to insert them in the waterproof-sleeves which she, with wifely alacrity, holds ready to receive them. He is gone. That one main obstacle to her pleasure is at all events removed. If only it would clear! She is no longer half-sincere with herself. No longer does she feign a desire to extricate herself from the entanglement into which she has plunged, nor a gratitude to Mother Nature for having come to her aid. Without asking why she wishes it, she has concentrated all her being upon the one mastering desire to see that cloud-curtain raise its |