shaking her, "why do not you speak? why do not you contradict her? why do you allow her to say such things about you? It is not true! Say that it is not true; it is only a canard. You have been saying it only to tease her; say that it is not true !" "Why should not it be true?" asks Belinda, turning her lovely cold face and her gloomy eyes up towards Sarah. The latter's hand drops nerveless from her sister's shoulder, and she steps back a pace or two. "Then it is true!" she says, horrified. "One would hardly imagine from your manner that you yourself had once been engaged to him," returns Belinda drily; "and yet I believe that it was so." "More shame for me," cries the other violently; "but I will do myself the justice to say that I never had the most distant intention of marrying him." "There we differ then," says Belinda, slowly rising, and walking with her cloak over her arm to the door, "for I have every intention of marrying him; and so, granny," turning as she reaches it and calmly facing them both, "as I began by saying, you may pack your trunks for Monaco as soon as you please." "How tiresomely she harps upon that string" cries Mrs. Churchill peevishly; the more peevishly for the pricks that her conscience, albeit a tough one, is giving her. "It is all your doing," says Sarah morosely, viciously rattling the fire-irons and boxing the dogs' ears; “you have driven her to it; sooner or later I knew that you would !" "Pooh!" replies the other crossly; "she is not so easily driven or led either. If it were for her happiness," with a little pious parental air, "I cannot say that I should much regret her marriage; and if it does really come off-it is a shocking thing, of course, such an amant pour rire, but she seems bent upon it; and if it does really come off," the natural frisky light reilluming her eyes, "why then, my dear child, there is in point of fact nothing to keep us from the South!" HE morrow has come. Mrs. and healthful from pleasing dreams of sunshine and lansquenet. Sarah has tossed between vexed visions and unwonted wakefulness. And Belinda? Belinda makes no complaint of her night. She looks older than when she went to bed, but the cold is pinching, and for the last year and a half she has been perceptibly ageing. The morrow has come, and the Professor. To-day he is not ushered into the little dark back-room, but is led by a full-buttoned pompous Tommy into the drawing-room, where his grandmother-elect sits ready and alone to receive him. Perhaps they have not a great deal to say to each other. At all events the interval is short before the bell is rung and a message given to request Miss Churchill to come down. She is sitting in her little chilly bedroom, her cheek pressed against the window-pane and her eyes idly following the dirty sparrows on the leads. Without a moment's lingering, she obeys. As she As she enters the room her betrothed advances to meet her. "I am happy to be able to inform you," he says in his stiff Donnish voice, “that your grandmother is good enough to say that she has no obstacle to oppose to our union." "I told you that she would not," replies Belinda calmly; "I knew that she could spare me." The words are simple and simply spoken, with no special stress or significant accent laid upon them; and yet under them the old lady winces. "It is no case of 'sparing,'" she says sharply; "of course it is a break-up to our |