ushered in to partake her solitude. She meets him with a complaint.

"I expected you yesterday.”

"I was detained by a College meeting, and by other engagements," he answers. "I hope,” ceremoniously, "that you were not inconvenienced by the deferring of my visit ?"

"I was," she answered brusquely. "As it happened, I wanted you badly. I was completely puzzled by a passage here," laying her hand upon a school edition of "Cæsar's Commentaries.' "I worried over it till I felt quite dazed and woolly."

As she speaks she draws the volume towards her, and they both stoop their heads over the page; his with its old, sparse, colourless hair, thriftily drawn across the baldening crown; hers with its unregarded riches of nut-brown. The difficulty dissipated, she leans back in her

chair.

"It is hopeless to make any real progress," she says morosely, "as long as our

lessons are so interrupted. How much better it would be if we lived in Oxbridge! How I wish we lived in Oxbridge!"

She is sitting alongside of him, and does not look at him as she expresses this wish. It seems to be addressed with a general vagueness to the air.

He glances at her, sidelong and suspiciously; at the beautiful blooming profile, the discontented mouth, the fine, petulant, small nose, the veiled, unglad eyes. He has almost given up suspecting her of late, but her last aspiration has rearoused his distrust. Was not Sarah once fervent and constant in her longings to inhabit a university town?

"It would make things so much easier," she continues plaintively, quite unconscious of his disquieting doubts. "If I were in difficulties I could go straight to you. I had much rather live in Oxbridge than here."

He is still observing her covertly, and makes no answer.

"It must be a good life!" she says, with

the same restless longing as a sick person's for strange food; "so full of intelligent interests, so absorbing, and must take one so out of one's self!"

As she speaks she clasps both hands at the back of her neck, and stares dreamily up at the ceiling. He has moved his eyes away from her. Perhaps they are satisfied with the result of their investigation. They now look straight before him on Cæsar's open page. Upon his fingers he balances a paper-knife, and an unusual expression has crept about his narrow lips.

"If you are sincere in your desire for a- -" he begins rather slowly; but she breaks in upon him hotly.

"Sincere!" she repeats, with an angry intonation; "I cannot imagine why you preface all your remarks with a doubt of my sincerity! What could I possibly gain by being insincere ?”

She looks at him full and irately as she speaks, and their eyes meet; the dull old cautious eyes, and the unhappy flashing young ones.

1

But again he breaks off.

ring at the door-bell.

There is a

"You have visitors," he says, in an annoyed voice. "We shall be interrupted."

66

No, we shall not," she replies, shaking her head. 66 Tommy knows that when you are here, I am not at home to anyone."

It is a sentence susceptible of a flattering interpretation, that, indeed, would seem to bear no other, but it is uttered as such indifferent matter-of-fact that he would be indeed a coxcomb who was elated by it.

"Please go on," smiling faintly.

"Since

I am sincere in my desire for-what?" But apparently he has lost the thread of his twice-begun speech.

'Your servant must have mistaken your directions," he says, with a vexed look; "he is evidently admitting some one."

Both listen, and as she listens Belinda's colour changes.

If we were at Dresden," she says in a suppressed and troubled voice, "and if I did not hope that it were impossible, I should say that the voice was

The door flies open.

"Here I am!" cries Miss Watson, bursting into the room, in apparently the identical large black and white plaid gown and grizzled fringe, and in certainly the same burly red face-perhaps a shade worsened by the battle and breeze—as of yore.

She is not ushered in, but helplessly followed by the baffled Tommy, who is raising his puny infant voice in futile protestations, as his predecessor had so often. done before him.

"I knew by Tommy's manner that you were at home!" cries she joyfully. "Bythe-bye, he is a new Tommy! What have you done with the old one? I would not give him my card; I said, 'No, I will surprise them!'"