to do, go and dress that she might be waiting for him on his return; but she would trifle all the morning away, and only on hearing his steps in the hall, run off to make her toilette. "Appearing," Hetty said, "to be in pursuit of her own little mouse-slippered feet like a kitten after a ball."

Maurice, with loverlike impatience, would be asking for her, and restlessly waiting for her, yet would see nothing of her till the second bell rang.

So, one day, Hetty went into her dressing-room and sat by the toilette-table while she was making her finishing touches. Hetty looked at her meditatively. Lizzie concluded she was admiring her. At last she said, "Lizzie, you don't love my brother; you don't love Maurice."

"You horrid Hetty, to say so! How can you?" what I think."

"I say

"But why?"

Hetty honestly told her.

'Well, I may not be very wise, but I know that 'still waters run deep.' If you've forgotten that, I'll refer you to your old copy-books."

Lizzie," said Hetty, seriously, "you ought not to trifle with my brother; he is very noble, is Maurice. There is hardly a woman in the world worthy of him, to my thinking."

"Oh! very likely not; but then you're his sister, don't you see. To my papa's and mamma's thinking there isn't a man worthy of me."

Hetty saw it was in vain to remonstrate.

Still, on occasion, Mabel thought in the anguish of her heart-"The bubble sails lightly on the waves of a good man's love. Oh, God! that it would burst, for all its iris hues."

Then, bitterly, she rebuked herself for the wish, and tried to cover Lizzie's faults with the mantle of sisterly love.

CHAPTER XIV.

"But for loving, why, you would not, Sweet,
Though we prayed you,

Paid you, brayed you

In a mortar-for you could not, Sweet!

So, we leave the sweet face fondly there;
Be its beauty

Its sole duty,

Let all hope of grace beyond lie there!"

ROBERT BROWNING.

THE effort was vain. Mabel was humiliated to find that, in her heart of hearts, she disliked her rival exceedingly; that she could rejoice in almost any circumstance which would deprive her of the love she was so incapable of appreciating; that she would not have disdained herself to snap the threads of this pending alliance with Maurice. So difficult is it sometimes to distinguish between temptation and sin. A circumstance occurred which empowered Mabel to show to Maurice the worthlessness of the thing he held so dear; but to assure herself that she was not completely fallen from the moral plane she imagined that she had once occupied, she preferred, by a decided act of for

bearance and self-renunciation, to abstain, in order that she might preserve her own moral dignity. She little reflected how much greater pain in the future she might spare to Maurice by not hesitating to inflict an immediate lesser pain. She was left one afternoon at home alone, all the rest had gone to the park; she had been remonstrated with for staying within doors on so fine an afternoon, but the strain upon her fortitude was too great for her always to be associated with the others, she was glad of an escape, if only for an hour. It was a relief to look as she felt, with no eye to observe her nor to pity. This afternoon found her plunged in the bitterest reveries. Her very memories seemed a lash to torture her; painful thoughts surged up to her excited brain, and the dim vista of the future appeared only a frightfully dark passage to a Hades where peace should be in forgetfulness. A servant brought her a letter.

"For you, Miss Gordon, and twopence to pay on it." Mechanically she gave the girl the twopence and sat with the unregarded letter before her. Letters had ceased to have any interest for her; she did not even examine the post-mark, nor superscription on this. Half an hour after she opened it, and ran her eye over its contents in some amazement.

"MY OWN PET AND DARLING,

"You'll think me long in writing to you; but you

K

know I was only to write under certain conditions, so what can a poor fellow do?

"I know you're true to me, my darling; neither absence nor anything else can shake my faith in you, for I know you can never forget the promise you made me when we took our last walk at Margate. It would be awfully jolly if it wasn't for these expectations. They may turn out worth something some day. I should deserve to have Sir Aubrey's gout along with the property if I grew too impatient. One of our fellows was chaffing me the other day, and he told me you'd been all taken up with that new star that's rising lately, Maurice Wetherill; that he was understood to be thinking of you. I told him it was a lie. And so it is, my darling; for, though ladies are said to admire public men, as their humbler sisters do the red coats, you've no ambition that way, have you? Besides, you are promised to me, and will not forget.

"I can tell you, too, that these kind of men don't make the best husbands. They're all for their books. The public is the wife they most care to please; they won't take the time to walk with the ladies, and say pretty things, such as women have loved to hear ever since Eve let herself be beguiled by that confounded old beau, the serpent.

"It is provoking of your father that he looks so black