"Mathematics won't catch thieves, in my opinion," oracularly observed the farmer. "Unless your wise chief constable could cast a nativity, as the astrologers do. But I suppose he's above all that sort of thing."

Farmer Ashow was always very hard on Grainger about his favorite studies. The youngster was really a good mathematician for a selftaught student; moreover, he invested his spare money in chemical apparatus; and from his solitary room there sometimes came sounds of explosion or odors of noxious gas. Half in earnest and half in jest, the farmer was wont to laugh at these vagaries of his.

"You'll never calculate the weather by algebra," the old man would say, "nor manure your fields with those nasty-smelling gases. And you'll either addle your brains with figures, or blow yourself to pieces with some of your combustibles."

The second prediction was nearly fulfilled once or twice. Grainger was ambitious, and had a fancy for blowing hydrogen soap-bubbles, and making chloride of nitrogen and so forth. Consequently there was sometimes a great smash of retort and crucible, and our chemical adventurer got burnt fingers and scorched eyebrows nothing worse as yet. And, as he good-humoredly was wont to remark, nothing of that sort could spoil his beauty.

tact with a master of the science. He had spent hours in attempting to discover the meaning of what the books tried to teach him. Mr. Severne set the matter clear in a minute. No wonder that the young farmer stoutly maintained his friend's cause.

"Well," said Farmer Ashow, as they rose from tea, "when Mr. Severne catches the thieves I'll believe in him. And now I'm going to smoke a pipe. Come down to the river with me, Mary.'

This was a regular custom of the summer afternoon. A pleasant path beside the Avon bounded the garden, and led towards some beautiful beech coppice. And up and down this the farmer loved to saunter in the sunshine, smoking his long pipe, and listening to Mary's gossip. The scene was enjoyable. The great mill-wheel moved slowly through the water; the lasher sparkled in the sunshine; trout leaped at the fluttering fly; now and then a kingfisher zigzagged from bank to bank, or a tall heron rose slowly in the air; and always stately swans floated double, swan and shadow," upon the poetic stream.

I think this was the choicest time of Farmer Ashow's summer days. In winter he liked the late evening, the settle and the great wood fire, and Mary's bird-like voice singing for him her favorite old ballads. But in summer he loved the Avon march, and to loiter with his daughter along the leafy path where years before he had wooed his wife.

CHAPTER III.

A BOUDOIR POUR BOUDER.

"An oriel window looks

O'er elms alive with rooks,
While afar,

Past glades where browse the deer,
There shines a silver mere,

Like a star."

Ar eleven on the morning after Vivian's night ride, he lounged down to breakfast at Broadoak, dressed point-device, and looking as fresh as paint. The Squire had breakfasted long before, and was out looking after his affairs. Lady Eva, however, had but just arrived, being like the lady (was it Millamant ?) in Congreve's play, who loved sommeils de

On the present occasion he was warm in defense of Chief Constable Severne, whom he greatly admired. What he knew of him was simply this: there was a Mechanics' Institute at Riverdale. Grainger, in pursuit of his mathematical studies, had gone thither to pore over certain books of reference. They were old-fashioned books, as a matter of course; the libraries of such institutions are usually illchosen. Grainger had just reached that period at the entry to mathematics when the Calculus has to be attempted; he could find no book that treated the subject otherwise than as Fluxions. He asked the librarian's guidance, but that person was wholly uninstructed. He was, how-matin. ever, good-natured; so he offered to inquire of Mr. Severne, who came there to look at the papers, and who bore a mathematical reputation. The Chief Constable, interested in the young student, lent him some books, and did what was even of more value-give him a few hints how to use them. The man who strives to teach himself any subject has difficulties unimaginable to more fortunate students; and this is especially the case with mathematics.

John Grainger was amazed to find how his perplexities disappeared when he came in con

"Well, child," said Vivian, giving Eva a cousinly kiss on the forehead, "how are you this morning? I, to say the truth, am thirsty. With your august permission, I'll tell Laurence to produce some hock and seltzer.

'A pleasure worthy Xerxes, the great king.' Every well-educated young lady knows of the passage."

The butler served the effervescent liquid, and Vivian felt refreshed.

"Now for breakfast. Why, Eva, you look

as fresh this morning as an Asian myrtle which | oak Avon look young again when Lady Eva the Hamadryads have watered. Who would came home; but he concentrated all his enerthink you were an old married woman ?" gies on this unique boudoir, and the result was

"That will I. Pshaw a heap of letters. Duns, Cugina, as sure as fate! Since the Reform Bill, English tradesmen have become a perfect nuisance."

Vivian did not open his letters, but proceeded to eat his breakfast, showing an excellent good appetite. When he had finished, he carelessly thrust his correspondence into his coat-pocket, lighted a cigarette, and said to his cousin :

"Don't be tiresome, Val. Have some break-perfection. The room had been added to the fast." house by himself, in his bachelor days, with the idea that he would use it as a sanctum; but the Squire's life became so active that he found no need for it, and it remained without an occupant. It was an octagon, approached by a corridor, and connected with the house at such an angle that two of its four windows commanded the long terraces of the two principal fronts, while the other two had exquisite views of their own. One of these looked through a wondrous sylvan vista to the river Avon, beyond which rose a steep hill, crowned with a picturesque clump of pine, elm, ash, and birch. Beneath the other lay long slopes of lawn, park-land populous with deer beyond, and a wide reach of the river, which looked in the distance like a lake.

Now, little girl, let us go and have a stroll." Wide windows opened to a terrace. Lady Eva took from a couch a broad-leafed straw hat, and they passed into the bright summer air. Full of perfume was the air, from myriads of fragrant flowers that made islands of color in the emerald lawns; full also of music from the unwearying throats of multitudinous birds that haunted the full-foliaged trees.

66

I

Rupert would like a boy, depend on it. dare say the old place will have to go to some vile cad whom he despises. Well, it can't be helped. You'll be a charming widow, without encumbrances, and with plenty of money."

"You are in a wicked mood this morning, Valentine. I am tired of you. Good-bye." Therewith she ran off along the terrace, and disappeared into the house.

"Poor little Eva!" he soliloquized, "she'd give her ears for a boy. I suppose I may as well look at these confounded letters."

He sat on a stone seat on the terrace, and looked through these documents. From tradesmen, several; from the demimonde one or two; from a London friend, some social gossip; and one brief anonymous scrawl with the Riverdale postmark:

"Sir,

"You are known. Be careful.

The beauty of the scenery without was well matched by the internal decorations. Three superb frescoes by three of our most famous painters occupied the spaces between those windows. The Squire, a lover of the classics, had chosen for himself the subjects. Whoso was fortunate enough to enter this chamber beheld right opposite him the palace of Menelaus, blazing with torchlight, while a misty moon rose above Eurotas, and queenly Helen passed stealthily through a postern gate to where Paris waited beside a chariot with chafing steeds. What a night it was! Upon Eurotas lay the moonlight, and music whispered from the wind-swept reeds on the river-bank; while flushed Atrides sat late at the banquet in his lighted halls, and drank deep healths to Priam and his sons.

And on the left was Dionysius, as depicted in the Homeric hymn

"Bacchus, son of Semele,

Sat on a cliff by the wide wild sea;
He was yet a merry boy,
Gazing over the deep with joy-
Dark his tresses, dark his eyes,

His chlamys azure as the skies."

The rosy young god lay lazily upon the long lush grass, and lustrous ivy and soft tendrils of the vine sprang by his indolent hand and languid foot, and strove to grow into a wreath about his

"A Well-wisher." Queer-very," said Vivian to himself. I dusky tresses. must think about this."

Meanwhile, Lady Eva had reached her boudoir, locked the door, and thrown herself into an easy fauteuil. It was a charming room-a perfect nest for so pretty a bird. When Squire Redfern prepared to bring home his beautiful bride, for whom he had that strong steadfast love unfelt save by men of ripe age, he lavished upon her all that his wealth could procure. That boudoir must have cost a fabulous sum of money. It was filled with reminiscences of

"The glory that was Greece,

And the grandeur that was Rome." The Squire, having a fine taste and an inexhaustible purse, made the great house of Broad

But on the beach below a swift shallop had run up, and evil-visaged Tyrrhene pirates clomb carefully towards the summit of the cliff, concealing themselves beneath the heavy fringes of purple-starred clematis. Little did they guess the coming terror in central abysses of the sea.

And on the right was slender-ankled Persephoneia, playing in the wide meadow with the deepbosomed Oceanides, plucking the myriad blooms of rose and crocus, violet, gladiolus, hyacinth, narcissus, miraculously produced to ensnare her. They burst beneath her fairy feet; they rose to meet her eager hands; the fragrance filled the concave ether. Then suddenly there was a chasm in the wide Nysian fields, and forth sprang Aïdoneus in his golden chariot drawn by im

mortal steeds, and the sky darkened at his stern aspect as if there were a thunder-storm, and the divine daughter of Demeter was rapt from the sight of her terror-stricken companions. The painter had caught that very moment: there was the wide, soft emerald meadow, half in the sunlight of noon, half in baleful eclipse; the daughters of Oceanus, pale and amazed, dropped their flowers upon the turf, and slender-waisted Persephoneia, powerless in her captor's mighty arm, looked with dilating eyes towards the dark steep subterranean road which the coal-black horses panted to descend. An icy wind from that mysterious road seemed to drive back her long dishevelled tresses. Far in the unfathomable depth shone like a star the palace of the god.

Broadoak Avon was full of visitors, she thoroughly enjoyed herself, and caused the enjoyment of others. Her presence seemed to have a magical influence.

But when the great house was left to herself and her husband, Lady Eva was intensely bored. Her cousin's company rather annoyed her than otherwise, though she was really fond of him; for he would treat her with a careless familiarity, as if she were still the mere hoyden that she had been when they were first thrown together. Now this, to a lady who had plenty of natural dignity, was really too bad. And Eva perplexed herself a good deal in attempting to conjecture why Vivian persisted in it. She could not guess.

I am disposed to think that he did it-half unconsciously perhaps in self-defense. Lady Eva was a very attractive woman, and Vivian a man easy to attract. Indeed if his poems from Italy represented any thing at all like real experience, he must have surpassed all other erotic versifiers in the number of his amours. Doubtless there was exaggeration; at the same time, I fancy Vivian was somewhat addicted to running after every fresh face and figure that he met in his wandering. There are poets who differ from Pope, opining that the proper study of mankind is women-and of these was Viv

But of all the other exquisite adornment of Lady Eva's boudoir it were impossible to speak. The young lady herself, at the moment when we have followed her thither, had no eye for the dainty trifles which on all sides surrounded her. She was simply bored, and angry with herself for being bored. The case was simple. When she married Rupert Redfern, she supposed that she loved him, and expected to be quite happy with him. Amid all her flirtations, she had been untouched herself; the blood ran calmly in her veins, though her beauty and grace were causing the ruddy fluid to rush like a mountain-ian. torrent through other channels; and finding in Squire Redfern a man evidently superior to his rivals in every thing manly, and possessing moreover a great estate, she married him without hesitation. But he was no Romeo, and certainly she was no Juliet.

When the Squire took her down into the country, she fully expected to he happy enough. She liked rural occupation; and, though not given to the distribution of tracts, was fond of looking after the welfare of the poor. What she did not anticipate was her husband's absorption in his own pursuits; he was his own steward, was an active magistrate, was Chairman of Quarter Sessions, looked after county business, parish business, his own business, and was at the same time carefully attentive to all political movements. Once he had been member for the county, and his wife heartily wished he was so still-for at any rate there would be the season in London.

Few women have the gift of making themselves happy independently. How far this is natural to the sex, and how far it is derived from education, it is impossible to say. Enthusiastic advocates of female rights maintain that men have made women what they are; that if they should ever get a fair chance they would be at least equal to men. Lady Eva had, however, no desire for such equality; what she preferred was the superiority which she actually possessed, the irresistible power of fascination.

Τί οὖν δίδωσι; κάλλος.

Eva was formed to be the centre of a pleasant social circle; and when, in the autumn,

Now I take it that he was afraid of liking Eva too well, and so conjured up (more poetico, in his mind's eye) the romping child whom he had chased through the woods, and helped to climb trees, and brought home after many a long country ramble, with flushed face and tired feet and torn frock. This is my solution of the problem, but I do not think it occurred to Lady Eva. Would she have felt flattered if it had ?

As I have said, she was angry with herself for feeling bored. It was wrong, no doubt. And it was stupid.

Mr. Disraeli remarks that no person can be bored who is not a bore. Lord Stanley is of opinion that any one who likes can be happy, since happiness consists in hard work. Lady Eva, without consulting these great authorities, could perceive that in her position, with unlimited command of money, with ample resources of all kinds, it was neither morally nor intellectually to her credit that she was the victim of ennui. Ennui was unintelligible to Squire Redfern. Nothing and nobody bored him. He would welcome a bitter morning of east wind and sleet and slush just as readily as a divine sunrise that glorified the world, and filled the hearts of lark and thrush with maddening desire of song. Old Mr. Bluebook, editor of a Scottish Review, and the finest master of prose in the English language, seemed to gratify the Squire just as much by his conversation as the choicest wit or most profound thinker of the day. It is a fortunate thing, no doubt, to be gifted with this sort of endurance. Still, I hold that he who does not hate the east wind can not know how sweet is the breath of the South-and that the man who can tolerate

a Scottish statistician or metaphysician must be | to the groom, and began to talk to Eileen. quite unable to enjoy colloquy with an English The baby, a hairless sturdy young mortal, with poet. those eyes of miraculous blue that new-born children bring fresh from heaven, was stretching and laughing.

he let himself down by a bough of ground-ash, dug up the orchis with his pocket-knife, and threw it up to Miss Ashow. But then he found the chalky ground giving way under him, and the ash-root gradually loosening, so that he could not possibly regain the path, but must slide down and make his way round. Telling Mary to meet him at the Cavern, he let go his hold, and by jumping and sliding reached the bottom of the slope. So they went along in parallel paths, Mary in the wood, and John Grainger on the river-bank, catching glimpses of each other at intervals.

geometry the only thing worth learning, and the brow of the steep slope. It was just becould inscribe a regular polygon of seventeen yond John Grainger's reach. Active as a deer, sides in a circle. His botany and chemistry were more empirical. The former was adulterated with poetry, and the latter with experiment. Both sciences, thus mollified and mitigated, are very nice for lady pupils. They like to connect the rose with Waller, and the lesser celandine with Wordsworth. They like the minor classics of stamens and pistils, tetrandria and monogynia. They also like to see potassium catch fire on ice, or chlorate of potash and phosphorus produce subaqueous combustion when touched by nitric acid. The great ideas which underlie both these sciences do not reach them -they like the fun and flirtation. When Cole, C.B., invented South Kensington, he was the feminine Londoner's greatest benefactor. There is no finer flirting-ground in the metropolis than the Department of Science and Art. And, as flirtation is both a science and an art, surely the department is most appropriately named.

The Cavern was a curious excavation in the rock, which tradition asserted to be an ancient haunt of robbers. It would only have held three or four robbers of any thing like a reasonable size. Loopholes were cut in it, through which there were beautiful views up and down the Avon, and a seat was hewn in the solid rock. Evidently it was an ancient cutting; why hewn there it would be hard to say. Perhaps a hermit might have lived there in the old ascetic days; there would have been no room for him to lie down, unless he were a very short

John Grainger had taken holiday this summer afternoon, to give Mary Ashow a lesson in botany. The pretty little lass, in straw hat and light print dress, carrying a basket to contain her floral treasures, tripped gayly along the wood-paths; while her big companion stalk-anchorite indeed; but he might have been of a ed steadily beside her. Very pleasant and cool were the woods, with just a faint breath from the south-west rippling all their leaves and fluttering the flowers that grew about the roots of the trees. They ascended to a terrace, high above the river, which was only visible at intervals through the dense summer foliage. The brown beech leaves of the last autumn still carpeted the woods; but a multitude of many-colored mosses mixed with them; and at the treeroots big fungi grew in forms and hues indescribable.

sect that preferred to sleep standing. But the origin of the cave matters little. It was a good place to make the terminus of a walk. On a hot day the stone chamber was always cool, and there were pleasant prospects through its narrow apertures; and the seat was so small, that two young folks like John Grainger and Mary Ashow, sitting down in it together, were in deliciously close juxtaposition.

However, on this occasion Mary approached it alone, and, as she approached, she noticed the fragrance of a cigar. Instead of alarming her, as might have been supposed, it seemed to hasten her steps. She tripped down the nar

About these last John Grainger was very learned. They were good to eat, he assured his pretty pupil; they had the nitrogenous ele-row path, orchis in hand, which led to the cave, ments of meat in them; some of them tasted and was greeted on entering by no less a perlike veal cutlets, and others like beef steaks. sonage than Mr. Valentine Vivian, who was Mary listened with grave attention, but ex-smoking a cigar, and admiring the scenery with pressed an opinion that she would much rather a somewhat patronizing air. "Ah! Mistress not try them. Mary," he said, when he saw her, "what good fairy told you to come here to-day ?"

But the great attraction of this particular wood was that it contained some of the rarest orchises. You know the flowers-pretty freaks of nature in a whimsical mood, blossoms that look like insects resting a moment on a leaf. In search of these Mary's bright eyes wandered restlessly in all directions, and at last she suddenly exclaimed-

"Oh! John, there's a spider orchis, I believe."

"Ophrys arachites," said the young man learnedly" a gynandrous plant."

"Never mind," interrupted Mary, petulantly. "But you must get me that one. It is such a beauty!"

Now this tall flower, bearing half a dozen blooms, which looked like so many spiders in good condition, grew some little way down over

And therewith he unhesitatingly kissed her pretty lips, to which she made no resistance. If poor simple John Grainger, far below by the river, had seen that osculation, how shocked he would have been! Often had he dreamed of those tempting lips, but never had he ventured to approach them.

"Oh, Mr. Vivian," she said, "who would have thought of meeting you here? I came out with poor John Grainger, but he slipped down the bank in getting me this beautiful orchis."

"An orchis!" said Vivian. "I accept the omen. And poor John is at the bottom of the hill, I suppose. Yes, I see him just turning up the zigzag."

Having reconnoitred John Grainger, Vivian