matter of personal feeling, I would rather you did not go.'

'I only wish it were possible to slip out of the engagement; but I don't think it is; aunt Chevenix is so easily offended.'

Offend her then, dear, for once in the way.'

Elizabeth shook her head hopelessly. After the money that had been spent upon her dresses it would seem something worse than folly not to wear them. They might have served for her trousseau perhaps, but she doubted if so much flouncing and trimming on the garments of a country clergyman's wife would have satisfied Malcolm Forde's sense of the fitness of things. There was a white tulle ball dress dotted about with tea-roses, a masterpiece of Miss March's, which she thought of with a tender regretfulness. O, the dresses ought really to be worn; and what a pity to offend aunt Chevenix for nothing!

'Very well,' said Mr. Forde. 'I see my tyranny is not to begin yet awhile. If you must go, dear, you must. But it seems rather hard that our betrothal should be inaugurated by a separation.'

It will only be for a few weeks. And I am not going till the end of the month.'

The footstep had approached and had passed the vicarage gate. It was not the step of Mr. Luttrell,

but of some bulky farmer walking briskly towards his homestead.

Good-night, dearest!' said Malcolm Forde, suddenly awakened to the recollection that it was a cold March night, and that Elizabeth was beginning to shiver. How inconsiderate of me to keep you standing in the open air so long. Shall I take you back to the hall-door ?'

6

O, no; my sisters might see us, and wonder. I will run round by the orchard, and go in the backway.'

'Very well, dear. They shall have no ground for wonderment after to-morrow. Good-night.'

VOL. II.

CHAPTER XIII.

'For Destiny does not like

To yield to men the helm,

And shoots his thoughts by hidden nerves

Throughout the solid realm.

The patient Dæmon sits

With roses and a shroud;

He has his way, and deals his gifts—
But ours is not allow'd.'

VERY little slumber came to the eyelids of Elizabeth that night. She had spent many a sleepless night of late; nights of tossing to and fro, and weary longing for the late-coming dawn; nights full of thought and wonder about the dim strange future, and what it held for her; nights full of visions of triumphs and pleasures to come, or of sad longing for one dearer delight which was never to be hers-the love of that one man whom she loved.

Very different were her thoughts and visions tonight. He loved her. The one unspeakable blessing which she had for a long time deemed unattainable had dropped into her lap. He loved her, and she

had given herself to him for ever and ever. No more vague dreams of the triumphs that were to be won by her beauty, no more half-childish imaginings of pleasures and glories awaiting her in the world she knew not. On the very threshold of that dazzling region, just when success seemed certainty, Love closed the gate, and she was to remain without, in the bleaker drearier world she knew, brightened only by that dear companionship.

She had told him that the most dismal home to which he could take her would be a paradise, if shared with him; and she believed that it would be So. Yet being a creature made up of opposites, she could not let the old dream go without a pang.

'From my very childhood I have fancied that something wonderful would happen to me, something as brilliant and unexpected as the fate of Cinderella: and it all ends by my marrying a curate!' she said to herself half wonderingly. But then he is not like the common herd of curates, he is not like the common herd of mankind. It is an honour to worship him.'

And then by and by she thought:

'I wish I had been a Russian empress, and he my serf. What a delight to have chosen him from his base-born brotherhood, and placed him beside

me upon the throne; to have recognised all that makes him noble, in spite of his surroundings; to have been able to say, "I give you my heart and soul, and all this northern world"!'

An empress could afford to make a bad match. It was a bad match. Even with all the glamour of this new delight upon her, she did not attempt to disguise this fact.

'I am glad he has money of his own,' she mused. 'We can at least have a nicely-furnished house— what a comfort to have modern furniture after our Ancient rubbish!—and silver like papa's. And I daresay Malcolm will give me money enough to dress nicely, in a simple parson's-wifeish way. I shall have to work very hard in his parish, of course, but it will be for his sake, and that will sweeten everything.'

She thought of Lord Paulyn, and smiled to herself at the idea of his disappointment. Now that she had plighted her faith to some one else she felt very sure that the Viscount had been desperately in love with her, and had only waited, with the insolence of rank and wealth, his own good time for telling her of his love. It would be not unamusing, if she met him in London, to lead him on a little, to the point of an offer even, and then crush him by the