when all the world—the world as represented by Lord Paulyn and society at the Rancho-was at her feet, did he cast her off so lightly, without allowing her any fair opportunity of justifying herself? For it was hardly to be supposed that she would kiss the dust beneath his feet, as it were, confessing her sins, and supplicating his pardon.

What had she done? Only enjoyed her life for this one brief summer-time, holding his image in her heart of hearts all the while. Yes, in the very whirlpool of pleasure looking upward at him, as at a star seen from the depths of a storm-darkened sea. And she had refused Park-lane, Cowes, Ashcombe, and two more country-seats for his sake.

Should she tell him of her rejection of Lord Paulyn- tell him that one incontrovertible fact which must reinstate her at once and for ever in his esteem? What, tell him this when he spoke of his love as a thing of the past, a dream that he had dreamed and done with, a snare which he had happily escaped, regaining his liberty of election, his freedom for that grander life in which human love had no part? What, sue again for his love, lay bare her passionate heart, again outstep the boundary line of womanly modesty, remind him how she had been the first to love, almost the first to declare her love? Had he not this moment reminded her, inferentially, of that most humiliating fact?

Thus argued pride, and sealed her lips. Hope spoke still louder : Let him talk as he might, he loved her, and could no more live without her than she could exist, a reasonable creature, without him. Let him leave her; let him renounce her. He would come back again, would be at her feet pleading for forgiveness, himself the acknowledged sinner, his the humiliation.

In that brief happy courtship, in those twilit rambles on the outskirts of Hawleigh, when for one delicious hour in the day they had been all the world to each other, Malcolm had laid his heart bare before her, had confessed all the anguish that his efforts not to adore her had cost him.

I have heard of men making as strong a stand against infidelity,' he said; but I doubt if any man ever before fought so hard a fight against a sinless love.'

I must be very horrid,' the girl answered in her frivolous way, 'or you would scarcely have taken so much trouble to shut the door of your heart against me.'

6

You are all that is lovely and adorable,' he said; but I had made up my mind to be an Ignatius Loyola on a small scale, and you came between me and my cherished dreams.'

She remembered these things to-day, as she stood with locked lips and cold scornful eyes, confronting him, resolved that from him alone should come the first attempt at reconciliation.

'Having renounced me,' she said at last, after a pause, in which he had waited, Heaven knows with what passionate eagerness, for any denial or supplication from her, in so deliberate and decisive a manner, I conclude you have nothing more to say-except, indeed, to tell me to what address I shall send your letters and presents.' This home-thrust she fancied must needs bring him to his

senses.

'Destroy them all!' he cried savagely. They are the foolish memorials of a most miserable infatuation.'

'As you please,' she answered coolly, preserving that outward semblance of an unshaken spirit to the last, acting her part of indifference and disdain far better than he played his. Had she not her experience of last night to help her? This morning's interview was no whit the less a scenic display-an actress's representation of supreme calm, with the strong tide of a woman's passion swelling and beating in her stormy breast all the while.

Then there is nothing more,' he said quietly, but with the quietness of suppressed passion, and with no attempt to conceal his emotion, only trying to carry himself manfully in spite thereof, except for us to say good-bye. Let it be a friendly farewell, Elizabeth, for it is likely to be a long one.'

She looked at him curiously. That was hardly the tone of a man who meant to retrace his steps-to leave her in anger to-day, only to come back to her repentant to-morrow. No, there was no room to doubt his earnestness. He did mean this farewell to be irrevocable-this parting for ever and ever. It was only when he had turned his back upon her-when the door was shut between them that he would discover how impossible it was for them to live apart.

'There must be some reciprocity in these things,' she thought; 'he could not be so much to mea part of my very life—and I nothing to him. He must come back to me.'

He held out his hand, and she gave him hers, and suffered it to remain helpless, unresisting, in his strong grasp, while he spoke to her.

'Elizabeth,' he said, there are some things very hard to forgive. It is hard for me to forgive you the delusive joys of the last few months-the deep delight I felt that March night when for the first time in my life passionate love had full mastery over my heart, and all the world seemed to begin and end in you. It is bitter to look back upon that hour to-day, and know that I was the veriest slave of a delusion-the blindest fool of a woman's idle fancy. But I did not come here to reproach you. The dream is past. You might have spared me the sharpness of this sudden waking; but even that I will try to forgive you. Good-bye.'

He looked at her with a sad strange smile, the firm lips set in

their old resolute curve, but with an unwonted tenderness in the

earnest eyes.

'Good-bye,' he repeated; let me kiss you once more at parting, even if I kiss Lord Paulyn's plighted wife.'

He took her in his arms, she coldly submissive, with an almost apathetic air. Was it not time for her to speak, to justify herself, to declare that there was no stranger in all that wide city farther from her heart than Reginald Paulyn? No, answered pride; it would be time enough to enlighten him when he came back to her to-morrow and sued for pardon. She would not defend herself— she would not stoop to be forgiven. Had she not humiliated herself too much already for his sake, when she gave him the love he had never asked?

This time I will hold my own against him,' she thought; 'I will not be for ever humbling myself in the very dust at his feet. From the beginning I have loved him with too slavish a love.'

He touched her forehead with his lips-the passionless kiss of forgiveness for a great wrong. It was the ruin of his air-built castle of earthly hope for which he pardoned her in that last kiss. Before him, wide and far-reaching as the summer sea that he had looked upon a few days ago from a grassy peak among the Pentlands, stretched a nobler prospect, a grander future than her love could ever have helped him to win, and hopes that were not earth-bound. Surely he was resigning very little in this surrender of the one woman he had loved with a love beyond control. And yet the parting tore his heart-strings as they had never been strained beforenot even when he stood by the death-bed of Alice Fraser.

'I am not destined to be fortunate in my loves,' he said bitterly, the memory of that older anguish mingling curiously with his pain to-day; let me try to hope that I have a better destiny than mere earthly happiness.'

The qualifying adverb jarred a little upon her ear. He had always set her so low; he had always loved her grudgingly, with a reservation of his better self, giving her only half his heart at best. You have been a great deal too good for me,' she said, with exceeding bitterness, and you have taken care that I should feel your superiority. It is not given to every woman to be like your first love-simply perfect; and I have some reason to be grateful to those worldly-minded people who are willing to accept me for what I am.'

Lord Paulyn, for instance,' said Mr. Forde, becoming very worldly-minded in a moment, his eyes lighting up angrily-' Lord Paulyn, who has made his adoration of you a fact notorious to all the world.'

It is something to have one constant admirer. Lord Paulyn is at least not ashamed of admiring me. He does not fight against

the sentiment, as a weakness unworthy of his manhood. He does not feel himself degraded by his attachment.'

This sounded like a direct avowal of the Viscount's affection, and of her acceptance thereof; surely no woman would speak in this manner except of an accepted lover. If Malcolm Forde had fondly hoped for denial—for a tardy attempt at justification-this unqualified admission was sufficient to enlighten him.

'I did not come here to bandy words, Miss Luttrell,' he said, drawing himself up stiffly; but I will not leave you without repeating a warning I gave you once before. If you set any value upon your peace on earth, or your fitness for heaven, since a woman is in some measure the slave of her surroundings, do not marry Lord Paulyn. I am not apt to go in the way of scandal, but I have heard enough of his career to justify me in declaring that union with him. would be the quickest road that you could take to life-long misery.' 'Yet you advised me, just now, to marry him. Rather inconsistent, is it not?'

6

Anger is always inconsistent. It was passion that spoke then, it is reason that pleads now. Do not let foolish friends persuade you to your ruin, Miss Luttrell. Your beauty may win as good position as Lord Paulyn can give you from a much better man, if you are patient, and wait a little while for that brilliant establishment which you have no doubt been taught to consider the summit of earthly felicity.'

Your advice is as insulting as-as every word you have spoken to me this morning,' cried Elizabeth, with a little burst of passion.

'Forgive me,' he said, with extreme gentleness. 'I did wrong to speak bitterly. It is not your fault if you have been schooled by worldly teachers. Believe me, it was of your own welfare, your future on this earth and in the world beyond, I was thinking. 0 Elizabeth, I know that it is in your power to become a good woman; that it is in your nature to be pure and noble. It is only your surroundings that are false. Let my last memory of you be one of peace and friendship, and let your memory of me be of one who once dearly loved you, and to the last had your happiness at heart.'

His softened tone set her heart beating with a new hope. That phrase, once loved you,' froze it again, and held her silent as death. A dull blank shadow crept over her face; she stood looking at the ground, only just able to stand. When she looked up, with a blinding mist before her eyes, he was gone. And dimly perceiving the empty space which he had filled, and feeling in a moment that he had vanished out of her life for ever, the numbness of despair came over her, and she fell senseless across the spot where he had stood.

MADEMOISELLE DE MONTPENSIER

In his negotiation of the Treaty of the Pyrenees with Don Louis de Haro, Mazarin estimated it as not the least fortunate circumstance in the position of the Spanish minister that he was free from all interference of the Spanish ladies, who cared for nothing but luxury and vanity. French ladies, he saw, were different. Young or old, maids or matrons, prudes or profligates, those who sought a reputation for wit, and those who found in silliness their strongest weapon, all equally meddled in state affairs; and the most turbulent citizen did not give a French statesman as much trouble as those fair busybodies, who, whatever other occupations they might allow themselves, always found leisure to vary them with political intrigues.* The princess we are about to speak of was not among those whom he named; but she could hardly have been out of his mind; for no one of her sex in all France, the queen herself not excepted, took a greater interest in politics, or from position, ability, and, we must add, from personal purity of character, was more calculated or better entitled to exercise a predominating influence over affairs of any kind in which she chose to concern herself. Little as she cared for falling-in with the fashion of the day when it did not coincide with her own humour, she has nevertheless facilitated our task by yielding to the taste so prevalent in her day for autobiography, in which she displays an amusing frankness, to which at the outset of her book she proclaims her resolution to adhere throughout, while at the end she implies her consciousness of having fully kept the resolution. She has not, she affirms, written to make people praise her, nor to acquire a reputation for cleverness; her object was rather to divert the ennui to which in her middle age circumstances condemned her, by recalling to her own mind the stirring scenes through which she had passed, and giving to the world her own impression of them, which could not fail to differ materially from the views taken and the accounts given by others. It may be, too, that she, thought this course calculated to serve her own reputation, and that by relating, as she says elsewhere, with truth and sincerity all the good and all the harm that really was in her,' she designed to silence or anticipate other narrators who would have been willing to give a worse colouring to her errors.

The Princesse Anne Marie Louise d'Orléans, Duchesse de Montpensier, but better known as Mademoiselle, and not unfrequently

*Esprit de la Fronde, iv. 113.