the flutter of whose strong wings gladdened the heart of the sportsman, might be all very well; and to three or four weeks at Rothesay or Colintrave in the bathing season the lady and her daughters had no objection; but a fixed residence, six months out of the twelve, on that lonely shore, they steadfastly refused to endure. So the scouring-paper and knife-powder manufacturer, to whom the cost of a Norman castle more or less was a mere bagatelle, gave his agent orders to dispose of the château at the earliest opportunity, and resigned himself to the sacrifice involved in such a sale. The house and its appurtenances had cost him five-and-twenty thousand, the land five. He sold the whole to Lord Paulyn-after prolonged haggling, in which at last the Glasgow manufacturer showed himself unequal to the English nobleman- for seventeen thousand, and went home, after signing the contract, to his mansion by the West Park, rejoiced to be rid of his useless toy.

Lord Paulyn had been chiefly attracted to the place by its peculiar capacities for the abode of a yachting man. Slogh-na-Dyack stood on the edge of a bay, where there was anchorage for half-adozen yachts of the largest calibre; while on one side of the mansion there was a narrow inlet to a secondary harbour, a bay within a bay, a little basin hollowed out of the hills, where, when tempests were raging, the frailest bark might ride secure, so perfect was the shelter, so lofty the natural screen that fenced it from the winds. It was a harbour for fairies, a calm lakelet in which, on moonlit nights, one would have scarcely been surprised to find Titania and her company sporting with the silvern spray.

Hither Reginald Paulyn brought his wife after they had been married about two years and a half. It was her first visit, except for a flying glimpse of those mountain slopes from her husband's yacht, to Scotland his land, her first lover's native land. The thought thrilled her even now, when the remembrance of the days in which he had loved her was like the memory of a dream.

She had been married two years and a half; years in which she had drained the cup of worldly pleasure, and of womanly sorrow also, to the very lees. She had run riot in fashionable extravagances; given some of the most popular parties in London, in the house with the many balconies; won for herself the brilliant distinction that attends social success; queened it over all compeers by the insolence of her beauty, the dash and sparkle of her manner. For a little while-so long as the glamour lasted, and selfishness was subjugated by the intoxication of novelty-she had ruled her husband; then had come disputes, in which she had been for the chief part triumphant; then later disputes, in which his dogged strength of will had conquered; then coldness, severance, estrangement, each tugging at the chain, eager to go his or her own way. But before the world-that world for which Elizabeth had chosen to live

Lord and Lady Paulyn appeared still a very happy young couple, a delightful example of that most delightful fact in natural history-a love match.

Their quarrels at the worst, and they had been exceedingly bitter, had hardly been about the most serious things upon which men and women could disagree. Money matters, my lady's extravagance, had been the chief disturbing influence. The breast of neither husband nor wife had been troubled with the pangs of jealousy. Elizabeth's conduct as a matron was irreproachable. In the very vortex of fashionable frivolity no transient breath of suspicion had ever tarnished the brightness of her name. The Viscount, in his unquestioned liberty, had ample room and verge enough for any sin against his marriage vow were he inclined to be a sinner, but as yet Elizabeth had never stooped to suspect. Their estrangement therefore had not its root in those soul-consuming jealousies which sunder some unions. Their disputes were of a more sordid nature, the wranglings of two worldly-minded beings bent on their own selfish pleasures.

Eighteen months after her marriage there came the one real affliction of Elizabeth's womanhood. A son had been born to her, fair as the first offspring of youth and beauty, a noble soul-or so it seemed to her-looking out of those clear childish eyes, a child who had the inspired seraphic look of the holy Babe in a picture by Raffaelle, and whose budding nature gave promise of a glorious manhood. He was only a few months old-a few months which made up the one pure and perfect episode in Elizabeth's life-when he was taken away from her, not lost without bitterest struggles, vainest fondest hopes, deepest despair. For a little while after his death the mother's life also hung in the balance, reason tottered, darkness and horror shut out the light. Dragged through this tangle of mind and body, no one seeming to know very clearly which was out of joint, by physic which seemed to hinder or nature which finally healed, the bereaved mother went back to the world, and tried to strangle grief in the endless coil of pleasure; worked harder than a horse at a mill, and smiled sometimes with a heart that ached to agony; had brief flashes of excitement that seemed like happiness; defied memory; tried to extinguish regret for the tender being she had loved in a more exclusive devotion to self; grew day by day harder and more worldly; lost even the power to compassionate the distress of others, saying to herself in a rebellious spirit, 'Is there any sorrow like unto my sorrow?'

To Lord Paulyn the loss of his first-born had been a blow, but not an exceeding heavy one. He had considered the baby a fine little fellow, had caressed him, and tossed him in the air occasionally, at somewhat remote intervals, after the approved fashion of fathers, while smirking nurses marvelled at his lordship's condescension;

but he was not broken down by the loss of him.

He was a young

He had some

man, and was not in a desperate hurry for an heir. thing of that feeling which monarchs have been said to entertain upon the subject of their eldest sons, an inclination to regard the heir-apparent as a memento mori.

'By Jove, you know it isn't the liveliest thing to look forward to,' he had said to his friends when arguing upon the subject in the abstract; a young fellow who'll go and dip himself up to the hilt with a pack of money-lenders, and borrow on post-obits, and play old gooseberry with his father's estate, by the time he's twenty-one, and perhaps make a finish by marrying a ballet-girl before he's twentytwo.'

It was after a season of surpassing brilliancy, an unbroken round of gaieties, involving the expenditure of so much money that Lord Paulyn groaned and gnashed his teeth when the butler brought him the midsummer bills-a season which had ended in the most serious quarrel Elizabeth and her husband had ever had-that the Viscount brought his wife to this Norman château, not in love but in anger, intending this banishment to the coast of Argyle as a means of bringing the lady to a due sense of her iniquities and a meek submission to his will.

'She'll find it rather difficult to get rid of money there,' he said to himself with a sardonic grin, and I shall take care to fill the house with visitors of my own choosing. There'll be Hilda, too, to look after my interest. Yes, I think I shall have the upper hand at Slogh-na-Dyack.'

This was another change which the last year had brought to pass. Just at the end of the London season-happening so opportunely after the last ball at Buckingham Palace, as Madame Passementerie, the French milliner, ventured to remark to Lady Paulyn's maid, Gimp-the noble house of Paulyn had been thrown into mourning by the demise of the dowager.

The noble lady had led a life of extreme seclusion throughout a prolonged widowhood,' said the obituary notice in a fashionable journal; thus offering the most touching tribute which affection can pay to those it has cherished while on earth, and still fondly mourns when transferred to a higher sphere. Honoured and beloved alike by equals and dependents, she was the centre and source of all good to those who came within her peaceful circle, and she was followed to her last resting-place in the family vault in old Ashcombe church by a train of friends, tenants, and retainers, in which long procession of mourners there was not one who did not lament the loss of a valued friend or an honoured benefactress.' The notice had been written for another patrician widow, but served very well for Lady Paulyn, about whom the editors of newspapers knew little or nothing. She had lived a retired life in the depths of the country, and it