She paused a moment before she | ness, and sank back once more into answered, calmly, "No! Again I her chair. ask what do you mean ?" "I think not," said I, "and I "What do I mean? Do you for- hope not. And now hear me and get that we are betrothed ? Do heed me, Lilian. It is enough for you forget how often, and how me, no matter what your feelings recently, our Vows of affection towards another, to learn from yourand constancy have been ex-self that the affection you once prochanged?" fessed for me is gone. I release you from your troth. If folks ask why we two henceforth separate the lives we had agreed to join, you may say, "No, I do not forget; but I must have deceived you and myself-" "It is true, then, that you love me if you please, that you could not no more?" "What, then, is your feeling towards him?" "What!" give your hand to a man who had known the taint of a felon's prison, even on a false charge. If that seems to you an ungenerous reason, we will leave it to your mother to find a better. Farewell! For your own sake I can yet feel happiness-happiness to hear that you do not love the man against whom I warn you still more solemnly than before! Will you not give me your hand in parting-and have I not spoken your own wish?" She turned away her face, and Lilian's face grew visibly paler-resigned her hand to me in silence. even in that dim light. "I know Silently I held it in mine, and my not," she said, almost in a whisper; emotions nearly stifled me. One "but it is partly awe-partly-" symptom of regret, of reluctance, on her part, and I should have fallen at her feet, and cried, "Do not let us break a tie which our vows should have made indissoluble; heed not my offers-wrung from a tortured heart! You cannot have ceased to love me!" But no such symptom of relenting showed itself in her, and with a groan I left the room. "Abhorrence!" she said, almost fiercely, and rose to her feet, with a wild defying start. 66 "If that be so," I said gently, you would not grieve were you never again to see him-" "But I shall see him again," she murmured in a tone of weary sad M CHAPTER XLIII. I WAS just outside the garden-door, | Yet sure I am that the change is when I felt an arm thrown round only on the surface, that her heart me, my cheek kissed and wetted with is really yours, as entirely and as tears. Could it be Lilian? Alas, faithfully as ever it was; and that no! It was her mother's voice, later, when she recovers from the that, between laughing and crying, strange, dreamy kind of torpor which exclaimed hysterically: "This is joy, appears to have come over all her to see you again, and on these faculties and all her affections, she thresholds. I have just come from would awake with a despair which your house; I went there on pur-you cannot conjecture, to the knowpose to congratulate you, and to talk to you about Lilian. But you have seen her ?" Yes; I have but this moment left her. Come this way." I drew Mrs. Ashleigh back into the garden, along the old winding walk, which the shrubs concealed from view of the house. We sat down on a rustic seat where I had often sat with Lilian, midway between the house and the Monks' Well. I told the mother what had passed between me and her daughter; I made no complaint of Lilian's coldness and change; I did not hint at its cause. "Girls of her age will change," said I, "and all that now remains is for us two to agree on such a tale to our curious neighbours, as may rest the whole blame on me. Man's Name is of robust fibre; it could not push its way to a place in the world, if it could not bear, without sinking, the load idle tongues may lay on it. Not so Woman's Name- what is but gossip against Man, is scandal against Woman." "Do not be rash, my dear Allen," said Mrs. Ashleigh, in great distress. "I feel for you, I understand you; in your case I might act as you do. I cannot blame you. Lilian is changed-changed unaccountably. ledge that you had renounced her." I have not renounced her," said I, impatiently; "I did but restore her freedom of choice. But pass by this now, and explain to me more fully the change in your daughter, which I gather from your words is not confined to me." "I wished to speak of it before you saw her, and for that reason came to your house. It was on the morning in which we left her aunt's to return hither that I first noticed something peculiar in her look and manner. She seemed absorbed and absent, so much so that I asked her several times to tell me what made her so grave, but I could only get from her that she had had a confused dream which she could not recall distinctly enough to relate, but that she was sure it boded evil. During the journey she became gradually more herself, and began to look forward with delight to the idea of seeing you again. Well, you came that evening. What passed between you and her you know best. You complained that she slighted your request to shun all acquaintance with Mr. Margrave. I was surprised that, whether your wish were reasonable or not, she could have hesitated to comply with it. I spoke to "She wept! You amaze me. Yet the next day what a note she returned to mine!" her about it after you had gone, and | his balcony from our terrace; he she wept bitterly at thinking she would smile to us and come across. had displeased you." I did wrong in slighting your injunction, and suffering Lilian to do so. I could not help it, he was such a comfort to me-to her, too-in her tribulation. He alone had no doleful words, wore no long face; he alone was invariably cheerful. 'Everything,' he said, 'would come right in a day or two." "The next day the change in her became very visible to me. She told me, in an excited manner, that she was convinced she ought not to marry you. Then came, the following day, the news of your committal. I heard of it, but dared not break it to her. I went to our friend the mayor, to consult with him what to say, what do; and to learn more distinctly than I had done from terrified, incoherent servants, the rights of so dreadful a story. When I returned, I found, to my amazement, a young stranger in the drawing-room; it was Mr. Margrave-Miss Brabazon had brought him at his request. Lilian was in the room, too, and my astonishment was increased, when she said to me with a singular smile, vague but tranquil: 'I know all about Allen Fenwick; Mr. Margrave has told me all. He is a friend of Allen's. He says there is no cause for fear.' Mr. Margrave then apologized to me for his intrusion in a caressing, kindly manner, as if one of the family. He said he was so intimate with you that he felt that he could best break to Miss Ashleigh an information she might receive elsewhere, for that he was the only man in the town who treated the charge with ridicule. You know the wonderful charm of this young man's manner. I cannot explain to you how it was, but in a few moments I was as much at home with him as if he had been your brother. To be brief, having once come, he came constantly. He had moved, two days before you went to Derval Court, from his hotel to apartments in Mr. -'s house, just opposite. We could see him on And Lilian could not but admire this young man, he is so beautiful." "Beautiful? Well, perhaps. But if you have a jealous feeling, you were never more mistaken. Lilian, I am convinced, does more than dislike him; he has inspired her with repugnance, with terror. And much as I own I like him, in his wild, joyous, careless, harmless way, do not think I flatter you if I say that Mr. Margrave is not the man to make any girl untrue to you-untrue to a lover with infinitely less advantages than you may pretend to. He would be an universal favourite, I grant; but there is something in him, or a something wanting in him, which makes liking and admiration stop short of love. I know not why; perhaps, because, with all his good humour, he is so absorbed in himself, so intensely egotisticalso light; were he less clever, I should say so frivolous. He could not make love, he could not say in the serious tone of a man in earnest, 'I love you.' He owned as much to me, and owned, too, that he knew not even what love was. As to myself— Mr. Margrave appears rich; no whisper against his character or his honour ever reached me. Yet were you out of the question, and were there no stain on his birth, nay, were he as high in rank and wealth as he is favoured by Nature in personal advantages, I confess I could never consent to trust him with my daughter's fate. A voice at my heart would cry, 'No!' It may be an unreasonable prejudice, but I could not bear to see him touch Lilian's hand!" "Did she never, then never suffer him even to take her hand ?" "Never. Do not think so meanly of her as to suppose that she could be caught by a fair face, a graceful manner. Reflect; just before, she had refused, for your sake, Ashleigh Sumner, whom Lady Haughton said no girl in her senses could refuse;' and this change in Lilian really began before we returned to L- ; before she had even seen Mr. Margrave. I am convinced it is something in the reach of your skill as physician-it is on the nerves, the system. I will give you a proof of what I say, only do not betray me to her. It was during your imprisonment, the night before your release, that I was awakened by her coming to my bedside. She was sobbing as if her heart would break. 'O mother, mother!' she cried, 'pity me, help me-I am so wretched.' 'What is the matter, darling?' 'I have been so cruel to Allen, and I know I shall be so again. I cannot help it. Do not question me; only if we are separated, if he cast me off, or I reject him, tell him some dayperhaps when I am in my gravenot to believe appearances; and that I, in my heart of hearts, never ceased to love him!"" cribed to cheering words he might say about myself, since it is all but certain that I was not, at that time, uppermost in her mind. Can you explain this apparent contradiction?" "I cannot, otherwise than by a conjecture which you would ridicule." "I can ridicule nothing now. What is your conjecture? "I know how much you disbelieve in the stories one hears of animal magnetism and electro-biology, otherwise-" "You think that Margrave exercises some power of that kind over Lilian? Has he spoken of such a power ? " "Not exactly; but he said that he was sure Lilian possessed a faculty that he called by some hard name, not clairvoyance, but a faculty, which he said, when I asked him to explain, was akin to prevision-to second sight. Then he talked of the Priestesses who had administered the ancient oracles. Lilian, he said, reminded him of them, with her deep eyes and mysterious smile." "And Lilian heard him? What said she ?" "He did not offer to try any of those arts practised by professional mesmerists and other charlatans?" "I thought he was about to do so, "She said that! You are not but I forestalled him; saying I deceiving me?" never would consent to any experi"Oh no! how can you think ment of that kind, either on myself or my daughter." So? 22 "There is hope still," I murmured; and I bowed my head upon my hands, hot tears forcing their way through the clasped fingers. One word more," said I; "you tell me that Lilian has a repugnance to this Margrave, and yet that she found comfort in his visits-a comfort that could not be wholly as "No, not to-night; but watch and heed her, and if you see aught to make you honestly believe that she regrets the rupture of the old tie from which I have released herwhy, you know, Mrs. Ashleigh, that -that-" My voice failed-I wrung the good woman's hand, and went my way. does somehow or other bewitch her, unconsciously to herself; for she always knows when he is coming. Indeed, I am not sure that he does not bewitch myself, for I by no means justify my conduct in admitting him to an intimacy so familiar, and in spite of your wish; I have reproached myself, resolved to shut my door on him, or to show by my manner that his visits were unwelcome; yet when Lilian has said, in the drowsy lethargic tone which has come into her voice (her voice naturally earnest and impressive, though always low), 'Mother, he will be here in two minutes-I wish to leave the room and cannot '-I, too, have felt as if something constrained me against my will; as if, in short, I-viz. that in him there was a somewere under that influence which Mr. Vigors whom I will never forgive for his conduct to youwould ascribe to mesmerism. But will you not come in and see Lilian again ?" I had always till then considered Mrs. Ashleigh - if not as Mrs. Poyntz described her-" commonplace weak "-still of an intelligence somewhat below mediocrity. I now regarded her with respect as well as grateful tenderness; her plain sense had divined what all my boasted knowledge had failed to detect in my earlier intimacy with Margrave thing present, or a something wanting, which forbade love and excited fear. Young, beautiful, wealthy, seemingly blameless in life as he was, she would not have given her daughter's hand to him! CHAPTER XLIV. THE next day my house was filled with visitors. I had no notion that I had so many friends. Mr. Vigors wrote me a generous and handsome letter, owning his prejudices against me on account of his sympathy with poor Dr. Lloyd, and begging my pardon for what he now felt to have been harshness, if not distorted justice. But what most moved me, was the entrance of Strahan, who rushed up to me with the heartiness of old college days. "Oh, my dear Allen, can you ever forgive me; that I should have disbelieved your word-should have suspected you of abstracting my poor cousin's memoir ? " "Is it found, then ?" 'Oh, yes; you must thank Margrave. He, clever fellow, you know, came to me on a visit yesterday. He put me at once on the right scent. Only guess; but you never can! It was that wretched old housekeeper who purloined the manuscript. You remember she came into the room while you were looking at the memoir. She heard us talk about it; her curiosity was roused; she longed to know the history of her old master, under his |