off.

"Only going to run after Jeanne and Jacques," said Ursula, setting "My feet got quite frozen in that cold tribune, and I want to warm

them."

"There's room inside," shouted Madame Olympe, through the front window, to Monsieur Charles; he had no great-coat, and she thought he would be cold. "Get into the carriage and let the servant go upon the box."

"But, Olympe, I am quite comfortable up here," he answered. "Get into the carriage."

"I have got a shawl over my knees," said he, appealingly.

"Get into the carriage."

"I was just going to smoke a little cigarette," he observed, mildly. "But when I tell you to get into the carriage!" she answered, her voice working up ominously towards the treble key.

He did as he was bid, and we started. After we had gone steadily along for about ten minutes, one of the horses shied at a piece of paper that was lying in the road. Madame Olympe gave a scream: "It's the white horse!" cried she.

"It's the bay one," said Monsieur René, looking out.

The coachman whipped and whipped in vain ; the animal jumped and fidgeted, but would not go by the place.

Madame Olympe was beginning to be a good deal frightened. "It's the white horse!" she exclaimed again.

Monsieur Charles now looked out in his turn. "No, Olympe," said he, "it is the bay horse."

"It's the white horse!" she vociferated, eyeing him despotically, between two screams. The beast now began to kick and plunge, and Madame Olympe got into a state of the most imperious terror.

"There is no white horse at all in the carriage," said Monsieur Charles. "But when I tell you that I choose that it should be a white horse!" cried she in her highest key, and with her eyebrows running straight up her forehead into her hair. It was too funny, and we all went into fits of laughter, in which she could not help joining very heartily herself, in spite of her alarm. The gentlemen then got down, the restive creature was led past the obstacle, and presently we arrived safely at the water's edge, where we found the others waiting for us.

We jumped into the boat, and pushed off from shore: Monsieur de Saldes and Jeanne rowed. We were all very quiet; some of us were a little exhausted by the exertions of the morning, and all were depressed by the feeling that it was the last of our many happy excursions. What an evening it was ! One whole side of the heavens was of a deep solemn rose-colour, with a wondrous diaper of red brown leaves embroidered upon it by the branches of a screen of trees which stood out in strong relief against it: the other side was a blaze of golden fire. This effect lasted the longest it only seemed to grow into an ever-deepening amber, haunting that half of heaven like some brooding passionate regret, while

the rose huc passed first into violet, then into dark purple, and then faded away into still silver grey. Soft opal tints came down from the skies and lay upon the face of the waters, as we rowed away from all the glory into a world of delicate twilight shadow. Suddenly, from the grey bank, burned out a single orange-coloured leaf. Oh! who shall explain the strange mystery by which one feels stabbed to the heart with a sharp pang of delight at some unexpected apparition of this kind? We all called aloud in one unanimous voice of salutation, as we floated past the little lonely flame. Presently the surface of the river became black as liquid. ebony, the moon got up, and a pleasant rhythm of plashing oars, always accompanied by a bright flash of light, was all that marked our gentle progress through the water.

"Ah! Will no one sing and make this quite, quite perfect ?" said Madame Olympe.

Monsieur Kiowski began the well-known air of the Sorrento boatmen, the Fata d'Amalfi, and Ursula joined in second. While they sang, Jeanne and René pulled in their oars, and we went drifting-drifting-drifting along in soft darkness, listening to the passionate southern sounds. I could not help thinking that, perhaps when I am dying, that solitary leaf will burn into my heart once more, as I drift silently with closed eyes into the waters of the other life.

Every one felt grieved when Madame Olympe unwillingly gave the signal for pulling to shore. The place where we landed was very shallow, and one had to step over large stepping-stones in the water in order to reach the bank. There was neither difficulty nor danger, and we accomplished it with perfect ease. Suddenly a plaintive voice was heard calling upon us all to stop. It was Monsieur Jacques, who had remained behind unperceived, and who now announced that it was simply impossible for him to get out of the boat or over the stones. It was quite in vain that we reasoned with him, and assured him that nothing could be easier: he stood there wailing and imploring without making the least attempt to move, until Madame Olympe, touched with compassion, strode down the bank again, recrossed the stones, and whipping him up round the knees like a baby, brought him in her arms triumphantly through the water back to us.

Monsieur Kiowski left us almost as soon as we returned to the house, very amiably sorry that he could not wait to escort me on my journey, but promising to come very soon and be presented to mother in town. The dinner was dreary-the cloud of last moments was upon us: Madame Olympe hardly spoke; there seemed to be a sort of impassable wall built up between Ursula and Monsieur de Saldes; and Jeanne was miserable at losing us all. Monsieur Dessaix had a swelled face and went to bed before dinner. When we had gone back into the drawing-room, Madame Olympe began turning over our photograph-books. In looking through Ursula's she came upon a photograph of Colonel Hamilton, and looked at it with great interest for some time. She had not seen him for many years before

his death.

own.

She then asked Ursula if she had no likeness of her mother; she said she had a miniature of her, and went to fetch it. When she showed it to us, I was struck with the unlikeness of the expression to her The colouring was the same, and so were the drooping lids; but the mouth looked all tremulous with tenderness, and I was at a loss to account for the sarcastic turn of Ursula's lips, until she showed us a small head of an Italian uncle of hers, a brother of her mother's, and I saw at once where it came from. We had nothing whatever of an evening. At about half-past ten, Madame Olympe said she had a headache, and folding me in her arms with a most maternal embrace, bade me farewell. I had to be off at four in the morning in order to catch the tidal train, and so we separated early, and indeed, with our opposed elements and dispositions of mind, it was quite the best thing to be done.

After Ursula and I had been some time in our room, it suddenly occurred to me that Madame Olympe had never given me a small parcel which she wished me to take over to England for her: so slipping on my dressing-gown I ran down by a back staircase which communicated directly with her apartment, to see about it. I cannot say how glad I am that it had so happened, for I had a last five minutes with her, so affectionate and tender that I would not have lost them for all the world. Just as I had bid her good-night for the second time, I recollected having left my photograph-book in the drawing-room, and as Madame Olympe assured me that no one was there, I ran through a little passage which led straight from her room into the drawing-room, to look for it, or rather to feel for it. I had no candle, but I knew perfectly well where I had left it,-on the top of the music-stand behind the curtain in the bay window-and I had just laid my hand upon it and felt its clasps, when I saw a sudden light through the chink of the curtain, and Ursula and Monsieur de Saldes came in together.

"You have come down for your mother's miniature?" said he.

"Yes, I left it on the chimney-piece," she answered calmly, going towards the fireplace.

"It is there no longer," he said. "I have got it. I took it because I knew you would come down for it, and because I wanted to speak to you. All day I have endeavoured to get near you, but your systematic avoidance of me rendered it impossible; now you must hear me. For the last two days, for what reason God alone knows, you have appeared to take a strange delight in presenting yourself under the most repulsive and unfavourable aspect. You have expressed feelings in every way discreditable to you, and in words that, if you remember them, might make you blush. I now come to tell you that all this I am willing to overlook, to believe that it was temper-caprice-excitability-whatever name you choose to give it, and I ask you to become my wife."

I never was more stupefied in my life than when I found myself the involuntary recipient of this extraordinary confidence. However, I thought it so essential that these two should understand each other, that I quietly

sat down in my corner, determined not for the world to move or interrupt them. Anything like the insolence of his tone and manner it was impossible to conceive. I was at a loss to imagine how she would answer him.

"Your wife?" said Ursula. The words dropped with awful calmness into the silence of the night.

"Yes," he continued, in the same tone of aggressive arrogance. "I am well aware how terribly against you your birth and education have been, but I make the just allowance for it, and remember that partly to these disadvantages and peculiar circumstances you also owe your strong individuality-which, while it is your snare, is also one of your most powerful attractions."

“Then,” she said, with the most perfect composure, "I am to understand that you overlook my unfortunate antecedents and are willing to marry me on account of my originality? This is no doubt very kind, and highly flattering to me; but I think perhaps it might prove a dangerous experiment to both of us. Why, how little you know yourself, Monsieur de Saldes! Having married me for my unlikeness to other women, your first endeavour would be carefully to stamp out all the sharp corners of that individuality which has at present the good fortune to please you, and to blur me down into the dead level of everybody else. Failing to do this, as you would-for I am not made of very malleable stuff-you would soon get to hate me for the very thing that made you like me; after which I should probably have the gratification of secing you devoted to some other woman immeasurably my inferior-a Sophie de Malan!" (this she said with unutterable contempt,) "whose principal attraction would probably consist in her utter unlikeness to myself. No: I am sensible of the honour you do me, but I think the hazard too great and must decline it; and since a vagabond I am, a vagabond I will remain."

"It is you that do yourself injustice, not I," he replied with warmth. "It is you that say these hard things of yourself, not I. Should I ask you to be my wife if I did not know your real worth? It is this that drives me distracted, to see you (you!) living with the sort of people you do, exposed to the odious familiarities of a Dessaix-—”

"I do not know what reason you may have for speaking of Monsieur Dessaix with such sovereign contempt," she said. "I have myself the greatest admiration for him, not only on account of his remarkable genius, but for the sake of his disinterested nature and the generous self-denial of his whole life. When at his father's death his two young sisters were thrown entirely upon his hands, he was engaged to a woman to whom he was passionately attached. He broke off his engagement and gave up all thoughts of marriage, in order to educate and provide for his sisters. After years of self-abnegation and hard labour he has had the gratification of seeing them both honourably married, but his own existence has been entirely sacrificed. Who are you, Monsieur de Saldes, that you despise this man? Whom have you lived to benefit? whom have you worked to serve ?"

"I beg your pardon," he answered, "if I have spoken of your friend in a way that has hurt your feelings. I have not the slightest doubt that he is a most estimable person; but you are altogether of another order

"I have no desire whatever to repudiate my class,-the class to which my mother belonged," she said very quietly. "And that being the case, you must perceive how totally unfit I am for the honour you propose to me."

"But don't you see," he rejoined eagerly, "that your marriage with me at once places you in an entirely different sphere-the one for which nature intended you? All these miserable antecedents and odious surroundings, which make me so utterly wretched, would by the force of circumstances die a natural death. Your marriage with me would at once remove you from them."

"I see," said Ursula, slowly. "And I should give up my dear old Giambattista, who, when my father was dead and I was left alone in our wretched lodging, came and fetched me away and brought me home to his old wife, and housed, and fed, and clothed me, as if I had been his own child. And I should also, no doubt, give up Jacques, who nursed me through that terrible small-pox, when even my own father was afraid to come near me, and I, neglected and forlorn, was left to toss with fever and worry through as I might;-Jacques, who sat up night after night with me, fanning me, and putting little bits of ice into my dry mouth, as my mother might have done. The first day that I felt better I insisted on his bringing me a looking-glass. Shall I ever forget it? I burst into tears of despair; and Jacques, while the tears ran down his own cheeks, took my hands and said, 'Do not weep. Thy soul is not changed. Thou wilt be always lovely to thy friends!' You, I remember, brought me a veil, and begged me to wear it when you called; the alteration in my complexion affected your finer sensibility so painfully. No, Monsieur de Saldes, I am properly alive to the compliment that you have paid me; but I am afraid I might find the conditions hard, and end with dying of the burden of an honour unto which I was not born.""

"You purposely misunderstand me! Who talks of compliments? who talks of honour? Oh, Ursula!" he cried, in great emotion, "do you not see how passionately I love you?"

"What!" she said. "A woman who finds virtue wearisome?" "For heaven's sake don't recall those terrible words!-forget themforget them, as I will! "

"What!" she continued, bitterly. "A woman who does not respect herself?"

"Yes! yes! and a thousand times yes, were it a thousand times true! Oh, child, could not you see that all my hate was love? where were your eyes that you did not see this? Where was your heart that you did not feel it? Why, child, at the very moment that you were uttering those horrid words my whole heart was going out in passionate adoration before