across the churchyard, with its long rank grass and tombstones stained with mossy slime, the old parish church of Olney :—a quaint time-worn structure, with an arched and gargoyled entrance, Gothic windows, and a belfry of strange device. High up in the belfry, and on the boughs of the great ash trees surrounding the burial acre, jackdaws were gathered, sleepily discussing the weather and their family affairs. A footpath, much overgrown with grass, crossed from the church porch to a door in the weather-beaten wall communicating with the adjacent vicarage, a large, dismal, oldfashioned residence, buried in gloomy foliage.

Miss Combe glanced at church and churchyard with the air of superior enlightenment which a Christian missionary might assume on approaching some temple of Buddha or Brahma. George, glancing over the wall, uttered an exclamation.

"What's the matter now!" demanded Alma.

"Brown's blind mare grazing among the graves," said young Craik with righteous indignation. He was about to enlarge further on the delinquencies of the vicar, and the shameful condition of the parish, of which he had just discovered a fresh illustration, but remembering his recent experience, he controlled himself and contented himself with throwing a stone at the animal, which was leisurely cropping the grass surrounding an ancient headstone. They walked on, and passed the front of the vicarage, which looked out through sombre ash trees on the road. The place seemed dreary and desolate enough, despite a few flower beds and a green lawn. The windows were mantled in dark ivy, which drooped in heavy clusters over the gloomy door.

Leaving the vicarage behind him, the three followed the country road for about a mile, when, passing through the gate of a pretty lodge, they entered an avenue of larch trees, leading up to the mansion to which they gave their name. Here all was bright and well kept, the grass swards cleanly swept and variegated with flower beds, and leading on to shrubberies full of flowering trees. The house itself, an elegant modern structure, stood upon a slight eminence, and was reached by two marble terraces commanding a sunny view of the open fields and distant sea.

It may be well to explain here that the "Larches," with a large extent of the surrounding property, belonged to Miss Alma Craik in her own right, the lady being an orphan and an only child. Her father, a rich railway contractor, had bought the property and built the house just before she was born. During her infancy her mother had died, and before she was of age her father too had joined

the great majority; so that she found herself, at a very early age, the heiress to a large property, and with no relations in the world save her uncle, Sir George Craik, and his son. Sir George, who had been knighted on the completion of a great railway bridge considered a triumph of engineering skill, had bought an adjacent property at about the time when his brother purchased the lands of Olney.

The same contrast which was noticeable between the cousins had existed between the brothers, Thomas and George Craik. They were both Scotchmen, and had begun life as common working engineers, but there the resemblance ceased. Thomas had been a comparative recluse, thoughtful, melancholy, of advanced opinions, fond of books and abstruse speculation; and his daughter's liberal education had been the consequence of his culture, and in a measure of his radicalism. George was a man of the world, quick, fond of money, a Conservative in politics, and a courtier by disposition, whose ambition was to found a "family," and who disapproved of all social changes unconnected with the spread of the railway system and the success of his own commercial speculations. Young George was his only son, and had acquired, at a very early age, all the instincts (not to speak of many of the vices) of the born aristocrat. He was particularly sensitive on the score of his lowly origin, and his great grudge against society was that it had not provided him with an oldfashioned ancestry. Failing the fact, he assumed all the fiction, of an hereditary heir of the soil, but would have given half his heirloom to anyone who could have produced for him an authentic "family tree," and convinced him that, despite his father's beginnings, his blood had in it a dash of "blue."

George Craik lunched with his cousin and her companion in a spacious chamber, communicating with the terrace by French windows opening to the ground. He was not a conversationalist, and the meal passed in comparative silence. Alma could not fail to perceive, however, that the young man was unusually preoccupied and taciturn.

At last he rose without ceremony, strolled out on the terrace, and lit a cigar. He paced up and down for some minutes, then, with the air of one whose mind is made up, he looked in and beckoned to his cousin.

"Come out here," he said. "Never mind your hat-there is no sun to speak of."

After a moment's hesitation, she stepped out and joined him. "Do you want me?" she asked carelessly. "I would rather leave you to your smoke, and go to the library with Miss Combe. We're

studying Herbert Spencer's 'First Principles' together, and she reads a portion aloud every afternoon."

She knew that something was coming by the fixed gaze with which he regarded her, and the peculiar expression in his eyes. His manner was far less like that of a lover than that of a somewhat sulky and tyrannical elder brother, and indeed they had been so much together from childhood upward, that she felt the relation between them to be quite a fraternal one. Nevertheless, his mind just then was occupied with a warmer sentiment,—the one, indeed, which often leads the way to wedlock.

He began abruptly enough.

"I say, Alma, how long is this to last?" he demanded, not without asperity.

"What, pray?"

"Our perpetual misunderstandings. I declare if I did not know what a queer girl you are, I should think you detested me!"

"I like you well enough, George,-when you are agreeable, which is not so often as I could wish."

Thus she answered, with a somewhat weary laugh.

"But you know I like you better than anything in the world!" he cried eagerly. "You know I have set my heart on making you my wife."

"Don't talk nonsense, George!" replied Alma. "Love between cousins is an absurdity."

She would have added an "enormity," having during her vagrant studies imbibed strong views on the subject of consanguinity, but advanced as she was, she was not quite advanced enough to discuss a physiological and social problem with the man who wanted to marry her. In simple truth, she had the strongest personal objection to her cousin, in his present character of lover.

"I don't see the absurdity of it," answered the young man, "nor does my father. His heart is set upon this match, as you know; and besides, he does not at all approve of your living the life you do-alone, without a protector, and all that sort of thing."

By this time Alma had quite recovered herself, and was able to reassume the air of sweet superiority which is at once so bewitching in a pretty woman, or so irritating. It did not bewitch George Craik; it irritated him beyond measure. A not inconsiderable experience of vulgar amours in the country, not to speak of the business known as "sowing wild oats" in Paris and London, had familiarised him with a different type of woman. In his cousin's presence he felt, not abashed, but at a disadvantage. She had a

manner, too, of talking down to him, as to a younger brother, which he disliked exceedingly; and more than once, when he had talked to her in the language of love, he had smarted under her ridicule.

So now, instead of taking the matter too seriously, she smiled frankly in his face, and quietly took his arm.

"You must not talk like that, George," she said, walking up and down with him. "When you do, I feel as if you were a very little boy, and I quite an old woman. Even if I cared for you in that way-and I don't, and never shall-we are not at all suited to each other. Our thoughts and aims in life are altogether different. I like you very much as a cousin, of course, and that is just the reason why I can never think of you as a husband. Don't talk of it again, please!—and forgive me for being quite frank—I should not like you to have any misconception on the subject."

"I know what it is," he cried angrily. "It is that clergyman fellow! He has come between us."

"Nothing of the sort," answered Alma with heightened colour. "If there was not another man in the world, it would be all the same so far as you and I are concerned."

"I don't believe a word of it. Bradley is your choice. A pretty choice! A fellow who is almost a beggar, and in a very short time will be kicked out of the Church as a heretic."

She released his arm, and drew away from him in deep exasperation; but her feeling towards him was still that of an elder sister annoyed at the gaucherie of a privileged brother.

"If you continue to talk like that of Mr. Bradley, we shall quarrel, George. I think you had better go home now, and think it over. In any case, you will do no good by abusing an innocent man who is vastly your superior."

All the bad blood of George Craik's heart now mounted to his face, and his frame shook with rage.

"Bradley will have to reckon with me," he exclaimed furiously. "What right has he to raise his eyes towards you? Until he came down here, we were the best of friends; but he has poisoned your heart against me, and against all your friends. Never mind! I'll have it out with him, before many days are done!"

Without deigning to reply, Alma walked from him into the house.

An hour later, George Craik mounted his horse at the inn, and rode furiously homeward. An observer of human nature, noticing the expression of his countenance, and taking count of his

square-set jaw and savage mouth, would have concluded perhaps that Alma estimated his opposition, and perhaps his whole character, somewhat too lightly. He had a bulldog's tenacity, when he had once made up his mind to a course of action.

But when he was gone, the high-spirited lady of his affections dismissed him completely from her thoughts. She joined Miss Combe in the library, and was soon busy with the problem of the Unknowable, as presented in the pages of the clearest-headed philosopher of our time.

CHAPTER VIII.

MYSTIFICATIONS.

"What God hath joined, no man shall put asunder,"

Even so I heard the preacher cry—and blunder !

Alas, the sweet old text applied could be

Only in Eden, or in Arcady.

This text, methinks, is apter, more in season

"What man joins, God shall sunder-when there's reason!"

Mayfair: a Satire.

AMBROSE BRADLEY came back from London a miserable man. Alighting late in the evening at the nearest railway station, nearly ten miles distant, he left his bag to be sent on by the carrier, and walked home through the darkness on foot. It was late when he knocked at the vicarage door, and was admitted by his housekeeper, a melancholy village woman, whose husband combined the offices of gardener and sexton. The house was dark and desolate, like his thoughts. He shut himself up in his study, and at once occupied himself in writing his sermon for the next day, which was Sunday. This task occupied him until the early summer dawn crept coldly into the room.

The Sunday came, dull and rainy; and Bradley went forth to face his congregation with a deepening sense of guilt and shame. A glance showed him that Alma occupied her usual place, close under the pulpit, but he was careful not to meet her eyes. Not far from her sat Sir George Craik and his son, both looking the very reverse of pious-minded.

It was a very old church, with low Gothic arches and narrow painted windows, through which little sunlight ever came. In the centre of the nave was the tomb of the old knight of Olney, who had once owned the surrounding lands, but whose race had been