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alsdafabet ten years of prestige "Loved nothing better than a—oh, how you must have misunderstood me!" says Rodney, with mournful earnestness, liberally sprinkled with reproach.,Stooping, he presses his lips to her hand for the first time. The caress is long and fervent.,Running over to the river that flows swiftly but serenely a few yards from her, she leans over the bank and gazes down lingeringly and with love into the dark depths beneath that cast up to her her own fair image.,"She must be harder-hearted than I think her, if she can resist you," he says, fondly.,"Where's the docther at all, at all?" says he, forcing Geoffrey into a chair, and turning to Biddy, who is standing open-mouthed in the doorway, and who, though grieved, is plainly finding some pleasure in the situation. Being investigated, she informs them the "docther" is to-night on the top of Carrigfoddha Mountain, and, literally, "won't be home until morning."，It revives him somewhat. And presently the intenser pallor dies away, and speech returns to him.，"It is quite necessary you should know all about it," says Nicholas, in a low tone, to Dorothy, whom he is holding carefully, as though under the mistaken impression that young women if left on chairs without support invariably fall off them. "As the future mistress here, you ought to be up to every point connected with the old place."，She is enchanted, and stands there for a minute or two spellbound by the glory of the scene before her. Then a desire to see her beloved lake from the great windows in the northern gallery takes possession of her. She will go and look at it, and afterwards creep on tiptoe to the library, seize the book she had been reading before dinner, and make her way back again to her room without any one being in the least the wiser. Anything will be better than sitting here any longer, dreaming dismal day-dreams."I don't mind," says Mona. "We are Paddies, of course."

"It is quite a romance," says Jack Rodney: "I never heard anything like it before off the stage." He is speaking to the room generally. "I doubt if any one but you, Mona, would have got the will out of him. He hates the rest of us like poison.","Ah," said her bull husband; "now you understand how it is that we feel. You mourn for your father; but we have seen our fathers, mothers, and many of our relations fall over the high cliffs, to be killed for food by your people. But now I will pity you, I will give you one chance. If you can bring your father to life, you and he may go back to your camp.","I mean," says Mona, flushing a vivid scarlet, "is she stern?","Don't you know?" says Mr. Darling, mysteriously. "It is a secret, but I know you can be trusted. Every morning early she has them carefully swept, with tea-leaves to keep down the dust, and if the tea is strong it kills the weeds.",Even Lady Rodney for the moment has fallen a prey to her unpremeditated charms, and is leaning forward anxiously watching her. Jack and Sir Nicholas are enchanted.,"Jack is only Mr. Rodney too.","This spot always brings to my mind the thoughts of other people," says Mona, softly. "I am very fond of poetry: are you?","Oh, I don't know: that was a mere figure of speech," says Mr. Rodney, who is afraid to say such absences are caused by an innate love of freedom and a vile desire for liberty at any cost, and has nothing else handy. "Now don't stay moping up here when I go, but run downstairs and find the girls and make yourself happy with them.","I don't know, I'm sure; but really the way you expressed yourself, and——Yes, of course, Spice will be company, the very best company for you.",She is a very little girl, quite half a head shorter than Mona, and, now that one can see her more plainly as she stands on the hearthrug, something more than commonly pretty.,As Mona comes still nearer, the words of the speaker reach her, and sink into her brain. It is Lady Rodney who is holding forth, and what she says floats lightly to Mona's ears. She is still advancing, unmindful of anything but the fact that she cannot see Geoffrey again for more hours than she cares to count, when the following words become clear to her, and drive the color from her cheeks,—,"Oh, no," says Mona, gently; "only I should like you better, of course, if you were not the cause of our undoing.".