ney from one end of Europe to the other was scarcely worth consideration. One day, when my dreams of the preceding night had been more vivid than usual, I was seized with a feverish unrest. I had made all the arrangements for the Asiatic expedition, and was waiting in dreary idleness for favourable weather for my start. Better, I thought, to spend that weary interval in a hurried flight hitherward. I have returned in secret, leaving my servant behind me; and no one but you and the old woman at the Hermitage will know of my coming. I arrived in the early morning, and have lain in wait for the dusk ever since, trusting to some happy accident to afford me an opportunity of seeing you. I knew this garden was your favourite walk in the twilight, and I had been in ambush behind the yews for half an hour before I heard the dear familiar footstep and the rustling of the silken dress."

While he was speaking, the thought of Arthur Holroyde's presence at Scarsdale had flashed upon Marcia. Until then she had forgotten every thing in the surprise and agitation that had come upon her. But now all at once she understood the danger that might arise from any meeting between Holroyde and the man he had injured. Would Godfrey, who had sought his wife's betrayer from one end of America to the other, be satisfied to let him go scatheless if Providence flung them together? An icy terror benumbed Marcia Denison's heart.

"O God," she thought, "if they should meet!" She put her hand to her forehead, trying to calculate the chances for and against such a meeting. Mrs. Harding's visitor might come out upon the terrace at any moment; and his voice might be heard in the still evening calling to the groom who held his horse, or making his last adieux. The two men might pass each other in the darkness unrecognised and in safety; but any chance utterance of the visitor's name by grooms or stable-boys might reveal his neighbourhood and bring about some fatal encounter.

The days of duelling are past and gone, it may be; but men contrive to kill one another occasionally, nevertheless; and it is not so long since a corpse was carried out of a field in Berkshire, to lie stark and bloody in a darkened chamber at the Barley Mow. The flydrivers of Windsor point to the green hollow where the victim fell, and relate how quietly the gentlemen alighted from their vehicle and walked across the pleasant meadow. Can the practice of duelling be ever entirely extinct while men have human passions and a human impatience of insupportable insult and injury?

"If they meet, there will be some deadly harm," thought Marcia: "I have not forgotten how Godfrey wrote of his enemy only a few months ago. The old wounds had not ceased to bleed. O God, keep these two men asunder, for I know there would be peril in their meeting."

The pause was very brief during which Miss Denison thought all this. Godfrey walked silently by her side in the darkness; it seemed

to him enough happiness to be with her. She turned to him presently and laid her hand upon his arm.

"Pray go!" she exclaimed. "You had no right to come back. I have forborne from reproaching you, for I cannot regret it now since it gives me the opportunity of asking you a favour."

"A favour, Marcia! You will ask any thing of me! Why, that would give my dreary life a kind of charm."

"You talked just now of taking that terrible journey through Central Asia. Promise me that you will abandon the idea.”

"I would rather you asked me any thing else in the world. Do you forget, Marcia, that henceforth there is nothing left for me in life but perilous journeys, and the exploration of solitudes that are new to me? I want to see Schamyl's fortresses. I want to beat up a new territory. Remember that I have been fifteen years a wanderer. Abyssinia is as stale to me as Oxford Street. You send me away from Scarsdale, Marcia; don't deny me Circassia and the Chinese Wall."

"I shall be miserable, knowing you are in danger," said Marcia, in a low voice. She felt that she had no right to say so much as this. But then talking to a man on the eve of a life-long exile is like talking to a man on his deathbed. "I think if my image haunted your dreams, it must have been because I was tortured night and day by fears for your safety," she added softly.

"You were tortured for me; you suffered for my sake! Oh, my own dear love, I will promise any thing in the world rather than cause you unhappiness."

"Promise then that you will not leave Europe."

"I promise."

"A thousand thanks! And now go. You will leave Scarsdale the first thing to-morrow morning."

"Yes, Marcia, to return to St. Petersburg, where I shall spend the winter. And now farewell. Forgive the folly that has brought me to you, and forget, if possible, that you have seen me. Good-bye, goodbye. God be with you, best and noblest of women!"

He held both her hands in his, and bent his head over them reverently as he said this. Then he turned and left her; and she heard his firm step upon the gravel-walks as she stood listening in the darkness. The stable-clock struck the half-hour after seven as she waited between the gnarled espaliers. When the footsteps were quite out of hearing, she walked along the pathway to the stout wooden door by which Godfrey Pierrepoint had left the garden. She opened this door and stood within its threshold still listening. The last yellow light of the departed sun had died out in the west, and the evening star shone fair and bright above the solemn woods. The September night was still and warm. Miss Denison emerged from her garden upon the broad gravelled drive that approached the steps leading to the terrace. She ascended these steps and walked past the lighted windows of the

dining-room, where the curtains were very rarely drawn in warm weather. One glance within showed her Mr. Holroyde sitting opposite the Baronet at the round table. So for the present there could be little chance of a meeting between Godfrey Pierrepoint and his enemy.

"Thank God!" thought Marcia. "If he goes straight back to the Hermitage, no harm need come of this mad return. Heaven keep him from wandering about the wood to-night!"

She looked up at the purple sky, very calm and beautiful in its profound depth of colour. Venus had summoned her brothers and sisters out of the blue darkness, and the light of a thousand stars shimmered upon the leaves and made a faint silvery brightness upon the grass. Marcia felt sorry that the night should be so beautiful. It was such a night as would beguile an erratic person into lonely wanderings in silvan glades, among the dewy fern.

"If they met face to face in the broad open country, they might recognise each other by this starlight," thought Marcia; "but the wood about the Hermitage will be as black as the bottom of a grave."

She entered the house by one of the French windows of her father's study, and went upstairs to her own sitting-room-the room in which Godfrey Pierrepoint had contemplated her portrait more than a year before. A shaded lamp had been placed by the pile of books she had left on her table, but she did not take her usual place under the lamplight. She seated herself by one of the windows, and looked out at the distant woods. Seated here, she could hear the voices in the rooms below. Mrs. Harding and Arthur Holroyde came out upon the terrace by and by, followed by the Baronet, who was tenderly reminded of the perils of cold night-air. But the widow was not quite her gushing self this evening, and Marcia wondered why she was so quiet.

Mr. Holroyde's horse was brought to the steps at the eastern end of the terrace at about half-past eight. Miss Denison watched him as he mounted and rode away, looking backwards and waving a white hand airily as he disappeared round the circular sweep of the drive. Looking down at the figures on the terrace, Marcia saw the widow sitting in a moody attitude, with her folded arms resting on the stone balustrade. Sir Jasper spoke to her twice before she raised her drooping head and replied to him.

"Is there any misunderstanding between papa and her ?" wondered Miss Denison. 66 Surely his eyes will be opened as to her real character before he commits himself to any foolish declaration."

But Marcia's mind was not long occupied by her father's enchantress. Whom could she think of to-night but Godfrey Pierrepoint?

About a quarter of an hour after Arthur Holroyde had disappeared with that airy wave of his delicate hand, a shot sounded far away in the stillness of the wood.

"Good heavens, how foolish I am!" thought Marcia, after she had started to her feet pale and trembling; "that sound made my heart

VOL. XV.

LL

grow cold, though I have heard a hundred times that the wood is infested by poachers, who defy the keepers, knowing very well that papa won't prosecute them. Some poor creature whose wife and children are half-starving fired that shot, I daresay."

Miss Denison had been accustomed to be startled by stray shots almost every evening of late-shots which Dorothy explained as "Poachers, please, Miss Marcia; and father says if Sir Jasper isn't more severe with them, there won't be any birds left by and by; for they shoot the young birds, Miss Marcia, and wire the young hares, and go on dreadfully."

"If I sit idle here any longer," thought Marcia, "I shall be full of nervous fancies."

So she went to the lamp-lit table, and opened her books. It is something for a woman to be a little bit of a blue-stocking when the hour of trouble comes upon her. A parcel of new books had come down from Dulau that afternoon, and Marcia had some volumes of classic history and biography to dip into, written in that light airy manner with which Frenchmen can handle the heaviest subjects. She tried to concentrate her attention upon her book, and succeeded so far as to get through the evening somehow or other. She was even astonished when she looked up at the little timepiece on the mantelshelf, and saw that the hands pointed to half-past eleven. She was dawdling over the putting away of her books and papers, glad to do any thing that occupied the time and would help to shorten a sleepless night, when she was startled by the trampling of footsteps, the ringing of half-a-dozen different bells, and the sound of many voices all talking at once.

She rushed out into the corridor, and thence to the broad landing at the top of the principal staircase, where she met Dorothy flying towards her, pale and breathless.

"What is the matter? Speak, child, speak!" she cried, grasping the girl's arm.

"Oh, Miss Marcia-don't be frightened! It's-it's very dreadful, but it's nothing wrong with your papa-or any body you know-but the-the gentleman who was here to-day has been found in the woodshot-and he's being brought in here, miss, dead or dying; and they're riding off for doctors right and left. And Mrs. Brownlow is almost beside herself with fright. It's-it's like it was that dreadful night, Miss Marcia, when poor Miss Denison was dying, and nobody seemed calm or able to do any thing quietly, except you."

"Yes," murmured Marcia in a faint voice, "I remember that night; and God grant I may be strong enough to be useful now, if any help can save this miserable man! Where have they carried him, Dorothy?"

"Into the study, miss. Sir Jasper said he wasn't to be moved a step farther than was necessary. The servants were all crowding about the door, and I just caught a glimpse of the poor gentleman lying on a

sofa that had been brought out of the drawing-room, and looking as white and still as a corpse; but Sir Jasper sent us all away, and shut the door; and every body is to go to bed, Mrs. Brownlow says, except Mary Carter, Mr. Hills, and the men who have gone for the doctor."

Mr. Hills was Sir Jasper's own man, and a model of sobriety and solemnity. This gentleman had had so much experience in the nursing of invalids who ailed nothing, that he was almost as good as a doctor.

Throughout the remainder of that night, Marcia kept watch alone in her own room, while Dorothy slumbered peacefully in her little chamber nigh at hand. All that miserable night Marcia sat in the oldfashioned window, ready to help if her help were wanted below, and praying in her heart of hearts for Godfrey Pierrepoint, by whose hand she believed the stricken man had fallen.

CHAPTER XXX.

SUNSHINE FOR MR. DOBB.

THE next day was Friday, and Friday loomed a black and gloomy day for Henry Adolphus Dobb, who evidenced so morose a disposition at the domestic breakfast-table, that he drew down upon himself figuratively-worded reproaches to the effect that he had arisen from the wrong side of his bed, and was afflicted with a pain in his temper.

Perhaps there is no repast more apt to become weary to the spirit and revolting to the appetite than the dismal meal with which the Englishman with limited means fortifies himself for his day's work. The Parisian may have three courses and a dessert in the Palais-Royal for something under fifteenpence, or in quaint little streets on the other side of the Seine, for something under fivepence. The French peasant in the provinces may have a basin of some mysterious soup, which at the least is savoury, or a bunch of grapes with his hunch of bread, or a pocketful of yellow pears, or a lettuce steeped in oil, and a slice of hard cheese. He may vary his humble menu with the changing seasons, and may warm himself with a soup in winter, and refresh himself with a fruit in summer, and may impart a patrician tone to his repast at all times by the consumption of a liquor that is at any rate called wine. But the wife of a British clerk with an income of a hundred and twenty pounds per annum thinks she has done her duty to her husband when she has placed before him a stale half-quartern, considerably adulterated with alum, a doubtful French egg boiled hard, and a pat of indifferent butter. And then she sits glaring at him sternly across a dingy British-metal pot of weak tea-that never was grown in China, and whose ghostly resemblance to tea is washed out of it by an immoderate allowance of boiling water: and if he does not do justice to the goods his domestic gods have provided for him, she asks sharply why he doesn't "make" a good breakfast.

"I don't know what has come to you, Henry Adolphus, for the last