the idea of this had never occurred to them, and it was quite contrary to their wishes. She did not say that they had hoped and expected Owen would have chosen Annie for his wife. But Annie knew that this was the thought in the writer's mind as plainly as if it had been before her on the paper, knew that it was Mr. Gerard's thought, too, and the thought of everybody. Owen also knew this had been expected of him, and would think she was disappointed.

Mrs. Gerard did not ask Annie to come over and see them, and this, Annie knew, too, was because it was thought she would not be able to bear it. It was plain they all considered her ill-treated, and were annoyed and ashamed at it, and pitied her. But much as she knew they loved her, she would not have their pity. Though gentle, she was proud, and she determined to go to Ashfield that very evening, and show them that she was not going to pine and fret for one who cared nothing for her.

She went; but no sooner had she entered the room than she half regretted her hardihood, and began to fear that her strength and powers of dissimulation would not be equal to the task she had undertaken, for Mrs. Gerard came up to her, and, taking her hand, gazed kindly and searchingly into her eyes-those soft, dove-like, hazel eyes, which had sunk so deep during the last few weeks-and laid a caressing touch on her nut-brown hair. She could not stand it, and, hastily turning away, went to the window, and leant on the old brown windowsill, her hands drooping listlessly over it, her eyes gazing down the avenue, on the bare, tossing ashtrees, beneath which in summer and in winter she had so often walked with Owen, and listened to their rustling. Then they had always seemed to murmur of love

and happiness; now they moaned and writhed as if in pain.

The children came round her, wanting her to sing; but she answered them petulantly, and they left her alone, wondering why Annie was so 66 cross." She heard their whispers, and they recalled her to herself. Leaving the window she went to the piano, and, choosing the liveliest airs she knew, began to sing and play.

While she was thus engaged Owen came in, and, favoured by the gathering twilight, she contrived to congratulate him on his engagement, with a tolerably steady voice. When lights were brought she remained at the piano, for then her back was to the room, and she need not meet the eyes of Owen or Miriam.

"Won't you sing this, Miss Blake?" said Miriam, approaching, and taking up a favourite Italian song which Annie had often sung at her request.

Annie hesitated, for it was also a favourite of Owen's. She had learned it to please him, and she feared lest the trembling of her voice should betray her agitation. She commenced the prelude, at the same time trying to invent a hundred excuses to avoid singing that song, when suddenly a voice without began the air, accompanied by the notes of a violin.

Everybody started, and some ran to see who the musician was. He had entered the avenue, and stood before the window, a dark, slight man, of about middle age, looking like a foreigner.

On seeing the door opened, he raised his cap, and advancing, began, in broken English, to ask for an hour's rest and some refreshment. The request was readily complied with. He was brought into the kitchen, where an ample repast was soon spread before him. He partook of it very sparingly,

however, and, having finished, took up his violin, and began to play, adding, after a few minutes, to the instrumental music his own deep, powerful voice.

The servants gathered round him. The music drew the children to the spot, and after a while the rest of the family also. The violinist thanked Mrs. Gerard for her hospitality.

"I will play one more air now before I go my way," he said. "You all here to listen to de poor Italian."

His keen, dark eyes shot a rapid glance round as he spoke.

"Cousin Miriam," cried one of the children. "Miriam's not here.

I will call her. She's from Italy, too," continued the child, looking up into the man's dark face," and can speak to you in Italian if you like; oh, ever so fast."

But the musician was running his fingers over the strings of his violin in a rapid prelude, and did not seem to hear.

He

In a moment Miriam entered, and going up to the Italian addressed him in his own language, with enthusiasm in her tone. He replied in a low voice, and bent over his violin. They could not see his face distinctly, for his back was to the light, and the cap he kept on his head half concealed it, but his tone seemed full of emotion. The unexpected sound of his own language had evidently affected him.

He began to play at once, dashing into the very middle of the air, as it appeared, a wild, irregular melody, that seemed full of struggling tumultuous emotions, each jostling the other with breathless rapidity. Now, it was low and tender, like the softest murmurings of love, the next instant, fierce and passionate, and it ended in a perfect torrent of sound, that almost took away the breath of the listeners.

He rose abruptly, and slinging

his violin round his neck, bowed, and went towards the door. He would not accept the money they wanted to press on him, nor the offer of a night's lodging in one of the out-houses. As he passed Miriam he paused, and, holding out his hand, said,

"Exiles from the same land are equals when they meet, lady; do not, then, disdain my touch."

Miriam held out her hand. As he took it he murmured two or three words in Italian. Whatever they were they caused her to glance up at him quickly with a startled expression. But she made no reply. In fact, she had not time, for the next instant he was gone. But Annie, who was nearest, fancied that she saw the gleam of something white, like a small piece of paper, flutter into Miriam's palm. She expected Miriam to speak of it instantly, but Miriam was silent, and Annie began to think she had been mistaken, and the circumstance left her mind.

She had many things to think of that night on returning home. It had been a great strain on her to keep up during the evening, and now that the occasion for it was past, and she was alone once more in her own room, she felt completely exhausted. Yet to think of sleep was impossible while her mind was so full of crowding thoughts. Somehow, although she had seen Miriam and Owen together that evening, and had heard him address her with the freedom of a plighted lover, she could less than ever realize the fact that he was lost to her. She seated herself at the window, and leaning her forehead on her hand, tried to picture her own life when he should have passed from it for ever; when he must no more colour her thoughts. The empty, empty blank! it was in vain to image it.

It was a fine, starry, moonlight

night. From where she sat she could see the quaint gables and tall chimneys of Ashfield, the trees silvered by the moonbeams, and the path between them one broad track of light.

Suddenly she perceived a figure moving rapidly under their shadow, a slight female figure. Who could be out at so late an hour? Annie knew that the house had been shut up, and the door locked and bolted, full an hour ago. Besides, this was not one of the servants; no, she knew that slender form well, and smooth, gliding walk, could even discern the dress, though half concealed by a dark cloak. It was Miriam she reached the gate, drew back the heavy bolts with some difficulty, apparently, and then ran swiftly along the road, taking the direction of a certain glen among the wildest part of the mountains, known by the appellation of the Black Glen. A lonely spot even in the day-time, and shunned by all the country people as haunted. In the centre of it were the ruins of an old monastery, and beside them a blighted witch-thorn.

Towards this ill-omened valley, then, Miriam hastened. Annie watched her approach its dark entrance, where the moonlight, shaded off by black cliffs, seemed to shrink away. Then her figure disappeared. A superstitious feeling shot shot through Annie's heart. Despite her education, and the enlightenment of the age, she would not have gone to that glen alone, and at such an hour, for worlds. What could Miriam want there?

Annie remained at the window, lost in amazement and conjecture, to see if Miriam would soon return. But more than an hour passed before her vigilance was rewarded, and she beheld the slight, dark figure appear on the road below. The night had then become somewhat cloudy, but there was still light enough for her

to observe Miriam glide past the front door of the house to the window of the dining-room, which was but slightly raised from the ground. She saw her stealthily open it, after a rapid glance round, and a moment's pause, as if to ascertain that she was unseen. Then, springing through, she disappeared from view.

CHAPTER III.

THE WARNING.

THE day for the marriage of Miriam and Owen was fixed. The consent of Miriam's father had been obtained, and it now wanted but three weeks to the time.

But though all went according to his wishes, Owen Gerard was not quite happy. The thought of Annie sometimes intruded itself, and though he tried to convince himself that there had been nothing but sisterly love for him on her side, such reasoning was only surface deep, and beneath it he felt that she loved him, and he had not treated her well.

Nor even as regarded his affianced bride, did he feel altogether satisfied. Though he loved her devotedly, and with a love more passionate and romantic, more thoroughly absorbing than he had ever given to Annie, he knew that he did not fully comprehend her, and at times felt as if there were some vast distance between them, a distance which could never be overstepped. The thought of ordinary domestic life with her, seemed very strange. The very intensity of her love, amounting almost to an agony, disquieted him, and sent a strange thrill, half of awe, through his heart. How dif ferent it was from the serene day light of Annie's love, in which he had ever basked with unclouded

spirit. Shadows and twilight seemed to surround Miriam on every side.

Of late the country people had begun to regard her with a strange sort of superstitious feeling, and this though he affected to treat it with contempt, as mere ignorance, and prejudice against one who had been brought up in a foreign country yet secretly irritated Owen, and inspired him with a vague uneasiness. When out walking with Miriam, the peasants whom they met on the roads would shrink away, as if from something unholy, making the sign of the cross as they did so.

They could not understand what young Mr. Gerard saw in the pale foreign girl, to induce him to give up sweet, fair-faced Annie Blake for her sake, and concluded that it must be the work of some unholy spell. Strange rumours were whispered among them. Peasants returning home late, declared that, having occasion to pass near the Black Glen, they had heard the murmur of voices, and had seen the Italian girl standing beneath the blighted witch-tborn; not alone, a figure clad in the garb of a monk, with cowl drawn over the face, was by her side, the spirit, doubtless, of some wicked friar from the adjoining ruins, doomed for his sins to do penance on earth. Or perhaps, worse still, the Evil One himself, who had assumed this garb. In this spot, and thus accompanied, it was declared Miriam might be seen nightly, by any bold enough to venture thither.

At all this Owen laughed scornfully, though it was unpleasant that the girl he had chosen for his wife, should be thus regarded by those among whom she was to dwell. But there came a note one day that made him more seriously troubled than ever before. It contained but a few words, in Annie's writing. They were these:

"Ask Miriam what she does in the Black Glen at midnight.-A.B." "Absurd folly!" he muttered, and crumpling up the paper, flung it into the fire.

How tenderly he had once treasured every scrap of that handwriting! Nevertheless, he did speak to Miriam that evening, as they stood together in a lonely spot where they had watched the sun go down. Lightly, laughingly he began.

The people were suspicious of her," he said, "because she was a stranger. But when she was his wife, and went more among them, they would trust her and learn to love her. They believe you weave spells in the Black Glen at midnight. Perhaps it is so. What do you

say? Do you know I begin half to think that you are a witch; at least you have laid a spell upon me, but it is a blessed one, is it not!"

Miriam slowly raised her dark eyes to his face. "I do not know," she said, "Perhaps the trouble that I feel, and that I can see you sometimes feel, too, is a sign that we should not love; I often fear that I have overshadowed your life. But they who love the most intensely are not the happiest, I think, for is not love full of deep, deep sadness, and burning pain? When you loved me first, and I began to love you, my life seemed to brighten, as if the sun had suddenly burst out from a dark sky, and I thought I should be happy at last."

"At last, Miriam !" echoed Owen, "and you but nineteen."

"Yes, because even when I was a child I was not happy, though I often dreamt of happiness. Sometimes at play a feeling of intense misery and horror would suddenly come over me, and I would stop playing and steal away to a lonely place. When I first came here the same feeling took possession of me, stronger than ever before, and with

it another stranger still. It seemed to me that I had often seen those dark mountains before, and every rock and cliff appeared familiar. When I entered among you all, the feeling grew more overpowering. Surely I knew that room well. The pictures on the walls were old acquaintances, and everything in it came to my mind as if seen at some former time, it might be in a dream, but forgotten till they again. appeared before me. Perhaps it was because I was to meet you here, you who were to influence my life for ever. It would be strange indeed if no voice in my heart foretold that, only why should it speak in tones of fear, and make me tremble. It was this that caused my swoon when I went to my room that night, but I could not explain the reason to your mother. I

wonder shall I ever be your wife. It wants but three weeks to the time, and yet-and yet-the shades are gathering thick as my love deepens. Happiness cannot dwell in my heart, no more than sunshine can rest in-in some dark valley."

She paused, and her eyes fixed themselves wistfully on the wintry landscape, over which dusk was gradually creeping. Owen thought they turned in the direction of the Black Glen.

"Let us go back," she said, suddenly. "It is very cold," she shivered as she spoke.

They walked on, Miriam clinging to Owen's arm, as if fearful lest anything might tear her from it; but neither spoke.

CHAPTER IV.

THE BLACK GLEN.

THE days passed on, and as they went, each bringing nearer the one which would make her the bride of him she so passionately loved,

Her

Miriam seemed hourly to grow sadder and stranger in her manner. Every trace of her short-lived sprightliness gradually disappeared, and she returned to what she had been on first coming. The same strange terror was often in her eyes now, and the faint pink tinge which had begun to colour her marble-like cheek-giving to her all she needed. for beauty-faded totally. whole mien expressed dejection, despair almost. Everything about her breathed it. The little attentions which she had of late begun to bestow on dress were relaxed; and whether it was that her hair was less carefully twined, but the thick coils drooped heavier on her neck, and seemed to bow it down. When Owen was with her she would hang upon him, silent, but gazing into his face, her large black eyes full of such a depth of love as seemed too great for words. None could help noticing the change that had taken place in her.

"Do you know what is the matter with Miriam ?" Mrs. Gerard said one day to Owen. "She seems

unhappy."

"I am afraid she is not happy," he answered, "but I do not know why, I only know that she loves

me."

"She loves you, that is certain. Yet, ob, how I wish you had never thought of each other in this way! for you are changed, too, of late, and I sometimes fear are not happy either. I can't help wishing, orphan almost as she is, that she had never come here. All would then be as it was."

Owen frowned. "You are all prejudiced against Miriam," he said, in a tone of irritation. "What ails her is probably nothing but melancholy, which will pass off, Because she is not precisely like the people one meets every day, she is looked upon with eyes of suspicion."