ceived the wilful young heiress was becoming more decided and dignified in her answers, when she thought it prudent to retire from the field, and give up the whole matter in despair: especially after hearing that Beatrice was aware of Maude's new plan, and had not by any means disliked it.

In very ill-humour and greatly chagrined, Lady Halford at last withdrew to prepare for receiving the evening guests: and Maude, glad to have half an hour for the undisturbed indulgence of those reflections which that day's events had brought more present to her mind than ever, though they had been stirring there and speaking to her for some time past, threw a shawl over her shoulders, and stepping out of a glass door, began pacing quietly up and down the green terrace before it, refreshed by the cool sweet air of the soft April evening, and ruminating, with very chequered feelings, on life and its employments.

She had been thus engaged for some time, when the sound of a horse's feet broke the stillness of the night. They stopped, and suddenly a tall form passed swiftly from the library, and, with one hasty stride, a handsome but rather wild-looking young man placed himself immediately in front of her.

"I am come, Maude," he exclaimed in a passionate tone; "I am come on this day, which should have seen us man and wife, to see you once more, and once again and for the last time to ask you what my fate is

to be ?"

Maude had started when he approached her, and trembled excessively while he was speaking; but ere he concluded she had drawn herself proudly up to her full height, and answered coldly,

"Your fate, sir, is not in my hands, but your own; I have not its ordering: nor can I see what right you have thus to intrude yourself upon me, or speak in that tone of reproach."

"And is it thus you answer me? Oh, Maude! is it your voice, your lips which utter such bitter words?

once I could not have believed it of you. Oh, when I wreathed that garland for your hair, and you, almost a baby, lisped out your choice of me for your own sworn knight under yonder old yew, did I ever dream then that I could have lived to wish I had never seen you since that day! and has it come to this, great heaven!"

He paused in his sentence, which had been uttered in a pleading, plaintive tone, and stood with folded arms and bowed head near Maude, who had advanced a little towards the edge of the terrace as he proceeded, and now leant for support against one of the old sculptured Italian figures which stood there. colour changed rapidly, but Hubert could not see this, nor had he noticed how she had altered her position; and after a pause he proceeded, in a hurried, impetuous tone,

Her

"Maude, you do not, you cannot love me. Once, once you told me that you did; but, no matter, I dare not speak of that now. Listen to me-listen to me for the last time, Maude. You banished me from your presence; you bade me prove myself worthy of your love before I returned to claim it: the appointed time past, others acknowledged me altered, reformed, steady, what you will; all but you-you only hesitated; and after all that I had done, all that I had struggled through and endured for your sake, you coldly appoint me yet a further term of banishment, and bid me convince you by my conduct that the change in me and my habits is sincere, and not merely induced by my hope of winning you. Do you--did you think I could bear this? Yes, very possibly you might; you do not love-I do. Now listen: I have done, I have borne to the uttermost, and I have come to ask you, once and for ever, will you be my wife ? you indeed love me, or is the dream of my youth, the hope of my manhood, false, deceptive, and delusive ? Appoint your own time, if you will; but promise me now-now-this hour, that should have seen you mine,

Do

- my own, that you will be my wife, and mine only: promise me this, or I will never, never believe you loved me; and then I shall know how to act."

Hubert Courtenay thought he knew her whom he was addressing well, and so he did, but not well enough; or, in the heat and excitement of the moment, he forgot all but his own passionate feelings when he thus fiercely, peremptorily spoke. Maude had recovered herself again, and, with a voice and manner yet colder than before, replied,

"You may believe what you choose, Mr. Courtenay, and act as best suits your own feelings. For me, you have had my decision already, and by that I intend to abide."

"And is it even so? Maude, Maude, you are not the Maude I knew and loved once. You told me I had become immersed in dissipation, led away by my companions of the gay world; and what, what has the world done for you? Oh, how it has altered you!cold, unfeeling, ungenerous Maude. But you are rich, and I am poor: perhaps, as my fortune lessened, you learned to prize your's more highly. You may think I, too, have been taught its value, and that—but no, no, you cannot, you dare not do that; you know me too well. Thoughtless, imprudent, reckless, I may have been, but calculating, selfish, never; and you must feel, know this as well as myself. But you have ceased to love me. You look perhaps for a nobler match, better fitted to the heiress of these broad lands. I will be no hindrance; for if you will not this night promise to be my own, Maude, as once you did before long years ago, to-night I leave you, and for

ever!"

He paused, and waited anxiously for some minutes; Maude was silent. Both were so quiet, that her soft breathing could be heard in the intervals of his shorter and more interrupted respiration.

"Will you give me no answer? only from your silence that the tie

Must I gather between us is

broken, and for ever? At least let me hear the doom; never fear but I will brave it boldly."

He pronounced the last words haughtily, and Maude after an instant answered, in a low voice,

"The choice the doom, if you will-rests with yourself. I have no wish to alter the terms on which we stand to each other; but for the rest, further I cannot, will not go at present."

"No wish to alter the terms on which we stand! and what, in heaven's name, are they? nothing-what you may be on with every man you see; for as to the old love you once confessed, that is nought, absolutely nought, cancelled, perhaps forgotten. What is it to know that some day, perhaps, you may or may not be my wife, just as you may be little Alfred Mortimer's, or the Grand Turk's? No, no. You will not speak the words, but you do not love me; your views are changed, your feelings-all, or you would not, you could not, as the beloved Maude of old, past years, speak so coldly; you could not treat me as you do now, if love remained for me. No matter what aught beside might say, love would be too mighty for reason, prudence, and would not suffer you to speak thus; you could not. And oh, Maude, is it indeed so? is all, all over between us? You do not speak: what, not one word or sign? Farewell, then, before my brain turns, and I forget all, but that I see you, and that I love-love did I say? no, loved. The Maude I would have cherished and idolised to the last moment of my existence has no being now; she has passed from my sight and my knowledge, as she must do from my fancy and memory. Be it so. Oh, Maude, do we indeed part thus? Farewell, then, and for ever!"

And speaking these last words slowly, and with a pause between, as though willing to give her an opportunity of interrupting him if she would, he walked rapidly away. As he reached the glass door, he turned, gave one long, lingering look towards the two

white figures, both equally motionless, and now indistinctly seen through the twilight, then rushed through the library and hall, leaped on his horse, and was some miles distant, before Maude, with a complexion as white as the Grecian nymph against whom she had been leaning, appeared in her dressing-room, and submitted herself to the hands of her busy, impatient, happy maid, to be decked for the night's festivity.

How little do the gay dancers in a large, well-filled ball-room know what thoughts and feelings are astir within the minds and hearts of their smiling entertainers!—nay, of each other! How different and how contrasted with the scene around would they oftentimes appear!

CHAPTER II.

LADY HALFORD found, to her no small chagrin, that her niece's determination to remain at Willingham during the summer remained fixed and unalterable; nay, that all her arrangements for doing so were made in so exact a manner, that nothing could be found fault with, nothing pointed out as a reason for their being altered.

When Mrs. Redgrave arrived, she proved all that was necessary for the position she was required to fill. Quiet, inoffensive, unexceptionable manners, middleaged, plain, very still, with no particular expression or character discernible on her countenance, a most convenient pliability of action and opinion, and a great deal of inanity. What more could be required in the obsequious chaperone companion of an heiress past one and twenty!

So Lady Halford had nothing to do but shrug her shoulders, prophesy her niece's extreme ennui before