much as you like, and welcome-I'll take it kindly; but don't fall foul of Ellen, if you please. The notion of her needing to be envious and jealous of little Lesbia Maynard beats everything for absurdity."

"You say that, and you write verses about gold thrones and chains. What a confounded humbug you are!"

Connor laughed aloud. "Well, no one will accuse you of being that same. You've as fine a talent for insulting your relations and friends as the biggest hypocrite in the world would need to prove his sincerity by."

"I did not insult you-nothing of the kind; but I'm in earnest that those verses don't go to Miss Maynard."

"Oh, I can be in earnest too, if you like; but just look here, Pelham! We are not schoolboys now to quarrel conveniently, and we found out once before that it did not answer for us two to interfere with each other. We made a mess of it when it was only a question of a dog between us, and a young lady is a much more awkward subject to disagree about."

"And indeed, Pelham, you are taking it a great deal too seriously," put in Ellen, eagerly. "Don't you know that Connor is always writing verses to young ladies, and never sending them? Why he has written poems on every one of the seven Miss O'Roones of Ballyowen; and as to the Dublin young ladies of his acquaintance, you should see what he finds to say and sing about them."

"No, he shall not see," cried Connor, taking up his writing-case, and deliberately placing the sheet from which Ellen had read in an inside pocket already well stuffed with MSS.

"It's like shaking a red rag before a mad bull's eyes to show a scrap of poetry to Pelham. Let him subside, poor fellow; we've poked him up enough for one day, and he begins to look dangerous. Hullo! there's the postman coming up the street. I shall run down and intercept my share of his budget. I always hate letters except on a rainy day, and then there's some use in them. If I find a billet-doux

from the youngest Miss O'Roone, Pelham shan't read it."

Pelham followed Connor out of the room, and was seen by Ellen a few minutes later setting forth to work off his discontent by a solitary walk in the rain. As soon as he was fairly out of sight, Connor's figure dashed across the road in the direction of the Maynards' house, closely following in the wake of the postman. Ellen, left alone, returned with a sigh to her work of spreading delicate fronds of seaweed on wet paper to send to cousin Anne, as an addition to the Happy-go-Lucky Lodge collection of works of art. As her needle laboriously separated and arranged the minute pink and white fibres, her thoughts made rapid excursions from one subject to another. If only the boys would not quarrel; if only she could once more see cousin Anne, and help her to arrange her heterogeneous possessions; if only she could learn the secret art by which Lesbia kept the boys so pleasantly engrossed that in her presence such jars as had occurred this morning seldom fell out. She laughed over the foolish squabbles with Connor, but they always left a little sting, a pin-prick wound, in her heart, that made her uneasy and remorseful for days after; and though no amount of coaxing would have won such an avowal from Connor, she knew quite well that it was the same with

him.

It was as necessary for him as for herself to bask in the good-will and approbation of those he lived among, and she knew by many little signs that nothing ever elated Connor more, or made him more comfortable with himself, than when some rare chance brought an unusual mark of confidence, or a word that could be twisted into approval from Pelham, his way. And Pelham, too, why did he wince so under Connor's little sarcasm and her own careless speeches, and brood over them so long, if he did not, at the bottom of his heart, care more for Connor's good opinion and hers than he ever chose to show? Surely she must be a very bad manager, a very inefficient sister, not to have brought about greater harmony

If

between these two, and made them understand each other better before this. How the rain pattered down, and how still the house was within! Soon Ellen heard her father open the dining-room door, and take in the letters which Connor had left on the hall-table, and shut himself in to read them; five minutes after, the door of the lower room opened hurriedly and her father's voice was heard calling her mother to come downstairs. It was not a usual thing for Mrs. Daly to leave her bedroom in the morning. How feeble her step on the stair was now, how slowly and reluctantly she seemed to move! Ellen half rose to help her, and then sat down again. her father had any unpleasant business to discuss with her mother, as was only too likely, it was better that they should talk it out first alone, and she must hold herself ready to comfort each separately afterwards. In dilemmas her father was apt to turn to her for counsel instead of to Pelham, and that displeased her mother. There was something in the aspect of this day that reminded Ellen of another day at home, a day that had brought trouble and change. Was it the patter of the rain? Strong, heavy rain, that would not have disgraced the West land, where everything seemed to be done more thoroughly and heartily than here. Ellen shut her eyes and tried to conjure herself back in thought to Castle Daly, and to believe for a moment or two that when she looked up she should find herself surrounded by old familiar things. The touch of a wet cheek put close to hers roused her, and she opened her eyes quickly to the sight of Connor leaning over the back of her chair, with laughter in his eyes, and bright drops trickling from his drenched hair down upon her face.

"What are you thinking of?" he began. "Have you not been cracking your sides with laughing over the fine disclosure we have had this morning?" "What do you mean?" "Don Pomposo in love."

"Oh, nonsense. Why did you go out into the rain and get yourself so wet?"

66

"What a question for a Connemara girl! To post my love-letter, of course." Oh, Connor, have you really?" "And indeed I have. The joke is, that I had to take one of Pelham's envelopes, with his initials on the flap. I dashed into his room, seized from his desk the first that came to hand, directed it to Miss Lesbia, and rushed out after the postman to drop it into the Maynards' box with their other letters. I only noticed the big P.D. above the seal after it had slipped through my fingers. But it's an excellent joke."

"It is not fair: she will think Pelham wrote the verses."

"Will she? Won't her heart tell her better than that, don't you think?" "Connor, I do believe you are very conceited."

"You'll have to believe her very stupid if she is to give Pelham the credit for writing what she's reading this minute. I wish I could see her eyes, the darling jewels that they are, eating up the words. Won't she know who wrote them! Pelham write such verses as those to her, indeed!"

"Perhaps she would prefer to think they were Pelham's. She has seen almost as much of him as of you; and he is very handsome, you must allow."

"So is that old gold fish in the vase there, but who ever succeeded in getting up a tender interest in the dumb beauty? It looks well in a room, but nobody flings a thought to it. It's the blarney that wins the hearts, all the world over."

"It's a shame that it should when it is such thoroughgoing blarney as yours, Connor dear. I don't think you should have sent those verses to Lesbia. She does not know you as well as I do, and perhaps she'll believe all that farrago you wrote about your love being a gold throne for her to sit upon for ever, and your thoughts her slaves following her in chains. Oh, Connor, Connor, when I know what erratic creatures they are—it makes me laugh, but she might possibly take it seriously."

"And it's heaven's truth she'll be

taking in if she does. I don't know why you won't believe me, Ellen, for I've been saying the same thing to you for the last six weeks without a breath of change. A man may be in love, and keep a little fun and life in him. He need not look black death and thunder at all the world like Pelham, I should hope; and I have loved that little darling in the red house yonder ever since the day when she made me savage by laughing at me."

"Six weeks ago," put in Ellen.

"And why won't I love her for ever? I don't care if all the world knows of it."

"But I advise you not to let Mrs. Joseph Maynard know of it, or there'll be no peace for poor little Lesbia. Pelham too

"Hang Pelham!

What right has he to put in his oar? He took against her at first. He shan't cut in now, and spoil everything-I won't have it."

"He leaves us to-morrow, Connor dear. Don't say a word to vex him again. Don't let him know that you have really sent that letter, or for any sake breathe a word of its being put in one of his envelopes. We shall both be sorry to-morrow if we vex him again to-day."

"You never vex anyone-you are a regular little saint. It was Pelham's taking it upon himself to find fault with you, that bothered me, more than his interference about Lesbia. I can stand anything from him better than his bullying you."

"He does not intend to bully-it's his English way; and, Connor avourneen, what I want from you, is just a promise to take no notice however sulky he is the rest of this day, but to help me to coax him round. If blarney is good for anything, it is to keep peace at home, among brothers and sisters, don't you think? There is papa's voice calling me. Connor, I'm sure that some important news has come in those letters you took in. I have had a strange unsettled feeling on me all day, as if something was coming. Suppose only it should be news that took us home."

"Put in a word for Lesbia Maynard's going with us then, or I had rather stay where we are."

CHAPTER XIII.

"ONE letter for mamma, and four for papa-and, hollo! two for Babette. I say, Miss Babette shan't have her letters this minute though. I'll pay her out for dragging me in from the garden, by keeping them in my pocket till after dinner." Muttering thus to himself, little Walter Maynard, who had constituted himself supplementary letterdeliverer to the family, slipped two of the letters he had abstracted from the letter-box into his knickerbocker pockets and trotted into the parlour with the rest of his budget. Dr. Maynard was out on his morning round of visits among his patients. Mrs. Maynard inspected the outsides of his letters and read her own, while Lesbia looked up wistfully towards the little letter-carrier, from the copy-book, along which she was guiding Bobby Maynard's red stumpy fingers in their first efforts to make pot-hooks and hangers; and sighed. She had not had a letter for a whole week. It was too bad of Bride, and the ready April tears swelled in her eyes, till one large bright drop overflowed and fell.

"There, Baby, it was you made me make that great blot. Yes, it was," cried Bob, twisting his head round, so as to see her face. "Why, you are crying! Mamma, here's cousin Babette crying again. Isn't she a baby?"

Thus appealed to, Mrs. Maynard looked up from her letter; her face had rather a startled expression upon it, and the children thought her voice and her words, too, sounded odd.

"You are a very naughty boy, I am sure, Bobby, if you have made your cousin Lesbia cry, when she is so kind as to give you a writing-lesson. You may get down now and let Walter come and write."

"It was not Bobby's fault," said Lesbia, twinkling away her tears, and brightening instantly into smiles and

dimples under the unexpected ray of kindness; "but, oh, dear Aunt, need Walter write to-day? My fingers are so hot and tired with holding Bobby's, and I'll give Walter some other kind of lesson by and bye to make up."

She strolled off to the window without waiting for an answer, clasping her tired hands behind her head. Mrs. Maynard's eyes rested on her for a minute or two, consideringly, and then turned back to re-peruse a sentence in her letter.

"We have all here been much excited by a report that has reached us of the death, at Florence, of Dr. Maynard's uncle that rich old Mr. Maynard you told me about. They say he has left an immense fortune behind him, two hundred thousand pounds at the least, and that it is all to go to one of his greatnephews or nieces; we are hoping that the lucky heir is one of your fine boys. Let us know soon."

Mrs. Maynard's fingers strayed to the letters on the chimney-piece; the news must be in one of them. What a provoking thing it was that Dr. Maynard should have gone out that morning on one of his longest rounds, and that he should so often have declared his determination to keep his letters to himself, that even with such a question as this hanging over her, his wife dare not meddle with them. An immense fortune for one of her boys-for darling Johnny, the old man's godson. Surely Providence could not have allowed anything else to happen. The anxious mother's thoughts flew back to question every incident of the last occasion, when old John Maynard had come down to Whitecliffe expressly to spend an evening at their house. Which of the children had he noticed most ?-Those tiresome ever-ready tears and smiles of Lesbia's! She was an awkward girl of thirteen then, not so very pretty, and old John had hardly looked at her till, just as he was taking leave, he poked his hand under her chin, and asked her abruptly if she was sorry to be separated from her brother and sister; then those provoking bright large tears had come into her babyish brown eyes, and the old

man had turned away, and had a violent fit of coughing. Perhaps he hated tears. It was fortunate that he had not seen Lesbia within the last year or two, for certainly she was an alarmingly pretty girl now-an anxious charge for anyone. Good gracious! suppose for an instant the two hundred thousand pounds should go to her, what could be done then? Johnny, the eldest of their family, was only fourteen-three years younger than Lesbia --and those two had never been friends. Only last Christmas holidays he had locked her up in the dark closet at the head of the stairs, and she had remained in the cold, forgotten by everyone, till Dr. Maynard asked for her at tea-time, and went to let her out. Yet they had all been extremely kind to her; she herself, at all events, could answer for having spent, strictly for Lesbia's benefit, very nearly all the money sent by the elder brother and sister, deducting only quite small sums to remunerate herself for all the trouble and care she had been put to. There could not be much to complain of in management under which she had grown up-the fresh, brighteyed, pink-cheeked creature that stood idling in the window there, so different from the plain elder sister. Again Mrs. Maynard's eyes fixed themselves on Lesbia, and as she took a more curious inventory of her charms than she had ever troubled herself to make before, she came to the conclusion, that if by perverse fate Lesbia did prove to be the heiress of the fortune that ought to come to her son, it would become her all her life to be extremely grateful to the disinterested cousins who had brought her up, and to acknowledge that she owed it somehow to them that her dark hair was so abundant, and of such a rich colour, that her figure was so slim and graceful, and that such a rich peach-bloom glowed under the clear brown of her cheeks. Had not all these endowments come to her under their roof?

Dr. Maynard did not return home at his usual hour, and in consequence the early dinner was one of the scenes of riot and squabble among the boys, and ineffectual scolding from Mrs. Maynard,

that were a perpetual jar on little

Lesbia's natural love of order and refinement. Her thoughts were busy during the meal, planning some legitimate method of securing a quiet afternoon for herself.

"You look very tired, Aunt" (she called Mrs. Maynard aunt, though she was in reality only her cousin by marriage). "You look tired, and I am sure your head is aching," she said, after dinner was over. "Let me do the week's mending for you this afternoon. I will take the stocking-basket into the old conservatory, where I shall have no interruption, and I will get all done by teatime, and you can lie down and rest."

Mrs. Maynard hesitated a minute. All dinner-time she had been looking at Lesbia in the light of a possible great, heiress, and the habit she had fallen into of using her as a household drudge did not look so just and natural as it had seemed any time these last seven years. On the other hand, was it not a true kindness to the girl if this temptation of great wealth were really coming, to let her do one more afternoon's useful work? She should not be the worse for it, if things turned out as they ought to do, and Johnny's advancement lay in one of those thick letters on the chimneypiece. Mrs. Maynard made up her mind to be very generous, in that case, to Lesbia, and make her a present of the cornelian brooch she had seen her look at longingly so often, behind its glass-case on the pier. She would quite deserve that and other little marks of favour as well perhaps, if events proved her not to have been guilty of wiling old John Maynard's fortune from him by those well-remembered crocodile tears.

"You are really a very good girl, Babette, to think of the mending," she said cordially," and as I think it likely I may have to talk over some important business with Dr. Maynard when he comes in, I shall be much obliged to you if you will get it done."

Lesbia ran upstairs quite elated with the few kind words and the success of her little scheme, and forbore to scold Walter for lifting the heaped-up workbasket from its shelf in the wardrobe

before she came up, and disturbing its contents by thrusting his hands into it.

"You are going to be very good boys all this afternoon, Walter and Bobby," she said, coaxingly, "and when I have finished my work I will tell you over again the whole story of the terrible fight at Ballyowen fair, and how nearly your cousin John Thornley had his arm broken by the red-haired Irishman, who tried to pull him off his horse."

The conservatory was a dilapidated little place entered by a door and some stone steps from the back-room where Dr. Maynard occasionally saw his patients. It was many years since all pretence of keeping it supplied with plants had been abandoned, and it was seldom entered now by anyone but Lesbia, who liked to shut herself in among the cob. webs and broken flower-pots because it was the only place in the house where she could feel herself quite safe from the boys, who did not dare to pursue her across their father's territory. She used to study her lessons there, which the masters, her brother and sister, insisted on giving her. There she diligently carried on the skilful contrivances with her needle and scissors, and stores of ribbon and net, that gave her much-worn gowns and bonnets the dainty air so puzzling to Ellen Daly. There she laughed aloud, and sometimes cried and trembled over her sister's letters from Ireland; and there, seated on the stone steps with her elbows on her knees, and her dimpled chin propped between her hands, she dreamed her girlish dreams of all the good the future was to bring her. If the thronging, brightly-coloured thoughts could only have taken shape as they rose up and photographed themselves on the cracked panes of glass round her, what a curious and pretty series of decorations the old tumble-down outhouse would have had, and how surprised Lesbia would have been, on getting up from her seat and walking round when the hour of castle-building was over, to observe what a very prominent place a certain slim, dark-eyed personage held in all the pictures! She would have been quite certain that she did not really think as highly of herself as