everybody he met knew someone he knew? Have I expressed that properly without a bull? Well, I have had an instance of that sort of thing myself lately, and it has interested me so much that I must write it to you. First, let me tell you that I am much happier than when I last wrote in the spring, partly because Connor has come from Dublin to spend his vacation here, and partly on account of the acquaintance that has grown out of the adventure I am going to relate. You will say it is the oddest coincidence when you hear. Whitecliff Bay, where we have been living for the last three months, is a very gay little place, especially in the autumn. There are miles and miles (Pelham would bring me down to yards, but I will indulge in amplitude of speech when I write to you) of parade crowded with visitors, and below and beyond there is a region of wet white sand, broken up with big boulder stones and jutting-out ledges of rock. This is usually given up to regiments of nursemaids and digging children. Connor hates these haunts of Cockneydom, as he calls them, and in our walks hurries me at breathless speed through the populous district till we get beyond a certain rocky wall, where the beach is so solitary that we can almost fancy ourselves on our own shore again, and where he can make speeches to the stones, as he used to do at home. One day when we had had a great deal of poetry, and Connor had come out of his heroic into his ridiculous vein, he insisted on climbing up into a hollowed-out mass of rock and giving me a series of imitations of lectures by Dublin Professors. He said such absurd things, and made himself like so many different people, that I tired myself out with laughing. In a pause, we heard an echo of my laugh, stifled but very distinct, come from the other side of the stone. Connor jumped down like a shot, and almost fell over a young lady who was seated comfortably at the foot of his rostrum on the shady side with a large sketching-board on her lap. Her face grew as crimson as his when she saw we

had found her out, and she looked up at me in an appealing way (I never saw such pretty brown eyes before), and said, 'Indeed I did not mean to listen. I was busy sketching, and did not know what was going on for a long time, and afterwards I really could not help laughing.' Her mouth quivered again as she spoke, and she peeped up from under her curly dark eyelashes at Connor, as if she were very anxious to know what kind of creature all that rodomontade had come from. I was charmed, but Connor walked off down, I could see, in the very lowest depth of glumness. It did not make it any better for him,' he said, 'that it was only a girl, and such a very pretty one, who had overheard his nonsense; he was all the more disgusted at being caught making a fool of himself.'

6

"We met the same young lady again afterwards on the sands, sometimes with a troop of children who seemed to be under her charge. Connor called her the girl with the shabby bonnet,' and I the girl with the pretty eyes.' She used to purse up her mouth and look demure as we passed, and I don't believe we should ever have spoken to her if it had not been for another little incident which these same children brought about. We came upon her one evening standing by the edge of the water, looking very angry and ready to cry. Two of the boys had perched themselves on a high white stone round which the tide had flowed. She wanted them to get down, and they were riotously daring her to come and make them. It was only a narrow streak of water, but it would have spoiled her neat boots and her fresh muslin skirt to wade through it. It is true about the bonnet and all the other poor little things being shabby, but she manages to put them on with a dainty air that I could not give to silks and satins. I saw her glance down at her little feet and her pink flounces, and tears of vexation swelled up into her big brown eyes. I made Connor look. In a minute he strode over the water and was back again with a kicking boy

under each arm. We walked back with her to the house where her aunt and uncle live, Connor keeping the boys in good order, and bringing them back to the height of good humour with such stories as only Connor can tell; and since that evening we three-or rather I should say we ten, for I must include the seven boisterous cousins-have been the fastest of fast friends. We did not find out who she was at first. The aunt's name was Maynard, and we called her Miss Lesbia-she has the misfortune to own that sonnetical name -and after a while Babette and Baby, as the boys call her. The fun is, that Pelham took a great disgust at our friendship. It is to be confessed that at first we talked about the Maynards night and day. Are they respectable people?' he asked. 'They don't keep a gig,' was all the satisfaction he could ever get from Connor. To satisfy himself, he used to come down to the Parade to watch us through an operaglass as we set out and came back from our boating excursions. He pronounced that Miss Maynard was not in the least pretty quite plain, in fact, and in bad style-just the sort of friend he should have expected Connor and me to pick up and rave about. Yet though his judgment was so decided, one sight of her plainness did not content him. Somehow or other he was always there watching. Now there is this about our Babette-she has such a kind heart she can never bear to leave anybody out of her liking. She expects everyone to be friends with her, and I even think that the more people stand aloof from her the more interest they have for her, and the more resolute she is to win them. One day when we were all setting forth on a long expedition, and Pelham was lingering forlornly about, she just looked up at him with her large, babyish brown eyes, and said, 'You are coming too, are not you?' and he came. Not that once only. He has quite turned over a new leaf. He leaves his books in the morning, and sits out with us on the beach while Connor reads 'Lalla Rookh' aloud.

He joins our

afternoon walks as a matter of course, and gets into the boat of an evening uninvited. Connor quizzes his shy, grave efforts to make himself agreeable, and Lesbia laughs; but Pelham, though he is not witty, can give a good hard, effective snub in self-defence now and then. When he administers one to Connor, it is like putting a lid on to a jack-in-the-box. Connor is effaced for the moment, to flash up again at an unexpected opportunity, and Lesbia in a fright makes haste to twist the joke into something that sounds like a compliment to Pelham, and so restores peace. I am not sure that the boys are really learning to like each other better, but at all events we, sister and brothers, spend more of our time together, and have more things in common to talk about, than we ever had before in our lives; and Anne, is it not odd that we should owe this to the sister of Uncle Charles' grand favourite, John Thornley-the man you dislike so much? It's true. Connor's Lesbia is actually sister to the brownpaper man and woman you described to me. I have been a long time coming to the fact, for it was very long in coming to me. I knew a great deal of Lesbia's history before her real name came out. It is a very sad one and fits the grave brother and sister you describe better than our pretty Lesbia. Their father, though he was a near relation of Uncle Charles, seems to have been a very imprudent man, and his conduct so offended his cousins, Dr. and Mrs. Maynard, that they dislike the very mention of his name, and acquiesce gladly in the mistake strangers naturally fall into of calling Lesbia Miss Maynard instead of Miss Thornley. There were several Thornley brothers and sisters at one time, but all are dead now except these three. I wish Lesbia was not subject to be seized with fits of shyness whenever anything, about the troubles they all had to bear in their father's lifetime, comes out in the course of conversation; for it seems to me, from little words she has let drop now and then, that

the grave brother and sister must have done some things that were rather fine, and that I should like to hear more about. They have had to workactually work-with their own hands like common people to help the others in very bad times. Lesbia speaks of them with a kind of loving awe that impresses me greatly. It seems there is a rich old uncle on the mother's side, and when their mother died he offered to adopt his grand-nephews and nieces and take them to live with him, if they would adopt his name and solemnly promise never to hold any further communication with their father, who was abroad at the time. There were four nearly grown-up brothers and sisters then, and Lesbia tells me they held a family council over the letter, and decided not to accept their granduncle's offer. They would not give up their father or their name, which they did not consider he had in any way disgraced, and they did not choose to be dependent on a relation who had allowed their mother to die in poverty. They agreed, however, that Lesbia, who was then only ten years old, ought not to be bound by their resolve, and they made a compromise about her. They sent her here to live with their mother's cousin, Mrs. Maynard, and wrote to the grand-uncle begging him to wait for her determination till she was old enough to make it for herself. He never answered the letter, and he has not taken any special notice of Lesbia since, though he is on good terms with his relations here, and sends presents to their children sometimes. I think Lesbia almost hopes he has forgotten her existence. She dreads having a decision to make; she could not bear to separate herself from her brother and sister; and yet she acknowledges that luxury and riches would be great temptations to her. I can see they would, by the disgust with which she often looks at her own shabby bonnets and faded gowns. Why do I tell you all this? I am coming to the reason soon; but first I must explain the link between us and the Thornleys

that sent them to Castle Daly. Uncle Charles was mixed up at one time in some of the speculations that brought the elder Mr. Thornley to grief; and it was the eldest son's conduct, when the father's difficult affairs came to be wound up, that inspired our wise uncle with such an opinion of his ability that he would not believe anyone could set our affairs to rights so well as he. I asked Lesbia one day if the appointment had been good for her brother, and to my surprise she shook her head and began to cry, and when Connor and I tried to comfort her by going into raptures about the country, and telling her how we longed to live there again ourselves, she put a letter from her sister into my hands, and begged me to read it. It was a very clever letter, full of little touches of description that made me cry out with longing for home; but at the end came an allusion to some danger which she seems to believe hangs over her brother, and threatens his life. It was only a word or two, but they were such grave, quiet words, that I felt they meant more than they said. Anne, is this danger all a delusion, or is there a grain of truth in it? I will not believe in more than a grain, especially as Miss Thornley insinuates that you have used your influence to prejudice the people against her brother, and that you are to blame somehow for his not being safe at Castle Daly. I'll tell you what you must do to open her eyes. The instant you have finished reading my letter you must order out Peter Lynch and the car, and drive over to Castle Daly, whatever other business you may happen to have in hand, and invite the brother and sister to come and stay with you at Good People's Hollow. If they hesitate you and Peter must bring them off by force. When you have possession of them you must take them about in the car to all the wakes and fairs and stations you can hear of, till their faces and your's and Peter Lynch's have got so mixed up together in

people's thoughts that they will never disconnect them again. Then you must write a letter for me to show Lesbia, such as will set her heart at rest, saying how well you and Mr. Thornley are getting on together, and how everybody's ill-will has given way at the sight of your triple alliance. Be quick, dear Cousin Anne, and accomplish this, or I'll never believe you are a true descendant of the O'Flaherty witch. I shall expect that letter before another month is over, and the shortening of the days which Miss Thornley says she dreads so much has become perceptible."

CHAPTER X.

MISS O'FLAHERTY went about her usual occupation for the rest of that day and the next, carrying Ellen Daly's letter in her pocket, and bearing on her mind. the conviction that a disagreeable duty, to which she must bring herself sooner or later, hung over her head. It was not any personal feeling against the Thornleys that made Ellen's request distasteful, it was rather that it brought her, as despotic rulers are liable to be brought, into unexpected collision with. the limits of her power.

Sympathetic people with active minds and not very strong wills sometimes appear to have almost unbounded power over those with whom they are brought constantly in contact. The busy brains and hearts quick to interpret the emotions of slower intellects seem to have an irresistible faculty for moulding the actions of others in accordance with their wishes; but it is a sort of influence that is very apt to fail suddenly. It only gathers up and gives form to the feelings and thoughts of others, it does not control them, and the link of sympathy once broken, the authority falls to the ground.

Miss O'Flaherty, Queen of Hearts, as she was reputed to be, had had one or two examples of her powerlessness to bring about what she desired, when it was against the prejudices of her neigh

bours she was working, and not through them, and she suspected that this matter of calling back the sanction she had been supposed to give to the popular hatred of the Thornleys would prove another humiliating instance of the failure of her influence.

She had no instinctive love of combat in her, but in this instance the duty was too imperative to be long put aside. She let two fine days slip by, but when the third came in, with drenching rain and howling west wind from the sea, her resolution woke up. It was easier to defy weather and Peter Lynch together than to take Peter Lynch alone, and from childhood Anne had always found a storm of wind inspiring, and taken delight in braving the weather; besides, she should be sure to find the Thornleys at home, and they hardly could turn her away from her cousin's door wet through. She gave her little maidens directions to prepare for visitors before she left home, and in spite of the blinding rain took the reins in her own hands to provide against Peter's circumventing her after all by overturning the car in the first convenient bog he came near.

The

She did not set forth till noon, and her progress was slow, the road being converted in many places to a shallow running stream, and the old horse knowing well in whose hands he was. It was already late in the afternoon when Castle Daly came in sight. storm had spent its strength by that time, the loud wail of the wind had died away into little fitful gusts, like the worn out sobs of a child spent with angry crying, the clouds had lifted in the west, showing below their black jagged ridges a blood-red sun sloping to its funeral pyre piled with purple and gold. The tossed waves of the lake caught the glow, and ran up to the shores in crimson curves as if the expanse of water had been suddenly turned into a sea of molten jewels. The trees and battered flowers in the garden seemed to be gathering themselves together and lifting up their tossed arms and wet faces for a farewell kiss of peace from