But, as he gave them lashins' of bread and beer after he had exasperated them all round, they forgave him before the day was out, and pronounced him "a real gentleman at bottom, although he was as sly as a natter-jack and as teddious as a blue-jemmy."

When Lady Jane and her party came through the gate and into the grand aisle where all the rest were assembled, there was that soft flutter of garments and subdued modulation of voices which mark the arrival of Personages. The Clintons were always the Clintons at Beaton Brows; and no usurper could dispossess them, as no failure among themselves could degrade them. Smudge, rent, lapse, fracture-what did it signify? The oil in the ampoule may be rancid; it none the less creates the Lord's anointed. Zenobia, captive, was still their queen to the Palmyrans, if but a poor fettered slave to the Romans, clanking her golden fetters as she walked by the conqueror's triumphal car. And Lady Jane their Lady Paramount-was received by all this festive congregation as reverently as if indeed of a different flesh and blood from the rest. Mr. Harcourt lisped and satirized; Mrs. Harcourt went briskly forward, her haste expressing the coalescence of equality, as it were two drops of quicksilver running together on the plate; and FitzGeorge "louted low," bringing his soft felt hat down to his knees with a sweep suggestive of plumes and typifying homage. Elsie Arrol, too, shouldered her way in among the first ranks, in her stolid, roundeyed unconsciousness of intrusion, walking with short steps and on her heels as her manner was, while making her courtesy with as much exaggeration as Petrarch had made his reverence. Sharp, matter-of-fact, unæsthetic Lady Jane received this affectation with scarcely veiled contempt for Elsie-with the same contempt, greatly attenuated, to FitzGeorge. Five Oaks was a charming place; and nothing takes the nonsense out of a man like a practical mother-in-law. Mr. Standish was a fool, as she often said, but under proper management he might be made available:and husbands of rank and means convenient for the four scantilydowered girls at the Hall were at a premium. Wherefore she greeted this ape of aestheticism-this medieval "masher" and modernized Euphues-with more cordiality than she felt for himself personally, though not with more affection than she felt for his fields and farms.

Neither the first among the eager, nor the last as if reluctant, Mrs. Ellacombe bided her time to welcome their local queen on this, her first appearance in a party of pleasure since the tragedy which had isolated her and hers from the world. She was standing at a little distance from my Lady's more immediate court-Yetta

Carew by her side, as radiant as the blue sky beaming overhead. While standing there, waiting her turn and biding her time, Lanfrey and Ethel broke through the little throng and came up to her and Yetta-Lanfrey glad to have this opportunity for what was essentially a public manifesto and private protest, and Ethel following his example-in fear and trembling of the consequences, but heroically loyal to the cause and its leader. The other girls merely bowed-each stiffer and more glacial than the other. Maurice, his face aflame, did not come near, and contented himself with lifting his hat; but Lanfrey shook hands and spoke to Paston Carew's daughter with evident pleasure and marked cordiality, and his face was the text on which more than one embroidered a commentary.

Lady Jane, at times conveniently short-sighted, put up her broad-framed tortoise-shell glasses, and stared at the little group as if she did not know her own children. She looked full at Yetta, not twenty feet away, with that fixed stare which presupposes ignorance for the one part and insensibility for the other. The girl's treacherous cheeks burnt like scorching roses, but she made the best of things. She did not falter nor become shame-faced for all her treacherous blush, but went on speaking to Lanfrey and Ethel as lightly as if they were her friends assigned by the fitness of things, and not foes ordained by a fate of which she knew the action only, not the source.

Really the situation was becoming strained to absurdity! thought the guests. Here were the Carews, established, received, part of the acknowledged society at Beaton Brows; and for Lady Jane to ignore Miss Carew as if she did not know her was as iniquitous as boycotting-of which it was a form. Why should she put up those hideous glasses and stare at the poor girl as if she were a doll without feeling or a savage without knowledge? Why should she pretend not to know her, when she saw her every Sunday at church, and knew her as well as she knew the pulpit or her prayer-book? While Mr. Lanfrey and Miss Clinton were speaking quite like friends--almost more than friends, if the young man's face might be read as one reads an inventory-why should the other young ladies bow, with mouths that suggested vinegar and lemon-juice, and Captain Clinton look like a hostile turkey-cock, with his face aflame in that extraordinary way?

So thought the guests, not disinclined to find fault with even their sacred lady when she went too far and trod on the heels of folly. The reverse indeed of disinclined; for nowhere does snobbery avenge itself so cruelly as in England, where the idol of Rank is both worshipped and vilified-treated as the Neapolitans

treat their saints-prayed to, flattered, fêted, one day;-sworn at and beaten with rods the next.

Mrs. Ellacombe thought the best thing she could do for all concerned was to end this sorry pretence and set things fairly foot to foot.

She took the girl's hand in hers and said:

"Let me present Miss Carew, Lady Jane. She is in a manner my adopted child.”

"I was just going to introduce her, mother," said Lanfrey hurriedly.

Lady Jane would fain have reduced her son to cinders by a look which all could read; but, caught in the network of social decorum, she was forced to yield to circumstances, and to accept the introduction without an overt disclaimer if without cordiality-contenting herself with staring hard and saying abruptly :

"Is this your first visit to Ferndale Abbey ?"

"No," said Yetta; "I have been here before with my father." The exquisite melody of the girl's voice, heard for the first time, fell on Lady Jane's ears with unpleasant surprise. She was angry with herself in that she had to acknowledge this new charm, having already to confess a beauty which she did her best to comfort herself by saying was of an unbeautiful type. She felt like the prophet called to curse, and compelled to bless instead. Standing there in that warm summer sunshine, she had the strange feeling of darkness and inward chill which comes from unconfessed hostility. It was not the violence of anger nor the warmth of combat, but just the dead cold of enmity. She would have liked to say something rude, cutting, sarcasticsomething that should abash this unwelcome intruder and punish her for the sin of her father's birth. As she had no opening compatible with self-respect, all she could do was to turn away sharply, with a curious little half-strangled noise; and Yetta felt that she had displeased Lanfrey Clinton's mother she did not know how. Before she had time to come to an understanding with herself, she was called away from her own thoughts by Lanfrey's voice saying pleasantly :

"Have you been over the ruins, Miss Carew? Do you understand all about them?"

"I am sure you do not," chimed in Ethel; "so come with us, and we will explain them to you."

"With pleasure," said Yetta, glad to escape from an atmosphere which she felt to be dangerously charged with electricity; and with a smile to Mrs. Ellacombe, who had found a seat on the top

of a broken pillar, the girl passed under the archway with her two companions and felt as if she could once more breathe freely.

But she took the sunshine with her from FitzGeorge Standish; and though Maurice was quite sure he hated her, as a loyal Clinton should, he hated his brother still more in that he had again taken the kernel for his own share, and been bold and rebellious where he himself had been true to his creed and staunch to his order.

FitzGeorge Standish was right-a picnic is really a very picturesque affair. Grant the long-legged harvest-men and invisible midges which come out of space and vanish as you pursue grant the earwigs and the wasps, the prying ants and the sluggish horse-flies--the whole thing is nevertheless preeminently suggestive, and more than any other method of association lends itself to pretty groupings and pleasant combinations.

There was a Bohemian kind of look about this picnic of to-day which almost justified the master of Five Oaks in his æsthetic foolishness. The young people who had paired off into couples as they strolled about the ruins, probably discussing the last tennis-match or the coming tournament, looked like lovers quoting Dante and following after Rosetti. Those who had gathered into knots embodied the idea of gallantry, recalling Pampinea "la Reina" of the joyous Ten, and reproducing Fiammetta. The men were all gallant, the women all gracious, and Time had borrowed the wings of Love. But among the little groups which had separated themselves from the main body, that formed by Lanfrey, Ethel and Yetta was the most beautiful and the most important.

Wherever she went, the tall girl, in her simple soft white gown, carried the sun with her and made as it were an island of light and flowers. And wherever Lanfrey went he carried with him the beauty of a noble personality. Ethel's very humility and gentleness gave her a special charm, lovely in its own way; and in the friendship that had sprung up between them and their hereditary foe were the elements of a drama of which time alone would show the ending-whether the curtain would ring down on a tragedy or to the sound of the mellow golden bells.

At present that drama was not moving very rapidly. A talk on ethics does not carry young people at a hand-gallop into the depths of emotion. It has its tendency, all the same. Roads must be made before they can be travelled on, and the most exquisite golden chariot cannot career in mid-air.

"I do not go so far as Mr. Standish, but I always feel that these old fellows left much to be regretted, and something to be

imitated," said Lanfrey, as they settled themselves in an angle open to the sky, where once had been the high-groined roof and sculptured niches of the Lady Chapel. "We have not gained on all sides by our destruction of the Religious Orders."

"No?" said Yetta, who thought we had. "But is not England more advanced than the Roman Catholic countries where they still exist? I do not know anything about it, because I have never been abroad, but I have always understood so."

"I do not want to see a revival of Roman Catholicism here in England," said Lanfrey; "but I should like to see more earnestness in those who believe at all, and more quietness of living and working. The old monasteries were grand asylums for delicate souls and frail bodies. Cowper and Charles Lamb were both monk's manqués; and how many of our social failures and intellectual martyrs would have lived in peace, and cultivated their powers to perfection, could they have taken refuge in the cloisters!"

Yetta did not answer. She turned her soft eyes on the speaker with a look that expressed assent but confessed to ignoranceand with this ignorance pleasure at being taught by him.

"Do you not feel the difference between modern practice and profession?" he asked, in answer to her look. "Do you not feel the want of simplicity even in those who are most sincere? We play too much to the gallery. There is too little reticence-too little quietness, in our lives. We plant our acorns with a blare of trumpets, and are always showing the rooting of our saplings. If we give a guinea subscription we publish it in the newspapers, and commend our ostentation under the disguise of encouragement and example. We make too much fuss about everything. That is the plain English of it."

"How can it be helped?" asked Yetta.

"We can help it only in our own persons," he answered. "Those of us who care to do and not to prate, can always find a path of modest action across the jungle of publicity. In every place and in all circumstances silent and useful work can be done by those who wish to do it."

Her heart beat rapidly.

"What could I do here at Beaton Brows?" she asked.

He looked at her, and there rose to his mind a picture of this gracious creature working among the poor-how her very presence would bring to those sordid homes a sense of beauty and purity, of infinite value--how she would be like Aurora chasing the dark, and scattering flowers as she passed by. He was on the point of breaking out into a passionate exhortation, when suddenly his