made you anxious? I do come to think so, for you never flourish your words about as I do; so, believing that, I would like to write again differently; only it is truer to let what I have written stand, and make amends for it in all haste. I love you so infinitely well, how could even a year's silence give you any doubt or anxiety, so long as you knew I was not ill?

"Should one not make great concessions to great grief even when it is unreasonable?" I cannot answer, dearest; I am in the dark. Great grief can not be great without reasons; it should give them, and you should judge by them;-you, not I. I imagine you have again been face to face with fierce, unexplained opposition. Dearest, if it would give you happiness, I would say, make five, ten, twenty years' "concession," as you call it. But the only time you ever spoke to me clearly about your mother's mind towards me, you said she wanted an absolute surrender from you, not covered only by her lifetime.

Then, though I pitied her, I had to smile. A twenty years' concession even would not give rest to her perturbed spirit. I pray truly-having so much reason for your sake to pray it"God rest her soul! and give her a saner mind towards both of us."

Why has this come about at all? It is not February yet; and our plans have been putting forth no buds before their time. When the day comes, and you have said the inevitable word, I think more calm will follow than you expect. You, dearest, I do understand; and the instinct of tenderness you have towards a claim which yet fills you with the sense of its injustice. I know that you can laugh at her threat to make you poor; but not at hurting her affections. Did your asking for an "answer" mean that I was to write so openly? Bless you, my own dearest.

LETTER XLVI.

Dearest:-To-day I came upon a strange spectacle; poor old Nan-nan weeping for wounded pride in me. I found her stitching at raiment of needlework that is to be mine (piles of it have been through her fingers since the word first went out; for her love asserts that I am to go all home-made from my old home to my new onewherever that may be!). And she was weeping because as I slowly got to understand, from one particular quarter too little attention had been paid to me:-the kow-tow of a ceremonious reception into my new status had not been deep enough to make amends to her heart for its partial loss of me.

Her deferential recognition of the change which is coming is pathetic and full of etiquette; it is at once so jealous and so unselfish. Because her sense of the proprieties will not allow her to do so much longer, she comes up to my room and makes opportunity to scold me over quite slight things;and there I am, meeker under her than I would be to any relative. So, to-day I had to bear a statement of your mother's infirmities rigorously outlined in a way I could only pretend to be deaf to until she was done. Then I said, "Nan-nan, go and say your prayers!" And as she stuck her heels down and refused to go, there I left the poor thing, not to prayer, I fear, but to desolate weeping, in which love and pride will get more firmly tangled together than ever.

I know when I go up to my room next I shall find fresh flowers put upon my table; and the grievous old dear will be carrying a sore heart that I cannot comfort by any words. I cannot convince her that I am not hiding in myself any wounds such as she feels on my behalf.

I write this, dearest, as an indirect

answer to yours-which is but Nannan's woe writ large. If I could persuade your two dear but very different heads how very slightly wounded I am by a thing which a little waiting will bring right, I could give it even less thought than I do. Are you keeping the truce in spirit when you disturb yourself like this? Trust me, Be

I.

Five years ago my sister Anne was what you might call a fairly pretty girl-not a beauty like Chloe, who was all dash and dimples and color, but pretty in a superior, graceful, slight, long-necked way of her own, which was not without its charm. That was before Lyndhurst came down to stay, however, and just about the time when Teddy Marsden fell unexpectedly in love with Anne.

Now, as I have just said, Anne was a very charming girl, and tremendously superior, but somehow I used to find her a trifle difficult to get on with. She had a way of forgiving you with a kind of saintly sweetness for sins you had never committed, and then reminding you of them afterwards, and so Chloe and I (who used to quarrel a dozen times in an hour, but were otherwise inseparable)-when Teddy Marsden began to develop an outrageous interest in my mother's excellent health and a curious facility for forgetting his umbrella and calling for it twice a dayChloe and I rejoiced exceedingly.

Not that we wanted to get rid of Anne, but we wanted to see her comfortably settled. Marsden had a fine income. There was only one between

him and the title, and not to put too fine a point upon it, he was the only eligible man that wanted her. It is true every single curate that came to the place proposed to Anne, but as Chloe very truly said, "Curates don't count," and as regards all the others, though they one and all went to Anne for consolation, it was only after they had proposed to Chloe, who had "cried very much" and refused them.

This, however, is not a story about Chloe but about Anne-Anne, who was a rather pretty girl and on the point of being engaged to Teddy Marsden, before Lyndhurst came down to stay five years ago.

Now the coming of Lyndhurst happened thus: I had to go up to town on business, and Chloe, who had bicycled into a ditch in the dark the night before and strained her foot, had passionately adjured me to bring her down "a box of marrons glacés, a little gold pig for her chain," and lastly, "a decent man," by way of consolation. I had faithfully executed her first two commissions when I chanced on her third in the shape of Lyndhurst, who, in immaculate frock coat and pale gray gloves, was sauntering down Bond Street as I came out of Charbonnels.

There is no need for me to describe

Lyndhurst, for everybody knows him; nor is there any need for me to say that I had sworn by him, hero-worshipped him and finally hated him, for everybody goes through the same thing. The hating period, however, was as far distant as the worshipping when I met him that morning, for I hadn't set eyes on him for years. He hadn't changed a bit, however, unless, indeed, he was handsomer than ever. Melancholy eyes, radiant smile, charming voice! Before two minutes had passed he had bridged over our five years separation, placed our acquaintance on the old footing, and with the most delightful assurance in the world asked himself down to stay.

"I know it will be dull, dear old man," said he, "and I shall bore myself to death; but don't worry about that. It will be a rest, and that's what I want. It will be terrible, but the rest will do me good." (Really, when you come to think of it, Lyndhurst is inimitable!) "Rest and pretty women," said he. "There are always pretty women in the country-milkmaids, and better class girls with watering-pots and scissors. That's what I want. A new type to inspire me. You're going down this afternoon? Good. I can't stay and lunch with you, dear old man, for I've an engagement; but I shall be home by four-the old address; you'd better come and fetch me."

Had any other man--but this was Lyndhurst. I fetched him.

What is more, his valet being indisposed, I packed for him, and as he could not "move" without his afternoon tea, the housekeeper being out. ... But we have all been to the old address; there is no need to recapitulate what happened, and to tell the truth I resented nothing. I felt sure Chloe would avenge me.

We missed our train, so we had to wait for the 5.47; but we passed the hour and a half very pleasantly at Vic

toria noting the artistic value of glass as a background to smoke, and as Lyndhurst pointed out to me, it was really all for the best, for we should have a much more beautiful drive in the cool of the evening.

As a matter of fact he was right. The day had been tremendously hot, and as we drove through the delicious air the effect of the sunset was something gorgeous over the gorse on the common. Lyndhurst was in ecstasies.

"The quiet, the open sky, the trees, the loneliness, the country smell!-How shall I ever thank you for over-persuading me!" he said as we turned in at the gates and went up the avenue ("over-persuading" struck me as peculiarly happy). "Look at these oaks" (they were elms)! "Listen to those rooks" (they were crows)! "Ah, it is perfect! It only needs-" he stopped short and clutched my arm wildly. "In the name of heaven, who is that?"

Contrary to my expectations (I had wired announcing our visitor's arrival), that was not Chloe but Anne. Anne in gardening gloves and a white frock, pensively snipping off dead sunflowers with a huge pair of garden scissors, and gazing with mild approval at the setting sun.

"It is Clytie!" said Lyndhurst. "Clytie waiting for Apollo!"

"Pardon me," I replied, "it is my sister Anne waiting for her dinner."

To my dying day I shall never forget the look of disgust on Lyndhurst's face, nor for that matter the look a moment later on Chloe's when Lyndhurst bowed on being introduced, and then looked the other way. Both were distinctly precious, but the best of all, I think, was my mother's when Lyndhurst kissed her dear old hand, and before she could open her mouth, told her he meant to stay in this Paradise forever, and begged her to consider him as her new and most devoted son.

At first she gazed helplessly at me

as if to ask if he'd suddenly gone mad; then her eyes softened with an indescribable understanding as they fell on Chloe, and it is my firm belief that the dear old soul would have said "Bless you, my children," and gathered Lyndhurst then and there to her heart, had not Anne herself opened the door and come in.

She had not heard of the telegram, so stood for a second looking at Lyndhurst irresolutely. A shaft of sun fell, glorifying her fair hair to the color of the sunflowers in her hand. For the first time in my life I saw Anne with another person's eyes and realized that she was pretty.

"Mr. Lyndhurst. My daughter Anne." There seems always to be a special Providence told off to provide Lyndhurst with an opportunity. As Anne bowed, one of her flowers slipped and would have fallen to the ground, had not Lyndhurst, with his own peculiar dexterity, caught it.

"It is a good omen," he said, handing it back to Anne.

"It is a good omen." Nothing more than that. But that evening at dinner, Anne, who never wore flowers, had sunflowers at her waist, and later on, when Teddy Marsden took her into the kitchen garden and proposed, Anne refused him.

II.

That's how it began, or rather, as I am speaking of Lyndhurst, that's how it ended, for with him the end and the beginning are one. With Lyndhurst to wish was to have, and to have was not to want. Desire was the very breath of life to him, and possession the instantaneous quenching of desire.

Knowing this as I did, it was perhaps not very wise of me to bring him into personal touch with two young girls-sisters of my own-but who is always wise? And, to tell the truth, I

had largely forgotten that particular side of him-one can forget a good deal in five years-and if I gave the matter a thought it was only to laugh in anticipation of the lesson Chloe would read him. As it turned out it was not Chloe who held the Book of Life open for Lyndhurst at that particular page, but Anne.

To my dying day I shall never understand how it came about, but so it

was.

Chloe had "excellent coloring," but the sun, moon and stars, according to Lyndhurst, had been created solely for the purpose that they might shine on Anne. He would sit and gaze at her by the hour together, saying nothing, doing nothing, simply sit "and drink her in," while Anne, who had never been known to "idle" for five consecutive minutes in her life, would turn her head first this way and then that, and lift her chin, and lower her hand, as complacently as if she had been a model at half a crown an hour.

To the uninitiate it seemed an odd amusement for a lovely August morning, but there were plenty of rooms in the house, and as they were in nobody's way but their own . . .

Meals, however, were quite a different matter-and after a little time they became things of terror. At meals the one topic of conversation was Anne. The setting of Anne's head on Anne's neck-the line of Anne's throat to Anne's ear-the cutting of Anne's nose and the curve of Anne's wrist. It sounds incredible, but it is nevertheless absolutely true, that not only did Lyndhurst postpone his own meal (until we had all finished, when the dishes would have to be brought back again) to dilate to Anne's family on Anne's charms, but Anne's family would subdue the clatter of their own knives and forks to listen! As for Anne herselfshe who could eat her mutton chop with the best of us-it's my belief she

half starved herself, for, from the day when Lyndhurst (who had just eaten his way through seven courses) said women should not eat meat, Anne became a vegetarian. It was a sight for the gods to see Lyndhurst helping himself to cutlets and enthusiastically pointing out to Anne the exquisite coloring of poached eggs on spinach-or descanting (over beef and Yorkshire pudding) on the days of Tyre and Sidon, otherwise the "God-given purple" of poor Anne's plate of mulberries and

cream.

Teddy Marsden-who nearly knocked Lyndhurst down when he asked to change places with me in order to try a new lamp effect on Anne's hair-Teddy went to my mother and with tears in his honest eyes implored her to put a stop to the thing or Anne would go into a decline!

That was a lover's license though, for Anne had never looked so well in her life. If Lyndhurst drank Anne in -the ambrosia and nectar of Lyndhurst's praise certainly served Anne as food. She bloomed up under it like a flower warming itself in the sun; there was a grace, a radiance about her in those days that was perfectly amazing.

And though Chloe would have died rather than confess it, I could not help fancying she was rather sore. She had had it her own way for so long, and when the earth which has revolved around you all your life suddenly begins revolving round somebody else .. . . ! !

"It's my turn to play consoler now," said Chloe to me one morning as she stood at the window watching Teddy Marsden mooning down the drive.

"How do you like the rôle?" I asked. "Better than being made a fool of like Anne," said she, tossing her pretty head.

"Dear me," said I, "must a woman needs be a fool because a man happens to be in love with her?"

"A man!" cried Chloe. "In love!"

"One day when you were out there, Lyndhurst happened to say that six months ago he had simply raved about your type of girl-so you see . . . "

"It looks well for Anne in six months' time," said Chloe drily, "doesn't it?"

That afternoon I took it upon myself to drop a friendly word of advice to Anne.

"I suppose you know what you're about," I said--"but Lyndhurst's the deuce of a flirt."

Anne's eyes are bright turquoise blue -but when she's offended they've no more expression in them than pieces of stone.

"Did Chloe ask you to tell me that?" said she.

"No," said I, "she didn't. But even if she had it wouldn't make it any the less true. Lyndhurst's a delightful chap and as clever as you make 'em, but you mustn't take him too seriously. He doesn't mean half he says. Six months ago he was infatuated with some woman in Paris, for the moment he's infatuated with you-six months hence he'll be infatuated with somebody else."

"I suppose you won't deny that I'm indebted for your last remark to Chloe?" said Anne.

"Why drag Chloe into it?" said I. "What's it got to do with her? Don't you suppose I've got eyes and ears and a tongue of my own? Why, any fool could see you're pleased at the way Lyndhurst's making the running.