bowed to each other in an alarming way, which did not promise much for their future brotherliness, and then they both stood bolt upright and stared at Miss Marjoribanks, who had relapsed, in the pleasantest way in the world, into her easy-chair.

"Now, please sit down and talk a little," said Lucilla; "I am so proud of having you both together. There never has been anybody in the world that I have missed so much as you-you knew that when you went away, but you didn't mind. Mr Ashburton is very nice, but he is of no use to speak of in an evening," said Miss Marjoribanks, turning a reflective glance upon her own candidate with a certain sadness ; and then they both laughed as if it was a joke; but it was no joke, as one of them at least must have known. "Lucilla," said Mrs John, with consternation, "I never heard anybody talk as you do; I am sure Mr Ashburton is the very best of society, and as for Mr Cavendish

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"Dear aunt Jemima," said Lucilla, " said Lucilla, "would you mind ringing the bell? I have been sitting to Maria Brown, and I am almost fainting. I wish you gentlemen would sit to her; it would please her, and it would not do you much harm; and then for your constituents, you know"

"I hope you don't wish me to look like one of Maria Brown's photographs to my constituents," said

Mr Cavendish; "but then I am happy to say they all know me pretty well." This was said with a slight touch of gentlemanly spite, if there is such a thing; for, after all, he was an old power in Carlingford, though he had been so long away.

"Yes," said Lucilla, reflectively, "but you are a little changed since then; a little perhaps just a little stouter, and

"Gone off?" said Mr Cavendish, with a laugh; but he felt horribly disconcerted all the same, and savage with Miss Marjoribanks, and could not think why "that fellow" did not go away. What had he to do in Lucilla's drawing-room? what did he mean by sitting down again and talking in that measured way to the old lady, as if all the ordinary rules of good breeding did not point out to him that he should have gone away and left the field clear?

"Oh, you know it does not matter for a gentleman," said Lucilla; and then she turned to Mr Ashburton"I am sure the Major wants to see you, and he thinks that it was he who put it into your head to stand. He was here that day at lunch, you know, and it was something he said

"Quite true," said Mr Ashburton in his business. way. "I shall go to see him at once. Thank you for telling me of it, Miss Marjoribanks; I shall go as soon as I leave here."

And then Mr Cavendish laughed. "This is what I call interesting," he said. "I hope Mr Ashburton sees the fun; but it is trying to an old friend to hear of that day at lunch, you know. I remember when these sort of allusions used to be pleasant enough; but when one has been banished for a thousand years

"Yes," said Lucilla, "one leaves all that behind, you know-one leaves ever so many things behind. I wish we could always be twenty, for my part. I always said, you know, that I should be gone off in ten years."

"Was it the only fib you ever told that you repeat it so?" said Mr Cavendish; and it was with this pretty speech that he took her down - stairs to the well-remembered luncheon. "But you have gone off in some things when you have to do with a prig like that," he said in her ear, as they went down together, "and cast off old friends. It was a thing a fellow did not expect of you."

"I never cast off old friends," said Miss Marjoribanks. "We shall look for you on Thursday, 'you know, all the same. Must you go, Mr Ashburton ? when lunch is on the table? But then, to be sure, you will be in time at the Browns'," said Lucilla, sweetly, and she gave the one rival her hand while she held the arm of the other, at the door of the diningroom, in which Mr Ashburton had gallantly deposited aunt Jemima before saying good-bye. They were

both looking a little black, though the gloom was moderate in Mr Ashburton's case; but as for Lucilla, she stood between them a picture of angelic sweetness and goodness, giving a certain measure of her sympathy to both-Woman the Reconciler, by the side of those other characters of Inspirer and Consoler, of which the world has heard. The two inferior creatures scowled with politeness at each other, but Miss Marjoribanks smiled upon them both. Such was the way in which she overcame the difficulties of the meeting. Mr Ashburton went away a little annoyed, but still understanding his instructions, and ready to act upon them in that businesslike way he had, and Mr Cavendish remained, faintly reassured in the midst of his soreness and mortification, by at least having the field to himself and seeing the last (for the present) of his antagonist which was a kind of victory in its way.

"I thought I knew you better than to think you ever would have anything to do with that sort of thing," said Mr Cavendish. "There are people, you know, whom I could have imagined-but a prig like that." He became indeed quite violent, as aunt Jemima said afterwards, and met with that lady's decided disapproval, as may be supposed.

"Mr Ashburton is very well-bred and agreeable," Mrs John said, with emphasis. "I wish all the young men I see nowadays were as nice."

Young men !" said Mr Cavendish. "Is that what people call young nowadays? And he must be insane, you know, or he would never dream of representing a town without saying a single word about his principles. I daresay he thinks it is original," said the unhappy man. He thought he was pointing out his rival's weakness to Lucilla, and he went on with energy-"I know you better than to think you can like that milk-and-water sort of thing."

"Oh, I don't pretend to know anything about politics," said Lucilla. "I hear you gentlemen talk, but I never pretend to understand. If we were not to leave you that all to yourselves, I don't know what you could find to do," Miss Marjoribanks added compassionately; and as she spoke she looked so like the Lucilla of old, who had schemed and plotted for Mr Cavendish, that he could not believe in her desertion in his heart.

"That is a delusion like the going off," he said. "I can't believe you have gone over to the enemy. When I remember how I have been roving about all those ten years, and how different it might have been, and whose fault it all was

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This Mr Cavendish said in a low voice, but it did not the less horrify aunt Jemima, who felt prepared for any atrocity after it. She would have