from an infinite number of novels; only she had not got one yet. She wanted one sadly; what woman does not ? She was not utterly unconscious of her wonderful beauty, and she was thinking, on this very afternoon, whether Dempster, the pupil, was not old enough to be made a fetch-and-carry lover of: and she came to the conclusion that he was not old enough to stand it, and that she might still find a rival in raspberry tarts. This day, for the last time in her life, she was nothing more than a wild school-girl. Remember that she had no mother, no cultivation, and for three or four years no control whatever. If she was an unworthy person, she would not be mentioned here.

It is not necessary to follow Miss Lee and her charge through their long afternoon's walk. It might be funny; but we don't want to be funny. Enough to say that, what with good health, good humour, youth, and a natural enough carelessness of appearance, she committed a hundred small indiscretions, and arrived home by much the most boisterous of the party. And, after a short scrambling and riotous tea, they all took to blind-man's-buff as a sedative.

When every one had got more tangled and excited than ever; when Algernon was laughing fit to split his sides; when Mr. Betts, intensely interested and enthusiastic, had, as blind man, walked bang into the fire and burnt himself, under the belief, Dora wickedly suggested, that Miss Lee was up the chimney; then Miss Lee herself proposed that they-with a view to rest and quiet themselves before supper and snap-dragoon-should have a game of hide-andseek all over the house. It was voted by acclamation; and, during the acclamations, one of the junior Silcotes, who are practically out of this story, fell down stairs, with such a thumping of his soft body on the stair carpet, such a rattling of the nearly equally soft head of him against the banisters, and such a clatter of loose stair rods which he brought after him in the catastrophe, that they were all quiet for nearly five seconds, until his frantic father had dashed down, and found him lying in the hall unhurt, under the impression that he had distinguished himself, and done the thing of the evening! Then they began their hide-and-seek.

Mr. Betts hid first; but Dora contemptuously

walked up to him, and took him from behind the scullery door. Then Reginald hid, and with amazing dexterity got home into the front parlour through the folding doors which connected that room with his father's study, which was the back parlour on the first floor (perpend it for yourselves in a twelveroomed house; you will find it come right, for I saw it. I might describe the spreading of bread and butter, or the baking of cakes, but I must not dwell on a game of hide-and-seek). After this, Dora had hid, but Dempster the pupil had found her, and the rest of them found that Dora had lost her temper. A rude boy, I fear, that Dempster, though neither of them said anything about it afterwards. Perhaps an ill-achieved kiss may be worth a sound box on the ears, and a week's sulks. That is a matter in which only the first parties are concerned. Then when confusion and fun were grown into mad hurly-burly, it became Miss Lee's turn to hide.

At this time, also, it became Arthur Silcote's turnafter having preached for, and also dined with, a Balliol man in the neighbourhood-to step across to his brother to see how he was getting on, to

knock at the door, to be admitted instantly by a grinning maidservant, and, on inquiring about the noise in the house, to be told, by that confused and delighted young person, that they were playing at blind-man's-buff, and that his niece, Miss Dora, was at that moment hiding behind the study curtains. I dread going on. I am afraid of telling the awful catastrophe which followed. It is very dreadful,

but there is not a bit of harm

It is

in it, and it might

happen to any one to-morrow. Arthur knew the way perfectly well; and he, the preux chevalier of Baliol, the man who was considered a perfect prig about women among men quite as particular as he, then and there, believing that it was his little niece Dora, lugged out Miss Lee from behind the curtain, kissed her, called her his dear little pussy, and then, putting his two hands behind her waist, jumped her towards the door, just as Dora and the whole party came in with a candle, Dora saying, "Don't tell me; I know she is here." She was indeed. And so was her uncle.

CHAPTER XIII.

TWO MORE GUESTS.

THE most awful part of the accident remained a profound secret. All that the astonished Dora and the rest of the children saw, was that Miss Lee and her uncle were alone together in the dark, and that they were both the colour of that rose which she knew at Silcotes as "General Jacqueminot." Dora said little, but thought the more: all she said was, Uncle, how "Why, you are all in the dark here. After which they all went up did you get in?” stairs, the younger ones shouting all together to their father and grandfather, how they had found Miss Lee and Uncle Archy, alone in the dark in the study. Miss Lee was not present, and Algernon rallied his brother right pleasantly. Archy replied that it was