you do, but I never admired you more than when you gave up your pride, and allowed these children to pay this visit."

"I have no pride, Archy," said Algernon. "And, if I had, I could not display it in that quarter."

Arthur looked at him keenly, and asked, "Why?" "I cannot tell you."

'Do you mean on general grounds-on the ground that you have no right to be proud to your own father or that you have no right to stand in your children's light? Or are there other grounds for your not being proud?"

"The reasons," said Algernon, "on which I acted in sending my children to their grandfather at Silcotes were just such as you have suggested: that I had no right to be proud to my own father, and that I should be wicked to stand in my children's light. You asked me then if there were other reasons why I should show no pride in that quarter. I answer that there are. We must understand one another, at least partially, my dearest Arthur, even if that partial understanding aids in our separation. I know that it is to your good offices that I owe this recognition of

my children. Utter the question which I see hanging on your lips."

"I'll utter it, Algy, though all the powers of the Inferno shall never make me believe in you as anything but the best man who ever walked. Here it is. Did you, before Tom or I remember, ever-well— uake a fiasco?"

"Never! To you I will say the simple truth. Though I'm not strong in brain, and have that want of energy which comes from habitual ill-health, yet I have lived as blameless a life as any of us poor sinners can hope to lead."

"Then what has caused this terrible injustice of my father towards you?"

"He has not been unjust. He has been most generous. Question on, and let us have it

out."

"Has his extraordinary treatment of you arisen from any facts in connexion with your mother?" "Yes. I will now finish this conversation, and we will never resume it. I was put in possession of certain facts when I was seventeen. Now ask yourself, but never ask me, what has made me

grey at six-and-thirty, and has produced in my father that never-ending thought about self, and distrust of others, which has made him very little better than a lunatic."

CHAPTER IX.

MISS LEE.

On this occasion Arthur pointed out to Dora what he was pleased to call the extreme meanness of her conduct towards her father, in making disparaging comparisons between his house and her grandfather's. Dora received her scolding with perfect composure and silence, replying not one word, but looking steadily at him with her hands behind her back. Though she did not confess her fault, yet she never repeated it. Their visits to Silcotes took place every year after this. The old man ordered it, and every one obeyed; but Dora, honest little story-teller as she was, always, on her return home, used audibly to thank Heaven that she was back in her own place once more, and to vilipend and ridicule the whole ménage of Silcotes most entirely.

The other children used generally to roar all through the night after their return, and to be unmanageable for the next week.

Two pupils were got-dough-faced foolish youths, who had made so little use of their schooling that their matriculation examination was considered more than doubtful, and so they were, with the wisdom of some parents, taken from experienced hands at school, and sent into the inexperienced hands of Algernon. That he did his duty by them, and got them through, I need not say; but it was on the strength of these pupils that he engaged a governess.

Miss Lee was a foolish Devonshire young person, whose father had been a clergyman, and, as she always averred, kept hounds. She also held up her head, as being a cousin of Mr. Lee of Basset, whose wealth her imagination compared favourably with that of Silcote. The hounds were quite possible, for he left her destitute, and with no education, and so it became necessary for her to go out as a governess. She was not in the least fit for it, and Algernon, of course, could only offer the most modest stipend. So they naturally came together from the extreme ends of England. Miss