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had never made speeches to each other.

"It's beastly hard. I've not been worse-not much worsethan other people. If I'd been rich, nobody would have minded. And to stew the rest of my life in a beastly colonial town! I suppose they'll marry you to some rich brute. Betty, can

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"Yes?" she asked, faintly.

No, never mind. People are as they are: they must do what they must. But it's hard not to see you, old girl. Will you believe one thing? I cared for you all the time; I did indeed."

The girl spoke painfully. "Yes; I believe that. But what does it matter now? Everything's horrid. Why weren't you my brother?"

"Oh, I'm glad I'm not that, even now. But you do care still, just a bit?"

"Oh yes, I suppose so we've been half like brother and sis

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ter. Yes I care. She began to cry, and Herbert struck his stick viciously against his leg.

"It's a brute of a world." Then he took something from his pocket and spoke in a changed voice, shyly, "Take this, Betty. It's a ring that belonged to my mother. She told me I borrowed it once to play a game with you when we were children.

When you don't care any more, send it back to me. Don't send it just because you're being married some beast-only if you don't care at all,-you understand, don't you?"

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VOL. CLXV.-NO. MII.

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She took the ring and turned it over and over between her fingers. "Yes, I understand; and I promise." She looked down. The autumn night was black and still. "Look at me, he said. She spoke without looking up. "Herbert, I'd go with you if I could. I'm not strong enough; I can't face the world; I can't make enemies of all my people, and-and-I don't trust you. Herbert, how can I?" He struck his leg again and laughed. "Oh yes, you are right in that. I don't trust myself. But promise about the ring again. This isn't mere sentiment. We've been part of each other's lives since we were children, and we can't forgetit's not like a sudden love-affair. And I'm going to be alone. Promise again.'

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"I promise that, whatever happens to me, I'll keep the ring so long as I love you.'

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Good-bye," he said, simply. A full, good-natured voice shouted from the direction of the house, "Betty! Are you out of doors? Where the devil are you?" She whispered quickly: "It's Bob; good-bye." They embraced, half as lovers and half as brothers and sisters use, and she ran away, calling, "All right, Bob coming!"

Herbert lay down on the grass and looked at the black sky for nearly half an hour. Then he waved a farewell to the happiest home of his life, and vaulted gently over the paling into the road.

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CHAPTER II.

On a hot afternoon in the early part of last season, an affably smiling and comfortably conditioned young man was sauntering down Piccadilly. He glanced with a slightly condescending interest at all who met him, and downwards with more emphatic approval at his uncreased frock - coat and straight trousers and glistening boots. Occasionally a woman in a passing carriage would bow to him, and he took off his hat with an elegant sweep, and his smile broadened, and an acute observer would have remarked in him pleasure in seeing an acquaintance than in being recognised himself. A hansom cab came towards him, and in it was a girl with a white, small-featured face and soft brown eyes, who nodded and waved her hand to the young man, and he stopped suddenly and took off his hat with a wider sweep. He seemed to think that the cab also would be stopped; but it went on, and a little white-gloved hand waved again at the side-window as it passed him.

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gent, with strength to accomplish some useful toil if the world had set him to any—as it seemed to have no thought of doing. For this was that attraction of our modern froth

a rich young man. Somewhere in the North-at least a dozen miles from his father's country-house-was a town inhabited by a patient, stunted, anæmic folk, who worked as long every day as the factory laws would permit, and died at forty or so, with the pleasing results that Mr Fairbrother, senior, Mrs Fairbrother, their son Arthur, and the frequent strangers within their gates, had every luxury which the somewhat limited Fairbrother imagination, assisted by other advice, could conceive, and that Arthur Fairbrother was about to marry Lady Betty Flair, daughter of the late and sister of the present Earl of Mereworth. If the form of this announcement seems snobbish to your intelligence, I am sorry; but I must give it in the form in which it appealed to the Fairbrother mind.

One need not think hardly of the Fairbrothers. If the foundation of their money was the cheap labour of other people, there was yet acuteness and even invention required for the massive edifice; and any callousness involved was shared by the vast majority of their fellow - creatures. We cannot all be social reformers, Mr Fairbrother said. Arthur Fairbrother spent his large allow

ance neither viciously nor with any particular vulgarity. He had passed through Harrow and Cambridge with some success and popularity; his manners were very tolerable, his intellect sufficient for the daily round, his principles most respectable. He lived an athletic life, even in London, where he rode and fenced-he fenced better than one would have expected of his stolidity-with regularity; and that alone, as we know, would have gained the world's pardon, which he did not need, for a rich young man's excesses. He was quite honestly attracted by Lady Betty Flair, whose small pretty face and soft brown eyes had attracted other people who cared nothing for her connections.

Arthur Fairbrother strolled down Piccadilly, content with everything under the cheerful May sun. He had fenced in the morning, had lunched largely but wholesomely, had won seven shillings at pool afterwards, and was going, with a conscience more than satisfied with his virtue, to call on Mrs Ogilvie, a lady of some distinction. Mrs Ogilvie was an old lady who had seen a great deal of the world, and had been in her day well seen by it. She was the aunt of a Cambridge chum of Fairbrother, had met him at the chum's house, and had taken an odd pleasure in his society. "He's a peaceful change," she said. "I've adopted so many wild young men who've gone to the bad: this Fairbrother young man's like a large, peaceful, well-trained dog or a well

fed ox. I don't think he understands, but he listens; and I'm past the age when one wants to be sympathetic about young men's imbecilities. This one listens and never gives any trouble, and it's a comfort to see him eat, the darling!" So she had taken him up, as she phrased it, had been to stay at his father's house in Yorkshire, and had introduced him to many people whom he liked to know. Arthur was rather afraid of her. She was voluble, and sometimes puzzled him, and she corrected his little faults with great candour. But he was grateful to her, actually and proverbially, and never failed to obey a command for his attendance. On this occasion she was just arrived in London, and he had not seen her since his engagement to Lady Betty Flair.

"I'm extremely angry with you," Mrs Ogilvie said. "You ought to have come to me first. I disapprove altogether. NoI don't want to hear anything about it: I know much more about Betty Flair, and all her kith and kin, and how it was managed, and everything, than you do. You were asked down to Mereworth for Easter, weren't you, and strolled about on the cliffs, and thought you were in love, and that it would be

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admirable thing socially, didn't you? I disapprove altogether. No, don't try to argue ; you don't know how: sit still, and eat a large piece of cake and look cheerful while I scold you. Why couldn't you marry that sensible cousin of yoursMabel, wasn't she?-that nice,

comfortable creature I met in Yorkshire? She'd make a good wife for you, and you'd have no quarrels or anxieties, and grow fat together, and be nice, restful dears. Instead of which you must marry a girl whom you won't understand in the least-don't tell me!-and who'll worry a stone off you every week. You think of social distinction, and all that, I suppose-that's the result of a little knowledge. You won't alter your own position because you marry a woman of good family, except in the eyes of people who don't know, and read the Society papers. I don't complain of your being a snob

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"Really, Mrs Ogilvie " "Don't interrupt: you know you're a snob, and it's quite natural and desirable that you should be. But you don't understand. If you marry Mabel-it is Mabel, isn't it? your money and my help would get you all the society you want. Mabel would feed people and smile with sheer animal content, and be immensely popular. Whereas your Betty Flair will snub people she doesn't like Mabel would like them all, bless her!—and won't welcome bores, who are nine-tenths of the sort of people you want to know; and unless she's very unlike her family,-well, I won't go into that. You won't hit it off with her set-and in fact, you're a fool, my poor Arthur. You must have another cup of tea and eat another large piece of cake. Why didn't you come to me first? I could have told you all about the family.

It's not too late to do that now."

"I don't want to hear anything about them, thank you.

"Oh yes, you do; but it's quite right and proper to pretend you don't. You know, of course, that Mereworth's at his wits' end for money?"

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"He has not confided his affairs to me."

"Well, I think it probable he will before very long. I'm told he has hardly an acre left outside his gardens and woodthere is a wood? He hasn't cut it down? I'm surprised-and how he gets a shilling I don't know, or how any of them get a shilling. Do you know anything of the Flair history? Don't tell me you haven't looked them out in the Peerage." "Of course I wanted to know

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"Of course you did. Go on eating, you dear creature. But the Peerage doesn't tell you their characters. They were all of them rakes. There was a Flair, the first Mereworth or his father, in Charles II.'s time. Have you ever read Grammont's 'Memoirs'? Read it in French, and bring me a list of the words you don't know, and I'll translate if they're proper. Well, there's a story about that Flair in Grammont, and another about his sister. Grammont was amused by it; but I think you'd regard it from another point of view. They've all been rakes; but they've been such absolute fools as well-not stupid, you know, but just idiots-that people always forgave them. You can't laugh at people and stone

them at the same time. All rakes, and all fools. Until the present people, who I think are simply fools altogether."

"You must except those I know."

"Not at all. What is the use of your denying that the last Mereworth, the one who died last year, was a fool? I knew him intimately. So is the present boy, Bob,-an absolute fool. So is his mother. BettyHere stood up.

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Arthur

He had no engagement that evening, and, feeling a little depressed by his old friend's prophecies, he went to a theatre. He had dined first at his club, and dined very well, and the piece was sentimental: before it was over Arthur Fairbrother felt full of noble emotions. People, he reflected, were not so bad as that cynical old woman had supposed them. He was going to marry a wonderful person, and her Fairbrother family was rich, at least, in beautiful historical associations. At the same time, he confessed to himself that he had not been encouraged to be a passionate pilgrim. Lady Betty had received his diffident caresses in rather a formal manner, and had not returned them. That, no doubt, was the beautiful coldness of a young girl, of an unawakened soul something about a soul being awake had been said on the stage. Still, it was true that the whole affair had been very practical and ordinary-there was a distinct air of a bargain about it. Arthur Fairbrother's soul longed vaguely for the strange and the romantic. As he walked out of the theatre he felt that life was rather empty and prosaic, and that he was worthy of very much better things.

"Sit down again: you're too impatient. I wasn't going to say anything bad of her. Eat a piece of sugar. You were quite right, Arthur; but I'm not quite so malicious an old woman as you think. It happens that I'm fond of Betty. She's not a fool: she's wild and innocent, and I like the type. It's just because I like her and I like you that I'm sorry two dears who can't possibly be happy together should think they want to marry. I'll assume she's in love with you, of course. Yes, really; I should be very angry if she wasn't. Tell her to come and see me, and I'll tell her all about your family, and why I don't want her to marry you. But her mother is a fool. Did you ever hear of poor Herbert Mardon?"

He went back to his club, "I think not-I never met and there he found Lord Merehim."

"Well, never mind. It has nothing to do with you-and nothing with your Betty either," she added, quickly. She came to an end of her criticisms, and soon afterwards Arthur Fairbrother went away.

worth in the smoking-room, who came up to him, saying, "You're the very man I wanted to see." Lord Mereworth was a good-looking, jovial young man, with bright eyes and curly hair, and an air of innocence which a little belied his reputa

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