have sulphate of copper in it; and the other was for ordinary lines, and it was to have dragon's blood in it."

"Oh, George!" said Miss Constantine reproachfully, "how can you joke so? There are no such things as dragons!"

"My dear aunt, didn't my saintly namesake slay a dragon? and as he was such a huge beast how do you know that his blood has not been kept, like' that of St. Januarius, to this day?"

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George, be serious! Do you not see your uncle is too much vexed to care for joking?"

"Well, auntie, I will be good! Dragon's blood is only a colouring matter-why so called I don't know-that you buy at the chemist's. Also I bought spirits of turpentine and white wax, that I melted over-night, and spirits of wine, and there was a lot of resin, and other inflammable substances; and they did not melt as fast as I wanted them to do on the fire I had lighted in the harness-room, so, the kitchen being clear, I carried the pot there, and while I was stirring the mess I suppose a spark fell in, and there was such a flare-up. I was frightened, for the flames lapped the wooden chimneypiece, and I dragged the pot off in a hurry, and the handle twisted in my fingers, and it fell over-and that's all about it. I am very sorry, sir, that I spoiled the breakfast, and kept you waiting. It shall not occur again."

The old gentleman was mollified, and he sipped his porridge with relaxed countenance. Presently he inquired, "You will be at home to-day, George?

"Well, sir, I have an engagement. The season is just over, you see, and I am going with Grosvenor Smith to fish the Abbot's Pool."

"George, when I was your age I attended to business first, and took my pleasure afterwards. Take my word for it, you will never die a rich man!"

"I am quite content, sir, to live upon a competency."

"You will not have that in years to come, if you don't alter."

"Well, sir, I am very sorry, but I must go to-day. Do you particularly wish me to remain at home?"

"Yes; I have special business that I wish to bring before you as junior partner, and to-day is our busy day, too, and it does not look well, this incessant fishing and shooting, and going up to town."

clipped in a few weeks, you I will not make any engageI'll stick to business like a

"Well, sir, my wings will be know. Ethel shall reform me. ments for next week, sir. brick."

CHAPTER X.

THE ABBOT'S POOL.

"LET us go down to the river-side: it will be cool by the water," said Rachel Meacham to her friend Honor, as they set out that Saturday evening for a walk.

"Would it not be pleasanter Singlehurst way? there are more trees, and the sun is awfully hot yet."

"I will take you through shady lanes to the watermeadows. We will go to the Abbot's Pool. I want some water-lilies; and, oh, Honor, what's the use of hiding it from you! I do so want to speak to him; and I know he sometimes goes down there fishing these summer evenings. I have been at home a month now-a month yesterdayand I have not had one word with him. He has been twice to our house, and once I was out, you know, and the other time mother kept me in the large kitchen, seeing to the preserves, till he was gone. I believe she did it on purpose, for she knows I am of no use in that sort of way. I always manage to let the jam burn, or else take it off the fire before it sets; and generally she does not care for me to scorch my face and spoil my hands: she says, after all the schooling

I have had, I am not come home to be made an upper servant of."

Honor put up her parasol, fervently wishing it were silk instead of gingham, and turned in the direction Rachel wished. The girls went on in silence, till they were quite clear of the village, and in a pleasant lane where the trees met overhead; then Honor said, "Rachel, tell me frankly, what do you think of your chances?"

"My chances! Of what, Honor? I don't know what you mean."

"Your chances of becoming Mrs. George Trevanion, to be sure."

Rachel turned scarlet, and then grew white as the fragrant campion she had just gathered from the flowery bank. All the shame-facedness of womanhood came upon her, and at the same time a sickening sense of the distance which really interposed between herself and the man she loved. Honor had never asked her who she meant by "him"; she knew well enough. But when it comes to a woman intuitively using the third person singular number of the masculine personal pronoun, as Rachel used it, it is all over with her. In all the wide world there is only one man whom it is worth her while to think about-indeed, for her, only one existing; all the others are mere puppets in a show, male human creatures, clad in male habiliments, going about, no doubt on business of their own, and having each one, perhaps, his private loves and hates, and anguishes and blisses, but of no more account to her than are the obscure supernumaries of the stage to the Siddons of the solemn tragedy. She replied at length, after an interval of silence, during which Honor had watched her attentively—

"There is no chance in the world of my ever being that. I don't aspire-I don't hope for it."

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Then, whatever are you after? You had better marry Hugh Bonser than be George Trevanion's-plaything."

"I can never marry Hugh Bonser; I hate him. But,

Honor, can't you understand how we may love on dearly,

very dearly, and yet never hope to be any nearer to the one we care about?"

"No," said Honor shortly; "I can't understand, Rachel. I have read such stuff in the novels I used to be so fond of; but as for being such a simpleton myself, I could as soon eat chalk instead of cheese. George Trevanion is wonderfully handsome, I must say-handsomer than anybody I ever saw before; though Mr. Carfax has more sense in every separate feature than the other in all his face; and if I had to choose between the two I know which would be my choice, Rachel Meacham; and it would not clash with yours, I promise you. But then this handsome George has something more than a pleasing face to recommend him he is rich, he is a gentleman, and he is clever and good-natured too, isn't he?"

"He is the kindest creature alive; he would not hurt a worm," replied Rachel with effusion.

"I am afraid he has hurt you though," said Honor, with a little quiet sneer, which she repressed upon the moment. Rachel might be a silly girl, and doubtless she ought to have known that when a fine gentleman makes pretty speeches to a young woman in her station he means nothing by it; and she ought to have better guarded that soft, impressible heart of hers, instead of falling down and worshipping at the feet of her soul's idol: but better a thousand times Rachel's suicidal foolishness, for which they were many excuses-first among them George's own most culpable behaviour, and the girl's very faulty education-better by far the weakness and romance that had, nevertheless, the ring of the genuine metal in it, than Honoria's cold, calculating spirit, that would sacrifice to no other god than Mammon, and that would offer up not only itself, but anybody and everybody that came between her and the goal she would attain. Poor Rachel! a more dangerous confidante and bosom friend than Honoria Butterfield she scarcely could have chosen, though, when their fellow-pupils at Felicia House came to think about it, it was Honor who had sought and patiently courted

Rachel, not Rachel who had elected Honor to be her chief adviser.

"No!" continued Rachel, still pursuing her own train of thought; "George would never hurt any one! He is kindness and consideration itself. Why, Honor, everybody loves him! If he has hurt me, it is all my own fault. You know that story of Clytie and the sun? He read it to me one day last winter."

No! Miss Butterfield did not know it. She knew the story of " Fair Rosamond" and of "Jane Shore," but Clytie was beyond her.

"What is the story?" she asked, languidly. She thought it might be as well to know it; it would do to quote some day, and everything was of use once in a way at least.

"I am not sure that I remember it properly; though I do remember that I sat on the little rocking-chair in my own parlour, and he sat on the footstool on the other side the fire, and I had on my new ruby-coloured French merino, and it was snowing heavily, and my mother had gone to Abbot's Langley, else he wouldn't have been sitting where he was, I am afraid; and-"

"Never mind all that! Who was-what's her nameClytie?"

"Oh! it's a silly story after all," said Rachel. She had suddenly shrunk up within herself: something told her that the bare facts of the tale were nothing, and would only provoke Honoria's ridicule. The spiritual meaning she attached to that legend of the old mythologic days would never, never be perceived by her companion. Why vex herself by seeing. Honor's laughing face, and hearing her sarcastic strictures? "You would not care to hear it," she went on, “and really I could not tell it rightly now, and I should spoil it. Clytie was only a flower-"

"I thought she was a girl."

"She was a girl and a flower too. I can't explain it; but she loved Apollo-that is the sun, you know—and the sun warmed the poor flower with his kindly beams, and smiled

H