denly with an unwonted feeling of self-abasement? Mrs. Keane looked up as she reached the foot of the stairs, and gazed at the girl with her magnificent figure and her beautiful face full of insolence, as she stood gathering up her subdued wrath, stooping a little downward just like an angry hawk poising itself. There was something in the superb physical beauty of the creature that fascinated her with a species of fear of instinctive dread rather than of admiration. She could neither understand the feeling nor throw it off; and for days and days Ursula's dark face haunted her with a curious sense of evil. It seemed almost as though she had owned Ithuriel's spear, and an instinct of the fatal truth had come to her—that that face, with its dusky dangerous loveliness, had worked her one of the greatest ills her life could know.

CHAPTER XXIV.

LENNARD DREAMS.

LENNARD went home slowly and dreamily. His small usually pale face glowed with colour, his lovely eyes glistened like living sapphires beneath the long curling lashes, and were not only bright, but full of a tender mistiness, just as though some unwonted pleasure or excitement was reacting into melancholy. The boy, during the past autumnal months, had been, for the very first time in his life, a good deal in the country, revelling in the fresh open breezes and the glorious sunlight of heaven. It was early spring now, and in the hollows by the river-side he had found some flowers delicate as moonlight, which had seemed to wither in his hand long before he reached his home; and it was probable that

this had helped to cast a shade of thought on his sensitive face.

The sunset was quite past its brief gorgeousness by the time he arrived at his favourite seat near the attic window. So he sat down and dreamed again of the sights he had seen-the oak branches ruddy with the unfurling of tender red leaves, the young foliage fringing the trees with the softest beauty, the clear azure tints of the sky unflecked by cloudlets, the lights and shadows glancing downwards and dimpling the earth until the whole world seemed an enchanted place to his impassioned nature. He tried to give his sister some idea of the exquisite pictures that flitted through his brain; but she was busy washing up the dishes, and she could not have comprehended all he felt had it been ever so eloquently described; for Nell was a brave, practical, industrious little creature, and had nothing in common with the boy, but a return of his intense love.

So, after an hour spent in reverie, Lennard got up, and, taking the old time-blackened violin, began to play. All that he had been feeling, all that he would have completely failed to express by word of mouth, poured out now in such a low rich strain that Nell ceased to work, and paused to listen.

She listened and listened till the big tears, so seldom found in her summery blue eyes, flooded them so fast that both hands went up to dash them away; then creeping up to his side, she took hold of his arm gently.

'Don't, oh, don't!' she whispered, in a trembling voice. It makes my heart ache so !'

He turned and looked at her, smiled a little faintly, then laid down his violin with a deep sigh.

'O Nell, I wish we lived in the country; one breathes freely there; but this place stifles me!'

'Do you love the country so much, Lennard ?'

'Love it! Nell, I felt once or twice to-day just as if I was in heaven!'

Nell was shocked, and she drew back from him. Her brother seemed to her positively wicked when he said that.

Heaven! Why, to her 'heaven' was something ever so far way, and so sacred, for in it her mother was enshrined like a beautiful saint! So, saying no more, she fell to washing her dishes again, trusting by her silence to rebuke the boy for his irreverence. But he never thought of heeding her. The glowing pictures had come back to him, and he was lost in them once more. Nell looked at his exquisite face, his dreamy eyes, and then she too sighed. Why, oh, why, was Lennard often and often so distant, as it were, from her, even while he was within the very reach of her touch? She thought over this sadly, and went on with her daily work, feeling that she was quite alone.

The boy still dreamt and the girl still worked, when little Weston came home from rehearsal. Nell started as his first footfall on the stair met her ear; then she stopped working, with the breath checked on her rosebud lips, and a queer keen look coming into her eyes. Lennard had not heard the step, but he jumped off his seat, with a faint pained cry, as his father came in at the door; then, covering his face with both his hands, he sat down again.

'Father' cried Nell, in a sharp imperious voice, while her cheeks grew perfectly waxen and her eyes grew grave. The little man looked at her very mistily, shook his small head with a gesture of unutterable censure, and clung to the doorway, as though the house had been a ship tossed by some fierce storm.

'Nell, Nell, my girl, you have been loosening the planks again, you have! It will be a mercy if they don't up-up and hit your poor old father on the forehead. Then he'll die, and where—where will you be, Nell?'

'Father,'-the child went bravely towards him and took up the violin, which had slipped on to the floor,— ' come in, and let us shut the door. O father dear, you are drunk ; and maybe she knows of it and grieves. Heaven is far off, but not so far that she can't see this; and she'll cry as she used to here.'

Little Weston looked at the white resolute little face, and waved his hand drearily in the air as he released his hold on the door-frame and tried to steady himself against Nell's shoulder.

'Be quick and shut the door. Nell, shut the door!' he whispered, in a hoarse guttural voice, very unlike his usually cheery accents. 'Shut the door, I say!' he went on, imperatively stamping his diminutive foot on the ground with an unseemly violence that made Lennard tremble and shake all over. 'She may look through and begin to cry again-fright at the loose boards, you know! She was always as frightened and as gentle as a dove-a lovely pure-white dove, that flew away on her white wings and left me now all alone-all alone! Shut the door; but listen. What is that? She's crying-crying, Nell; and close by too, child! You didn't shut it quick enough."

He fell into a chair and stared hard at Lennard, who was sobbing piteously.

Throwing both arms on the table, the little man hid his flushed face on them, muttering audibly,

'No, no, it isn't her that's crying! She has sent the boy; she always does send him; and I can't look at him when he is pained, I can't!

That evening a tall slender boy, with a beautiful delicate face, hovered timidly about the stage entrance of the Prince's Theatre before he dared to go in. At last he ventured forward, a livid white to the very lips and quivering from head to foot; drawing, by his appearance, the attention of the leader of the orchestra.

'What is it?'

'He is ill-my father is ill; and if you please, sir, I want to take his place for a night or two.' 'What's your name?' 'Weston.'

'Ah, so little Weston's your father, and he's ill! Sorry for it; and you have some friend ready to take his place.'

Lennard looked down, blushed a vivid scarlet, then he took courage to lift up his eyes, and to murmur very low and humbly,

'I don't know any one who could take it, sir, only myself. I would like to play-that is, I know some music, sir!'

'You !'

The tone had more of surprise than contempt in it; but nevertheless it hurt the boy like the stroke of a lash. His large sapphire eyes pleaded more than his voice.

'Let me try, sir, only let me try,' he said, glancing wistfully at a violin that happened to be lying on a bench near the leader's room.

'There can't be any harm in your trying, so come in here,' the man said gently, moved by both eyes and voice. Take that, and let me hear if you can do anything with it.'

Lennard seized the instrument eagerly, and began. At first the bow quivered in his hand, and gave out a sweet but tremulous sort of wail, as though some spirit complained of a mortal disturbing it; but genius generally rises strong and free above all. The first few

sounds of the music imbued the boy with courage and nerved his hand. His frail-looking arm waxed firm, his exquisite eyes brightened, his chiselled lips parted a little asunder as though the music came through them, and the leader of the orchestra, a great man in his own small domain, beat time, unconsciously aroused into a keen sympathy by a power greater than his own.

Lennard softly put down the violin and looked very wistfully at the arbitrator of his fate, while the man gazed at him wonderingly.

'You'll do you'll do! It is really wonderful! I am surprised little Weston never mentioned it.'

'Then may I come in father's place till he is well?'

'Come? Of course you may ! And I tell you what, my young genius, you and I must have a few rehearsals together. You are a precious long sight ahead of little Weston's teaching. You must come to my house.'

Lennard occupied his father's place, and those who loved music felt that sweeter sounds than they had heard before at the theatre were added to the orchestra. Some of them could even trace the new strains to the delicate-looking boy, whose head, reaching just above the railing, reminded them of one of those cherubs with deep-blue spiritual eyes with which the great maestro Raphael guarded the most celebrated of his Madonnas.

Music is grand and full of subtle power; but that divine folly which men call love is in advance of music, exactly as thought is the master of expression.

Lennard that night cast his eyes over the audience during a rest in the music, and saw, occupying a seat a few yards from him, the girl for whom he had culled his freshest and fairest flowers. She was looking at him. He saw, from be

neath the long lashes that instantly drooped to his burning cheeks, that she whispered to her mother, and appeared to be pointing him out. During each pause of the music the boy had time to feast his impassioned eyes on a face that might have captivated older and more experienced connoisseurs in beauty. She was so bright and sweet, with just a rose of the softest pink nestling in the rich waves of her hair. No marvel that Lennard thrilled so many hearts by the solo which was given to him to play; for in that solo the boy seemed to breathe out the love that thrilled through his own childlike heart, and which would henceforth go hand in hand with his genius, like twins, intertwining life so completely that they would perforce live together and perish together.

Lennard never quitted his seat in the orchestra for a single moment, but sat entranced gazing at the girl's sweet face, yet never seeming to look upon it, until the glow in his heart was like the sun of the south that gives crimson to the side of a peach in a day.

When the curtain fell, he went out with the crowd and watched Ethel Seymour into the carriage that awaited her. How far she seemed above him in everything! She did not see him; and no one in the throng guessed the utter, the dense darkness that fell on the boy's heart when the girlish face was lost to his view.

CHAPTER XXV.

THE TWO URSULAS.

BLUE shimmering silk, fold upon fold, had lain concealed in Ursula's chamber. To find a fashionable modiste, who could turn it into one

of the elegant robes her heart had long coveted, was a matter of difficulty. The girl had nothing to guide her, and she was sadly at a loss. Her queer isolated existence had been strangely barren of friends or even acquaintances. There was, in fact, no one with whom she could confer on the, to her, all-important subject, save and except the violinist's little daughter.

But Ursula had no faith in Nell. She fancied she had detected a certain inquisitiveness in the child; and she feared that Nell, moreover, might enlighten Ralph Pierce, and excite unpleasant and unanswerable queries. But the ball was approaching, and something must be done. There was a poor old weak-eyed dressmaker living in the house, who kept herself and three small children from absolute starvation by altering dresses and fitting garments to the shabby purlieuites. She it was who had fashioned the long trailing cheap gown that had rattled like autumnal leaves, and she had considered it a chef-d'œuvre of fashion. It had inspired the loud-spoken admiration of the neighbourhood even; but Ursula had been among really well-dressed women since then, and the idea of confiding her cerulean silk to the tender offices of a half-starved, purblind old creature seemed to her a desecration. Still the said afflicted old woman might be useful in pointing out an efficient substitute; and to glean such information Ursula dropped into the wretched den one day and made herself unusually affable.

Mrs. Knight, besides her other afflictions, was slightly lame, and she had given up going out to work for some years; but now and then old customers, who had seen her in palmy days and pitied her in declining ones, went to her with some trifle to alter or mend, and

discussed others of her calling confidentially. Mrs. Knight had never seen her, she said; but there was a young person who lived in a narrow street at some distance; and if Miss Pierce didn't object to several flights of stairs, the young person was considered really stylish in her work. The old woman produced the address, and Ursula's difficulty was solved.

The following day, Helen Willoughby's daughter found herself surrounded by clouds of billowy silk and filmy white lace, measuring, cutting, and searching her brain for some original and novel trimming which would establish her in the good opinion of the most dashing, extravagant, and profitable customer that had ever entered the humble little 'fourthfloor back.' The silk was rich and soft enough to give forth that luxurious rustle, on the merits of which Ursula had been so eloquent to Bernard; and the cobweb-lace that lay entangled in its folds, wearing the fleecy whiteness of a summer cloud, had a flavour of 'price' about it that startled the dressmaker at the responsibility imposed upon her.

The modiste who follows her calling with a good deal of natural taste possesses more of genius than persons often think. Labour of this kind performed under the inspiration of ideas ceases to be merely work, and becomes exalted into the fine arts.

The girl soon became interested in her task. The sloping gores resolved themselves into a sweeping train, long and flowing in rich azure waves that were softened by the misty delicate lace, impalpable as though but the frost of a single night had passed over the silk. Never did a seamstress work more zealously. Towards evening the skirt was finished, and laid daintily across the tiny bed in the corner,

sweeping to the floor in sumptuous folds that might have satisfied an empress. The corsage, shapely as the form to which it had been fitted, was nearly ready. The dress had been promised in two days, and it was the second already. The girl worked harder and harder, and panted in her anxiety to keep her faith. Towards evening she slackened haste a little. The ball-dress was almost finished, and the pretty dressmaker was charmed with the effect. Nothing half so beautiful or expensive had passed through her hands before. She felt an enormous pride of creation as she surveyed it, and smiled as her task was completed. When it was quite dusk her customer arrived, her dark face flushed as if she had walked fast, her manner strange and excited as though she were followed by some apprehension. With a quick keen glance she saw that the promise had been religiously kept, and the garment ready to try on.

'What a good girl you are!' she said, flinging her hat on the bed and seizing on the dress so eagerly that it dragged half across the floor. 'Oh, I am dying to put it on! But if it shouldn't fit! What shall I do if it wants alteration!'

'It will fit! It is sure to be right!'

Ursula hastily pulled off her walking costume, and throwing it carelessly down, held out both white arms for the new garment. As she stood thus, the dressmaker paused for a moment, lost in admiration of the lovely girl, lovely with a loveliness that was strangely familiar too. Untaught as she was in art, her eyes were fascinated by the rare beauty before her. The rounded arms tapering down in thin smooth snowiness, the sloping shoulders, the exquisite bust just defined, pure and white as the whitest marble, were all so perfect, that even the