fascinating attributes of a first experience, not succeeding to or displacing other emotions, as in older hearts, but taking up en

sting them with meanings of love and faithfulness,-ostensibly entertaining such meanings only as fables wherewith to pass the time, yet in her heart admitting, for detached instants, a possibility of their deeper truth.

the very next morning brought round a circumstance which, slight in itself, took up a relev

an pass without bringing her an answer to the advertisement,

en alarmed, of course. Springrove told you wha

ear. But what is th

ff now... Cytherea, I hope you like Spring

nk he is, e

ed off to walk home, and went about five miles along a path beside the railway. It then struck me that I might not be fit for anything to-day if I walked and aggravated the bother

ith their breakf

the gate-house last night, I'm

though I was so tired. For one thing, there were the luggage trains rattling by at my elbow the early part of the night. But worse than this, he talked continually in his sleep, and occasionally struck out with his limbs at something or another, knocking against the post of the bedstead and making it tremble. My condition was altogether so unsatisfactory that at last I awoke him, and asked him what he had been dreaming about for the previous hour, for I could get no sleep at all. He begged my pardon for disturbing me, but a name I had casually let fall that evening had led him to think of another stranger he had once had visit him,

he would wait, and showed her into the small inner room. There was a glass-pane in the partition dividing this room from the bar to enable the landlord to see if his visitors, who sat there, wanted anything. A curious awkwardness and melancholy about the behaviour of the girl who called, caused my inform

you not b

not likely to live

ed her up. Well, do what they would they could not for a long time bring her back to consciousness, and began to be much alarmed. "Who is she?" the innk

get some information from her. He stooped over her, put his mouth to her ear, and said sharply, "What's your name?" "To catch a woman

-and stoppe

ame!' sai

ave I said!" and was quite overcome again-this time with fright. Her vexation that the woman now doubted the genuineness of her other name was very much greater than that the innkeeper did, and it is evident that to blind the woman was her main objec

any more of that! too many years had passed since it happened. "At any rate, you found out her surname?" I said. "Well, well, that's my secret," he went on. "Perhaps I should never have been in this part of the world if it hadn't been for that. I failed as a publican, you know." I imagine the situation of gateman was given him and his debts paid off as a bribe to silence; but I can't say. "Ah, yes!" he said,

therea murmured. '

The man was evidently truthful, for there was not motive sufficient f

'Don't you recognize anything else in

?' he

name of his first sweetheart in Bloomsbury, who so mysteriously reno

,' said her brot

r woman of the name in England. In what y

undred and

n tell you.' She searched their little stock of books for

n in the evening of the sixteenth of Oct

uarter before she met

have searched for a clue to her secret half the world over, and never found one. If we had really had any motive for trying to discover more of the sad history than papa told us, we should

e woman) is a mere coincidence after all-a family story to tell our friends if we ever

at silentl

orning to your advertisemen

on

t by your looks

said sadly. 'Surely there must be pe

em mostly by friends' recommendations; whilst those who want them,

shall

shillings a week do not amount to much truly; but then many mechanics have no more, and we live quite as sparingly as journeymen mechanics... It is a meagre narrow life we a

back there ag

mark were almost too laboured to be real. 'Besides,' he continued, 'something better for me is sure to turn up soon. I wish my en

very probable, you are not wanted after the beginning of October-the time Mr. Gradfie

until advertising had been once more tried, this time taking lower ground. Cytherea was vexed at her temerity in having represented to the world that so inexperienced a being as her

USEFUL COMPANION. A

either of the above c

od needle-woman-Addre

mou

son. Rather oddly they met Springrove again in a few minutes. This time the three walked a little way together, Edward ostensibly talking to Owen, though with a single thought to the reception of his words by the m

sh his friends good-evening, or to find a reason for continuing near Cytherea by saying some nice new thing. He thought of a new thing; he proposed a pull across th

ays sitting in the stern with the tiller ropes in her hand. The curves of her figure welded with those of the fragile boat i

pair of sculls; but not considering himself sufficiently accomplished to do finished rowing before a parade full of promenaders when there was a little swell on, and with the rudder unshipp

n into still closer companionship,