walking quickly alongside of me, “we are not going to part like this!"

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Do not call me Nancy !" cry I, indignantly, "it makes me sick!"

"What does it matter what I call you?" he cries, impatiently; "of what consequence is such a trifle? I will call you by what name you please, but for this once you

must listen to me.

I know as well as you

do, that it is my last chance!"

"That it is!" put in I, viciously.

The path is beginning to rise. After mounting the slope, we shall soon be out of the wood, and in the peopled open again.

"How can I help it, if I have gone mad?" he cries violently, evidently driven to desperation by the shortness of the time before him.

"Mad!" echo I, scornfully, "not a bit of it! you are as sane as I am !"

All this time we are posting along in

mad haste. Thank God! the highroad is in sight, the cheerful, populous, light highroad. The trees grow thinner, and the path broadens. Even from here, we can plainly see the carts and carters. He stops, and making me stop too, snatches both my hands.

66

"Nancy!" he says harshly, stooping over me, while his eyes flame with a haggard light. Yes, I will call you so this once to me now you are Nancy! I will not call you by his name! Is it possible? You may say that it is my egotism; but, at a moment like this, what is the use of shamming of polite pretence? Never, never before in all my life have I given love without receiving it, and I cannot believe"-(with an accent of passionate entreaty)" that I do now! Feeling for you as I do, do you feel absolutely nothing for me?"

"Feel!" cry I, driven out of all modera

tion by disgust and exasperation.

"Would

you like to know how I feel? I feel as if a slug had crawled over me!"

His face contracts, his eyes darken with a raging pain. He throws my hands—the hands a moment ago so jealously clasped-away from him.

“Thank you!” he says, after a pause, in a stiff voice of constraint. “I am satisfied !”

"And a very good thing too!" say I, sturdily, still at boiling point, and diminishing with quick steps the small space still intervening between me and the road.

"Stay!" he says, overtaking me once again, as I reach it, and laying his hand in detention on my arm. "One word more! I should be sorry to part from you-such friends as we have been "-(with a sneer) -"without one good wish. Lady Tempest, I hope "-(smiling with malevolent

irony)" that your fidelity will be rewarded

as it deserves."

"I have no doubt of it!" reply I, steadily; but even as I speak, a sharp jealous pain runs through my heart. Thank God! he

cannot see it!

CHAPTER XIII.

ES, here out in the open it is still quite light; it seems two hours

earlier than it did below in the

dark dingle-light enough as plainly to see the faces of those one meets as if it were midday. I suppose that my late companion and I were too much occupied by our own emotions to hear, or at least notice the sound of wheels approaching us; but no sooner have I turned and left him, before I have gone three paces, than I am quickly passed by an open carriage and pair of grays— quickly, and yet slowly enough for me to recognize the one occupant. As to her