Eglosilyan by playing, in a very elaborate manner, "Love's young Dream."

The solitary young person who was taking her morning walk now left this rugged road, and found herself on the bleak and high uplands of the coast. Over there was the sea-a fair summer sea; and down into the south-west stretched a tall line of cliff, black, precipitous, and jagged, around the base of which even this blue sea was churned into seething masses of white. Close by was a church; and the very gravestones were propped up, so that they should withstand the force of the gales that sweep over those windy heights.

She went across the uplands, and passed down to a narrow neck of rock, which connected with the mainland a huge projecting promontory, on the summit of which was a square and strongly-built tower. On both sides of this ledge of rock the sea from below passed into narrow channels, and roared into gigantic caves; but when once you had ascended again to the summit of the tall projecting cliff, the distance softened the sound into a low continuous murmur, and the motion of the waves beneath you was only visible in the presence of that white foam where the black cliffs met the blue sea.

She went out pretty nearly to the verge of the cliff, where the close, short, wind-swept sea-grass gave way to immense and ragged masses of rock, descending sheer into the waves below; and here she sat down, and took out a book, and began to read. But her thoughts were busier than her eyes. Her attention would stray away from the page before her-to the empty blue sea, where scarcely a sail was to be seen, and to the far headlands lying under the white of the summer sky. One of these headlands was Tintagel; and close by were the ruins of the great castle, where Uther Pendragon kept his state, where the mystic Arthur was born, where the brave Sir Tristram went to see his true love, La Belle Isoulde. All that world had vanished, and gone into silence; could anything be more mute and still than those bare uplands out at the end of the world, these voiceless cliffs, and the empty circle of the sea? The sun was hot on the rocks beneath her, where the pink quartz lay encrusted among the slate; but there was scarcely the hum of an insect to break the stillness, and the only sign of life about was the circling of one or two sea birds, so far below her that their cries could not be heard.

"Yes, it was a long time ago," the girl was thinking, as the book lay unheeded on her knee. "A sort of mist covers it now, and the knights seem great and tall men as you think of them riding through the fog, almost in silence. But then there were the brighter days, when the tournaments were held, and the sun came out, and the noble ladies wore rich colours, and every one came to see how beautiful they were. how fine it must have been to have sat there, and have all the knights ready to fight for you, and glad when you gave them a bit of ribbon or a smile! And in these days, too, it must be a fine thing to be a noble lady, and beautiful, and tall, like a princess; and to go among the poor

And

people, putting everything to rights, because you have lots of money, and because the roughest of the men look up to you, and think you a queen, and will do anything you ask. What a happy life a grand and beautiful lady must have, when she is tall, and fair-haired, and sweet in her manner; and every one around her is pleased to serve her, and she can do a kindness by merely saying a word to the poor people! But if you are only Jim Crow? There's Mabyn, now, she is everybody's favourite because she is so pretty; and whatever she does, that is always beautiful and graceful, because she is so. Father never calls her Jim Crow. And I ought to be jealous of her, for every one praises her, and mere strangers ask for her photograph; and Mr. Roscorla always writes to her, and Mr. Trelyon stuffed those squirrels for her, though he never offered to stuff squirrels for me. But I cannot be jealous of Mabyn-I cannot even try. She looks at you with her blue, soft eyes, and you fall in love with her; and that is the advantage of being handsome, and beautiful, for you can please every one, and make every one like you, and confer favours on people all day long. But if you are small, and plain, and dark-if your father calls you Jim Crow-what can you do?"

These despondent fancies did not seem to depress her much. The gloom of them was certainly not visible on her face, nor yet in the dark eyes, which had a strange and winning earnestness in them. She pulled a bit of tormentil from among the close warm grass on the rocks, and she hummed a line or two of " Wapping Old Stairs." Then she turned to her book; but by-and-by her eyes wandered away again, and she fell to thinking.

"If you were a man, now," she was silently saying to herself, "that would be quite different. It would not matter how ugly you were-for you could try to be brave or clever, or a splendid rider, or something of that kind and nobody would mind how ugly you were. But it's very hard to be a woman, and to be plain; you feel as if you were good for nothing, and had no business to live. They say that you should cultivate the graces of the mind; but it's only old people who say that; and perhaps you mayn't have any mind to cultivate. How much better it would be to be pretty while you are young, and leave the cultivation of the mind for after years! and that is why I have to prevent mother from scolding Mabyn for never reading a book. If I were like Mabyn, I should be so occupied in giving people the pleasure of looking at me and talking to me that I should have no time for books. Mabyn is like a princess. And if she were a grand lady, instead of being only an innkeeper's daughter, what a lot of things she could do about Eglosilyan! She could go and persuade Mr. Roscorla, by the mere sweetness of her manner, to be less suspicious of people, and less bitter in talking; she could go up to Mrs. Trelyon and bring her out more among her neighbours, and make the house pleasanter for her son; she could go to my father and beg him to be a little more considerate to mother when she is angry; she might get some influence over Mr. Trelyon himself, and make

him less of a petulant boy. Perhaps Mabyn may do some of these things, when she gets a little older. It ought to please her to try at all events; and who can withstand her when she likes to be affectionate and winning? Not Jim Crow, any way."

She heaved a sigh, not a very dismal one, and got up and prepared to go home. She was humming carelessly to herself

Your Polly has never been false, she declares,

Since last time we parted at Wapping Old Stairs;

-she had got that length when she was startled into silence by the sound of a horse's feet, and, turning quickly round, found Mr. Trelyon galloping up the steep slope that stretches across to the mainland. It was no pleasant place to ride across, for a stumble of the animal's foot would have sent horse and rider down into the gulfs below, where the blue-green sea was surging in among the black rocks.

"Oh! how could you be so foolish as to do that?" she cried. "I beg of you to come down, Mr. Trelyon. I cannot

"Why, Dick is as sure-footed as I am," said the lad, his handsome face flushing with the ride up from Eglosilyan. "I thought I should find you here. There's no end of a row going on at the inn, Miss Wenna, and that's a fact. I fancied I'd better come and tell you; for there's no one can put things straight like you, you know."

A quarrel between her father and her mother-it was of no rare occurrence, and she was not much surprised.

"Thank you, Mr. Trelyon," she said. "It is very kind of you to have taken the trouble. I will go down at once."

But she was looking rather anxiously at him, as he turned round his horse.

"Mr. Trelyon," she said, quickly, "would you oblige me by getting down and leading your horse across until you reach the path?

He was out of the saddle in a moment.

"I will walk down with you to Eglosilyan, if you like," he said, carelessly. "You often come up here, don't you ?"

"Nearly every day. I always take a walk in the forenoon."

"Does Mabyn ever go with you ? His companion noticed that he always addressed her as Miss Wenna, whereas her sister was simply Mabyn.

"Not often."

"I wonder she doesn't ride-I am sure she would look well on horseback-don't you think so?"

"Mabyn would look well anywhere," said the elder sister, with a smile. "If she would like to try a lady's saddle on your father's cob, I would send you one down from the Hall," the lad said. 66 My mother never rides now. But perhaps I'd better speak to your father about it. Oh! by the way, he told me a capital story this morning that he heard in coming from Plymouth to Launceston in the train. Two farmers belonging to Launceston had got into a carriage the day before, and found in it

a parson, against whom they had a grudge. He didn't know either of them by sight; and so they pretended to be strangers, and sat down opposite each other. One of them put up the window; the other put it down with a bang. The first drew it up again, and said, 'I desire you to leave the window alone, sir!' The other said, 'I mean to have that window down, and if you touch it again I will throw you out of it.' Meanwhile, the parson at the other end of the carriage, who was a little fellow and rather timid, had got into an agony of fright; and at last, when the two men seemed about to seize each other by the throat, he called out, For Heaven's sake, gentlemen, do not quarrel. Sir, I beg of you, I implore you, as a clergyman I entreat you, to put up that knife!'

then, of course, they both turned upon him like tigers, and slanged him, and declared they would break his back over this same window. Fancy the fright he was in!"

The boy laughed merrily.

"Do you think that was a good joke?" the girl beside him asked, quietly.

He seemed a little embarrassed.

"Do you think it was a very manly and courageous thing for two big farmers to frighten a small and timid clergyman? I think it was rather mean and cowardly. I see no joke in it at all."

His face grew more and more red; and then he frowned with vexation. "I don't suppose they meant any harm," he said, curtly; "but you know we can't all be squaring every word and look by the Prayer-book. And I suppose the parson himself, if he had known, would not have been so fearfully serious but that he could have taken a joke like any one else. By the way, this is the nearest road to Trevenna, isn't it? I have got to ride over there before the afternoon, Miss Rosewarne; so I shall bid you good-day."

He got on horseback again, and took off his cap to her, and rode away. "Good-day, Mr. Trelyon," she said, meekly.

And so she walked down to the inn by herself, and was inclined to reproach herself for being so very serious, and for being unable to understand a joke like any one else. Yet she was not unhappy about it. It was a pity if Mr. Trelyon were annoyed with her; but then, she had long ago taught herself to believe that she could not easily please people, like her sister Mabyn; and she cheerfully accepted the fact. Sometimes, it is true, she indulged in idle dreams of what she might do if she were beautiful, and rich, and noble; but she soon laughed herself out of these foolish fancies, and they left no sting of regret behind them. At this moment, as she walked down to Eglosilyan, with the tune of " Wapping Old Stairs" rocking itself to sleep in her head, and with her face brightened by her brisk walk, there was neither disappointment, nor envy, nor ambition in her mind. Not for her, indeed, were any of those furious passions that shake and set afire the lives of men and women; her lot was the calm and placid lot of the unregarded, and with it she was well content.

CHAPTER III.

RES ANGUSTÆ DOMI.

WHEN George Rosewarne, the father of this Miss Wenna, lived in eastern Devonshire, many folks thought him a fortunate man. He was the landsteward of a large estate, the owner of which lived in Paris, so that Rosewarne was practically his own master; he had a young and pretty wife, desperately fond of him; he had a couple of children and a comfortable home. As for himself, he was a tall, reddish-bearded, manlylooking fellow; the country folks called him Handsome George as they saw him riding his rounds of a morning; and they thought it a pity Mrs. Rosewarne was so often poorly, for she and her husband looked well together when they walked to church.

Handsome George did not seem much troubled by his wife's various ailments; he would only give the curtest answer when asked about her health. Yet he was not in any distinct way a bad husband. He was a man vaguely unwilling to act wrongly, but weak in staving off temptation; there was a sort of indolent selfishness about him of which he was scarcely aware; and to indulge this selfishness he was capable of a good deal of petty deceit and even treachery of a sort. It was not these failings, however, that made the relations of husband and wife not very satisfactory. Mrs. Rosewarne was passionately fond of her husband, and proportionately jealous of him. She was a woman of impulsive imagination and of sympathetic nature, clever, bright, and fanciful, well-read and well-taught, and altogether made of finer stuff than Handsome George. But this passion of jealousy altogether over-mastered her reason. When she did try to convince herself that she was in the wrong, the result was merely that she resolved to keep silence; but this forcible repression of her suspicions was worse in its effects than the open avowal of them. When the explosion came, George Rosewarne was mostly anxious to avoid it. He did not seek to set matters straight. He would get into a peevish temper for a few minutes, and tell her she was a fool; then he would go out for the rest of the day, and come home sulky in the evening. By this time she was generally in a penitent mood; and there is nothing an indolent sulky person likes so much as to be coaxed and caressed, with tears of repentance and affectionate promises, into a good temper again. There were too many of such scenes in George Rosewarne's home.

Mrs. Rosewarne may have been wrong, but people began to talk. For there had come to live at the Hall a certain Mrs. Shirley, who had lately returned from India, and was the sister-in-law, or some such relation, of George Rosewarne's master. She was a good-looking woman of forty, fresh-coloured and free-spoken, a little too fond of brandy-andwater, folks said, and a good deal too fond of the handsome steward, who now spent most of his time up at the big house. They said she was a grass-widow. They said there were reasons why her relations wished