things, might she not be surprised by his lack of affection, begin to suspect him, and end by disliking him? Yet he knew that not for ten thousand worlds could he muster up courage to repeat one line of sentimental poetry to her.

He had never even had the courage to kiss her. He knew that this was wrong. In his own house he reflected that a man engaged to a woman ought surely to give her some such mark of his affection-say, in bidding her good-night; and thereupon Mr. Roscorla would resolve that, as he left the inn that evening, he would endeavour to kiss his future bride. He never succeeded. Somehow Wenna always parted from him in a merry mood. These were pleasant evenings in Mrs. Rosewarne's parlour; there was a good deal of quiet fun going on; and, if Wenna did come along the passage to the door with him, she was generally talking and laughing all the way. Of course he was not going to kiss her in that mood—as if, to use his own expression, he had been a jocular ploughboy. "Good-night, dear," he managed to say to her on one occasion, and for ten minutes thereafter as he walked home through the darkness, he felt that his face was burning. He had kissed her hand once. That was on his first meeting her after she had written the letter in which she promised to be his wife, and Mrs. Rosewarne had sent him into the room where she knew her daughter was alone. Wenna rose up to meet him, pale, frightened, with her eyes downcast. He took her hand and kissed it; and then, after a pause, he said, "I hope I shall make you happy." She could not answer. She began to tremble violently. He asked her to sit down, and begged of her not to be disturbed. She was recalled to herself by the accidental approach of her sister Mabyn, who came along the passage, singing, "Oh, the men of merry, merry England," in excellent imitation of the way in which Harry Trely on used to sing that once famous song as he rode his black horse along the highways. Mabyn came into the room, stared, and would have gone out, but that her sister called to her and asked her to come and hold down a pattern while she cut some cloth. Mabyn wondered that her sister should be so diligent when a visitor was present. She saw, too, that Wenna's fingers trembled. Then she remained in the room until Mr. Roscorla went, sitting by a window and not overhearing their conversation, but very much inclined to break in upon it by asking him how he dared to come there and propose to marry her sister Wenna.

"Oh, Wenna," she said, one evening some time after, when the two sisters were sitting out on the rocks at the end of the harbour, watching the sun go down behind the sea, "I cannot bear him coming to take you away like that. I shouldn't mind if he were like a sweetheart to you; but he's a multiplication-table sort of sweetheart-everything so regular, and accurate, and proper. I hate a man who always thinks what he's going to say, and always has neat sentences; and he watches you, and is so self-satisfied, and his information is always so correct. Oh, Wenna, I wish you had a young and beautiful lover, like a Prince!"

"My dear, child," said the elder sister, with a smile, "young and beautiful lovers are for young and beautiful girls, like you."

"Oh, Wenna, how can you talk like that!' said the younger sister; "why will you always believe that you are less pretty than other people, when every one knows that you have the most beautiful eyes in all the world. You have! There's not anybody in all the world has such beautiful and soft eyes as you-you ask anybody and they will tell you, if you don't believe But I have no doubt-I have no doubt whatever-that Mr. Roscorla will try to make you believe you are very ugly, so that you mayn't think you've thrown yourself away."

me.

Miss Mabyn looked very indignant, and very much inclined to cry at the same time; but the gentle sister put her hand on hers, and said— "You will make me quarrel with you some day, Mabyn, if you are so unjust to Mr. Roscorla. You are continually accusing him of things of which he never dreams. Now he never gets a chance that he does not try to praise me in every way, and if there were no looking-glasses in the world I have no doubt he would make me believe I was quite lovely; and you shouldn't say those things of him, Mabyn-it isn't fair. He always speaks kindly of you. He thinks you are very pretty, and that you will grow up to be very beautiful when you become a woman."

Mabyn was not to be pacified by this ingenuous piece of flattery. "You are such a simpleton, Wenna," she said, "he can make you believe anything."

"He does not try to make me believe anything I don't know already," said the elder sister, with some asperity.

"He tries to make you believe he is in love with you," said Mabyn, bluntly.

Wenna Rosewarne coloured up, and was silent for a minute. How was she to explain to this sister of hers all those theories which Mr. Roscorla had described to her in his first two or three letters? She felt that she had not the same gift of expression that he had.

"You don't understand-you don't understand at all, Mabyn, what you talk of as love. I suppose you mean the sort of wild madness you read of in books-well, I don't want that kind of love at all. There is quite a different sort of love, that comes of respect and affection and an agreement of wishes, and that is far more valuable and likely to be lasting. I don't want a lover who would do wild things, and make one wonder at his heroism, for that is the lover you get in books; but if you want to live a happy life, and please those around you, and be of service to them, you must have a very different sort of sweetheart-a man who will think of something else than a merely selfish passion, who will help you to be kind to other people, and whose affection will last through years and years."

"You have learnt your lesson very well," said Miss Mabyn, with a toss of her head. "He has spent some time in teaching you. But as for all that, Wenna, it's nothing but fudge. What a girl wants is to be really loved by a man, and then she can do without all those fine sentiments. As for Mr. Roscorla

"I do not think we are likely to agree on this matter, dear," said Wenna, calmly, as she rose; " and so we had better say nothing about it."

"Oh, I am not going to quarrel with you, Wenna," said the younger sister, promptly. "You and I will always agree very well. It is Mr. Roscorla and I who are not likely to agree very well—not at all likely, I can assure you.”

They were walking back to Eglosilyan, under the clear evening skies, when whom should they see coming out to meet them but Mr. Roscorla himself. It was a pleasant time and place for lovers to come together. The warm light left by the sunset still shone across the hills; the clear blue-green water in the tiny harbour lay perfectly still; Eglosilyan had got its day's work over, and was either chatting in the cottage gardens or strolling down to have a look at the couple of coasters moored behind the small but powerful breakwater. But Mr. Roscorla had had no hope of discovering Wenna alone; he was quite as well content to find Mabyn with her, though that young lady, as he came up, looked particularly fierce, and did not smile at all when she shook hands with him. Was it the red glow in the west that gave an extra tinge of colour to Mr. Roscorla's face? Wenna felt that she was better satisfied with her engagement when her lover was not present; but she put that down to a natural shyness and modesty which she considered was probably common to all girls in these strange circumstances.

Mr. Roscorla wished to convoy the two young ladies back to the inn, and evidently meant to spend the evening there. But Miss Wenna ill requited his gallantry by informing him that she had intended to make one or two calls in the evening, which would occupy some time: in particular, she had undertaken to do something for Mrs. Luke's eldest girl; and she had also promised to go in and read for half an hour to Nicholas Keam, the brother of the wife of the owner of the Napoleon Hotel, who was very ill indeed, and far too languid to read for himself.

"But you know, Mr. Roscorla," said Mabyn, with a bitter malice, "if you would go into the Napoleon and read to Mr. Keam, Wenna and I could go up to Mother Luke's, and so we should save all that time, and I am sure Wenna is very tired to-day. Then you would be so much better able to pick out the things in the papers that Mr. Keam wants; for Wenna never knows what is old and new, and Mr. Keam is anxious to learn what is going on in politics, and the Irish Church, and that kind of thing."

Could he refuse? Surely a man who has just got a girl to say she will marry him, ought not to think twice about sacrificing half an hour to helping her in her occupations, especially if she be tired. Wenna could not have made the request herself; but she was anxious that he should say yes, now it had been made, for it was in a manner a test of his devotion to her; and she was overjoyed and most grateful to him when he consented. What Mabyn thought of the matter was not visible on her face.

CHAPTER VIII.

WENNA'S FIRST TRIUMPH.

THE two girls, as they went up the main street of Eglosilyan (it was sweet with the scent of flowers on this beautiful evening), left Mr. Roscorla in front of the obscure little public-house he had undertaken to visit; and it is probable that in the whole of England at that moment there was not a more miserable man. He knew this Nicholas Keam, and his sister, and his brother-in-law, so far as their names went, and they knew him by sight; but he had never said more than good-morning to any one of them, and he had certainly never entered this pot-house, where a sort of debating society was nightly held by the habitués. But, all the same, he would do what he had undertaken to do, for Wenna Rosewarne's sake; and it was with some sensation of a despairing heroism that he went up the steps of slate and crossed the threshold.

He looked into the place from the passage. He found before him what was really a large kitchen, with a spacious fire-place, and heavy rafters across the roof; but all round the walls there was a sort of bench with a high wooden back to it, and on this seat sate a number of menone or two labourers, the rest slate-workers-who, in the dusk, were idly smoking and looking at the beer on the narrow tables before them. Was this the sort of place that his future wife had been in the habit of visiting? There was a sort of gloomy picturesqueness about the chamber, to be sure; for, warm as the evening was, a fire burned flickeringly in the grate; there was enough light to show the tin and copper vessels shining over the high mantelpiece; and a couple of fair-haired children were playing about the middle of the floor, little heeding the row of dusky figures around the tables, whose heads were half hidden by tobacco-smoke.

A tall, thin, fresh-coloured woman came along the passage; and Mr. Roscorla was glad that he had not to go in among these labourers to make his business known. It was bad enough to have to speak to Mrs. Haigh, the landlady of the Napoleon.

"Good morning, Mrs. Haigh," said he, with an appearance of cheerfulness.

"Good evenin', zor," said she, staring at him with those cruelly shrewd and clear eyes that the Cornish peasantry have.

"I called in to see Mr. Keam," said he. "Is he much better?"

A thousand wild suggestions flashed upon his mind. She might not recognise him. She would take him for a Scripture reader, come to hasten the poor man's death; or for the agent of some funeral company. He could not smile, as he was asking about a sick man; he could not sigh, for he had come to administer cheerfulness; and all the while, as Mrs. Haigh seemed to be regarding him, he grew more and more vexed and vowed that never again would he place himself in such a position.

"If yü'd like vor to see 'n, zor," said she, rather slowly, as if waiting

for further explanation, "yii'll vind 'n in the rum"-and with that she opened the door of a room on the other side of the passage. It was obviously the private parlour of the household-an odd little chamber with plenty of coloured lithographs on the walls, and china and photographs on the mantelpiece; the floor of large blocks of slate ornamented with various devices in chalk; in the corner a cupboard filled with old cut crystal, brass candlesticks, and other articles of luxury. The room had one occupant—a tall man who sate in a big wooden chair by the window, his head hanging forward between his high shoulders, and his thin white hands on the arms of the chair. The sunken cheeks, the sallow-white complexion, the listless air, and an occasional sigh of resignation told a sufficiently plain story; although Mrs. Haigh, in regarding her brother, and speaking to him in a loud voice, as if to arouse his attention, wore an air of brisk cheerfulness strangely in contrast with the worn look of his face.

"Don't yi knaw Mr. Roscorla, brother Nicholas?" said his sister, "Don't yü look mazed, when he's come vor to zee if yü're better. And yü be much better to-day, brother Nicholas ?"

"Yes, I think," said the sick man, agreeing with his sister out of mere listlessness.

"Oh, yes, I think you look much better," said Mr. Roscorla, hastily and nervously, for he feared that both these people would see in his face what he thought of this unhappy man's chances of living. But Nicholas Keam mostly kept his eyes turned towards the floor, except when the brisk, loud voice of his sister roused him and caused him to look up.

A most awkward pause ensued. Mr. Roscorla felt convinced they would think he was mad if he offered to sit down in this parlour and read the newspapers to the invalid; he forgot that they did not know him as well as he did himself. On the other hand, would they not consider him a silly person if he admitted that he only made the offer in order to please a girl? Besides, he could see no newspapers in the room. Fortunately, at this moment, Mr. Keam himself came to the rescue by saying, in a slow and languid way-

"I did expect vor to zee Miss Rosewarne this evenin'-yaas, I did; and she were to read me the news; but I suppose now--"

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"Oh!" said Mr. Roscorla, quickly, "I have just seen Miss Rosewarne -she told me she expected to see you, but was a little tired. Now, if you like, I will read the newspapers to you as long as the light lasts." Why don't yi thank the gentleman, brother Nicholas ?" said Mrs. Haigh, who was apparently most anxious to get away to her duties. "That be very kind of yü, zor. 'Tis a great comfort to 'n to hear the news; and I'll send yu in the papers to once. Yü come away with me, Rosana, and yu can come agwain and bring the gentleman the newspapers."

She dragged off with her a small girl who had wandered in; and Mr. Roscorla was left alone with the sick man. The feelings in his heart were