Ruth looked up with an involuntary movement of surprise, and Lord Harewood coloured slightly as he replied to it.

"I would not insult the memory of the departed, but you cannot be ignorant of the circumstances I allude to; and without disturbing the shadows of the past, I am at liberty to say that a union of mere arrangement on both sides could be productive of little besides mutual unhappiness. It is a strange moment to intrude my grievances upon you, my young friend," continued he, "but the reality of ennui is better than the suspicion of offence which entailed it.”

Ruth was touched by the tone of despondency into which Lord Harewood, the very proudest and most reserved of mankind, had been betrayed.

"You cannot possibly honour me more, my dear Lord," said she kindly, " than by

detailing any circumstance which may render my sympathy valuable.”

66

"I thank you, my dear Ruth," said he,

your sympathy is indeed very dear to me."

He rose after a few moments of silence, and walked to a little distance plucking handfuls of flowers from the clustered boughs that hung round him.

Ruth fancied her interest had been coldly expressed, and after a while she also left her seat with the intention of joining him. Lord Harewood, however, thought she wished to re-join the party in the drawing-room, and offered his arm to conduct her thither; but Miss Annesley turned down the furthest alley of the conservatory, and when the walk had fairly commenced, she said very gently, “Few people have more of the ingredients of happiness than Lord Harewood.”

“What are the ingredients of happiness?"

answered he with a smile; "I hope I am not ungrateful for benefits unconsciously enjoyed. I am certain you are too intimate with real happiness to dream of extracting it from such. toys as rank and influence."

"But your Lordship has more than these," said Ruth earnestly; "power, and wealth, and talents-does such a wide field for virtuous enterprise offer no hope of happiness as its harvest?"

Lord Harewood was silent for a few minutes, and when he spoke again, the traces of anxiety were in his voice. "Wealth I have not-the terms of Lady Harewood's will leave me as poor as when I bartered the rank she sought for it; and though I exult in the surrender of that which I was never in myself base enough to aim at appropriating

yet its

loss has put a barrier between me and any future tie of a similar kind."

"Do not say so, my dear Lord!" said Ruth

"it is doing foul injustice to the value of your affections, to let them sink even in your own estimation, by a loss so insignificant. Lord Harewood's bride can never want a competence."

A short pause followed, and then the gentleman spoke again in a voice which became every moment huskier from the interest it expressed.

"I will tell you," said he, "the obstacle I find so insurmountable. The golden shackles imposed by my parents upon my choice in earlier days, were so irksome and so degrading that I tremble lest a future engagement may, without any similar cause, be capable of the same construction."

"That is surely altogether a groundless fear, my Lord," replied Ruth," none who really know the true nobility of your nature can misjudge it, and least of all she to whom the judgment will be of most importance. You are

not one to let any consideration of the world's malice oppose itself to your happiness."

"No!no!" replied Lord Harewood, “ and yet I am not sure that it would be malice, and not justice to condemn the presumption of offering a hand that has neither youth nor wealth to enrich it, to one on whom nature and fortune have outvied each other in showering gifts."

Ruth Annesley trembled in every limb for what was coming, with all the sensitive compassion that characterizes the gentler among her sex ; but she was too proudly delicate to make her fears discernable, and she replied. with perfect self-possession :

"She is altogether unworthy your affection, my Lord, who could discover one tint of presumption in its bestowal-and the opinion of all the world beside is surely less than indifferent."

"God bless you, dear Ruth!" said her