has written to say how delighted she is to make your acquaintance-yours and Monsieur Dessaix's-(and so select as she always is !)-I really don't know what you would have. Isn't it quite true, Maria ?" she said, appealing to her daughter in her despair.

"Oh, quite true-ten," calmly said Maria, who had got to her work again and had not the smallest idea what her mother was talking about. "Very well, then," said Ursula. "In that case we will go--" "Now that is so nice and sweet of you!" interrupted poor Lady Blankeney, with a ray of hope.

"But," continued Miss Hamilton, gravely, "I will not sing, and Jacques shall not play, and that will give your select Marquise all the more time to become acquainted with us."

Lady Blankeney's face fell so dismally that I was sadly afraid she was going to cry. Just then Madame Olympe came up, and proposed an expedition to the Géant-a high hill in the neighbourhood, from which there was a lovely view.

"But what shall I do?" said Lady Blankeney, dolorously. "I must send an answer to-day. She told me she meant to do without the Trebelli if Ursula went

"Then hadn't you better write and tell her to put the Trebelli on again?" said Ursula, coolly.

"Dear me!" said Lady Blankeney, still more dejected. "I don't see how we are to go at all. What is to become of you, Ursula, if Maria and I go?"

"Oh, don't be unhappy about me, my dear Lady Blankeney. Jacques and I shall have a very cosy little evening together at the hotel, I dare say." "Speak to her, you, my dear Countess! She really doesn't know the things that people will say, and I really am almost beginning to be afraid that-that-she does not care."

"I do not know, and I do not care," said Miss Hamilton, looking at Lady Blankeney placidly.

"When is this party to be?" asked Madame Olympe.

"It's on Saturday next," said Lady Blankeney," and I must write to-day, and I'm sure I don't know what I am to say after all her kindness about it!"

"I'll tell you what," said Madame Olympe. "Write and say that I keep Miss Hamilton here until Monday next-that is, if she will stay?" and she turned towards Ursula. An expression of pleasure lit up Ursula's face, which was followed by a slight shade of hesitation.

"Oh, you and Monsieur Dessaix I mean, of course," added Madame Olympe, laughing. "And now go and get your things on quickly, all of you; it soon gets cold of an evening now, and it is a longish way that we Bessy," she continued, addressing me, go and fetch your

have to go.

hat too.

The others will walk, but the pony-chair is ordered for you, and there is a way up, not quite so pretty, perhaps, as the road that they are going, but at least twice as short: I am sure we can manage it with the

pony-chair and our steady old horse, and Monsieur Kiowski and I are coming with you."

We had a lovely view, certainly, when we got to the top of the hill; and I think that the intense delight it gave me must have repaid my dear hostess for all her kind thought and hard labour in my behalf; but oh, what that journey up was to my poor rickety nerves, no words can tell. We went up, and up, and up through an entirely perpendicular lane, where there existed no road at all. Madame Olympe walked the whole way, pulling the horse up after her by main force, while Monsieur Kiowski pushed behind with all his might. I never was so terrified or so miserable in all my life. Whenever we stopped for an instant in order to allow the poor animal to recover his breath, the carriage rolled back, and frightened me out of my wits. I made one or two feeble propositions about walking, which Madame Olympe peremp torily extinguished. At last, Monsieur Kiowski, seeing that I was on the point of crying, suggested that I was more likely to be made ill by sitting in the carriage and being frightened, than by the fatigue of walking. Upon this Madame Olympe suddenly turned round, and coming close up to me, in a determined way, said, "You are frightened; of what are you frightened? Of being run away with? How is it possible up this steep hill ? Of the carriage rolling back? Where can you go to if it does roll back? into the hedge." And she suddenly backed the carriage right into the hedge, to illustrate her words. "There is only one thing that can happen to you, and that is to tumble out; but I do not see what is to make you do that; and if you did, you are but an inch from the ground in this little low chair, and you could not hurt yourself if you were to try."

"Well," said Monsieur Kiowski, who had gone a little way off to take a peep through a break in the trees, "is it decided? Does she get out?" "Yes," answered Madame Olympe, unhesitatingly. "I have convinced her reason that there is no danger; so she is no longer frightened, and stays in."

After that there was nothing for it but to remain where I was and endure agonies until we reached the summit. That angelic creature Monsieur Kiowski ran ever so far back to possess himself of an enormous stone, very nearly as big as a milestone, with which he toiled up the hill after us, scotching the wheel with it every time that we stopped, and thereby doing away with what had been the most unpleasant of my sensa tions. At the top we were met by the rest of the party, with the exception of Monsieur Dessaix. He had started with them, it seems, but the moment they began to ascend the hill he had exclaimed to Miss Hamilton, "Ursula, there is danger; I leave thee!" and returned home. I was allowed by Madame Olympe to walk down by the road that I had come, accompanied by Ursula, Monsieur Kiowski, Monsieur Berthier and Jeanne. Lady Blankeney and Maria were driven home the long way by Madame Olympe.

As soon as we reached the château, Lady Blankeney made one final attempt to mollify Miss Hamilton about Madame de Verneuil, but she was

entirely inexorable, and so poor Lady Blankeney, with Maria, retreated upstairs, much mortified, to write her letter. I went and established myself upon my sofa, and Madame Olympe made us some tea-after which Ursula began to sing, and then Monsieur Dessaix was prevailed upon to play. He played with Madame Olympe, first, sonatas of Mozart's, as long as the daylight lasted and that they could see; and then he went playing on, compositions of his own: a song of Gretchen, a song of Juliet, a song of Ophelia, a song of Mignon-tender, pathetic, exquisite ! and we sat and listened, first into the twilight, then into the dusk, until the last fine passion and the last faint glimmer clung together in an undistinguishable embrace and died into the night. For some seconds after the sound had ceased, we all remained breathless and motionless, bound in a great silent emotion. At last a gentle voice said from out of the darkness, with a little sympathetic sigh," Ah, how well I did to come back!"

Ursula's hand, which was lying in mine, gave a sudden jump, and Madame Olympe got up, crying, "Why, René, you don't mean that it's you? No this is too laughable !"

The lamps were lit, and a slight fair man, with chestnut hair and a red beard divided into two points, was presented to me as Monsieur de Saldes. Jeanne was right-interesting was the word. Ursula had remained sitting rather behind me, and had not been perceived in the first moments of greeting. At last Monsieur de Saldes caught sight of her, and came forward with an exclamation of pleasure to meet her.

Forgive my

"My dear Ursula, how charmed I am to see you! freedom," he added. “When I first knew you, you were no higher than that, you know,"-and he made the measure with his hand in the air.

"Yes, but I have grown since then. I am now as tall as that," she said, drawing herself up to her full height, and drawing her hand up with a lazy charming gesture to a level with her head, "and I am always called Miss Hamilton."

I was amazed at her self-possession; and so, I think, was Monsieur René, for he suddenly flushed and turned with rather an embarrassed manner to speak to Madame Olympe.

"I feel proud of myself," said Ursula to me in English. "I suppose I am the first person who has ever put that man down in his life." "He does not seem to like it much," said I.

"Good for him!" she answered, with a wicked smile.

"Now tell me what on earth has brought you back to me so soon, René?" said Madame Olympe. "Your erratic proceedings become daily more wonderful."

"Suppose I have come back for the meet to-morrow? Would that be so very wonderful?" said he.

"Yes," said Madame Olympe, "for you knew of the meet before you went, and had no intention whatever of hunting."

"Perhaps I came back to see old friends-who knows?" he said, with a charming smile at Ursula.

"That won't do either," said Madame Olympe. "You forget that I know what took you away in such a hurry. You had better tell the truth

at once-it will have to come out at last-come, execute yourself with a good grace, and unfold the mystery."

"If I were to tell you, how you would laugh at me!" he said, laughing himself."Well, you must know, then, that yesterday evening I thought I would just go for half-an-hour to Madame de Limour's. At this season I made sure of finding her alone, and having a little chat comfortably by her fireside. Not at all. There were at least twenty people-men of science with dowdy wives, literary lions, a German poetess with a goitre-and in the midst of all these, such a fish out of water, and more undressed than anything you can conceive, Sophie de Malan! She was in the hands of a hideous man, who, I was told, had just written something about the decomposition of oils. She flew to me at once, held on like grim death, and would not let me go until I had sworn all my great gods that I would dine with her to-day. I really never saw anything so shocking as her appearance. I suppose, like myself, she had expected to find no one, and had put on an old gown-it was a very dirty one-and those naked little high shoulders! I assure you one could see the articulation of her anatomy all down her chest as far as her waist. You never saw such a hideous spectacle in your life!"

"Where was Monsieur de Malan ?"

"Oh, she had left him somewhere or other by the seaside in Normandy, and was only herself in Paris for a day or two on business. If he had been there I might have borne it. I always rather liked Malan: but a tête-à-tête with Sophie was more than my poor shattered frame could stand. So I wrote a little note (to be sent at seven o'clock), stating how at the eleventh hour my wretched health obliged me to renounce the promised happiness, &c."

"So that, in point of fact, it is to Madame de Malan's invitation to dinner that we are indebted for the pleasure of seeing you?" said Miss Hamilton.

"Do you know her, Miss Hamilton?" said Monsieur de Saldes, turning to her. "Oh, though, of course you do! She was at Florence in the old days."

"Yes; she was at Florence in the old days," answered Miss Hamilton, smiling but my acquaintance with her was very slight."

66

"And you are going to England, Olympe tells me," he continued, "and with Lady Blankeney? Surely, after the vita libera of Italy, England, and under those auspices, will never suit you?"

"I am afraid the alliance does not seem likely to last very long," said Ursula. "Our points of view upon all subjects are so very different. I don't feel certain how I may like England under my new circumstances. I have come into a fortune, you know; and among other pleasant things, have inherited an estate in Devonshire, which I am told is quite lovely. I can fancy liking country-life in England-there is something useful, delightful,

and altogether noble about it. Whenever I read or hear about it, it seems to me the ideal life. Each of the two times I have been in England, it has only been to make a hurried visit of a few days to London upon business matters. Oh, how ugly I thought it, and how I hated it! It was almost worth while going there, though, for the joy of returning afterwards to the beloved land. How one's spirits rise the moment one crosses the frontier, and hears people speaking with sweet terminating vowels once more! "

66

Yes," said Monsieur Kiowski. "I know nothing like the emotion that the first Italian town gives one after an absence-the well-remembered yet always new aspect of men and things! The faded frescos on the old palaces the balconies teeming with crowded flowers; the shops, half in, half out of doors-the barber with the striped curtain drawn back, that the patient may flâner with his eyes while his chin is in jeopardy-the tailor who is always mending a waistcoat on a sort of hob at the entrance of the shop"

"The limonaro and the water-melon man," interrupted Ursula.

"The ill-shaven priests and slippered women," continued Monsieur Kiowski.

"The groom who has a tenor and the milkman who plays the mandoline!" cried Ursula.

"How noisy-how sunny-how fascinating it all is!" said Monsieur Kiowski.

“And, sommi Dei! what a stench!" added Monsieur de Saldes. "I don't mind it!" said Ursula, indignantly.

"You needn't be angry with me for my unromantic climax to your eestasies," said Monsieur de Saldes. "No one knows better than I do the emotion of a return to Italy. The second time I went to Rome, it was at the end of October, I recollect. I threw open the window of the carriage as we drove from Cività Vecchia: a dense vapour covered all the country, and one could see nothing; but the whole land smelt of the aromatic herbs which the cattle were chewing, and that well-remembered Campagna odour of thyme borne in upon the damp air affected me unspeakably. I lay back in the carriage, and cried like a child: happy tears! why

cannot one shed such oftener!"

I felt quite touched. "Humbug!" said Ursula to me in a low voice. It was the first time that she jarred upon me.

"Well," said Madame Olympe. "No one enjoys a trip to Italy more than I do, but I don't think I could live there. I do get so furious with the dishonesty and unreliability of the people-they do cheat and lie so!" "You must remember," said Ursula, "that going to Italy as you do, and living the hotel life on the great beaten track, you see the very worst specimens of the people. They do not, perhaps, feel the great shame of lying as the English do; but I have known many perfectly dependable Italians, and I think that when they are so at all, they are generally more so than any other people. Quite the most truthful nature I ever met with