"I'm glad to hear you say so."

"You really puzzle me; I cannot see the drift of all this?"

"I'm afraid it's a snow drift, and one that will never melt."

"My dear Thea, do speak intelligibly, for I positively don't understand you.'

"Then, in plain English, mother, I wish you would marry Master Hartsfoot; I think it's the least you could do, and that you ought to do it."

Mrs. Neville did not laugh; but she opened her eyes very wide at her daughter, as she said slowly

"My dear, I cannot marry a man who does not ask me."

"Oh! it depends upon that, does it?"

"I suppose it generally does depend upon that."

"Not always, vide Sir Angus Tullibardin. Humph! why cannot offers of marriage, once made, be like leases, renewable? You know he did ask you once."

"Sir Angus seemed quite of your opinion, that proposals of this nature were renewable, or he would not have renewed his so often," smiled Mrs. Neville.

"Yes, the demmed vairlet!" said Dorothy, imitating him, till she actually looked like him, and her mother was obliged to laugh, in spite of

herself. "As he was so anxious to be at my wedding, I think it would be only a pretty attention to ask him to it; so I'll go and consider about it," added she, leaving the room, and going to her own, where, without ringing for Phoebe, she managed to get out her whisk and gloves, and to equip herself for a walk-not, I suppose, despite all the strange liberty that unmarried women have always had in England, with the intention of calling upon Sir Angus Tullibardin.

CHAPTER XIII.

'Miserum istuc verbum et pessimum est,

Habuisse et nihil habere."

PLAUTUS.

HE sun, for the time of the year, was a bright one; the buds were beginning to pout on the leafless branches, and the birds, as they flitted from tree to tree, chirruped so loudly, and seemed as busy as if they were trying to get all their building done before summer came, that then they might have nothing to do but enjoy themselves. So that all above was bright enough, but the earth was still strewed with withered leaves, as the winter wind had blown them there. True types, both of them; who wants brightness must always look above, for Earth ever has, is, and ever will be, cumbered with tokens of neglect, death, and decay.

Master Hartsfoot was sitting at the glass door window of his dining-room that looked out upon the Mall. Although he had a book in his hand, he was not reading; no, he was watching the withered leaves, some blown hither, some thither,

and others whirled up into the air, where, after a few rapid gyrations, as if struggling desperately against the aërial aggression, fell flat on the ground, and were trampled on by the next passer. Hartsfoot watched these contests as if they had been human ones, and then occasionally he'd turn from the window, and give a long, purposeless look round the room; it was astonishing what a strangeness of desolation had fallen upon his home of late. All seemed so cold, so still, so lifeless-such a mere husk, without an animating spirit. Was he sorry that Dorothy's happiness had returned so fully and unexpectedly, and that consequently his part in the drama of her life was over? Oh! no; he rejoiced with all his heart, with all his soul. would always be welcome at her house; but still,

she no longer wanted him.

no use to her; he could no

He knew he

He could be now of longer mingle in the current of her and her mother's life. Once more he must shun the house on the Mall, for he could have no possible pretext for going near it, much less of haunting it.

Yet it was hard; he had been uprooted, as it were, from a sort of isolated rock, where he had, at least, calmly vegetated, to be transplanted amongst the most lovely and luxuriant exotics, which had caressingly twined around his rugged solitary life, and now that he had grown to feel

the necessity of their warmth and their perfume, he must go back to his rock and again take root, or perish, as fate might decide. And tears came into his eyes, if they did not come out of them.

Then he wandered back far away into the not shadowy, but adamantine past; and he lingered separately over all the torture epochs-the day Margaret had refused him-the day he heard of her marriage with Algernon Neville. Well, he had lived through that! and why should he not again continue to "linger piecemale on the rock ?" Then came the remembered gradual diminishing of that great agony! and he recollected the sort of soothing sensation of coolness to his fevered, tortured heart, when he heard that the marriage was not a happy one. Was he revengeful?—did he really wish the woman he had so madly loved to be miserable? No; still, his misery would have been too great if any other man had made her completely happy. Then, he lowered the curtain over that part of his life, and stagnated till the day-long years after-when she was a widow, and he heard that she had come to live on the Mall, whereupon he had tried hard to get rid of the lease of his house, but not being able to do so, had made up his mind to stay and bear it, as he should never see her!-never see her! And the day she had taken him by storm,