Breaking a silence which had remained undisturbed some minutes, Lady Lodore, glancing at her two younger daughters, observed plaintively:

"I do wish, girls, you would lay aside that horrible knitting." Hyacinth and Daphne, who were both occupied with a crimson knickerbocker stocking, looked up and smiled.

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"What will the duke say if he sees you thus occupied ? have no brothers, and the very colour of your wool betrays you are not employed for the poor," added the mother querulously.

"We cannot afford to lose old friends before we have made new ones, mamma," replied Hyacinth gaily. "These stockings are for Major Banger and Captain Smithers, who have so often given

us a mount."

"Major Banger! Captain Smithers!" repeated Lady Lodore contemptuously. "Oh! what incorrigible flirts you are."

"So we acknowledge ourselves to be, mamma," said Hyacinth good-humouredly. "But good, honest, open flirts, who, when married, intend to entirely close the pleasant volume of flirtation, which will at first be sadly dull, I fear."

Here Hyacinth started, raising her hand to enjoin silence, while the sound of carriage wheels called all the ladies to attention, and Lady Lodore deftly seizing a stocking right and left from her refractory daughters' fingers, flung them beneath the sofa, saying angrily:

"I will be obeyed for once. Here is the duke!"

At the same moment the door flew violently open, and Kate rushed in, her pretty face crimson with excitement, her hair in wildest disorder, and her dress and hands soiled with earth, while in breathless words she exclaimed:

"Tiger is found! But oh! he is in a rabbit hole. Please send some one at once to dig him out, for I can't manage it."

Lady Lodore remained speechless from anger. But Iris, rising from the dignified pose she had assumed in expectancy of the duke's arrival, took poor little Kate by the shoulders and pushed her towards the door, saying authoritatively:

"For goodness sake, Kate, go and make yourself fit to be seen. Here is the duke."

Kate shook herself free from her cousin's grasp, replying irreverently:

"Bother the duke! Besides, it's not him; only his valet and things. And I won't go, but stay and disgrace you all, unless you promise at once to send some one to Tiger's help. What do I care for a hundred million dukes in comparison to the dog darling mamma gave me?" sobbed Kate passionately.

But her tears were quickly arrested at the sound of a feeble little bark in the passage, and in another moment the Duke of Melton and Major Selmar were announced (for it was decided the duke

should retain his original name, as he and Oliver were distantly related, and could term themselves cousins).

As they entered, with one bound Tiger sprang from his rescuer's arms into those of the enchanted Kate, who, unmindful of all present, covered him with kisses, while Lady Lodore and her daughters came forward and greeted their guests with the easy grace of well-bred women of the world.

"By Jove! they are divinities, and I am lost," mentally ejaculated Oliver, while aloud he gallantly observed, "I was told your daughters numbered the Graces, Lady Lodore, whom they so fitly represent, but I perceive that you have also a Hebe in your household."

He glanced at untidy Kate, who now that she held Tiger in her arms was beginning to feel rather crestfallen at her own appearance, but yet did not like to leave the room, wishing

to see the fun.

"My niece, Miss Morden, duke; hardly out of the schoolroom," said Lady Lodore, hoping this might serve as an excuse for Kate's disorderly appearance.

"Then it was not one of the Misses Parkhursts' dog which you so gallantly rescued," said Oliver, addressing his friend, with as near an approach to a wink as he dared indulge in.

"Oh! I am so much obliged to you; more than words can express, Major Selmar," said Kate, coming out of her corner and offering with a deep blush her little earth-stained hand, which the duke took with a smile. He had experienced some disappointment on finding it was to this pretty child, and not to one of the stately beauties that he had done good service. But he felt fully rewarded as he looked into the depths of the liquid brown eyes raised so gratefully to his; and discovering that Kate had but lately returned from India, they soon had many topics in common, and being left quite in the cold by the other ladies, who were completely occupied with Oliver, the duke and Kate quickly became on friendly terms. She, with the sweet ingenuousness of extreme youth, confiding to him how she had lately left home and parents because the climate of India was injuring her health, and how, to comfort her at parting, darling mother had given her Tiger.

"And we love each other, don't we, Tiger, and talk together of mamma?" said the girl, stooping to kiss the dog on its head. When she looked up again her eyes were full of tears, and, much touched, the duke observed gently:

"Dogs are sometimes truer friends than human beings, Miss Morden."

Here Iris, reproaching herself for neglect of the duke's friend, inquired if he would not have some tea, and Kate slipping out of the room, he approached the table, where Oliver, intoxicated by an English freshness of beauty to which his eye had long been

unaccustomed, was conversing with guilty brilliancy, every resoluticn of not flirting melting away beneath the sunny glances of the fair sisters. Beautiful as they were, all three, he had quickly decided that Hyacinth was the most brilliant of this bright constellation.

In the meanwhile Lady Lodore was sitting on what is metaphorically termed thorns. For, hating to bide with idle fingers, and maintaining she could even talk better when occupied, Hyacinth, regardless of her mother's convulsive becks and frowns, had extracted her work from beneath the dark depths of the sofa, and was again busily knitting.

"You can have no conception how refreshing it is to see you occupied in such homely work. In India, our ladies are SO enervated by the heat, they can do nothing but read novels," said Oliver in his softest voice, watching with admiration the clinking pins moving so rapidly in Hyacinth's slender white fingers. "What fortunate brothers are yours to have such kindly workers in their sisters," he whispered insinuatingly.

"We have no brothers, duke," replied Hyacinth demurely, glancing at her mother.

"Ah! you are even better employed? For charitable purposes, of course."

"Well, yes and no, for Captain Smithers, for whom my work is destined, is, I fear, not overburdened with this world's goods," replied Hyacinth with arch boldness.

"Happy Smithers!" whispered Oliver, inwardly wondering "who the deuce Smithers was," deciding he must be one of the innumerable adorers he had heard discussed in conjunction with the Misses Parkhurst.

But the thorns here becoming unbearable to Lady Lodore, she groaned audibly, causing Oliver to look round in astonishment, while the duke gave a loud admonitory cough, recalling his recalcitrant friend to order, and a few minutes later the whole party retired to prepare for dinner.

"Hyacinth, you will break my heart," almost sobbed Lady Lodore, as together they mounted the stairs.

"I should be sorry to do that, dear mamma," replied the girl coaxingly. "But depend upon it, I know my own business best; and I will never sail under false colours."

So saying, she kissed her mother and ran up to her room laughing. She thought the duke the handsomest man she had ever seen in her life, and the most fascinating.

(To be continued.)

DISDAINFUL DI.

BY EVELINE MICHELL FARWELL.

CHAPTER I.

"NOW, Frank, get a good start, and let

them see that a Douglas can still show 'em the way. Get the far side of the covert, he's pretty safe to break there, and it's nice open country, nothing to stop you. Give the mare her head, and she'll never put you down."

Certainly, the big grey, with her sloping shoulders, grand quarters, and clean flat legs, looked good enough for most things

but what about the man? Frank Douglas sat his horse well enough, still there was an indescribable something which made one less sure of him than of Moonstone, but then horses are far easier to judge than men.

He was good enough to look at in his way, tall, well-built, with eyes which should redeem the plainest face, in the opinion of most women, and Frank's was anything but plain. His uncle was of a very different stamp, small, wiry, with quick keen eyes. Sitting in his saddle as though he grew there, General Douglas looked a sportsman all over, and although a slight attack of paralysis resulting from a sun-stroke in India, had robbed-shire of its best man to hounds, he still turned up at most meets, and saw more sport than many who were by way of going. He was a hardened old bachelor, and had just come home to settle at Douglas Court, intending to make Frank, who had been left an orphan at ten years old, his heir. He had seen little of him except during some summer holidays, when he had been home on leave, and had asked Frank to keep house with him at the Court. As a guardian he had been both generous and lenient, caring but little what work was done, either at Eton or Oxford. "I don't want the lad to be a scholar," he used to say; "as long as he's a gentleman and a horseman, I'm satisfied."

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As to horses, Frank had pretty nearly carte blanche; but his uncle didn't think a great deal of his stud when it arrived at the Court, and had insisted on Frank making his first appearance in -shire on old Moonstone, as fine a hunter as ever crossed a country. Look at her now, quivering with excitement as she listens for the music she knows and loves so well. She has not long to wait, for scarcely have hounds entered covert than there comes a whimper, swelling quickly into chorus, and they

crash out of the gorse well in the wake of as good a fox as ever saved his brush.

At the first sound, General Douglas had made for a lane running at right angles from the covert; galloping up this, followed by many of the field, he drew rein at the top, and saw the pack streaming along the valley below, while a field in front of them, a dark brown streak slipped through the fence. Several men and two ladies were well up, some in the same field with hounds, others a little to the left, but where was Frank? The general's eyes were good enough, and there was no mistaking Moonstone at any distance, but where the devil was she? Not in the first flight, nor yet in the second. Good heavens! that can't be Moonstone.

To the right of hounds a crowd of people jostling through a gate, and there, last of the jostlers, chafing and fretting her heart out, is a big grey. Not Moonstone? Yes! there-not sailing along, showing the way as a Douglas should, not even riding jealous with the few who mean going, but crushing with a hundred people through gates and gaps, the hundred and first is Frank Douglas. If the general swore a mighty oath, is it to be wondered at? Turning old Conundrum's head, he rode slowly homewards; perhaps it was well for Frank that he did so. The Douglas's were a hot-tempered race; but it was soon over, and by the time Moonstone's hoofs rang out a challenge in the courtyard, the general had himself made Frank's excuses. It was the lad's first day in a strange country. He might have got a bad start after all, and some officious beast might have led him wrong with shouts of bogs, or bosh of some sort. The lad must ride. There had never been a Douglas yet who couldn't lick the field, no matter where.

So day after day the old general sent Frank out, and day after day Frank showed himself more and more deft at opening gates for ladies, squiring them through gaps, and generally philandering," as his uncle testily put it. The general had in his day been quite "the flower of maidenly pets," but he had never been so far gone as to put any woman, however beautiful, before a fox!

"No girl worth her salt would wish it," he used to say. "A woman who knows anything knows that if a man's not a sportsman, he's not much of a man, anyway."

Another grievance was that Frank didn't know when a woman was worth her salt, and when she wasn't, at least, to his uncle's thinking. There was a certain doctor's daughter, to whose bridle rein he stuck with a persistence which, otherwise applied, would have placed him well up with hounds. Katie White was pretty enough of her kind, but the general only went in for thoroughbreds. It would have been sufficiently bad to see a Douglas road-riding with any one, but with Katie White! Bah! it was

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