carriage because "she said she would not come in." Still, having expected nothing, the young step-mother was not disappointed. And when the three left, Oliver having held up his rosy mouth voluntarily for "a good large kiss," the sweetness of the caress lingered on her mouth like a chrism of consecration, sanctifying her for these new duties which seemed to have been sent to her without her choice, almost without her volition; for she often felt, when she paused to thing at all, as if in the successive links of circumstances which had brought about her marriage, she had been a passive agent, led on step by step, like a person half asleep. Would she ever awake?

When Mrs. Ferguson, re-entering, ready with any amount of sympathy, found the young step-mother kissing her hand to the retreating carriage with a composed smile, which asked no condolence, and offered no confidences, the good lady was, to say the least, surprised. "But," as she afterward confessed to at least two dozen of her most intimate friends, "there always was something so odd, so different from most young ladies about Miss. Oakley." However, to the young lady herself she said nothing, except suggesting, rather meekly, that it was time to change her dress.

"And just once more let me beg you to take my shawl—my very best— instead of your own, which you have had a year and a half. Ah!" sighing, "if you had only spent more money on your wedding clothes!"

"How could I?" said Christian, and stopped, seeing Dr. Grey enter. This was the one point on which she had resisted him. She could not accept her trousseau from her husband's generosity. It had been the last struggle of that fierce, poverty-nurtured independence, which nothing short of perfect love could have extinguished into happy humility, and she had held to her point resolute and hard; so much so, that when, with a quiet dignity peculiarly his own, Dr. Grey had yielded, she had afterward almost felt ashamed. And even now a slight blush came in her cheek when she heard him say cheerfully,

"Do not trouble her, Mrs. Ferguson, about her shawl. You know I have taken her—that is, we have taken one another 'for better, for worse,' and it is little matter what sort of clothes she wears."

Christian, as she passed him, gave her husband a grateful look.
Grateful, alas! Love does not understand, or even recognize, gratitude.

But when the door closed after her, Dr. Grey's eyes rested on it like those of one who misses a light.

He sat down covering his mouth—his firmly-set but excessively sensitive month with his hand, an attitude which was one of his peculiarities; for he had many, which the world excused because of his learning, and his friends—well, because of himself.

If ever there was a man who without the slightest obtrusiveness, or self- assertion of any kind, had unlimited influence over those about him, it was Arnold Grey. Throughout a life spent entirely within the college walls, he had, from freshman to fellow, from thence to tutor, and so on to the early dignity of mastership, the most extraordinary faculty of making people do whatsoever he liked—-ay, and enjoy the doing of it. Friends, acquaintances, undergraduates, even down to children and servants, all did, more or less, sooner or later, the good pleasure of Dr. Grey. Perhaps the secret of this was that his "pleasure" was never merely his own. None wield such absolute power over others as those who think little about themselves.

Had circumstance, or his own inclination, led him out farther into the world, he might have been noticeable there, for he had very great and varied acquirements—-more acquirements perhaps, than originalities. He had never written a book, but he had read almost every book that ever was written—or, at least, such was the belief current in Avonsbridge. In his study he was literally entombed in books—- volumes in all languages—and Avonsbridge supposed him able to read them all. How far this was a popular superstition, and to what length his learning went, it is impossible to say. But nobody ever came quite to the end of it. He was a silent, modest man, who never spoke much of what he knew, or of himself in any wise. His strongest outward characteristic was quietness, both of manner, speech, motions, springing, it appeared, out of a corresponding quietness of soul. Whether it had been born with him, or through what storms of human passion and suffering he had attained to this permanent central calm, who could say? Certainly nobody knew or was likely to know; for the Master of Saint Bede's was a person, the depth of whose nature could not be fathomed easily with any line. Possibly because, old as he was, it happened, as does happen in some lives, that the right plumb-line, by the right hand, had never been dropped yet.

As he sat, his grave eyes fixed on the ground, and his mouth covered by the long thin brown hand—the sort of hand you see in mediaeval portraits of student-gentlemen—nothing of him was discernible except the gentleman and the student. Not though he sat waiting for his "two- hours' wife," whom undoubtedly he had married for love—pure love— the only reason for which anyone, man or woman, old or young, ought to dare to marry. That he could feel as very few have the power to feel, no one who was any judge of physiognomy could doubt for a moment; yet he sat perfectly quiet—the quietness of a man accustomed to something safer and higher than self-suppression—self-control. When Mr. Ferguson came in, he rose and began to speak about the weather and local topics as men do speak to one another—and better that they should!—even at such crises as weddings or funerals.

And Christian his wife?

She had run up stairs—ran almost with her former light step, for her heart felt lightened with the childish smile of little Oliver—to the attic which for the last nine months she had occupied—the nursery, now made into a bedroom, and tenanted by herself and the two little Fergusons. No special sanctity of appropriation had it; a large, somewhat bare room, in which not a thing was her own, either to miss or leave behind. For, in truth, she had nothing of her own; the small personalities which she had contrived to drag about with her from lodging to lodging having all gone to pay debts, which she had insisted —and Dr. Grey agreed—ought to be paid before she was married. So he had taken from her the desk, the work-table, and the other valueless yet well-prized feminine trifles, and brought her, as their equivalent, a sum large enough to pay both these debts and all her marriage expenses, which sum she, ignorant and unsuspicious, took gratefully, merely saying "he was very kind."

She now looked round on her sole worldly possessions—the large trunk which contained her ordinary apparel, and the smaller one, in which were packed all she needed for her fortnight's marriage tour. Her traveling dress lay on the bed—a plain dark silk—her only silk gown except the marriage one. She let Mrs. Ferguson array her in it, and then, with her usual mechanical orderliness, began folding up the shining white draperies and laying them in the larger trunk.

"Shall I send that direct to the Lodge, my dear?"

Christian looked up absently.

"To Saint Bede's Lodge—you know—that it may be ready for you when you come home?"

Home—that blessed word which should send a thrill to the heart of any bride. Alas! this bride heard it quite unheeding, saying only, "Do what you think best, Mrs. Ferguson."

And then she proceeded to fasten her collar and complete the minutiae of her dress with that careful neatness which was an instinct with Christian, as it is with all womanly women, though how this poor motherless girl had ever