looked wonderingly at him, her eyes full of inquiry and bewilderment. It was marvellous acting, if it was acting; yet he thought she could scarcely have so soon forgotten their scene in the anteroom the previous night. They had now come into the salon; he left her side and walked to the mantel-piece, leaning his arm on it, and speaking coldly, as he had never done to her since they first met.

"Beatrice, do not attempt to act with me. You cannot have forgotten what we said in the anteroom last night. Nothing assumed ever deceives me, and you only lower yourself in my estimation."

She clinched her hands till the rings he had given her crushed together.

"Act! assume! Great Heaven, how dare you speak such words to me?"

"Dare? You speak like an angry child, Beatrice. When you are reasonable I will answer you."

The tears welled into her eyes, but she would not let them fall.

"Reasonable? Is there anything unreasonable in resenting words utterly undeserved? Would you be calm under them yourself, Lord Earlscourt? I remember now what you mean by yesterday; I did not remember when I asked you. Had I done so I should never have simulated ignorance and surprise. Only last night you promised to trust me. Is this your trust, to accuse me of artifice, of acting, of falsehood? I would bear no such imputation from any one, still less from you, who ought to know me so well. What happiness can we have if you—"

She stopped, the tears choking her voice, but he did not see them; he only saw her indignant attitude, her flushed cheeks, her flashing eyes, and put them down to her girlish passion.

"Calm yourself, Beatrice, I beg. This sort of scene is very distasteful to me; to figure in a lover's quarrel hardly suits me. I am not young enough to find amusement in disputation and reconciliation, sparring one moment and caresses the next. My life is one of grave pursuits and feverish ambitions; I am often harassed, annoyed, worn out in body and mind. What I hoped for from you was, to borrow the gayety and brightness of your own youth, to find rest, and happiness, and distraction. A life of disputes, reproaches, and misconstruction, would be what I never would endure."

Beatrice was silent; she leaned her forehead on her arms and did not answer him. His tone stung her pride, but his words touched her heart. Her passion was always short-lived, and no evil spirit possessed her long. She rebelled against the first part of his speech with all her might, but she softened to the last. She came up to him with her hands out.

"I had no right to speak so impatiently to you. God knows, to make your life happy will be my only thought, and care, and wish. If I spoke angrily, forgive me!"

Earlscourt knew that the nature so quick to acknowledge error was worth fifty unerring and unruffled ones; still he sighed as he answered her,—

"My dear child, I forgive you. But, Beatrice, there is no foe to love so sure and deadly as dissension!" And as he drew her to him and felt her soft warm lips on his, he thought, half uneasily yet, "She has never told me who annoyed her—never mentioned her companion in the anteroom last night."

Lady Clive had her wish; the thorn festered as promisingly as she could have desired. Ce n'est que le premier pas qui coûte in quarrels as in all else. Dispute once, you are very sure to dispute again, whether with the man you hate or the woman you love.

III.

HOW PRIDE SOWED AND REAPED.

It only wanted three weeks to Beatrice Boville's marriage. We were all to leave Lemongenseidlitz together in a fortnight's time for old Lady Mechlin's house in Berks, where the ceremony was to take place.

"Earlscourt is quite infatuated," said Lady Clive to me one evening. "Beatrice is very charming, of course, but she is not at all suited to him, she is so fiery, so impetuous, so self-reliant."

"I think you are mistaken," said I. I admired Beatrice Boville—comme je vous ai dit—and I didn't like our family's snaps and snarls at her. "She may be impetuous, but, as her impulses are always generous, that doesn't matter much. She is only fiery at injustice, and, for myself, I prefer a woman who can stand up for her own rights and her friends' to one who'll sit by in—you'll call it meekness, I suppose? I call it cowardice and hypocrisy—to hear herself or them abused."

"Thank you, mon ami," said Beatrice's voice at my elbow, as Lady Clive rose and crossed the room. "I am much obliged for your defence; I couldn't help hearing it as I stood in the balcony, and I wish very much I deserved it. I am afraid, though, I cannot dispute Helena's verdict of 'fiery,' 'impetuous,'—"

"And self-reliant?" I asked her. She laughed softly, and her eyes unconsciously sought Earlscourt, who was talking to Lady Mechlin.

"Well? Not quite, now! But, by the way, why should people charge self-reliance on to one as something reprehensible and undesirable? A proper self-reliance is an indispensable ground-work to any success. If you cannot rely upon yourself, upon your power to judge and to act, you must rely upon some other person, possibly upon many people, and you become, perforce, vacillating and unstable.

As she spoke a servant brought a note to her, and I noticed her cheeks grow pale as she saw the handwriting upon it. She broke it open, and read it hastily, an oddly troubled, worried look coming over her face, a look that Earlscourt could not help but notice as he stood beside her.

"Is there anything in that letter to annoy you, Beatrice?" he asked, very naturally.

She started—rather guiltily, I thought—and crushed the note in her hand.

"Whom is it from? It troubles you, I think. Tell me, my darling, is it anything that vexes or offends you?" he whispered, bending down to her.

She laughed, a little nervously for her, and tore the note into tiny pieces.

"Why do you not tell me, Beatrice?" he said again, with a shade of annoyance on his face.

"Because I would rather not," she said, frankly enough, letting the pieces float out of the window into the street below. The shadow grew darker in his face; he bent his head in acquiescence, and said no more, but I don't think he forgot either the note or her destroyal of it.

"I thought there was implicit confidence before marriage whatever there is after," sneered his sister, as she passed him. He answered her calmly:—

"I should say, Helena, that neither before nor after marriage would any man who respected his wife suffer curiosity or suspicion to enter into him. If he do, he has no right to expect happiness, and he will certainly not go the way to get it."

That was the only reply he gave Lady Clive, but her thorn No. 2 festered in him, and when he bade Beatrice good night, standing alone with her in the little drawing room, he took both her hands in his, and looked straight into her eyes.

"Beatrice, why would you not let me see that note this evening?"

She looked up at him as fearlessly and clearly.

"If I tell you why, I must tell you whom the note was from, and what it was about, and I would much rather do neither as yet."

"That is very strange. I dislike concealment of all kinds, especially from you, who so soon will be my wife. It is inconceivable to me why you should need or desire any. I thought your life was a fair open book, every line of which I might read if I desired."