fall.

Her overwrought nerves were jarred.

The claptrappy tune, the overdone emphasis, the vulgar intonation distressed her; she was ashamed of the feeling, but could not help it; she turned to walk away. The preacher paused in the middle of a line.

"You have put your hand to the plough; you will not turn back!" he cried pleadingly. The public appeal annoyed her for a second, but when she met his eyes, bright with an earnest desire to "save her soul," her anger died.

"I hope not," she said gently; and walked away with his fervent "God help you!" ringing in her ears.

CHAPTER III.

Dover was unusually gay in the year when Barnabas Thorpe held his revival meetings there. Mr. Deane gave a large ball at Ravenshill, all the county magnates attended, and the guests danced in the old picture gallery.

It was a remarkably pretty entertainment, and the host and his three daughters were worthy descendants of the ruffled and powdered Deanes who looked down on them from the walls.

They were a stately family. Mrs. Russelthorpe herself was a most dignified woman, and Kate and Margaret had inherited her grace of bearing.

Margaret in her gold and white dress, with pearls on her white neck, was a good deal admired, but her attention kept wandering from her partners to her father, who was talking and laughing merrily, but who coughed every now and then rather ominously. Consumption, that scourge of so many English families, was terribly familiar in this one.

Meg had been immensely excited about the ball before-hand, and had taken intense interest in all the preparations for it, including her own new dress; but, at the last, something had occurred to change the current of her thoughts, she might be arrayed in sackcloth now for all she cared.

"Margaret's character comes out even in small things," Mrs. Russelthorpe observed cuttingly. "She is unstable as water. One can never depend on her in the least. Where do you think I found her this afternoon? Just emerging from a vulgar crowd on Dover sands, where she had been staring at a singing minstrel or a play-actor or a buffoon of some kind! She came in with her head full of nothing else, and wanted to tease her father into going back with her to listen too."

"Ah! I heard that fellow on the beach; his buffoonery takes the form of preaching," said the lawyer to whom she had made the remark, and who was rather a favourite with Mrs. Russelthorpe. He glanced at Margaret, who was standing a little way off, but was quite unconscious of his observation.

"It is a curious question whether that sort of canter is most knave or fool," he said. "I incline to the former hypothesis; Deane, to the latter. Miss Deane sees him as a sort of inspired prophet, I suppose. A good deal depends on the colour of one's own glasses, you know. After all, hers are the prettiest!"

Mrs. Russelthorpe shrugged her shoulders with a short laugh as she turned away.

"I did not know you had such an innocent taste for bread and butter," she said.

Mr. Sauls looked after her with some amusement; it was not the first time that he had noticed that there was no love lost between Mr. Deane's favourite daughter and her aunt, and he had occasionally felt sorry for the girl, as evidently the weaker of the two.

"If it isn't possible to serve two masters, two mistresses must be a degree more hopeless," he remarked to himself. "I really don't know that I can do without Mrs. Russelthorpe yet—but I'll risk it!" And he walked across the room, and asked Miss Deane to dance.

Meg stared with uncomplimentary surprise; she had always considered that Mr. Sauls "flattered Aunt Russelthorpe," and had despised him accordingly with sweeping girlish severity. She would have refused to dance if she had had sufficient presence of mind, but he (who was never wanting in that quality) took her momentary hesitation for acceptance, and she found herself engaged to him, she hardly knew how.

She could not have discovered a partner more entirely unlike herself if she had ransacked England for her opposite; and her father laughed, but with a little sense of chagrin, when he saw Mr. Sauls offer her his arm.

The Saulses usually came to Dover for a few months in the year. The county people had turned their aristocratic backs on them, till Mr. Deane, in a moment of generous enthusiasm, had ridden full tilt against "pernicious prejudices," and had introduced young Sauls as his dear friend right and left.

This had occurred some time before. County exclusiveness was no longer the subject on which Mr. Deane was hottest, and, to tell the truth, George Sauls was no longer his dear friend; but the young man amused Mrs. Russelthorpe, and had kept his footing in the house.

Nature had not been kind to Mr. Sauls in the matter of looks, but had made it up in brains; he knew his own worth in that respect, and meant to get full market value for his capabilities. He had an assured belief in himself, of which time proved him justified.

When the plums of his profession began to fall to his share, people called him uncommonly lucky; but fortune only pretends to be blind, I fancy, and seldom favours fools.

"You are wishing me at Jericho," he remarked, as Meg unwillingly took his arm. "But your father's daughter ought to be liberal above all things—ought not she?"

Meg, whose generosity was easily wakened, coloured and then smiled, pleased at the implied compliment to Mr. Deane.

"I know that my father is always fair to every one," she said. "I did not mean to be rude to you, but he promised me this dance, and I am so disappointed that he has not come. Of course, it is nicer to dance with father than with anybody."

"Of course," assented Mr. Sauls. He would have disbelieved that statement if any other girl had ventured on it; but he was intelligent enough to appreciate Meg's truthfulness. Indeed, the very essence of George Sauls' cleverness lay in the capability of rightly estimating many diverse sorts of characters.

He persevered in his efforts to interest her, partly because he was in the habit of persevering in anything he undertook, partly because it had occurred to him that Miss Deane was an heiress, and partly because she really attracted him, perhaps by the law of contraries.

He was more than ten years Meg's senior in age, and twenty in experience; therefore he listened to her opinions with respect, and took care not to appear to patronise her. Meg was interested very easily.

Her shyness wore off, and she let him draw out wonderful theories imbibed from her father about Universal Brotherhood, and the Rights of the People, and the New School of Poetry, and heaven knows what besides.

Mr. Sauls led her on, and hid his occasional amusement fairly well.

Miss Deane was a "very transparent little girl," he thought; but yet she touched him.

He felt sorry for any one so crammed with illusions, so terribly sensitive, and so remarkably unpractical—besides, she was remarkably pretty too!

Meg thought him very ugly at first, and first impressions were vivid (though not always lasting) with her. Meg had no "indifference" in her; she always liked or disliked emphatically—and his was not the kind of face to take her fancy.

Mr. Sauls was a heavy-looking man, thick, and rather