you know," he asked, starting from a reverie, "why Lord Randolph desires my company so especially at Uplands?"

"Cannot say," answered Vellumy, smiling, "unless it be to call your palette into requisition, to pourtway the beauties of his ladye-love."

"Lady Dora Vaughan?" asked the other in surprise. "I thought she had quitted Up—. Indeed, I know she has," he added hastily; "I saw her to-day."

"Not Lady Dowa," answered Vellumy, with a knowing smile. "Some one else he is vewy much in love with, a——" Up to the present moment he had been talking at random, just to divert Tremenhere's ideas from any thing singular in the summons the other had received. Some thread from the Parque's weaving surely, tangled round his shallow mind at this juncture, and drew him on, without thinking on his part, to add, by way of "fun:" "I don't know that I ought to tell you"—this was said confidentially—"but Gway is deucedly in love with some married woman, qwite a beauty, I hear."

"Indeed!" was the thoughtful, half painful reply, yet he could not tell where this information galled him.

"Oh yes!" continued the confidential Vellumy; "it is a recent affair—Gway is tewibly in love," he glanced smilingly at the thoughtful Tremenhere.

"Do you know her?" asked he.

"No, he's newer let me see her; it is quite a romantic affair, of wecent date."

"Married, you say?" inquired Tremenhere, trembling he scarcely knew why. "Then of course the passion is a hopeless one?"

"What an innocent you would make me think you!" laughed Vellumy. "Her husband, I hear, is a jealous cuwmudgeon; she's afwaid of her life of him, but, fwom all I hear, I should certainly say she loved Gway, and not a little."

A cold chill passed through the other's frame, then suddenly recalling his cruel suspicions of Minnie, which had been so completely obliterated from his mind, he shook off the incubus hanging round his heart, and said mentally, "I am again playing the madman! There are thousands of married women with whom Lord Randolph is acquainted." And, resolved to banish these thoughts, he started a totally different subject, and conversing indifferently they arrived at the end of their journey. They found their host absent, however; he and some friends were out shooting, so a servant said, but would of course return for dinner. Tremenhere took possession of the room awarded him, and afterwards he and Vellumy amused themselves with billiards for an hour or two. Lord Randolph was one of the most oblivious personages in the world; he totally forgot, in the turmoil of other thoughts, that Marmaduke Burton had on a previous occasion declined meeting Tremenhere; great, then, was the unpleasing surprise of both, when Lord Randolph entered in shooting trim, accompanied by the latter. Tremenhere's brow flushed with pride as Lord Randolph said, slightly presenting them, "I suppose you two have met before?"

Burton looked pale and uncomfortable; Tremenhere said boldly, "We have met often."

Their host looked up at the tone, and, bursting into a reckless, good-tempered laugh, said, turning round on one heel, "Egad, now I recollect! Burton, you fought shy of Tremenhere last time he was here, and shirked a meeting. Come, I'll be sworn you've quarrelled about some woman; you must oblige me, and make it up: this I intend to be a day of peace-making;" and he gave a peculiar look at Vellumy, who responded to it in an equally significant manner. All this by-play was unnoticed by Miles, who, in answer to Lord Randolph, said, "Your lordship is quite right; that gentleman and I have quarrelled about a woman, yet not quite as you suppose, possibly."

"'Pon my life," answered their host more seriously, "I'm a thoughtless, forgetful fellow, or I ought to have called to mind, Burton, that when you and Tremenhere were down here together the other day, you quitted to avoid him. This should convince you, Tremenhere, that Burton bears no animosity towards you; come, oblige me: be friends, forget old grievances."

"Animosity! and forgetfulness!" cried Tremenhere. Then, lowering his tone, he added coldly, "Lord Randolph, there are persons with whom estrangement is more consonant to our feelings than friendship; but his presence—I mean the presence of my worthy cousin——"

"Cousin!" exclaimed their host and Vellumy in a breath.

"I disclaim it!" cried Burton, trying to appear calm; "that is, except indirectly—left-handed."

"Man!" said Tremenhere, energetically making an involuntary step towards him. The other two made a movement to prevent any collision; but Tremenhere stopped as Burton shrunk back. "I am a fool," he said, "to forget my noble part—patience. Pardon me, Lord Randolph; whilst I am in your house as guest, I will no more so offend—I will conduct myself as if such a person as that man had never existed. When I proclaim our relationship again, he shall tremble more than he does even now—look at him!" And, turning contemptuously away, he quietly interrupted an awkward apology which their host was commencing, by—"Has your lordship had good sport to-day? We artists lose these more wholesome pleasures, amidst our palettes and pencils."

Lord Randolph was well pleased at the turn affairs had taken: he had not brains enough to carry out two things at once. All his ideas were now fixed upon one great achievement, foreign to this. Burton seemed so awkwardly ill at ease, that Tremenhere could almost have found it in his heart to pity him. After the first feeling of annoyance occasioned by his presence, he felt gratified, as he would be a witness of the public justice he purposed doing Minnie; and, in this mood, he quickly recovered his equanimity of temper; and, when he took his place at the dinner-table, Lord Randolph was fain to admit, even with the then prejudice against him, that certainly honest uprightness sat upon his brow, and lightness of conscience in his easy gaiety; whereas Burton looked pale, discontented, and gloomy. Tremenhere took not the slightest notice of him; there was no sneer, no avoidance, but a quiet obliviousness of his existence, especially annoying. Their host was in high spirits, and, with the well-bred ease of a perfect gentleman, put all his guests, as far as he could, on that pleasant footing. Several peculiar looks passed between Vellumy and himself, more especially after the former's return to table, whence he had been summoned by Lord Randolph's valet.

"Vellumy," he cried, laughing, "you look as if you had seen a ghost; 'pon my life you're pale."

"Am I?" responded the other in the same tone; "I have, howewer, seen no ghost, but a spiwit of gwace and beauty."

"Where?" asked the others, in a breath.

"Ask Randolph," said Vellumy; "I newer tell tales out of school."

"Pshaw!" answered the host, giving a half-frowning look at his friend, "there's not a living woman here, that I ever see, now the women folk and their maids have departed."

"Talking of that," said Burton, "when do you become one apart from us—a respectable married man?"

"Probably never," was the decided reply. "Lady Dora frowns upon my suit; and——"

"You have little pressed it of late," hazarded some one.

"I never saw two less like lovers than you were, down here the other day."

"By George, no!" cried Burton; "you were always running up to town—there must be some magnet there, I fear. Lady Dora should look to it."

Vellumy laughed aloud.

"Oh, Vel is in the secret!" exclaimed the first speaker. "Tell us, is she dark or fair?—fair for a guinea! for this morning at breakfast he was raving about golden hair, and cheeks blushing like the inside of a sea-shell, which the amorous sea bathes in tears."

"Poetically described," said Lord Randolph, colouring slightly; and almost inadvertently his eye rested on Tremenhere, who was pale and silent. "I shall, probably, never