you know; there's no system about it whatever: that's just where it lies. He has a way with him; I have no way with me; and all the Philosophy in the world won't give me one. Only, I hold that he makes one radical mistake in judging of my system of education: he won't let me thrash my own boys when he can help it, which I think is rather hard on any preceptor."

"Oh, it is!" said Lyndis, sympathetically; "but I dare say you are too fond of correction, or whence this dudgeon at being debarred from it?"

"Well—— But if there is such an anomaly as 'righteous indignation,' what a fervor of godliness must the sight of the average boy excite in the breast of the right-minded schoolmaster! And can indignation find a better vent than blows? Why, even the long-suffering Moses had to break something when he found his Hebrews dancing round a calf!"

"I would not adopt a profession which develops the indignation to so great an extent," said Lyndis, rather amused by her companion's impetuosity.

"Do not say that, Miss Villiers; whatever we have most at heart will disgust us sometimes. We have our ideal (or we ought to have), and the reality is coarse, indeed, in comparison, but it is better than nothing at all; and is it not in itself an ennobling thing to be constantly engaged in a tremendous struggle, whether the vantage be to you or no?"

Roscoria looked at Lyndis with a far-away intensity and a sad determination of expression, which made her think she had never seen so enthusiastic a young man.

"It is a glorious vocation, teaching," said Lyndis, gently.

"It seems so when you praise it."

Lyndis here grew a little absent-minded. She could follow him when he talked of his boys, but when he began on this new vein of sentiment she knew she must begin to dictate to him what he should say next. So she observed that the weather was fine, a fact that Roscoria had noticed before.

"It is the finest day I ever saw in my life, as well as the happiest," he replied loudly, and with fervor.

Beautiful Lyndis! she looked up with those starry eyes of hers and—begged his pardon! So the poor young man was obliged to pretend he had said something else. And there they were at the Tremenheeres' gate already, and Lyndis, with a somewhat more distant smile, took her racket, passed through the tiresome gate, and was lost amongst the laurels, whilst Roscoria hesitated. He did not attempt to follow her, but, after speaking a few words to his host and hostess, went in search of Tregurtha.

Now Tregurtha, though he had started a quarter of an hour after his friend, and taken the longer route by the circumambient road, instead of going across country, had—for some reason inexplicable except to very young people—arrived long before Roscoria, and was disposed to be foolishly jocose upon the subject. Louis checked this tendency in his friend, though with some difficulty; and Tregurtha grew somber as he recounted the boredom of his experiences over a set of tennis, wherein his antagonists had dawdled about without any manner of spirit, whilst, as he himself was the best player on the ground, his partner naturally was the worst. Observing that Roscoria grew lax in his attention to these plaints, Tregurtha went and hovered aimlessly around a tea-table. He was speedily dislodged from this refuge by the hostess herself, who stormed up to him with a rustle of silk akin in sound to the spray of a mighty cataract, and an all-conquering inflation of demeanor peculiar to the grandees of Devonshire and Cornwall, and, seizing him by the arm, bore down upon the other end of the long salon with him in tow.

Tregurtha was a Cornishman himself, so he was equal to the occasion—drew up his height and adopted an attitude of breezy and elegant ease as he listened to Mrs. Tremenheere lisping something about a "Miss ——" (he could not catch the name), "introduce—very clever—not my style—pretty though——" etc., until she stormed off again, leaving Tregurtha anchored opposite a small but rather stately foreign-looking damsel, of pleasing exterior, with a pair of great soft blue-black eyes, which were gazing up at him with an expression of absolute fright. The occasion did not seem to warrant this nervousness, and Tregurtha was just thinking to himself, "What a shame to bring her out just yet! she looks so young and shy," when the maiden before him turned hastily round and slipped out by the French window on to the lawn, laughing consumedly. That laugh! he knew it. Dick pursued in hot curiosity and identified her. This was she—the heroine of the stockingless episode—this was Thetis—this was Arletta of Falaise.

"I think we have met before," quoth he, not without relish of the joke. But the lady of the hyacinthine eyes was too deeply conscious of that fact to enunciate a syllable. So there they two stood together on that almost deserted lawn (let us not be compelled to explain that every one else was drinking claret-cup!), under the heat of that summer sun, for several silent moments; and the man was losing his heart.

There was magic in the air that afternoon, for out came Roscoria presently (looking very much en l'air), and with him a tall, fair-haired woman, who only wanted wings. Tregurtha forgot himself in an instant, and, laying his hand on Louis' shoulder, led him up to Thetis, impressively and proudly observing:

"Miss ——, allow me to introduce my friend" (with emphasis) "Louis Roscoria!"

"Keeper of the Wild Beasts' Asylum, Torres Hall," murmured the said Roscoria, irreverently. "I have been deputed to arrange another set; shall we four play?"

Tregurtha gave vent to a muffled cheer, and the quartet marched (with some unseemly haste, lest other men should take their bishoprics) to the best ground, and there began. Tregurtha and Roscoria were noted players; together they were, in Devonshire at least, invincible. In a single, Tregurtha had the best of it.

The set was exciting. At first the two sides won game for game. Lyndis, as a tennis-player, was grace personified. She looked so lovely and moved so lightly that it seemed a marvel why hers was not always the winning side. Roscoria, too, exerted every muscle, and writhing about with the cleverness of a lively cobra, ought to have done wonders, but he tried too hard, and lost. Tregurtha, with less grace, had a longer reach and a greater power of hard hitting, so he turned to his partner about the fourth game, saying, "We will win this set, I think," and proceeded to do so. His partner was a capital player, shirked no balls, and had a prompt little way with a back-hander, which looked spirited and was useful. It was she who won the set (said Tregurtha), for it was she who returned Roscoria's last serve, with the twist on, by a malicious little slant just over the net, where the ball fell almost a yard before the feet of the goddess Lyndis, who beamed with gracious impotence upon it.

The baffled pair, Roscoria and Miss Villiers, strolled to an arbor, and there sat talking. It might have been ten minutes that they sat there—as Roscoria thought it was—or it might have been an hour and ten minutes to boot. Anyhow, it was heaven. There sat Lyndis Villiers in a low wicker chair, all embowered in fragrant honeysuckle, and looking herself like pink eglantine with her gold hair and soft rose cheeks. The admiring sunlight played on her dress, all snowy white, save where a pretty caprice had moved her to place a bunch of glittering buttercups. There she rested, one hand round a branch of honeysuckle, her eyes still, kind, and peaceful; her voice sweet and calm, speaking her very thoughts, and those such wise and pure ones! There was Lyndis, the Ideal realized, and there opposite sat Roscoria, clasping his knee in his hands in deep preoccupation, not himself at all, nor conscious of himself, but "a