daughter-"a capital arrangement, especially as you go to Southwold on Saturday, don't you, Jack?"

"Do you give your lecture that evening?" his father asked, suddenly, and coming down from the clouds.

Philip Sutton didn't dare to look up for fear of laughing when Jack Stamford answered in the affirmative, but he thought a great deal.

"What do you lecture upon?" asked his host again.

"The c-c-cure of stammering, sir!" replied his son, with an amused twinkle of the eye, as he glanced askance at Philip.

"Eh?" said Mr. Stamford, who didn't in the least understand a joke. "Turnips, and the agricultural interest, I mean, sir," Jack resumed, gravely. "I have been getting up that last pamphlet of Mr. Ho-o-oAnd here the unfortunate speaker was indefinitely detained, the word proving a very stiff fence indeed; so, without taking any notice, his mother went on.

"I have got an invitation for you, Mr. Sutton, for this ball at my cousin Lady Delamayne's, on Thursday night. Charming people the Delamaynes; and she," continued Mrs. Stamford, benignantly, "was a first cousin of my mother's. My mother, you know, was one of the

"Hoggs!" gasped Jack Stamford, at last, "first-rate farmer."

"My dear!" exclaimed Mrs. Stamford, rather startled, though she was well accustomed to such interruptions "one of the St. Aubyns, Mr. Sutton; distant connexions of yours, I believe?"

"Ah!" said Philip, vaguely, for his knowledge of his cousinship was very vague. And then Mrs. Stamford told her daughter to sing, and Helen, without a moment's hesitation, sat down at the piano and sang in a rich contralto a wild Irish lament, full of such despairing pathos that Philip was startled, and a general silence ensued through the room.

"Rather lugubrious, dear child," said her mother; "Mr. Sutton looks quite solemn after it! Emily, sing us one of your lively little German songs?"

"I think I'm rather frightened," suggested Miss Hope, as she went to the piano, "but I'll try."

And as she sat down, it occurred to Philip that Miss Hope was extremely pretty. Though a year older than Helen (who was just twenty), she looked a great deal younger, and the joyous expression of her face at times-the sort of expression you see in a careless, happy child-accounted for this. We always-ourself-wish to know what the heroines of a story are like; therefore, taking it for granted that you, reader, do the same, we beg to inform you that Miss Hope had a very prettily-shaped oval face, large dark-blue eyes, sunny-looking brown hair, and a sufficiently small but firmly cut mouth, that denoted a great deal more determination of character than at the first glance you would have given her credit for. Her nose?-oh! we beg your pardon for having omitted a description of that important feature-it was a very good nose, but as we have not studied nasology we cannot tell you to what particular order it belonged. And it also occurred to Philip Sutton, as Miss Hope put her hands down on the piano, that they were the very prettiest little hands imaginable. She sang two or three songs in a very nice voice-not a voice like Helen's though-and with some originality of expression, and

VOL. XLIII.

R

then Jack Stamford went up and talked to her, while Philip, in speaking to his hostess, asked casually if Miss Hope was one of their neighbours. "No," said Mrs. Stamford, "she is only staying with us. She generally lives in Cornwall, but Helen is very fond of her, and often has her here. She is a very nice little thing," added Mrs. Stamford, carelessly, "but has the misfortune, poor child, besides being an orphan, to be

But here Mrs. Stamford was interrupted by a sudden pause in the room, and Philip finished the sentence for himself with the word "dependent." It was evident from his hostess's manner. And the idea was confirmed when, after the ladies had gone to bed, and Jack and he were smoking at the front door, and the former had been stammering a panegyric on her, he added,

"But she's desperately p-p-poor, you know, and my father and mother are frightened to death for fear I should f-f-fall in love with Emily Hope, you know!" And he thereupon chuckled with the most cruel satisfaction.

even.

"It is as well to know, you know," thought Philip, "though of course the only person I have anything to do with here at present is Miss Stamford. What a very agreeable girl she is, and cleverer than I fancied, Yes, if I only knew what fortune she really has (it came from an aunt, I believe), I certainly would make the most of my time here. What a mercenary wretch I should be called if people could only read my thoughts! And yet unjustly so. For Heaven knows, if I had only fortune on my own side, King Cophetua himself should not surpass me, and the less my wife had the better I should be pleased. But if I am to marry, I must marry a woman with money. Either thus, or not at all, and I don't think I should make an agreeable old bachelor. I am not a mere fortune-hunter. I will never marry any woman without really liking her for herself, and doing my best to make her happy. As to falling in love with her, that's out of the question, and she must take a sincere friendship and affection instead. Thus much I am sure, if she prove worthy of it, I could give her in time, and no reasonable woman could expect a man who has passed two-and-thirty without ever having felt the belle passion' to do more."

Here Jack Stamford, who began to find his companion's long silence both dull and uncivil, suggested they should go to bed, and wished him good night. Philip continued the meditation in his room.

"This is the third matrimonial speculation I have been engaged in within the last two years, and it may fail as the others did. Miss O'Brien, whose fox-hunting disposition and Paddyisms I had got over for the sake of her good-nature and her five thousand a year, might as well have had her castle in Spain as in Ireland. The five thousand a year ought to have been paid by her tenants, but they didn't seem to think so, and Kate had little more than enough to pay her milliner's bills with. (I wonder if she ever did?) Poor Kate! she was very handsome. But there was no help for it, and she would have been wretched if she had married me. Luckily, I never proposed. There certainly was no mistake about Susan Langdale, but that old dragon of a mother took very good care that should not affect me in any way, and the girl ran away with the fifth son of an Irish viscount! Well, if the bar were not so

terribly up-hill, I'd work like a slave and earn my own right of choosing a wife yet. But ten years since I began reading, and am only now getting into practice!

II.

As far as we know, there are not many more lovely scenes in our dear mother England than that presented by the valley of the Wye in Monmouthshire on a bright August day, when the summer foliage is in all the beauty of its maturity, and the hush of contentment and plenty lies over the golden fields. The "Wyndcliff" road, cut in the side of a high cliff rising sheer and abrupt from the hollow, and covered with vegetation, commands a beautiful view of the many turnings and twistings of the river Wye, and, as a background and more on a level with itself, of the broad silvery sheet of water formed by the mouth of the Severn. Like a shining snake the Wye winds along, no sluggish English river, but rapid and clear as a Scotch stream, and bearing gaily along the small craft that trust themselves to its current. But what gives its peculiarity to the scene is the quaintness of the rocks that form the river's bank, and which, broken here and there into fantastic shapes, give the effect of a succession of ruined castles, picturesque in their grey antiquity. "That's the Horseshoe, Mr. Sutton," said Helen Stamford, pointing with her whip to a curious tongue of land round which the stream gave an eccentric curve, "but whether there were giants on the earth in those days to bestride monsters who could leave such an impression, our chronicles say not."

Philip and Helen were riding along Wyndcliff, side by side, the day after the arrival of the former at Stamford House, Miss Hope and Jack Stamford following them, and Mrs. Stamford and a Mrs. Lloyd, a cidevant governess of Helen's, closing the cavalcade in an open carriage.

"There should be legends attached to all those fairy castles," said Philip, "as in the Rheinland; but I fear we poor pilgrims of the Wye have a less romantic fatherland."

"Nay," Helen answered, "we have traditions enough, I think; and more than that, our history can give us life-stories that may indeed in their grand chivalry sound fabulous."

"Your patriotism then lives more in the past than the present, Miss Stamford," said Philip, smiling; you take more interest in the heroes of Acre and Poitiers and Agincourt, than in those of Alma and Balaklava? And yet I doubt whether English hearts beat more bravely then than

now."

"What do you mean?" asked Helen, suddenly drawing rein, and looking full at him with her earnest grey eyes.

"Only that I was struck last night with your apparent absence of interest in the present war, and that you seemed to have escaped being Crimea-bitten, as many romantic young ladies are just now. I mean when your brother and I were speaking of it yesterday evening."

"I not take interest in the present war!" Miss Stamford exclaimed, indignantly. "What do you think I am made of? Do you think I don't feel for my countrymen, triumph when they triumph, mourn when they fall-merely, forsooth, because I don't carry my heart in my hand for every passer-by to read, and jeer perhaps at what they term romance?

Do you think that because I am a woman I don't love my country, and that I wouldn't die in her cause, and while I live honour her sons for their mother's sake, and for their own hero-hearts?" She turned her eloquent face towards Philip as she spoke, the face usually so pale glowing with resentful excitement; then suddenly recovering herself, she said, in an apologetic tone," I beg your pardon, Mr. Sutton, I oughtn't to get so excited. How could you know the one point on which I am easiest wounded! Pray forgive me." And she looked so repentant and earnest about it, that Philip, though a little taken aback at the outburst, felt very much inclined to laugh.

"It is I who require forgiveness, Miss Stamford, for forgetting that you were an Englishwoman, to whom her country in all ages of its greatness or its sorrow must be England still. But one is so accustomed to hear the subject of this Russian war entered into immediately, that

"And yet you will think me inconsistent, Mr. Sutton, when I say that I cannot bear to hear it so little talked of in comparison with what it was last year. People take it as a matter of course now, and as if its only object was to afford a change of conversation from the ordinary topic of the weather. And yet death is still the same-a soldier's life is worth this year what it was last, and every month that passes by is marked in the calendar by a deeper stain of blood. Every day, instead of diminishing, makes the awe of this war become greater to me."

"I fear you call in question more than 'people,' Miss Stamford," said Sutton, shrugging his shoulders; "you upbraid human nature at large. What will it not get accustomed to?-especially where the suffering is merely reflected on it from others? But in some cases this is mercifully ordained. Take, for instance, the hospitals, at present, in the East. Had Miss Nightingale, and her merciful sisters in devotion, not accustomed' themselves to the horrors they have had to witness, could they have performed the great work which has shown our age

How noble a thing a woman may become?

Not-understand me-that I would detract one iota from the self-devotion and sacrifice which must have been required of them ere they acquired this custom'-they must have striven hard for the mastery first, and to some the effort may have been too much—but to have continued their work at all they must have become to a certain extent used to it."

Helen did not answer, but the steadfast glance she gave upward to the summer sky would have told Philip Sutton, had he looked round, how she thought they had got accustomed to it.

"Did you, with your strong interest in the subject, never think of joining the sisterhood, Miss Stamford ?" asked Sutton.

Helen shook her head. "My duty did not lie there," she said, rather sadly; " perhaps the sacrifice with me lay in remaining passively at home in that state of life'-and all the rest of it, Mr. Sutton, you know." Helen abruptly ended, for she became shy all of a sudden at finding herself talking thus to a mere acquaintance. But seeing that Philip still lis tened, she went on. "What do you think Emily did, though ?-Miss Hope, I mean-she had no particular tie in the world, poor child, and wished with all her heart to be of use; but she knew how absurd it was for delicate girls to offer themselves, as she had heard of their doing-girls

who were next thing to useless at home-for work of this severe kind. So she resolved to go into training for a time, got into one of the hospi tals, worked hard and patiently-though less hard than that Eastern work must be-worked zealously for a fortnight, and—had to give it up. Though not at all delicate, she found it was above her strength, and that she should only end by increasing the hospital list, and so, as I say, she gave it up. It was a great disappointment, and it was a brave thing to do, for so many people were ill-natured enough to sneer about it and throw out inuendoes that required courage to face. And"But here the conversation was cut short, for the subject of it, looking as unlike a person who had ever received a disappointment of any sort, galloped past them in a race with Jack Stamford, and beckoning them with a smile that was quite irresistible to join, off they both set along this shady bit of the road, utterly forgetting, in their mad canter, war, hospitals, each other, and, above all, the scenery they had ostensibly come to admire.

"Oh, the Moss Cottage," said Emily, checking her horse, and hardly able to speak; "and that particular turn of the road Mrs. Stamford said we were to look at. And what a very undignified approach to Tintern, for there it is, Mr. Sutton."

And Philip looked down upon the beautiful old abbey on which, even at a sober pace, you come so unexpectedly by a sudden turn of the road, and as he looked was fain to confess, that much as he had heard it praised, the ruin itself surpassed his expectations. It was, as Mrs. Stamford now informed him, said to have been built by William le Clerc, brother to the first Earl of Pembroke, for a fraternity of Cistercian monks, and is still in such perfect preservation, that you need not draw upon imagination to form an idea of its magnificence as you look along the lofty but roofless arches of its aisles-arches still unbroken, though the ivy hangs from them in thick festoons, the growth of long-past years. Athwart these arches the sun now glinted, chequering the grass-grown aisles with shadows of the hanging foliage; scarce a bird or mouse stirred from its haunts in the old walls, and a strange hush rested over the ruin, typical, as it seemed, of the eternal stillness resting on bygone ages, of the solemn silence reigning on those monastic graves below.

This influence was felt by the merry group who had just entered the abbey, and for a few moments no one spoke; but we regret to say that it was a prolonged stammer from Jack Stamford which broke the spell, and after this inharmonious interruption a regular exploration of the abbey commenced. Up the narrow stairs one by one they all went (with the exception of Mrs. Stamford and Mrs. Lloyd, who stayed to superintend the luncheon arrangements), and presently emerged at a giddy height at the top of the walls, where, however, a wide enough path did away with the apparent danger. And then Philip and Stamford being first in the descent, Helen and Emily gave them the slip; and when Philip turned from below to look for them, he saw as pretty a picture as you could desire to look upon. Leaning forward with careless grace, Helen looked down at them from a high-arched window, her pale, earnest face with its braided hair, scarcely shadowed by the drooping plume of the black riding-hat she wore, and contrasting well with the joyous face, rose-tinted with excitement, that leaned against her shoulder, as Emily, her hair half-loosened and her hat hanging round her neck,