she had changed; and there was that in this swift perception that made him glance eagerly about for Lady Gwyther. But as he took in the recruited group-identities of the hour added to those of the previous twenty-four-he saw, among his recognitions, one of which was the husband of the person missing, that Lady Gwyther was not there. Nothing in the whole business was more singular than his consciousness that, as he came back to his interlocutress after the nods and smiles and hand-waves he had launched, she knew what had been his thought. She knew for whom he had looked without success-but why should this knowledge visibly have hardened and sharpened her, and precisely at a moment when she was unprecedentedly magnificent? The indefinable apprehension that had somewhat sunk after his second talk with Miss Banker and then had perversely risen again-this nameless anxiety now produced on him, with a sudden sharper pinch, the effect of a great suspense. The action of that, in turn, was to show him that he had not yet fully known how much he had at stake on a final view. It was revealed to him for the first time that he really cared' whether Mrs. Grantham were a safe nature. It was too ridiculous by what a thread it hung, but something was certainly in the air that would definitely tell him.

What was in the air descended the next moment to earth; he turned round as he caught the expression with which her eyes attached themselves to something that approached. A little person, very young and very much dressed, had come out of the house, and the expression in Mrs. Grantham's eyes was that of the artist confronted with her work and interested, even to impatience, in the judgment of others. The little person drew nearer, and, though Sutton's companion, without looking at him now, gave it a name and met it, he had jumped for himself at certitude. He saw many things-too many, and they appeared to be feathers, frills, excrescences of silk and lace-massed together and conflicting, and after a moment also saw, struggling out of them, a small face that struck him as either scared or sick. Then, with his eyes again returning to Mrs. Grantham, he saw another.

He had no more talk with Miss Banker till late that evening -an evening during which he had felt himself too noticeably silent. But something had passed between this pair, across dinner-table and drawing-room, without speech, and when they at last found words it was in the needed ease of a quiet end of the

long lighted gallery, where she opened again at the very paragraph.

'You were right-that was it. She did the only thing that, at such short notice, she could do. She took her to her dressmaker.'

Sutton, with his back to the reach of the gallery, had, as if to banish a vision, buried his eyes for a minute in his hands. And oh, the face-the face!'

'Which?' Miss Banker asked.
'Whichever one looks at.'

'But May Grantham's glorious.

out'

She has turned herself

'With a splendour of taste and a sense of effect, eh? Yes.' Sutton showed he saw far.

'She has the sense of effect. The sense of effect as exhibited in Lady Gwyther's clothes-!' was something Miss Banker failed of words to express. Everybody's overwhelmed. Here, you know, that sort of thing's grave. The poor creature's lost.' 'Lost? '

6

Since on the first impression, as we said, so much depends. The first impression's made-oh, made! I defy her now ever to unmake it. Her husband, who's proud, won't like her the better for it. And I don't see,' Miss Banker went on, that her prettiness was enough-a mere little feverish, frightened freshness; what did he see in her ?-to be so blasted. It has been done with an atrocity of art——————’

'That supposes the dressmaker then also a devil?'

'O your London women and their dressmakers!' Miss Banker laughed.

6

But the face, the face!' Sutton woefully repeated. 'May's?'

The little girl's. It's exquisite.'

'She has at last begun to see.' Sutton showed again how far he saw. 'It glimmers upon her innocence, she makes it dimly out-what has been done with her. She's even worse this evening -the way, my eye, she looked at dinner!-than when she came. Yes'—he was confident—it has dawned (how couldn't it, out of all of you?) and she knows.'

'She ought to have known before!' Miss Banker intelligently sighed.

'No-she wouldn't in that case have been so beautiful.'

'Beautiful?' cried Miss Banker-overloaded like a monkey in a show!'

The face, yes-which goes to the heart. It's that that makes it,' said Shirley Sutton. And it's that—he thought it out-that makes the other.'

'You take it hard,' said Miss Banker.

Lord Gwyther, just before she spoke, had come in sight and now was near them. Sutton, on this, appearing to wish to avoid him, reached, before answering his companion's observation, a door that opened close at hand. So hard,' he replied from that point, 'that I shall be off to-morrow morning.'

'And not see the rest?' she called after him.

But he had already gone, and Lord Gwyther, arriving, amiably took up her question. The rest of what?'

Miss Banker looked ham's clothes.'

him well in the eyes. Of Mrs. Grant

ROOK-SHOOTING.

WHEN Mr. Wardle took the Pickwickians out rook-shooting, he doubtless thought that this was the mildest form of entry to sport with the gun, and admirably suited for beginners. That Mr. Winkle would contrive to bag Tupman was scarcely to be expected. But with the gun of the period, and an unskilful hand loading, priming, and cocking it, all things were possible, even when potting young rooks on the top of a tree. Here, however, we have done an injustice to Mr. Wardle. He did not intend his guests to 'plaster' the birds sitting, but had his farm boys out-not, as Mr. Pickwick darkly surmised, to gain a hazardous livelihood by offering themselves as occasional marks to beginners, but to climb the trees and scare the birds, so as to make them fly. This is a far higher ideal of the sport than that of the average Devonshire farmer invited to a rook-shooting party. First he puts the gun up and squints carefully along it. 'No,' he says, 'no, thicky won't du.' Then, shifting his ground, up goes the gun again. 'Bless 'em, how 'ee du muvee; carn't baide still nohow.' Down comes the gun again. He moves to the other side of the tree. 'Ah, now be arl right; I zim. They du luke arl black i̇' a lump.' Up goes the gun with careful arm. Bang! Got the whole nest I du truly think. I did never hold wi' that rifle-shooting for rooks. One at a taime, one at a taime! be downright narrowmainded, I call un. Pick arl they five birds up, boy, and vaind

me another brood.'

Yet there are few more popular ways of spending a few hours in the woods in May than this narrow-minded' form of rookshooting with a good and accurate little rifle. From May 7 to May 20, according to whether the season is early or late, is the time when the young rooks issue forth from the nest, and, sitting on the boughs around it, caw complacently and survey the world of fresh green leaves around them. Then the party up at the Hall take their rifles after breakfast, fill their pockets with the nice heavy little tin boxes full of copper-cased cartridges with greasy bullets sticking out of them, and stroll to the rookery. Sometimes it is in isolated trees in the park and gardens; some

times in part of a big wood. More often it is a separate plantation specially suited in kind and growth to the needs of rooks. Nearly every tree holds one or two nests. In some there will be as many as a dozen. Great are the fuss, the cawing, the going and coming to the colony, and high and sanguine the estimate made by the small boys who accompany the shooters to pick up' of the number of dozens which the rookery will yield. If the time is properly chosen, most of the birds will be branchers,' but few will yet be flyers.

There are, however, always some early nests in which the birds are more forward than the rest, just as there are other late nests of which the occupants will emerge only a week or so later, to give sport to the rifle after all the rest have left. If the shooters have eyes for anything else than the birds, they will notice that at no other time in the year are the woods quite so beautiful, especially if they be of oak (and there is no tree which the conservative rook likes so much to build in). In the oak plantation there is always more light and air than in any other, because the leaves come on last of all, and when they do come out are not very thick, like those of the horse-chestnut or the many-branching elms, and do not kill vegetation under them as do the beech-leaves. So under the oaks there is at this time such a growth of late bluebells, and pink ragged robin, and wood-elder, and dumb nettles, and young woodbine, as is never seen in the other woods, if the ground be at all hard and clayey. Looking up into the trees to select promising shots, the eye sees even greater beauties, for the leaves look all golden-green as the sun shines through them, and beyond the sky is as blue as it is possible for an English sky to be. The chestnut-trees have all their white blossom spikes on, the oaks themselves are in flower, though it does not show much, and the tall spruce firs, which, if they find a place in the wood at all, always hold rook nests and the highest and most difficult birds, have streaks of resin and odorous turpentine running down their sides, and brown cones on their branches. People who go in seriously for rifle-shooting at rooks take some pains to keep a score of their shots. If the business is to be regarded as a sport this is just as well; for it makes the shooter take pains to select his shots, and not to waste cartridges. Some persons prefer always to take the bird with its breast towards them. It is safest, generally speaking, to aim rather low, but at the legs, not at the toes. Inspection of a target will show