leisure at Camlough: May was invited to join the lovers in all their walks and rides, and it often fell to lier share to feel herself one too many. She learned a trick of letting her horse lag behind the others, and of losing herself in the dingles in quest of wild strawberries. Sometimes Sir John Archbold made a fourth in the rides, and. paid her old-fashioned compliments, and told her of the new improvements which le meant to make about the place; a rustic bridge here, a plantation there; and May cheerfully studied the points of view, and faithfully gave him her opinion on these matters. But quite as often she was entirely left to her own reflections. This did not trouble her, for she had a vast love of beauty and a turn for noting character, and the new images that crowded her own mind made a constant entertainment for her from morning till night. The lovers were an unfailing source of delight to her. Her heart leaned towards them in quite a motherly fashion. She had read about lovers, but she had never beheld a real pair before. She followed in their wake, admiring, in her simplicity, what she conceived to be an example of the greatest happiness of life. She spent long dreamy days, thinking over the matter, down among the lilies and sedges under the bridge, or wandering through mazy and shimmering dingles. The world was very glorious, thought May, in her maiden meditation, and human life was very beautiful, and richly blest.

Mrs. Lee and May and Katherine were all lodged in the same wing of the castle. Their windows all opened out upon the great balcony. May was rather afraid to trust herself on the balcony alone, lest Mrs. Lee should loom forth and take possession of her. Mrs. Lee had a handsome sittingroom off her bedroom, and it often pleased her to spend the day in its solitude. May, a less important person, had only a pretty little dressing-room, furnished with writingtable, books, and pictures; but she, too, liked to spend an hour in her retreat. This sitting-room and this dressing-room adjoined one another, the wall between being but a partition. When Mrs. Lee heard May stirring in her nest, she was apt to leave her own and come knocking at May's door. When May heard Mrs. Lee leave her room, she was apt to fly to the balcony, and thence escape to the gardens. Upon the strength of many disappointments Mrs. Lee built a theory that the dressingroom was haunted. "My dear ma'am," she would confide to May, "I heard some one

move in it quite plainly; but when I entered there was nobody to be seen!" And May wouldianswer slyly, "Indeed, madam, I don't believe it is haunted by anything more mischievous than myself!"

This was all very well, and for a time she kept the ponderous lady at a distance. The hour of her defeat was at hand, however, and one night she heard Mrs. Lee's gentle knock upon her bedroom door. For a moment May thought of making no answer, and pretending to be asleep. But "it would be quite useless," she decided the next moment, "for she would come in and wake me, I believe!”

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Mrs. Lee, I am just stepping into bed," was her answer. It was certainly true, for she had put out her light, and stood in her night-dress, in the moonlight, in the middle of the floor.

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'My dear Miss May," came back to her through the keyhole, you will not object to an old woman's sitting at your bedside for an hour?"

May saw that she was conquered. She || opened her door and retreated to her bed, where Mrs. Lee followed her, and sat down before her like a nightmare. Mrs. Lee had on a large white nightcap, and even the moonlight had no power to make her look like a spirit of night or mysterious angel visitant."

"My dear," bogan Mrs. Lee, "I should not torment you with my complaints if I had any one else to go to for sympathy."

This was said in an accent of such real sadness that May gave up her impatience and became attentive.

"I'm very sorry if you are in trouble, Mrs. Lee," she said.

"Thank you, my dear," said Mrs. Lee, "and truly I am in sore trouble. Love has always been a mischief-maker, they say, but young men used sometimes to take advice from their mothers. My son used, but now he will not listen to a word that I speak. My dear, I want you to say a few words to the lady."

In the earnestness of Mrs. Lee's affliction she had forgotten the formality of her usual style of address. May's patience, however, was not proof against this speech. She sat up and spoke out her mind.

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Now, Mrs. Lee, I should like to show respect to all you say; but I find it very hard to pity what you seem to feel. I think nothing could be more fitting than the match, and as for your son, I think Miss Archbold only too good for him, if there be any difference between them."

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"That's what she thinks herself, I dare say," said Mrs. Lee, beginning to weep; and I do declare I believe there is no kind-heartedness left among young women now-a-days. But if she does think so, why does she not tell him so and send him away?"

"Send him away!" echoed May; "I don't understand you at all, Mrs. Lee."

"I see that plain enough, my dear, and I will tell you all about it. You think that Miss Archbold is going to marry my son ?"

"Of course I think so," said May. "What else could I think?"

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What else, indeed? But she is not going to marry him, and she is going to ruin him for life."

"Oh no, I could not believe it."

"That will not alter the matter at all," said Mrs. Lee, crossly.

"That is true, but I mean-you know even were she capable May paused. "In that case, Mrs. Lee, she would not be worth thinking of. Your son would not be ruined for life, I dare say."

"You know nothing about the matter when you say so," retorted the distressed lady. "My dear ma'am, I came here to tell you the whole story. I suppose you have heard my son spoken of as a man of wealth ??

May admitted that she had heard him so spoken of.

Well," said Mrs. Lee, grimly, "I have three hundred a year which my husband left me. It was all he had to leave. And he said, 'The child is a boy; let him work:""

May was silent, not daring to ask if upon the reversion of his mother's three hundred pounds a year rested Christopher's sole claim to be considered a man of wealth.

"And so he should have been brought up to work, and he would have worked," went on Mrs. Lee, "if I had not had a brother who was a rich bachelor. He was an old man, and all his great wealth had never made him happy. He had been always called a woman-hater, but when he was dying he sent for me, and he made me some confession about his views of life. He said he believed a single life led to all sorts of folly and wickedness, and that he had been a miserable man because he had been so lonely. He had willed all his fortune to my son, on condition that he should marry before he was twenty-three. If a young man has any good in him,' said he,

he has always fallen in love with some nice girl before that age. Let him marry her at once, and not wait till he has begun to think that she is not as handsome, or as clever, or as angelically tempered as he would like her to be. Most young men are prevented by want of money. He shall not be so prevented.' In this humour my brother made his will, and so, my dear ma'am, it happens that if Christopher be a married man before the last day of next September, he will be richer than most men in the kingdom. If he be not married by that time he will be poorer than any other poor young man by just this much, that he will not know how to work."

"And this is July," said May; "they ought to be getting ready for the wedding."

"There will be no wedding here," said the troubled lady.

"Oh, Mrs. Lee!"

"There is no wedding thought of, except in my son's poor bedazzled brains. I told you before that it was this girl's amusement to lead him on to his ruin. And I tell you so again."

"But does she know the circumstances, as you have told them to me?"

"I told them to her myself seven or eight months ago. She only laughed and said the old gentleman had made an exceedingly awkward arrangement."

"Perhaps she does not like to be tormented about the matter. She may choose to be a little mischievous, but I will not believe that she can be so wicked as you think."

"You don't know her as I know her. You have not seen her with other lovers around her, my dear. She was the centre of a crowd of them when we met her first, and she turned them off one by one, and seemed to delight in their vexation. At that time I thought Christopher would have married a sweet little girl, the daughter of his tutor in England. She was fond of him I am sure, and though she had not a penny, he need not care for that. But this Katherine put her clear out of his head."

"Would it not be well to appeal to her father and mother-I mean Sir John and Lady Archbold?" said May, now thoroughly roused to comprehend the situation, and feel interested in averting this threatened danger.

"I tried that before," said Mrs. Lee, gloomily, "but I might have saved my pains. I believe they are afraid to interfere with the

girl. They declared politely that they never could think of influencing their daughter's affections. As if I wanted them to do so! I asked for nothing but that she should make up her mind."

May began to share in the poor lady's dismay.

"So then I should have left this place in anger," said Mrs. Lee, "only for fear of making a quarrel, and destroying any hope that might be left. If the lady would marry my son I should be thankful, though, indeed, I do not like her. My poor boy loves her, and at all events his fortune would be secured. But if she turns him away now at the last moment, when he finds himself ruined and disappointed, he will fall into a despair which she with her light ways could scarcely even dream of. And things are no better to-day than they were weeks ago.'

This conversation went on for some time longer, and during the course of it much of the heaviness and unsightliness of Mrs. Lee's outlines became softened away, and was never after visible to May's pitying eyes. These two new friends parted at last with an understanding that May should if opportunity offered, make interest for Christopher, and plead his cause with Katherine. And after Mrs. Lee had gone away, May lay a long time still awake, wondering over the iniquity that had just been made known to her. She found it in the end too monstrous to be believed in.

Before she went to sleep she had persuaded herself that Katherine must come forth, triumphant in honesty, from under the cloud of this suspicion which was at present hanging over her.

CHAPTER XVII. KATHERINE SPEAKS HER MIND.

Ir was not long before May had an opportunity of learning Katherine's sentiments towards Christopher, as well as towards some other people and things.

One morning she was entertaining herself after her own fashion, alone, in the dingle beyond the rustic bridge over the stream. She was sitting in the shelter of a large oak, stringing the ripe rowan-berries into a long scarlet chain. So occupied she heard a rapid step, and a muttering voice coming over the little bridge, a crunching in the underwood close by, and then some one fell prone upon the moss at the foot of her tree; the other side of the tree at which she was sitting. This was Christopher Lee, in deep distress. He had broken the stately, fan-shaped ferns by the reckless

ness with which he had flung himself down. His face was buried in the grass, and he was sobbing; and May could not move to go away and leave him, for the reason that he was lying upon her muslin skirt. She tried to draw it away without disturbing him, but this was impossible. He started at the movement and looked up. "Oh, Mr. Lee, I am so sorry!" said May; "I could not help being here!"

He looked at her angrily for a moment, with a burning blush on his perturbed face. Then he laughed uncomfortably, and begged her pardon.

"I see I have spoiled your dress," he said, "but, of course, I did not do it intentionally. Of course, if I had seen you I should not have come here."

"It was very unlucky," said May, "at least if you mind it. But my dress has got no harm."

"Mind it?" he said. "Of course I mind that you should have caught me lamenting like a woman. But I trust myself to your charity; and believe me I have reason for grief. At least I think I have," he added slowly, passing his hand over his face. "I may be foolishly wrong, and if so I will come and tell you, some day soon, of my happiness. I dare not describe to you what that happiness would be like. But I think that I have reason for grief.”

"I hope with all my heart that you are wrong," said May, "and that you may get your happiness. If you don't

Well, if I don't ?"

"I was going to say something which I had better not say, said May. "You would perhaps think me impertinent and interfering.'

"Perhaps I should," said Christopher, reflecting, "and that would be unfair. I will not ask you to say another word. Good morning, Miss Mourne; I am going a little further down the stream to fish."

And so he walked off, forgetting that, in order to fish, it is necessary to have a rod, or some other apparatus for the purpose. But May was a gentle critic, and would not have laughed at him for the world.

After that May dropped her brilliant chain from the bridge, and watched it floating down the stream. Then she turned away, and walked up the hilly garden towards the castle. Katherine was leaning over the balcony, alone. She had been looking down towards the dingle and could see a long way. May mounted the balcony and approached her, seeing that, as she

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You have been walking with Mr. Lee?" said Katherine, not rudely, but with the air of one who considered she had a right to ask questions. "Where have you left him ?" "He said he would go further up the river to fish," said May, demurely.

"Oh!" Katherine looked surprised and a little disappointed. She had perhaps expected some pitiful tale of her lover's desperation.

"You were walking with him some time?" she asked again, after a minute, during which she had been eyeing May, who sat with her dark head against the geraniums, her eyes half shut, gazing drowsily down through the sunshine to the river, the way by which Christopher had gone.

"Not walking," said May; "sitting and standing."

"Oh!" said Katherine, impatiently," and talking, of course. He was complaining to you of me all the time ?"

"No," said May, mischievously, "we never even mentioned your name."

I am glad to hear it, I am sure," said Katherine, with a mortified smile. “But I had thought it might be otherwise, knowing his habit. He is a dreadfully lowspirited young man. I am tired to death of him. I wish they would go away."

"Then why do you not tell him so, and send him away at once?" asked May, rousing up so suddenly, and speaking with such energy that she quite startled Katherine. "You know-you know it is you who keep him here."

May trembled while she spoke, believing that Katherine would think her interference quite outrageous. But Katherine's uneasiness all vanished at the attack. Her face kindled with smiles.

gently, "you don't know what you are saying. Lovers will not be shaken off so easily. I speak from much experience. While you you have never had a lover, have you?" said she, looking at May, keenly.

"No, indeed!" said May, hastily, and blushing a vivid blush, that wandered from her cheeks to her forehead, creeping up even among the little rings of her hair. She felt vexed with herself for blushing, for she knew of no reason why the question should annoy her. And there was Katherine looking on with amused curiosity.

"How red you turn!" said Katherine, who had never blushed, save with anger, in her life. "But you need not be ashamed. It is no reproach at all, living out of the world as you do.'

"I am not ashamed," said May, and I do not wish for a lover. But I think I can understand how a man ought to be treated by a woman whom he loves-for whom he is willing to give up everything in the world."

"Do you indeed? So you have studied the matter. Come, now, tell me all about it," said Katherine, looking delighted.

"He ought not to be encouraged, and then left to break his heart," said May, with another subtle quiver of excitement dyeing her cheeks. "Even if

"Even if what ?" asked Katherine.

Miss Archbold, I am afraid I shall make you very angry."

"No such thing," said Katherine; "I am accustomed to hear dirges about broken hearts. You are not such an original person as you think. And your enthusiasm about lovers' rights is exceedingly amusing. Go on with that speech which you were afraid would overwhelm me."

"I was going to say your conduct would be cruel to Mr. Lee, even if his fortune as well as his happiness were not so entirely at your mercy."

"So you have picked out that story already," said Katherine, looking right well pleased.

"I picked out nothing," said May, indignantly.

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Well, let that be. We cannot help the truth getting about. But, my simple maiden, how am I to blame if people will make a mess of their family arrangements? If a man chooses to lose a fortune for my sake, how am I to prevent his being so silly? If I had been his mother I should have brought him up better. The world

"Well," asked May, "what would happen then ?"

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Why then I should think him worth a little pains. I have no mercy on a fool." "Poor Mr. Lee!" said May. "And have all your lovers been fools, Miss Archbold ?" "All," said Katherine, "or at least I have found it easy to make them fools for the time." Katherine had warmed wonderfully with her subject as she went on. It was evidently one upon which she loved to discourse. There is just one person,' she continued, "whom I have thought worth an effort; for whose sake I could acknowledge that my heart is not made of flint. While such a one lives," here her lip curled, "I have no pity for such simpletons as Christopher Lee!"

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66 Have you told Mr. Lee of the existence of this person ?" asked May, gravely, after some rueful reflections upon Christopher's hard fate.

Katherine laughed gaily. "You amusing little goody!" she said, blithely, "do you think that I also am a fool? I have been frank enough with you, but you don't suppose it is my habit to carry my heart upon sleeve ?"

my

"Was this person rebellious?" asked May, rushing into another question to avoid the opportunity of declaring what she thought about Miss Archbold, and her habitual line of conduct.

"Not quite," said Katherine, with an air of mystery; "but he looked as if he could be. You will see him, I have no doubt, by-and-bye." Here the young lady suddenly became thoroughly confidential. "The first time we met was on board ship, when we were returning from our travels, quite a short time ago. We were coming from Calais to Dover, and there was a storm, and people were frightened. Everybody behaved like a fool, including mamma and papa, who were both ill. He took care of us all, and, as I had fully expected, he made himself my devoted attendant. Towards the end of the passage the wind fell, and all the stars came out. Nothing could be more favourable to a romantic im

cards, and he came to us in London. There is no doubt that we shall see him here soon. He belongs to this country, and his history is quite interesting. He has been some years abroad, and is coming to visit his inheritance for the first time. He was reserved about himself, but we heard all his story from a friend of his father's. Mamma does not quite approve of him, for the old man may live a long time, and is not very reputable. Still, he must die. And the nephew will be quite a millionaire."

Who is this gentleman?" asked May, suddenly. "What is his name?"

"Did I not mention ? I thought yon knew. He is Paul Finiston, handsome and proud, and they say he is a poet. One could see it in his eyes that night on board the ship. He had a way of folding his arms and seeming to forget everything and everybody, himself as well as the rest. This was, of course, when the danger was over, and there was nothing more to be done. It piqued my vanity at first, but I soon saw that though a gentleman, indeed, it was evident that he had not been accustomed to the ways of polite society. It is little things like this that made me say he might be inclined to be rebellious. dear me, Miss Mourne, how white you are grown!"

But

"Am I?" said May, "never mind. Tell me something more about Paul Finiston.” "Do you know him?" asked Katherine,

sharply.

"I cannot say that," said May, "for I left my Paul Finiston in Dublin a great many years ago. I have no acquaintance with your admirer, Miss Archbold."

"Your Paul Finiston ?" said Katherine, with a sudden elevation of her handsome chin.

"Forgive me if I speak awkwardly," said May; "I mean the Paul Finiston with whom I had some acquaintance."

This was said with dignity, and Katherine was at a loss how fitly to express her displeasure. But fitly or unfitly, her sense of May's audacity must be made known to

the offender.

"And with whom you hope to renew your acquaintance," she said, bluntly, and with a look and a tone that made May again turn pale.

"Do not speak to me like that," said the young girl quickly. "I shall be glad if you will talk upon some other subject."

"But I will not drop the subject,” said