Was this indifference altogether assumed? He asked himself the question without arriving at any satisfactory conclusion.

"Even that is a sort of comfort," he said, with a sigh, and an anxiously inquiring look.

"I am glad of it really glad; but at the same time you must, as a man of the world and a soldier, give me credit for an unusually large stock of womanly credulity."

"Why? Is not a soldier, then, to be believed upon his simple word of honour? That speech is hardly generous, Miss Harman.”

"Nor is it fair of you to put before me, so unexpectedly, a general proposition which admits of only a qualified rejoinder, and then expect the answer to fit in with a particular case.'

She puzzled him.

"You speak in riddles," he said, looking full into her open countenance. "Would you have pity, and explain?"

"What I mean is, that you asked me to say Yes or No, and were liberal enough to allow me to take my choice; when I exercise this privilege and say No, you are displeased and hurt. Why should you claim or expect any other answer? Up to a few moments ago I had not the smallest ideaso well did you keep the secret— that you had actually paid me the great compliment of considering me worthy to fill the proud position of being your wife."

"You are cruel," he said, mournfully; "I did not think you could

be."

"Ah, no!" she replied, "I am not speaking sarcastically, major; but when a man acts the part of a misogynist before the world, and with the wide experience of the sex which you must have had, comes to the hasty conclusion that

"No, no! Not for an instant, believe me, Major Tynte, but"You would then still qualify your faith with—buts.”

"Be reasonable, be even commonly just," she said; "I don't believe in women any more than you do, but I am a woman.' "One in a thousand!" lamely interjected the major.

"Sch!" she replied.

"Instead

of being so in any flattering sense, I should deserve to be considered more base than the worst of them, if what I said was uttered with a view to self-laudation. No. I pride myself, major, on being somewhat a judge of character. I flatter myself that I can tell it by the face, by the hands-even by the back sometimes. This may be an altogether fatuous idea; and some day, I daresay, I may find myself wofully mistaken, and all my pet theories violently uprooted. I may be awakened to some huge error of judgment-slowly perhaps, but not the less surely.' "I wish I had heard all this months ago." "Why?"

"Because a catalogue of my faults enumerated by you would have been valued by me. But there is presumption in the idea that you should think me worth even the most superficial study."

"Not at all; and as a simple matter of fact, I have studied you.'

"I judge by the unerring logic of facts, which says that I am rejected. And yet, Miss Harman, believe me that your power of discernment, your insight, is not yet perfect, or you would have divined something of the depth of my devotion."

"I only profess character-reading not thought or sentiment reading major; and I am not, I acknowledge, a proficient even at that. Do not blame me." She spoke with something so sweet in the shape of a smile, that if her error had been greater he would have forgiven it. "Sentiment and character are two such very different things. The first only obscures the other-overmasters it, rules it, and makes blind votaries or blinder dupes. A mind evenly balanced should be above the baneful influence of-of sentiment. Some people call it love. What has happened in your case? Am I to believe that you are moved to the very depths of your soul by casual intercourse with me with a woman who has no great mental endowments, and devoid of beauty?"

"My veneration

"Good gracious!" she exclaimed, with a laugh just loud enough to convey to an inquisitive passing couple an impression that the conversation was of the usual frivolous description, "you surely don't mean by the use of a such word to imply that I am really to be counted among the antiques! You could hardly be so ungallant as that."

"Ah!" he sighed, sorrowfully, "I was not alluding to age. You must excuse me if I stumble somewhat, being such a mere tyro in the intricate paths of love. My footsteps are unsteady from want of practice."

Well, frankly, I do excuse you," she said, with renewed kindliness of tone. "Indeed, I feel that I ought even not only to apologise myself, but to thank you. Love will account for the wildest eccentricities, else why should a man with a profound sense of the beautiful in nature and in art be so deeply moved because he has not become the immediate possessor of a commonplace woman, some years past her 'teens,' with a retroussé nose, red hair, and

He was pained. "I must be rude enough to stop you-peremp torily," he said; "you must at least allow me freedom to hold my own opinion on- " he was going to say an open question, which would have been another blunder.

She laughed. "Why, that's just what, in the same breath, you want to prevent me from doing. Confess now, honestly, the hair is red. Ah! you have taken time to think, and to count the cost. If the point had been put to the vote in the regiment, you know you would have stood in a glorious minority of one.”

He remembered the words of the big sub and sighed; but he

braved it out from downright conviction.

"Even then I would have been right. It is not red. I would maintain this opinion against any odds."

"You should have said conviction, not opinion, as leaving less room for self-rebuke. However, I am sure you would maintain it, major, just as you would sustain your reputation when called upon to lead a forlorn-hope; but this only shows that infatuation can make one even colour-blind. You are too prejudiced to be accurate."

"Ah, Miss Harman!" he pleaded, sadly, and remembering his own remark to Fitz, "do not banter, but have mercy; I am in no mocking mood."

“Nor I either, believe me. You forget that when you put to me a most momentous question I answered it; there was no mockery in that. Suppose we change the subject. You have no right, of course, to demand of me any explanation of my reasons for rejecting your flattering proposal, nor have I any right to question you; but it did seem strange that you should have kept the secret so well and so long, and I, thoughtlessly perhaps, gave expression to that feeling."

Was it to be wondered at Surely not. What an utter idiot he had been all this long time back! Not only had he kept the secret absolutely from the one person to whom of all others he should have confided it, but he had stupidly tried to keep it a secret from himself-afraid to entertain it or believe in it. Yet it was an open one among his brother officers; and even the obtuse Fitzmaurice Bateman, who was not credited with extra nicety of mental vision, or accuracy of social perspective, had "spotted" the

whole thing (as we already know) without having gone much out of his way to discover it.

All this rose up now and loomed large before the major's mind, and stood out in bold relief against the sombre background of his misgivings. The ready tongue of the voluble lieutenant, backed up by his Hibernian impetuosity, would have got over all the disadvantages of natural brogue, and have carried the inmost citadel by storm, while the major merely lingered at the ramparts and exposed himself to assault. He felt all this keenly now. Hope had taken wing. He was dumb.

So aggravating was this silence, and indeed so embarrassing, that Lavinia impatiently began to pat time to the music with her foot, waiting for him to break it. At last she had to help him on as best she could.

"Of course, major, I shall always take the liberty of calling you a friend, and considering you a true one; and—will you call me the same? Perhaps I have no right to ask, but you would not call me an enemy-quite?"

This was said in the pleasantest and most kindly bantering of tones; but the major looked silently into space. She dashed on again with the vehement recklessness of despair-he was looking so forlorn.

"I am really very, very sorry. But what reason had you to hope for more than this?" There was a tremulousness in the voice. Was it pity? or if not, then what?

"I must honestly confess," at last admitted the major, "that I had absolutely none. I do not blame you in the least."

"Blame! Oh no; that would be too"-she was about to say absurd or ridiculous, but checked herself in time-"too unjust. The suddenness of the whole thing is

so utterly foreign to what I conceive of your character, that I can't look on it as serious. You remember what Napoleon or some other great soldier said of one of the adventurous things done by a British troop or company or regiment-'It is magnificent; but it is not war.' Your offer may be very flattering to me, and I honestly confess that I feel it so: there is not a woman in the world, I should think, who would not. Well, it may be all this; but we expect to be courted. Love at first sight we can understand and appreciate too. But you, major, cannot plead this; for it appears that while you have taken some months to make the discovery, you at the last moment spring a mine and are hoist by it."

This speech in its ending wounded; it seemed to be wantonly, recklessly cruel, notwithstanding her disclaimer. He sighed - merely that; but there was such a mournfulness in it, approaching almost to despair, that she silently rebuked herself.

"We shall soon say 'Good-bye,' he said.

She could not tell how it came about, this change in her towards him; but suddenly the first chord was struck, and its mysterious vibrations thrilled through her frame. The mine was sprung indeed, and she herself had sprung it. If the major only knew that victory was within his grasp! But he did not. The feeling was new and peculiar. There was a fluttering about her heart that gave indications of a sensation most puzzling but not unwelcome. Her voice changed altogether, and gained now in softness what it lost in pitch. "You will forget me― -forget all this," she said, "in the excitement of war and the pursuit of fame."

"I do not pursue fame," he re

"You can afford to despise it," she said; "but for me to do so would be to imply that I held in light esteem the qualities that win it."

"It is won too often by favouritism, by blind chance, or by a fortunate accident-all quite outside the merits of the individual."

"That may be," she said; "but always to me fame-real famedeserves regard. It seems to have in it that quality which is the nearest approach to the immortal. It is the earthly shadow, as it were, of eternity. The fame of Wellington lives while the world survives."

"True; but if the soldier's god is glory, as people too often believe it is, honour and dishonour may simply come to be judged by the standard of mere success or failure -a hazardous issue on which to stake it. You say I will forget you. My only hope is that in the excitement of battle I may, for a time, forget the vision, the false hope, which I foolishly conjured up. I see now clearly, Miss Harman, how unhandsome it was on my part to seek, at the last moment of my departure, to win a heart which, if I had succeeded, the chances of war might doom to sorrow and to years of grief. It is better as it is. I am glad, for your sake, and I must ask to be forgiven. You won't deny me that satisfaction?"

"No, ah no!" she said, speaking low. He took her hand in his. "It is easy to forgive where the fault is so flattering."

Her voice was tremulous with emotion; the strain had been too much-she had been acting too long.

She turned as if to look out