to detect the kindred quality of each. A stream that runs its melancholy race in dark, subterranean caverns, is no less the same when it bursts to light above in joyous flashes filled with the sun so long denied,—no less it falls from its brilliant frolic and flows on quietly to the great sea beyond.

In any unseen vase of flowers we discriminate the odors, and there is honeysuckle, we think, that mignonette, this sweetbrier. But that of two oriental coronations no more nor less than twin garden pinks—with its ineffable spice of clove and cassia, who thinks of separating? The two do not emit different rays of perfume, but slipping into each other, form one. They are the same thing. What else were Sir Rohan and Miriam? And what more frail and perishable than their unsupported happiness?

I linger a moment over these few brief days, days marred by nothing, days coming but once. They have for me that fragrance of a book where I have pressed a rose, and a shade of soft sadness always tinges such in the remembrance, it may be, like an attraction of opposite poles. And thus the image of Miriam, resplendent in loveliness, bathed in wafts of light and grace, a flowery thing

of smiles and joy, standing in the dark halls of the gray old house, beneath the stone heraldic cope, if seen through this magic lens that mellows all the landscape and imparts a golden air, borrows from it also that pathos which distance and excessive beauty give.

XVI.

IN THE LANES.

NE morning shortly after this event, the gen

ON

tlemen were walking to and fro in the shrubbery. There had been no frost yet, but the dew lay in tiny globes on the broad leaves as if shivering and clustering for company. To them came Miriam, in a daintiness of morning costume but recently indulged.

66

Papa," said she, "I wish I could talk slang." "My dear, I don't find you deficient there."

"I expected that! But I mean jockey slang, so that I could challenge Sir Rohan to a race over the downs, in real sporting phrase. It's so clear and breezy, and would do him such worlds of good!"

"I take up the glove without the accomplishment," said Sir Rohan, "and back Pharo against the Benshee at any odds."

"Will you make a book, papa?"

"Not I!" St. Denys returned. "It would be difficult to decide where the most money were to be lost."

"O, I don't know. The Benshee has n't been out this season. You rode Pharo to the hunt last week, I did n't hear that you checked the hounds though. It will be rather stupid for so old a hunter as Sir Rohan to ride without anything ahead, to kill, that is; but then my hat is killing, and he will always have that before him."

"Like certain Easterns then, I ride for a bride. Don't flatter yourself with hopes of escape!" said Sir Rohan.

"So at the best of it," she laughed, "when you catch me, you catch a Tartar."

"Well, little one," said St. Denys, "you seem to have attained your object without too much slang, though I have my doubts if your opponent can do more than swing in his saddle just now. What put that particular branch of education into your head?"

"Oh! Don't you know? There are some gypsies somewhere across the moor, real north country people, and they talk slang, of course. And

one of them, papa," she added, lowering her voice, "the housekeeper says, was hung in London, a little while ago, for something he did on the way here; and they are very angry about it. How they wander round! Do you suppose they came down to see the land's end?"

"An old woman, belonging to them, was here last night," said Sir Rohan. "Did n't she speak with you?"

"Yes. She was talking with the maids, and I went out and crossed her palm. But she was very odd. She only muttered some gibberish — slang, maybe—and threw my hand up to my face, looked at me a minute, and whispered, 'So you think you'll marry him, the pale villain yon. Toss it away, you won't. You are one of us.'"

"Miriam, she did n't say that?" asked Sir Rohan.

"Truly! Who cares? I should like to see her forbid the banns!" said she.

"Saucy Miriam! where are your blushes?" exclaimed St. Denys. Whereupon, the breakfastbell ringing, she ran away.

In an hour or two, at Sir Rohan's direction, Pharo and the Benshee appeared in the avenue,