me, like Joan, about my festooned gown and my coloured skirt-which is not vermilion, David, but very sober violet. I will put on one of my old frocks and Joan's gardenhat the next time I come out with you, and then you will feel as if I belonged to you again.'

'Shall I? Shall I ever feel that, Esther?' he interrupted her, hastily.

Why, whom else should I belong to, David? What have I in the world to care for but Countisbury, and the people who live there?'

Her caressing voice thrilled through every fibre of his frame. 'Look at me quite straight while you say that, Esther.'

She looked at him with perfect unabashed truth, without the faintest uprising of colour into her face.

Quite sincerely, child, you have no wish or desire beyond Countisbury, and the people who live there.'

Quite sincerely. I am attached to you all from my very heart-to you most, David, and I never wish to go away from you again.'

'You are a good child, Esther,' after looking very hard into her steady, loving eyes. 'You quite true. I perfectly understand you now.'

are

And he kissed her. He felt, at that moment, that he could never be querulous, or jealous, or exacting with her again: that the hope to which alone jealousy, or mistrust, could belong was utterly extinguished: slain by her own loving eyes: clean gone from him for evermore!

'But you look so pale, cousin David.'

The sun is shining in your eyes, Esther. Let us get on our way. It must be nearly eleven o'clock already.'

CHAPTER VI.

RESCUED.

So died the solitary dream of David Engleheart's life; died by a gentle loving stroke, far easier for him to bear than would have been that cruel sudden violence which, had the dream lasted longer, must inevitably have awaited it.

Unfortunately, we none of us feel

very keenly, at the time, what intense blessings our disappointments really are or ought to be to us. We quiver and writhe just as if the horrible operation were not for our ultimate good. We cry any pain but this,' at the very moment when this pain is the one thing needful to save us. Had David Engleheart known that Oliver Carew was to meet Esther again to-day, was to renew his acquaintance with her, to admire her more than ever, to walk part of the way home with her, to speak words that might lay the foundation of a serious and lasting attachment-had David known all this, do you think he would have mourned that his poor foolish love had gotten its death-blow, at least from Esther's own tender hand, and not from the coarse, unfeeling blow of a rival? Of course he would not; and Philosophy, doubtless, would have consoled him enormously, as she always does, under his trouble. But he knew nothing save that he had been a fool, and that Esther would never, never love him (though Joan might) while he lived: and when, a short while afterwards, the girl walked away from him while he fished he felt that all the yellow sunshine had turned black and cold, and that for any good his life did to himself, or anybody else in the world, he might just as well throw himself into the river and have done with it at once.

Esther, on the contrary, never felt in happier spirits in her whole life than she did at this moment of poor David's black despair. It is not often that a woman, however young and ignorant, shatters a man's hopes without being aware of it. Some slight jar, some quivering nerve or broken word, gives token of the ruin wrought, even in those extremely rare instances in which the blow has been unpremeditated. But Esther was guiltless alike of intention and of knowledge. That David, at his immense age-past forty at least-and with his striking peculiarities and old-world ways of living, should be in love, was, I must acknowledge, just the very last contingency likely to occur to the mind of any girl of eighteen. Esther was

accustomed to his exactions" and questionings of her affections; had set them at rest as her really warm' affection for the poor fellow prompted her to do. What more was there to be thought upon the subject? David was happy with his beloved rod, she with her own thoughts and delicious exhilaration of newly-recovered freedom. How exquisitely tender was this warm light, glancing down upon her dress through the dense foliage of the woods! how like a friend's voice was the soft brawl of the stream as its clear brown waters fell with thousands of gleaming silver threads across the weir! How distinctly the small transparent pools, away from the line of seething foam, gave back the manycoloured forms of fan-like ash and delicate-leaved water-plants upon the bank! Would it mirror back her face as clearly, Miss Fleming wondered? She leant athwart a low, moss-covered root to see; and beholding the reflex of her own figure, with the rose which vanity had led her to place in her hat surmounting it, instantly began to wonder-led by what train of ideas I know not -whether Mr. Carew were fishing this morning, and whether, if by any accident they met, it would be right for her to recognize him, or not?

She had, by nature, not any one of the qualities that go towards the making of a coquette. She was frank, modest, true: all that a coquette is not. But yet, when a sudden turn of the path brought to her view the figure of Mr. Carew advancing just at this very moment when she was thinking of him, she became conscious of extraordinary interest in the growth of some ferns among the rocks; then of the great beauty of the river itself; finally as by instinct, not sight, she knew the stranger was drawing nearerof the reflection of her own flushing face in the water; also of a general desire not, perhaps, exactly to be dead, but far away in one of the coolest, darkest nooks of her own quiet garden at Countisbury. And very charming did her consciousness and her desire to appear unconscious make her fresh face look in the young man's sight.

'We have had no rain, you see, in spite of all our heavy friend's prognostics.'s Meteorological, of

course; Mr. Carew was true to his race and to his age; but still there was a friendly tone, there was something in that one word 'our,' which, in itself, constituted, while it renewed, an acquaintance.

'And you don't find Devonshire quite such a dreadful place as you thought you would?" If Miss Fleming had felt horribly shy as he approached her, all that she showed of the feeling was a very brilliant colour now. She possessed, to a high degree, those two unspeakable charms in a young woman-selfpossession and great steadiness of manner. You begin to think there are other things here besides cold and rain?'

'I see there are,' said Mr. Carew, meeting her eyes with a look which would have been a compliment had she chosen to receive it.

Trout, perhaps? Have you had good sport?'

'That depends on what folks call sport,' he answered, in Mr. Vellicot's voice. No: fishing is a delusion. I have been here since nine this morning and have not had three definite rises yet.'

And my cousin, who is fishing about half a mile off, landed two splendid trout in the half-hour that I was watching him. Really, I think there must be something inin-'