seemed while passing, with this Mr. Carew.

Good-bye to you,' quite abruptly; 'my cousin will be waiting for me. I beg your pardon for keeping you so long from your fishing.'

And I am not to see you any more?'

'You said that you should only stop another day or two.'

Am I You

I have altered my mind. not to see you any more? never walk abroad these summer evenings through the woods?'

'I walk upon the moors sometimes,' she answered, demurely.

The moors. That is an awfully wide latitude.'

The moors round our house at Countisbury. They are very wild and still. We like them better than the valleys after the dew has fallen, David and I.'

'Perhaps your cousin would have no welcome for me there?'

'David has a welcome for all strangers who come to Countisbury, and Joan and I would be glad to show you our garden,' she added, simply. You will have no difficulty in finding our house-it's the only one for miles, among the moors. Good-bye.'

She let him keep her hand in his a moment, and then left him.

David was waiting patiently for Esther just above the falls among the rocks; he had been waiting there and watching her and Carew for more than an hour. You have met with your new acquaintance then, Esther? I would not disturb you.'

Oh, David, how I wish you had come up! He really is a very quiet, agreeable person, and so fond of fishing! I am sure you would have liked him.'

'Do you think so, child?'

I met him, and he said he had had no sport, and asked me as to what flies you used, and I just looked at his and told him which you found were best-the green-drake and stone-fly, you know, and-'

You must have exhausted the subject thoroughly, Esther. You have been gone near upon four hours.'

'Oh, David, impossible! How can you say so?'

'You left me at eleven; it is now near three. Where is your damask rose, child?'

It fell in the water, cousin. Wasn't I right about the flies? The green-drakes and stone-flies now, and the little black gnat when the days get hotter?'

He-he's going to stay here, then?'

'A few days more, I think, David,' looking straight into his face. You are surely not angered by my speaking a while with this young man? I should have done the same if you had been there.'

'No, not angered,' said poor David, gently. I am never angered with you, my dear.'

He stopped suddenly, and gathered a wild rose from a briar-bush that grow beside their path. Will you wear this, Esther, instead of the one you have lost?"

'Mr. Carew has it, cousin; it is not really lost.'

And mine is not wanted to replace it. You are true to your new faith already, child!'

David Engleheart threw the flower in the water and watched it for a minute or two before it floated away and was lost in the vortex of the stream. 'Gone-gone for ever,' he said then, and as he spoke, he looked very white and odd about the lips. 'Little one, let us go home. The sun is sinking fast.'

CHAPTER VIII.

ESTHER'S KNOWLEDGE OF THE WORLD.

Miss Joan showed no displeasure whatever on hearing of Esther's renewal of acquaintance with Mr. Oliver Carew; indeed, she rather constituted herself the young man's upholder or champion against poor David, upon their return home. 'It was surely very natural he should speak again after travelling for two hours in Esther's company Would only the evening before.

you have the girl never speak to any one but dull old owls like you and me, cousin David? You look as gloomy as though she had com

mitted some dreadful offence in chattering for an hour to this young man. Pray, were you and I never young ourselves, cousin?' At all of which amiable little concessions to human frailty, Esther, in silence, greatly wondered.

David, with the new lights he possessed as to Joan's intentions on himself, read, or thought he read, the motives of her leniency pretty clearly. The disposal of Esther by marriage would be another bar removed between Miss Engleheart and himself. What a horrible aggravation of his jealous pangs, of the anguish of his dying passion was in the thought! All that evening he paced up and down the terracewalk, a book in his hand-of the contents of which his eyes read never a word; while Miss Joan pursued her accustomed sunset avocations in the garden, with great cheerfulness and alacrity, and Esther's low laugh and happy girlish voice mocked him, ever and anon, with their ring of perfect contentment-their utter unconsciousness of his miserable state.

'Do leave off reading, Davidwhat can old Ben Jonson say worth knowing about on such a delicious night as this? Come and look at these roses we have budded, David. They have all struck but one.'

'David, listen to the bees among the sycamores.'

David, how long the cuckoo sings this year.'

You had better leave David to his book,' cried Miss Joan, as all these little kindly attempts of Esther's successively fell to the ground; 'leave David alone, and come and help me water the strawberries. Patty with her great hoofs trampled down half my plants last year, and David waters his own legs more than he does the ground when he takes a can in his hand, so this summer I mean to do it all myself unless you like to help.'

This was quite a gracious invitation for Miss Engleheart to give, and with all a child's zest for work, Esther went in vigorously for watering. No pretty playing at watering, as practised by young ladies in the gardens of suburban villas,

but solid, hard labour of alternate pumping, carrying, and saturating the strawberries and herself. Then, when old Mrs. Engleheart had to be read to, and Joan had left her alone in the garden, she stole away to her favourite seat beneath the thorntree on the terrace-walk - which poor David had now vacated-the only point in the garden that commanded a distant view of Lynmouth, and of the sea. Deep down through a vista of green valleys curled up the blue smoke from the little town; the Channel rose beyond it calm and violet-coloured like the cloudless sky; over the far horizon the mountains of the Welsh coast shone, delicate-hued and vapour-like through the dim, aërial orange of the dying twilight. A strange thrill of happiness stirred in Esther's heart. Was her life to be warm and roselit like that sea? her future golden like those distant hills? Was she, indeed, to live for ever in this old silent life of Countisbury-oror -? Whatever the alternative was that suggested itself it engaged her thoughts steadily for at least an hour, and at the end of that time she was still so occupied with her own day-dreams as to start quite guiltily when Joan Engleheart's voice again broke in upon her meditations.

You are out in the damp then, still? David said you had gone back to the house.'

'I have been here ever since you went in with Aunt Engleheart, Joan. I think David is in a dream to-day.'

David is thinking of nothing but his books, as usual,' said Joan, tartly. 'People of our age don't dream, except when they are in their beds and asleep. Pray what have you been thinking about all this time, Esther? It is something new for you to keep quiet so long.'

I am rather tired, Joan. We had such a long walk to-day, and-'

'You are not in the least tired, Esther,' interrupted Miss Engleheart, with emphasis; 'and I am sorry that you think it necessary to prevaricate.'

'Joan!'

'You have learnt it-and I have

no doubt many other virtues-at school. From the time you were four years old you never told me an untruth before: don't begin now. I should find you out in one half minute; and besides,' Joan added, not unkindly,' deceit is unnecessary for you, Esther. You are strongstrong in body, brave in spirit: dissimulation is for the weak, and, for anything I know to the contrary, may be their best resource. Whoever is strong enough to tell the truth will invariably find it to his own interest to do so.'

'Well, then, I am not tired,' said Esther. Walking to the Watersmeet has made me no more tired today than it ever did before, but I thought I would like to be alone a little, and to think. That is the truth, Joan.'

No very startling confession, truly, but as the girl made it her hands turned nervously cold; and, instinctively, she moved her face away, even in that dim light, from the searching scrutiny of her companion's eyes.

To think!' echoed Joan: to dream, to build castles among the clouds at sunset. I know, Esther,' with her hard laugh. 'I was once eighteen, like you.'

'Yes, Joan.'

'Not as young in heart as you are, for I was plain, even then, and a plain woman is never exactly young at any age-but still eighteen. I dreamed, I hoped; ugly though I was, I knew I could be happy if anybody had loved me.' Joan brought out these words with an irascible, resolute kind of gulp.

And no one did love me: and we fell upon poverty, and dark days, and by the time I was twenty I had given up sunset dreaming, and I knew what life mine was to be.'

And have followed it nobly, Joan!' cried Esther, hugely touched by anything like confidence from Joan's granite lips. 'You have been a faithful daughter, and a good manager of your mother's straitened means.'

'I possess common sense, Esther; don't talk about nobleness and such fiddlesticks. All heroics are wasted

on me. I possessed common sense and endured. I knew more contentment was to be got from work than from idleness, so I worked; and by this time my life, such as it is, has become habitual to me and not distasteful. What I was going to say is, that at eighteen, I should no more have believed I should ever grow into what I am than you, with your good looks and recollection of Mr. Carew's fair words, could imagine yourself Joan Engleheart now.'

'Esther, all these dreams are natural. I remember mine, and there was no harm in them. I don't believe there is any harm in yours. David was wrong in looking so glum and disconcerted about your talking to the young man-of course, poor fellow, he knows nothing of these things, how should he?' Esther thought of David's confidences of the morning. He looks upon you as a child, and would do so twenty years hence, if you lived in the same house with him still.'

Twenty years!' repeated the girl. 'We shall be all old, old people long before that time.'

You will be thirty-eight, Esther. Not a bad sort of age for a woman with her own home, and with her children growing up about her; but a hard time of life for a single woman struggling alone among strangers-a governess with a brain just warping after twenty years of work, a companion just ebbing out of the ghastly, professional cheerfulness she has earned her bread with till now. Yes; middle age has few charms for such as they.'

'God keep me from being either a governess or a companion!' cried out Esther. 'I have my own two hands, and the knowledge you have given me, Joan. I will work cheerfully if there is need, but I will be independent. I will never work to suit the caprice of others.'

""I will-I will." That is how all young people talk: they will do what they think best, and then, when real life comes upon them, they find that they must do what lies to their hand, not what they themselves had chosen. I like

your resolute spirit, Esther-the more because both your parents were poor, weak, shilly-shally creatures, who died because they wouldn't live and do their duty, and therefore it has come to you from training, not inheritance: but I would have you, even now, look your coming life straight in the face, and not merely talk of your readiness to work. My mother believes that Aunt Tudor will leave her money to you. I do not.'

'Nor do I,' cried Esther. She has given me a great deal of money already, thirty pounds a year since I was a little child, and now this last fifty pounds to send me to school. I have no right to look for any more from her, and I shall not want it. When I am old enough I will work. The word has quite a zest for me, Joan.'

.

'And what will you work at?'

'Oh-well, whatever I find I am fittest for,' said Esther, cheerily. 'I am not going to be depressed by anything to-night, Joan. I feel that merely to live, merely to suffer even, will be enjoyment. The world is so wide, and there are such an immense number of years to go through before I shall be old.'

What is this Mr. Carew like, child?'

'Mr. Carew is-is tall, and not ill-looking, cousin. What could make you think of him?'

'A farmer's son, I think I heard you tell David.'

'Yes; but you would never think so from his face or speech, and then he is in the army, himself. How clear the beacon shows to-night, Joan! I don't think I ever saw it so bright before.'

Esther, you would be happier married to a farmer's son than working for your own bread. There is no lonely working woman on this earth who does not daily and hourly weary over her own life. I speak from knowledge, and I am not much given to sentimental weaknesses, as you know.'

'And what has Mr. Carew got to do with that remark, or with my future life?' said Esther, quickly. 'You don't think my peace of mind is endangered by every stranger who

speaks to me for an hour, I hope, Joan?'

'I think you possess decent common sense, Esther,' answered Joan, who, while she wished to arouse in Esther's mind a certain train of ideas, was far too keenly awake to overstep her own mark by a single hair's breadth. From your description, the young man appears to be just a careless, conceited fool, secking his own amusement, and not in the least likely to fall in love with you or me, or anyone else but himself.'

'Oh, Joan! he is not in the least conceited.'

All men are conceited, Esther, and most men are heartless, and many men are fools; but I have no fear whatever of your peace of mind: if I had, I should forbid you to speak to Mr. Carew any more. Dan Vellicot is much more likely to come as a suitor to Countisbury than any handsome young gentleman who wears a sword in her Majesty's service, and travels down here to while away his leave of absence in fly-fishing.

And Miss Joan having finished these exhilarating remarks, rose, looked about her, sniffed vehemently, gave a single low meaning whistle, and then skirted away swift and noiseless as fate towards the orchard-hedge. Even while she spoke, her eye had been intently fixed upon certain outlines not unlike those of Patty Simmons's mother, with a basket on her arm, hovering stealthily about the gardenwicket, and instinct (true as that of an Indian trail-hunter) told her at once the point from whose ambush she might best detect and pounce upon whatever fresh deed of darkness her unhappy handmaid's depraved natural affections had been leading her to commit.

'Was all that good advice meant merely to show me what kind of life lies before me, or to warn me against the danger of liking Mr. Oliver Carew? Esther wondered, as later in the evening she walked slowly along the path towards the house. Poor Joan! she need not be afraid. I am not likely to forget that mine will be a life of work and

hardship, and as to this strangerI had nearly forgotten him until Joan mentioned his name.'

'How white and near the stars look,' Miss Fleming further soliloquized; that is a sign of fine weather to-morrow. I shall go out upon the moors towards sunset, and wear my new lilac frock, and a white rose in my waist belt - no, that would look as if I wanted to be asked for it again. My lilac frock, and straw bonnet, and my muslin scarf will look best. Joan will say I have been dressing myself out, but I don't mind that I ought to dress more neatly now I am grown up; and if I go out by the orchard-gate none of them will notice me . . . . Oliver Carew-it is not an ugly name. I shall never write about him to Milly and Jane. I couldn't bear to read such nonsense as they would be sure to write, and besides, in a few more days he will be gone, and there will be an end of it all . . . . How nice the old house looks, lying there white and silent in the moonlight: I wouldn't like to leave it, and yet I don't think I should like to live at Countisbury for ever, and grow to be like Joan and David. I should

like, before I die, to see some of those foreign places Mr. Carew talks so well about. I wonder whether anyone will ever care enough for me to take me to them. I wonder whether Mr. Carew really likes me, or only pretends he does. It was very pleasant to talk to him as we sat together on the rock. I felt as I never feel when David holds my hand at that moment when he said good-bye. I should like all my life to be as it was this morning, only with a new muslin dress, and a new hat and gloves to put on every day, and with Mr. Carew, or- or somebody else-to meet me whenever I walked. It will be very dull indeed when Mr. Carew is gone. I wonder I never knew before how dull it is to walk about the woods with only David to talk to.'

And oh, reader! (of the severer and more uncompromising sex), remember Esther Fleming's ageonly just eighteen! Remember she had never enjoyed the privileges of a ball-room; had never been to an archery-meeting or a pic-nic; had never read any French romance, except 'Telemachus,' in her life.