MISS

ISS ENGLEHEART'S sweeping condemnation of men's hearts, brains, and principles was not entirely correct as regarded Oliver Carew. He was as little conceited as any handsome lad could be upon whom the prettiest faces of more than one London season had smiled not unfavourably. In matters pertaining to his own gratification he was hot-headed and impulsive as a schoolboy. He would not have stepped a line out of the path which he had been taught to consider honour had the crossing of that line been the one and only means that should rescue him from death.

But in saying that he was doubtless thinking vastly more of his own amusement than of falling seriously in love or marrying Miss Joan had approached very nearly to the truth. When Mr. Carew had thought of marriage at all, up to this period, it had been as of a necessary condition of existence that would doubtless come upon him some day, leaving his own happy selfish life very much as it was, but adding the companionship of a good-tempered, pretty, affectionate sort of young woman, whose tact and devotion to him should prevent his ever feeling bored when at home, but yet never stand the least in the way if he wanted to amuse himself elsewhere. The domestic lot of such of his more intimate friends as had married did not invariably serve as an illustration of these optimist opinions; but he was a great deal too easy a philosopher to trouble himself with any deeper views of life than those which his own favourably-placed circumstances suggested. If he did eventually get a wife like So-andso's, who should bully him, or a

wife like So-and-so's dearest friend's, who should insist upon going to balls without him every night of the week, why it would be a nuisance, and he must make the best of it-no difficult matter when one has all the pleasantest ingredients for material enjoyment so very ready to one's hand. In the mean time, he was duly thankful for having escaped the strong ankles and sandy hair of that wealthy young woman his relations had desired him to win, and had every intention of continuing in his present unfettered condition as long as possible.

But what are intentions when a well-favoured face looks up to yours in the loneliness of green-shaded woods? What are intentions when this face smiles at you, flushed and animated, amidst the golden glory of the moors at sunset? What are intentions, what are fixed and steadfast resolves, when this face turns from you blushing, as you whisper soft adieux at twilight amidst the perfumed, voluptuous silence of the summer lanes? In a fortnight from the time that Oliver first met Miss Fleming he believed her to be the loveliest and (which charmed him more) the most loving woman in the world; the only one he had ever admired; the only one who could by any possibility make him happy. He believed that he could not live very long if he were to be separated from her, or at least that life under such circumstances would be much too shattered and objectless to be worth holding. He did not care about her position or her lack of money, of these he had enough for them both: he wanted her. No man who married Esther Fleming could be said to marry beneath him