brilliancy of colouring in which Miss Leslie indulged with impunity. Gay as she was she never looked too gay. Yet were the ribbons, and the white cloth jacket, and the brighthued little cravats rashly bestowed on any other, that other seemed to flame, and confusion came of it.

She made herself very agreeable to the whole family-all of whom, save Di, were nearly strangers to her. The alliance between Miss Leslie and Miss Prescott had been formed at school, where Mrs. Prescott had seen Alice once or twice on occasions of going to fetch Di home. But to the boys,' as Di called her brothers, Miss Leslie was an utter stranger, and they were much dazzled by her as 'it became them to be, the London belle simply thought.

She took up the tone of delighting in the country and all that made up life in the same, with a delicate tact, that made it seem a very spontaneous, perfectly bewitching thing to 'the boys.' She liked roughing it,' she assured them. Liked roughing it!' that dainty creature, to whom the crumpling of a rose-leaf might have been supposed to be a serious inconvenience. It was a most graceful condescension on her part, Henry Prescott felt, when Miss Leslie rode his hunter, or suffered him to drive her about in a high, fast-looking dog-cart. It seemed to him that she stepped down from her high estate of delicate gracefulness and beauty in doing these things-she! a woman who was specially designed to lounge in a curve in a low-sloping carriage, and be drawn through the higher haunts of the world! A most graceful condescension! made for him.

The beauty with the blue eyes and the black brows and lashes spoke with a most girlish and engaging frankness of her friendship for Mr. Carew.' She advanced to meet Di's unacknowledged dreads and suspicions in a way that sometimes quite, and always nearly dispersed them. 'I think I was almost jealous at first,' she would say to Miss Prescott, when they were alone together; not that I

wanted him myself, but I didn't want any one else to have him.'

Then, in reply to this, Di, with the polite perfidy of woman, would say, There is no doubt that if you had wanted him yourself you would have had him; I couldn't stand against you, Alice.'

'Now do you think that I believe you think that? Well, anyway, I don't envy you any more: this life is far too jolly for any one in her senses to leave it for a life in London with Charlie Carew.'

'You say so because it's new to you. You would soon get bored down here when the first flush of novelty had gone off.'

'Never-never-never.'

'Oh, yes you would. Why, you regard a week without one ball and several gatherings of some sort as a blank altogether.'

'Ah! that's the atmosphere. I can't help wanting to participate in gaiety when I'm in the midst of the sound of it; but down here I don't hear of it, and so I don't want it. I wish I never had to leave down here.'

'I wonder if she would marry Henry,' Di thought, after this conversation with her friend. 'He's very much taken with her, and she seems to like to be with him, and to find pleasure in studying his tastes; but then that is Alice; she prides herself upon her tact.'

Meanwhile the fame of his sister's friend spread abroad through their circle, and Henry Prescott was very proud of his guest. Inquiries, direct or surreptitious, were always being made about her, and it flattered him that he should be the temporary guardian of such a celebrity. To be the permanent one was a bewildering dream of bliss in which ho dared not indulge.

As for Alice Leslie, she merely obeyed the gay fancy of the moment, and did, and said, and looked just as it bid her, without a thought of an after part. It was very pleasant to the pretty, vivacious, fashionable girl, who was only one of many such up in her own set, to come down and put out the paler local lights, and be the one bright particular star and win all the honest

hearts, that showed her too clearly she could do so 'an only she willed it.' Pleasant to play at having pastoral tastes, at delighting in fair scenery, at roving the woods, and finding the fields and brooklets, and the simple society of a few chosen friends 'sufficient to her.' She knew that when the first note of winter festivity was sounded in her own coterie that she could leave all these without a regret, and go back, with new roses on her cheek, to the old fields where fresh conquests awaited her. It pleased her to think that they would all talk of her down here long after she had left them and they had drifted from her mind; talk of her and quote her sayings, and cite her dresses, and generally tell and retell the tale of her sojourn and successes amongst them. It was very much better than the sea-side, where she had spent the latter part of the summer. There she was subjected to the same set as in town to a degree that forbade all hope of their having anything fresh to say to each other when they met again in the winter. But here she was the stranger, the queen of hearts, the altar on which all sighed to lay their attentions. It was one little round of triumph to her from the moment she came down to breakfast, and was met by one brother with a flower, and the intelligence that the other had gone to meet the postboy, in order that she might have her letters the sooner, till the hour came for retiring, when all fought for the 'barren honour' of presenting her with her candlestick.

The

She was a sight, walking along the little village, capitally costumed, with the brothers, one on either side of her, each jealously regarding each word or glance of hers. cnb was getting his first lesson in the pleasure and the pain of loving from Miss Leslie. She took a safe tone with him, safe as far as she was herself concerned, that is, calling him a boy, and at the same time flattering him into a very unboyish heartache. He began to hate Henry for those years of seniority which made Alice refrain from taking that maddening elder sister's tone with him which she occasionally adopted

when the cub' dared to be too sentimental.

And she was a spectacle on Sundays, a spectacle that sometimes upset the curate, who was young and tender, like 'Little Billee,' causing him to wish that he had more than seventy pounds a year. Her little straight throat and small head were the very things to make that lily bend'-which is so becomingly suggestive of devotional feeling-an easy thing for her to accomplish. Her little prayer-book with the broad silver cross upon it, held in her little silver-grey kidgloved hands; the tender-looking grebe collarette into which she nestled her round white chin; the sweet thrill of the voice that broke in and harmonised the inharmonious congregational singing; the way in which she half swept, half glided down the aisle, a sort of pious young sovereign-all these made her an unforgotten thing in that village for many a long day.

Only Jack Markham refused to bend the knee to her. Di's worth a thousand of her any day that can be named,' he said, contemptuously, after listening to Henry Prescott's earliest ebullitions of feeling respecting her. 'She's a good-looking girl enough, but take the wave out of her hair and the ribbons off her head, or do away with that hat and jacket, and those wonderful Balmorals, and Miss Alice Leslie wouldn't be such a great beauty, you'd see.'

But Henry refused to believe that he should see anything of the kind. Everything becomes her best-she makes defect perfection,' he said, gravely, his love developing that vein of poetry which is in most of us, whether it ever be brought out or not; 'she'd adorn a palace or a cottage equally well.'

'Whew-w,' Jack Markham whistled slowly; the wind sets in that quarter, does it? Now look here, old fellow, we neither of us know about palaces from personal experience; but take my word for it, if you tried her in a cottage, you would have a taste of her temper that would make you like her less.'

Jack Markham was not the only

She

one who was guilty of the weakness of speaking a word in season to a man in love. Di was very fond of her brother, fond of him and proud of him in a certain way. esteemed him for his fine sense of honour, for that perfect integrity which not only kept him invariably from seeming the thing he was not, but even more, made him on all occasions seem the thing he was. She admired him for his daring and skill in the field and chace, for his good looks and good temper, for his manliness and courage and strength. She loved him warmly, as sisters do love brothers who pet and protect them. But withal she did not deceive herself about him, and she knew that he was not cast in the mould that would find favour in Alice Leslie's eyes. It was hard for Di to word the truth even to herself, but she could not blind herself to its being the truth. had not the amount of education and cultivation which is deemed essential by even superficial young ladies who have been made free of current literature.

Henry

It was hard to word the truth to herself, and still harder to hint the same to her brother. But Di did it gallantly at last, feeling strongly that it behoved her to avert from him any pain that might be averted, since she had brought this Alice Leslie upon him. So she took the opportunity of doing so one day when it was raining, and Alice, 'bored and hipped' (and rather cross, truth to tell), had gone upstairs to lie down on her couch, and make a little private moan as to the tediousness of a wet day in the country.

The steady pattering down of the drops upon the dejected-looking shrubs immediately outside the windows seemed to have a depressing effect upon the whole party. Mrs. Prescott had retired, having declared it to be a good day to go and 'mend up' a lot of things in her bedroom. Nellie was employed in reviling the weather that prevented her driving over to the nearest town for more salmon-coloured wool wherewith to ground a gorgeous piece of worsted work, and in wandering about the room in very vague

ness. Henry and Di were respectively trying to read, and failing, by reason of the former being nervously expectant of Miss Leslie's reappearance, and the latter being keenly alive to the fact; and 'the cub' was irritably conscious that he was much marvelled at by his brother and sisters for staying in the house when he could have gone into the more congenial atmosphere of the stables. 'Such the power of love.' Willie had a horror, a horror such as can only possess a boy, of being laughed at; but he risked that misery rather than leave the place that might possibly be graced by Miss Leslie's presence.

At last Ellen broke a silence, which had lasted some time, by exclaiming,

'When is Alice coming down, Di? I wish she would make haste. I want to try that duet with her.'

'Hadn't you better call her, Di?' Henry suggested. 'I'm anxious to hear that song. Call her down.'

Di laughed I thought you objected to music by daylight? Besides, Alice would not be grateful to me for disturbing her.'

Henry relapsed into his book for a page or two; then he defended his musical taste against that charge which had been made of daylight killing it.

'I've said sometimes that I don't care to hear a constant strumming when I'm making up my accounts in the morning; but when we none of us have anything better to do, we may as well have some music.'

'Especially if Alice Leslie will join us if we have some, and keep away from us if we haven't any; eh, Harry? Ellen asked, laughing. 'Now I will be a jewel of a sister. I'll go and get her down.'

Di looked at her eldest brother as Ellen went out of the room, and she saw that he looked pleased, foolishly pleased,' she thought, considering all things. The colour came upon his brow as he met her glance, too. Altogether, the signs were sure and bad. The time for speaking had come.

'Poor Alice!' she said, leaning forward on her low seat with her book in her lap, and looking up with

a pretty little confidential air into her brother's face. Poor Alice; this has been a trying day for her— So wet.'

'Trying day for anybody,' he answered, seeing that he was expected to say something.

'Yes, but for her, particularly for her. She shrugged her shoulders at the woods and fields she has been saying such sweet things about, when she came down this morning, and said a wet season in their society would be rather crushing.'

Henry looked interested for a moment; then an expression of 'knowing more about it perhaps than Di did' swept over his face, and Miss Prescott felt called upon to say a word or two more.

'She'll be a charming little woman of the world when she marries. I fancy I see her already the mistress of a capitally-appointed house in a good neighbourhood. Alice would be wretched unless she were close to the park, and had a neat little brougham, and a showy saddlehorse, and a swell groom, and a running account at Elise's. Charlie and I shall be in such a much more humble way that we shall not see much of her.'

'She isn't married yet,' Henry Prescott said, hoarsely. The picture his sister had conjured up was a horrible one for the poor fellow to contemplate. It was borne in upon his mind that he was loving not at all wisely, and a great deal too well.

'No, she's not married yet, as you say; but that's the way she will marry, or ought to marry, to be happy: it's her groove.'

She would be just as happy in another,' Henry Prescott replied; and Di had only time to shake her head and say 'No, no,' before Miss Leslie and Ellen came into the room.

'Alice has come to sing to you, Harry,' Ellen began at once. She was sound asleep when I got up, and just a little cross when I woke her, but she forgave me soon when I told her what I wanted.'

'Not cross, I'm sure,' Henry Prescott whispered, as he started up to meet her; and Alice gave him a little flashing glance, and muttered quickly,

'You won't believe that of me, will you? Nellie wouldn't call me cross if she knew about a letter I've had to-day. Mamma says I must go home to-morrow.'

She whispered all this standing near to Henry, looking up almost imploringly into his eyes.

Go home to-morrow,' he repeated; 'oh! no you won't, Alice; I mean

'I fear I must,' she said with a sigh, turning away. Then she added, Come, Di, come and sing away some of my sorrow, I have to leave you to-morrow, dear. Now don't speak, it won't bear talking about.'

So she staggered them and puzzled them with her intentions and the abrupt announcement of her immediate departure, gracefully, and apparently excitedly, waving off all questioning on the subject. 'Mamma had recalled her and she must go,' she said. The truth was, she fancied that the dull and wet season had set in here, and that it would be livelier and more agreeable at Bayswater. So she determined to go away suddenly and be regretted.

She sang her tenderest songs in her tenderest tones to them that night. She put aside her gay brilliancy and substituted a soft air that was not sorrow exactly, but 'that resembled sorrow as the mist resembles the rain.' Looking at her, and listening to her as she warbled out metrical assertions to the effect that she would marry her own love, for true of heart was she, and others of a like order, Henry Prescott came to the conclusion that Di was much mistaken about her friend, and that the latter was peculiarly fitted by nature, habit, and education, to bless a country heart and adorn a country life. He remembered that

'He either fears his fate too much,
Or his deserts are small,
Who dares not put it to the touch,
And win or lose it all.'

He would put his fate to the touch to-morrow before she left. But on the morrow his design was frustrated. Something intervened to delay Miss Leslie's departure, as shall presently be told.

CHAPTER V.

'ALMOST LIKE A BROTHER.' The one thing in which Miss Leslie did not conform to the normal habits of her entertainers, was in the matter of getting up early. It was the sole thing in which Henry Prescott could have desired to see her other than she was. And this, not from any moral objection to the morning languor that might develop into laziness, but because it prevented his enjoying the first fruits of her society. In vain he got into the way of being a long time over his breakfast and the previous day's paper. In vain he would loiter about in the yard for ten minutes or a quarter of an hour after the groom had led his horse out, and then go back to the house, fraught with some question that was imperative, as to being asked of his sisters long after they believed him to be well away on the farm. It was all in vain that he did these things day after day with apparently inexhaustible patience; Alice Leslie scarcely ever could prevail upon herself to get out of her room before eleven o'clock.

But this morning, the morning on which she had avowed that she must leave them, the sound of Miss Leslie's light step as she sprang along the passage and down the stairs made itself heard much earlier than usual. Ellen had carried the pet guest a cup of coffee and her letters shortly after the post-bag came in. Ellen had also communicated a piece of intelligence which Di had received.

'It's a pity you're going away today,' the youngest Miss Prescott had said. Di has heard from Charlie, and he's coming down to-morrow to stay for a week.'

Is he?' Alice replied, carelessly. 'I'm glad I'm going though; Di would be lost to me as soon as he comes.' Then she turned to her coffee and her correspondence; and Ellen left her, and went down to tell them that Alice would be down directly, for a wonder; and adding, to her brothers, 'I suppose you will stop in, and see her this last morning, both of you-won't you?'

Alice came in presently, looking prettier than ever, both the boys thought, with a deeper rose-tint over her fair face than usual, and with her bright hair pushed far off behind her ears, and rolling in crimped luxuriance behind. She was all that he had always felt sure she must be-all that a girl ought to be early in the morning, Henry Prescott thought, as he rose to meet her. Fresh and bright-hued in complexion, and dress faultlessly arrayed; perfect in all those delicate points of spotless collar and cuffs, and well-fitting shoes and waistband-wafting into the room with the fragrance of rosewater, and the mere idea of some exquisitely-perfumed hair-wash about her-sparkling and fastidious and unexceptionably neat, without being too effervescent, fanciful, or fussily careful.

She came forward with a fluttering mass of open letters in her hand, and seated herself at the table, opposite to Henry, on the same side with Di, only separated from that young lady by Willie (to whom she was less of a novelty early in the day than to his elder brother-for Willie had devotedly disregarded the farm, and all appertaining thereto during Miss Leslie's sojourn amongst them). As soon as she was seated she commenced speaking rapidly, and with a slight air of embarrassment, to Mrs. Prescott. But though her words were given to the old lady, her looks, when sho raised them from the table, were bestowed on the eldest son.

'I hardly know how to tell you, Mrs. Prescott-you will think mo so everlasting, and mamma so very changeable; but I've heard from her again this morning, and sho says if you can have me a little longer she shall be very glad to let me stay.'

'My dear! certainly-only too glad to have you,' Mrs. Prescott replied, warmly; and Henry gave Alice a long gratefu! look, as she raised her eyes to his once more, which would have satisfied her as to his feelings, even if she had not fathomed them before.

'How very kind of your mamma, Di said.