correspondence-lessons in Latin and mathematics, and supplied her with the books. She means to work, when she can, with a view to a possible future. She is anxious to show that she is not all society beauty. But, dear me, how beautiful she is! I don't see how her mind is to rival her face, and how she will be thrown away! "I could find it in my heart to wish she had married the rich baronet; but your father shakes his head, and says `No.' I believe the whole family are to meet in the south of France in the winter. Lady Haredale smiles, and says she can't think what they are going to live on. "My love to Lucian. How long do you stay with him? "Your loving aunt,-- "Margaret Riddell." Sylvester read this letter as he and Lucian lay on the short fine turf of a bluff headland in the Isle of Orkney, not far from Kirkwall, looking over the northern sea, now blue and dancing in summer sunshine. The air was sweet, clear, and bracing; white sea-birds floated over the sparkling waves; a lark sang high in the pure sharp air; the charm of spring had hardly yet departed from the far advanced summer; tiny flowers sprinkled the down, and the little hardy black-faced lambs that cropped them, were still in the prettiest stage of their youth. "My education is in advance of the shilling copy," said Sylvester, reading the first sentence of his letter aloud; and then, after a moment's hesitation, passing it to his companion. When he had answered Lucian's letter of invitation to join him at Oban, he had briefly acknowledged the truth of the guess indicated by the return of the photograph; but since then no word on the subject, so near the hearts of both, had passed between them. Lucian had regained much of his usual look and manner, and did not appear to be occupied with anything but the business of his yacht and with the places that he had come to look at. Now he put down his pipe, which he was preparing to re-light, and, leaning on his elbow, read the letter through, more than once perhaps, for he was a long time silent. Then he looked up at Sylvester. "I was a fool," he said, "a fool to be gulled by any evidence against her denial. I ought to have known her better. I wasn't man enough to trust her. That's why she has forgotten me." Though Sylvester had often said as much to himself, the avowal was startling, in Lucian's slow, clear voice, the accents hardly varying from those in which a few minutes before he had asked his companion to give him a light. "You were so young," he said. "But how--" "How do I know it now? I don't know. I found it out by seeing her again. _You_ understand her better." "I'd give my right hand never to have been forced to meddle with the matter," said Syl. "I want to say," said Lucian, "that I'm not a dog in the manger. If you could get her--I--I--I think it would be the best thing for her. I-- hope you'll try."