with Eugenie de Guerin in her hand. A soft, warm, balmy, sunny afternoon, one of those days in which the very air is happiness, and into which no trouble seems capable of entering--nineteen years old--a fairy prince in disguise, coming to test her disposition under his humble incognito. Do you think the young creature could forget all that, and enter even into Mademoiselle de Guerin’s pure virginal world of pensive thoughts and world-renunciation, because it was Sunday? But Sara did all she could toward this end. She held that tender talisman in her hand; and, no doubt, if there were any ill spirits about, it kept them out of the way. Powys for his part was walking up the avenue with a maze of very pleasant thoughts in his mind. He was not thinking particularly of Miss Brownlow. He was too sensible not to know that for him, a junior clerk just promoted to the glory of a hundred and twenty pounds a year, such an idea would have been pure madness. He was thinking, let us say, of the Claude, of how it hung, and all the little accessories round it, and of the sunshine that fell on Sara’s dress, and on her hair, and how it resembled the light upon the rippled water in the picture, and that he was about to witness all that again. This is what he was thinking of. He was country bred, and to breathe the fresh air, and see the trees waving over his head, was new life to him; and warm gratitude, and a kind of affection to the man who generously gave him this pleasure, were in his mind. And notwithstanding the horrible effect that the burden of debt had so recently had upon him, and the fact that a hundred and twenty pounds a year are far, very far, from being a fortune, there was no whiteness now visible at his seams. He was as well dressed as he could be made in Masterton, which was a commencement at which Mr. Wrinkell, or any other good economist, would have frowned. Mr. Brownlow went to join his daughter in the drawing-room as soon as he heard that his visitor had come to the door, and met him in the hall, to Powys’s great comfort and satisfaction. And they went up stairs together. The sunshine crossed Mr. Brownlow’s grizzled locks, just as it had crossed the ripply shining hair, which glistened like the water in Claude’s picture. But this time Powys did not take any notice of the effect. Sara was reading when they went in, and she rose, and half closed her book, and gave the guest a very gracious majestic welcome. It was best to be in-doors just then, while it was so hot, Sara thought. Yes, that was the Claude--did he recollect it? Most likely it was simply because he was a backwoodsman, and entirely uncivilized, that Powys conducted himself so well. He did not sit on the edge of his chair, as even Mr. Wrinkell did. He did not wipe his forehead, nor apologize for the dust, as Mr. Brown would have done. And he was grateful to Mr. Brownlow, and not in the least anxious to show that he was his equal. After a while, in short, it was the