talking to the governess. Oswald had something of the feeling of a schoolboy who has escaped when he found that no explanation was asked from him, and this was the only reason he gave to himself for not making those inquiries into Agnes Burchell’s family which he felt it was now really necessary to make. But why immediately? Let him make a little more ground with her first, and establish his own position. It charmed him a great deal more to think of winning her in this irregular way than to plan the proper formal approach to her parents, and application for their consent. To go and hunt up an unknown family and introduce himself to them in cold blood, and ask them, ‘Will you give me your daughter?’ was quite alarming to him. He put it off, as it is so easy to do. Certainly it would be his duty to do it, one time or other, if his suit prospered, and he was not much afraid of the non-success of his suit. But to go to them once for all, and inform them of his engagement with their daughter, would, he thought, be a less difficult matter--and all the delightful romance of the strange wooing would be lost should he adopt the other plan. He felt that he had got off when the door of the House closed upon him without any questioning from Sister Mary Jane; but on her side the feeling was different. She was disappointed. She had guessed how things were going, though not that they had gone nearly so far, and she had been convinced that the young stranger’s anxiety to see her arose from his honourable desire to set everything on a proper footing. The reader will perceive that Sister Mary Jane was too simple and too credulous. She was half vexed at the idea of losing the girl whom she had grown fond of, and half glad that Agnes had found a new life more suited to her than the routine of the House, for Agnes, it was evident, had no ‘vocation,’ and she did not doubt for a moment what Mr. Oswald Meredith’s real object was. She had made up her mind to allow herself to be sounded, to yield forth scraps of information diplomatically, and finally to divulge everything there was to tell, and set the eager lover off to the rectory at the foot of the hill. But Sister Mary Jane was much dismayed to be asked no questions at all on the subject. She could not understand it, and all the disagreeable stories she had ever heard of the wolves that haunt the neighbourhood of a fold came into her mind and filled her with dismay. Instead of being honourable and high-minded, as she had taken it for granted he must be, was he designing and deceiving, according to the ideal of men who used to appear in all the novels? Up to this moment Sister Mary Jane had felt disposed to laugh at the Lothario of fiction. Was this that mythical personage in his improper person? The result of the interview on her side was that she reproved poor Agnes gently for a few days, and declined to allow her to go anywhere, and would not make any reference whatever to little Emmy’s going to the seaside.