out how curiously unaware of what she was doing the girl was; living in a dream, performing mechanically all outside functions. Who does know, of those who are most near to us, what is going on in our minds? And not a calm Sister, not a little orphan in the House, would have been more incapable of comprehending, than was Oswald--to whom it would have seemed impossible--that anything in the world could produce so much emotion. Not only was it incomprehensible to him, but he could not even have found it out; and that his conduct should move either Agnes or Cara to this passionate suffering was an idea out of his grasp altogether. He would have been astounded, and more than astounded, had he been able to see into these two strange phases of unknown existence, which he could not have realised; but yet he was interested as warmly as his nature permitted. He was ‘in love;’ he was ready to do a great deal to secure to himself the girl he loved. He was ready to proceed to the most unmistakable conclusions, to commit himself, to blazon his love to the eyes of day. Perhaps even the sense that it was in his power to do this, without waiting for a keynote from anyone else, had something to do with his perfect calm. After this, however, the departure of Emmy brought a new phase to the strange wooing. There was no reason now why Agnes should go out alone; and watchful Sister Mary Jane, who was not satisfied with the shape the affair was taking, exercised an undisclosed surveillance over her young disciple. Things ‘of the world,’ like love and marriage, are out of the way of professed Sisters, Anglican or otherwise; but Sister Mary Jane had long recognised that Agnes Burchell had not a ‘vocation,’ and she was a woman, though she was a Sister, and had a soft spot in her heart which would have made her not inexorable to an incipient romance. But why didn’t he ask me about her friends? Sister Mary Jane said to herself. This seemed to her the test by which Oswald was to be known, and he had borne its application badly. Accordingly she watched over Agnes with double zeal, scarcely letting her out of her own sight. Someone was always ready to accompany her, when she went out; and even in the daily procession of the school-girls Agnes was never left alone. Here, however, Oswald was just as much in advance of everything Agnes could have thought of, as she was in advance of him in intensity of feeling. Nothing could exceed the cleverness, the patience, the pertinacity with which he baffled this attempt to shut him out from her. He would not be shut out; he haunted the neighbourhood like the air they breathed. The door seemed never to open but he was within reach, and Agnes never went to a window without seeing him. He passed the procession as it went demurely along the street; he was present somewhere when it came out, and when it went in; whenever Agnes was visible he was there. This might have been the most intolerable