The lady blushed again, but Adèle's gentle delicacy triumphed. She bowed her head in acquiescence, and took Arthur's arm, leaning on it somewhat heavily, for she was still weak. Adèle walked on her other side, slightly supporting her from time to time; and so they passed through the gallery, with not many thoughts for the pictures, just as the daylight was beginning to wane. "---- street, Islington," said Arthur to the stately coachman when, having at last emerged from the galleries, the trio stood beside a small, well-appointed carriage. The coachman looked dignifiedly astonished. He took note of an exceedingly shabby person who was evidently connected with this strange fancy. Had his young lady been alone, he might have respectfully demurred; but as Mr. Arthur was a trusted person in the establishment--one, moreover, whom it was not safe to offend--he hazarded no remark, and after one protest in the shape of repetition, in an inquiring key, of the obnoxious address, turned his horses' heads in this very unwonted direction. He had to ask his way several times before he could find the out-of-the-way street indicated by Arthur's brief order; but for at least one of those inside the carriage the drive could not have been too long. Arthur Forrest would have found it extremely difficult to explain his feelings, even to himself. Happily, for the moment it was not necessary. To analyze our enjoyment or its sources would be very often to rob it of its charm. Why is the transparent greenness of spring or its first balmy breeze so delicious to the senses? Why does a certain melody echo and re-echo in the brain with a sweetness we cannot fathom? Why does beauty--pure outline, graceful form, rich coloring--awaken a thrill of gladness in our being? We cannot tell. We can only rejoice that such things are. And Arthur was very young, full of the freshness of youth and inexperience. He would have been highly indignant could he have heard such a remark applied to him, for he looked upon himself as a man of the world whom it would be difficult to astonish in any way; but nevertheless it was true. The very novelty of his sensations as he sat on the back seat of the brougham, looking anywhere rather than in the fair face before him, proved this. It was well for him that the vision came when it did, when his heart was young and his life vigorous, when the chivalry of youth had not passed away, with other beautiful things, in the numbing surroundings of a fashionable life. At last the carriage stopped at the entrance of a dingy street in a region where "apartments" looked out from almost every window. The lady would not suffer her new friends to take her to her own door, and they possessed sufficient refinement of feeling to refrain from pressing the point. She seemed even to shrink from the prospect of any further acquaintance.