The five stories comprised in the following pages were written, some long ago, some recently, as the lack of homogeneity in their style and conception sufficiently indicates. No writer who values his art will permit himself to produce work which (at the time at least) he would desire to see forgotten. As his mind grows, however, and his experience widens, he constantly detects imperfections in that which he had before deemed passable, and the impulse arises in him to blot out or ignore everything anterior to what he now regards as his best period. My critics would doubtless spare me the trouble of saying that little harm would have resulted, in the present instance, had that impulse been yielded to. But an author may, in some measure, justify his soft-heartedness towards his offspring by pleading, first, that he is not always the person best qualified to pronounce judgment on the comparative merits of this or that child of his brain; and secondly, that there is a faculty of youth as well as a faculty of maturity, and that the former may occasionally evolve something which, though crude in form, shall in substance be sounder than the products of later years. It may furthermore be remarked that stories contributed (as all of the present collection have been) to magazines, are liable, except in special cases, to pass out of the author's control; whence it can happen that material which he himself might feel inclined to reject, may nevertheless make its appearance upon the responsibility of other judges. It only remains for him in that case to hope that the public will not see with his eyes. LONDON: _August, 1880_. CONTENTS. ELLICE QUENTIN THE COUNTESS'S RUBY A LOVER IN SPITE OF HIMSELF KILDHURM'S OAK THE NEW ENDYMION ELLICE QUENTIN. I. A man about thirty-four years of age was sitting a few years ago in his bachelor rooms in one of the inns of court. It was a spring afternoon, warm for the season; the window was open, and above the high-shouldered brick buildings a glimpse of eastern sky appeared, with a pinkish flush upon it, reflected from the sunset clouds in the opposite quarter of the heavens. Through the window were also visible the boughs of a tree upon which the bright green buds were beginning to unfold; and a couple of sparrows were chirping to one another as they fluttered from twig to twig. A muffled hush was in the air, peculiar to these London enclosures, into which horses and vehicles seldom enter; the roar of the great thoroughfare, though only a few rods distant, being almost inaudible to the occupant of this quiet chamber; while the light ticking of the clock upon the mantelpiece, and the twittering of the birds, were both perceptible to him.