"How could it have come here?" asks Lord Sartoris, without raising his eyes from the luckless handkerchief. "Do you know anything of it?" "Nothing; except that it belongs to Ruth. I gave it to her last Christmas." "You! A curious gift to a girl in her rank in life?" "She wished for it," returns Branscombe, curtly. "Then she is no doubt heart-broken, imagining she has lost it. Return it to her, I advise you, without delay," says his uncle, contemptuously, throwing it from him to a table near. "I need not detain you any longer, now,"--rising, and moving towards the door. "Going so soon?" says the younger man, roused from his galling reflections, by his uncle's abrupt departure, to some sense of cordiality. "Why, you have hardly stayed a moment." "I have stayed long enough,--too long," says Lord Sartoris, gloomily, fixing his dark eyes (that age have failed to dim) upon the man who has been to him as his own soul. "Too long?" repeats Branscombe, coloring darkly. "Yes. Have you forgotten altogether the motto of our race?--'Leal friend, leal foe.' Let me bring it to your memory." "Pray do not trouble yourself. I remember it perfectly," says Dorian, haughtily, drawing up his figure to its fullest height. "I am sorry, my lord, you should think it necessary to remind me of it." He bows and opens the door as he finishes his speech. Lord Sartoris, though sorely troubled, makes no sign; and, without so much as a pressure of the hand, they part. CHAPTER XIX. "Lock you, how she cometh, trilling Out her gay heart's bird-like bliss! Merry as a May-morn thrilling With the dew and sunshine's kiss. * * * * * Ruddy gossips of her beauty Are her twin cheeks; and her mouth, In its ripe warmth, smileth fruity As a garden of the south."--GERALD MASSEY. To Georgie the life at the vicarage is quite supportable,--is, indeed, balm to her wounded spirit. Mrs. Redmond may, of course, chop and change as readily as the east wind, and, in fact, may sit in any quarter, being somewhat erratic in her humors; but they are short-lived; and, if faintly trying, she is at least kindly and tender at heart. As for the vicar, he is--as Miss Georgie tells him, even without a blush--"simply adorable;" and the children are sweet good-natured little souls, true-hearted and earnest, to whom the loss of an empire would be as dross in comparison with the gain of a friend. They are young! To Dorian Branscombe, Miss Broughton is "a thing of beauty, and a joy forever; her loveliness increases" each moment, rendering her more dear. Perhaps he himself hardly knows how dear she is to his heart, though day after day he haunts the vicarage, persecuting the vicar with parochial business of an outside sort. It ought, indeed, to be "had in remembrance," the amount of charity this young man expended upon the poor during all this early part of the year.