enough gone to put such a question definitely in words to himself, but it lingered about the avenues of his mind, and sweet whispers of response seemed to breathe over him. Two, and not one! and he was understood, and his difficulties appreciated; and surely now the guiding light at last must come. His mother heard him come in, as she lay awake thinking of him, and wondered why he should go out so late, and whether he had shut the door, and thanked heaven his father was fast asleep, and did not hear him; for Dr Mitford would have become alarmed had he heard of such nocturnal walks--first, for John’s morals, lest he should have found some unlawful attraction in the village; and, second, for the plate, if the house was known to be deprived of one of its defenders. His anxious mother, though she had thought of little else since his birth except John’s ways and thoughts, had yet no inkling of anything deeper that might be in his mind. That he might love Kate, and that Kate might play with him as a cat plays with a mouse--encourage him for her own amusement while she stayed at Fanshawe Regis, and throw him off as soon as she left--that was Mrs Mitford’s only fear respecting him. It was so painful that it kept her from sleeping. She could not bear to think of any one so wounding, so misappreciating, her boy. If she but knew him as I know him, she would go down on her knees and thank God for such a man’s love, she said to herself in the darkness, drying her soft eyes. But how was his mother--a witness whose impartiality nobody would believe in--to persuade the girl of this? And Mrs Mitford was a true woman, and ranked a “disappointment” at a very high rate among the afflictions of men. And it was very, very grievous to her to think of this little coquette trifling with her son, and giving the poor boy a heartbreak. She was nearly tempted half-a-dozen times to get up and throw her dressing-gown about her, and make her way through the slumbering house, and through the ghostly moonlight which fell broadly in from the staircase-window upon the corridor, to Kate’s room, to rouse her out of her sleep, and shake her, and say, “Oh you careless, foolish, naughty little Kate! You will never get the chance of such another, if you break my boy’s heart.” It would have been very, very foolish of her had she done so; and yet that was the impulse in her mind. But it never occurred to Mrs Mitford that when he took that long, silent, dreary walk, he might be thinking of something else of even more importance than Kate’s acceptance or refusal. She had watched him all his life, day by day and hour by hour, and yet she had never realised such a possibility. So she lay thinking of him, and wondering when he would come back, and heard afar off the first faint touch of his foot on the path, and felt her heart beat with satisfaction, and hoped he would lock the door; but never dreamed that his long wandering out in the dark could have any motive or object except the first