I shuddered as this pang disturbed my warm bliss. "For Heaven's sake, don't joke, Georgy!" I exclaimed. "I can't even hear you allude to the possibility of marrying such a man as that with equanimity. I am not so poor. Mr. Floyd--" But, after all, I could not tell her of Mr. Floyd's generosity to me: it seemed like basing calculations upon his death to assure her that the course of events was to bring me a fortune. She looked at me with eagerness. "Tell me now," she said, putting her hand upon my arm. "If you love me, Floyd, you cannot keep a secret from me." To describe the beauty of her face, the fascination of her manner, the thrill of her touch, words are quite powerless, mere pen-scratches. If any man could have withstood her, I was not that man. Shame to relate, I soon had told her everything--that Mr. Floyd had for years placed an ample income at my disposal--that I had seen his will, which gave me, without restriction, a clear third of his fortune. She was meditative for a while. "But," she said then with a trifle of brusqueness, "if you marry me he will be angry and change all that: he does not like me. He has different plans for you: he wants you to marry Helen." "Don't say that," I cried, "for I love Mr. Floyd so well, I owe him so much, I could refuse him nothing." "You mean that if he asked you to marry Helen you would give me up, would take her?" she retorted with a flaming color on her cheeks and a gleam in her eyes. "You do not care for me, then. You are merely playing with me: you love her, after all." "Now, that is nonsense, Georgy," I said gently, for through her jealousy I had the first glimpse, I fancied, of something like real love for me; "and I do not like to hear Helen's name bandied about in this way. You may be sure that she will stand in no need of suitors: I shall never be one of them. Now, then, who is it that is coquetting? You know whom I love--what I want. I am very much in earnest--unsettled in heart and mind, body, soul and spirit, until I have your answer. Tell me, Georgy darling, is it or is it not to be?" But I was to have no answer that day. Miss Lenox said it was very tiresome hearing me reiterate that dreary question, and that she saw raspberries in the thicket which I must gather for her. Although, when she had eaten them, she let me kiss the lovely stained lips, I was still far enough from knowing whether they were mine or not--whether she liked to raise my ardent dreams merely to disappoint them, or whether at heart it was, as she sometimes hinted, that she did care for me with something of the intimate, clinging habit which bound _me_ so closely to _her_. ELLEN W. OLNEY. [TO BE CONTINUED.] DAWN IN THE CITY. The city slowly wakes: Her every chimney makes Offering of smoke against the cool white skies: Slowly the morning shakes The lingering shadowy flakes Of night from doors and windows, from the city's eyes.