He takes her hand kindly, but his eyes do not meet hers, and the tender inflection of yore is missing from his voice. Virginia betrays no surprise. Poor soul! She understands too well. "Why?" she says quietly. "I think we are very well as we are." "No," he returns hastily, "we are not! My views have changed on the subject--changed entirely. Marriage is the best thing. It decides your fate. To live as we do is neither one thing nor the other." "You forget," she says, in a tone so calm as to be almost unnatural. "This state has great advantages. There is no tie between us. If either of us tired of the other, there is nothing to hinder our parting, to-morrow--to-night even." He looks at her, speechless with amazement. Her eyes do not flinch from his. "If," she continues, with that terrible calmness,--"if you wanted to marry Miss Constance Devereux; if I wished to marry--let us say, Lord Harford--there is nothing to prevent it except," slowly, "the unwritten law of a faithful heart." Philip Vansittart leans his face between his hands. He cannot find a word to say. He is smitten with remorse, for he knows well enough that she is faithful. But why that allusion to Lord Harford? "What do you mean about Harford?" he asks presently. "He wants me to marry him," replied Virginia quietly. "He asked me four years ago; he asked me again the day before yesterday." She draws a letter from her pocket, and scans Philip's face as he reads it. When he has finished, he looks at her. She understands his glance but too well. There is an only half-suppressed eagerness--a half-suppressed hope in it. "What shall I do?" she says, so quietly that it deceives him. "There is no better fellow living than Harford," he says cordially. "If you thought you could be happy with him; if--" He stops abruptly. There is a look of such terrible agony in Virginia's face that he starts up and takes her hand. "No, no," he cries. "Let it be as I said. Let us marry each other. It is the only thing to be done." Virginia's ears, sharpened by suffering, catch the dreary tone of the concluding words. * * * * * Next morning, when Philip, according to custom, went to Virginia's room, he found her asleep. From that sleep she never woke. One more of those unfortunate cases of an overdose of chloral. The deceased lady had suffered much from sleeplessness, and always kept the fatal drug by her bedside. The church gave its blessing, and society smiled when that heretic and sceptic Mr. Vansittart led his charming girl-bride to the altar a few months later. It was whispered that there had been an--entanglement, but that was all hushed up now, and he had become a respectable member of society. MR. JOSIAH SMITH'S BALLOON JOURNEY.