Blushing energetically at the compliment, she replied in silence, and for a few minutes there was an embarrassing hiatus in the exchange of thought and feeling. Fearing that he had offended her, the duke arose, and striding to the grand piano began to improvise diligently. At that moment there came in through the open window a sound of wheels on the gravel outside. He ceased in the middle of a nocturne and would have left the room, but she restrained him: “It is only my father returning from India,” smiled she; “I shall be so glad to introduce you.” The full horror of the situation burst upon him like a thunderbolt out of a clean sky. “Madam,” he thundered, “your father is dead! He died of the plague in Bombay, and I attended the funeral, although he had cursed me with his last breath. I cannot—cannot meet him!” With those words falling from his white lips he flung himself out of the room. A servant entered and handed Clarisse the visiting card of Mrs. Delahanty. _From “Mary Ann & Co.”_ As they neared each other on the narrow bridge Paul observed that she was profoundly agitated. “Darling,” he said, “please to signify the cause of your perturbation. It is not impossible that I may be able to remove it. You know,” he added, “that I have studied medicine.” She blushed deeply, then turned pale and continued to tremble. He seized her hand and laid two fingers upon her wrist. “The pulse,” he said, “is abnormally frequent and irregular.” With a barely audible expression of disapproval, she withdrew her hand and endeavored to pass him on the narrow footway of the bridge. A misstep precipitated her into the stream, from which with no small difficulty she was taken in a dying condition, a half-mile below. The person that drew her forth from the waters was Paul’s aged uncle. “Tell Paul Dessard,” she said with her last breath, “that I love him, die for him! Tell him how I strove successfully to hide my love from him lest he think me unmaidenly; but it cannot matter now if he know it. Tell him all, I pray you tell him all, and add that in that Better Land whither I go my spirit will await him with impatience, prepared to explain all.” The good old man bent over her, placed his open hand behind his ear and ejaculated: “Hay?” She shook her head with an infinite pathos and suspired. _From “Ideals.”_ Where the grand old Hudson river rolls its floods seaward between the rugged Palisades and the agricultural country of its eastern bank Janey Sewell dwelt in a little vine-covered cottage in one of the most picturesque spots of the latter. Janey was beautiful all day long. Her hair was as dark as the pinion of a crow, and her brown eyes rivaled in lustre the sheen of the sunlight on the bosom of the river. She was also a fine French scholar.