It was in the workmen’s dinner-hour. They had the place to themselves. He took her hand and held it in a firm, warm clasp. ‘There was a door,’ he said; ‘you were quite right. It was just where we found you in a huddled-up heap on the floor. But it was locked, and the bookcases covered it. You can walk through now.’ They went into the inner room. There was the open door as she had seen it. But what desolation beyond! The long room was bare of furniture; it had evidently been shut up for a long time, for it smelt mouldily. The light came in coldly through the long windows, curtained only with cobwebs. There was dust everywhere, in drifts on the floor, deadening the sounds of their feet. It had dimmed the shepherds and shepherdesses of the painted walls and the flower-wreaths and Cupids of the ceiling. ‘They used to meet here,’ he said in a low voice. ‘When he was “on his keeping.” He had some secret way of entry known only to them and one or two faithful servants. When the scent was hot she hid him here, and not even the Duke or Duchess knew. He used to read in these rooms when the house was asleep. There was a man here before me who swore he saw him at night searching the shelves for some book he wanted. It is the influence, of course. Such as he leaves the influence behind him long after he is dead.’ She was very pale. As they turned and went out of the room quietly, she said, nodding her head towards the fine new building which was going up in the courtyard: ‘After all, I do not think I shall ever read there. I doubt that I am cut out for scholarship. I do not feel that I could go back to “Middle Irish.” The studentship will have to go.’ ‘No?’ he said, with a lifting of his handsome eyebrows. ‘After all, a married woman will not have much time for scholarship—of so difficult a kind.’ ‘I suppose not,’ she said, as they stepped out into the open air. ‘Perhaps—after all—I worked too hard. Women have that way—have they not? I am not surprised I ... broke down.’ Then she added something quite irrelevant: ‘I wonder,’ she said, ‘if poor Miss Brooke ever saw them together. When she spoke—it was only of _him_. Could she have seen them—as I did?’ KATHARINE TYNAN. _MY FIRST WEEK IN FLANDERS._ BY LIEUT. THE HON. W. WATSON-ARMSTRONG.