scheme of all should be successful; nor what a weary life of failure, and disappointment, and self-disgust, poor Millicent had gone through. Mary could not have believed in any extenuating circumstances. There could be no trace of womanly or natural feeling in the creature who thus came, visibly without the shadow of a pretext, to lie in wait for Ben. She thought her heart would have stopped beating when the dog-cart dashed in at the gates. But her outward aspect was one of such fixed composure that Ben, as he made a spring out of it, almost without leaving the horse time to stop, and caught his cousin precipitately in his arms, felt as if he had committed a social sin in his sudden kiss. ‘I am sure I beg your pardon, Mary,’ he cried, half laughing, half horrified. ‘I forgot I had been away so long, and you had grown out of acquaintance with me; but still you need not look so shocked.’ ‘I am not shocked,’ said Mary, who had scarcely voice enough to speak; ‘it was only the surprise; and, good heavens, what a beard!’ ‘Well, yes, it is an alarming article, I suppose,’ said Ben, looking down with complacency upon one of those natural ornaments which men prize so much. It was an altogether new decoration. And it seemed to Mary that he had grown even taller while he had been away, so changed was the development of the mature man,--brown, bearded, and powerful,--from that of Ben, the young man of fashion, who had been as dainty in all his ways as herself. His frame had broadened, expanded, and acquired that air of activity and force which only occupation gives. His eye had no languor in it, but was full of active observation and thought. The change was so great that it took away her breath, and after the second glance Mary was not quite sure that it was so very satisfactory. He was more like the Rentons than he had been,--his lip curled a little at the corner, as if it might sneer on occasion. His manner had grown a little peremptory. ‘Where is my mother?’ he said immediately, without giving even a spare moment to look again at the companion of his childhood;--‘in her own room?’