in far countries on the ground of a common speech a delightful sympathy of race. This sympathy may sometimes be qualified by the seen limits of his apprehension, but it almost revels as such horizons recede. We shall see quickly enough how accurate a measure it might have taken of Nicholas Dormer. There was food for suspicion perhaps in the wandering blankness that sat at moments in his eyes, as if he had no attention at all, not the least in the world, at his command; but it is no more than just to add without delay that this discouraging symptom was known among those who liked him by the indulgent name of dreaminess. By his mother and sisters, for instance, his dreaminess was constantly noted. He is the more welcome to the benefit of such an interpretation as there is always held to be something engaging in the combination of the muscular and the musing, the mildness of strength. After some time, an interval during which these good people might have appeared to have come, individually, to the Palais de l'Industrie much less to see the works of art than to think over their domestic affairs, the young man, rousing himself from his reverie, addressed one of the girls. "I say, Biddy, why should we sit moping here all day? Come and take a turn about with me." His younger sister, while he got up, leaned forward a little, looking round her, but she gave for the moment no further sign of complying with his invitation. "Where shall we find you, then, if Peter comes?" asked the other Miss Dormer, making no movement at all. "I daresay Peter won't come. He'll leave us here to cool our heels." "Oh Nick dear!" Biddy exclaimed in a small sweet voice of protest. It was plainly her theory that Peter would come, and even a little her fond fear that she might miss him should she quit that spot. "We shall come back in a quarter of an hour. Really I must look at these things," Nick declared, turning his face to a marble group which stood near them on the right--a man with the skin of a beast round his loins, tussling with a naked woman in some primitive effort of courtship or capture. Lady Agnes followed the direction of her son's eyes and then observed: "Everything seems very dreadful. I should think Biddy had better sit still. Hasn't she seen enough horrors up above?" "I daresay that if Peter comes Julia'll be with him," the elder girl remarked irrelevantly. "Well then he can take Julia about. That will be more proper," said Lady Agnes. "Mother dear, she doesn't care a rap about art. It's a fearful bore looking at fine things with Julia," Nick returned. "Won't you go with him, Grace?"--and Biddy appealed to her sister. "I think she has awfully good taste!" Grace exclaimed, not answering this inquiry. "_Don't_ say nasty things about her!" Lady Agnes broke out solemnly to her son after resting her eyes on him a moment with an air of reluctant reprobation.