sort--the sort of parasite that preys upon good-looking or talented women. "Dear me! as my aunt says, I am getting quite flowery and didactic. Isn't that something in the teaching or preaching line? I forget which. Harry says I am a journalist spoilt. I don't know about that, but I _should_ like to be a war correspondent. I am afraid there is no opening for a young woman in that line yet--a young woman who isn't clever enough to be a governess, loathes nursing, would assassinate her employer if she was a lady help, but who can walk, ride, drive, play tennis, and shoot fairly. By the way, there's going to be a war in the South Island, isn't it? Couldn't you contrive to be badly wounded? and perhaps--only perhaps--she, 'the fair, the chaste, the inexpressive she,' might come out to nurse you. "Harry says _that's_ a certain cure for--let me see--indecision, the malady of the century as regards young women. I remember being troubled with it myself once. He says I was--whereas now--but I won't inflict my happiness upon you. "What a long letter, to be sure! Never mind the nonsense part of it. That is partly to make you laugh. He advises you, in the elegant language of the day, to 'keep up your pecker,' which he says means _nil desperandum_. I say ditto to Harry, and ask you to believe me, _always_, "Your sincere friend, "ELIZABETH MERIVALE." Massinger put down the letter of his frank and kindly correspondent with feelings of a mixed nature, akin to pleasure, as evidencing an interest in his welfare not all conventional, but, on the other hand, recalling regrets exquisitely painful. These being partially dulled, he had mistakenly concluded that they had no further power to wound. And now, after a comparative cure, when his tastes had been satisfied and his curiosity aroused by the incessant marvels of a fantastic region, he had been recalled to the old land, resonant with the past anguish. The inhabitants of this enchanted isle, with their mingled pride and generosity, chivalrous courage and ferocious cruelty, had aroused his sympathies. There, beyond all, stood the figure of Erena, with her frank, half-childish ways, her countenance at one time irradiated with the joyous abandon of an innocent Bacchante, as she laughed aloud while threading with him the forest paths; at another time with shadowed face and downcast mien, when a presage of future ills caused the light to fade out of her luminous eyes.