look after Sarah," cries she, laughing resonantly. "Judging by what I saw to-day, you would not have been far out!"

Belinda's cheek, hot with shame a moment ago, grows pale. The impulse to flee leaves her; a contrary impulse, such as draws the palpitating canary to the cage-wires and the cat's claws, roots her to the spot.

"What do you mean?" she asks faltering. "Was she "-lowering her voice, so as not to be heard by anyone else, hating herself for descending to such a question, and trying to carry it off with a spurious merriment" was she-ha! ha!-flirting very nefariously with them all?”

"With them all!" repeats the other in loud irony. "Pooh! that would have been nothing; there is always safety in numbers. The others were nowhere. Rivers had it all his own way!"

This is what Belinda has been angling to hear, and now she has heard it. It is not then the figment of her disordered

fancy; it must indeed be obvious to have hit the eyes of so coarse and casual an observer as Miss Watson. Nor does the recollection of how much she had profited by her former prompt action upon information derived from the same source recur to her memory.

"He is a sad dog, is David, is not he?" cries the other jocosely; and then she bumps off again in her punt, bawling, as she floats down the stream, to her oppressed and silent boatman.

"Le monde n'est jamais divisé pour moi, qu'en deux régions; celle où elle est, et celle où elle n'est pas."

A

WEEK-a whole week-only a week! There are two opposing ways of looking at this or any other period of time; one of impatient marvelling at its immensity, the other of gasping consternation at its shortness.

It

is needless to ask which of these two moods is Mrs. Forth's, with regard to Rivers' holiday. Only a week! How many times, during its seven days, does she, with that all-answering phrase, stop conscience's mouth? Of what use for only

a week to practise self-government? of what use for only a week to question, with too nice a closeness, her heart as to the cause of its leapings and sinkings? her temper as to the reason of its endless variabilities? her thoughts as to the path they take? or her imagination as to the length of its tether? Only a week! Too short a space to do anything in but enjoy -to enjoy to enjoy! With eyes resolutely shut to the cost-to the heavy score running up, that at the week's end will have to be paid. Oh, not too short to enjoy in!

It is not all enjoyment. Already, before two days of it are past, it has been marred by irksome labour, by balked expectation, by unreasoning jealousy-a jealousy whose unreason she herself, in her calmer moments, recognises; which in Rivers' presence dies of famine, having less than nothing to live upon, but, once out of the reassurance of his eyes, revives and bulks big again.

Rare indeed is it for one successful

excursion not to engender another or several more. The weather holds. The Professor's heart or liver-it is never quite clearly understood which of these organs is affected—has recovered its balance, upset by his wife's Walpurgis day.

Belinda has three consecutive afternoons of freedom-three afternoons of being swiftly pulled down the river, that brave water-way alive with vigorous youthhood— of gaily drinking tea and sucking cider-cup through straws at little river-side alehouses-of picking the freakish fritillaries. in the meadows-of being towed back in dreamy languor at night-fall or star-rise— of loitering homewards with hands full of flag-flowers-of parting at the garden gate.

To that parting there comes, each evening, a deeper deadlier sweetness. It does not lie in words. There is not one word that, did the Professor protrude his velvetcapped head from his bower window, need be withdrawn.