the smallest of the three drawing-rooms had been uncovered for their occupation, and here a bright fire and a table laid for dinner looked cheerful and habitable.

"I am so tired, my dear," said Lady Dormer, to whom exertion of any kind was overwhelming; "though I should have been much worse if you had not been with me." Maggie's native kindness and bright alacrity made her a great favourite with indolent elderly people. "Well, Johnson," to the under butler, who was in attendance, "have you all the luggage right, and did you get my fur cloak?"

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Yes, my lady. I was just in time to get it, before the carriages were moved off."

"Any letters ?"

"Yes, my lady," presenting a salver laden with cards and notes. "Just put them here on the writing-table, and pray let us have dinner. Miss Grey and I are quite exhausted."

"Take my arm to your room, Lady Dormer."

"Thank you, my dear. I think there is a letter here for you; we will see, after dinner.

Miss Grey was quite willing to wait till after dinner for her letter or letters. She had written to her cousin to let him know she was to be in town for a week, and also to Mrs. Berry (as she still wished to be called) in case she might be there too; these were her only correspondents.

"Dear me! that is quite fortunate," exclaimed Lady Dormer after dinner, looking up from the note she was reading. "Mr. Flummery can see me to-morrow at twelve. That is the advantage of coming before the rush of the season; a month or two later and I should have had to wait weeks. Don't you think it would be a good plan, Miss Grey, to have your teeth looked at also, now that Flummery is not so busy ?"

"I don't think they want any looking at, thank you," said Maggie smiling.

"It is wiser to have them attended to before they want it.”

"I have a note here from my cousin, Mr. Grey. He proposes coming to see me to-morrow, between ten and eleven, and I wish you would be so good as to tell Johnson to show him into some other room; it will disturb you if he comes in here."

"Oh! the young man who came down to Grantham? No, my dear, you will not disturb me. I shall not leave my room until I go to Flummery, at twelve or a quarter before. You must be content to breakfast alone to-morrow. I don't think there is another room open; by-the-by, I should be so much obliged, Miss Grey, if you would write to Lady Torchester for me; here is her note. Say I am so exhausted by the journey, I really could not write; that I am fortunate in having an appointment with Flummery to-morrow, and when I know

if he wants to see me again, I will fix a day to go and stay with her; and my kind love."

"Just a few lines will do," said her ladyship, and settled herself for a refreshing nap before tea. Maggie set forth her writing materials, and had hardly commenced, when Lady Dormer opened her eyes, and said sleepily, "Will you be so good as to mention that the Rector's Persian cat has four kittens, if she would like one?"

"Yes, Lady Dormer."

"Two of them are white, one grey and one black-or two black and one white, I am really not sure-but perhaps I might remember by the time I see her," and Lady Dormer was wrapped in sleep before the last words were quite complete.

Maggie wrote on, smiling at the oddity of thus writing to the mother of the man who had done his best to induce her to marry him. "I am very fortunate, however," she thought, "to find so many to be kind and pleasant with me; but after all it is a lonely lot, and at best only a tolerable desolation. I wish I could love cousin John-there seems to lie my only chance of a home! but I cannot, and that's the end of it. I wish he was not so imperious and provoking."

The sedate and correct Johnson was removing Miss Grey's breakfast the next morning when cousin John arrived.

"Well, Maggie," he cried, taking both her hands, "this is luck! I never thought I should see you so soon again-let's have a look at you," taking her coolly by the shoulder and turning her round to the window. "Why you don't look half the girl you were a month ago. You're pale and down looking. What have you been doing with yourself, little Mag?" There was genuine hearty kindness in his tone, and Maggie's eyes and voice responded to it instantly.

"Oh! nothing, dear cousin. I have been well and happy, and I am very glad to see you." John seized that favourable moment for an abrupt kiss. "No you aint, you little humbug; you think more of the fine filigree gentlemen you saw at Grantham."

"Do not begin to be disagreeable the moment we meet."

"All right. And now what are you going to do in town?"

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Nothing." She proceeded to explain Miss Grantham's plans, and her consequent freedom.

"Lord!" cried John, "isn't she content with that fine place of her's that she must go into some one else's house ?”

"It does seem strange."

"And this is Miss Grantham's own too," said John looking round.

"Yes, all her own."

Who is she going to marry? I wonder she hasn't picked up a husband before now."

"What a pity you have not an opportunity of trying your chance,” said Maggie, laughing.

"Now don't you be jealous," said John, tenderly.

"Well, John," cried Maggie, still laughing, "I do think you the most conceited man that ever lived. I am sure you believe you have only to ask Miss Grantham and she would accept you."

"Come now, that's a little too strong; but she might do worse." "It is quite enviable," added Maggie, reflectively. "Tell me, do you think it would be convenient to my uncle and Mrs. Grey if I were to pay them a visit for a few days? I am free just now, and I do not know when I may be so again."

"Convenient! Yes, of course it is-it must be," cried John, delighted. "You are a little trump, Mag, after all, to stick to the old folks. Now look here. I tell you I did feel a little uncomfortable about the tall thin chap that sticks on so well to his horse. I didn't like the way he questioned you, and looked at me, the day we met him in the Park. I can't tell why," continued John, puzzled by the strong unaccountable instinct which pressed upon him a dim feeling of danger; "but I did not like him. I suppose you were as thick as thieves down there?" a jerk of the thumb in the supposed direction of Grantham.

Maggie, though infinitely provoked with John, and still more with herself for blushing so causelessly, could not help laughing at her cousin's phraseology, and for pure mischief said, "I spent nearly every evening very agreeably in his society."

"The deuce you did! Now, Mag, remember, I warned you "Don't be ridiculous," interrupted Maggie indignantly. "I need no warning. If you could only see a little of life at Grantham you would understand the impossibility of Mr. Trafford showing me anything but the mere civility due to a lady introduced by his hostess. Do not offend me by such miserable suspicions, or I shall send you away."

"By Jove, Mag, you have learned to do the grand lady in fine style! Never mind, you have the right spirit. Now about going to see the governor. You write, and I'll write. We will go down on Saturday. I can get å bed at the inn, but I must come up on Monday and I'll bring you back. By the way, Fred Banks is down there. I have not had time to write to you since;" and John proceeded to recount the capital arrangement he had made for a partnership between the young medical student and his father, &c., &c., to all which Maggie did "seriously incline," truly interested in the welfare of her kind, oppressed uncle." And, John," she asked hesitatingly, “is Mrs. Grey more cheerful and pleasant with uncle than she used to be?"

"She does not snub him quite so much, if that's what you mean. I have made her feel he has a son at his back as won't stand that.

Wasn't she a tartar to you and me? We were always in the same boat, eh, Mag? Still it was hard to a business-like woman, as she is, to see her money melting away, and a niece of her husband's quartered on her."

"No doubt, no doubt," I must have been a sad burden," said Maggie, with a swelling heart.

"What nonsense," he returned, " neither the governor nor I thought so."

Maggie was silent. She wanted John to go. She felt half afraid of a prolonged interview leading to some painful explanation; and, rough and disagreeable as John was, she could not bear the idea of causing him annoyance. He must ever be her best and oldest friend of bygone times. Nothing could efface the debt of gratitude she owed him.

"If you are going to the City, John, perhaps you will walk with me to Oxford Street. I have some shopping to do."

"Of course I will. I ought to have gone before, but "—with an indescribable wink-" it's not so easy to get away."

"Well do not let me keep you now if you are pressed for time." "Go, put on your bonnet," was John's reply.

"Oh, I have worked you such a smart pair of slippers. I will bring them down.

"Well you are a little brick and no mistake. You did not quite forget me all those agreeable evenings."

"I should be very ungrateful if I ever forgot you, dear cousin." "Look here, Mag, I am going out sooner than I intended. I have settled everything very satisfactorily, and I think I'll be off in April, early in April."

"Indeed," said Maggie looking down, as she thought, whatever John might be, she had no other friend in the world like him. Oh! if she could only love him. "I suppose I ought to be glad of your success, and I am; but I shall be very sorry when you are gone."

"Shall you though, little Mag," cried John with a flash of pleasure beaming out in his eyes and over his face, red hair and all. "Never mind, I am not gone yet, and we'll see." He was determined not to speak till what he considered the right time; but he thought it a suitable moment for an embrace, which Maggie deftly eluded. "There, John, you know I hate to be hugged."

"Faith I ought, by this time," growled John, much disappointed. When Maggie joined him with her bonnet on, not even the peaceoffering she bore, a pair of delicately-worked slippers, brown and yellow leaves on a crimson ground, sufficed to chase the cloud from his brow. He looked on moodily while she put away her little workbox, and rang to let the gravo Johnson know she was going out. "Shall you be in to dinner, 'm?" asked that official.

"Yes, certainly."

"Lady Dormer ordered it at six.”

"Very well, Johnson."

"I suppose that fine friend of yours, Mr. Trafford, will dine here," grumbled John, as the servant left the room.

"No, I should think not," returned Maggie. "I do not think he is in London."

"Yes, he is though. I went to the Reform Club yesterday to see one of our big colonists on business, and I saw him standing on the steps of the Travellers' talking to a couple of swells like himself." "Perhaps he is there. I know nothing about him."

When Maggie had coaxed cousin John into a better temper and bid him good-bye, promising to start for Market Ditton on Saturday by the 12.30 train if she heard favourably from Mrs. Grey, she proceeded to perform her shopping, and then, feeling curiously fearful of returning to P-Square, she took a long solitary walk along Hyde Park and round Kensington Gardens, the old familiar locality where in the bitter bygone days she had so often walked, in attendance on Jemima and Bell. How well she remembered every inch of ground, and the hopeless sadness and depression with which she used to grope around her, in thought, for some way of escape, and found none! Then she was the bond slave of that fearful tyrant, her aunt, to whose minute and degrading despotism she could not look back without a shudder; now she was the companion, nay, the friend, of the heiress of Grantham; raised infinitely above her original lowly state, and not likely again to sink into it, and that too through no exertion or special merit of her own. How thankful and happy she ought to be! And was she not? Yes, of course she was; if she still felt a painful unsatisfied craving in her heart, it was only a reprehensible discontent, that she must resist and subdue; she must have faith in the future, and strive to have her sources of happiness in her own heart and mind:-grand resolutions if they could be fulfilled, but wholesome, as an astringent, even in an attempt at fulfilment. So, strengthened by her self-communing, Maggie made her way back to P-Square, and found that Lady Dormer had only just returned.

"Mr. Trafford called shortly after you went out, 'm," said Johnson, as Maggie passed through the hall. "He asked how long you and her ladyship would be in town. I told him you had just gone out with Mr. Grey."

Maggie told herself it was well she had not seen him: She could not forget the sense of betrayal she had felt; and then he was evidently a source of jealousy to Miss Grantham, to whose friendship she looked for whatever brightness her future might possess. All the weakness and folly which eddied round his idea must be swept away and utterly renounced.