be there. Do you know, I have often | vehemence, "you could save my soul thought of you? And you see I did if you would tell me what it is you do know you again in spite of believe !"

what was it? your magic ring." She laughed more naturally now; she was regaining her self-control.

"Your memory is marvellous."

"Oh no; it isn't that. I have no memory at all. But you were so queer, you know. I never met anybody in the least like you."

The words gave the plain young woman an unpleasant sense of responsibility. "Are you quite sure," she said, a little awkwardly, "that this is not the dream? - the flowers, I mean, and the callers, and the fire-and the other the reality?"

"Do you think it is?"

"I am inclined to think that the

A look of genuine distress came over the little woman's face. "Believe, believe!" she said. 66 Why do you talk so much about belief? I believe it is worth while trying to be good."

Why? Is there another life after this? Is there a heaven?" "Here at least — yes." "And a hell?"

"Yes."

-

"Where we shall burn? - really burn " she put her pretty finger close to the bar of the grate -"to hurt?"

"It would be a poor lookout for us if it did not hurt; but some people never seem to feel it." The girl laughed. you mean," she said.

other is at least nearer the reality than
this."
"But you don't really believe all he clergyman say that.
was saying?"

"I didn't hear it all."

"I know. I saw you come. Are you engaged to that mau ?"

The young woman found it difficult to follow these conversational gymnastics. "No," she said shortly. "Nor going to be ?" "Nor going to be."

"I never feel quite sure that you haven't a trump card up your sleeve all the time."

"I know what "I once heard a You mean that I

am in hell now."
"God forbid ! I don't need to go
beyond my own experience.
never cared to stay in hell long.”

But I

"I don't know. One might be in a worse place. I am afraid," she went on, with a weird laugh, "I am one of the people who are not sensitive enough to feel it !"

The little woman shuddered. "Don't!" she said.

"Why not?" The splendid figure drew itself up defiantly. "Why should

There was no answer.
"Are you still as contented as I talk gammon to you?
in your grey little world
temptation ?"

ever?"

"I think so. Life seems sadder than it did; but, when all is said, it is very beautiful.”

The girl sighed impatiently. "I wish I could see where the beauty comes in!"

66

Well, in that scene on the beach, for instance, the intense earnestness, the magnetic human influence, the longing for better things."

"And yet you don't believe what the man said?"

"At least he made me wish myself a better woman."

The girl sprang to her feet, and paced up and down the room.

6

66

What do you know of life, of

More, perhaps, than you think." "Bah! It is easy for you to talk of trying to be good! Were you ever in love? Were you ever married? Were you ever ." she hesitated, looked straight into the honest eyes, and then continued boldly, "Were you ever married and then in love?"

For the first time the young woman's eye fell on the plain gold circlet which had replaced some of the flashing gems. "I did not know," she said weakly, "that you were married. I remember - that night-you told me there was a difference between you and the man

"I believe," she said, with intense you cared for."

But the tide had turned.

The girl looked annoyed and nonplussed for a moment, then broke into a laugh.

"Come in, colonel!" she cried. "Here is a young lady who is anxious to make your acquaintance."

Without another word or glance the little woman slipped past the waiting figure in the hall, and made her way out into the night.

III.

"WELL, this is a change from smoky London lodgings!"

"If only it had lasted! God ! if only the difference had lasted! His coldness piqued me, don't you know ?-he had been so much at my feet; and I was so determined to win him back that I don't think I realized how much I had begun to think of somebody else. But somebody else wasn't - wasn't 'free,' as the library books say; and — and it was time I was getting settled. I had lost money in gold shares, and my life was all in a muddle, and I hadn't the society I was entitled to at all. So I married- and then I knew that I loathed him and somebody else's wife died. If there is a God at all, it just seemed as if he was laughing at me! What was the use of making me pretty, and giving me money to buy nice clothes, if I am never to be happy, -never, never to have what I want? And my youth is slipping away, and nobody seems able to tell me whether there is another world or not. I meet people clever men who ought to know! - who say it is all moonshine; and you would have me grow old and ugly, trying to be good! Do you know" she fell on her knees, and threw her arms across her companion in magnificent abandonment "I almost wish you would tell me there is no other life, for then I could have what I want in this!" "Colonel Whyte, ma'am," said the ments and the emotions. I hope there maid.

6

With a bound the girl sprang to her feet, and raised her hands to her dishevelled hair. "I have kept you an unconscionable time," she said, with a nervous laugh," and no doubt you are longing to get home. It was awfully good of you to come in."

The young woman had flushed as though some one had struck her. "Yes," she said quietly, "it is time I was at home. Good-night."

Before she had reached the threshold, however, the uncomfortable sense of her own responsibility came back upon her.

"Where is your husband?" she said earnestly, laying her hand on her companion's arm. "Who is this man ?"

The plain young woman stood with a friend at the open window of the hotel. A heavy shower had fallen in the afternoon, but now the sun was shining genially, and the subtle, invigorating fragrance of the heather was borne in from the Yorkshire moors.

"We have earned our holiday honestly, haven't we? and we mean to make the most of it. Three whole weeks! For three weeks we are going to bask on the heather, and read Heine, and look up at the blue sky; we will forget that we ever attended a woman's suffrage meeting, or interviewed a celebrity, or described what royalty wore. We have left our moral responsibilities behind, too. It is a duty, a positive duty, to cultivate the senti

will be some pretty gowns at dinner! I hope there will be lots of courses lots-daintily served ! We are grand ladies, Rita, you and I-for three weeks! - and we know how things ought to be done. Do you think we can afford half a bottle of Médoc?"

The plain face looked older than at Llandudno; but the lines that took from its fresh youthfulness were genial, friendly lines, such as endear a face to those who know it.

"Change your gown, dear girl, and don't chatter. The gong will sound in ten minutes."

"Sadly beneath the dignity of a grand lady, isn't it, to dress in ten minutes? Heigho!"

She slipped on an old-fashioned black silk, and went to explore the possi

Dinner was more than half over when the door opened, and a lady and gentleman were ushered up to a small table in the window. Ah, there was no doubt about it now! The plain incessantly.

to come? And yet I don't know. | yourself to pieces at present. Take a These cold, grey moors are admirably little ordinary care, and you will be all in keeping with your philosophy. I right." wonder" she looked up with an arch A fit of coughing was the only ansmile-"I wonder if you are still try-swer. Hastily the beautiful woman ing to be good' ?" lifted her handkerchief to her lips, and in another moment its snowy folds were stained with a crimson drop.

The young woman walked to the window and looked out on the daffodil sky and rich purple heather. "Cold,―grey!" she said. it is all blazing with color!"

"Why,

"Do you see that?" she said quickly. "Yes, and I have often seen it before in people who are well and strong It now. It means that you must rest, and take care of yourself, and get strong."

"And you know the Riviera ! seems to me you carry your own world about with you, and see things that are invisible to ordinary mortals. What was it Jack was quoting last night?

66

"No, no, no!" The auswer came like the clang of a passing bell. "No need to tell me what it means! I have Oh, the dreary, dreary moorland ! seen it all in my mother. I am getting And these long evenings depress me thin"-she slipped the rings from her unspeakably. If you had only heard long white fingers —" and my neck the church bells yesterday! I thought But you never saw my neck in the old they would drive me mad before they days!" she interposed regretfully. “I stopped. I want sunshine real sun-had a dark velvet gown- but there ! shine and roses and blue water! that's past." There was dead silence am making my husband take me away in the room for a few moments, then, the first thing to-morrow; and he has "You could have saved me if you had gone out now to see if there is nothing wished," she said. going on that would pass away the time for an hour or two."

I

"Saved you?

"Oh, not from this! This is nothing. Do you remember that night on the beach? I was screwing up my courage to go and speak to that man; but I looked at you, and saw you did not believe a word of it."

"Oh!" cried the little woman, with a sharp cry as of physical pain. "Surely I never said that!"

"No, you did not say it; but you looked as if you had found something better, don't you know? And your something better was too good for me." "But, dear child, it is not too late. If I were you" - she threw back her head-"I would make a fresh start now this very minute!"

"I be

The other nodded slowly. lieve you would, even if you were dying," she said. "Oh, I know you have got hold of some thread in life, something that is worth having; but you don't seem able to put it into words much. Well, well, it doesn't matter! I don't suppose my soul was worth saving-and, I dare say, it was all bunkum after all. When you come to

think of it, nobody ever has come back. Is that you, Jack? Come in! Let me introduce you to my friend

She broke off with a laugh less musical than of old. "I declare I don't even know your name? Never mind; we are old friends all the same, I assure you. Well, what luck?"

The new-comer seated himself with a sigh of resignation, and looked at his watch. "There is a revival meeting," he said, "in the conventicle down the way, and a performance of 'Johnny's Mamma' in the Town Hall."

The beautiful lips pouted peevishly. "Johnny's Mamma!' I've seen it a hundred times. Never mind! It will help to pass the time. Good-bye, Miss Smith? I might have known it was Smith! Come along, Jack. We shall be awfully bored, but we'll show the folks a Parisian bonnet for once in their lives!"

From The Fortnightly Review.
ITALIAN DISUNION.

ITALY is united in name it is true, but is, in fact, well-nigh as disunited as before the breach was made in Porta Pia !

All was to be done at one bound. Institutions, which would have been rejected in more sober moments, were adopted, and hence were fated from the very outset to work badly. Italy was to become a great nation, as it were in a day, and outside help was to be rejected for: "Italia farà da sè ! "

they now amount to £1,680), in order to form an army and navy, much too large for the available`resources of the nation, it is but natural that elements, especially where they have been freed against their will, should utterly refuse to be amalgamated.

The desire for union, though the plebiscito purported to represent the wishes of the people, was anything but general. The plebiscito was packed in Rome by people from Piedmont, brought thither by free tickets on the railways. The true Romans, in point of fact, shut themselves up in their houses during the days of the plebiscito; whilst the peasantry of the Romagna and of the south, through being analfabeti or letterless in many cases, and through poverty in others, had no voice in the matter, though they had no desire for a change.

From the very outset all the stir for an united kingdom came from the north. Garibaldi was born in a Paduan cottage, and his expedition of the Mille to Sicily was called the "conquest," whilst the Sicilians were openly sneered at as barbarians! This contemptuous assumption of superiority has been the keynote throughout. Even Crispi, though born in Palermo, has got infected by contact with the hard-headed northerners, who preponderate in the Legislature. The severity with which the rising in Sicily and the sympathetic movings in Naples were met, seems a token of this. A little more leniency, such as was practised shortly after at Poltri, near Bari, where the grant of No account was taken of the widely "domanial lands" to the citizens was differing races and customs; requiring met with such expressions of loyalty as Napoleon I. had recognized, when and gratitude towards the king and he harbored the project of forming two the prefect, would have completely separate States utterly different laws won the Sicilians. In fact, it was and measures. The language was to when returning with mattocks and be all the same, and, as if in silent horns and tambours from tilling the protest, many of the upper classes communal lands en masse, by way of often speak the patois, or, failing that, asserting their rights, which they French. When freedom is thus ushered thought were imperilled, that the in by a desire to mould all on the same people of Caltavuturo were shot down pattern, and to force the square man by the soldiery, and thus opened the iuto the round hole, coupled with series of butcheries. It is the blood enormously increased taxation (on an which was shed during this state of estate which formerly paid £400 taxes, siege, which spared neither women