turret. The ladder by which he had escaped still stood within it, and beside the ladder he beheld the dim outline of a woman, in a meditative attitude, holding his handkerchief in her hand. Somerset felt himself an intruder, and softly withdrew. When he had reached the ground, he looked up. A girlish form was standing at the top of the tower looking over the parapet upon him-possibly not seeing him, for it was dark on the lawn. It was either Miss De Stancy or Paula: one of them had gone there alone for his handkerchief, and had remained awhile, pondering on his escape. But which? "If I were not a faint-heart, I should run all risk and wave my hat or kiss my hand to her, whoever she is," he thought. But he was faint-hearted in the circumstances, and did not do either, feeling that, if it were Paula, her acquaintance was too precious a thing to be trifled with, even by an act which would easily have borne the interpretation of playful gallantry. "I am much obliged to you.” "Oh no-that's not necessary. I went up last night to see where the accident happened, and there I found it. When you came up, were you in search of it, or did you want me?" " he thought. "I "Then she saw me,' went for the handkerchief only; I was not aware that you were there," he answered, simply. It could hardly be doubted that she was quite unconscious of any sentimental meaning which might have been attached to her words, "Did you want me?" and he involuntarily sighed. It was very soft, but she might have heard him, for there was great interest in her voice as she continued, "And then you saw me and went back?" "I did not know it was you; I saw that some lady was there, and I would not disturb her. I wondered all the evening if it were you." Paula blushed to a mild degree, and hastened to explain. "We understood that you would stay to dinner, and as you did not come in, we wondered where you were. That made me think of your accident, and after dinner I went up to the place where it happened." So he lingered about silently in the shades, and then thought of strolling to his rooms at Markton. Just at leaving, as he passed under the inhabited wing, whence one or two lights now blinked, he heard a piano, and a voice singing "The Somerset almost wished she had not exMistletoe Bough." The song had proba-plained so lucidly; he would have prebly been suggested to the romantic fancy ferred to muse on her motive in going of the singer by her visit to the scene of there as on some sweet mystery. his captivity. CHAPTER XII. THE identity of the lady whom he had seen on the tower, and afterward heard singing, was established the next day. "I have been thinking," said Paula, on meeting him, "that you may require a studio on the premises. If so, the one I showed you yesterday as suitable for such a purpose is at your service. If I employ Mr. Havill to compete with you, I will offer him a similar one." Somerset did not decline; and when they had discussed further arrangements, she added, "In the same room you will find the handkerchief that was left on the tower." "Ah, I saw that it was gone. body brought it down?" And now followed the exciting days to which his position as her architect, or, at worst, as one of her two architects, naturally led. His anticipations were for once surpassed by the reality. Perhaps Somerset's inherent unfitness for a professional life under ordinary circumstances was only proved by his great zest for it now. Had he been in regular practice, with numerous other clients, instead of having made a start with this one, he merely would have totally neglected their business in his exclusive attention to Paula's. The idea of a competition between Somerset and Havill had been highly approved by Paula's solicitor, but she would not assent to it as yet, seeming quite vexed that Somerset should not have taken the good the gods provided, without questioning her justice to Havill. The room she Some- had offered him was prepared as a studio. Drawing-boards and Whatman's paper were sent for, and in a few days Somerset began serious labor. His first requirement was a clerk or two, to do the drudg “I did,” she quietly remarked, looking up for a second from under her shady hat brim. ery of measuring and figuring; but for the present he preferred to sketch alone. Sometimes, in measuring the outworks of the castle, he ran against Havill strolling about with no apparent object, who bestowed on him an envious nod, and passed by. "I hope you will not roughly make your sketches," she said, looking in upon him one day, with serio-playfulness, as he sat in the room which had been lent him, "and then go away to your studio in London, and think of your other buildings and forget mine. I am in haste to begin, and wish you not to neglect me." I have no other building to think of," said Somerset, rising and placing a chair for her. "I had not begun practice, as you may know. I have nothing else in hand but your castle." "I suppose I ought not to say I am glad of it; but it is an advantage to have an architect all to one's self. The architect whom I at first thought of told me, before I knew you, that if I placed the castle in his hands, he would undertake no other commission till its completion." "I agree to the same," said Somerset. "I don't wish to bind you," she returned. "But I hinder you now-do pray go on without reference to me. When will there be some drawing for me to see?" "I will take care that it shall be soon." He had a metallic tape in his hand, and went out of the room to take some dimension in the corridor. As the assistant for whom he had advertised had not arrived, he attempted to fix the end of the tape by sticking his penknife through the ring into the wall. Paula looked on at a distance. "I will hold it," she said, after watching in silence for some time, and seeing his difficulty. his sketch-book, while he marked down the lines just acquired. "You said, the other day," she observed, "that early Gothic-work might be known by the under-cutting, or something to that effect. I have looked in Rickman and the Oxford Glossary, but I can not quite understand what you meant." It was only too evident to her lover, from the way in which she turned to him, that she had looked in Rickman and the Glossary, and was thinking of nothing in the world but of the subject of her inquiry. "I can show you, by actual example, if you will come to the chapel," he returned, hesitatingly. "Don't go on purpose to show me. When you are there on your own account, I will come in." "I shall be there in half an hour." "Very well," said Paula. She looked out of a window, and, seeing Miss De Stancy on the terrace, left him. Somerset stood thinking of what he had said. He had no occasion whatever to go into the chapel of the castle that day. He had been tempted by her words to say he would be there, and "half an hour" had come to his lips almost without his knowledge. This flirtation—if it were not anything more serious-was growing tender. What had passed between them amounted to an appointment; they were going to meet in the most solitary chamber of the whole solitary pile. Could it be that Paula had well considered this in replying with her passive "Very well"? Probably not. She might think of it between now and then, and might not come. Somerset proceeded to the chapel, and waited. With the progress of the seconds toward the half-hour, he began to She went to the required corner, and discover that a wild and breathless adoraheld the end in its place. She had taken tion of this girl had risen within him. it the wrong way, and Somerset went Yet so imaginative was his passion that over and placed it properly in her fingers, he hardly knew a single feature of her carefully avoiding to touch them. He countenance well enough to remember it did this without speaking; he had in- in her absence. The meditative judgstinctively discovered as one of her pe- ment of things and men which had been culiarities that she did not care to be spok- his habit up to the moment of seeing her en to on these occasions. She obedient- in the Baptist chapel seemed to have left ly raised her hand to the corner again, him—nothing remained but a distracting and stood till he had finished, when she wish to be always near her, and it was absently murmured, "Is that all ?" quite with dismay that he recognized what immense importance he was attaching to the question whether she would Without further speech, she looked at keep the trifling engagement or not. "That is all," said Somerset. Thank you." The chapel of Stancy Castle was a silent place, heaped up in corners with a lumber of old panels, frame-work, and broken colored glass. Here no clock could be heard beating out the hours of the day; here no voice of priest or deacon had for generations uttered the daily service denoting how the year rolls on. The stagnation of the spot was sufficient to draw Somerset's thoughts for a moment from the subject which absorbed them, and he said to himself, "So, too, will time triumph over all this fervor within me. The sombre mood quite vanished when, lifting his eyes from the floor, on which his foot had been tapping nervously, he saw Paula standing at the other end. It was not so pleasant when he also saw that Mrs. Goodman accompanied her. The latter lady, however, obligingly remained where she was resting, while Paula came forward, and, as usual, paused on a half-smile without speaking. dared now. not let such an accident happen And yet surely she saw the situation! Was the inscrutable seriousness with which she applied herself to his lesson a mockery? There was such a bottomless depth in her seductive eyes that it was absolutely impossible to guess truly. Let it be that destiny alone had ruled that their hands should be together a second time. All rumination was cut short by an impulse. He gently seized her forefinger between his own finger and thumb, and drew it along the hollow, saying, "That is the curve I mean.” Somerset's hand was hot and trembling; Paula's, on the contrary, was cool and soft as an infant's. "Now the arch-mould," continued he. "There the depth of that cavity is tremendous, and it is not geometrical, as in later work." He drew her unresisting fingers from the capital to the arch, and "It is in this little arcade that the ex- laid them in the little trench as before. ample occurs," said Somerset. 66 She allowed them to rest quietly there Oh yes," she answered, turning to till he relinquished them. "Thank you," look at it. she then said, softly, withdrawing her hand, brushing the dust from her fingertips, and putting on her glove, to do which she turned a little aside, her glance falling to the ground. "Early piers, capitals, and mouldings generally alternate with deep hollows, so as to form strong shadows. Now look under the abacus of this capital; you will find the stone hollowed out wonderfully; and also in this arch-mould. It is often difficult to understand how it could be done without cracking off the stone. The difference between this and late work can be felt by the hand even better than it can be seen." He suited the action to the word, and placed his hand in the hollow. She listened attentively, then stretched up her own hand to test the cutting as he had done; she was not quite tall enough; she would step upon this piece of wood. Having done so, she tried again, and succeeded in putting her finger on the spot. No; she could not understand it through her glove even now. She pulled off her glove, and then, when her hand rested in the stone channel, her eyes became abstracted in an intent effort at realization, the ideas derived through her hand passing into her face. "No, I am not sure now," she complained. Somerset placed his own hand in the cavity. Now their two hands were close together again. They had been close together half an hour earlier, and he had sedulously avoided touching hers. Her imperception of his feeling was the very sublimity of maiden innocence, if it were real; if not, well, the coquetry was no great sin. But he would not think of it as pretense or flirtation; the divine calmness of her beauty, in the young man's eye, was stained by such commonplace suppositions. "Mr. Somerset, will you allow me to have the Greek court I mentioned ?" she asked, tentatively, after a long break in their discourse, as she scanned the green stones along the base of the arcade, with a conjectural countenance as to his reply. "Will your own feeling for the genius of the place allow you?" "I am not a mediævalist: I am an eclectic." "You don't dislike your own house on that account?" "I did at first-I don't so much now. .I should love it, and adore every stone, and think feudalism the only true romance of life, if—” What?" "If I were a De Stancy, and the castle the long home of my forefathers." Somerset was a little surprised at the 66 avowal: the minister's words on the effects of her new environment recurred to his mind. "Miss De Stancy doesn't think so," he said. "She cares nothing about those things.' Paula now turned to him: hitherto her remarks had been sparingly spoken, her eyes being directed elsewhere. 'Yes, that is very strange, is it not?" she said. "But it is owing to the joyous freshness of her nature, which precludes her from dwelling on the past—indeed, the past is no more to her than it is to a sparrow or robin. She is scarcely an instance of the wearing out of old families, for a younger mental constitution than hers I never knew." "Unless that very simplicity represents the second childhood of her line, rather than her own exclusive character.' Paula shook her head. "In spite of the Greek court, she is more Greek than I." "You represent science rather than art, perhaps." "How?" she asked, quickly, glancing from under her hat, without moving her head quite far enough for direct vision. "I mean," he answered, quietly-for though he loved Paula, he was not so much in awe of her as to shirk honest statements—“I mean that you represent the march of mind-the steam-ship, and the railway, and the thoughts that shake mankind." She weighed his words, and said, slowly: "Ah, yes: you allude to my father. My father was a great man; but I am more and more forgetting his greatness: that kind of greatness is what a woman can never truly enter into. I am less and less his daughter every day that goes by.' She walked away a few steps to rejoin the excellent Mrs. Goodman, who, as Somerset still perceived, was waiting for Paula at the discreetest of distances in the shadows at the further end of the building. Surely Paula's voice had faltered, and she had turned to hide a tear: were he sure of that, the ambiguous manner, which he could not unriddle, would have no sinister mocking meaning in it, but would be the spontaneous peculiarity of her nature. She came back again. "Did you know that my father made half the railways in Europe, including that one over there?" she said, waving her little gloved hand in the direction whence low rumbles were occasionally heard during the day. "Yes." "How did you know?" "Miss De Stancy told me a little; and I then found his name and doings were quite familiar to me." Curiously enough, or perhaps naturally, since it was a main line of railway, with his words there came through the broken windows the murmur of a train in the distance, sounding clearer and more clear. It was nothing to listen to, yet they both listened, till the increasing noise suddenly broke off into dead silence. "It has gone into the tunnel," said Paula. "Have you seen the tunnel my father made? The curves are said to be a triumph of science. There is nothing else like it in this part of England. 66 There is not: I have heard so. But I have not seen it." "Do you think it a thing more to be proud of that one's father should have made a great tunnel and railway like that, than that one's remote ancestor should have built a great castle like this?" What could Somerset say? It would have required a casuist to decide whether his answer should depend upon his con viction, or upon the family ties of such a questioner. His own family had been rather of the high old-fashioned sort; he himself was rather an artist than a man of science; and had his interrogator been a De Stancy, there is not much doubt about the answer that would have risen spontaneously to his lips. "From a modern point of view, railways are, no doubt, things more to be proud of than castles," he said, "though perhaps I myself, from mere association, should decide in favor of the ancestor who built the castle." serious anxiety that Somerset threw into his observation, as if nothing but honest truth were available, was more than the circumstance required. But she herself was in such a thoughtful mood that mere politeness without conviction would, after all, hardly have met the case. "To design great engineering works," he added, musingly, and without the least eye to the disparagement of her parent, quires no doubt a leading mind. But to execute them requires, of course, only a following mind." แ The re His reply troubled her; and there was a distinct reproach conveyed by her slight movement toward Mrs. Goodman. He saw it, and was grieved that he should have uttered it. "I am going to walk over and inspect that famous tunnel of your father's," he added, gently. "It will be a pleasant study for this afternoon." She went away. "I am no man of the world," he thought. "I am a fool. I shall not win her respect; much less her love!" CHAPTER XIII. SOMERSET did not forget what he had planned, and when lunch was over, he walked away through the trees. The tunnel was more difficult of discovery than he had anticipated, and it was only after considerable winding among green lanes, whose deep ruts were like cañons of Colorado in miniature, that he reached the slope in the distant upland where the tunnel began. A road stretched over its crest, and thence along one side of the railway cutting. He there unexpectedly saw standing Miss Power's carriage; and on drawing nearer he found it to contain Paula herself, Miss De Stancy, and Mrs. Goodman. "How singular!" exclaimed Miss De Stancy, gayly. "It is most natural," said Paula, quietly. "In the morning two people discuss a feature in the landscape, and in the afternoon each has a desire to see it from what the other has said of it. Therefore they meet." Now Paula had distinctly heard Somerset declare that he was going to walk there; how, then, could she say this so coolly? It was with a pang at his heart that he returned to his old thought of her being possibly a finished coquette and dissembler. Whatever she might be, she was not a creature starched very stiffly by Puritanism. Somerset looked down on the mouth of the tunnel. The absurdity of the popular commonplace that science, steam, and travel must always be unromantic and hideous, was proved on the spot. On either slope of the deep cutting, green with long grass, grew drooping young trees of ash, beech, and other flexible varieties, their foliage almost concealing the actual railway which ran along the bottom, its thin steel rails gleaming like silver threads in the depths. The vertical front of the tunnel, faced with brick that had once been red, was now weather-stained, lich ened, and mossed over in harmonious hues of rusty browns, pearly grays, and neutral greens, at the very base appearing a little blue-black spot like a mousehole-the tunnel's mouth. The carriage was drawn up quite close to the wood railing, and Paula was looking down at the same time with him; but she was so reserved and undecipherable that he made no remark to her. Mrs. Goodman broke the silence by saying, "If it were not a railway, we should call it a lovely dell." Somerset agreed with her, adding that it was so charming that he felt inclined to go down. "If you do, perhaps Miss Power will order you up again, as a trespasser," said Charlotte De Stancy. "You are one of the largest share-holders in the railway, are you not, Paula ?" Miss Power did not reply. "I suppose, as the road is partly yours, you might walk all the way to London along the rails, if you wished, might you not, dear?" Charlotte continued. Paula smiled, and said, “No, of course not." Somerset, feeling himself superfluous, raised his hat to his companions as if he meant not to see them again for a while, and began to descend by some steps cut in the earth, when Miss De Stancy asked Mrs. Goodman to accompany her to a barrow over the top of the tunnel; and they left the carriage, Paula remaining alone. Down Somerset plunged through the long grass, bushes, late summer flowers, moths, and caterpillars, vexed with himself that he had come there, since Paula was so inscrutable, and humming the notes of some song he did not know. The tunnel that had seemed so small from the surface was a vast archway when he reached its mouth, which emitted, as a contrast to the sultry heat on the slopes of the cutting, a cool breeze, that had travelled a mile underground from the other end. Far away in the darkness of this silent subterranean corridor he could see that other end as a mere speck of light. When he had conscientiously admired the construction of the massive archivault, and the majesty of its nude ungarnished walls, he looked up the slope at the carriage; it was so small to the eye that it might have been made for a performance by canaries, Paula's face being still smaller, as she leaned back in her |