no use weeping where tears stood for so little, as it seemed they did with this sharp lady.

Miss Cawthorne reflected for one moment, bit her thin lips, contracted her dark brows, and her resolution was formed, Her bonnet and shawl were then put on, and she walked home with Mrs. More, for this conversation had taken place at the rectory.

Few words passed between the two ladies as they went, for they had only one subject in common, and that was not of a nature to be discussed in a shady lane, about the close of day. "Perhaps," said Miss Cawthorne, "I shall find the man himself at the cottage?"

"No," replied Mrs. More, "I don't think you will; for I heard him tell my daughter he was going to dine with a gentleman in the neighbourhood, and could not see her to-day. Why he ever was permitted to see her so often, I am sure I cannot tell. There seems very little in the young man, to my fancy-very little indeed."

"You don't know how pleasant he can make himself," observed her companion; for she herself had shown no very marked distaste for the conversation of Arthur Grahame.

But they had reached the garden wall of Lowbrooke Cottage when this remark was made, and it was therefore high time to drop the name of one who had already furnished so fruitful a theme for gossip's story. It seemed, in short, as if the whole village had sometimes nothing else to do than discuss what Arthur Grahame was about for the present, and intending to do for the future. The very fact of Ella and her companion, as Alice Greyburne was generally called, being the only parties who were determinedly silent on the subject, made it only talked about the more. So true it is, that a mysterious silence reveals more in the long run than is revealed by a habit of frank disclosure; and hence, from the same cause, uncommunicable people who determine that their affairs shall not be discussed by common lips, nor penetrated into by vulgar curiosity, are just the very persons who are the most talked about,

both in themselves, and their transactions. Unfortunately too, for them, they are the persons most egregiously misunderstood. Had Ella set about deliberately to plan for herself any mode of conduct likely to make her the subject of universal curiosity, she could not have chosen better than to make a mystery of Arthur Grahame's visits to her house, and of his affairs, and prospects generally. The same restriction being laid upon her companion, the silence being observed by Alice Greyburne, only increased the general curiosity, and confirmed the belief that there was something to conceal.

Lillie Cawthorne believes she has got hold of that something; and she now sits like a person whose mind is big with interest, waiting in a little apartment, seldom occupied at that hour of the day-waiting for the lady of the house to favour her with a private interview.

Ella came quickly, looking smiling, bland, and gentle, but yet full of curiosity, for she wondered what could be the cause of such a visit at such an hour.

"She is indeed a beautiful woman," said Lillie Cawthorne to herself, as Ella entered the room. And well she might say this, for time, who, in passing over both their heads, had left her own face and figure every year a little more spare, harsh, and unlovely, seemed thus far to have cast only heightened beauty over the face and form of her old school companion. In this respect, time had dealt very unfairly by them, for Ella began life so rich in all that makes a woman lovely, that she could well have afforded to lose a little; while on the other hand, her old school rival had little indeed of loveliness that she could spare. But time is sometimes more fair in his dealings than a mere outside view of things would lead us to suppose. There is sometimes a kind of inner loveliness with which the outer does not always keep pace. We shall see whether the balance was not better adjusted when these charms are taken into account. Poor Ella seems not to have advanced much here. Happy will it be for Lillie Cawthorne, if her heart has been gaining what youth in general loses by the touch of time.

Miss Cawthorne was seldom long in entering upon any business in which she engaged. Ella was scarcely seated beside her, had scarcely uttered the usual expressions of common-place civility, when she said in rather an abrupt manner, "There is a little matter of business on which I wish to speak with you, or I would not have come at so unseasonable an hour."

"Indeed!" said Ella. "I shall be very happy, I am sure, if there is anything in which I can serve you."

"Serve me!" exclaimed Miss Cawthorne. "Oh, dear! I don't want any body to serve me. I am one of those people who can always manage to serve myself."

"Then, to what," said Ella, "do I owe the honour of this visit?" She would have said the pleasure, but that word seemed to choke her, and she could not utter it. In fact, there was already a strange fluttering at her heart, as if something terrible was coming, and she wished it would come speedily, that she might know the worst at once.

"You may possibly guess," said Miss Cawthorne, "that the subject of my present communication is a young gentleman friend of yours, seeing that the whole village talks about little else."

"Go on," said Ella; but her voice had changed since she spoke before, and sounded hollow, and strange. She drew her chair too a little behind the thick window curtains which shaded that side of the apartment, and there watched the countenance of her visitor, who sat exactly where the last beams of departing day streamed full into the room.

"I wish it was dark," said Ella to herself; but her visitor had not observed her countenance. She was too much occupied with what she had to say, and went on as Ella requested her.

"I dare say," said Lillie Cawthorne, "that you yourself are not quite a stranger to what people say in a little place like this."

"Indeed I am," Ella replied. "What do they say?"

They say that your young friend, Alice Greyburne, is carrying on an affair with Mr. Grahame."