the way you are thinking of is not a right way you must not do it?""

"Do what, dear?" asked Alice, soothingly. "What Caroline says you mean to do. You must not, to please your father, or any one, marry Sebastion. Oh, Alice! I know so well how it would be if you did. I see it all. He is just one of those terribly strong, silent people, the weight of whose will crushes one to death. You could never live and be yourself near him. Don't be angry with me for saying this, but I know you would be frightened of him, and, Alice, you might get to be what Aunt Harriet calls you-deceitful. You might never be able to speak the truth to him—and think of going on like that all

your life!"

In her agitation Ruth spoke loud, and did not see how pale Alice grew as she went on. They were standing face to face, Ruth a step below Alice, with her back to the hall. Without answering, Alice made a gesture of entreaty to her to let her pass on, and then

Ruth turned and saw what Alice had seen all the time, that Sebastion, who had come into the hall to put Alice into the carriage, was standing close to the stairs. He had been looking at Alice while Ruth was speaking, and both had been too much agitated to stop her. When she had once seen her cousin Sebastion's face, Ruth could hardly take her eyes from it again the expression was so different from anything she had ever expected to see there. It was agitated and sorrowful, but without a shade of anger in it. As soon as they all stood together at the foot of the stairs, he spoke:

"I beg your pardon for having overheard your warning, Ruth. Don't suppose that I am angry with you for it. With such an opinion of me, you are right, and I am glad that Alice has such an honest friend. I, too, would tell her, if I might, as emphatically as you have done, not for any motive to sacrifice herself through any false generosity. You are right in calling that untrue, and in prophecy

ing that a life-time of regret would follow. Let Alice take the warning again from me.'

A look that Ruth did not understand passed over Alice's face; for an instant she looked steadily at Sebastion, and a smile of sad wonder played on her lips.

“You are mistaken, both of you, in what you think of me," she said, at length, so humbly that no pride could have had half as much dignity in it; then, after stooping down to leave a kiss of forgiveness on Ruth's forehead, she walked quickly down the hall to the door, and put herself in the carriage without waiting for Sebastion's assistance.

Mortally afraid of encountering another of Sebastion's looks, Ruth ran up stairs, and shut herself in her mother's room for the rest of the day. She pondered a good deal at intervals on what had passed, and concluded at last that even Caroline's puzzles might be matched by mysteries still further removed from the sphere of her comprehension.

247

CHAPTER IX.

66 Shy she was, and I thought her cold,
Thought her proud, and fled over the sea,
Filled I was with folly and spite,

When Ellen Adair was dying for me."

TENNYSON.

SEBASTION left the house as soon as Major Earle's carriage was out of sight, and set off on a quick walk through the streets of Kingsmills, not caring particularly where he went, but intent on working off his agitation by quick motion, and giving certain half-formed projects which had suddenly risen in his mind time to think themselves out. From constant habit he took the road to Earle's Court, and by the time he was in a condition to reflect where he was going, he found himself close to the great

gates that led into the yard of the manufactory at the Leasows. He paused there; it fell in with the resolution at which he had arrived now to imagine that there was a necessity for his seeing his brother immediately, and after a moment's longer reflection, he turned in to enquire for him. During the six weeks he had been in Kingsmills, he had come to know the ways of the Meyer family pretty well, and to come and go among them without ceremony. He was free of Maxwell's studio, and had sometimes paced it, quarterdeck fashion, by the hour together; he had even penetrated as far as the counting-house and taken some pains to understand his brother's work there. The life that went on in this little world, toilsome, but monotonous, without variety and yet passed in a crowd, was especially distasteful to his restless, adventurous, and yet lonely spirit. Every visit showed him more and more clearly the great gulph which education, circumstances, per