draw. She would tell Mr Rivers she did not require any lessons after all. This mood lasted all the afternoon, but about six o'clock she changed again, and began to watch at the window, and to declare that her uncle must have forgotten all about his promise.

At last two hats appeared above the gate. Edith quitted her post, for she did not wish to be caught watching, and when her uncle and Stephen entered the room she was demurely reading: but she was no hypocrite and she at once held out her hand to Stephen and said, "Mr Rivers, I do thank you so much for all the trouble you have taken, I am perfectly delighted with the casts."

"I am very glad, I am sure," answered Stephen.

"Well, you had better set to work at once so as to lose no daylight," said Mr Champneys.

At first Stephen felt very bashful at teaching and correcting a young lady, but he was a teacher by birth as well as education, and he soon forgot his diffidence, and spoke with as much authority as he would have done to any child in his own school. And Edith received his instructions far more meekly than any of his own pupils would have done.

Mrs Melville, the Rector, and Violet, were at the other end of the room. Her mother and uncle were talking together in a low tone, but Violet's whole attention was given to the proceedings of the master and his pupil, and she could not help feeling surprised, and some resentment at Mr Rivers' behaviour. It seemed to her that it was continual fault-finding. This, that, or the other was always wrong.

"He's a conceited young prig," thought Violet to herself, "I wonder Edith can put up with it."

But when the lesson was over nothing could be more diffident than the young man's manner, he did not venture to make a remark, but humbly took his leave. He might be a prig, but he was certainly not presuming. The fact was that, just at the end of the lesson, he had happened to look at Violet, and he had read the expression of her face quite correctly. He felt hurt and mortified and was glad to hurry away.

His thoughts were not of the sweetest as he walked home. "Because I am only a schoolmaster they look down upon me and despise me," he thought to himself, " even that sweet lovely girl, who seems so gentle and good; she evidently looks upon me as altogether an inferior being, and speaks pleasantly to me just out of the kindness of her heart, as she would to her horse or her dog, or any poor woman in the parish; but if I only venture to speak one word as if I thought myself in any one respect on a level with them, why I am snubbed at once, and considered presuming and stepping out of my place. After all, perhaps it is as well that I have had the lesson in time, for who knows? I might have forgotten that they are ladies, and I only a poor man—that my mother keeps a shop. Well, I can bear a little humiliation for her sake, and, at any rate, I will go on with Miss Melville's lessons as long as I am allowed to enter the sacred precincts. It will put a few pounds into my pocket, and I'm sure they are sorely needed."

The sisters had a little discussion too, on the subject before they went to bed that night.

"I do think that man is rather impertinent," said Violet, "why, Edith, he found fault with you, and corrected you just as though you had been any little village school girl. I really don't think he quite knows his place."

"Nonsense," replied Edith, "his place is to teach me. What would be the use of a master who was afraid to correct me when I was wrong? I should look upon him as a cheat."

"But he should remember that you are a lady," said Violet, "and his superior."

"As far as I could see he never forgot that I was a lady," replied Edith, "and as to being his superior, there I quite disagree with you, Violet, I consider myself decidedly his inferior, or I should not wish to be taught by him."

"I mean your inferior in position."

"He is poorer, no doubt, if that is what you mean by being inferior; but he is a gentleman, and I am quite sure that he knows a great deal more than either of us, or he would not have been able to pass such an examination."

"At any rate mamma does not think that he knows so much as you do," replied Violet.

"But mamma and I do not always quite agree in all our opinions," said the independent Edith. "I have long seen that we had much better agree to differ. I only wish mamma would see it too, it would be much happier for us both."

"I do think we ought to try to give way to our mother's opinion, Edith, dear," said Violet. "Do you know it sometimes seems almost as though you went against her out of perverseness."

"No, it is not perverseness," said Edith, as though she were calmly discussing some other person's character. "I'm sure I don't wish to pain her any more than you do, Vi, but there is something in me that always makes me see the objections to everything; and if people are very strong on one side, I can't help it, I always take the opposite, and you know, Violet, I must either be dumb, or say what I think. I can't be amiable like you, and agree with everybody. I am sure mother would not like it if I never spoke to her at all, and that is what it would come to if I have to give up expressing my opinions. I suppose I am what you would call a Radical, for I never can see that one man is not as good as another. If you look at a beautiful picture, or read a beautiful poem, you don't ask who the painter's or writer's father was, before venturing to admire. You don't say the man is not a gentleman, and therefore I cannot approve of his work. No; His work shows what he is. By their fruits ye shall know them.'"

"I daresay you are right enough in what you mean," replied Violet, "but I don't quite see how it applies. However, I am sleepy now, Edith, so I will go; goodnight."

CHAPTER XIII.

THE GREEN-EYED MONSTER.

EDITH now worked steadily at her drawing, and felt that she was improving almost daily, though she had not much to show; but her uncle was perfectly satisfied with her progress under her new master, and her mother appeared so too.

"Really I am very glad we discovered that Mr Stephens was an artist," said Mrs Melville one day. "I thought at once that he seemed a very clever young man, and the way he is teaching Edith proves I was right. His manner is so masterly-so very different to the foolish prettiness of an ordinary drawing master. I think, I should like Violet to take some lessons too."

This was a way Mrs Melville had. No matter how strongly she opposed a thing in the first place, if she once saw reason to alter her mind, and she was quite open to conviction, she would speak as though she had always been of the same opinion, and she now quite took to herself the credit of having discovered that the schoolmaster was "no ordinary young man."

The Rector smiled and acquiesced. These innocent weaknesses of human nature amused him. He had too hard a fight with real evil and wickedness to let such