got such ideas from me." She threw in a frown with one side of her face, as if to add an interpretation to her remonstrance, "Hold your tongue, and don't make an exhibition of your ignorant profanity." Forsyth included both in a half-smile, in which Mrs. Westwood chose to read disgust, and Olympia astonishment at her daring heterodoxy. It pleased her to think that she had both shocked her aunt and made somebody stare at her.

"You are thinking," he said very quietly indeed, "of a sort of paradise from which it is no doubt best to escape in time. I was thinking of the paradise of a simple life and quiet mind."

"I hate simple lives and quiet minds!" said the débutante, determined to press her supposed advantage, and not guessing that to draw her out might be the very object of him whom she thought she was shocking and bewildering. "It is tantalising to read of what people have done when they had the chance and then to compare one's own life with theirs. It is a good thing to live in the middle of rebellions and persecutions. What would Joan of Arc have been if she had lived in simple times and had a quiet mind?”

Forsyth half smiled again at this very un-ball-room-like small talk from the seemingly self-complacent height for which she felt inclined to detest him.

"My dear young lady," he answered, "do you think that greatness lies in doing great things by chance or in the capacity for doing them when the chance comes? Joan of Arc, if she is your model, would have been a better shepherdess and no less a heroine if she had lived in this peaceful village of yours."

"No-she would have been a wretched shepherdess. I've no doubt hers were the worst kept sheep in all France before her time came. She'ld have been always longing for a wider world, and perhaps have done what was wrong rather than have minded sheep all her days. I suppose if Joan of Arc is my heroine, your hero's a Quaker?"

"I have no hero, Miss Westwood, and no heroine."

By this time the three Miss Penders had all found partners. That Olympia had not was not owing to any want of unknown admirers, for so beautiful a stranger could not fail to attract all eyes in the room. But her aunt, for an hour or two at least, knew how to protect her own. How such things are managed chaperons, who never reveal their secrets, will understand. She was a poor diplomatist, but an excellent tactician.

But Gerald, from his doorway, saw the state of things: and, though he did not recognise his mother's hand in the affair, he was not going VOL. XII., N.S. 1874.

M M

to let Olympia sit out longer than need be. Indeed he was not ill-pleased to see her in such a forlorn condition as to be compelled to put up with the conversation of the most unattractive man in the room: it gave him an opportunity of claiming for his partner the belle of the whole ball.

"I say, Olympia," he said, coming up and interrupting the conversation without compunction, "will you try a waltz with me? I can pull you through somehow, I dare say. Shall we do this one?"

"Gerald," began Mrs. Westwood, who knew the effect of ball-room air upon incipient flirtations, "don't you think you'd better ask somebody else? It's nonsense to come to a ball to dance with your own cousin."

That was enough for Olympia, though she would have preferred to scare the old gentleman with her heroes and heroines a little while longer. She could not waltz, but that did not matter with Gerald, and, to vex her aunt, she would even have plunged into the Lancers. She rose up at once to take Gerald's arm. Forsyth watched her with another smile; but it was a sad one; and something in Gerald's manner, as he looked from the boy to the girl, made him murmur "Poor young man !"

In another moment the two would have been lost among the dancers when, before she had taken her partner's arm, another young man came up and, looking at Forsyth for an instant, said,

"Pray honour me with a turn or two, Miss Westwood, if you are not engaged."

The Earl

Mrs. Westwood could hardly believe her eyes or ears. himself had come forward as a candidate for the hand of Olympia. It might be natural that a courteous host should not suffer a girl under his roof to sit out alone, but it was too bitter to think that, when they all got home, it would be Olympia that had danced with the Earl. She must do something to prevent this scandal, though in all other things Lord Wendale's word would have been her law.

"This is not Miss Westwood, my lord," she said blandly, as if assuming that the intended honour was meant for the family in the person of its proper representative. "This is Captain Westwood's niece, who has never been out before. Indeed, she never dances. Do you, Olympia?" she asked with a meaning look. "My own girls are excellent waltzers, but Olympia never cared for dancing."

But Olympia thought, "This is really like Cinderella!" and in the thought she was so ungrateful as to forget the fairy godmother-her cousin Gerald-without whom she would never have been at this wonderful ball at all. It was he who had given her the very dress

she wore, and now, in the presence of this magnificent romance hero, he faded from her sight even while his hand still touched her arm. "Olympia!" he began to plead in a whisper.

"Indeed, but I do like dancing though, Aunt Car❜line! Gerald, you shall have the next, if you care.”

Gerald did care; but it was this dance he cared for, and not for the next or the next dozen. He was only her old playmate, of course, who ought to have surrendered her willingly, and have taken pity on some other forlorn damsel; but he sat down by his mother, who felt as cross as he.

"Aren't you dancing, Gerald?" she asked:

"No, mother; I haven't got a partner, and it isn't my way to take other people's. I say, mother, of all the affected fools I ever saw I think Lord Wendale looks about the biggest. How you all can think such a lot of a barber's block I'm hanged if I know. I should like to see him aboard the Lapwing! I wonder how long he takes to curl his hair?"

"Hush, for goodness sake, Gerald ! He's a most aristocratic young man, and I've no doubt his hair curls quite naturally. But I'm ashamed of Olympia to-night. I declare I was ready to sink into the earth when she was going on about Adam and Eve. Wherever she gets such ideas goodness knows. One would think she only came to disgrace us all; and she only a sort of charity girl, if Lord Wendale knew. She's getting a regular man's woman, as I call it; and men's women I can't abide."

Gerald coloured up, but only answered, "It's better to be a man's woman, though, than a woman's man, like that barber's block fellow; I hate women's men-they're always prigs and fools."

If he had but known in what a dilemma Olympia's faithlessness had placed her he would have been consoled. Nature is a bad dancing mistress, and she had known no other. Impulse had made her rashly bold; but when she took her place in the circle with her partner she felt like anything but a heroine. It is not a pleasant emotion when the volunteer leader of a forlorn hope begins to feel his fingers tingle with the courage that is oozing out of them. She felt as though she were about to disgrace herself publicly before the whole ball-room, and bitterly repented of her disobedience to Aunt Caroline.

But her luck was not doomed to desert her even now. Fortune helps the bold, but for the over-bold she sets no stint to her favours. Lord Wendale was an admirable dancer-so excellent that he could tell by instinct, and at the first touch, whether his partner was one to

do him justice. In such matters he had a woman's tact and an So he let half a dozen couples start before them, and

artist's hand.

then said"Are you very fond of waltzing, Miss Westwood? I confess that I am not at least in a crowd. What do you say to our making a rather more quiet tour than round and round in a square yard? There is something I want you to see. Do you know that we have known each other for years-that the moment you came into the room I recognised you for an old and dear friend?"

Olympia drew a grateful sigh for her release, and opened her eyes widely. "I don't care for dancing either-in a crowd.

can you mean by our being friends?"

But what

Come-nobody

"That's my secret! But it shall be revealed. will miss us for a minute" And Gerald, who had placed himself where he might make himself as miserable as possible by seeing Olympia's waist encircled by the arm of the handsomest and most distinguished man in the room, was deprived of even this sorry apology for comfort. The two disappeared together from the room, as though the Earl had deliberately engaged her not for a dance but for a flirtation.

It was quite possible. Lord Wendale, as host, had to talk to too many people not to make the most of what might be his only opportunity of making the acquaintance of the most beautiful of all his guests. The curtained doorway through which he led her opened at once into a branch of the long picture gallery that was the true glory of Beckfield. There had not been a Calmont for many generations without the taste for art that had culminated in the present Earl.

This long gallery, seen for the first time, and hung on either side with glimpses into a hundred new worlds at once, filled Olympia with nothing less than awe. This was even better than the ball. Lord Wendale, watching her attentively, saw her wonderful eyes light up when they looked down the vista of his art treasures-if she had tried to please him she could not have found a better way.

But I

"You care for pictures, I can see," he said, "if you don't care for waltzing. There is a second sympathy between us already. suppose you have seen my gallery often before?"

"No-never."

"Never? Impossible-when you live so near? But that is my fault, I'm afraid, and must be mended. Are you a painter?" "No-not at all."

"Then you are likely to be the better critic. I am no painter, but I know what others can and can't do. I was sure that eyes like

yours, Miss Westwood, were made to admire as well as-as-to be admired. There it would out, though it sounds horribly like a compliment. I wish I could take you through my pictures now, but your mother"

"Mrs. Westwood is my aunt." This was a point on which she would admit of no inaccuracy.

"So much the better," thought Lord Wendale. "I was wondering how roses should grow on crabsticks.-Your aunt, then, must bring you over-and your sisters, or cousins, or whoever they are, of course--some day before I go. But, as I was saying, there is something I must show you now-that won't bear keeping.-I suppose you look in the glass sometimes? Well, then, I want you to look in a glass now, and tell me what you see. No, you needn't look round: it's just in front of you. Forsyth calls it a picture: it's really my magic mirror, that shows us the past: perhaps you would rather see the future; but the past-and the present-are quite enough for me." "I see the face of a very beautiful girl: and-why, sure, that is my old bush in the Green Walk—and— !”

"It is you that have called it beautiful, Miss Westwood. I call it the glory of Beckfield."

"But who did it? Are you laughing at me?"

"It was painted by Forsyth-the man you were talking to just Not only to-night, but for years, you have been the Queen of Beckfield."

now.

She could hardly believe in her own glory. That she, in her obscurity of The Laurels, should all the time be the inspiration of a great painter and the pride of a great Earl !—It was impossible, and yet it was true.

CHAPTER V.

What read I in the skies, sweet maid ?—

Good lack, I read a frown!

For, by this day next year, they've said,

They mean to tumble down!

Then blue will be the fields, I wis!—

By Venus and by Mars

I'll cry, for "Buy sweet primroses,"

"Come, buy my golden stars!"

ALL this, however, was far too much like the true story of Cinderella -omitting the meekness of the heroine-to please Mrs. Westwood. Even Gerald felt that his old mate in mischief had fluttered up to a higher spray. Olympia herself, who came home in what her aunt