newspaper paragraph; this was immediately contradicted, and long after even the principal actors had ceased to take an interest in the story of their mishap, a certain portion of the truth was administered homoeopathically to the public.

CHAPTER II.

HOLM BUSH.

A FRIENDLY and amiable critic has just said to me, "But there's no Mr. Ramsay!"

I do not intend that there should be a Mr. Ramsay, for I never saw and hardly ever heard of him. It may perhaps be as well to state here, however, that he died soon after Helen was born, leaving, as he thought, a moderate dot for the baby girl, and a fine fortune to the sturdy threeyear-old boy, of whom he was dotingly fond. The little fellow missed his father dreadfully, and showed his grief and his remembrance in a thousand touching ways. A whole year after, when the child sickened of the complaint which ended his short earth-life, his last baby words were an entreaty that his father might be told how sick Tony was, and how badly he wanted his dadda to kiss and make him well.

Helen told me all this when we first began to exchange our little domestic confidences. She was saying that she had never known a real anxiety or a grief, for this blank in her small home circle. had been long ago filled up by the gracious healing hand of Time, drawing her mother's heart closer and closer to her own, year by year.

Now I have positively done with the long retrospective glance which possesses so much fascination for the old, and I will go on with my story, passing briefly over that first autumnal visit to Holm Bush.

The weather was bad: I remember it far more distinctly than the meteorological vagaries of last year; and I can hear now the dismal plash of the rain against the windows in Helen's room as we sat by the fire the night after I arrived. My first evening at Holm Bush gives me back only a dim, shifting scene of lights and flowers and gay colours; for my journey had so thoroughly shaken and tired me, that I could be conscious of nothing except the blessedness of rest and warmth and an early departure to bed.

Mrs. Ramsay was so deliciously motherly in all her ways that I did not feel in the least strange or shy with her; and when she came the first night

to kiss me after I was in bed, she could not keep her hands from giving the bedclothes that final smooth and tuck which tells, more than any action I know, of a soft womanly nature. I don't believe the Ladies who want their Rights now-a-days, could do it if they tried.

A good night's sleep is Nature's own patent medicine for the young, to be taken in any quantity, and warranted never to fail in effecting a cure. I slept the clock round, as old nurses say, and woke perfectly strong and well again. Helen had charged me on no account to get up until she came to see me, and had given strict orders that I was not to be disturbed before I rang my bell.

It would not do to confess what time of day the clock hands announced when, after the tidy elderly housemaid-head chambermaids as they were called then-had answered my summons and drawn the thick curtains back, my lazy eyes travelled slowly, resting on each unfamiliar object by the way, towards the chimney-piece. I only know that I felt so thoroughly demoralized it seemed of little consequence now what enormity in the way of lying in bed was committed; so, instead of being startled or shocked to see the lateness of the hour, I merely said, "Tell Miss Ramsay I am awake, and would be glad to see her, please."

C

"I'll tell the mistress if you please, Miss," answered Martha. "Miss Helen, she's in the stables with Mr. Charles—leastways Mr. Kenneth, and she won't be in, not just yet, Miss."

"Have they done breakfast, then?" I asked, with some slight dawning sense of shame. Martha glanced at the clock, as if wondering to what hours I had been accustomed, and said, "Oh yes, Miss, times and times ago; but Mrs. Ramsay ordered breakfast to be served in Miss Helen's mornin' room whenever you was pleased to want it,"

Qh, that's next door, isn't it, Martha ?" I inquired; "so I will get up directly. And I suppose I can go in there in my dressing-gown, can't I ?”

"Yes, Miss, certingly," was Martha's demure reply, as she curtsied herself towards the door, and left me to get out of that delicious bed wherein I had found such stores of comfort and rest, as well as a fresh supply of strength and high spirits—that is, high spirits for me; but at my best I was a repressed little creature in those days, and had an absurd fancy that the more staid and undemonstrative I was, the more people would look up to me. It must have made me very uninteresting to strangers; but at all events it is a comfort to perceive that the damsels of the present day not likely to fall into their grandmothers'

are