nothing in our minds now, no disturbing memory, to make any awkwardness or bitterness in our intercourse. We have a mutual regret, but it is not mingled with reproach. Let us lay our past reverently in its grave, and bury it out of sight. It is not given to every one to be happy, as we fancied that we might have been— together; but we may still help one another a little in the future. Do not let us meet for a short time, and then let us meet as friends."

He had bowed his head again while she was speaking, as if he received her words in a spirit of almost reverent acquiescence; and when she ceased, he held out his hand with a gesture of consent; she placed one of hers within it, and laid the other lightly on his hair, which for an instant she touched with her lips also. He did not feel the gesture, but he was conscious of it; and it thrilled him

with a sense of benediction.

The light

rustle of her dress seemed to him like

the flutter of an angel's wings. . . . and then he was alone.

CHAPTER XXII.

FRIENDSHIP.

"Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control,
These three alone lead life to sovereign power.
Yet not alone for power (power of herself
Would come uncalled for) but to live by law,
Acting the law we live without fear,

And because right is right, to follow right,
Were wisdom in the scorn of consequence."

"Oh, well, perhaps he didn't know it; they weren't on the best of terms-or on any terms at all" (Sir Harry laughed at his own joke), "so perhaps Leslie wouldn't be told in such a hurry; but he's sure to learn it soon enough from some

body. You'd better come for a drive this afternoon, Zara; it will put a little life into you. Would you like to go into the country a little way?"

Sir Harry had quite recovered his own good opinion, and was evidently piquing himself on his consideration for his wife.

"With the Tracys?" she enquired, in answer to the last part of this speech, and reasoning from past experience.

"The Tracys? No, confound the Tracys. That girl, for all her pretty ways, has something of the harpy in her after all ; and I shall show her that I am not to be taken up and cast down like a puppet."

Zara received this intimation of Sir Harry's sudden change of opinion with only a very faint smile. The indulgence of small triumphs was a petty passion to which she had never succumbed; and now that her mind was absorbed in larger things, it seemed a matter of no moment

to her whether Miss Tracy was held up to her as a model or not; indeed it was even a cause of regret that one resource of Sir Harry's unoccupied hours should be thus removed. Of his inconsistency of opinion and purpose she thought but little; it was only one of the many hundred instances of his wayward childishness of mind, which, in forming the daily trial of her life, became in detail almost unnoticed.

The drive into the country proved to be a less generously-unselfish purpose than might have been expected from Sir Harry's manner of proposing it. He wanted to look at a horse, at Surbiton, which he heard was for sale, and the description of which had struck his fancy. He was constantly buying horses at an enormous price, and being obliged to sell them afterwards at a loss; but this did not in the least affect his estimate of the worth of his own judgment in matters equine.