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gone; if he had been absolutely after the rabbits he would have taken some of the men or the dogs at the least with him; and it was odd he had chosen that night in especial to be belated, as among the people coming to dine at White Ladies in an hour's time was Lady Millicent Clinton, a beautiful blonde, tantalising, imperious, and bewitching to the highest degree, whom Erroll had watched for at Flirtation Corner, left the coulisses for at the opera, bought guinea cups of Souchong for at bazaars, and dedicated himself to generally, throughout the past season. He walked onwards, flushing the pheasants with his step, and startling the grey herons as he passed the pools, till they rose at the bark of the dogs, and sailed majestically away in the sunny silent air. At last, as he went along the confines of the deer-park, towards the entrance of a long elm-walk, half lane,half avenue, that led round towards the Abbey, a spaniel bustled out of the brushwood near and leapt upon him; it was one of his own dogs, a water-spaniel that Erroll had whistled to him, and brought with them that morning. Hallo, Marquis! where is he, old fellow?" said Strathmore, as he stooped and patted the dog. Marquis understood the question, shook his long ears that were dripping with water from his chase of a wild duck, looked vivaciously intelligent and specially important, and ran onwards, turning back now and then to see that he was followed. No detective from Scotland-yard could have better done his duty. As Strathmore looked to watch where the dog ran, he saw standing in the deep shadow flung by the trees, across the walk, leaning over a gate against which his gun was resting, and talking to a woman, Bertie Erroll-in quest of other game than the rabbits. He was at some distance from Strathmore, almost at the other end of the avenue; across which broad lines of yellow light fell through the trunks of the trees from the sunset, where the elm-boughs meeting above head, thick with luxuriant leaf, threw chequered shadows on the turf below. He was leaning down over the stile which led into a bridle-path that wound up to the church a mile or so beyond, and was talking earnestly to his companion, who stood on the other side, and who, even at that distance, made a charming picture, much such a one as Aline, when Boufflers toyed with her at the woodland brook under the forests of Lorraine, with the butterflies fluttering above her head, and the wild flowers hanging in her childish hands. She stood on the lower step of the stile, so that as she reached upwards one of her arms was wound about his neck, her face, soft, youthful, and fair, was lifted to his own, as his hand lingered on her brow, pushing back from it the shining waves of hair, while she nestled closely to him as a bird to the one who caresses it, as a spaniel to the master it follows. It was a scene to be interpreted at a glance, that golden sunset hour under the shadow of the elms ;-and in those hours who remembers that the sun will set, leaving the dank dews of night to brood where its beams have fallen; that the foliage above us will drop off sere and withered like the "dark brown years" of Ossian, into which we must enter and dwell; that in the grasses the asp is curling, that in the west the clouds are brooding? None remember, mes amis ! neither did those who lingered then beneath the elms before the sun went down. "That's his game! By George! I thought it was odd if the rabbits alone made him too late for dinner! I wonder how many he has shot in the coppice. Poor Lady Millicent! she would die of mortification and

pique," thought Strathmore, as he looked up the elm-walk at its crossed light and shade, with a smile in which there was a dash of contempt. He had been loved by women who might well have claimed to haunt his memory; proud, peerless beauties, who might well have looked to rouse the swift imperious passion which, when they loved-that unloving race!-the love of the Strathmores had ever been; but he had cared for none of them, and this wasting of hours, this ceaseless adoration of women, this worshipping of a mistress's eyebrow, was incomprehensible and somewhat contemptible in his sight. He never was so nearly losing patience with Erroll as when he came en evidence with the perpetual gallantries, the never-ending, ever-changing grandes passions, as easily lit as cigars and as quickly thrown aside, that were the characteristic of the Sabreur, and his best beloved pursuit. Strathmore would as soon have understood consuming his time in constantly blowing soap-bubbles, like Hawthorne's hero of the Seven Gables!—and he looked now with a certain disdainful amusement at them where they stood, while Erroll stooped down so that his moustaches almost brushed the woman's brow, and she leaned forward so that her head, uncovered to the sun that played upon the auburn ripples of her hair, rested against his arm. Then unseen himself, he turned, and making the spaniel quiet with a sign, crossed the avenue, and went along beside the sunken fence of the deerpark by another route homeward, so that he should neither spy upon nor interrupt them.

Such game was Erroll's especial sport, if he found it on the lands of White Ladies he was fully welcome to the preserves undisputed. Strathmore did not covet him either the small amusement of slaying, nor the inevitable trouble of the game when slain. A quarter of an hour later on, as he crossed the lawns that lay in front of the Abbey, while the chimes of the bells were ringing the curfew with low mellow chants and carillons, he heard a step behind him, and as he turned faced Erroll, who came along smoking, with Marquis at his heels, and blandly unconscious that he had been seen in his tête-à-tête under the elms.

"Had good sport in the coppice, mon cher? What did you mean by giving us the slip like this?" said Strathmore, as he swung round and waited for him.

"Pretty good; rabbits were rather shy," answered Erroll, with the Manilla between his lips, and the most tranquil air of innocence that the human countenance ever wore.

"But la belle wasn't! Tant mieux! you seemed very good friends; is she an old acquaintance or a new? Is the game in the bag or only marked; hit or only just flushed? I expect the whole story in the smoking-room to-night!"

A certain dash of annoyance and discomfiture went over Erroll's face for the moment, but he laughed as he broke the ash off his cigar against the grey stone of the cloisters under which they were passing:

"Hang you! where did you see me?"

"Where you were very plainly to be seen! If you make open-air rendezvous, tres chèr, you must be prepared for spectators. Who is she? If the game's been found on my lands, I think it is fair I should have an account of it. Is she an old love or a new?"

"Not new," laughed the Sabreur, pulling his velvet Glengarry over his forehead, to keep the sunset glare out of his eyes.

"Not new! I thought you gave no more thought to old loves than to old gloves-the gloss off both, both go to the devil! I suppose you found her up last autumn, when you were down here in my place. I was in the East, so I am not responsible for what happened. You might have told me, my dear fellow; I shouldn't have rivalled you; pretty paysannes never had any attraction for me; I like the tourneure of the world, not the odour of the dairy. Give me grace and wit, not rosy cheeks and fingers fresh from the churn and the hencoop; the perfume of frangipane, not of the farm-yard. Petrarch might adore a miller's wife-ce n'est pas selon moi-and I think the flour must have made Laura's chiome d'oro look dusty: I never took a mistress from my tenantry! · Who is she, Erroll?”

Erroll took the Manilla out of his mouth, sent a puff from it into the air, and turned to Strathmore with his gay insouciant laugh, clear as a bell and sweet as a girl's, that had so much youth in it:

"I'll tell you some other time. Old story, you know, nothing new in it. We're all fools about women, and she's sweetly pretty, poor little thing! beats any of those we shall have to-night hollow, Lady Millicent and all of 'em!"

Strathmore raised his eyebrows and stroked his moustaches:

"An old love! and you're as enthusiastic as that? What must you have been in the beginning! Thank Heaven I was not here. Poor Lady Millicent! sal volatile by the gallon would never restore her if she knew a young provincial, smelling of the hayfield, with a set of cherry ribbons for a Sunday, and a week-day aroma of the cowshed (if not the pigsty), was said by the difficile Sabreur to beat her hollow!—and she a Court beauty and a Lady in Waiting! So much for taste!"

Pigsty? Cowshed? You didn't see her just now, Cecil; you couldn't!" broke in the Sabreur, disgusted.

"I saw a woman, my dear Erroll, c'etait assez; she was your property, and I noticed no more."

"For God's sake don't suppose me such a Goth that I should fall in love with a dairymaid, Strath!" said Erroll, plaintively. "She's nothing of that sort—nothing, I give you my honour! Let me clear my character, pray. Should I love a Phillis in a hazel-bower?' I hate cobwebs, dew, and earwigs; and I can't bear a coarse colour for a woman! I say, Strathmore, don't let out anything about it, though, will you? Don't tell the other fellows; there's no object, and they'd only

"Chaff you? Exactly!"

"It's

"No! I don't care a straw for chaff," said Erroll, meditatively, with his Manilla in his mouth, drawing his Glengarry over his eyes. only boys who mind chaff, we don't. But they might get hunting her out, you see-would, I dare say, I should in their place and I don't want that. I wish to keep the thing quiet. I have managed to do it hitherto; and she would cut up as rough at insult as Lady Millicent herself; you understand ?"

"Not very clearly; but it doesn't matter; one doesn't look for perspicuity in love intrigues-nor for reason."

Hang you! you know what I mean," murmured the Sabreur, lazily. "You mean, you don't want me to tell of your tête-à-tête, and set the men on to badger you about it when the women are gone? Very well! I'm silent as the dead!" laughed Strathmore. "What a wicked dog you are, Bertie, on my word, though. Country air ought to purify your morals; one naturally sins in cities, but

Inevitably sins in villages! Just so, one's nothing else to do! In town, one sins from sociability; in the country, from solitariness-a safe indication that the soft sins are the natural concomitants of one's existence everywhere, and shouldn't be resisted!" said the Sabreur, with a yawn.

"Admirable theory!-developed in practice, too, by its preacher, which can't be said of all precepts! Arcadia and the Rue Bréda have more in common than one generally fancied then; but I shouldn't have thought you'd have taken to provincial amourettes, Sabreur! However, failing hot-house fruits, I suppose you take a turn at blackberries. What an odd state of existence it must be, not to be able to live twenty-four hours without finding some woman's eyes to look into!"

"Very natural, I think!-when women's eyes are the pleasantest mirrors there are, and framed on purpose for us. You were never in love in your life, Strath."

"I was never the fool of a woman, if you mean that."

"You've brought over a prima donna, because, in a cold sort of way, you thought her a handsome Roman," went on the Sabreur, disdaining the interruption-" or you've taken up the Montolieu, because she made a dead set at you-and because one has a Montolieu as naturally as one has a cigar-case or a pair of slippers-or you've made love to some grande dame because it answered a political purpose, and advanced a finesse to be in her boudoir when everybody else was shut out of it; but as for love-you know nothing about it!"

Strathmore laughed:

"I know as much as any wise man knows. I know just as much as flavours life-any more disturbs it. I like a woman for her beauty, but I should be particularly sorry to sup in raptures off a single smile, to tie my hands with a golden hair, and to go mad after the shape of an ankle, as you do with a dozen divinities in as many months. A week or two ago you were wild about the Clinton, who is worth looking at, I grant you, and now, I dare say, you've lost your head just as completely for little Phillis yonder, with her hands in the butter! My dear Bertie, it's positively inexplicable to me; I can fancy your kissing the lips, if they're pretty ones, of all those goddesses, but I can't possibly understand your caring about the goddesses themselves!"

"Hold your tongue!-and, for Heaven's sake, don't suppose I'm in love with a human churn! Hands in the butter; what an idea!" mur

mured the Sabreur, disgusted.

"Well! it must be a cabbage-rose this time, conservatory ones don't grow about the home farms. Or if it isn't

Strathmore stopped, struck with a sudden thought, and swung round, as they walked under the cloisters, his face as he turned to Erroll softening with that rare smile which took from it all that was cold, dark, and dangerous in its physiognomy, and gave to it a generous and almost tender warmth a warmth that as yet no woman had had the magic to

waken there. He laid his hand on Erroll's shoulder with the old familiar gesture of their Eton days, as they came out of the aisles of the cloisters on to the lawn that stretched smooth and sunny before an antique grey terrace, with broad flights of steps hung with ivy, looking down on to thick avenues and long glades of trees, like the terrace at Haddon, where Dorothy Vernon fled in the summer moonlight to the love of John Manners.

"Erroll, I say, it is no entanglement, no annoyance, is it, this affair of yours?"

Erroll threw his cigar away, shook his head, and laughed :

"Not in the least; except-that my conscience smites me a little for it sometimes. That's all !"

Strathmore's hand rested still on his shoulder, lying there in the safe, cordial grasp of a friendship warm as the friendship of David for Jonathan.

"Conscience! How exceptional you are! The word's out of all modern dictionaries, and rococo from use. But what I meant was, if you had any difficulty of any kind-if you need to shake yourself free from any embarrassments-you would keep to your promise and let me serve you in all ways? Remember, old fellow, you gave me your word?"

He meant that Erroll would let him assist him more substantially than by advice. The Sabreur was a cadet d'un cadet, a man about town, with little more to float him than a good name and a fashionable reputation, lucky Baden "coups" and dashed-off magazine articles; his debts were heavy sometimes, his embarrassments not a few, though on his gay sunny nature they never weighed long; he was, very literally, a "beggared gentleman," though his beggary was as joyous and insouciant a Bohemianism as might be; and well off himself, Strathmore, who was generous to an extreme, and ascetically indifferent to riches, as I've said, had always pressed him, and sometimes, though generally with the utmost difficulty, compelled him to accept his aid without bond or payment.

His hand lay on Erroll's shoulder where they stood at the foot of the terrace steps, and the light from the west fell full upon his face as Strathmore looked at him-it was so frank, so glad, with a smile as bright as a girl's upon it, that many years afterwards Strathmore saw it in memory fresh as though beheld but yesterday.

"Dear old fellow! I know you would! If I needed, I would ask you as freely as though you were my brother;" and Erroll's voice was rich and full as he spoke, like the voice of a woman when she speaks of or to that which she loves: then he laughed and curled a loose leaf round his Manilla. "But there's no need here; I'm not the sufferer. They are not panther griffes, like your Montolieu's or La Julia's, confound her! I play the tiger part if there be one in the duo. I say, Strathmore, what a confounded bore your going off to Servia-Bosnia, Bulgaria, where is it? Won't Prince Michel wait?"

"Prince Michel would willingly wait till doomsday rather than see me, but England won't. It is a bore; I didn't want to leave till over the 1st; however, diplomatie oblige! and there'll be a good deal of finesse wanted. It is an errand quite to my taste."

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Perhaps you'll see this adorable Vavasour and Vaux beauty on the Continent. Do try!"