rally lively person.

On the question of recognition she was somewhat indifferent. By
the acting lads themselves she was not likely to be known. With the
guests who might be assembled she was hardly so secure. Yet detection,
after all, would be no such dreadful thing. The fact only could be
detected, her true motive never. It would be instantly set down as the
passing freak of a girl whose ways were already considered singular.
That she was doing for an earnest reason what would most naturally be
done in jest was at any rate a safe secret.

The next evening Eustacia stood punctually at the fuel-house door,
waiting for the dusk which was to bring Charley with the trappings.
Her grandfather was at home tonight, and she would be unable to ask
her confederate indoors.

He appeared on the dark ridge of heathland, like a fly on a negro,
bearing the articles with him, and came up breathless with his walk.

"Here are the things," he whispered, placing them upon the threshold.
"And now, Miss Eustacia--"

"The payment. It is quite ready. I am as good as my word."

She leant against the door-post, and gave him her hand. Charley took
it in both his own with a tenderness beyond description, unless it was
like that of a child holding a captured sparrow.

"Why, there's a glove on it!" he said in a deprecating way.

"I have been walking," she observed.

"But, miss!"

"Well--it is hardly fair." She pulled off the glove, and gave him her
bare hand.

They stood together minute after minute, without further speech, each
looking at the blackening scene, and each thinking his and her own
thoughts.

"I think I won't use it all up tonight," said Charley devotedly, when
six or eight minutes had been passed by him caressing her hand. "May
I have the other few minutes another time?"

"As you like," said she without the least emotion. "But it must be
over in a week. Now, there is only one thing I want you to do: to wait
while I put on the dress, and then to see if I do my part properly.
But let me look first indoors."

She vanished for a minute or two, and went in. Her grandfather was
safely asleep in his chair. "Now, then," she said, on returning,
"walk down the garden a little way, and when I am ready I'll call
you."

Charley walked and waited, and presently heard a soft whistle. He
returned to the fuel-house door.

"Did you whistle, Miss Vye?"

"Yes; come in," reached him in Eustacia's voice from a back quarter.
"I m