h she was, gracious though she meant to be--there
was something about Eliza Monk that seemed to repulse Robert Grame,
rather than attract him. Lucy had fascinated him; she repelled. Other
people had experienced the same kind of repulsion, but knew not where it
lay.

Hubert, the heir, about twenty-five now, came forward to greet the
stranger as they entered the Hall. No repulsion about _him_. Robert
Grame's hand met his with a warm clasp. A young man of gentle manners
and a face of rare beauty--but oh, so suspiciously delicate! Perhaps it
was the extreme slenderness of the frame, the wan look in the refined
features and their bright hectic that drew forth the clergyman's
sympathy. An impression came over him that this young man was not long
for earth.

"Is Mr. Monk strong?" he presently asked of Mrs. Carradyne, when Hubert
had temporarily quitted the room.

"Indeed, no. He had rheumatic fever some years ago," she added, "and has
never been strong since."

"Has he heart disease?" questioned the clergyman. He thought the young
man had just that look.

"We fear his heart is weak," replied Mrs. Carradyne.

"But that may be only your fancy, you know, Aunt Emma," spoke Miss Monk
reproachfully. She and her father were both passionately attached to
Hubert; they resented any doubt cast upon his health.

"Oh, of course," assented Mrs. Carradyne, who never resented anything.

"We shall be good friends, I trust," said Eliza, with a beaming smile,
as her hand lay in Mr. Grame's when he was leaving.

"Indeed I hope so," he answered. "Why not?"

III.

Summer lay upon the land. The landscape stretched out before Leet Hall
was fair to look upon. A fine expanse of wood and dale, of trees in
their luxuriant beauty; of emerald-green plains, of meandering streams,
of patches of growing corn already putting on its yellow hue, and of the
golden sunlight, soon to set and gladden other worlds, that shone from
the deep-blue sky. Birds sang in their leafy shelters, bees were
drowsily humming as they gathered the last of the day's honey, and
butterflies flitted from flower to flower with a good-night kiss.

At one of the windows stood, in her haughty beauty, Eliza Monk. Not,
surely, of the lovely scene before her was she thinking, or her face
might have worn a more pleasing expression. Rather did she seem to gaze,
and with displeasure, at two or three people who were walking in the
distance: Lucy Carradyne side by side with the cle