ou have never told me.'

'I am very old.'

'My mother's, and my grandmother's,' said she, looking at him no longer
as at a possible husband, but as a strange fossilized relic in human
form. Pierston saw it, but meaning to give up the game he did not care
to spare himself.

'Your mother's and your grandmother's young man,' he repeated.

'And were you my great-grandmother's too?' she asked, with an
expectant interest in his case as a drama that overcame her personal
considerations for a moment.

'No--not your great-grandmother's. Your imagination beats even my
confessions!... But I am VERY old, as you see.'

'I did not know it!' said she in an appalled murmur. 'You do not look
so; and I thought that what you looked you were.'

'And you--you are very young,' he continued.

A stillness followed, during which she sat in a troubled constraint,
regarding him now and then with something in her open eyes and large
pupils that might have been sympathy or nervousness. Pierston ate scarce
any breakfast, and rising abruptly from the table said he would take a
walk on the cliffs as the morning was fine.

He did so, proceeding along the north-east heights for nearly a mile. He
had virtually given Avice up, but not formally. His intention had been
to go back to the house in half-an-hour and pay a morning visit to the
invalid; but by not returning the plans of the previous evening might be
allowed to lapse silently, as mere pourparlers that had come to nothing
in the face of Avice's want of love for him. Pierston accordingly
went straight along, and in the course of an hour was at his Budmouth
lodgings.

Nothing occurred till the evening to inform him how his absence had been
taken. Then a note arrived from Mrs. Pierston; it was written in pencil,
evidently as she lay.

'I am alarmed,' she said, 'at your going so suddenly. Avice seems to
think she has offended you. She did not mean to do that, I am sure. It
makes me dreadfully anxious! Will you send a line? Surely you will not
desert us now--my heart is so set on my child's welfare!'

'Desert you I won't,' said Jocelyn. 'It is too much like the original
case. But I must let her desert me!'

On his return, with no other object than that of wishing Mrs. Pierston
good-bye, he found her painfully agitated. She clasped his hand and
wetted it with her tears.

'O don't be offended with her!' she cried. 'She's young. We are one
people--don't marry a kimberlin! It will break my