nes.

"There," he continued, "when you write to your uncle, inclose that."

Grace took it, and read:--

DEAR MISS NEVIL,--Pray assure your uncle from me that I am quite
ready to guarantee, in any form that he may require, the undertaking
represented to him by Mr. John Somers. Yours very truly,

ROBERT RUSHBROOK.

A quick flush mounted to the young girl's cheeks. "But this is a
SECURITY, Mr. Rushbrook," she said proudly, handing him back the paper,
"and my uncle does not require that. Nor shall I insult him or you by
sending it."

"It is BUSINESS, Miss Nevil," said Rushbrook, gravely. He stopped, and
fixed his eyes upon her animated face and sparkling eyes. "You can send
it to him or not, as you like. But"--a rare smile came to his handsome
mouth--"as this is a letter to YOU, you must not insult ME by not
accepting it."

Replying to his smile rather than the words that accompanied it, Miss
Nevil smiled, too. Nevertheless, she was uneasy and disturbed. The
interview, whatever she might have vaguely expected from it, had
resolved itself simply into a business indorsement of her lover, which
she had not sought, and which gave her no satisfaction. Yet there was
the same potent and indefinably protecting presence before her which she
had sought, but whose omniscience and whose help she seemed to have lost
the spell and courage to put to the test. He relieved her in his abrupt
but not unkindly fashion. "Well, when is it to be?"

"It?"

"Your marriage."

"Oh, not for some time. There's no hurry."

It might have struck the practical Mr. Rushbrook that, even considered
as a desirable business affair, the prospective completion of
this contract provoked neither frank satisfaction nor conventional
dissimulation on the part of the young lady, for he regarded her calm
but slightly wearied expression fixedly. But he only said: "Then I shall
say nothing of this interview to Mr. Leyton?"

"As you please. It really matters little. Indeed, I suppose I was rather
foolish in coming at all, and wasting your valuable time for nothing."

She had risen, as if taking his last question in the significance of a
parting suggestion, and was straightening her tall figure, preparatory
to putting on her cloak. As she reached it, he stepped forward, and
lifted it from the chair to assist her. The act was so unprecedented, as
Mr. Rushbrook never indulged in those minor masculine courtesies, that
she was momentarily as confused as a y