her
young dreams. She lets him kiss her lips again and again, she is
clasped in his arms, yet feels them not; her mind fixed on the dazzling
picture of "what is to be!"

"Your answer, Eleanor, darling--love!" he gasps, watching the glorious
colour mount to her face, the marvellous radiance fill her eyes.

"Yes, Philip, your wife always!" Her head is on his shoulder, he has
gathered her hands about his neck. The brief midday hours fly as she
yields to the tender wooing.

"Soon," he whispers, "autumn's fingers of decay will creep over
Copthorne, while leaves must fall damp and dead in the country lanes.
Marry me, Eleanor, now the summer is here."

She starts back, a deadly fear knocking at her heart. She laughs,
apparently frivolous and light-hearted.

"Yes, in the summer, sometime next year."

"Next year!" his face falling. "But when? Next year has three hundred
and sixty-five long days!"

She smiles entrancingly, shrugging her shoulders.

"Oh! well--when the birds begin to sing."

"No," he cries, drawing her to him, "before they are silent, Eleanor,
before the light of summer goes out of the heavens, and the blue sky
fades to grey!"

Her eyes droop, her cheek is pale.

CHAPTER III.

GOD MADE THE WOMAN FOR THE MAN.--_Tennyson_.

"Oh, do stop and take me to tea in that lovely confectioner's shop!"
cries a pleading voice, while an eager hand flourishes a parasol which
pokes the driver in the back. "Oh, I wish I could speak the horrid
language."

"But, my dear," replies the man at her side, "you have only just had
your coffee and unlimited bon-bons. I want to show you Brussels
thoroughly. It is a most interesting town."

Eleanor Roche sighs. To her uncultivated mind the magnificent Hotel de
Ville, the Roman Catholic Churches, galleries, picturesque towers,
gables, and doorways of ancient buildings, hold but little charm.

She is madly excited about the bonnet and boot shops, the lace fans and
collars, chocolates, and ice creams.

Philip is bent on enlarging his wife's mind, and hopes to awake in her
his fervent love for art. Surely in time she will learn to appreciate
it. At present she is decidedly slow of comprehension. Though looking
lovelier than ever in her new Parisian toilettes, Eleanor disappoints
him. She talks perpetually of her appearance, dresses three or four
times a day, revels in admiring glances from male tourists, and
displays strange apathy when sight-seeing.

"