ayed in her Sunday best.

"Shall you be wanting anything, sir?"

"Nothing whatever, Mrs. Macdonald."

"If not, I would like to go to the church to see Miss Sally and the
Bishop. I'd slip out quiet before the end, so as not to keep the
ladies waiting for their tea."

"Go by all means," said Paul, smiling a little over the commotion
created by a Bishop and his lawn sleeves, and a flock of girls in white
dresses and caps.

Then his thoughts reverted to Sally's face, with its sweet seriousness
of expression, as she had started for the church, and from Sally he
passed on to May; and there his mind lingered. She was
beautiful--beautiful beyond compare; and to-day there had been an added
grace of tenderness in her manner to Sally: a protecting, motherly
care, as if she would shield her from his want of sympathy. She seemed
so much older than Sally, and yet there were but four years between
them.

He pictured the room as it would appear when she entered it, and he
settled which of the two easy-chairs he would draw nearer to the fire,
and where he would sit himself, so that he could watch the firelight
playing on her face; and then---- He covered his face with his hands
and shut out the light, the better to understand the cause of the
fierce pain that was gnawing at his heart.

It did not take him long to discover what had happened. He, Paul
Lessing, a man who had knocked about the world and had mixed with all
sorts and conditions of men and women, whose pulses had hitherto never
quickened their beating at the touch of a woman's hand or the sound of
a voice, found himself, at thirty-one, as helplessly and ridiculously
in love as any lad of twenty.

With a smothered exclamation, he pushed back his chair, and began a
restless walk up and down the room. Was ever a grown man guilty of
such egregious folly before? A great gulf separated him and the woman
of his dreams: a gulf that could never be bridged over. In tastes and
in circumstances they were separated far as the poles. His love was
perfectly hopeless; and yet the notion of her marrying another, and
removing herself entirely out of his reach, was intolerable to him.
But, as an effectual cure of his madness, he knew that it was the best
thing that could happen to him. The remedy was a sharp one, but it
would be complete.

"A few days must settle it, and, until then, I need not meet her," said
Paul, aloud. "I won't stay in this afternoon; business can take