on, but feeling rather nervous all the time. "Then I must
congratulate you on being a great deal better acquainted with my state
of mind than I am myself. I don't know how it is, but for my own part, I
confess that I cannot find any indication of such a condition as you
describe."

Here Seymour looked up.

"I think," he remarked, quietly. "That I might give you a _little_
further information on the subject, since you seem so very much
interested in it. Minnie was along with Charlie on Saturday night, on
his interesting errand, and also Miss Chartres."

Archie gave a low whistle of surprise, and stared at Seymour, as though
expecting him to say more, but if such was his expectation, he was
doomed to disappointment, for Seymour having delivered in these few
words the full extent of his information on the topic under discussion,
closed his lips and turned his attention to his book again.

Minnie looked distressed, but Archie did not notice it in his
astonishment and eagerness to know more about this mysterious
proceeding.

"Is it true, Minnie?" he demanded. "Seymour, who told you that?--I
declare I don't believe a word of it."

"Edward Laurence told me," replied Seymour, without looking up. "His
mother was down there at Hollowmell yesterday, and came home full of it.
I did not know before to-day that I had a saint for a sister; and as for
not believing it, if you don't, just look at her and you soon will."

And sure enough her face was dyed with a hot flush that mounted even as
he spoke to the roots of her hair, though he could only have been
instinctively aware of her confusion, for his head was still bent over
his book.

Archie looked from the one to the other in open-mouthed astonishment for
a minute or two, and then it dawned upon him that Minnie looked, to say
the least of it, uncomfortable, and stifling his curiosity, which was by
this time greater than ever, as best he could, suddenly relapsed into
silence.

Soon afterwards Seymour left the room, and Minnie resolved to seize this
opportunity of telling Archie the real facts of the case.

"It was so kind of you," she commenced rather confusedly, "to help me as
you did just now. I could not tell you about it while Seymour was here,
for you know very well how he laughs at religion, and says it is all
done for show, and that there is no heart in it at all. I don't mean
that I should have told you if Seymour had not been here, for I wouldn't
have mentioned i