es, as distinct as yours now, reproving me for my
idle, frivolous life.'

'Nonsense! I am sure you are neither idle nor frivolous. Do doze off, if
you can, dear; I'll go and get something to read.'

'You won't be angry with me?' the girl asked, in the tone of an
affectionate weary child.

'I shall if you use ceremony with me.'

Beatrice sighed, folded her hands upon the fan, and closed her lids.
When Mrs. Rossall returned from the house with a magazine and a light
shawl, the occupant of the hammock was already sound asleep. She threw
the shawl with womanly skill and gentleness over the shapely body. When
she had resumed her seat, she caught a glimpse of Wilfrid at a little
distance; her beckoned summons brought him near.

'Look,' she whispered, pointing to the hammock. 'When did you see a
prettier picture?'

The young man gazed with a free smile, the expression of critical
appreciativeness. The girl's beauty stirred in him no mood but that. She
slept with complete calm of feature the half-lights that came through
the foliage made an exquisite pallor on her face, contrasting with the
dark masses of her hair. Her bosom rose and fell in the softest sighing;
her pure throat was like marble, and her just parted lips seemed to need
a protector from the bees....

While she sleeps, let us learn a little more of her history. Some
five-and-twenty years previously, Alfred Redwing was a lecturer on Greek
and Latin at a small college in the North of England, making shift to
live on a beggarly stipend. Handsome, pleasing, not quite thirty, he was
well received in such semblance of society as his town offered, and, in
spite of his defects as a suitor, he won for his wife a certain Miss
Baxendale, the daughter of a well-to-do manufacturer. She brought him at
once a few hundreds a year, and lie pursued his college work in improved
spirits. His wife had two brothers; one had early gone to America, the
other was thriving as a man of business in the town of Dunfield. With
Laurence Baxendale, who dated his very occasional letters from various
parts of the United States, the family might be said to have parted for
good; before leaving England he had got on ill terms with his father and
brother, and it was only a persistent affection for his sister that
caused him to give any sign of himself year after year. When this sister
had been Mrs. Redwing for about two years, she one day received an
intimation from solicitors that Laurence was