o happy, and they--Oh! _poor_
old people!"

"They have wronged you--slighted you--ill-treated you," says he, looking
at her.

"But they are unhappy; they must be wretched always about your brother,
their _first_ child. Oh! what a grief is theirs!"

"What a heart is _yours_!" says he, drawing her to him. "Barbara! surely
I shall not die until they have met you, and learned why I love you."

CHAPTER III.

"It was a lover and his lass
With a hey and a ho, and a hey-nonino!
That o'er the green cornfield did pass
In the Spring-time, the only pretty ring-time,
When birds do sing hey-ding-a-ding,
Sweet lovers love the Spring."

Joyce is running through the garden, all the sweet wild winds of heaven
playing round her. They are a little wild still. It is the end of lovely
May, but though languid Summer is almost with us, a suspicion of her
more sparkling sister Spring fills all the air.

Miss Kavanagh has caught up the tail of her gown, and is flying as if
for dear life. Behind her come the foe, fast and furious. Tommy, indeed,
is now dangerously close at her heels, armed with a ferocious-looking
garden fork, his face crimson, his eyes glowing with the ardor of the
chase; Mabel, much in the background, is making a bad third.

Miss Kavanagh is growing distinctly out of breath. In another moment
Tommy will have her. By this time he has fully worked himself into the
belief that he is a Red Indian, and she his lawful prey, and is prepared
to make a tomahawk of his fork, and having felled her, to scalp her
_somehow_, when Providence shows her a corner round a rhododendron bush
that may save her for the moment. She makes for it, gains it, turns it,
dashes round it, and _all but_ precipitates herself into the arms of a
young man who has been walking leisurely towards her.

He is a tall young man, not strictly handsome, but decidedly good to
look at, with honest hazel eyes, and a shapely head, and altogether very
well set up. As a rule he is one of the most cheerful people alive, and
a tremendous favorite in his regiment, the ---- Hussars, though just now
it might suggest itself to the intelligent observer that he considers he
has been hardly used. A very little more haste, and that precipitation
_must_ have taken place. He had made an instinctive movement towards her
with protective arms outstretched; but though a little cry had escaped
her, she had maintained her balance, and now