said the schoolmaster.

A moment of silence followed, broken only by Clementina's failures in
quieting herself.

"To me," he resumed, "the sweetest fountain of money is the hand of
love, but a man has no right to take it from that fountain except he is
in want of it. I am not. True, I go somewhat bare, my lady; but what is
that when my Lord would have it so?"

He opened again the bag, and slowly, reverentially indeed, drew from it
one of the new sovereigns with which it was filled. He put it in a
waistcoat pocket and laid the bag on the table.

"But your clothes are shabby, sir," said Clementina, looking at him with
a sad little shake of the head.

"Are they?" he returned, and looked down at his lower garments,
reddening and anxious. "I did not think they were more than a little
rubbed, but they shine somewhat," he said. "They are indeed polished by
use," he went on with a troubled little laugh: "but they have no holes
yet--at least none that are visible," he corrected. "If you tell me, my
lady, if you honestly tell me, that my garments"--and he looked at the
sleeve of his coat, drawing back his head from it to see it better--"are
unsightly, I will take of your money and buy me a new suit." Over his
coat-sleeve he regarded her, questioning.

"Everything about you is beautiful," she burst out. "You want nothing
but a body that lets the light through." She took the hand still raised
in his survey of his sleeve, pressed it to her lips, and walked, with
even more than her wonted state, slowly from the room.

He took the bag of gold from the table and followed her down the stair.
Her chariot was waiting her at the door. He handed her in, and laid the
bag on the little seat in front.

"Will you tell him to drive home?" she said with a firm voice, and a
smile which if any one care to understand let him read Spenser's
fortieth sonnet. And so they parted. The coachman took the queer,
shabby, un-London-like man for a fortune-teller his lady was in the
habit of consulting, and paid homage to his power with the handle of his
whip as he drove away. The schoolmaster returned to his room--not to his
Plato, not even to Saul of Tarsus, but to the Lord himself.

[TO BE CONTINUED]

SOME LAST WORDS FROM SAINTE-BEUVE.

It is seven years since the world of letters lost the prince of critics,
the last of the critics. His unfinished and unpublished manuscripts were
eagerly demanded and devoured; while obituaries, notices,