h a twinge of jealousy.

"Oh, no," she exclaimed quickly, and at once corrected herself.
"Not so much as I ought. I love him, of course, for his father's
sake: but in features he takes after his mother very strikingly, and
that--on the few occasions I have seen him--chilled me. It is wrong,
I know; and no doubt with more opportunity I should have grown very
fond of him. Sometimes I tax myself, Harry, with being frail in my
affections: they require renewing with a sight of--of their object.
That is why we are keeping our birthdays together to-day."

She smiled at me, almost archly, putting out a hand to rest it on
mine, which lay on my knee; then suddenly the smile wavered, and her
eyes began to brim; I saw in them, as in troubled water, broken
images of a hundred things I had known in dreams; and her arm was
about my neck and I nestled against her.

"Dear Harry! Dear boy!"

I cannot tell how long we sat there: certainly until the ships
hung out their riding-lights and the May stars shone down on us.
At whiles we talked, and at whiles were silent: and both the talk and
the silences (if you will not laugh) held some such meanings as they
hold for lovers. More than ever she was not the Miss Plinlimmon I
remembered, but a strange woman, coming forth and revealing herself
with the stars. She actually confessed that she loathed porridge!--
"though for example's sake, you know, I force myself to eat it.
I think it unfair to compel children to a discipline you cannot
endure with them."

She parted with me under the moonlit Citadel, at the head of a
by-lane leading to the Trapps' cottage. "I shall not write often, or
see you," she said. "It is seldom that I get a holiday or even an
hour to myself, and we will not unsettle ourselves"--mark, if the
child could not, the noble condescension--"in our duties that are
perhaps the more blessed for being stern. But a year hence for
certain, if spared, we will meet. Until then be a gentleman always
and--I may ask it now--for my sake."

So we parted, and for a whole year I saw nothing of her, nor heard
except at Christmas, when she sent me a closely written letter of six
sheets, of which I will transcribe only the poetical conclusion:

"Christmas comes but once a year:
And why? we well may ask.
Repine not. We are probably unequal
To a severer task."

CHAPTER V.

THE SHADOW OF ARCHIBALD.

It is not only children who, having once taste