of a water-lily.

"Why?" was the counter inquiry.

"Because I never heard how it happened."

"How was that?" said Lilla, launching into narrative. At the close of it
she said,--"Cecil pulled him through that time. I shouldn't have thought
nursing much in her line; but she was very hard hit, you know, and I
rather wondered Bertie didn't propose before he left so suddenly. Very
likely he did though."

Bluebell's eyes opened in horror at this unpalatable suggestion. "What
_are_ you dreaming of, Lilla?" gasped she. "Cecil! why she looks upon him
as an uncle or something."

"Oh, Bluebell, you blind little bat, it would be as well if you looked
upon him 'as an uncle or something.'"

But the other sat aghast and speechless. Lily glanced at her
sympathetically.

"Well, perhaps he mayn't care for Cecil. He has been talking nonsense to
you, too, I see, as he has to us all three, for that matter. I feel so
angry about it, I have a great mind to tell you all he said to _me_."

"I don't want to hear," said her companion, coldly; "nor do I at all
agree with you about Cecil"

"All right," returned the other. "Only remember he can't afford to marry,
whatever he may have pretended to you--not but what that subject is about
the last it ever occurs to him to enter upon."

Bluebell at first utterly refused to receive this intolerable suggestion
into her mind. Lilla must be inventing--in love with him herself, and
trying to make mischief. Nothing should induce her to believe it. How
irritating she was, too, with that knowing, quizzing expression in her
face!

So when Cecil, tired of solitude, proposed coming into their boat,
Bluebell eagerly took possession of the canoe, and went off on an
independent paddle, ostensibly to look for Miss Prosody.

CHAPTER XVI.

DETECTED.

His passion is not, he declares, the mere fever
Of a rapturous moment. It knows no control;
It will burn in his breast thro' existence for ever,
Immutably fixed in the deeps of the soul.
--The Wanderer.

"Why did you shoot on so quick, Major?" said Vavasour, in an injured
tone, after the dumb scene before referred to. "We might as well have
stayed and discoursed those young women."

Fane growled something about not choosing to intrude.

"I don't suppose they would have minded. That spicy little party, Lily
Tremaine, was smoking. I wonder who finds her in cigars?"

"I hate Canadian girls!" said F