ness all her own, and she looked him straight in the face while she spoke. She saw the blood mount slowly to his temples, and the wonder grow apace in his fixed

eyes.

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Do you believe me ?" she asked when she had finished. She was leaning heavily on the table; for now that the thing was done, it appeared to her rather terrible: her throat was scorched, as though from the passage of fire, and by the bewildered, wavering look which Sir Peter turned upon her, she could guess that there must be wildness in her face.

"No," said Sir Peter, "I don't believe you." His own unsteady, questioning gaze belied his words. He did not quite disbelieve her, but neither did he quite believe her. He was in a maze. A blind man does not submit without a a struggle to have his eyes torn open-and torn open, too, in this point-blank cut-and-dry fashionwithout a single preliminary stage.

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'You must believe me," said Maud, desperately and deliberately calm-"You must!" Was the thing not quite done, after all? Was there still a dangerous loophole left? Quick, quick! It must be closed up at any price.

"You have been overstrained," said Sir Peter, watching her. "I don't understand you. This story you tell me is very wonderful, but it is a great deal more like a thing in a book than a thing in real life. To begin with, everybody knows that Christopher Swan died years ago. You have got some idea into your head; you speak so quietly, but your colour, your eyes! You are feverish, Miss Epperton."

will you then believe whatever else I have told you?" And, without waiting for his answer, Maud went to the door and called for the landlady. The fact of the shoemaker on the moor having been identified by Adam two days ago as Christopher Swan, had already spread to Floundershayle, as also the fact of the shoemaker having since disappeared trackless, and with him, consequently, all trace of the copper-vein. It was supposed that in an access of terror he had fled the country, but search and inquiries had hitherto proved unavailing. All this information was elicited from the landlady by Maud's questions, and in Sir Peter's presence. In point of fact, a great deal more than this was elicited, for the landlady was more easily set agoing in the conversational line than she was stopped, and the event had naturally produced some sensation at Floundershayle. Under cover of the voluble stream of details, Maud walked to the window. The stream flowed on for a little longer, and then ceased. After that the door opened and closed again, and there was silence in the room.

Maud waited; she did not quite know whether this waiting lasted a very long or a very short time, but suddenly she became aware that Sir Peter was walking rapidly across the room. "Now!" thought Maud; "he believes me now! What is he going to do to me? Will he kill me? I suppose he can't well strike me," and she swung round to face him, believing him to be scowling above her; but lo, and behold! he was not there at all he had passed her, and was at the door already, with his fingers on the handle.

"Stop!" she cried, amazed; "where are you going to?" "I am going to her," said Sir

Peter. His voice shook, his eyes were alight. Maud was right: he did believe her now. The one point of her story which she had proved to him by the landlady's testimony, had vouched for the veracity of the whole. It had been as the touchstone of the intrinsic credibility of the tale, and it wanted but that to disperse his bewilderment and to make him eagerly accept the proof. To believe in the story was to believe in Lady Baby's love for him; it was that that made his eyes

shine so.

"And I?" said Maud. "You go like this? without the smallest word-of abuse? Without the tiniest shadow of a curse upon my head? We have not done our talk yet. I want to know now what you think of me?" She had come up to him where he stood beside the door; and, still fingering the handle, he turned and eyed her in a curious startled way, as though violently recalled to a sense of her identity. It was evident to her that the man's soul, released from its bondage of suspicion, had flown straight to the feet of its queen, soaring over her head in a lover's ecstatic oblivion. "Do you remember who I am?" she asked, almost laughing.

"Yes, to be sure." His memory was returning. He came back upon his steps, as it were, to consider the practical aspect of the case. "And she really never cared for Carbury?" he asked, gazing urgently in Maud's eyes.

"Never. Carbury never was more to her than the possible family saviour."

"But, in mercy's name, why did she not say so then?"

Ah yes, exactly; and over there, with just that look, she says: 'Why did he not ask?' When once you people with the big, proud souls get to quarrelling,

there is nothing for it but for a small soul to go between you. Do you know what her plan was? Oh, she had got plans! She was going to have looked at you over the top of a blind this afternoon, and then she meant to go home and wait till she was fifty, at which date she would write you a letter to explain that it had been all right all along, and her heart empty of everything, but your image. I am not joking; she hadit all pat.'

Sir Peter shuddered; he seized Maud's hand. "And you have saved us both from this!

"Yes," said Maud, looking down oddly at the hand he held; “and I also have, up to twenty minutes back, been doing all I could to bring you both to this. How is it that we stand, exactly? I can't make it out, and I can't make you out either. Do you see no objection to shaking hands with the woman who has just been expounding to you how she put herself up for sale, and how she was prepared to be bought and paid for, exactly on the same terms that you would buy and pay for your furniture or your china? Are you quite sure that you have understood all I told you? Are you aware that, once on board your yacht, I would have stuck at nothing that could have widened the gulf between you and Lady Baby; and that, if I have not actually committed any particularly villainous act in pursuance of this object, it is only because the opportunity did not happen to present itself?"

Sir Peter's gaze grew troubled. "What made you tell me all this to-day?"

Maud shrugged her shoulders. "A fit of the virtues, I suppose. I have them sometimes; it generally lasts about twenty-four hours. I believe my nerves were a little

upset after the night. The chances are that to-morrow at this hour I shall be tearing out my hair at the thought of what I have done." Sir Peter stood staring at her with wrinkled brow.

"Well? You are waiting to be dismissed. How are we to part? Have you made up your mind?"

"I am wondering," said Sir Peter. "I don't uuderstand. What are you, Maud Epperton? and what shall I say to you? Are you a very heroic woman, or a very despicable one? You have deceived me, and you have enlightened me, you have betrayed me, and you have saved me. It is the maddest mixture. What shall I do? Shall I decline to shake hands with you because you treacherously plotted to steal my love from me? Or shall I fall at your feet and kiss the hem of your dress because you courageously gave it me back again? I have seen you be so great and brave, and you have proved your self to be so small and base. What are you?" He had taken her two hands now, and was examining her anxiously, as one examines a curious and unprecedented phenomenon, for Sir Peter was marvellously ignorant in the ways of women.

"Make a compromise," said Maud, her mouth quivering a little under his scrutiny. "Give me a little of each, a la Brutus, you know: As she was brave I esteem her, as she was desperate I excuse her, as she was unfortunate I weep for her, but as she was false I spurn her. There is esteem for her courage, excuse for her despair, tears for her-no, we will

skip them-and so on to the bottom of the page."

"You would skip what you cannot escape," said Sir Peter; "they are on your cheeks already. Oh, Maud, the pity of it! Do you know that you are a grand woman wasted?"

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"No, I did not know it," said Maud. And now go. I scent the artist coming to the surface. Have you nothing better to do this morning than to discover artistic possibilities?"

It needed no more than these words of hers to sinks her, as it were, in one instant out of sight, and to conjure up another vision in her place. Before Maud had quite realised that the door had been opened, Sir Peter had already passed the window, striding rapidly, his face towards Gullyscoombe.

"I see," said Maud, standing alone in the middle of the room. "I see how it is: if I had not called him back when his fingers were on the door-handle,—if I had not flaunted my treason in his face, he would have forgotten even to be angry with me; and if I had lain down before him and grovelled for his pardon, he would have walked over my head to get at her, and would not have thought it worth while to give me so much as a knock in passing. Is it that he loves better than he hates? or is it that my influence upon him was less even than I thought? Perhaps,"-and she laughed abruptly, brushing her hand over her eyes, -"perhaps I should not have got him after all! There is some comfort in that."

IN Cardinal Lavigerie, Primate of Africa, and Archbishop of Carthage and Algiers, Mr Clarke' has at all events a worthy subject. This is the case not merely with reference to the great works to which the Cardinal had devoted himself, such as the strengthening of the influence of his Church throughout Africa, his humane efforts for the rapprochement of the conquering and conquered races, the establishment of distant missions, and last, not least, his vigorous and eloquent crusade against the SlaveTrade; the man himself, as a sub ject for personal portraiture-the first aim, surely, of all true biography -seems to us one of the most picturesque figures on the modern stage. As regards this latter desideratum we mean no serious disparagement to the work before us when we say that it is not altogether free from the besetting fault of many Roman Catholic biographies (and when the subject is a good man and a Cardinal the temptation is at its highest)viz., a faint aroma of unreality, with a slight affectation of a certain sacred simplicity recalling, and no doubt befitting, the Acta Sanctorum.' Still, there would be more reality in the portrait even of a Cardinal who occasionally lost his temper, or made a mistake, or was deceived by others; but such blemishes are not allowed to be seen even between the lines. Thus in the disputes recorded between the Cardinal and the French Government there is never any "other side" to the question,though such questions are apt to

have another side,-but the reader must find that out for himself; and to make one more criticism on a book of considerable interest, the sectarian feeling of the writer, leading him to ignore to a great extent the existence of Protestant missions, tends to diminish the value of his narrative of the condition of Central Africa.

Born in 1825, the son of an officer in the customs, the young Lavigerie developed very early a vocation for the "religious" life; and after a distinguished school and college career, during which he came under the influence of the famous Bishop Dupanloup, he was made Professor in the Sorbonne at the age of twenty-nine. But he first found his true vocation some seven years later, when sent to Syria after the massacres of Lebanon, 1860; and to this, his first acquaintance with Musselman fanaticism, may well be due his extreme opinions of that creed. These, indeed, might have been modified by the noble conduct, on that occasion, of Abd-el- Kader, with whose grave and moderate language, and firm and dignified bearing," he was greatly impressed.

"When I rose to take leave," the Abbe writes, "he advanced towards me and held out his hand. Remem

bering that it was the hand which had saved and protected our unfortunate brethren, attempted to carry it to my lips, in order thus to express my gratitude and respect. Abd elKader, however, refused to receive this mark of homage, saying that though he allowed every one else to kiss his hand, he could not let me do

so, because he beheld in my person a minister of God."

The esteem in which the Abbé was held at Rome is shown by his appointment, soon after this, as Auditor of the Rota, which is usually considered a step towards the Cardinalate, and in 1863 he was appointed Bishop of Nancy. A few sentences from his first letter to his new flock gives, in their perfectly simple but eloquent earnestness, some insight into the character of the man :

"The day is close at hand, my dear brethren, when I shall appear for the first time in your midst. As yet, I have never beheld you face to face, nor has the sound of your voice ever fallen upon my ear; but I love you with that charity of which religion alone possesses the secret that charity which knows neither time nor space, because its source is in the omnipresent God. My mission is to teach you three things-the most indispensable which can be taught on earth-faith, which sustains and guides the life of man; hope, which consoles and cheers him; charity,

which renders his existence a source of happiness to himself and a benefit to others."

Four years later, at the request of his friend but subsequent opponent Marshal MacMahon," he went into exile at the call of duty," as his biographer puts it: in other words, he accepted the Archbishopric of Algiers. No doubt, to the average Frenchman Algiers is exile, but to the eager and cultured fancy of the Bishop there rises immediately a vision of splendid future possibilities, built on the historic glories of the past: he sees the traces, first of great historic peoples, and the ruins of old and varied classic civilisation; then, "for us who are Christians, memories of a far more hallowed nature"-viz., of the once great and flourishing African Church of

Cyprian and Augustine, and of its fall and desolation. And then he asks, “Is the death of this unhappy nation to last for ever?" and he eloquently apostrophises the scene of his new labours :

For the last thirty years she has been "France is calling to thee, O Africa! summoning thee to come forth from the tomb? Gather together, then, the fragments scattered over thy mountain-sides, strewn along thy trackless deserts; take once again thy place among the nations united to thee by a common faith and a common civilisation. Teach thy children that we have come among them only to restore to them the light, the greatness, and the glory which were theirs in the past, and that we will make thy former conquerors to understand that our sole wish is to avenge thy wrongs by loading thy enemies with deeds of charity and Christian love."

To the civil authorities of the colony, however, pledged not to interfere with the religion of the country, and dreading, perhaps unduly, an awakening of religious fanaticism, the policy implied in this noble utterance, and the expressed intention of giving vigorous effect to it, were very unwelcome. It seems hardly fair to attribute their opposition, as the author does, to hostility to religion. This came later on, after the war of 1870; but the position of the Emperor, and the personal sentiments of Marshal MacMahon, may be accepted as proof that this was not the case then, and that the Archbishop's policy was opposed by the Government, possibly with reluctance, simply because inconsistent with their own. Events, however, fought for the Archbishop: a terrible famine occurred. The French Government, following its usual traditions, endeavoured to conceal the facts. These at last became known, causing a great sensation. The Church came for