and gardens, and even the green itself, was crisp and white with hoarfrost, which, of course, did not last, but gave us warning of winter. When I went out, I met Nelly just leaving her own door. She was in her red cloak, with her dress tucked up, and the little black hat with the red feather, which was always so becoming to her. But either it was not becoming that day, or there was something the matter with the child. I don't remember whether I have said that she had large eyes, eyes that, when she was thinner than usual, or ill, looked out of proportion to the size of her face. They had this effect upon me that day. One did not seem to see Nelly at all; but only a big pair of wistful, soft eyes looking at one, with shadowy lines round them. I was alarmed, to tell the truth, whenever I saw her. Either something had happened, or the child was ill.

"Good-morning, my dear," I said; "I did not see you all yesterday, and it feels like a year. Were you coming to me now?"

"No," said Nelly-and even in the sound of her voice there was something changed-"it is so long since I have been in the village. I had settled to go down there this morning, and take poor Mary Jackson some warm socks we have been knitting for the babies. It is so cold to-day."

"I thought you never felt the cold," said I, as one does without thinking. "You are always as merry as a cricket in the winter weather, when we are all shivering. You know you never feel the cold."

"No," said Nelly again. "I suppose it is only the first chill"-and she gave me a strange little sick smile, and suddenly looked down and stooped to pick up something. I saw in a moment there was nothing to pick up. Could it be that there were tears in her eyes, which she wanted to hide? "But I must go now," she went on hurriedly. “Oh, no,

don't think of coming with me; it is too cold, and I shall have to walk fast, I am in such a hurry. Good-by."

I could do nothing but stand and stare after her when she had gone on. What did it mean? Nelly was not given to taking fancies, or losing her temper at least not in this way. She walked away so rapidly that she seemed to vanish out of my sight, and never once looked round or turned aside for anything. The surprise was so great that I actually forgot where I was going. It could not be for nothing that she had changed like this. I went back to my own door, and then I came out again and opened the Admiral's gate. Probably Martha was at home, and would know what was the matter. As I was going in, Martha met me coming out. She was in her red cloak, like Nelly, and she had a letter in her hand. When she saw me she laughed, and blushed a little. "Will you come with me to the post, Mrs. Mulgrave?" she said. "Sister would not wait for me; and when one has an important letter to post-" Martha went on, holding it up to me, and laughing and blushing again.

"What makes it so very important?" said I; and I confess that I tried very hard to make out the address.

"Oh, didn't she tell you?" said Martha.

"What a funny girl she

is! If it had been me I should have rushed all over the Green, and told everybody. It is

can't you guess?"

post it; it was she

And she held out to me the letter in her hand. It was addressed to "Captain Llewellyn, H.M.S. Spitfire, Portsmouth." I looked at it, and I looked at her, and wonder took possession of me. The address was in Martha's handwriting. It was she who was going to who, conscious and triumphant, giggling a little and blushing a little, stood waiting for my congratulations. I looked at her aghast, and my tongue failed me. "I don't know what it means," I said, gasping. "I can't guess. Is it you who have been writing to Captain Llewellyn, or is it Nelly, or who is it ? Can there have been any mistake?" Martha was offended, as indeed she had reason to be. "There is no mistake," she said, indignantly. "It is a very strange sort of thing to say, when any friend, any acquaintance even, would have congratulated me. And you who know us so well! Captain Llewellyn has asked me to marry him that is all. I thought you might have found out what was coming. But you have no eyes for anybody but Sister. You never think of me."

"I beg your pardon," said I, faltering; "I was so much taken by surprise. I am sure I wish you every happiness, Martha. Nobody can be more anxious for your welfare than I am-" and here I stopped short in my confusion, choked by the words, and not knowing what to say.

"Yes, I am sure of that," said Martha, affectionately, stopping at the gate to give me a kiss. "I said so to Sister this morning. I said I am sure Mrs. Mulgrave will be pleased. But are you really so much surprised? Did you never think this was how it was to be?"

"No," I said, trembling in spite of myself; "I never thought of it. I thought, indeed—but that makes no difference now."

"What did you think?" said Martha; and then her private sense of pride and pleasure surmounted everything else. "Well, you see it is so," she said, with a beaming smile. "He kept his own counsel, you see. I should not have thought he was so sly-should you? I daresay he thinks he showed it more than he did; for he says I must have seen how it was from the first day."

And she stood before me so beaming, so dimpling over with smiles and pleasure, that my heart sank within me. Could it be a mistake, or was it I―ah, how little it mattered for me-was it my poor Nelly who had been deceived?

"And did you?" I said, looking into her face, "did you see it from the first day?"

"Well, n-no," said Martha, hesitating; and then she resumed with a laugh, "That shows you how sly he must have been. I don't think I ever suspected such a thing; but then, to be sure, I never thought much about him, you know."

A little gleam of comfort came into my heart as she spoke.

"Oh,

then," I said, relieved, "there is no occasion for congratulations after all."

"Why is there no occasion for congratulations?" said Martha. "Of course there is occasion. I wanted Sister to run in and tell you last night, but she wouldn't; and I rather wanted you to tell me what I should say, or, rather, how I should say it; but I managed it after all by myself. I suppose one always can, if one tries. It comes by nature, people say." And Martha laughed again, and blushed, and cast a proud glance on the letter she held in her hand.

"But if you never had thought of him yesterday," said I, "you can't have accepted him to-day."

"Why not?" said Martha, with a toss of her pretty head-and she was pretty, especially in that moment of excitement. I could not refuse to see it. It was a mere piece of pink and white prettiness, instead of my little nut-brown maid, with her soft eyes, and her bright varied gleams of feeling and intelligence. But then you can never calculate on what a man may think in respect to a girl. Men are such fools; I mean where women are concerned.

Why not?" said Martha, with a laugh. "I don't mean I am frantically in love with him, you know. How could I be, when I never knew he cared for me? But I always said he was very nice; and then it is so suitable. And I don't care for anybody else. It would be very foolish of me to refuse him without any reason. Of course," said Martha, looking down upon her letter, "I shall think of him very differently now."

What could I say? I was at my wits' end. I walked on by her side to the post-office in a maze of confusion and doubt. I could have snatched the letter out of her hand, and torn it into a hundred pieces; but that would have done little good; and how could I tell if it was a mistake after all? He might have sought Nelly for her sister's sake. He might have been such a fool, such a dolt, as to prefer Martha. All this time he might but have been making his advances to her covertly-under shield as it were of the gay bright creature who was too young and too simplehearted to understand such devices. Oh, my little nut-brown maid! no wonder her eyes were so large and shadowy, her pretty cheeks so colourless! I could have cried with vexation and despair as I went along step for step with the other on the quiet country road. Though she was so far from being bright, Martha at last was struck by my silence. It took her a considerable time to find it out, for naturally her own thoughts were many, and her mind was fully pre-occupied ; but she did perceive it at last.

"I don't think you seem to like it, Mrs. Mulgrave," she said; "not so much as I thought you would. You were the very first person I thought of; I was coming to tell you when I met you. And I thought you would sympathize with me and be so pleased to hear—"

"My dear," said I, "I am pleased to hear-anything that is for your happiness; but then I am so much surprised. It was not what I looked

for. And then, good heavens, if it should turn out to be some mistake

can mean.

"Mrs. Mulgrave," said Martha, angrily, "I don't know what you This is the second time you have talked of a mistake. What mistake could there be? I suppose Captain Llewellyn knows what he is doing; unless you want to be unkind and cross. And what have I done that you should be so disagreeable to me?"

"Oh, my dear child!" I cried in despair, "I don't know what I mean ; I thought once-there was Major Frost, you know—————"

"Oh, is it that?" said Martha, restored to perfect good-humour; "poor Major Frost! But of course if he did not choose to come forward in time, he could not expect me to wait for him. You may make your mind quite easy if that is all."

"And then," I said, taking a little courage, "Captain Llewellyn paid Nelly a great deal of attention. He might have thought"

"Yes," said Martha, "to be sure; and I never once suspected that he meant it for me all the time."

I ask anybody who is competent to judge, could I have said any more? I walked to the post-office with her, and I saw the letter put in. And an hour afterwards I saw the mail-cart rattling past with the bags, and knew it had set out to its destination. He would get it next morning, and the two lives would be bound for ever and ever. The wrong two?—or was it only we, Nelly and I, who had made the mistake? Had it been Martha he sought all the time?

CHAPTER II.

THE news soon became known to everybody on the Green, and great surprise was excited by it. Everybody, I think, spoke to me on the subject. They said, "If it had been the other sister!" Even Lady Denzil went so far as to say this, when, after having called at the Admiral's to offer her congratulations, she came in to see me. "I do not pretend that I like the marriage," she said, with a little solemnity.

"There were

claims upon him nearer home. It is not every man that is at liberty to choose for himself; but if it had been the little one I could have understood it." I hope nobody spoke like this to Nelly; she kept up a great deal too well to satisfy me. She was in the very centre of all the flutter that such an event makes in a small society like ours, and she knew people were watching her; but she never betrayed herself. She had lost her colour somehow-everybody remarked that; and the proud little girl got up a succession of maladies, and said she had influenza and indigestion, and I know not what, that nobody might suspect any other cause. Sometimes I caught her for one instant off her guard, but it was a thing that happened very rarely. Two or three times I met her going off by herself for a long walk, and she would not have my company when I offered to go with her. "I walk so fast," she said, "and then it is too

far for you." Once I even saw her in the spot to which all our walks tended the Dingle, which was our favourite haunt. It was a glorious autumn, and the fine weather lasted long-much longer than usual. Up to the middle of November there were still masses of gorgeous foliage on the trees, and the sky was as blue-not as Italy, for Italy is soft and languorous and melting-but as an English sky without clouds, full of sunshine, yet clear, with a premonitory touch of frost, can be. The trees in the Dingle are no common trees; they are giant beeches, big-boled, heavily-clothed giants, that redden and crisp and hold their own until the latest moment; and that mount up upon heights, and descend into dollows, and open up here and there into gleams of the far plain around, growing misty in the distance as if it were sea. The great point in the landscape is a royal castle, the noblest dwelling-place I ever saw. We who live so near are learned in the different points of view; we know where to catch it shining like a fairy stronghold in the white hazy country, or stretching out in grey profile upon its height, or setting itself-here the great donjon, there a flanking tower-in frames of leafy branches. I had left my little carriage and my stout old pony on the road, and had wandered up alone to have my last peep before winter set in, when suddenly I saw Nelly before me. She was walking up and down on the soft yielding moss, carpeted with beech-mast and pine-needles; then she would stop and gaze blankly at the view,-at the great plain whitening off to the horizon, and the castle rising in the midst. I knew what the view was, but I saw also that she did not see it. Her face was all drawn together, small and shrunken up. There were deep shadowy lines round her eyes; and as for the eyes themselves, it was them and not Nelly that I saw. They were dilated, almost exaggerated, unlike anything I ever saw before. She had come out here to be alone, poor child! I crept away as best I could through the brown crackling ferns. If she heard anything; probably she thought it was some woodland creature that could not spy upon her. But I don't believe she heard anything, nor saw anything; and I was no spy upon her, dear heart!

The nearest we ever came to conversation on the subject was once when I was telling her about a girl I once knew, whose story had been a very sad one. She had pledged her heart and her life to a foolish young fellow, who was very fond of her, and then was very fond of somebody else; and would have been fond of her again, periodically, to any number of times. She had borne it as long as she could, and then she had broken down; and it had been a relief to her, poor girl, to come and cry her heart out to me.

"It has never been my way, Nelly," I said, "but it seems to ease the heart when it can speak. I don't think that I could have spoken to any one, had it been me."

"And as for me," cried Nelly, "if I should ever be like that-and if any one, even you, were so much as to look at me as if you knew, I think I should die!"