ton with her daughter would be her best card, so she expressed it; and accustomed all her life, as she had been, to play with the best feelings of the human heart as she would with the French crackers at a ball supper, she felt no scruples in providing against casualties; and so Dan Colyton's visits to The Lodge were encouraged with a kindness he seemed duly to appreciate. At first, Mrs. Villaroy made a point of always presiding at the painting-lessons which Colyton imparted to Yolande; but she found the huge, unfurnished dining-room so cold and comfortless, that by degrees she failed in her attenance. While Yolande, on her part, from an antipathy to the general style of her mother's morning visitors, abstained from entering the pretty drawing-rooms; and thus it frequently happened that her interviews with young Colyton assumed the character of têtes-à-têtes.

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CHAPTER II.

"Thou only dost know me; to thee is revealed
The spring of my thoughts, from all others concealed;
The enigma is solved, as thou readest my soul;
They view but a part, thou beholdest the whole."
TOWNSEND.

On the first occasion of Colyton being left, by the flight of Mrs. Villaroy from the wretched dining-room, alone with her daughter, his counsel on some point connected with the picture on her easel, was asked by the zealous Yolande. Spurred on by the judicious and artistic hints he gave her, she at once

commenced their execution; recommending him at the same time to make a retreat into the drawing-room.

"I prefer this room with all its thousand incongruities to any other," he said quietly; beginning a survey of the books ranged in the odd old oaken shelves. Poor Yolande ! There could not have been a better synopsis afforded of her strangely and variously constituted mind, than by the heterogeneous literature of these shelves. Next to Christie's "Disquisition on Etruscan Vases," was a well-used volume of the "Arabian Nights." Sir William Drummond's "Academical Questions" flanked an illuminated Missal; Peacock's "Headlong Hall" and "Durandus" leant most lovingly together; while Brand's Chemistry" and Butler's "Lives of the Saints" showed, by a forest of little paper

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marks protruding from their leaves, that

they were much consulted. However, works of a Romanist tendency were most predominant; at the same time that, with Vasari's "Lives of the Painters" and modern poems, there were some old and curious books on Sorcery intermixed. From the inspection of the books, Colyton proceeded to a survey of the apartment. It was equally suggestive of wonderment as to the proprietor. But among all its discrepances, considering that she who owned it was a professing member of the Church of England, were some objects deeply repugnant to the ideas of Colyton. In a sort of recess, which had probably been originally constructed for a sideboard, stood a little square table covered with a pretty purple velvet cloth. On it stood the crucifix which had travelled with the gauze and crape dresses; one or two books, which, with their silver clasps and corners, and

the red edges to their leaves, spoke their nature, lay by it. There was also an antique-looking vase with a black-letter inscription on it in blue and gold, filled with fresh flowers; and a little agate casket, which might, or might not, contain any relics at the present time-but that such was its original office, no one could doubt. All this, however, Colyton could have pardoned; even to the little prie dieu chair. He had seen much of this in many young women of his acquaintance; who, from a certain picturesque and sentimental taste, with something of devotional spirit, believed that they might thus worship the Infinite God, while pleasing their own eyes with ladylike æsthetics, and pretty realisations of the oratories brought by pictures and poems to their attention. But there was something beyond all this which much ruffled him.