gentleman and a splendid fellow. If I had a son, Clem., I should have wished him in such a case to act exactly as you did, and not otherwise. I should have been proud of him; I dare say I should have thought him too good for any girl that ever put on a petticoat. I think so of you. When I speak of nonsense, it isn't anything about the money Melissa may have, or the sort of thing that is called position in a provincial town. In my place we all earn a living one way or another; we have no gentlemen there, unless you come to the county families, who in their hearts don't recognise much difference between Melissa's father and yours. I don't mean that; I mean that the thing wouldn't suit at all. Melissa isn't your form, take my word for it. The child is my darling little daughter; but I can see with half an eye that she has more faults than she has dresses-even." "Please don't, Mr. Aquitaine."

"You would rather think she has no faults, I dare say. But, after all, I fancy I am a good deal fonder of Melissa than you

"Well, I shall be fonder of her two years hence than you will. Oh, yes; you need not protest. We have all suffered in that way and got over it. I tell you, Clem., I like you so well that if everybody else concerned in the matter was willing, and you had more money than they could count on 'Change in half a day, my advice to you would be not to marry Melissa Aquitaine. Come, it isn't often a father has given advice like that, is it? But it is sincere. I know my little girl better than you do, and I don't believe she could make you a good wife. I don't think she is capable of much love. I don't think she could put up with anything or be of one humour long. I sometimes think she is incapable of loving-and for his sake, whoever he may be, I should almost wish it were so. those are my sentiments."

"All the same, I love her."

There!

"No, you don't. I know you think you do; but you don't." "Perhaps you know what I feel better than I do myself," Clement said, with a melancholy smile.

"I know much better than you what the strength of the feeling is, and how long it is likely to last. Stuff and nonsense! If I found you groaning with a toothache, and were to tell you that you would think the gout, if you had it, much worse, you probably wouldn't believe me. Perhaps you would ask whether I could judge of your feelings better than you could yourself. I should say, Yes; and when you came to have the gout, you would know that I was right,"

"The cases are rather different. You can't know what I feel, Mr. Aquitaine."

"Of course I know you think you feel more than anybody ever did before or ever will again. But, my good boy, that in itself is only one familiar symptom. That only confirms my view. We have all been like that. Come, come, you are in the age for falling in love; and Melissa came in your way, and she is a pretty girl, and her very little pertnesses and ill-humours had a charm for you. Tut, tut! I know all about it, you'll find. And you have taken her for your ideal. You are in love with your ideal girl, not Melissa Aquitaine. She isn't any one's ideal, even her father's."

"Well, anyhow, that's one reason why I want to get away out of this. I want to live in some earnest, active, striving sort of way; I want to fight a stiff battle of life."

Aquitaine smiled.

"We miss those Saracens terribly," he said. "It was such a relief to every disappointed fellow in the chivalrous days to be able to go and fight the Saracens. Well, perhaps the West may help us out of our difficulty. You want to have a hand in Montana's project-his New Jerusalem-I suppose ?"

"I should like to know something about it. Of course I couldn't go now. I wouldn't leave him for all the objects in the world, unless he was quite willing. But I can't help always looking out for something that may turn me free to go wherever I choose."

"You are not speculating on his death, surely ?" Aquitaine said, with a certain surprise and harshness in his tone.

And

"No; I don't like to think of such a misfortune as that. happily we need not think of it; he has splendid health, and has years and years before him, I hope. No; I was thinking of something that would make him happy, and set me free to go and bury myself wherever I chose. I was thinking that some day his son will come back to him."

"Why on earth do you think that?"

"Well, for one thing, he is firmly convinced of it himself. You see, he never heard any account of his son's death; and he is convinced he will come back some day."

Aquitaine shook his head.

"Either he is dead long ago, or he has no intention of coming back. Why should he never have written? Did he never write?" "Never."

"Then, why should he never have written if he meant to come

back? Oh, no; he is either dead, or he has married and forgotten all about the people at home. He has grown rich, and does not want to come back; or he is poor, and is ashamed. The chances are many to one, I should say, that he is dead."

"Still, if it should not be so-and he firmly believes it will not be so I should feel sadly out of place here. There would be no need of me any more. I should feel in the way more than anything else. You have no idea how he longs for his son-every year more and more."

"What does your father want you to do?" Aquitaine asked.

"Well, that is the worst of it; he wants me to do nothing. He wants me just to stay with him always, and tells me I shall have plenty of money when-that is, afterwards, you know. But that seems to me an unmanly sort of life. I am hanging on, doing nothing"

"You are learning something. You are studying, I suppose?"

"Yes, I am studying a good deal, and I should be happy enough if that seemed the right sort of thing to do. I can sit in a room with books half the day and half the night too, and be perfectly happy, but that doesn't seem the way that a man ought to spend his life. I am fond of books, but I am afraid I should never do anything in the literary line. I don't think I have any gift of poetry or prose, or anything else. I don't believe I have the gift of expression at all," Clement said despondently. "I am sure I couldn't paint a picture, or model a statue, or make a drawing for a house, or do anything of that kind. I can't expect to lead the life of a dilettante scholar in a library. I think I should make a good settler or an explorer-these are times when one may easily find something to do with energy and enterprise about it. But all that would only come up if what I told you of were to happen. If this young man should

come back--__”

"He would not be much of a young man now," said Aquitaine. "No; I forgot about that. I was thinking of him as if he always ought to be what he was when he went away. If he should come back, I should be de trop in the business, to say the least of it."

"Did you ever see the son ?" Aquitaine asked.

"I never saw him; no. I never even heard he had gone until afterwards."

"I never saw him," said Aquitaine; "at least, I never remember seeing him. I know he was in our office for some years; but there were a lot of people there, and I was about the world then more

than I am now, and my attention was never called to him. I do not even know what he was like."

"His father thinks he was like me," Clement murmured dreamily, "but that must be a mere fancy. I believe he was very good-looking."

Aquitaine looked quickly at the young man; but Clement was evidently not fishing for a compliment. There was a mirror near him; he had not even glanced at it. He was moodily looking down.

"Clearly that must have been a mere fancy," Aquitaine said, with a smile.

"Oh, yes!" Clement replied.

"Well-I am in a difficulty about you," Aquitaine said, “and I'll put it into plain words. I don't like the idea of your going out on this wild-goose chase to found your new Atlantis or whatever it is; and I should be terribly sorry to hear that you had left the kind old man who has been so good to you."

"I'll not leave him while he wants me; that's certain. Nothing on earth will make me do that."

"Very well; I quite believe you mean all you say. I don't like the chance of your being taken in tow by Montana either: I don't believe in him. But, then, I hate the idea of your wasting any more of your time thinking over this little crotchety girl of mine. Will you promise me to try to shake off that thought-to get rid of it once for all ? "

"Why should I do that? It makes life sweet to me. It doesn't do her any harm. I shall never speak of it to her or to any one. But it is all I have that makes life dear-the thought of her."

"In Heaven's name!" Aquitaine exclaimed, "why don't you take to writing poems? It would be ever so much better; you could work off the nonsense that way. The rhymes take so much out of one! The most unmanageable poets of all are the poets who don't compose any poetry. My dear good Clem., will you promise me to begin at once a series of sonnets—a short series, only a hundred and fifty or so-to my daughter?"

"You laugh at me, but I don't mind."

"No; that's the worst of it; I wish you did."

"Because I know you mean it kindly. Nothing coming from you can give me pain."

"Oh, hang it all!-I know; because I am the father of HER. Well, listen, Clem.; you said you never would speak to her-Her, with a big capital-unless you had my consent. My dear boy, you have my consent. Nothing better could possibly happen to you than to

try your chance. If that doesn't cure you, nothing will. Go along, there's a good fellow, and ask my daughter to marry you. Faith of

a heavy father a somewhat heavy-hearted father now and then— if she consents, I'll not stand in the way; and neither, I can promise you, will her mother.”

The young man's eyes had flashed fire for a moment, but then he became graver than ever.

"Now you really are laughing at me," he said, "and this is a sharper jest than the other."

"I am not laughing at you," Aquitaine replied, in a tone that was almost stern. "I am very much in earnest. I don't believe any one can cure you of this nonsense half so well as my daughter herself. Go to her; tell her in poetic language how much you love her; offer her your hand and heart-I have reason to believe you'll find her in a remarkably melting mood just now."

"I know well enough she would only laugh at me; I don't want to ask her; I don't want her to marry me, if it comes to that; why should such a girl think of a fellow like me? It would be a shame. I only want to love her."

"Go and tell her so," Aquitaine said, "and then let me hear from you again,"

CHAPTER VIII.

ROMEO AND ROSALINE.

GOOD fortune and bad fortune had combined to make Montana what he now was. The buffets and the rewards had conspired to decide his fate, each the wrong way. The buffets did not either correct or discourage; the rewards did not satisfy. His personal beauty was perhaps his first stimulus to the belief that he must be destined for great things. He felt that the gods had set their seal on him by making him beautiful, as the Greek orator declared of Phryne. His love-match had shown him that he could impress women with a sense of his power. His grief and his disappointment had filled him with a despair which, while it lasted, was akin to madness. He had suffered intensely; sorrow, dull, protracted, seemingly hopeless struggle, and iron poverty had tried to bear him down. He had seemed as if destined to end a drear life by some death of utter misery. Yet through all his worst times he had felt the same faith in his destiny-in his mission. He was confident that he was tried in