"No," said Clement, with a sudden earnestness which was forced from him, "I don't think anything of the kind."

He did not, indeed, think so any more.

"Come," said Montana, "it is time for us to go to the Church of Free Souls. It is not far from this ;" and they went their way at once, and no other word was spoken until they reached the place.

CHAPTER XII.

66 'THE DESIRE OF THE MOTH FOR THE STAR."

How was it with Melissa Aquitaine when an air ground out on a barrel organ could bring tears into her eyes-she who had never been supposed to know one touch of sentiment? The air that now moved her thus, and made her put down her pen as she sat writing in her room, was not a dirge, or a sad appealing hymn, or a piece of melancholy music of any kind. It was the air of a comic song, a vulgar music-hall song. We are strangely apt to fancy that melancholy sensations are wrought only by music that is melancholy. To the vast majority of people, the feeling the music inspires is far more often one of association than of art. Something suggested by the air, some connection which is in our memory with past time or a lost friend it is, and not the nature of the strain, which touches our heart, and strikes "the electric chain wherewith we are darkly bound." The village lad enlists and goes to the war, and is killed, and his sweetheart is made melancholy for years after by the first sound of "Tommy, make room for your uncle," on the barrel organ, because he used to whistle it, and he is dead. The young wife who died long ago used to amuse her husband by rattling off on the piano the inspiring notes of "Champagne Charley," and the Charley of that day, now grown a middle-aged man, is made instantly melancholy by the sound of that ridiculous air, although he could hear without outward sign of emotion the most devotional passage of the sublimest oratorio, or the soul-piercing pathos of "Che faro senza Eurydice." It so happened that a common music-hall ballad now touched Melissa's heart and made her eyes wet. It was some ballad that she suddenly remembered having heard her nurse sing for her in days long ago, that now seemed to her long ago, when she was still a child; days not particularly delightful or romantic in themselves; but still, days when nothing troubled her; and now something was troubling her. She used to be a disagreeable little child

enough in those days; and the possibility that she had been so began now to occur to her somehow. She began to doub. whether she had been exactly all that she might have been to those around her. New feelings coming up within her were beginning dimly to reveal to her the possibility of other people having feelings too-a matter which had not previously occurred to her mind. She was unhappy, poor little girl; and the air she heard grinding itself out on the barrel organ spoke to her of a time when she never thought of either herself or any one else being unhappy. So she put down her pen for a few moments and felt the tears come into her eyes.

"What a fool I am!" she said bitterly and aloud, and she went on with her writing again. She wrote in a hurried way, rapid by fits and starts, and then stopping for a long time to think over what she was to say next, and tearing up a good deal of what she wrote, and thrusting the torn scraps into the pocket of her dress, as if she would not have even those fragments seen of common eye. She was so much absorbed in her work that she did not hear the sound of a quick, light tap at the door, and then the opening of the door itself. Her father quietly entered the room. As she had not heard him, he would now surprise her by his coming. He stole behind her chair and put both his hands over her eyes.

Melissa cried out at once, " Papa!"

"How did you know it was I?" Mr. Aquitaine asked, setting Melissa's eyes free to look out upon the world, which they did at that moment with a somewhat startled look in them.

"Oh, I knew the touch of your hands very well; and besides, there was nobody else who would come in such a way."

She did not seem, he thought, as glad to welcome him as he usually found her, and she hurriedly shut up the blotting-book in which she had been writing.

"What have you been doing, Mel?" he asked, after having given her a loving kiss.

"Oh, nothing, dear," she said, "nothing."

"Something, surely. What have you got in your book? What have you been writing ?"

She got up petulantly, opened the book, took a sheet of paper out, and began to tear it in pieces. Mr. Aquitaine was looking on with perfect good humour, and did not even appear to notice the anger that was in her face.

"I do believe, Mel," he said, "you have taken to writing poetry; come, confess you were trying your hand at verses; do let me have a look,"

"No," said Melissa, still with an embarrassed air, "I was not writing poetry. I can't write poetry. I can't write anything worth looking at."

"An essay on woman's rights, perhaps? I should like very much to have a look at it."

"You know I don't care about woman's rights," said Melissa, or woman's wrongs either."

"Well, I never thought you did much; but one doesn't know what may have come about lately under the guidance of Montana."

Melissa looked up at him, a sudden light of wonder in her eyes, and then she looked down again.

"No," she said, "I have not advanced in woman's rights any farther than I was."

"Then," said Aquitaine, "it must be a novel. You are beginning a novel. It is something or other about which you don't feel quite certain, and you are afraid to have it seen by any one while it is yet a project. Never mind, girl; I know they say children and fools should never look at unfinished work, and so I shan't ask to look at yours. But I have no doubt it will be something remarkable when it does come out. Only, if it is going to be a very long piece of work, don't you know, Melissa, I think you'll never finish it."

"Do you think I am meant for the early and silent tomb?" said Melissa, with an attempt to be lively.

"No, not a bit of it; but I think you are a very lazy and capricious little girl, and that whatever you begin you certainly won't finish, if it is to be more than a page. If that were a letter, now-I dare say you could finish a letter, provided it were not too long; but I despair of your ever getting as far as the middle of the first volume of a romance. Besides, I don't know what you would do for a hero. I don't believe anybody is a hero in your eyes, not even I myself, Mel. Come, confess you don't think me an heroic figure."

"Girls don't want heroic figures for their fathers," said Melissa. No, I suppose they don't. It would be rather uncomfortable to have an elderly hero always hanging about the house, would it not? But you have a hero, then, for your love romance?" "I am not doing any love romance," said Melissa. you be so tiresome?"

"How can

"Very well, girl, let it be," said the good-natured Aquitaine : "just now I want you to do some less attractive business; I want you to come with me and make one or two calls."

Melissa moved uneasily about the room, and still seemed dis

tressed as to the fate of the torn paper which she held crumpled in her hand.

"You haven't got a waste-paper basket," said Aquitaine, "and don't know what to do with your rejected MS. My dear, you must start a waste-paper basket instantly if you are going in for the business of writing; you will find nothing so important as the wastepaper basket, and it will be just as well you should fill it yourself in anticipation, and so save the editors and publishers the trouble; they will do it if you don't."

"I haven't a waste-paper basket, and there isn't a fire, and the thing is neither worth destroying nor keeping." Nevertheless, she did not throw away the paper that she held in her hand. "Very well, dear," she said; "if we are to go out, I shall be ready in a moment."

"In a moment!" Mr. Aquitaine echoed. "Very well; I will read a few of the newspapers. I have not begun them this morning, and your moment will give me time for a good steady read through the lot of them." He took a newspaper and settled himself down. Melissa meanwhile crept out of the room in the quietest way, eager to get to her own chamber.

Mr. Aquitaine was too unsuspicious a man to be roused to any sense of distrust, even by the girl's evident embarrassment. He took it for granted that she had been writing some letter which she did not care to finish when once she was interrupted, and he did not really fancy that she was starting on the business of authorship. A man more keen-eyed than he might have thought that there was something in the girl's evident determination not to part with the tom paper she held in her hand. But even if Aquitaine had suspected what she was doing, or had insisted on seeing it, it is not likely that much change would ultimately have been made in the conditions with which this story has to deal. Melissa was a resolute little person, sure to have her own way in the end, and to walk whatever road she marked out for herself, no matter to what goal it conducted.

On her rapid way upstairs Melissa literally ran against Geraldine Rowan. Her excitement and agitation did not escape Miss Rowan's notice.

"Whither are you flying, and what have you got in your hand, breathless child?" Geraldine said, playfully holding the girl; “what torn document is that?"

you

I wish every

"I don't know," said Melissa, "and I don't care. one would not frighten and torment me. What is it to anybody

what I write or whom I write to? I am not sending it, anyhowthere!" and she tore the paper into scraps ever so much more minute than she had done in her first excitement, and then she burst into tears.

"Something is going terribly wrong with you, my dear little girl," Geraldine said; "and I am a very determined friend, Melissa, when I want to be a friend at all. Come to my room, or I will go to yours; let us talk for a moment or two. I will not ask you to tell me anything if you don't wish; but if you could at all bring yourself to make me your confidante, I think it would be good for you. I am a very faithful friend, and I know that something is troubling you lately that you want to conceal. Why don't you speak to your

father ?"

Melissa was now allowing herself to be led quietly along the passage towards Geraldine's room. She made no answer, and was only trying to prevent her sobs from being heard. They got into the room, and Geraldine carefully closed the door.

"Why not speak to Mr. Aquitaine, Melissa?" she said; "he seems to me to be the best of fathers and the best of good companions. I should tell anything to such a man if I were you."

"I have nothing to tell," Melissa murmured, still making a feeble effort to keep up her defiant manner.

"But such a change has been coming over you that everybody can see-everybody, I think, but Mr. Aquitaine; people never notice their own family. Girls don't burst into tears at being asked what they have written without some reason for it. Besides, I can see that something is distressing you. Will you tell Mr. Aquitaine, or will you let me ask Captain Marion to speak to him?"

"No," said Melissa, "nobody shall speak about me to anybody. I don't choose to be spoken about. If I have anything to tell I will tell it myself, but I could not talk to my father about it, Geraldine. How can you speak in such a way? I cannot talk to him. I cannot talk to anybody about it."

"Then, there is something!" said Geraldine quietly.

'Oh, of course there is, if you will have it, if you will insist upon it. Of course I know you have been wondering about this for ever so long. Well, there is something. I am a very silly girl, that everybody knows; and I have been making myself more silly of late than I do believe even Providence intended to make me. Look here-yes, I think you are a true friend, and I like you-or, I don't hate you ; not more, at least, than I hate most people, as I do. I don't like you, perhaps, although I said I did just now; still, I don't hate you more