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that my father would have chosen for me—you know the paternal idea as well as I—and I have kept it secret, There will be a terrible noise, no doubt ; but I think that with your help I may get over it. If you would only do me this good turn—when I have told my father, I mean——say that you never could have married me, you know, or something of that sort ; ‘pon my life it will help to smooth the way mightily. I am ao anxious to, win him round to my point of view, and not to cause any estrangement.”

What Phyllis replied she scarcely knew, or how she counselled him as to his unexpected situation. Yet the relief that his announcement brought her was perceptible, To have confided her trouble in return was what her aching heart longed to do; and had Humphrey been a woman she would instantly have poured out her tale. But to him she feared to confess ; and there was a real reason for silence, till a sufficient time had elapsed to allow her lover and his comrade to get out of harm’s way.

As soon as she reached home again she sought a solitary place, and spent the time in half regretting that she had not gone away, and in dreaming over the meetings with Matthius Tina from their beginning to their end. In his own country, among his own countrywomen, he would possibly soon forget her, even to her very uame.

Her listlessness was such that she did not go out of the house for several days, There came a morning which broke in fog and mist, behind which the dawn could be discerned in greenish gray, and the outlines of the tents, and the rows of horses at the ropes. The smoke from the canteen fires drooped heavily.

The spot at the bottom of the garden where she had been accustomed to climb the wall to meet Matthius was the only inch of English ground in which she took