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withal. At home in his quiet rooma in St, Peter's Street, Iveil, he pondered long and unpleasantly on the revelations of the cruise. The tale it told was distinct enough, and for the first time his position was an uncomfortable one. He had met the Franklands at Exonbury as parishioners, had been attracted by Frances, and had floated thua far into an engagement which was indefinite only because of his inability to marry just yet. The Franklanda’ past had apparently contained mysteries, and it did not coincide with his judgment to marry into a family whose mystery was of the sort suggested. So he eat and sighed between his reluctance to lose Frances and his natural dislike of forming a connection with people whose antecedents would not bear the strictest investigation.

A passionate lover of the old-fashioned sort might possibly never have halted to weigh these doubts; but thongh he was in the Church, Cope’s affections were fastidious—distinctly tempered with the alloys of the century's decadence. He delayed writing to Frances for aome while, simply because he could not tune himself up to enthusiasm when worried by suspicions of such a kind.

Meanwhile the Millbornes had returned to London, and Frances was growing anxious. In talking to her mother of Cope she had innocently alluded to his curious inquiry if her mother and her step-father were connected by any tie of cousinship. Mrs. Millborne made her repeat the words. Frances did so, and watched with inquisitive eyes their effect upon her elder.

"What is there so startling in hia inquiry, then ?” she asked, “Can it have anything to do with his not writing to me?”