since been thinking that it was-odd-that he should have known her face. Perhaps," she added, looking anxiously and eagerly into Adam's face, "he had seen her somewhere before; it was not a face one could easily forget, and she may have met him in Dublin, or been his friend's wife."

"His friend's wife-?"

It was well that in the partial light she could not see the expression in her husband's eyes. He was recalling a story he had heard, not so long ago, of Mr. La Mert and something that had happened in Ireland.

"I have been wondering, too," she went on, feverishly, "how soon we are likely to see Mr. La Mert again. He may be able to give me news of her. Just to think of it! and I have been so careless as to let him go away without asking him a single question! Do you think we are likely to see him again before we go away-or after?"

God forgive him if, as he looked down on that imploring, childish face, he thought he found something more in it than mere anxiety to see this man again for her sister's sake-if he read there a restless longing, an unsatisfied yearning of which she was too ignorant to be herself fully aware-nay, if he saw trembling on her lips and in the depths of her eyes the dawn of the soul that he believed to be as yet unawakened, but that he had so fondly and faithfully believed would sooner or later awaken to him-no other!

"You are not likely to see him again," he said, quietly. No, it was not likely, he thought, that Philip La Mert would again desire to have speech with Mignon. He was a more hardened man than Adam believed him to be, were he capable of meeting her glance, and replying to her questions concerning her sister.

"But Paris is not so big a place that one might not run up against somebody else," she said, with a very perceptible fall in her voice," and I dare say he came for more than just a day or two. If we keep our eyes well open, we may catch a glimpse of him yet, for we shall not be going away yet awhile."

“But I thought you were in such a hurry to get back to Lilytown," he said; "it was only yesterday morning that you said-"

46

'Only, you see,” she said, interrupting him, “I did not know what was going to happen-that I should see him."

Now, if there be any parallel to the extraordinary and perverse dislike (of which I have before made mention) that a woman has to being called a woman, it is that of the objection a man has to hearing his wife or sweetheart speak of any one under the sun save himself as him.

Adam drew his hand suddenly out of his wife's clasp: he was angry; worse still, he had lost his patience, but he was too thoroughly manly and chivalrous to vent his irritation on this slender, defenseless girl, who had so great a claim upon his love and forbearance.

She looked at him in surprise, not knowing in what way she had displeased him. To be innocent VOL. III.-5

has its drawbacks; had she possessed experience, she would have discovered the rock of offense, and in future steered clear of it. Only in that case she would not have been the Mignon that he loved. Well, men are hard to please ; and they demand, and, oftener than not, they demand utterly irreconcilable qualities.

66

Mignon," he said, a moment later, in his usual tone, "I have some good news for you that I received this morning. And yet it is almost inhuman to say that it is good, although Mr. Sorel is your enemy and a bad man-'

"What of him?" cried Mignon, breathlessly; then, suddenly sobered, "He is not-dead?” she said. "No-not dead, but grief and excitement have so worked upon him as to render him insane."

"

Then there is no chance," cried Mignon, clasping her hands in despair, “of our ever getting Rosemary. You said it was not likely that he would wish to retain the house, and that, by setting an agent on the watch, and giving him instructions to buy the house in his own name and transfer it to you afterward, he would never suspect we had got it; but now-"

But now," said Adam, "the thing has passed beyond possibilities, Mignon; it is done. Mr. Sorel's next of kin, a shrewd, practical man of business, without an ounce of romance in his composition, on whom devolved the task of settling all Mr. Sorel's affairs, when he found out from Prue how matters lay, that Miss Sorel had kept the school against her brother's wishes, and from the landlord that the lease had expired in June, but was to have been renewed on Miss Sorel's return, he simply declined committing any such folly in the existing state of the man's health, placed the matter in the hands of the very agent I had put to watch, accepted a sum for fixtures, etc., at a valuation, and caused to be removed to the How all personal belongings of Miss Sorel, and the whole thing is done. I have written to town to have certain things sent in to make the place decent, and we will set out, if you are ready, Mignon, the day after to-morrow."

She did not immediately speak; she was dumb beneath the weight of joy his words gave her, then she took one of his hands between both her own and kissed it passionately.

"To be able to watch and wait for her alwayslike that?" she said—" to be sure of never missing her, come when she will, by night or day, and it is all your doing-all. You are good," she said, with almost a sob in her voice, "and I am not worthy of you; though, indeed, indeed I will try to be—"

"Do not !" he cried, almost harshly, as he took her in his arms, "do you hear me? I forbid it, Mignon-only try! Is it so very hard a thing, sweetheart, to love me?"

She shrunk from his embrace-his words; it was not often that he permitted himself the folly of either. "Love" was a word that he had hitherto been shy of using with the girl, and now he said to himself that he had been mad to use it; she would be scared and ill at ease with him. He knew, also, that when the first seedling shoot of that which in time should

become a stately flower begins to stir in the warm, brown earth, it is folly, indeed, to seize and drag it into daylight, seeking to wrest from it its yet unborn secret of color and perfume. Yet it was difficult not to believe that the germ developed slowly, slowlynay, there were times when he doubted if the germ were there at all; and, in that case, how long and weary would be the waiting for that which should never come?

"And now we will go home and begin to pack up," said Mignon, feverishly, and, turning to depart without one backward look at the magnificent panorama that had but now so electrified her-" only," she added, stopping short, as though a thought had suddenly struck her, we shall not have many chances of seeing Mr. La Mert again if we go the day after to-morrow; nevertheless" (her face brightened, for a moment she looked again like the joyous, happy-hearted girl of two months ago), "it is more than possible that we shall run up against him some day in Lilytown."

CHAPTER XXV.

There's not a breath

Will mingle kindly with the meadow air,
Till it has panted round and stolen a share
Of passion from the heart!"

"O PRUE!" cried Mignon, taking one flying leap out of the carriage straight into Prue's arms, "it is worth all-all the disagreeableness of getting married and going away, to come back to you and Rosemary again!"

"Hush, Miss Mignon !-I beg pardon, ma'am," said Prue, with a hasty glance at Mr. Montrose, but, reassured by his unruffled countenance, it's glad I am to see your bonnie face again." She held the girl away from her, regarding her with fondest love and pride: "For, oh! 'tis a long and dreary time it's been without you!"

"Prue," said Mignon, solemnly, as they went along the familiar approach to the house together, are you quite sure that we've not all been-dreaming? Do you know" (she grew pale and stopped short) "that I cannot help fancying I have been away for the holidays, and that I shall find her standing just inside the door?"

No, no, Miss Mignon," said Prue, sadly; "but you'll just find two new maids, for cook left a while ago, and there's a bit change in the house."

And, indeed, when Mignon stepped over the threshold, she found that all was not just as it used to be.

From the school-window had forever disappeared the dismal wire-blind that had been the despair of the young and idle male population of Lilytown, and in its place hung curtains of crimson silk and white lace, while through the open window came the perfume of those sweetest of all homely flowers, double-stocks and mignonette. Prue's careful, formal fingers had also arranged nosegays wherever she could find a place to set them, for did she not know

the passion her little mistress had for those delicate ornaments of inanimate creation, that are oftentimes so infinitely better worth looking at than human beings?

As Mignon flew like a butterfly hither and thither, exclaiming, criticising, admiring, something of that instinct so firmly implanted in the feminine breast, and that will often keep a woman straight where love for husband and children will not, viz., the love of home, awoke in the girl's heart.

The colored maps still hung on the wall, in one corner of the room stood the globe over which her weary fingers had traveled so many, many times, but the desks, forms, and blackboard, had all disappeared to make place for such pleasant, handsome furniture, as beseemed the dining-room of a gentleman who was bringing his young wife home. She ran into the drawing-room. That was also a curious mixture of past and present; for, though the bunch of painted flowers still hung upon the wall, and Diana was still blowing an imaginary horn in the distance, some good fairy had been at work and turned the schoolish, chilly room into a bower of blue and white, that must have been specially chosen, one would say, with regard to the character of Mignon's beauty.

She was standing in the middle of the room, herself the prettiest thing in it, or so thought Adam, who was silently watching her from the doorway, when she spied him and ran forward.

"You like it?" he said, simply, and smoothing her ruffled, dust-powdered hair away from her blue eyes.

"Yes," she said, softly, "I like it." One little, fluttering hand stole timidly up and rested on his breast, then, standing on tiptoe, she lifted her lipsit was not far-to his, with as light, as kind, as affectionate a kiss as though he had been her brother or her father, or anything on earth but her lover or her husband.

"I like you," she said, heartily; "indeed, I grow to like you better and better every day; but there is only one person in the world that I love.”

His arms slackened their hold upon her; she stood alone.

"And when she comes," continued Mignon, looking about her with a beaming countenance of utter delight, "how happy we shall be, to be sure !"

"And until then?" he said, quietly.

"Oh!" she said, her face falling somewhat, "I have not thought much about it; but with so much to look forward to we can't be very dull, can we ?"

When, some half an hour later, Adam found himself seated at one end of the table, and Mignon, in a fresh muslin gown, with a rose in her belt, at the other, he said to himself that he was an ingrate to Fortune, in that he received her favors with such scanty thanks. Only to think that Mignon was there; that she would be at his table always; that, whenever he came home, this little shape would be within reach of his hand and glance of his eye; that he would nevermore be tormented by stolen and hasty peeps that only left him more hungry than

virtue in his nature, and once the friend and companion of all the gentle deities that strewed the path of matrimony with flowers, may it not be attempted to recall him to the circle of his ancient friends? We know not but the force of example and timely admonitions may compass the conversion of that gay prodigal, the Kiss; and if his immediate recantation be a blessing not to be expected, at least we are not precluded from venturing to put him upon reflection, and awaken him to a useful sense of his danger, by briefly calling to his mind the leading events of his past career.

Kissing (for that is the every-day rendering of the high-sounding word "osculation," which forms the title of this paper, and which is derived from a diminutive of the Latin word "os," the mouth, and therefore meaning a "little mouth," illustrative of the puckered-up shape of that organ when bestowing or receiving a kiss) was an act of religion in ancient Rome. The nearest friend of a dying person performed the rite of receiving his soul by a kiss, supposing that it escaped through his lips at the moment of expiration. Spenser, in his "Pastoral Elegy on the Death of Sir Philip Sidney," mentions it as a circumstance which renders the loss of his illustrious friend more to be lamented that

"None was nigh his eyelids up to close,
And kiss his lips."

A little after he introduces the lady, "the dearest love" of the deceased, weeping over him:

46 She, with sweet kisses, sucked the wasting breath
Out of his lips, like lilies pale and soft."

The sacredness of the kiss was inviolable among the Romans for a long time. At length it was degraded into a current form of salutation. Pliny ascribes the introduction of the custom to the degeneracy of the Roman ladies, who, in violation of the hereditary delicacy of the females of Rome, descended to the indulgence of wine. Kissing was resorted to by those gentle, "good-easy" husbands (who knew better than to risk the tumbling of the house about their ears) as the most effectual and courteous process to ascertain the quality of their wives' stolen libations; and Cato the Elder recommends the plan to the serious attention of all careful heads of families. The kiss was, in process of time, diffused generally as a form of salutation in Rome, where men testified their regard and the warmth of their welcome for each other chiefly by the number of their kisses. Among the early Romans the higher magistrates gave their hands to be kissed; and, under the first emperors, the monarchs did the same. This,

the hands, while the inferior were forced to be content with touching the royal robe. Sometimes the emperor kissed the mouth and eyes of those whom he wished signally to honor; but this was a very rare privilege, and persons whom he wished to disgrace he kissed with marked coldness. Agricola complained that, when he returned from his victories over the Saxons, Domitian gave him a “frigid kiss," and left him otherwise unnoticed. In later times the Roman emperors exacted the same homage accorded to the gods, their subjects being required to kiss their feet, and still later to kiss even the ground before them. Diocletian was the first to demand this servile manner of salutation. Christianity, too, did not disdain to borrow of heathendom even such things as were opposed to its inner spirit and intention. Thus, the popes required the baser laity to kiss their feet, and in 710 Pope Constantine I., on entering Constantinople, caused the Emperor Justinian to kiss his foot. Valentine I. made the custom permanent; and ever since 827 the laity has crouched and crawled up the steps of St. Peter's chair to kiss the toes of the great fetich enshrined thereon.

Kissing the sovereign's hands at court presentations is also only a compromise beginning from the same foundations already mentioned. On levee and drawing-room days large numbers of privileged persons go through the ceremony of presentation to royalty, which nowadays consists of the announcement of the presentee's name, his respectful obeisance, and kissing the right hand of the sovereign. It is not a little amusing for an unconcerned or initiated spectator to watch the bearing of each individual as he or she approaches the royal presence. Intense nervousness appears to be the prevailing tendency, and this often produces very funny results. Some will approach the throne dais with their countenances as pallid as though they were going to execution, with trembling limbs and parched, quivering lips. Others, again, self-possessed up to a certain point, will all at once collapse, and, in the excitement of the moment, will do some outré or absurd thing, and shuffle out of the charmed circle in a semi-unconscious state. We remember hearing of a certain provost or mayor of a Scotch burgh, who, on being presented at the court of St. James, got along swimmingly until it came to the decisive moment of kissing hands, when, partly from ignorance of what he ought to do, and partly from sheer gaucherie or awkwardness, he plumped down upon both knees, and, seizing the queen's hand with both his own paws, mumbled it over as if it were something to eat! No wonder that the chilling atmosphere of court etiquette thawed into a ripple of laughter, and the