for my boy, and neither his sisters nor I grudge him anything we possess. It does not therefore signify if his choice falls on a portionless girl. Be she who she may, if she is worthy to be Spencer's wife, I shall receive her with open arms, and give them what I can to make them comfortable.'

Mrs. Bertram wrote very freely to Edith, who had been one of her son's early playmates, and had always had much influence over him. Of course he had fallen in love with Edith: that was long ago.

Both families would have objected to the cousinship, but Edith only laughed at the boy.

Since then he knew of course all her sad history, but had shown no disposition to renew his attachment. Second love toward the same object was never in that young man's line.

'Edith, Edith! queen of my soul! where are you?' sang the voice of Mr. Spencer Bertram, as he sought the ladies along the terrace.

Miss Blake will think you are insane, Spencer,' said his cousin. Remember she is not accustomed to you, as I am. She is in the habit of associating with sensible people.'

'I know, I know,' said Spencer; 'Miss Blake is a sensible person. But what can I do? I never was one; and'-turning to Honor, and looking in her face again-"like likes unlike sometimes, does it not? I am sure Miss Blake will not expect impossibilities; she will let me talk nonsense now and then.'

'I fear she must,' laughed Edith, 'except she forsakes us altogether during your stay.-There is the dinner-bell.'

Honor wondered why it was she kept growing red under the glance that had just met hers. She in her mature dignity of nearly twenty-one years blushing like a girl of sixteen! But as regarded sensible people, was it not a little wearying to be always sensible? Except Lady Tracy's gleams of humour, which were more satirical than lively, how staid and solemn everybody she had to do with was! The nouns and verbs and rules of syntax among which her working hours were passed were very grave facts, and at home or with her friends it was the same; dear Edith was sometimes sad, and her father always 'sensible;' Newton was serious, Mrs. Blake grave, and Conny, though

frivolous in tastes and flippant in mind, was always very soberly in earnest about her own great aims, while the silly talk of the society she loved was most wearisome in its solemn folly. Even Emmy was quiet and thoughtful, as a child living much with older people often becomes.

Would it not be a relief-a blessed glimpse of liberty to listen to nonsense, which was not folly, once in a way? And in this Spencer Bertram liberally indulged her. To talk delightful nonsense was an art in which this young man excelled, and which, when particularly pleased, or wishing to please, he freely practised. His wonderful memory served him well here; quotations most inappropriate, and therefore laughter-provoking, blended with clever sudden gleams of real wit, clever sayings that might have made the fortune of many 'diners-out,' all poured forth so carelessly, the hearer remembered little beyond the fact of enchantment: such was his conversation at times.

Not but that he could talk, and talk well, on graver subjects when he chose.

Whatever he did he seemed to do well,

perhaps from the art of refusing to do other things at all. When he said, 'like likes unlike,' he spoke a truth he and Honor were soon to realize.

Spencer Bertram had never before, he averred. to himself, met with a woman possessing so many mental attractions as Honor, without one particle of the alloy female vanity mixes with the charms of those who are, or think themselves, handsome. Her face is plain, certainly,' mused the young man, but I have seen a thousand pretty faces less attractive.' And what like was the Honor of whom he spoke thus? When we last looked at her with criticising eyes, she was an awkward untidy child. What was she now? Had years moulded her features into finer shape, or taken all the freckles from her skin? Not so; the title of this story is BONA FIDE: a plain woman.' Honor never was anything else; but she was no longer slatternly or awkward.

6

Her figure, if wanting in the svelte elegance that distinguished Conny's form, was fairly well shaped, and alive with all those natural movements that speak of active duties, ruled over by

a cultivated mind; her own artistic sense, mingled with the genius of the people she had lived amongst since her girlhood, had taught her to dress always well; that is, always with that fitness towards place and time and person, the want of which makes a really well-dressed woman so rare a thing. Her voice had always been pleasant, and her long residence abroad had obliterated all local Irish accent, except just so much as gave character and piquancy to her tones.

It is a pleasant thing to look on active neatlyclad feet, even if they be a size larger than fashion demands; and those white hands, though no smaller than in the days of Isabel Wedderburn's misfitting present, spoke silently, in their deft movements, of kind household cares and busy deeds of love, deeds which found their echo in the blue eyes, grown deeper and more eloquent, as the mind within gained beauty and strength.

Lay aside all poetry of description, and what did those who now looked at Honor Blake see? A young woman of nearly one-and-twenty, of middle stature and comely shape, quick and