"I'd best be honest; I'm afraid I love Betty very much."

"And you can't marry her, my dear. You must go. If one could have any hope that you would work hard and get on -but how can one? You must go, my dear."

"Glad you told me straight,' he said, and kissed her hand.

Lord Mereworth said, "You're like your dad, boy. But remember he started life with a big income, and you haven't a shilling, or won't have soon. Pull yourself together: if you've got to sail a ship, you can't disregard your soundings."

"All right, sir," Herbert said. Bob, the only son, was equally sententious. "I'm not much in the moral line, myself," he said; "but I know the world better than you, old chap. Why don't you chuck it? Why don't you buck up and do something clever? Go on the Stock Exchange or something? Be a beastly millionaire and marry Betty, and lend me a few thousands. You see, we must have dibs. Buck up! !"

Lady Betty said little; she looked perplexed. "I wish you weren't mad, dear old Herbert."

They were alone in the little garden. Herbert kissed her, and Lady Betty sighed a big sigh.

In the next two years, while he grew from twenty-one to twenty-three, a Berserker fury of folly seemed to have settled on Herbert Mardon. In his more nervous temperament, the passion and waywardness he inherited came to a premature head. To feel remorse and bitterness for kindness forfeited at

twenty-one is not good for a young man of the savage type, and it quickened the pace of his natural instincts. He wrote a little volume of verse; and since he was primitive in feeling, and with all the wholesome instincts

in excess, the sapient called him decadent and laughed at him. He was man enough to join in the laugh, of course; but the circumstance turned him from that unlikely field of endeavour, and he did not trouble himself to find another. He was not unpopular, for he suffered fools, and they who remembered the famous Harry were amused by his excesses.

They would not be profitable to describe: I question if Herbert enjoyed them so much as his father before him. The crash came in two years. His money was gone, bills had been backed by friends. Lord Mereworth was hardly able to help him, and another touch was put on his plight by a divorce case, during which the boy's name decorated the daily papers. It was not a bad case, as such go; there was no meanness and hardly a deception involved the boy had little, indeed, beyond the main fact, for which to answer. But it confirmed the world in the opinion that Herbert Mardon was an irretrievable ne'er-dowell; and he himself, indifferent, like his father, to opinion, was keenly sensitive to coldness. from his friends.

He was ready to accept the offer of a cousin whom Harry Mardon, in his prosperous days, had started in a profession in which he had grown rich. This cousin was strongly of opinion

He laughed lightly, in the boyish manner she remembered. "That's not a sentiment many people will share," he said; "and I shan't give many of them the opportunity. Forgive my making this secret sort of appointment. I couldn't go to Curzon Street very well, could I? And, by the way, I'm not in England at all-or only to as few people as I can help. But I'll explain that later. Tell me all about yourself-been having a gala time, or got into any scrapes?"

"No," she answered, quickly; "tell me about yourself first. You don't look down on your luck." He was dressed in a

well cut tweed suit, with a straw hat and a neat black tie.

"The clothes? Oh, I left a lot with the man in my old diggings, and I went there last night,-I only arrived last night. I couldn't resist putting on my evening things first time for two years-and going to a decent place to dine. don't think anybody saw me."

I

"Bob saw you in the street last night at least, he says he was nearly certain. He was awfully excited about it this morning. He said he was going to your old rooms to ask if you had been there."

"That was nice of old Bob. I saw him all right outside White's. I was going by in a cab."

"Has Bob turned hedgehog since he succeeded? I forgot -I was sorry, Betty. I saw it in the papers. Your father was very good to me. It's no use talking about it; I'm sorry."

She said nothing, but laid her hand for a moment on his arm. "But about Bob - he must have had a reason. Tell it me. Ah! come and let us sit on those chairs." They sat in silence for some moments Herbert compressing his lips, Betty scratching in the dust with her parasol. Then he said quietly, "You're going to be married?'

"Yes."

"You saw him last night. Bob says he was talking to him when you went by."

I

"That fellow! Yes; I saw him, and I loathed him. loathe the type. It's all right chopping wood or fighting in the ranks; but I can't stand it carrying its clumsy manners into drawing-rooms and giving the tone to all England. Curse him! A sleek, confident, stupid, purse-proud pig! Betty, I can't let you go to a creature like that."

Lady Betty laughed for the first time. "You'd have said something of that kind whoever it was, and he's not like that. He's rather a sportsman: he can fence awfully well, and

He had gone to Coolgardie and worked like a nigger in a mine for some months. It was not amusing, but he said it relieved his feelings. Then he had fallen in with a man who was making a fortune there— a good fellow, a gentleman, and yet, more oddly, a scholar, and

with it all a keen man of business the only combination of the sort Herbert had met, and indeed it is strange to most of us, his seniors. This man liked to talk with him in long nights when it was too hot to sleep, and gave him work in his office, and lent him money for a speculation in which he had made £200. Whereupon he determined to come to England to spend it. His friend called him a fool, and said he would never be rich, but gave him leave to go. So he had come back, himself hardly knowing why-to leave his narrative for a moment nor quite understanding the old memory and affection, which was hardly passion then, and yet drew his wavering steps steps more surely than his faint hope of moneymaking stayed them. But when he came, he dreaded the old friends for whom he did not care, and the questions to which he had so poor an answer. So he thought he

"Thank you, that's enough. He'll be a beautiful figure in a cavalier suit. You'll enjoy it immensely."

"Herbert, dear, don't be a brute. I didn't wish to ask him, but Bob seems so anxious to please him." She lifted her little troubled face, and Herbert begged her pardon. Then he said: "I have one thing to say before you go. If you marry this Fairbrother chap you'll have ever so many thousands a-year, and all the English society you want. If you marry me - no, wait till I've finished-you can come back to Coolgardie, and you'd be desperately dull. But you'd be treated with respect. And I'd work. Holland told me that if I once convinced him I'd put my back into it, and be devoted to the business and give all my mind to it, he'd see I made a

"Am I to have back my ring?" She met his eyes, perplexed. He had almost banished appeal from them, but his lips twitched.

"Honour, Betty. It pledges you to nothing but a feeling, and I shall never remind you. Am I to have back my ring?" "No, Herbert. I shall keep your ring.'

He gave a slow sigh of relief, and leaned back on the little green chair. Lady Betty spoke quickly, digging at the ground. "Understand, Herbert. This man - the man I'm going to marry-is fond of me, I know, and I don't dislike him. I'm going to be to be a good wife, you know."

"Yes, yes," he said, smiling; "I understand. But you care for me and you keep my ring. Of course I knew you'd marry -you can't help yourself-and I've not come back with a fortune at the right poetical moment. Tell me about it. It's money, I suppose?"

"You saw him last night. Bob says he was talking to him when you went by."

"That fellow! Yes; I saw him, and I loathed him. I loathe the type. It's all right chopping wood or fighting in the ranks; but I can't stand it carrying its clumsy manners into drawing-rooms and giving the tone to all England. Curse him! A sleek, confident, stupid, purse-proud pig! Betty, I can't let you go to a creature like that."

Lady Betty laughed for the first time. "You'd have said something of that kind whoever it was, and he's not like that. He's rather a sportsman: he can fence awfully well, and