GODFREY PIERREPOINT's day-dream has been realised in the years that have gone by since the death of Arthur Holroyde: and other children play now in the old-fashioned garden which is only divided by a low boundary-wall from the hidden graves of a forgotten churchyard. The orchards and gardens of the Grange are the favourite playground of the children from the Castle. The little ones like the apples on those old espaliers better than any fruit that is grown in the prim kitchen-gardens of the loftier domain. They prefer the grassy lawn and the cottage-flowers, the sweet-williams and London-pride, the stocks and mignonette, and the glorious cabbage-roses which were the chief joy of their dead grandmother, to all the grandeurs of the Castle pleasaunce, where stately peacocks

screech at them, and where solemn gardeners look unhappy if a stray leaflet is dropped on the smooth gravel.

Happy children, on whose fair young heads all Fortune's gifts fall in a golden shower! Happy children, whose name in the place of their birth is synonymous with nobility and honour! Happy children, about and around whom there breathes so pure an atmosphere of love that the young faces seem still to reflect the brightness of the angels who have smiled upon them in their baby-dreams!

And while the children play in the gardens of the Grange, Marcia and Godfrey are sometimes away in London; for the name of Pierrepoint is fast becoming a power in the ranks of the more advanced of English Conservatives; and more than once in the course of every session Sir Jasper Denison has the pleasure of reading some grand speech of his son-in-law's commented upon in his favourite Times.

Godfrey Pierrepoint has indeed begun a new life. Love, ambition, success-all the brightest flowers that make the crown of existence-blos

som now for him, for him! And sometimes in a dream he fancies himself on the burning shores of the white Nile, and awakes in a feverish terror to remember his desolate youth, and to thank God for the gladness of his manhood.

And when the session is over, and he is free to fly back to the children at Pierrepoint, the grave African wanderer of the past, the earnest senator of the present, is transformed all at once into the lightest-hearted boyish traveller who ever sped northwards by express-train. In the Grange gardens, where he played in his childhood, he plays now with his children: and lying on the grass with the latest parliamentary reports open under his elbow, he is disturbed by tiny flaxenhaired toddlers, who insist on being taken to Banbury Cross, or enlightened as to the proceedings of that celebrated family of pigs whose leading member went to market.

Is it necessary to say that the Pierrepoint poor rejoice in the residence of their chieftain and his tender-hearted wife, or that the Castle is a land flowing with milk and honey for the surrounding

peasantry? There are strong-minded ladies in the neighbourhood, who threaten Marcia with the direful effects that are likely to arise out of her undiscerning charities; but Marcia pleads that if she waited to find faultless recipients for her benevolence, she should never give to any body.

"I am very sorry that James Price will not attend the two services, Miss Warlock," she replies to an importunate lady; "but I hear that he is a good husband and a most affectionate father, and that his drowsiness after dinner is really constitutional; so I don't see any reason for withholding the new milk that his children are allowed to have from the Castle dairy."

Mrs. Pierrepoint has a trusty ally in her own particular curate, Mr. Silbrook, on whom the Pierrepoint benefice was bestowed when the old incumbent died. He came to Yorkshire, delighted to return to his old slavery, and as happy to serve Mrs. Pierrepoint as he had been to wait upon the footsteps of Miss Denison. He loves her still; but in his soul love is so pure a flame that it burns

with as subdued and steady a radiance as the deathless lamp on a Roman-Catholic altar.

Sir Jasper comes often to Pierrepoint; and he makes his son-in-law's town-house his head-quarters when he has occasion to attend Christie's auction-room. He likes his grandchildren amazingly-from a good point of sight. "Place them on a level with my eye, and let me get a northwest light upon them," he says entreatingly, as he hands the little ones back to their nurses. "Yes, quite equal to Sant-very transparent and pearly. I shouldn't be surprised if that boy were to develop into a Gainsborough; and if he does, I shall leave him the whole of my fortune. You will not let him disturb my Ettys when I am dead and gone, will you, Pierrepoint? I think I should turn in my grave if any wretch were to put my Psyche in a bad light."

With the children in the Grange gardens there is some one who is not a servant, and yet not quite a governess-a gentle tender creature,