unhappy as she went downstairs, though, if another hero could be found, she was perhaps half-conscious that the melancholy part of her present love-story might be somewhat abridged.

The streets seemed changed to Percival as he went back to his work. Their ugliness was as bare and as repulsive as ever, but he understood now that the houses might hold human beings, his brothers and his sisters, since some one roof among them sheltered Judith Lisle. Thus he emerged from the alien swarm amid which he had walked in solitude so many days. Above the dull and miry ways was the beauty of her grey-blue eyes, and the glory of her golden hair. He felt as if a white dove had lighted on the town, yet he laughed at his own feelings, for what did he know of her? He had seen her twice, and her father had swindled him out of his money.

Never had his work seemed so tedious, and never had he hurried so quickly to Bellevue Street, as he did when it was over. The door of No. 13 stood open, and young Lisle stood on the threshold. There was no mistaking him. His face had changed from the beautiful chorister type of two or three years earlier, but Percival thought him handsomer than ever. He ceased his soft whistling, and held out his hand. "Thorne! At last! I was looking out for you the other way."

Thorne could hardly find time to greet him, before he questioned eagerly, "You have really taken the rooms here?"

"Really and truly.

lady?"

"No," said Percival. all the rest of it. you as they told me?

"Not a bit of it.

But

What's wrong? Anything against the land

"She's honest enough, and fairly obliging, and then your sister is not coming here to live with That was a mistake?"

She's coming-in fact, she's here."

"We are not exactly

"In Bellevue Street?" Percival looked up and down the dreary thoroughfare. "But, Lisle, what a place to bring her to!" "Beggars mustn't be choosers," said Bertie. what you would call rolling in riches just now. happens to be about midway between St. Sylvester's and Standon Square, so it will suit us both."

"Standon Square?" Percival repeated.

And Bellevue Street

"Yes. Oh, didn't I tell you? My mother came to school at Brenthill. It was her old schoolmistress we remembered lived here, when we had your letter. So we wrote to her, and the old dear not only promised me some pupils, but it is settled that Judith is to go and teach there every day. Judith thinks we ought to stick to one another-we two."

"You're a lucky fellow," said Percival. won't know, what loneliness is here."

"You don't know, and

"But how do you come to know anything about it? That's what I can't understand. I thought your grandfather died last summer?" "So he did."

"But I thought you were to come in for no end of money?" "I didn't, you see."

"But surely he always allowed you a lot," said Lisle, still unsatisfied. "You never used to talk of doing anything."

"No, but I found I must. The fact is, I'm not on the best terms with my cousin at Brackenhill, and I made up my mind to be independent. Consequently I'm a clerk-a copying clerk, you understand-in a lawyer's office here-Ferguson's in Fisher Street-and I lodge accordingly."

"I'm very sorry," said Bertie.

"Hammond knows all about it," the other went on, "but nobody else does."

"I was afraid there was something wrong," said Bertie; "wrong for you, I mean. From our point of view, it is very lucky that circumstances have sent you here. But I hope your prospects may brightennot directly, I can't manage to hope that, but soon."

Percival smiled. "Meanwhile," he said, with a quiet earnestness of tone, "if there is anything I can do to help you or Miss Lisle, you will let me do it?"

"Certainly," said Bertie. "We are going out to look for a grocer. Suppose you come and show us one."

"I'm very much at your service. What are you looking at?"

"Why-you'll pardon my mentioning it-you have got the biggest smut on your left cheek that I've seen since I came here. They attain to a remarkable size in Brenthill, have you noticed?" Bertie spoke with eager interest, as if he had become quite a connoisseur in smuts. "Yes, that's it. I'll look Judith up, and tell her you are going with us."

Percival fled upstairs, more discomposed by that unlucky black than he would have thought possible. When he had made sure that he was tolerably presentable, he waited by his open door till his fellow-lodgers appeared, and then stepped out on the landing to meet them. Miss Lisle, dressed very simply in black, stood drawing on her glove. A smile dawned on her face when her eyes met Percival's, and, greeting him in her low distinct tones, she held out her white right hand, still ungloved. He took it with grave reverence, for Judith Lisle had once touched his faint dream of a woman, who should be brave with sweet heroism, tender, and true. They had scarcely exchanged a dozen words in their lives, but he had said to himself, "If I were an artist, I would paint my ideal with a face like that," and the memory, with its underlying poetry, sprang to life again, as his glance encountered hers. Percival felt the vague poem, though Bertie was at his elbow, chattering about shops, and though he himself had hardly got over the intolerable remembrance of that smut.

When they were in the street, Miss Lisle looked eagerly about her, and asked as they turned a corner, "Will this be our way to St. Sylvester's?"

"Yes. I suppose Bertie will make his début next Sunday? I must come and hear him."

"Of course you must," said Lisle. "Where do you generally go?" "Well, for a walk, generally. Sometimes it ends in some outlying

church, sometimes not."

"Oh, but it's your duty to attend your parish church when I play there. I suppose St. Sylvester's is your parish church?"

"Not a bit of it. St. Andrew's occupies that proud position. I've been there three times, I think."

"And what sort of a place is that?" said Miss Lisle.

"The dreariest, dustiest, emptiest place imaginable," Percival answered, turning quickly towards her. "There's an old clergyman, without a tooth in his head, who mumbles something which the congregation seem to take for granted is the service. Perhaps he means it for that. I don't know. He's the curate, I think, come to help the rector, who is getting just a little past his work. I don't remember that I ever saw the rector."

"But does anyone go?"

"Well, there's the clerk," said Percival, thoughtfully; "and there's a weekly dole of bread left to fourteen poor men, and fourteen poor women, of the parish. They must be of good character, and above the age of sixty-five. It is given away after the afternoon service. When I have been there, there has always been a congregation of thirty, with out reckoning the clergyman." He paused in his walk. "Didn't you want a grocer, Miss Lisle? I don't do much of my shopping, but I believe this place is as good as any."

Judith went in, and the two young men waited outside. In something less than half a minute Lisle showed signs of impatience. He inspected the grocer's stock of goods through the window, and extended bis examination to a toy-shop beyond, where he seemed particularly interested in a small and curly lamb, which stood in a pasture of green paint, and possessed an underground squeak or baa. Finally he returned to Thorne. "You like waiting, don't you?" he said.

"I don't mind it."

"And I do. That's just the difference. Is there a stationer's handy?"

"At the end of the street, the first turning to the left."

"I want some music paper; I can get it before Judith has done ordering in her supplies, if I go at once.'

"Go then; you can't miss it. I'll wait here for Miss Lisle, and we'll come and meet you if you are not back."

When Judith came out, she looked round in some surprise. "What has become of Bertie, Mr. Thorne?"

"Gone to the bookseller's," said Percival; "shall we walk on and meet him?"

They went together down the grey, slushy street. The wayfarers

seemed unusually coarse and jostling that evening, Percival thought, the pavement peculiarly miry, the flaring gaslights very cruel to the unloveliness of the scene.

"Mr. Thorne," Judith began, "I am glad of this opportunity. We haven't met many times before to-day."

“Twice,” said Percival.

"Ah!

You used often to

She looked at him, a faint light of surprise in her eyes. twice," she repeated. "But you know Bertie well. come at one time, when I was away?"

"Oh, yes; I saw a good deal of Bertie," he replied, remembering how he had taken a fancy to the boy.

"And be used to talk to me about you. I don't feel as if we were quite strangers, Mr. Thorne."

"Indeed, I hope not," said Percival, eluding a baker's boy, and reappearing at her side.

"I've another reason for the feeling, too, besides Bertie's talk," she went on. "Once, six or seven years ago, I saw your father. He came in one evening about some business, I think, and I still remember the very tone in which he talked of you. I was only a school-girl then, but I could not help understanding something of what you were to him."

"He was too good to me," said Percival, and his heart was very full. Those bygone days with his father, which had drifted so far into the past, seemed suddenly brought near by Judith's words, and he felt the warmth of the old tenderness once more.

"So I was very glad to find you here," she said. "For Bertie's sake, not for yours. I am so grieved that you should have been so unfortunate." She looked up at him, with eyes which questioned, and wondered, and doubted all at once. But a small girl, staring at the shopwindows, drove a perambulator straight at Percival's legs. With a laugh he stepped into the roadway to escape the peril, and came back.

"Don't grieve about me, Miss Lisle. It couldn't be helped, and I have no right to complain." These were his spoken words; his unspoken thought was that it served him right, for being such a fool as to trust her father. "It's worse for you, I think, and harder," he went on; "and if you are so brave

"It's for Bertie if I am," she said quickly; "it is very hard on him. We have spoilt him I'm afraid, and now he will feel it so terribly. For people cannot be the same to us-how should they, Mr. Thorne? Some of our friends have been very good; no one could be kinder than Miss Crawford-but it is a dreadful change for Bertie. And I have been afraid of what he would do if he went where he had no companions. A sister is so helpless. So I was very thankful when your letter came. But I am sorry for you, Mr. Thorne. He told me just now

too.

"But, as that can't be helped," said Percival, "be glad for my sake I have been very lonely."

She looked up at him, and smiled. "He insisted on going to Bellevue

Street the first thing this morning," she said. "I don't think any other lodgings would have suited him.”

"But they are not good enough for you."

"Oh yes, they are, and near Standon Square, too; I shall only have seven or eight minutes' walk to my work. I should not have likedOh, here he is! Bertie, this is cool of you, deserting me in this

fashion!"

"Why, of course you were all right with Thorne, and he asked me to let him help me in any way he could. I like to take a man at his word."

"By all means take me at mine," said Percival.
"Help you!" said Judith to her brother.

burden, then?"

"Am I such a terrible

"No," Thorne exclaimed; "Bertie is a clever fellow; he lets me share his privileges first, that I mayn't back out of sharing any troubles later."

"Are you going to save him trouble by making his pretty speeches for him, too?" Judith inquired, with a smile. "You are indeed a friend

in need!"

They had turned back, and were walking towards Bellevue Street. As they went into No. 13 they encountered Miss Bryant in the passage. She glanced loftily at Miss Lisle as she swept by, but she turned and fixed a look of reproachful tenderness on Percival Thorne. He knew that he was guiltless in the matter, and yet in Judith's presence he felt guilty and humiliated beneath Lydia's ostentatiously mournful gaze. The idea that she would probably be jealous of Miss Lisle, flashed into his mind, to his utter disgust and dismay. He turned into his own room, and flung himself into a chair, only to find, a few minutes later, that he was staring blankly at Lydia's blue vase. But for the Lisles, he might almost have been driven from Bellevue Street, by its mere presence on the table. It was beginning to haunt him, it mingled in his dreams, and he had drawn its hideous shape, absently, on the edge of his blottingpaper. Let him be where he might, it lay, a light-blue burden, on his mind. It was not the vase only, but he felt that it implied Lydia herself, smile, curl, turquoise earrings and all, and, on the evening of his meeting with Judith Lisle, the thought was doubly hateful.

CHAPTER XXXVII.

LYDIA REARRANGES HER CAP.

THUS, as the days lengthened, and the winter, bitter though it was, began to give faint promise of sunlight to come, Percival entered on his new life, and felt the gladness of returning spring. At the beginning of winter our glances are backward; we are like spendthrifts who have