I have my law library coming on in a day or so. It's coming down by goods train. You must help me in this, Elaine."

A fortnight with Elaine as amanuensis, as companion, as everything, completed his subjection and managed successfully to minimize his sense of the disparity of their ages. Elaine, unawakened, readily endorsed the wisdom of her mother's wishes.

"He is an estimable man," Mrs. Buckiston said; "he has a great deal of money; if he should propose to you -and I think he will because he evidently finds you of great assistance in his work, and after all, twenty-five years of loneliness must make any man wish for a change and you should accept him-of course, Elaine, I would do nothing to influence you in the slightest way, but at the same time I know that poor Dick would have wished it. You will be very comfortable, because I feel sure he is very fond of you, and would deny you nothing in reason."

Elaine felt the truth of her mother's involved arguments, and she waited with the patience of one waiting to do a duty she is neither anxious to do nor anxious to leave undone.

The dénouement came about in an odd room that always looked as though it did not belong to the house, and which Derwent Findlay had chosen for his work-room.

Derwent felt vaguely excited and uncomfortable; Elaine recognized it as an event of the possible, even probable happening of which was by no means an unfamiliar thought to her.

"My dear Elaine," he began nervously; "I am going to say something to you which will probably sound very foolishly in your ears. I have lived a very long time alone, and dear me, dear me, it's really very unaccountable, but I hardly know how to express myself."

"Perhaps,” said Elaine thoughtfully, "you haven't rehearsed it."

"Eh, what?" he demanded, startled out of his nervousness, "rehearsed it? What do you mean, my dear?"

"I have heard you sometimes rehearsing your speeches. I thought perhaps it was because you hadn't done so that you that you didn't know exactly how to begin."

"Yes-yes," he said, thoughtfully, "it does help. But this I have thought about a good deal. I don't think I recollect any other case which has given me so much trouble."

"Oh, it's a case, is it?" she asked, with surprise.

"Well, it certainly is a kind of a case -but it's not the sort of case I've been used to arguing."

"Not about Patent Law?"

"Not a word about Patent Law. If it were I don't think I should be at fault in opening. The fact is, I have been very lonely for-for a long time." "Twenty-five years," she said, softly. "It is a terrible long time."

"Eh? Well, well, twenty-five years may seem a lot to you, but after all it's not a very long time. I have had very good rooms, and my club andWell, my dear, I never realized I was lonely until-until—”

"You saw me."

"God bless my soul!" he said, staring at her. "How did you guess that?" "I don't know. Go on."

"I don't," he said judicially, "think there is very much more to say-in short, I think that's my case. I saw you and I suddenly realized how lonely I was. When one knows that one is lonely it-it is rather bad, isn't it? You see I began to picture you in my rooms-they are too shabby for you, but it was only fancy-and it made such a difference. It was like catching the country sunshine and taking it all the way up to London and letting it loose in a dusty, shabby old room.

It was quite wonderful. The room changed into home. I-I smiled, and then I woke and-and that loneliness of mine became very apparent."

"I am afraid you are not getting on with your case, Mr. Findlay," she said, unemotionally yet kindly. "I don't think I quite understand what you mean."

"I know what I mean, but it would sound so foolish," he said, ruefully. "I want to join your young fresh life to mine, and I am aware, I am distinctly aware what an old, musty, dried-up man I am. I have let twenty-five years slip by; I have let twenty-five years die and leave their ashes about me. I think I am not a bad sort of fellow at the bottom, and I have got a lot of money which is quite useless to

me.

Not," he added, quickly, "that that would weigh with you, or that I would wish it to weigh with you; but my wares are so poor that I feel bound to pull them all out and put them before you."

"You wish me to be your wife?" she asked.

"That-that is a very clear putting of the case. If you can't accept thethe proposition-and I really do not see how you can, a wretched old fogey like me don't hesitate to say so. I shall understand, and after all there's Findlay on Patent Law."

He looked very wistfully at her, all the same.

"It is usual," she said, serenely, "to say something about love."

"I'm afraid I don't know much about it. It seems very wonderful, very like getting up early and seeing the sun rise after a rainy night, or finding out the weak spot in your opponent's opening, and hitting it in cross-examination. My dear Elaine, I was never in love before-that is, only once, and I don't remember anything about her except that she loved peaches. Now! think of it, Elaine, opening the book of romance

after twenty-five years of resting the shelf among the dust. Even the language is a little strange to me."

"I think," she announced, "that we are not meaning exactly the same thing. I mean that you ought to say you love me."

She was drawing upon the recollection of the novels she had been permitted to read. Her own instincts were dormant. The situation was almost pathetic, but Derwent Findlay was not in a position to appreciate that.

"I have been saying that all the time," he said in surprise. "Why, my dear Elaine, the world is different because I have discovered that it holds you. Twenty-five years I have been in ignorance of what happiness the world can hold, and now-now I verily believe I am frightened because I have found it out. I-I am such an unheroic figure that I know, I feel how very foolish it is of me to think.-But I can't help it, Elaine, I am quite powerless to withstand it. Oh, it's monstrous that I should want to take the very best of the world and shut it up with an old, musty, time-grimed object like myself! And yet-and yet-there are many better fellows than I am, younger, more able to-to slip into your thoughts, to see with your eyes, but not one, not one of them all can love you better than I do. You see I have been waiting for twenty-five years, and it's a long time, and all that time love has been growing outside my door, and now that you have opened it it has rushed in and filled my life." "You are very clever, Mr. Findlay." "Not very, I am afraid. Say serviceable, Elaine, say serviceable."

"And very good."

"I? Oh, not at all, not at all. I haven't done anything very bad because-well, you see, I have always been very busy and have had no time. But I am not good."

"And father esteemed you."

"Dick!" he chuckled in a curious manner. "Why, Dick always called me an old fool, and-and said I was a 'stick in the mud.' An idiom, a slang term, my dear Elaine, but very descriptive."

"Well, I think you are clever and good and I esteem you."

"Yes, yes. It's very blind of you, but I am glad, very glad, only, only of course that is really it's very presumptive of me, but I would like it to be a warmer word than esteem."

"I will be quite honest with you, Mr. Findlay. I do not love you."

"Of course not," he said, sadly, "it was preposterous. Think no more of

it. An old man like me!"

"But then I love no one else, and I do esteem you, and I esteem no one else but my mother. And-and-I daresay love will come, Mr. Findlay. I shall try ever so hard to love you."

"Yes," he said doubtfully, and looked at his beard, which was streaked with gray, and shook his head.

"And I should like to marry you because-because I know it will be best for me."

Mrs. Buckiston was delighted at the news and overwhelmed Derwent Findlaw with reminiscences of Dick. Derwent would have liked to have gone for a stroll in the garden with Elaine, but he was troubled with the thought of propriety. It was such a new phase of life that he felt like entering a court without a glance at his brief indeed, even far more nonplussed than that.

"Findlay on Patent Law" progressed steadily. Derwent worked patiently at it for two hours in the morning and three in the afternoon, and Elaine sat In the room with him looking up references. There were moments when the elderly man looked wistfully at the girl in the freshness of her beauty. The love that she had promised to acquire did not come very quickly. He was not satisfied with the daughterly

kiss every evening, when Mrs. Buckiston smiled and blinked. It was too regular, and never deviated from a spot just under the cheek-bone, on the left side.

"My dear," he said once, looking up from his laborious writing, "you are not thinking that perhaps you have made a mistake? I-I don't think you seem very happy."

"I am quite happy," she said serenely.

"I was looking at myself in the glass last night, Elaine, and I said to myself, Is it possible that any young, beautiful girl-"

"You think I am beautiful?" she asked eagerly. When she gave up callIng him Mr. Findlay as being too formal for engaged people, she gave up addressing him by name at all.

"Of course you are beautiful." "Not only good-looking but really, beautiful?" she persisted, with more animation than was usual with her. "Really beautiful," he said.

"I read somewhere," she murmured, "that the world was made for beautiful women." She looked out of the window at the blue of sky and sea below.

"And," he went on, taking up the thread of his broken sentence, "I said, Can Elaine ever really care for me? It seemed preposterous, dear, it is preposterous, I am afraid. Is it?"

"I do care for you. You are very good and kind."

Twenty-five emotionless years had left his heart as fresh as it was at their commencement. He was that pathetic hybrid, an old man with a young heart, a man capable of enjoying fully the pleasures of life and barred by years from entering into their possession.

be soon-so would she. However, I don't see how I can manage it until the Christmas vacation. I have a lot of work this term. And-and I shall have to get a house. God bless my soul, how I shall be cheated by the furniture people! Why, I have never bought any furniture for twenty-five yearsexcept a deck-lounge or two and one easy-chair!"

One morning in the fifth week of the vacation Derwent Findlay came down to breakfast with a troubled face and discouraged look, bearing a letter in his hand.

"I am afraid I shall have to go back to my rooms. I-I have made a discovery."

"A discovery?" Mrs. Buckiston was surprised in an ecstatic manner. "Unpleasant! I know it's unpleasant. Poor Dick was always making discoveries, and they were always unpleasant."

"I know," he answered dryly, "winding-up petitions, El Dorado limited liability companies unable to realize assets, mostly castles in Spain. Mine is not of that nature. I can hardly say whether it's unpleasant or not, except that it will bring to an end a pleasant visit a very pleasant visit."

"What is it?" Elaine asked.

"I have discovered a nephew, or rather a nephew has discovered me. Of course I have been aware of his existence, but I never really regarded him as a relation. I have never seen him. When his father died-his father was my brother and lived in Scotland -the boy went abroad. He is a painter. At Christmas and on my birthday he sends me a picture. I have exactly fifteen. They are all warehoused."

"Are they good?" Elaine was interested.

"I don't know. I never opened them -they were so nicely packed. He is coming home now and proposes to visit

me.

I suppose I must go back and see him. He is my only relative."

"Why not," said Mrs. Buckiston, "why not ask him here? There is the room over the porch. He may not like the paper, but the curtains I am sure are artistic And Dick was very fond of art."

Allington Findlay was asked there and came, a handsome, sunny-tempered, lazy man, who had ripened slowly in the sun of a pleasant life. His uncle had forgotten to say that he was wealthy, and Elaine was persuaded that he was poor, a struggling artist full of genius, and the victim of cruel disappointments. Her young sympathies went out to him while he was yet a stranger.

"So you're Allington," Derwent Findlay said, when his nephew tumbled out of the cab. "Well, we are the only two left of our family. I suppose we ought to see something of each other in the future."

"My dear sir," the younger man said, "I am delighted to see you at last. I have knocked about Europe for seven years. Whenever I met any Englishman he always said, 'Any relation to the famous Derwent Findlay? I have been proud of you, and have lived a good deal on your reputation."

Elaine, listening, thought the young man was acting diplomatically towards a rich uncle.

"Eh? Famous, eh? Do they say that of me? Ah, but I'm writing a book now; what will they say when it's published? It's going to be my monument when I am dead, Allington."

"Before that, I hope, sir."

"Yes, yes. Before that, of course, but it's a big work. It's so big that it has blocked me out from the world. When you come to town you must come and see my rooms in Planetree Court. I've had 'em ever since I first settled into chamber practice and gave up running round the country in the

Oxford Circuit. Twenty-five years, Allington, twenty-five years, and hardly a stick of furniture altered." "And my pictures, sir?"

"Ah, yes--fifteen. I have the receipt for their warehousing. You see I couldn't keep them in my rooms. There was no room, and the woman who does for me is very much attached to some chromos I picked up cheap at a sale twenty years ago."

The nephew laughed heartily. "There, Miss Buckiston, that is the appreciation the world puts upon the efforts of genius."

"I am sure,” Elaine said earnestly, "that your time will come, Mr. Findlay. There must always be a period of struggle before success. In the darkest moments it is well to look forward and catch some of the light which must come."

The artist opened his eyes widely and hid a smile. He had had his success, and there was a little gallery off Piccadilly where fashionable London gazed at his canvases in ecstatic worship. At this he laughed, but the homage was not unflattering to his soul. Yet there was a certain piquancy in meeting a woman who was ignorant of his position and was so charmingly anxious to hearten him. And the woman was fair even beyond most

women.

After two or three days the barrister plodding happily at his book began to miss his amanuensis. It seemed to him that she seized upon slight opportunities to slip from the room.

"I suppose," he said, "the weather is very beautiful. Now I should never notice that. I go out for exercise, not for pleasure. I believe I used to be fond of long walks, but that was a very long time ago. Elaine is young. I daresay she likes the sunshine, and I suppose Patent Law may be very wearisome to others. She likes reading novels and poetry.

She likes the

In a week Elaine and Allington became very friendly. She used to sympathize with his imaginary struggles, and he found her sympathy, based on fraudulent grounds, very pleasant.

"Go for a walk, Elaine," the barrister used to say. "Allington will look after you. I should like to come with you, only I must get on with that chapter on Barnes's summing up and judgment in Jones v. The Automatic Feeding Corporation. It's-it's very interesting."

And Elaine went with Allington, and it suddenly occurred to her that Clevedon was a delightful place.

"You are really going to marry my uncle?" Allington asked once.

"Yes, of course," she answered. "Do you love him?" he asked abruptly.

"I like him immensely. He is such a good man."

"Yes. He's an awfully good sort. That's the worst of it." And he struck a match savagely and lit a pipe that was drawing beautifully and had no need for it.

She was puzzled by his words, but thought that he meant contrition for his design upon his uncle's goodwill.

"After all," she said, "he is your only relation. It is quite right that you two should be a great deal to each other, you know. And he may be a great deal of help to you in introducing you, and then when you have made a name, a big, big name, he will be proud of you. I am sure that he will be very glad to help you."

Towards the end of the week the barrister began to watch the two young people very carefully. body had cared to watch him closely

If any

they would have noticed that he often