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I strolled on by her side, speculating a little anxiously on the co conducted to the lair of one of the savants attached to the establishment? and would he add a superfluous third to our little party of two, so complete and companionable, solus cum sola, in this populated wilderness? Above all, would he turn out to be a co about ested the introduction were olooh the wide doorway I glanced apprehensively at my companion, and met a quiet, inscrutable smile; and at that moment she halted outside a wall-case and faced me

"This is my friend," she said "Let me present you to Artemidorus, late of the Fayyum Oh, don't smile!" she pleaded "I am quite serious Have you never heard of pious Catholics who cherish a devotion to so towards Artemidorus, and if you only knehat comfort he has shed into the heart of a lonely woman; what a quiet, unobtrusive friend he has been to me in reeting on his gentle, thoughtful face, you would like him for that alone And I want you to like him and to share our silent friendship Am I very silly, very sentimental?"

A wave of relief had swept over me, and the mercury of my emotional thermometer, which had shrunk al it was of her and hoeetly intimate, to wish to share this mystical friendship with me! And what a pretty conceit it was, too, and how like this strange, inscrutable -departed Greek And the pathos of it all touched me deeply amidst the joy of this newborn intimacy

"Are you scornful?" she asked, with a shade of disappointment, as I made no reply

"No, indeed I am not," I answered earnestly "I want to make you aware ofyou by seeerate, and I don't kno to express it"

"Oh, never ht you would understand," and she gave er-tips

We stood awhile gazing in silence at the mummy--for such, indeed, was her friend Arteyptian in forhtly coloured as it was, in accordance with the racial love of colour, the tasteful refinement hich the decoration of the case was treated arish and barbaric But thepanel portrait which occupied the place of the usualwas a revelation to me Except that it was executed in tempera instead of oil, it differed in no respect fro archaic or even ancient about it With its freedoht and shade, it ht have been painted yesterday; indeed, enclosed in an ordinary gilt fraht have passed without remark in an exhibition of modern portraits