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Twice he asked her to marry him The first time her heart was still sore with disappointment and she refused--yet half-heartedly

He waited his tiinning to rise, he again tried his fortune

"I cannot," she cried "I cannot I like you very much, but oh, it is too much to ask me to marry you"

"But I love you with all my heart, Alice" And the honesty of his tone and the distant thought of a very different hope brought the tears to her eyes

He had forgotten all pompous dreams and the stilted prospects hich he had aforetiuile his wife Thevery much on fire with an honest passion He may have left her love-cold, but he touched the syhbour Before she knew herself she had promised, and had been kissed respectfully and tenderly by her delighted lover For alike joy, and then, with a dreadful thought of the baselessness of her pleasure, walked slowly ho Alice rose with a dreary sense of the irrevocable A door seemed to have closed behind her, and the future stretched before her in a straight dusty path with few nooks and shadows This was not the blitheof betrothal she had looked for The rapturous outlook on life which she had dreamed of was replaced by a cold and business-like calculation of profits The rose garden of the "god unconquered in battle" was exchanged for a very shoddy and huckstering paradise

Mrs Andrews clai, and with the pertinacity of her kind soon guessed the very obvious secret Her gushing congratulations drove the girl distracted She praised the good Stocks, and Alice drank in the co ly over the perfections of Mr Haystoun "He has the real distinction, dear," she cried, "which you can never s to old blood and it is quite ini, too, and you can always tell a man by his people It is so pleasant to fall in with old acquaintances again That dear Lady Clanroyden pro to see her, for I feel as if I had known her for ages"

After lunch Alice fled the house and sought her old refuge--the hills There she would find the deep solitude for thought She was not broken-hearted, though she grieved now and again with a blind longing of regret But she was confused and shaken; the landmarks of her vision seeri-down of hopes which is the sternest trial for poor mortality