would she not have altered? In a few more years Constance must have been very different: a light defiant worldliness would have crept over her; she could not have stood alone: morally, I mean. She would not have mourned or grieved openly; but the solitude of her life would have left strong tokens in the change of her whole being.

CHAPTER IX.

Ir was summer at Grainthorpe; the second summer from that in which Georgy Sandon had first seen Mr. Erskine, and in a short time Captain Anstruther would probably return. There was no outward change at Grainthorpe. Georgy's life had passed, a bit of gray blotting-paper might best tell how. Aunt Jane was older and sharper, more busy and more exacting than ever. Uncle Robert's temper, too, had been somewhat tried by losses in his business; he was now very absolute and tyrannical, very irritable, and easily offended.

The children's education must advance; Miss Robson was expensive; so Georgy was called upon to tutor them, under her aunt's supervision and direction.

Such was her outer life: and all this time had been very long in passing. One idea possessed her inwardly; it grew upon her daily, and she existed only in the recollection of James Erskine, who had been so kind to her. Although their gaieties were very limited-for the little girls not being grown

up, Aunt Jane had religious objections to a profitless going out-still Georgy had contrived sometimes to meet Mr. Erskine; for when any one is steadily resolved to meet another, it is astonishing how much may be done even under difficulties. She met with many rebuffs from Aunt Jane, and as a consequence, from her uncle also; who, being always busy, took his opinion on all family matters from his wife.

Georgy's going out only took place when there was a chance of meeting Mr. Erskine or his mother. On the latter, she bestowed a half-vicarious, halfreal affection: she would always have liked her, but the extent of that liking was given somewhat for sake's sake. So in the ensuing years she sometimes saw them; and seeing no one else, there was but little possibility that her one deep impression should be effaced.

Often when some one, a stranger to her world and to her people, said, "What do you think I heard to-day? Who do you think I met?" and she knew that her face ought to express interest for a moment, the same senseless hope, the same groundless expectation arose; and though she felt that it was impossible, she hoped for a moment to hear of the only thing that interested her, and fancied that they might pronounce the only name she cared to hear.

There were times of remorse when she thought of Stephen Anstruther; times when she would not

marry him, and wrote in her imagination long letters: letters which told him all; letters which must have been good, if an expenditure of misery and tears were to go for anything; and such, she was sure, as must make him forgive all. But he never understood anything; and to put pen to paper and begin to write-oh! it would have been easier to have joined in olden days a party of those German fanatics we read of, who paraded the streets of towns denuded of all their garments. Then she would marry: she would not give up her one way of escape from Grainthorpe; and she laid to her heart each laughing bit of matrimonial scepticism which Mrs. Everett sometimes preached, all Mrs. Lewis's philosophy, and the cheerful, solid good sense with which her friend Jessie Macbean and her sisters regarded the subject. All true enough in a way, no doubt; but her disposition was not precisely the same as any of theirs, and it might have been a risk to take their creed to herself. She had grown up in great dread of her uncle; and the idea of facing his anger and refusing Captain Anstruther seemed half an impossibility.

On the understanding of his marriage, a great part of the Captain's little fortune had been embarked in those inexplicable speculations wherein Georgy's money lay. The money prospects were gloomy now, and the impending loss to Stephen was a terrible vexation to Mr. Sandon. If Georgy had refused to

fulfil her engagement when Stephen was already a loser, Uncle Robert's first impulse would have been (had he lived in ancient times) to sentence her to a summary imprisonment. Aunt Jane disliked her niece, who naturally reciprocated the feeling. Georgy knew that she seemed cold and distant to her uncle; she knew, too, that she had disappointed him. He had wished her to grow up a tall, talkative girl, saying no matter what and singing no matter how, only songs with plenty of verses in them. She felt that she should have been differently constituted, and that her nature was surely a fault in her.

There lay one more feeling in her heart, utterly unexpressed, and never distinctly recognised by herself: it was that her only real approach to James Erskine would be when she was married. She did not think that thought, but there lay the consciousness of it under her very thoughts: Macbeth had some such consciousness, perhaps, of how his desire might be accomplished, before he wished for its fulfil

ment.

Such flashes of what may be cross many a one; and sometimes circumstances and temptations develope them into active realities: and then those who have enacted them are criminal above the rest of their fellow-creatures! Are they not? Are guilt and innocence always divided by one strongly-defined line of demarcation? There are some who, when