instead of homes. It seems to me that close beyond the edge of Christianity you fall, not into the shallows of Paganism, but into its abysses."

But in the evening Bertrand came to me and said,— "Cousin Monica" (he insists on the whole family calling me Cousin Monica; he says it is a dignified title for me, as good as that of those curious German Protestant abbesses, and a distinction for my pupils, in the acknowledgment of relationship)-"Cousin Monica," he said (it was in the conservatory, where I was sketching a great pure translucent orchis-blossom), "you are seriously offended with me; and I am going away tomorrow."

"I am not offended with you," I said, "but I see plainly what things you say mean; and I cannot always speak as plainly as I should like, and as I think I ought, partly on account of your sisters, and partly because I am too indignant."

"It seems to me you speak plainly enough," he replied drily. "You have told me at various times that I am no gentleman, that I am a lazy dilettante, and that a man who breaks stones on the roads is better than a dilettante; and to-day that I am no better than a murderer; not an ineffective climax."

"I only made a summary of what you said yourself," I said.

"Just such a summary as the pope's Syllabus makes of the tendencies of modern thought," he said. "But don't unsay anything. I am going away to-morrow, and it will be wholesome food for meditation. You don't ask where I am going?"

"No, why should I think of such a thing?" I said. "Certainly; only I happen to be going to Combe Regis," he replied, "where my brother Victor's curacy is, and where he says he often sees your mother and sisters. Could I take anything for you?"

I had nothing to send. I am always writing.

He went away.

But in a few minutes he came back and said,

"You have just finished that orchis, have you not? Might I not take it to your mother, as a sign that you are not altogether without interests among us, and that you are well enough to do other things besides giving those magical lessons in history which are transforming Antonia's life?"

I thought she would like it, and I gave it him.

Can I really have said so many uncivil things to him?

Bertrand's appearance has certainly greatly improved my relations with my pupils, notably with Antonia.

The child actually begins to be a child, and to believe in me with an enthusiasm of girlish devotion which bewilders me.

66

It seems that their previous governess was a person with a shallow satirical knowledge of the world, who summarily classified Antonia as one of the daring original" young women of a certain style of modern novels. "Vous êtes une originale qui ne se désoriginalisera jamais!" was her sarcastic verdict and reply to all Antonia's eager questionings. And the poor child does really long to disentangle herself from all kinds of things which perplex her; and before this clever criticism, of course, all her eager, crude young thought naturally crumpled up, as under fire or frost.

Ah, if for her there could only be the old Causeries du Lundi!

But the only person who paid any attention to her questions was Bertrand, who replied to them with a halfcontemptuous, half-compassionate, "So soon at the bars. of the cage! so soon at the beginning of the questions which have no answer and no end!"

And now she turns to me, and is ready to drink in

what I believe and tell her, like a patient in fever, parch. ing with thirst, who is suddenly transferred from some dreadful barbarous treatment of "no light, no air, and no water," to cool draughts and fresh breezes and sunshine.

We began with English history, in the biographical form, which is the only living history to me.

We took Alfred the Great, with all the biographies and notices, and original writings of his own and his contemporaries we could find.

It is curious to see the effect the discovery of the great English hero made on her.

"Cousin Monica," she said, "he actually lived! I thought he was about as real as Jack the Giant Killer. And here, under the haze and cloud of all these lovely old legends, I see him, not melting away, but growing solid, growing flesh and blood and heart and soul before me. And the whole world, even our own world, even the fashionable women in Hyde Park; and the ragged children in St. James's Park; and Westminster Abbey, and the palaces and the alleys, and the Queen's guards, and the British Museum, and the people I meet, seem to me to grow out of shadow-land, with him, into flesh and blood and heart and soul, into brothers and sisters.. All begins to grow real to me, from the old Greeks, to Ethel and Helena, and even to Ethel's mediævalisms.”

To-day we have had a most delightful holiday. Aunt Winifred came and fetched us, Antonia and me, to spend the day at Aunt O'Brien's.

By the freedom and delight of it, I felt how different is the atmosphere I have been breathing.

Aunt Winifred seemed to me actually giving out light, she made it all so warm and bright about her.

Sometimes, during the day, it made me think in a curious way of Elijah and Elisha. She loved my father