" I must hnle this somewhere, or that beast of a baronet will be clown on Biugo for poaching," said Dick, as he produced another piece of cord from that emporium, his trouser's pocket, wherewith Reggie " hitched " the terrier, as he nauti cally termed it, securely to a wheel of his bath-chair. And now to describe Montague Lonsdale, who courteously and warmly greeted the little party. With close-shorn hair of the darkest brown, and eyes that were splendid, of a hazel so deep that they looked quite black at times, a fine, clearly cut, and slightly aquiline profile, a figure above the ordinary height and well set up, he looked the stereotyped style of a genuine English gentleman, " with his white hands and well-bred tran quility, hard, but polished as line steel," to use the words of a recent writer ; and with the expression in his features of one who had faced and overcome much in his time, though few would have thought so, from the serenity of his manner and the composure of his bearing, the result of habit, training, and society ; and singling him out from among the many who admired and hovered round her, during her brief glimpse of life in London, Melanie had soon learned to love him ; he was so gentle, and withal seemed to possess "that mingling of force and tender ness, with a reserve of both," which, we are told, " is most enthralling to womenkind." While introductions and common places were being exchanged between his friend, Horace Musgrave, of the Hussars, Miss Brendon, and Regi nald, the unfortunate tenant of the wheel-chair, he continued, in a low voice : " I am on a visit to Horace's uncle, Sir Brisco Braybrooke, who took quite a fancy to me at his club. When I left town with them so abruptly, I little thought that I was to have the joy of being so near you and your new home, darling ; but I fear that I shall not be very welcome there."

"To Uncle Grimshaw —I fear not," murmured Melanie, as her dark eyes of grey-blue clouded for a moment, as she felt herself on the eve of troublesome and vexatious complications. 