, how could she estimate him so flippantly!

The mortification of having brought himself to this position with the
antitype, by his early slight of the type, blinded him for the moment to
what struck him a short time after. The man upon whose arm she hung was
not a soldier. What, then, became of her entranced gaze at the sentinel?
She could hardly have transferred her affections so promptly; or, to
give her the benefit of his own theory, her Beloved could scarcely have
flitted from frame to frame in so very brief an interval. And which of
them had been he who whistled softly in the dusk to her?

Without further attempt to find Alfred Somers Pierston walked homeward,
moodily thinking that the desire to make reparation to the original
woman by wedding and enriching the copy--which lent such an
unprecedented permanence to his new love--was thwarted, as if by set
intention of his destiny.

At the door of the grounds about the castle there stood a carriage.
He observed that it was not one of the homely flys from the under-hill
town, but apparently from the popular resort across the bay.
Wondering why the visitor had not driven in he entered, to find in the
drawing-room Nichola Pine-Avon.

At his first glance upon her, fashionably dressed and graceful in
movement, she seemed beautiful; at the second, when he observed that her
face was pale and agitated, she seemed pathetic likewise. Altogether,
she was now a very different figure from her who, sitting in her chair
with such finished composure, had snubbed him in her drawing-room in
Hamptonshire Square.

'You are surprised at this? Of course you are!' she said, in a low,
pleading voice, languidly lifting her heavy eyelids, while he was
holding her hand. 'But I couldn't help it! I know I have done something
to offend you--have I not? O! what can it be, that you have come away to
this outlandish rock, to live with barbarians in the midst of the London
season?'

'You have not offended me, dear Mrs. Pine-Avon,' he said. 'How sorry I
am that you should have supposed it! Yet I am glad, too, that your fancy
should have done me the good turn of bringing you here to see me.'

'I am staying at Budmouth-Regis,' she explained.

'Then I did see you at a church-service here a little while back?'

She blushed faintly upon her pallor, and she sighed. Their eyes met.
'Well,' she said at last, 'I don't know why I shouldn't show the virtue
of candour. You know what it means. I was the