murder in her face!"

And at last she had to give it up; the letters were not to be found. The
storm without settled itself to rest, the thunder died away in the far
distance over the hills, and Helen, worn out with fatigue and emotion,
sought a troubled slumber upon the sofa in her dressing-room.

"She cannot have given it to him," was the conclusion she came to at
last. "Well, she will do so to-morrow, and I--I will not let her out of
my sight, not for one instant, all the day!"

CHAPTER XXXIV.

A GARDEN PARTY.

I have done for ever with all these things:
The songs are ended, the deeds are done;
There shall none of them gladden me now, not one.
There is nothing good for me under the sun
But to perish--as these things perished.

A. L. Gordon.

Mr. Guy Miller is a young gentleman who has not played an important part
in these pages; nevertheless, but for him, sundry events which took place
at Shadonake at this time would not have had to be recorded.

It so happened that Guy Miller's twenty-first birthday was in the third
week of September, and that it was determined by his parents to celebrate
the day in an appropriate and fitting manner. Guy was a youth of no
particular looks, and no particular manners; he had been at Oxford,
but his father had lately taken him away from it, with a view to his
travelling, and seeing something of the world before he settled down
as a country gentleman. He had had no opportunity, therefore, of
distinguishing himself at college; but as he was not overburdened with
brains, and had, moreover, never been known to study with interest any
profounder literature than "Handley Cross" and "Mr. Sponge's Sporting
Tour," it is possible that, even had he been left undisturbed to pursue
his studies at the university, he would never have developed into a
bright or shining ornament at that seat of learning.

As it was, Guy came home to the paternal mansion an ignorant but amiable
and inoffensive young man, with a small, fluffy moustache, and no
particular bent in life beyond smoking short pipes, and loafing about the
premises with his hands in his trousers pockets.

He was a tolerable shot, and a plucky, though not a graceful horseman. He
hated dancing because he trod on his partner's toes, and shunned ladies'
society because he had to make himself agreeable to them. Nevertheless,
having been fairly "licked into shape" by a course successively of Eton
and of Oxford, he was