ehind, "I am really afraid
of Sir Maxwell Danby. He will go to the North Parade with all haste, or
find Lady Betty in the Pump Room, and speak evil of me."

"Let him dare to do so!" Leslie said. "I will challenge him, if he dares
to take your name on his lips!"

"Oh no, no!" Griselda said; "no! Promise you will not quarrel with him?
He is a man who would be a dangerous foe."

"He is my foe already," Leslie said. "As to danger, sweet one, I do not
recognise danger where honour is concerned. Do not talk more about this
now, nor mar these first sweet hours of happiness. Say it is not a
dream, those blessed words you spoke in the church, Griselda?"

She gave him a look which was more eloquent than any words, and then
said, in a low voice:

"I feel as if I had found my rest."

"Dear white-winged dove," was the reply, "if you have been wandering
over stormy waters tempest-tossed, let me love to think you have found
your rest with me."

They were now at the door of Mrs. Travers's house; Leslie knocked, and
it was opened by the old servant, who followed his young master wherever
he went--a faithful retainer of the old type of servant, who, through
every change and chance, would as soon think of cutting off a right hand
as forsake his master's son.

Giles had a most comical face--a mass of furrows and wrinkles, a mouth
which had very few teeth left, and small twinkling eyes. He wore a
scratch yellow wig, and a long coat with huge buttons, on which was the
crest of the Travers--a heron with a fish in its beak--a crest
suggestive of the land of swamps and marshes, where herons had a good
time, and swooped over their prey with but small fear of the aim of the
sportsman--so few were the sportsmen who ever invaded those desolate
wild tracks of water and peat-moss.

"Aye, Master Leslie," Giles said, "ye're late, and there's company at
dinner."

"It is scarcely one o'clock, Giles. Where is my mother?"

"Up above with the company; and not well pleased you are not there,
either."

"Oh!" Griselda said; "I do not wish to stay. Please take me back to the
Parade! Let me see Mrs. Travers another day, _please_. I ask it as a
favour."

She pleaded so earnestly, that old Giles interposed:

"There's room at my mistress's board for all that care to come. There
never yet was a guest sent away for lack of room."

"It is not that--not that," Griselda said.

"Whatever it is," Leslie said, "I cannot let you leave us thus"--for
Gri