diffident young lady who was stopping
with Maria, and who never left her side all that afternoon, much to
the disgust of the latter and the relief of Philip. One thing,
however, he was not spared, and that was the perusal of Hilda's last
letter to her friend, written apparently from Germany, and giving a
lively description of the writer's daily life and the state of her
uncle's health, which, she said, precluded all possibility of her
return. Alas! he already knew its every line too well; for, as Hilda
refused to undertake the task, he had but a week before drafted it
himself. But Philip was growing hardened to deception, and found it
possible to read it from end to end, and speculate upon its contents
with Maria without blush or hesitation.

But he could not always expect to find Miss Lee in the custody of such
an obtuse friend; and, needless to say, it became a matter of very
serious importance to him to know how he should treat her. It occurred
to him that his safest course might be to throw himself upon her
generosity and make a clean breast of it; but when it came to the
point he was too weak to thus expose his shameful conduct to the woman
whose heart he had won, and to whom he was bound by every tie of
honour that a gentleman holds sacred.

He thought of the scornful wonder with which she would listen to his
tale, and preferred to take the risk of greater disaster in the future
to the certainty of present shame. In the end, he contrived to
establish a species of confidential intimacy with Maria, which, whilst
it somewhat mystified the poor girl, was not without its charm,
inasmuch as it tended to transform the every-day Philip into a hero of
romance.

But in the main Maria was ill-suited to play heroine to her wooer's
hero. Herself as open as the daylight, it was quite incomprehensible
to her why their relationship should be kept such a dark and
mysterious secret, or why, if her lover gave her a kiss, it should be
done with as many precautions as though he were about to commit a
murder.

She was a very modest maiden, and in her heart believed it a wonderful
thing that Philip should have fallen in love with her--a thing to be
very proud of; and she felt it hard that she should be denied the
gratification of openly acknowledging her lover, and showing him off
to her friends, after the fashion that is so delightful to the female
mind.

But, though this consciousness of the deprivation of a lawful joy set
up