already gone, was a sad joy to them, and counted not so much a day
lost as one gained.

"We take no note of time but from its loss." This loss in the present
instance was most sweet to Monica and her lover. To them Time was the
name of a slow and cruel monster, whose death was to be desired.

And now the monster is slain, and to-day Brian will return to Coole. A
few lines full of joyful love and glad expectancy had been brought to
her yesterday by the sympathetic Bridget, who affected an ignorance
about the whole matter that utterly imposed on Monica, who would have
found a bitterness in sharing her heart's secret with her maid. Yet
Bridget knows quite as much about it as she does. To Kit alone has
Monica unburdened her soul, and talked, and talked, and talked, on her
one fond topic, without discovering the faintest symptom of fatigue in
that indefatigable person.

Yes, to-day he comes! Monica had risen with the lark, unable to lie abed
with the completion of a sweet desire lying but a few short hours away
from her, and had gone through the morning and afternoon in a dreamy
state of tender anticipation.

Yet surely not short, but of a terrible length, are these hours. Never
has the old clock ticked with such maddening deliberation; yet--

"Be the day weary, or never so long,
At length it ringeth to evensong;"

and at last the old clock, tick it never so slowly, must bring round the
hour when she may go down to the river to meet her love again.

But the relentless Fates are against her, and who shall interfere with
their woven threads? As though some vile imp of their court had
whispered in Miss Priscilla's ear the whole story of her forbidden
attachment, she keeps Monica in the morning-room with her, copying out
certain recipes of a dry nature, that could have been copied just as
well to-morrow, or next year, or _never_.

As the hour in which she ought to meet her lover comes and goes by, the
poor child's pulses throb and her heart beats violently. Kit has gone to
the village, and so cannot help her. All seems lost. Her eyes grow large
and dark with repressed longing, her hand trembles.

"There, that will do, dear child; thank you," says Miss Priscilla,
gratefully, folding up the obnoxious papers and slipping them into the
davenport.

It is now quite half an hour past the time appointed by Desmond in his
letter. Monica, rising impetuously, moves towards the door.

"Is the writing at an end?" Miss P