ed. It is paying
you a great compliment, captain, to lend you these. Were you one of the
awkward squad you should not have them."

"I will take care. You need delay no longer, Mr. Helstone. You may go
now.--He is gracious to me to lend me his pistols," she remarked, as the
rector passed out at the garden gate. "But come, Lina," she continued,
"let us go in and have some supper. I was too much vexed at tea with the
vicinage of Mr. Sam Wynne to be able to eat, and now I am really
hungry."

Entering the house, they repaired to the darkened dining-room, through
the open windows of which apartment stole the evening air, bearing the
perfume of flowers from the garden, the very distant sound of
far-retreating steps from the road, and a soft, vague murmur whose
origin Caroline explained by the remark, uttered as she stood listening
at the casement, "Shirley, I hear the beck in the Hollow."

Then she rang the bell, asked for a candle and some bread and milk--Miss
Keeldar's usual supper and her own. Fanny, when she brought in the tray,
would have closed the windows and the shutters, but was requested to
desist for the present. The twilight was too calm, its breath too balmy
to be yet excluded. They took their meal in silence. Caroline rose once
to remove to the window-sill a glass of flowers which stood on the
sideboard, the exhalation from the blossoms being somewhat too powerful
for the sultry room. In returning she half opened a drawer, and took
from it something that glittered clear and keen in her hand.

"You assigned this to me, then, Shirley, did you? It is bright,
keen-edged, finely tapered; it is dangerous-looking. I never yet felt
the impulse which could move me to direct this against a
fellow-creature. It is difficult to fancy that circumstances could nerve
my arm to strike home with this long knife."

"I should hate to do it," replied Shirley, "but I think I could do it,
if goaded by certain exigencies which I can imagine." And Miss Keeldar
quietly sipped her glass of new milk, looking somewhat thoughtful and a
little pale; though, indeed, when did she not look pale? She was never
florid.

The milk sipped and the bread eaten, Fanny was again summoned. She and
Eliza were recommended to go to bed, which they were quite willing to
do, being weary of the day's exertions, of much cutting of currant-buns,
and filling of urns and teapots, and running backwards and forwards
with trays. Ere long the maids' chamber door