stole in. I should not like this first time to leave you as a common visitor does. I came like a lover, and I will go away like a lover; and so good-bye, Gabrielle. He drew her down towards him, as he still reclined on the floor at her feet; and she felt his lips press hers. And then he leaped lightly to his feet, and vanished, as it were, in the dusk. He had come as a lover in a sort of romantic secrecy; and he had gone as a lover should go. Gabrielle sat in the soft gloom of the evening, and felt that if 'twere now to die 'twere now to be most happy. All her life before had seemed lonely and bare, a mere dull mistake, until this moment. Is it possible,' she thought, that this can

6

last; that happiness like this moment's is not to be paid for by some misfortune?' There came strangely across her mind the saying of some saint: Truly the damned ones are miserable, for they cannot love.'

Then she rang for lights, and tried to look and feel like some commonplace person to whom nothing in particular has happened.

23

CHAPTER II.

'WHEN FALLS THE MODEST GLOAMING.'

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THE two Scottish poets, Burns and Hogg, have dealt with the same text in the poem of each which sings of the love who is but a lassie yet.' The lover pictured by the Ettrick Shepherd is in very ecstasy of happiness, and in the highest mood of human confidence. Nothing can be less than sacred for him which has been touched, or praised, or looked on by his love who's but a lassie yet.' The stream so glassy, the modest gloaming, the birds that sing, the grass that grows green around the feet of the loved one, the very wind that kisses her, the flowery beds on which she treads-all come in for the poet's love and praise. How otherwise is it with Burns's disappointed hero! This lover has been hardly entreated by his love 'who's but a lassie yet.' He only thinks of letting her stand a year

or two in the hope that she will not then be quite so saucy; he declares that no one can woo her; man can only buy her. He vows that the real joy of man is a drop o' the best o't-being for the moment in the mood of the author of the Vaux de Vire, who finds easy consolation in wine when the scornful girl rejects his petition for a kiss; and, finally, in a wild burst of cynicism, worthy of Villon himself, he goes off into an utterly irrelevant remark about a minister who made love to a fiddler's wife and could not preach for thinking of her charms.

Clarkson Fielding was in the full mood of the happy lover. But he was also in a condition of much distress for the unhappy one who might, for all he knew, be in such state as Burns has described. The one sole drawback to his happiness was his knowledge that the same event which filled him with joy must have dashed the hopes of his brother to the ground. He wrote to Wilberforce at once, a short frank letter of explanation, in which he told how the knowledge of his great happiness had come on him wholly by surprise, and how when Wilberforce talked of asking Gabrielle to marry him, 'it never occurred to my mind that she

could possibly care for me.' 'I was determined not to say a word about it,' he wrote; 'I was going away for that reason alone, because I did not like to disturb your happiness by allowing you to know that I was unhappy. I was in love with her, Wilberforce, before you ever saw her, and I can't deny good fortune more than bad. What I thought was my case has come to be your case, and if I am happy I still can feel sorry that you are disappointed. Is it my fault if we have both set our hearts on the one woman, and my good fortune is your disappointment?' Wilberforce replied

at once:

'My dear Clarkson, how could she help liking you better? You are young and good-looking; and I only wonder the thing never occurred to me before. I shall get over my disappointment, and be able to congratulate you both very soon, I hope. Tell her so from me, and wish her every happiness; and the same to you, Clarkson, from

"Your affectionate brother,

"WILBERFORCE.'

Fielding read these few direct and manly words.

with a certain sense of relief. He could not have

loved her as I do; and he will get over it. I should not have got over it.' He said as much to Gabrielle.

'Oh, no,' she said, 'your brother is not by any means broken-hearted. He didn't even say he was--when I saw him. I think if he had known, he would have made an offer on your behalf as the next best thing. I have no scruples of conscience and no remorse on his account. I shall be very fond of him as a brother-in-law.'

There is one thing that troubles me,' Fielding said, after a moment's pause; and only one thing in the world, now that we have reconciled our consciences about poor Wilberforce.'

'What is your trouble. Is it anything I can help you to get rid of?'

'Yes; it is all in your hands.'

6 Ah, then it is done with,' she said. Tell me.'

'I find it hard to come at it. It's about money,

and that sort of thing; and I hate even to mention the name of money to you just now. Well, it's this I don't want a wife with money. I want