before next summer.

I shall winter either in the south of France or in Italy. Probably in the latter, if I can find a place to suit me. I shall not be alone. Richard Dering, Lionel's brother, is ordered to Europe for his health, and will join me through the winter. He has been with me in India, and understands my crotchety ways and queer temper."

Not without a bitter pang did Kester St. George hear this announcement. Hardly was one brother disposed of when another sprang up in his place. But he hid his disappointment under an admirable assumption of mingled affection and respect.

"At least, sir, there can be no objection to my having your address," he said, "when you are finally settled for the winter."

"None whatever-none whatever," answered the General.

"And should my vagrant footsteps lead me anywhere into your neighbourhood—although I don't think it at all likely that they will do so—and should I chance to drop in upon you about luncheon-time, I presume I should not be looked upon as an intruder ? "

66

Certainly not as an intruder. In fact, it was my intention to send for you before long, and ask you to stay with me. But not while my health is so bad. At present I am too nervous and out of sorts for company of any kind." This was said with more kindness of tone than the General had yet used in speaking to his nephew, but at the same time it was a plain intimation that their interview was at an end. Kester rose at once and took his leave.

"That fellow's an arrant scamp, although he is my nephew," muttered the General to himself, as the door closed behind Kester. "He's no real St. George. There's a drop of sinister blood somewhere in his veins that has proved foul enough to poison the whole. Of course, I knew when I sent for him that he had nothing to tell me about Lionel, but I wanted to see him and talk with him. I wanted to ascertain whether the impression that I formed of him when I was in England several years ago would be borne out by the impression I should form of him now. It has been borne out most fully. The Kester St. George of to-day, with his scheming brain and shallow heart, is precisely the Kester St. George of ten years ago, only with more experience and knowledge of the world's hard ways. Could we but wring the truth out of that crafty heart of his, I wonder whether one would find there the secret of a certain terrible crime? But I have no right to accuse him even in thought; and Heaven, in its own good time, will surely bring the truth to light."

CHAPTER XXII.

CUPID AT PINCOTE.

WITH the departure of Lionel Dering from Pincote in disguise, and the subsequent removal of Edith and Mrs. Garside to London, it would naturally have been thought that Mr. Tom Bristow's business in Duxley was at an end, that he would have bidden the quiet little country town a long farewell, and have hastened back gladly to the busier haunts of men. But such was not the case. He still kept on his lodgings in Duxley. Although he had given notice to leave them three or four times, when the day came for him to go he had always renewed his tenancy for another short term; and he still lingered on in a vague, purposeless sort of way, altogether unusual in one who rather prided himself on his decisive and business-like mode of conducting all the affairs of his every day life.

Truth to tell, he could not make up his mind to sever the thread of connection which bound him to Miss Culpepper; which, frail though it might be, still continued to hold together; and would, in all probability, so hold as long as he chose to remain at Duxley, but which must inevitably be broken for ever the moment he and his portmanteau bade a final farewell to the pleasant little town. And yet, what folly, what wild infatuation, it was, as he said to himself a score of times a day. There was not the remotest prospect of his being able to win Jane Culpepper for his wife-at least, not during the lifetime of her father. He had read his own heart and feelings by this time, and he knew that he loved her. He knew that he, the cool, calculating man of business, the shrewd speculator, who had never been overmuch inclined to believe in the romance of love; who had often declared that if he ever were to marry it would be for money and money only; he who had walked unscathed under the flashing fire of a thousand feminine eyes, had succumbed at last, like the most weak-minded of mortals, to the charms of a country-bred squire's daughter, who was neither very beautiful, very wise, very witty, nor, as he believed, very rich.

Yes, he certainly loved her. He owned that to himself now. He knew too that he couldn't help himself, and that, however foolish his passion might be, he could not bear to break himself away from it entirely, as he ought to have done, and put two hundred miles of distance between himself and her. He preferred to still linger on in love's pleasant paradise. Not with his own hands would he consent to shut the golden gates that would bar him for ever from that sunny precinct.

That Miss Culpepper was engaged to young Cope he knew quite well. But Tom Bristow was not a man to set much store by such an engagement. He felt, instinctively as it were, that Jane had drifted

into her present position almost unconsciously and without being sure of her own feelings in the matter. That Edward Cope was quite unworthy of being her husband he had no manner of doubt: who, indeed, was worthy of holding that position? Not much less doubt had he as to the real state of Jane's feelings toward the banker's son; and holding, as he did, that all is fair in love and war, he would have seen Mr. Edward Cope jilted, and he himself installed in his place, without the slightest feeling of compunction.

"He's an unmitigated cad," said Tom to himself; "altogether incapable of appreciating a girl like Jane." Which, reversing the point of view, was exactly Edward Cope's own opinion. In his belief it was he who was the unappreciated one.

But a far more serious impediment than any offered by Jane's engagement to young Cope lay before Tom like a rock ahead, from which there was no escape. He knew quite well that unless some special miracle should be worked in his behalf, it was altogether hopeless to expect that the Squire would ever consent to a marriage between himself and Jane; and that any special miracle would be so worked he had very little faith indeed. He knew how full of prejudices the Squire was; and, notwithstanding his bonhomie and rough frankness of manner, how securely wrapped round he was with the trammels of caste. He knew, too, that had the Squire not owed his life in years gone by to Mr. Cope's bravery, from which act had sprung their warm friendship of many years, not even to the son of a rich banker would Titus Culpepper, the proud commoner, who could trace back his family for ten hundred years, have ever consented to give his daughter. While as for himself, he, Tom Bristow, however rich he might one day perhaps become, would never be anything more in Mr. Culpepper's eyes than the son of a poor country doctor, and, consequently, to a man of old family, a mere nobody-a person who by no stretch of imagination could ever be looked upon in the light of a family connection.

And yet, being in possession of all this bitter knowledge, Tom Bristow made no really determined effort to break away, and to try the cure which is said to be often wrought by time and absence even in cases as desperate as his. Metaphorically speaking, he hugged the shackles that bound him, and gloried in the loss of his freedom: a very sad condition, indeed, for any reasonable being to fall into.

It was curious what a number of opportunities Tom and Jane seemed to find for seeing each other, and how often they found themselves together, quite fortuitously as it were, and without any apparent volition of their own in the matter. Sometimes Tom would be mooning about the High Street in the middle of the forenoon at the very time that the Pincote pony-carriage drew up against one or another of the shops, and then what more natural than that Jane and he should have three minutes' conversation together on the pavement? Sometimes

Jane would walk into Merton's library at the very moment that Tom was critically choosing a novel which, when borrowed, he would carefully omit to read. How quickly half an hour-nay an hour-would pass at such times, and that in conversation of the most commonplace kind!

Sometimes Jane, wandering absently with a book in her hands through the Pincote woods and meadows, would find herself, after a time, on the banks of the carefully preserved stream-river it could hardly be called-which wandered of its own sweet will through Squire Culpepper's demesne. There, strange to relate, she would find Mr. Bristow whipping the stream; very inartistically it must be admitted ; but trying his best to make believe that he was a very skilful angler indeed.

What wings those sunny minutes put themselves on at such times! How quickly the yellow afternoons faded and waned, and Jane would look round at last, quite startled to find that twilight had come already. Then Tom would accompany her part of the way back towards the house, his fishing-basket empty indeed, but his heart overbrimming with the happiness of perfect love.

Once every now and again the Squire, meeting Tom casually in the street, would ask him to dinner at Pincote. Memorable occasions those, never to be forgotten by either Tom or Jane, when, with the drawing-room all to themselves, while the Squire snoozed for an hour in his easy-chair in the dining-room, they could sit and talk, or pretend to play chess, or make believe to be deeply interested in some portfolio of engravings, or to be altogether immersed in a selection from the last new opera, turning over the leaves and strumming a few bars experimentally here and there; while, in reality, rapt up in and caring for nothing and nobody but themselves.

Yet never once was a single word of love whispered between them, whatever mutual tales their eyes might tell. Jane still held herself as engaged to Edward Cope: but she had made up her mind that as soon as that young gentleman should return from America she would see him, and tell him that she had discovered her error-that she no longer cared for him as a woman ought to care for the man she is about to marry; and she would appeal to his generosity to relieve her from an engagement that had now become utterly distasteful to her. His letters from abroad were so infrequent, so brief, and so utterly unlover-like, that she did not anticipate much difficulty in obtaining her request. But, as she was well aware, there was a certain amount of mule-like obstinacy in the character of Edward Cope, and it was quite possible that when he found she no longer cared for him, he might cling to her all the more firmly. What if he should refuse to release her? The contemplation of such a possibility was not a pleasant one. What she should do in such a case she could not even imagine. But

it would be time enough to think of that when the necessity for thinking of it should have arisen.

But even if released from her engagement to Edward Cope, Jane knew that she would still be as far as ever from the haven of her secret hopes, and that without running entirely counter to her father's wishes and prejudices, the haven in question could never be reached by her. But although it might never be possible for her to marry the man whom she secretly loved, she was fully determined in her own mind never to marry anyone else, however strongly the world might consider her to be bound by the fetters of her odious engagement. Edward Cope,

although he might refuse to release her from her promise, should never force her into becoming his wife.

The fact of having been appealed to by Tom Bristow to find a shelter for his friend when that friend was in dire trouble, seemed to draw him closer to Jane than anything else. From that hour her feelings towards him took a warmer tinge than they had ever assumed before. There was something almost heroic in her eyes in the friendship between Lionel and Tom, and that she should have been called upon to assist, in however humble a way, in the escape of the former was to her a proof of confidence such as she could never possibly forget. She never met Tom without inquiring for the last news as to the movements of Lionel and his wife; and Tom, on his side, took care to keep her duly posted up in everything that concerned them. A week or so after the departure of Lionel for Cumberland, Jane had been taken by Tom to Alder Cottage and introduced to Edith. How warmly the latter thanked her for what she had done need not be told here. In that hour of their meeting was laid the foundation of one of those friendships, rare between two women, which death alone has power to sever.

However deeply Mr. Tom Bristow might be in love, however infatuated he might be on one particular point, he in no wise neglected his ordinary business avocations, nor did he by any means spend the whole of his time in Duxley and its neighbourhood. He was frequently in London; nor was either Liverpool or Manchester unacquainted with his face, for Tom's speculative proclivities expended themselves in many and various channels. The project to bring Duxley, by means of a branch railway from one of the great trunk lines, into closer connection with some of the chief centres of industry in that part of the country, was one which had always engaged his warmest sympathies. But the project, after having been safely incubated, and launched in glowing terms before the public, had been quietly allowed to collapse, its promoters having taken alarm at certain formidable engineering difficulties which had not presented themselves during the preliminary survey of the route.

This put Tom Bristow on his mettle. He had been familiar from