and came next day to my office in Dame Street, carrying with him his poetic head, and the Elemental, and his notions upon European literatures, as fresh and gay and pleased with himself as though I was to be introduced to it all for the first time.

The other fellows were beginning to weary of him, and ask under their breath, what the deuce kept him in such an outlandish place as Dublin; but I still remained faithful to the old strange interest his first appearance had awakened in us all. They called him a bore, but he was SO handsome and foreign and courteous, he smiled so delightfully, and rolled his cigarettes with such deftness, that it was a real pleasure for me to observe him; and whether I understood him or not, or was wearifully conscious of having heard over and over all he had to say about the Elemental, and the Potential, and the esprit gaulois, the musical fluency of his speech fell upon my ear with the soothing charm of a brook chattering along a sunny meadow.

His voice was never rough or hurried; his face was never clouded; he never rasped my nerves, or called for explanation or contradiction; he was not in the least argumentative. The fellows laughed at my apology, and assured me I was born to be an encouragement for the bores who could not exist if there were not fools of my sort willing to be persecuted by them. This was their facetious way of implying that I am that most laughable of creatures, a goodnatured man.

Arcanieva came very often to my

In

came again, and asked if I could oblige him with a sheet of paper. silence I handed him some sheets and some envelopes, then said without the slightest ironical intent, "There are stamps in that box," and then coloured furiously lest I should have hurt his feelings. I think that I suffer more after the indulgence of any little pleasantry of a sarcastic flavour against my fellow-creatures than the object of it. But Arcanieva wrote on tranquilly, and, closing his letter, he reached forward, dipped his olive fingers into the box, and— Heavenly Powers, can I have been mistaken?-but it certainly seemed to me that he helped himself to more than the required stamp; hastily lowering my eyes before he could know that I had detected him, I yet was able to see his hand wander to his waistcoat-pocket.

It was not the first time that I had noticed in Arcanieva an indelicacy in small matters, and an inclination to pocket trifles. If you offered him a cigarette, a vesta, a fusee, or a lump of sugar, he invariably made provision for such times as he might be in need of the article, by slipping a few more into his pocket. It made me feel meaner than he to have to take note of such things; and the fact that it was becoming daily more and more difficult for me to think well of Arcanieva was a source of real distress to me.

This distress was soon sharpened to poignancy upon a discovery that banished the tranquil confidence between my sister and me. Between us, a dividing, because a silencing element, sat and hovered the young God of Love. We felt his presence, and his wings were as a wall between When I came home at night, I saw Bridget's pretty face flush and pale and her eyes glance quickly behind me. A certain head of faded

us.

ivory and dusky hair, if seen there, would flush her cheek with a confessing glow; their absence would bring a disappointed quiver to her soft little mouth.

Arcanieva spoke naïvely and enthusiastically about his passion. He took the whole college and club into his confidence, and went about raving of "that adorable Miss Bridget," till all the fellows longed to be at his throat. Indeed, it was becoming painful to me to visit the Athenæum. Some friend was sure to drag me into a corner, and burst into frantic abuse of Arcanieva. He was a low adventurer, a schemer, an impostor. Nobody knew where he came from, who, or what he was. Lumley didn't know, nor did any of the rest to whom he had brought letters. Webster had picked him up in Paris, and given him a letter to Lumley. Had I not heard the last reports about him? I begged to be spared, and shrank from the shame of hearing evil of the man my sister loved. But they would not spare me; they protested that it lay on their conscience to hear the rascal prating about Miss Bridget and his offensive love, that they resented it personally, and that I was bound to doors upon him.

close my

Close my doors upon him while Bridget's heart was open to him?

Pleasant counsel to a man who is constitutionally incapable of hurting a fly. I escaped from the Athenæum, shunned Lumley and dear old Oldberry, and took long solitary walks when I left the office to avoid the vexing sight of Bridget's pain and joy. I was in a dilemma; duty compelled me to act, and nature made action in the circumstances peculiarly distasteful to me. My feelings towards the handsome Russian as nearly approached exasperation as possible; for, now that my sister's name was openly coupled with Arcanieva's, it behoved me to

make inquiries, than which nothing was more hateful to me.

The evening on which I reached this unwonted decision, I resolved to break the heavy silence between us as I walked home to Bridget. She greeted me with the same quick glance over my shoulder that so distressed me, and then the little pink flush ebbed back to its excited source, and she looked paler and prettier than

ever.

"Bridget, have you lost confidence in me?" I asked, with difficulty and an odd hurrying of my pulses.

"Paddy, you dear, dear boy, what a question!" she cried, looking away from me into the fire; but I saw that she understood, for her cheeks grew hot.

"Have you nothing to tell me?" She turned her face towards me very wistfully, and my eyes, meeting hers, cried pardon for the wound my tongue was forced to inflict. "Do you love young Arcanieva? Tell me, dear.” She hid her face against my shoulder, and the tell-tale flush reached her hair and spread down to her throat. "Do you want to marry him?" And now I felt to the full how brutal is this probing of a thing so delicate and fearful as a girl's heart. How could I expect her to answer a question that, not I, but another alone had the right to ask? She moved from me in a grieved, proud way, and I put out my hand imploringly, cut to the quick by her pain. "Don't answer me, Bridget. I have been troubled about you, dear, and your happiness is all I think of. But I had no right to ask you that question; please forget it."

I went out, more anxious and perplexed than ever, and determined to call on Lumley and ask his advice. When I reached College Green I met Lumley himself walking towards the college. It was a fine bright evening, and he proposed we

should stroll about the streets instead

of immuring ourselves in a close room. He listened attentively to my story, shook his head several times, and stroked his chin in a thoughtful, judicial way. Lumley had an immense opinion of his own wisdom, and liked to be sued for advice. "Now look here, Paddy; you know you always were a complete idiot. You and that charming sister of yours are just like a pair of infants playing with snakes. You know nothing of life, and, what is more, you never will; you'll simply grow into an aged child, but never into a man, You have a pretty imagination, and put you in a library with pen and ink and German poems or Irish legends to be translated,—there you are in capital form. But give you swindlers and knaves to contend with, and there you are, -a fool."

"But didn't you all believe in him as well as I? You brought him down to the Athenæum, Lumley."

"Yes; but I didn't bring him into the bosom of my family; I didn't fling him in the way of a pretty confiding sister. I gave him dinners and liquors and tobacco: I lent him small sums which he failed to return; and when he began to borrow bigger sums, I cut him short. While you go about with your ears stuffed with wool or your own simplicity, mine are open to all the gossip in the air. That fellow has already taken in a score of pious old ladies. He goes to see them, drinks tea with them, and discourses on esoteric Buddhism. Then the old ladies are in a religious flutter and want to convert him. He is willing enough to be converted if they pay him; and what religious old lady ever refused to open her purse when it contains the chance of a recovered soul? He has changed his religion six times within the last six months. Has he No. 434.-VOL. LXXIII.

asked you for a subscription for his Russian book?" I confessed that he had, and had obtained it. "I thought So. Well, I am in a position to state that not a page of that book has been written, and not a page will ever be written. The scoundrel came to the office yesterday and begged me to let him have ten pounds. I declined, whereupon he produced a revolver and swore he would shoot himself if I didn't. 'Shoot away,' said I, and went on reading proofs. He disappeared into the inner room and came out with an air of desperate resolution. 'Will you lend me the money, Lumley?' 'No,' said I, without looking up. He disappeared again. I see by your face you are shocked at my callousness, my softhearted Paddy; you'd have been taken in, I know. Well, I was not. Besides, I argued thus, 'If Arcanieva is going to commit suicide, I can't prevent him if he's not, he won't, and I need not disturb myself.'

"Of course, I beg you to understand that I have no reason to suppose that Bridget is seriously in love with this Russian," I hastened to interpose, ashamed to have her spoken of in connection with such a disreputable fellow.

"Nonsense, you have every reason. Why shouldn't a fascinating adventurer be expected to captivate a lady? We are ready enough to be captivated by the charming adventuress, I confess. My dear simple Paddy, Providence instituted men and women to prove the weakness of both. The women fool us, and we fool them,-sometimes a little more tragically. And for my part, I will own that it is a very pleasant world while the process of fooling is going on."

This philosophising did not tend to lighten my burden, or help me to a conclusion upon the particular form

L

in the name of all the devils of the imagination was I to do with this impossible Russian? How was I to find out anything about him beyond that which he himself chose to tell me, which was singularly little, I thought, after a quick retrospective glance. Flattered by his extreme foreignness of aspect and the distant climes he suggested, we had opened our hearts to him and been glad enough to accept the fellow upon his own valuation; and there he was, a discomposing presence. If there was a mystery, as Lumley cheerfully suggested, how was I, a man of incurious habits, to get at the bottom of it?

We walked the streets, and puffed our pipes, and paused, and talked. We talked and walked and paused and puffed again, without arriving at any conclusion. "The devil take women and love and all nonsense of that sort," I finally exploded, and turned on my heel.

My seven-and-twenty years had not yet been disturbed by any semblance of worry. A placid individual, of moderate income and inexpensive tastes, with the constant congenial companionship of marriage without its drawbacks, I felt I was the least fitted of mortals to be confronted with acute mental distress. It made me nervous and disposed to swear, a habit very foreign to me; and when I got back to Donnybrook, I let myself in quietly, resolved not to see Bridget again that night. I pushed open the door of the front drawing-room which was not closed, wanting a book I had left there that morning. There was light in the back room, and through the folding-doors I saw a picture that took the blood from my face and sent

it buzzing and tingling in an unaccountable way through my veins. Bridget was standing with both hands clasped upon Arcanieva's shoulder, her head bent upon them in an unmistakable attitude of surrender. One of Arcanieva's arms was round her waist and the other hand held her pretty head, over which his own was bent in the unmistakable attitude of conqueror. I turned away and softly closed the door.

I feared to meet Bridget's eye next day. I felt somehow shabby because I knew by accident more than she supposed me to know, and hurried away from the breakfast-table without giving her time to speak, more troubled and more distressed than ever. I had hitherto never taken anything more than an abstract interest in the question of love: I liked women in a passionless unaspiring way, and was always glad of any little chance kindness flung at me like an unowned and unexpectant dog; but I was now for the first time made conscious that nobody had ever yet entertained a passion for me. Perhaps if I had not had Bridget, I might have gone forth boldly in search of the volcanic element; but now the thought unnerved me, and made me agitated and strangely dissatisfied.

"The mischief take that Russian !" I muttered. "A man has no business to be so handsome, so abominably Byronic and romantic-looking."

My reflections were interrupted by Lumley's head thrust in through the office-door. "Your affair is done, Paddy," he cried excitedly. "This

morning I had the queerest visitor in the world. Whom do you think? Inspector Macarthy! He sat in my room chatting about the weather and Home Rule, and I kept asking myself under my breath what the devil he could want with me. Suddenly the cat was out of the bag. He showed

me a likeness, and asked me if I were acquainted with the original. "Arcanieva!" I exclaimed. 'Exactly,' said Macarthy, as cool as a cucumber. 'Your Mr. Arcanieva is a Polish forger of the name of Canaski. The London police have been on his track for some time; they traced him to Paris, and then lost sight of him.""

"Don't tell me anything more, for God's sake!" I cried, shrinking from the degradation of Bridget's lover. “I'm sorry, I am indeed. He is a

brilliant fellow, whoever and whatever he may be else. I dare say he had desperate provocation. At any rate, I would like to beg a favour from you, Lumley."

"Ask it, Paddy," said Lumley, in a voice of curious gentleness.

"There is no need for our rudely destroying Bridget's illusion, is there?" I inquired.

I knew that Lumley loved her, and glanced timidly at him. He drew back a little, and bent his eyes upon the floor. "None, Paddy, if you have serious reason to believe that it would be a pain to her.”

"I have. We will say that he is a Nihilist. She will then be able to remember him as a misguided but disinterested young man. influence with the Press."

Use your

"I will, Paddy. But you had better have your paper left here for a couple of days,-by accident, you know." He rose, and stood with both hands clasped upon the knob of his walking-stick, staring at me wistfully. "Is it true then, Paddy, quite true, that she loves Arcanieva?"

"Quite true," I answered sighing. "Poor girl, poor girl! Oh, Paddy, most unwise Paddy! And here have I been faithful all these years without the courage to speak. I think I took a sort of æsthetic pleasure in her pretty pink and white serenity. Well, well, we are fools even when we seem wise.

"Good-bye, Lumley. Come inside, Mr. Arcanieva." He followed me into the office, and I pointed to a chair.

"Paddy," he continued, in the same strongly excited voice, clasping his hands together in a way that suggested the possibility of his falling on his knees before me, "I do implore you, my dear brother, for are you not the brother of her I love?" He saw me wince and frown, and tactfully skirted that theme. "Something happened a year ago when I was in London. I was greatly tempted. I was only the tool of a very powerful man, who has given me up now to screen himself. Help me, Paddy, to get away unmolested and safe."