It was the outrage against her father she felt most keenly.

Mr. Wort flung himself into the breach gallantly.

'I shall write to Mr. Walgrave to-night,' he said; and I daresay you'll have him down on Saturday.'

6

Saturday or Monday's all alike to me,' replied Mrs. James.

They strolled back to the garden, where the tea-tray had given place to a square black bottle of hollands, a brown jug of cold spring water, and a couple of tumblers. Grace was thoughtful. It was a humiliation to receive a lodger; but she could not help wondering and speculating a little about the stranger. Strangers were so rare at Kingsbury; and to receive one in her own house was like the beginning of a new life. They would date after-events from this epoch, no doubt, and divide life at Brierwood into two periods-before Mr. Walgrave came; after Mr. Walgrave came.

CHAPTER III.

'O, DO YOU REMEMBER THE FIRST TIME I MET YOU?'

He came late on Saturday afternoon-a calm sunny afternoon, with scarcely breeze enough to stir the newly-blown roses. The place seemed all roses to Hubert Walgrave's haggard London-weary eyes: roses making a curtain for the porch; roses white and red climbing up to the very chimney-pots, entangled with creamy yellow woodbine; spreading bushes of moss-roses and cabbage-roses in the narrow garden between the high-road and the house; and through a side gate Mr. Walgrave caught a glimpse of the old-fashioned garden behind the house, all abloom with roses.

'Rather a nice place,' he murmured, in a languid semi-supercilious tone that was almost habitual to him. As a rule, farmhouses are ugly.'

All the household-they had just finished tea in the every-day parlour-heard the stoppage of the

fly; and there was a little group behind the dimity curtains peering out at the new-comer-a group in which Grace was by no means the least curious. She forgot all the degradation involved in the idea of a lodger for the moment in her eagerness to see what he was like.

Jack and Charley Redmayne had gone out, at their mother's bidding, to assist in bringing in the stranger's luggage-a huge trunk, time-worn and shabby, which from its weight seemed to contain books; a large leathern portmanteau, also the worse for wear; a carpet-bag or two, three or four fishingrods, and a shower-bath.

'Ah,' exclaimed Mrs. James, with unmitigated disgust, I expected he'd be a slopper!'

'He looks like a gentleman,' said Grace thoughtfully. Heaven knows where the girl had obtained her notion of a gentleman; unless it were from the rector, a fussy little elderly man, who was always quarrelling with some one or other of his parishioners; or the curate, an overgrown youth of two-andtwenty, who had bony knees and wrists and ankles, and looked as if he had not yet ceased from growing out of his garments.

'He looks like a gentleman,' repeated Grace

dreamily. And indeed Mr. Walgrave bore upon him that stamp of gentle blood, that unmistakable indescribable grace and air which the merest peasant recognises intuitively as something that makes that other clay different from his own. He was tall, but not too tall-slender, but not too slender. His face was just a little worn and faded from recent illness, and could have hardly been considered handsome; dark brown hair, growing rather sparsely on the brow; a sallow complexion, of an almost foreign darkness; gray eyes, that looked black; an aquiline nose; a sarcastic mouth-a mouth capable of much expression; capable also of expressing nothing, if its owner were so minded. His age might be perhaps about five-and-thirty. Grace thought him elderly. Any little gleam of romance which her fancy picture of him might have inspired, vanished at sight of the reality.

'But he looks like a gentleman,' she said for the third time, as she opened her work-basket, and took out some scrap of that useless fancy-work which Mrs. James's soul abhorred, and seated herself at the window looking into the back garden. The common parlour had a window at each end, and a half-glass door besides opening into the garden.

There was a little stir in the house presently-a clattering of plates and dishes, a bell rung once or twice, the shrill voice of Mrs. James directing the maid-of-all-work. A dinner had been prepared for the new-comer, and was at this moment being served in the best parlour.

Grace crept to the half-open door of the family sitting-room, and peeped out. The door of the opposite parlour was ajar, and she heard a polite languid voice, which had an unpleasant coldness, she thought, approving everything.

Thanks. The rooms are very nice-quite airy and comfortable, all that I wish. Yes; I will take a glass of your home-brewed ale to-day, if you please. I have ordered a hamper of wine to be sent down from London. It will arrive to-night, I daresay.' And then, after an interval: 'I have to thank you for receiving me as a lodger. Mr. Wort tells me it is the first time you have admitted anybody to your house in that capacity.'

Well, you see, sir,' blurted out Mrs. James, who was candour itself, my brother-in-law's circumstances- Brierwood belongs to my husband's brother, Richard Redmayne, who's away in Australia at those rubbishing diggings, where I can't make out