That day, coming upon his enemy in St. James's, the latter saluted him with a mocking laugh which goaded the bookseller almost to madness. "What!" he cried. "Do you go cross-gartered like Malvolio? I shall read you all the signs of a lover."

Mr. R. brushed past him, and left him standing on the pavement, a gallant figure of a man, to attract the eyes of the passers-by. Some sense of the contrast between him and Mr. F.he, a pinched withered atomy of a man, the other with the air of a soldier, a man of adventures, of amours-made him shrink within himself as though he feared the daylight. And,-was it possible that the signs of his disorder were so evident in him that the mocking popinjay had read them plain? He knew himself by this time that he was in love, and with a shadow.

Presently his lady played with him as the cat with a mouse. He should see her, he should not see her. She would tell him all, she would tell him nothing. She was a maid, she was a wife, she was a widow. She was the victim of jealousy: she was misunderstood. At one time she sighed for a soul to understand her; at another she was demure and distant. She ceased to talk of Clorinda, she talked now of herself, with an egoism that never tired: yet she revealed nothing of her identity. As though she had guessed at wild impulses in his mind, she had forbidden him under pain of her everlasting displeasure to seek to know more of her than she chose to impart. With one hope she kept him quietthat in the autumn, when she proposed visiting the Town, he might see her. For the present he had to be content with the golden-chestnut lock of hair which he carried about his neck, and with the vision of her which floated to him from her letters as something exquisite, steeped in an atmosphere of apple-blossom.

For all his success he was still the little bookseller, and a moral man through and through. His infidelity of soul to his wife, who had grown old with him, whom he remembered as comely as a hollyhock, irked him. He was not a man of fashion to sin easily. Thoughts had come into his mind at times which he had looked at before he had driven them out-thoughts of what might happen if by any means his Bessie, poor soul, were to die. This was when Dulcinea was in a melting mood, and wrote languishing letters to him making up for those in which she had been capricious and coy.

He did not sin lightly like a fine gentleman. When he was in the presence of the poor, kind, foolish, overblown wife, his sense of guilt towards her made him sour and irritable. Her eyes were often red now. To catch sight of them was to have his dream of apple-blossom lose its magic for the time. It was easier with his daughters, who adored their mother, and so tossed their heads at him and were impertinent. They had nothing to do with it; they were mere accidental creatures. The trouble which fretted and made him unbearable when he was at Hammersmith was between him and their mother, the poor woman he had outgrown, with whom he had been wellcontent until that scent of apple-blossom had floated into his little drabcolored life. That his daughters were minxes did not matter; perhaps in his heart he thought the more of them for it.

But to be out of sight of Bessie's red eyes, and the sighs which now and again she heaved cavernously, he absented himself as much as might be from the home which had been everything desirable to him before he had written of Clorinda and become the fashion.

He found it necessary to take a lodging in town, where he stayed

week after week, unless when some of his fine friends carried him off to their splendid houses for a country visit.

Clorinda had now run her course; and he should be casting about him for an idea for a worthy successor to that immortal story. But he could think of nothing except the mysterious lady who had so turned his staid head; and of her promise that presently, if Strephon was patient, they should meet.

The time was now no further off than a few weeks, which went quickly. She would not yet give him word of how they should meet or when or where. While his poor Bessie, heaving sighs from the depths of her fat bosom, cried out to her comfortable daughters, "Oh, girls, girls, I have lost your father!" he hid himself away in his dark lodgings in Clifford's Inn, leaving the shop to take care of itself, denying himself to all who sought him, living only for those rose-colored letters with the scent of apple-blossom which came to him at varying intervals.

Betwixt the trouble of his conscience and the strain of expectation he lost his cheerfulness of aspect, which once had made him not so unlike a robin. Mr. F. might now have read him the signs of a lover, for the once dapper little person was somewhat neglected; the snuff-colored suit was dusty; his cravat awry; the powder of his wig many days old; his face bore unmistakable marks of suffering and strain.

If he had been about as usual he must have heard of Mr. F.'s book, over which the town was splitting its sides. But he kept to his lodgings, where he was served by an old woman. Once when he went out he saw his enemy approaching him with a more swaggering and triumphant air than ever.

There was no time to avoid a meeting, and be braced himself to bear it, though he had a thought of pity for

himself that he was too sick a man to be a subject for Mr. F.'s flouts and gibes. But to his amazement Mr. F., who had come to meet him, swinging his clouded cane in too robust a fashion for Piccadilly, suddenly gave up his first intention of insolence.

"I am sorry to see you looking so indisposed, sir," he said, and then he flushed, and with a shame-faced air extended his hand. The bookseller took it and held it an instant. His own was hot and trembling.

"I would see a physician," Mr. F. said. "You are not as robust as your admirers, among whom I count myself one, would wish to see you."

He went back to Clifford's Inn with a weak and hesitating step. The room was in a dusty disorder, very different from the neatness and freshness of the Hammersmith cottage. He looked at himself in a glass. Mr. F.'s consideration, his evident pity, had frightened him. Supposing he were to fall ill! It was now Friday, and Sunday was the day appointed by Dulcinea for their meeting. On Sunday she would walk in the Park. Strephon also would be there. They would surely find out each other among the crowd. Was it likely their hearts would not tell them?

What he saw in the green, spotted glass frightened him. His face was as yellow as a guinea, and there was a three days' beard on his chin. There was a spot on each cheek, darkly red. His eyes had sunk in their sockets. He felt hot and cold by turns, and the apprehension that he might be unable to appear in the Park made him feel sick and wretched.

"Oh, Dulcinea," he sighed, “your Strephon is exhausted. You have hidden yourself from him too long. He is worn out with waiting to behold you."

At the same moment his poor Bessie was sobbing to her sympathetic, indignant Prue and Sophy for the hundredth

time: "Oh, girls, girls, I have lost your father!"

When Sunday came he could hardly drag himself from bed; but he got up, and made a careful toilet. He had a new suit, which, although sober, was very elegant. It consisted of a pearlgray silk coat and waistcoat, with white small-clothes. Pearl-gray stockings, and shoes with red heels, completed his attire. His wig was fresh powdered, and he carried a cane. He used the latter for leaning on more than its strength warranted; and he wished he had chosen another place than the Park, where he recognized many fashionable acquaintances, some of whom, he was sure, lifted their eyebrows over his finery.

He

It was a September day, but there was an east wind blowing which pinched the leaves and the flowers and the faces of the women even under their rouge. He felt at first no sense of cold, although his new garments were somewhat thin against the east wind. hardly noticed those who passed him by. He was not mobbed as he would have been a few months earlier. In fact, it might have seemed to an observant spectator that people rather avoided him, although they stood in groups and whispered and smiled when he had passed by.

It was not until he had been walking up and down quite a long time, staring in the face of every woman he met, that he became conscious of being tired and cold. He sat down on a chair; too absorbed in watching for a face to feel more than a passing wonder that his chair was not surrounded by flatterers as usual. Once he shrank a little within himself as he saw Mr. F. pass by. Why were the people staring at him and mobbing him? An obscure, insolent fellow like him! He shivered in the east wind, and again he burned. He was conscious that he must cut an odd appearance, staring in the faces

of the women as he was doing, but he could not help it. Any woman might be Dulcinea. If he were to miss her! He turned cold and hot with the fear, cold and hot again. His eyes grew dazed. Faces were becoming alike to him. He could hardly distinguish one from another.

Three o'clock, and the Park was emptying. All the fashionable folk were going home to dinner. He stayed on till there was hardly any one left but himself. At the last indeed his head swam, and he had no inclination to leave his chair. It was all over and she had not come. And he was very cold and very hot. Some one bent over him and spoke to him sympathetically. Of all men it was Mr. F., his enemy.

"I have been observing you for some time, sir," he said, "and I fear you are indisposed. Let me take you to your lodgings. Pray do not say nay to me. It is an honor to be of the slightest service to so incomparable an author."

There was not a hint of mockery in his voice. He slipped an arm about the little frame as though he had been Mr. R.'s son, and assisted him to arise. He drove with him to his lodgings, saw him into his bed, and brought a physician to the bedside. The physician, who knew neither man, was astonished how the gentleman who had fetched him kept himself in the background. The patient had a chill, he said, and was feverish in consequence. He was to live on barley-water, and to be kept warm. Doubtless he would be better in a day or two.

After a night of burning thirst and wretched tossing to and fro, Mr. R. awoke to the scent of apple-blossom. There was a letter by his bed at which he snatched as eagerly as his strength would allow. It took him some time to decipher the thin spidery handwriting because of his throbbing head and

aching eyes. At last he took in the full contents. She had been in the Park; she had seen him; had had him pointed out to her. How strange that he had not known her! It was as good as a play to see how he watched the women, while she stood at his elbow. She had seen Mr. Henry F., the famous author, there. The whole world was laughing over his "William Ambrose." She was dying for a new sensation, and she was going to read the book as soon as she could get a copy. She believed the printers' presses could not turn them out fast enough.

At this point Mr. R. put down the letter, and his eyes filled with tears of disappointment, because he had missed her. He lay with them closed, feeling the scent of her apple-blossom. Then he opened them and looked languidly about the room. A cold breakfast, unfit for a sick man, stood by his bed. The disorder of last night was in the room. The fire was still unlit, and the light came sadly through the cobwebbed and dusty windows.

He felt the wretchedness of it all, and he sighed, with a half inclination towards the comfort and cleanliness of the Hammersmith cottage, amid its verdant woods and fields.

A little later and the doctor was by his bedside. There was a new respect in his manner. The famous Mr. F. had informed him of his illustrious patient. There was a hackney coach at the door, by Mr. F.'s orders, to convey Mr. R. to his home at Hammersmith. The doctor begged leave to accompany Mr. R. to his own house. Everything should be done for his comfort.

After all, it was like heaven to lie in the clean lavender-smelling sheets and look out at the yellow rose wreathing the window, and the fresh country sky; and to hear the birds sing, and to have Bessie doing everything to alleviate his discomfort as only she knew how. He

rattled like a wheezing bellows, and every breath he drew was torture.

For a few days he was too ill to. feel even the prickings of conscience. At last he awoke easier, and found half a dozen pink letters on his coverlet. He read through them by slow degrees. She had been to Essex Court in hopes to buy a book from him; she had stood and peered in at his window; she had waited on his doorstep. But she had seen nothing of him. Perhaps now they would not meet. She must return to Devonshire at the week-end. She had got "William Ambrose" at last, and was vastly delighted with it. Some one had said to her that it was the death of sentiment. Positively, before she left town, she must meet the delightful author.

It passed over the sick man's head without troubling him. This world of the feather-bed and the white curtains, between which now and again his Bessie's kind faithful eyes looked, was so far away from the scent of apple-blossoms and the ring of chestnut hair and the coquette who had tortured him.

A few days more and he was out of doors on a sofa. The warm weather had come back, and it was pleasant to lie all day with closed eyes, to be forgiven and caressed.

There was a rustle of silk near him, and he looked up to see a lady standing by his couch; she was not far short of middle age, but she was comely, with a wandering brown eye and a meaning smile.

"Poor Strephon!" she said, in a mincing, affected voice. "After all, Dulcinea could not go without seeing thee. So thou hast been ill. I broke away from my husband, Sir Ralph, to visit thee. The good man loves me too well not to be jealous."

She was wearing pink as he had fancied she would. Her full figure almost burst her stays; and under the wide pink hat, tied with blue ribbons, her

guns, though carried in the marketplace, were not, as a rule, taken into the town. But once I saw the goodhumored host, Abd-el-Kerim, rise and depart, and before he set out sling a large cutlass about him. "I suppose," said the shereef, in answer to my question, "he has an enemy." No one else took the least notice.

Once, as I sat there, a company of people came in, all robed in white, with hoods pulled over their heads; the leader, a man of about thirty, began rapidly, but with impressive utterance, to declaim a form of words, and it came with a sort of shock to me to hear the youths who followed him Ichime in at the close, amen. While he went through a series of these prayers, punctuated with the amens close and sharp as volley-firing, the shereef explained to me that this was a scribe with pupils training to be scribes; that they left their college and went on tour for a while, asking alms from town to town in order to provide for the great festivity with which their holiday opened. When the prayers ended, one of the pupils went through the company collecting pence, and as he went past I gave my contribution to the shereef to offer. But the scribe stopped short, looked a little confused, and said hurriedly (so the shereef interpreted) that he offered prayers for money and that he could not offer prayers for an infidel. However, when we explained that it was the gift of a scribe to a scribe and that I was willing to forego my part in the prayers, he bowed and smiled courteously, and with his pupils vanished into the night, to resume his collections elsewhere.

Such small traits of usage can be seen in a hundred places in Tangier. I did not stray beyond Abd-el-Kerim's fold, partly because of my liking for his genial welcome, partly because of a belief that the less one moves about in a country, where all is strange, the

more one sees. But the place in which I really feel that I saw something of Moorish life was the little port of Laraiche, some fifty miles from Tangier, where I was detained by foul weather for a matter of ten days. There were Europeans here, about one in a thousand of the population, but one hardly saw them; they managed nothing except the steamer traffic. Doubtless the rules which governed the town could be suspended or evaded for their benefit, but not always. The gates of Laraiche, for example, shut at sundown, after that the ordinary person could not enter or go out, and travellers, camped in the market-place outside, had to complete their purchases in good time. Once, moreover, after a ride in the surrounding country, I found the town shut against me not long after noon; and my shereef explained that it was a Friday, the Moorish Sunday, and the hour of prayer. Long ago in Andalusia, Spaniards had fallen on a town and surprised it. while the whole body of believers were at their devotions; since then it was the usage to bar out all comers during that sacred hour. All this discipline of life. normal everywhere else in Morocco, is not found in Tangier.

Nor was this the only curtailment of liberty. At half-past eight a gun was fired, and after it no one was entitled to walk the streets. I am bound to say that my shereef disregarded the rule. but he was, to begin with, a shereef, and, to go on with, a Russian subject; it is the extraordinary practice of European nations in Morocco to issue protections to favored Moors, enabling these citizens to defy their own Government. Moreover, he was acquainted with the authorities, as I found when we went to view the prison,-which again marked the contrast between Morocco and Tangier. For at Tangier everybody goes as a matter of course to see the gaols, where prisoners stick