'Mrs. Hooper, have you a photograph of--the gentleman who lived here?'She was getting to be curiously shy in mentioning his name.

'Why, yes. It's in the ornamental frame on the mantelpiece in your ownbedroom, ma'am.'

'No; the Royal Duke and Duchess are in that.'

'Yes, so they are; but he's behind them. He belongs rightly to thatframe, which I bought on purpose; but as he went away he said: "Cover meup from those strangers that are coming, for God's sake. I don't wantthem staring at me, and I am sure they won't want me staring at them." SoI slipped in the Duke and Duchess temporarily in front of him, as theyhad no frame, and Royalties are more suitable for letting furnished thana private young man. If you take 'em out you'll see him under. Lord,ma'am, he wouldn't mind if he knew it! He didn't think the next tenantwould be such an attractive lady as you, or he wouldn't have thought ofhiding himself; perhaps.'

'Is he handsome?' she asked timidly.

'I call him so. Some, perhaps, wouldn't.'

'Should I?' she asked, with eagerness.

'I think you would, though some would say he's more striking thanhandsome; a large-eyed thoughtful fellow, you know, with a very electricflash in his eye when he looks round quickly, such as you'd expect a poetto be who doesn't get his living by it.'

'How old is he?'

'Several years older than yourself, ma'am; about thirty-one or two, Ithink.'

Ella was, as a matter of fact, a few months over thirty herself; but shedid not look nearly so much. Though so immature in nature, she wasentering on that tract of life in which emotional women begin to suspectthat last love may be stronger than first love; and she would soon, alas,enter on the still more melancholy tract when at least the vainer ones ofher sex shrink from receiving a male visitor otherwise than with theirbacks to the window or the blinds half down. She reflected on Mrs.Hooper's remark, and said no more about age.

Just then a telegram was brought up. It came from her husband, who hadgone down the Channel as far as Budmouth with his friends in the yacht,and would not be able to get back till next day.

After her light dinner Ella idled about the shore with the children tilldusk, thinking of the yet uncovered photograph in her room, with a serenesense of something ecstatic to come. For, with the subtle luxuriousnessof fancy in which this young woman was an adept, on learning that herhusband was to be absent that night she had refrained from incontinentlyrushing upstairs and opening the picture-frame, preferring to reserve theinspection till she could be alone, and a more romantic tinge be impartedto the occasion by silence, candles, solemn sea and stars outside, thanwas afforded by the garish afternoon sunlight.

The children had been sent to bed, and Ella soon followed, though it wasnot yet ten o'clock. To gratify her passionate curiosity she now madeher preparations, first getting rid of superfluous garments and puttingon her dressing-gown, then arranging a chair in front of the table andreading several pages of Trewe's tenderest utterances. Then she fetchedthe portrait-frame to the light, opened the back, took out the likeness,and set it up before her.

It was a striking countenance to look upon. The poet wore a luxuriantblack moustache and imperial, and a slouched hat which shaded theforehead. The large dark eyes, described by the landlady, showed anunlimited capacity for misery; they looked out from beneath well-shapedbrows as if they were reading the universe in the microcosm of theconfronter's face, and were not altogether overjoyed at what thespectacle portended.

Ella murmured in her lowest, richest, tenderest tone: 'And it's youwho've so cruelly eclipsed me these many times!'

As she gazed long at the portrait she fell into thought, till her eyesfilled with tears, and she touched the cardboard with her lips. Then shelaughed with a nervous lightness, and wiped her eyes.

She thought how wicked she was, a woman having a husband and threechildren, to let her mind stray to a stranger in this unconscionablemanner. No, he was not a stranger! She knew his thoughts and feelingsas well as she knew her own; they were, in fact, the self-same thoughtsand feelings as hers, which her husband distinctly lacked; perhapsluckily for himself; considering that he had to provide for familyexpenses.

'He's nearer my real self, he's more intimate with the real me than Willis, after all, even though I've never seen him,' she said.

She laid his book and picture on the table at the bedside, and when shewas reclining on the pillow she re-read those of Robert Trewe's verseswhich she had marked from time to time as most touching and true. Puttingthese aside, she set up the photograph on its edge upon the coverlet, andcontemplated it as she lay. Then she scanned again by the light of thecandle the half-obliterated pencillings on the wall-paper beside herhead. There they were--phrases, couplets, bouts-rimes, beginnings andmiddles of lines, ideas in the rough, like Shelley's scraps, and theleast of them so intense, so sweet, so palpitating, that it seemed as ifhis very breath, warm and loving, fanned her cheeks from those walls,walls that had surrounded his head times and times as they surrounded herown now. He must often have put up his hand so--with the pencil in it.Yes, the writing was sideways, as it would be if executed by one whoextended his arm thus.

These inscribed shapes of the poet's world,

'Forms more real than living man, Nurslings of immortality,'

were, no doubt, the thoughts and spirit-strivings which had come to himin the dead of night, when he could let himself go and have no fear ofthe frost of criticism. No doubt they had often been written up hastilyby the light of the moon, the rays of the lamp, in the blue-grey dawn, infull daylight perhaps never. And now her hair was dragging where his armhad lain when he secured the fugitive fancies; she was sleeping on apoet's lips, immersed in the very essence of him, permeated by his spiritas by an ether.

While she was dreaming the minutes away thus, a footstep came upon thestairs, and in a moment she heard her husband's heavy step on the landingimmediately without.

'Ell, where are you?'

What possessed her she could not have described, but, with an instinctiveobjection to let her husband know what she had been doing, she slippedthe photograph under the pillow just as he flung open the door, with theair of a man who had dined not badly.

'O, I beg pardon,' said William Marchmill. 'Have you a headache? I amafraid I have disturbed you.'

'No, I've not got a headache,' said she. 'How is it you've come?'

'Well, we found we could get back in very good time after all, and Ididn't want to make another day of it, because of going somewhere else to-morrow.'

'Shall I come down again?'

'O no. I'm as tired as a dog. I've had a good feed, and I shall turn instraight off. I want to get out at six o'clock to-morrow if I can . . .I shan't disturb you by my getting up; it will be long before you areawake.' And he came forward into the room.

While her eyes followed his movements, Ella softly pushed the photographfurther out of sight.

'Sure you're not ill?' he asked, bending over her.

'No, only wicked!'

'Never mind that.' And he stooped and kissed her.

Next morning Marchmill was called at six o'clock; and in waking andyawning she heard him muttering to himself: 'What the deuce is thisthat's been crackling under me so?' Imagining her asleep he searchedround him and withdrew something. Through her half-opened eyes sheperceived it to be Mr. Trewe.

'Well, I'm damned!' her husband exclaimed.

'What, dear?' said she.

'O, you are awake? Ha! ha!'

'What do you mean?'

'Some bloke's photograph--a friend of our landlady's, I suppose. Iwonder how it came here; whisked off the table by accident perhaps whenthey were making the bed.'

'I was looking at it yesterday, and it must have dropped in then.'

'O, he's a friend of yours? Bless his picturesque heart!'

Ella's loyalty to the object of her admiration could not endure to hearhim ridiculed. 'He's a clever man!' she said, with a tremor in hergentle voice which she herself felt to be absurdly uncalled for.

'He is a rising poet--the gentleman who occupied two of these roomsbefore we came, though I've never seen him.'

'How do you know, if you've never seen him?'

'Mrs. Hooper told me when she showed me the photograph.'

'O; well, I must up and be off. I shall be home rather early. Sorry Ican't take you to-day, dear. Mind the children don't go gettingdrowned.'

That day Mrs. Marchmill inquired if Mr. Trewe were likely to call at anyother time.

'Yes,' said Mrs. Hooper. 'He's coming this day week to stay with afriend near here till you leave. He'll be sure to call.'

Marchmill did return quite early in the afternoon; and, opening someletters which had arrived in his absence, declared suddenly that he andhis family would have to leave a week earlier than they had expected todo--in short, in three days.

'Surely we can stay a week longer?' she pleaded. 'I like it here.'

'I don't. It is getting rather slow.'

'Then you might leave me and the children!'

'How perverse you are, Ell! What's the use? And have to come to fetchyou! No: we'll all return together; and we'll make out our time in NorthWales or Brighton a little later on. Besides, you've three days longeryet.'

It seemed to be her doom not to meet the man for whose rival talent shehad a despairing admiration, and to whose person she was now absolutelyattached. Yet she determined to make a last effort; and having gatheredfrom her landlady that Trewe was living in a lonely spot not far from thefashionable town on the Island opposite, she crossed over in the packetfrom the neighbouring pier the following afternoon.

What a useless journey it was! Ella knew but vaguely where the housestood, and when she fancied she had found it, and ventured to inquire ofa pedestrian if he lived there, the answer returned by the man was thathe did not know. And if he did live there, how could she call upon him?Some women might have the assurance to do it, but she had not. How crazyhe would think her. She might have asked him to call upon her, perhaps;but she had not the courage for that, either. She lingered mournfullyabout the picturesque seaside eminence till it was time to return to thetown and enter the steamer for recrossing, reaching home for dinnerwithout having been greatly missed.

At the last moment, unexpectedly enough, her husband said that he shouldhave no objection to letting her and the children stay on till the end ofthe week, since she wished to do so, if she felt herself able to get homewithout him. She concealed the pleasure this extension of time gave her;and Marchmill went off the next morning alone.

But the week passed, and Trewe did not call.

On Saturday morning the remaining members of the Marchmill familydeparted from the place which had been productive of so much fervour inher. The dreary, dreary train; the sun shining in moted beams upon thehot cushions; the dusty permanent way; the mean rows of wire--thesethings were her accompaniment: while out of the window the deep blue sea-levels disappeared from her gaze, and with them her poet's home. Heavy-hearted, she tried to read, and wept instead.

Mr. Marchmill was in a thriving way of business, and he and his familylived in a large new house, which stood in rather extensive grounds a fewmiles outside the city wherein he carried on his trade. Ella's life waslonely here, as the suburban life is apt to be, particularly at certainseasons; and she had ample time to indulge her taste for lyric andelegiac composition. She had hardly got back when she encountered apiece by Robert Trewe in the new number of her favourite magazine, whichmust have been written almost immediately before her visit to Solentsea,for it contained the very couplet she had seen pencilled on the wallpaperby the bed, and Mrs. Hooper had declared to be recent. Ella could resistno longer, but seizing a pen impulsively, wrote to him as a brother-poet,using the name of John Ivy, congratulating him in her letter on histriumphant executions in metre and rhythm of thoughts that moved hissoul, as compared with her own brow-beaten efforts in the same pathetictrade.

To this address there came a response in a few days, little as she haddared to hope for it--a civil and brief note, in which the young poetstated that, though he was not well acquainted with Mr. Ivy's verse, herecalled the name as being one he had seen attached to some verypromising pieces; that he was glad to gain Mr. Ivy's acquaintance byletter, and should certainly look with much interest for his productionsin the future.

There must have been something juvenile or timid in her own epistle, asone ostensibly coming from a man, she declared to herself; for Trewequite adopted the tone of an elder and superior in this reply. But whatdid it matter? he had replied; he had written to her with his own handfrom that very room she knew so well, for he was now back again in hisquarters.

The correspondence thus begun was continued for two months or more, EllaMarchmill sending him from time to time some that she considered to bethe best of her pieces, which he very kindly accepted, though he did notsay he sedulously read them, nor did he send her any of his own inreturn. Ella would have been more hurt at this than she was if she hadnot known that Trewe laboured under the impression that she was one ofhis own sex.

Yet the situation was unsatisfactory. A flattering little voice told herthat, were he only to see her, matters would be otherwise. No doubt shewould have helped on this by making a frank confession of womanhood, tobegin with, if something had not happened, to her delight, to render itunnecessary. A friend of her husband's, the editor of the most importantnewspaper in the city and county, who was dining with them one day,observed during their conversation about the poet that his (the editor's)brother the landscape-painter was a friend of Mr. Trewe's, and that thetwo men were at that very moment in Wales together.

Ella was slightly acquainted with the editor's brother. The next morningdown she sat and wrote, inviting him to stay at her house for a shorttime on his way back, and requesting him to bring with him, ifpracticable, his companion Mr. Trewe, whose acquaintance she was anxiousto make. The answer arrived after some few days. Her correspondent andhis friend Trewe would have much satisfaction in accepting her invitationon their way southward, which would be on such and such a day in thefollowing week.

Ella was blithe and buoyant. Her scheme had succeeded; her belovedthough as yet unseen one was coming. "Behold, he standeth behind ourwall; he looked forth at the windows, showing himself through thelattice," she thought ecstatically. "And, lo, the winter is past, therain is over and gone, the flowers appear on the earth, the time of thesinging of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in ourland."

But it was necessary to consider the details of lodging and feeding him.This she did most solicitously, and awaited the pregnant day and hour.

It was about five in the afternoon when she heard a ring at the door andthe editor's brother's voice in the hall. Poetess as she was, or as shethought herself, she had not been too sublime that day to dress withinfinite trouble in a fashionable robe of rich material, having a faintresemblance to the chiton of the Greeks, a style just then in vogue amongladies of an artistic and romantic turn, which had been obtained by Ellaof her Bond Street dressmaker when she was last in London. Her visitorentered the drawing-room. She looked towards his rear; nobody else camethrough the door. Where, in the name of the God of Love, was RobertTrewe?

'O, I'm sorry,' said the painter, after their introductory words had beenspoken. 'Trewe is a curious fellow, you know, Mrs. Marchmill. He saidhe'd come; then he said he couldn't. He's rather dusty. We've beendoing a few miles with knapsacks, you know; and he wanted to get onhome.'

'He--he's not coming?'

'He's not; and he asked me to make his apologies.'

'When did you p-p-part from him?' she asked, her nether lip starting offquivering so much that it was like a tremolo-stop opened in her speech.She longed to run away from this dreadful bore and cry her eyes out.

'Just now, in the turnpike road yonder there.'

'What! he has actually gone past my gates?'

'Yes. When we got to them--handsome gates they are, too, the finest bitof modern wrought-iron work I have seen--when we came to them we stopped,talking there a little while, and then he wished me good-bye and went on.The truth is, he's a little bit depressed just now, and doesn't want tosee anybody. He's a very good fellow, and a warm friend, but a littleuncertain and gloomy sometimes; he thinks too much of things. His poetryis rather too erotic and passionate, you know, for some tastes; and hehas just come in for a terrible slating from the --- Review that waspublished yesterday; he saw a copy of it at the station by accident.Perhaps you've read it?'

'No.'

'So much the better. O, it is not worth thinking of; just one of thosearticles written to order, to please the narrow-minded set of subscribersupon whom the circulation depends. But he's upset by it. He says it isthe misrepresentation that hurts him so; that, though he can stand a fairattack, he can't stand lies that he's powerless to refute and stop fromspreading. That's just Trewe's weak point. He lives so much by himselfthat these things affect him much more than they would if he were in thebustle of fashionable or commercial life. So he wouldn't come here,making the excuse that it all looked so new and monied--if you'llpardon--'

'But--he must have known--there was sympathy here! Has he never saidanything about getting letters from this address?'

'Yes, yes, he has, from John Ivy--perhaps a relative of yours, hethought, visiting here at the time?'

'Did he--like Ivy, did he say?'

'Well, I don't know that he took any great interest in Ivy.'

'Or in his poems?'

'Or in his poems--so far as I know, that is.'

Robert Trewe took no interest in her house, in her poems, or in theirwriter. As soon as she could get away she went into the nursery andtried to let off her emotion by unnecessarily kissing the children, tillshe had a sudden sense of disgust at being reminded how plain-lookingthey were, like their father.

The obtuse and single-minded landscape-painter never once perceived fromher conversation that it was only Trewe she wanted, and not himself. Hemade the best of his visit, seeming to enjoy the society of Ella'shusband, who also took a great fancy to him, and showed him everywhereabout the neighbourhood, neither of them noticing Ella's mood.

The painter had been gone only a day or two when, while sitting upstairsalone one morning, she glanced over the London paper just arrived, andread the following paragraph:-

'SUICIDE OF A POET

'Mr. Robert Trewe, who has been favourably known for some years as one of our rising lyrists, committed suicide at his lodgings at Solentsea on Saturday evening last by shooting himself in the right temple with a revolver. Readers hardly need to be reminded that Mr. Trewe has recently attracted the attention of a much wider public than had hitherto known him, by his new volume of verse, mostly of an impassioned kind, entitled "Lyrics to a Woman Unknown," which has been already favourably noticed in these pages for the extraordinary gamut of feeling it traverses, and which has been made the subject of a severe, if not ferocious, criticism in the --- Review. It is supposed, though not certainly known, that the article may have partially conduced to the sad act, as a copy of the review in question was found on his writing-table; and he has been observed to be in a somewhat depressed state of mind since the critique appeared.'

Then came the report of the inquest, at which the following letter wasread, it having been addressed to a friend at a distance:-

'DEAR -,--Before these lines reach your hands I shall be delivered from the inconveniences of seeing, hearing, and knowing more of the things around me. I will not trouble you by giving my reasons for the step I have taken, though I can assure you they were sound and logical. Perhaps had I been blessed with a mother, or a sister, or a female friend of another sort tenderly devoted to me, I might have thought it worth while to continue my present existence. I have long dreamt of such an unattainable creature, as you know, and she, this undiscoverable, elusive one, inspired my last volume; the imaginary woman alone, for, in spite of what has been said in some quarters, there is no real woman behind the title. She has continued to the last unrevealed, unmet, unwon. I think it desirable to mention this in order that no blame may attach to any real woman as having been the cause of my decease by cruel or cavalier treatment of me. Tell my landlady that I am sorry to have caused her this unpleasantness; but my occupancy of the rooms will soon be forgotten. There are ample funds in my name at the bank to pay all expenses. R. TREWE.'

Ella sat for a while as if stunned, then rushed into the adjoiningchamber and flung herself upon her face on the bed.

Her grief and distraction shook her to pieces; and she lay in this frenzyof sorrow for more than an hour. Broken words came every now and thenfrom her quivering lips: 'O, if he had only known of me--known of me--me!. . . O, if I had only once met him--only once; and put my hand upon hishot forehead--kissed him--let him know how I loved him--that I would havesuffered shame and scorn, would have lived and died, for him! Perhaps itwould have saved his dear life! . . . But no--it was not allowed! God isa jealous God; and that happiness was not for him and me!'

All possibilities were over; the meeting was stultified. Yet it wasalmost visible to her in her fantasy even now, though it could never besubstantiated -

'The hour which might have been, yet might not be, Which man's and woman's heart conceived and bore, Yet whereof life was barren.'

* * * * *

She wrote to the landlady at Solentsea in the third person, in as subdueda style as she could command, enclosing a postal order for a sovereign,and informing Mrs. Hooper that Mrs. Marchmill had seen in the papers thesad account of the poet's death, and having been, as Mrs. Hooper wasaware, much interested in Mr. Trewe during her stay at Coburg House, shewould be obliged if Mrs. Hooper could obtain a small portion of his hairbefore his coffin was closed down, and send it her as a memorial of him,as also the photograph that was in the frame.

By the return-post a letter arrived containing what had been requested.Ella wept over the portrait and secured it in her private drawer; thelock of hair she tied with white ribbon and put in her bosom, whence shedrew it and kissed it every now and then in some unobserved nook.

'What's the matter?' said her husband, looking up from his newspaper onone of these occasions. 'Crying over something? A lock of hair? Whoseis it?'

'He's dead!' she murmured.

'Who?'

'I don't want to tell you, Will, just now, unless you insist!' she said,a sob hanging heavy in her voice.

'O, all right.'

'Do you mind my refusing? I will tell you some day.'

'It doesn't matter in the least, of course.'

He walked away whistling a few bars of no tune in particular; and when hehad got down to his factory in the city the subject came into Marchmill'shead again.

He, too, was aware that a suicide had taken place recently at the housethey had occupied at Solentsea. Having seen the volume of poems in hiswife's hand of late, and heard fragments of the landlady's conversationabout Trewe when they were her tenants, he all at once said to himself;'Why of course it's he! How the devil did she get to know him? What slyanimals women are!'

Then he placidly dismissed the matter, and went on with his dailyaffairs. By this time Ella at home had come to a determination. Mrs.Hooper, in sending the hair and photograph, had informed her of the dayof the funeral; and as the morning and noon wore on an overpowering wishto know where they were laying him took possession of the sympatheticwoman. Caring very little now what her husband or any one else mightthink of her eccentricities; she wrote Marchmill a brief note, statingthat she was called away for the afternoon and evening, but would returnon the following morning. This she left on his desk, and having giventhe same information to the servants, went out of the house on foot.

When Mr. Marchmill reached home early in the afternoon the servantslooked anxious. The nurse took him privately aside, and hinted that hermistress's sadness during the past few days had been such that she fearedshe had gone out to drown herself. Marchmill reflected. Upon the wholehe thought that she had not done that. Without saying whither he wasbound he also started off, telling them not to sit up for him. He droveto the railway-station, and took a ticket for Solentsea.

It was dark when he reached the place, though he had come by a fasttrain, and he knew that if his wife had preceded him thither it couldonly have been by a slower train, arriving not a great while before hisown. The season at Solentsea was now past: the parade was gloomy, andthe flys were few and cheap. He asked the way to the Cemetery, and soonreached it. The gate was locked, but the keeper let him in, declaring,however, that there was nobody within the precincts. Although it was notlate, the autumnal darkness had now become intense; and he found somedifficulty in keeping to the serpentine path which led to the quarterwhere, as the man had told him, the one or two interments for the day hadtaken place. He stepped upon the grass, and, stumbling over some pegs,stooped now and then to discern if possible a figure against the sky.

He could see none; but lighting on a spot where the soil was trodden,beheld a crouching object beside a newly made grave. She heard him, andsprang up.

'Ell, how silly this is!' he said indignantly. 'Running away from home--Inever heard such a thing! Of course I am not jealous of this unfortunateman; but it is too ridiculous that you, a married woman with threechildren and a fourth coming, should go losing your head like this over adead lover! . . . Do you know you were locked in? You might not havebeen able to get out all night.'

She did not answer.

'I hope it didn't go far between you and him, for your own sake.'

'Don't insult me, Will.'

'Mind, I won't have any more of this sort of thing; do you hear?'

'Very well,' she said.

He drew her arm within his own, and conducted her out of the Cemetery. Itwas impossible to get back that night; and not wishing to be recognizedin their present sorry condition, he took her to a miserable littlecoffee-house close to the station, whence they departed early in themorning, travelling almost without speaking, under the sense that it wasone of those dreary situations occurring in married life which wordscould not mend, and reaching their own door at noon.

The months passed, and neither of the twain ever ventured to start aconversation upon this episode. Ella seemed to be only too frequently ina sad and listless mood, which might almost have been called pining. Thetime was approaching when she would have to undergo the stress ofchildbirth for a fourth time, and that apparently did not tend to raiseher spirits.

'I don't think I shall get over it this time!' she said one day.

'Pooh! what childish foreboding! Why shouldn't it be as well now asever?'

She shook her head. 'I feel almost sure I am going to die; and I shouldbe glad, if it were not for Nelly, and Frank, and Tiny.'

'And me!'

'You'll soon find somebody to fill my place,' she murmured, with a sadsmile. 'And you'll have a perfect right to; I assure you of that.'

'Ell, you are not thinking still about that--poetical friend of yours?'

She neither admitted nor denied the charge. 'I am not going to get overmy illness this time,' she reiterated. 'Something tells me I shan't.'

This view of things was rather a bad beginning, as it usually is; and, infact, six weeks later, in the month of May, she was lying in her room,pulseless and bloodless, with hardly strength enough left to follow upone feeble breath with another, the infant for whose unnecessary life shewas slowly parting with her own being fat and well. Just before herdeath she spoke to Marchmill softly:-

'Will, I want to confess to you the entire circumstances of that--aboutyou know what--that time we visited Solentsea. I can't tell whatpossessed me--how I could forget you so, my husband! But I had got intoa morbid state: I thought you had been unkind; that you had neglected me;that you weren't up to my intellectual level, while he was, and far aboveit. I wanted a fuller appreciator, perhaps, rather than another lover--'

She could get no further then for very exhaustion; and she went off insudden collapse a few hours later, without having said anything more toher husband on the subject of her love for the poet. William Marchmill,in truth, like most husbands of several years' standing, was littledisturbed by retrospective jealousies, and had not shown the leastanxiety to press her for confessions concerning a man dead and gonebeyond any power of inconveniencing him more.

But when she had been buried a couple of years it chanced one day that,in turning over some forgotten papers that he wished to destroy beforehis second wife entered the house, he lighted on a lock of hair in anenvelope, with the photograph of the deceased poet, a date being writtenon the back in his late wife's hand. It was that of the time they spentat Solentsea.

Marchmill looked long and musingly at the hair and portrait, forsomething struck him. Fetching the little boy who had been the death ofhis mother, now a noisy toddler, he took him on his knee, held the lockof hair against the child's head, and set up the photograph on the tablebehind, so that he could closely compare the features each countenancepresented. There were undoubtedly strong traces of resemblance; thedreamy and peculiar expression of the poet's face sat, as the transmittedidea, upon the child's, and the hair was of the same hue.

'I'm damned if I didn't think so!' murmured Marchmill. 'Then she didplay me false with that fellow at the lodgings! Let me see: thedates--the second week in August . . . the third week in May . . . Yes .. . yes . . . Get away, you poor little brat! You are nothing to me!'

1893.