creeping along the once gorgeous pattern of the floor, nestling and mingling with the yellow tinges there, stole up across the foot, the tall figure whose drapery fluttered in the increasing draft, the queenly neck, and withdrew behind a cloud, while the girl began humming the same tune and beating a gentle time with her head.

Sir Rohan recovered himself, concluding that the supernatural was not an agent in this apparition. It was a tune common enough in Kent, -he had first heard it there; she was probably a Kentish girl, too charming a piece of flesh and blood ever to throw off for filmy, impalpable essence. If his Ghost came in that shape, she might stay while she pleased. But was not his Ghost a fairer shape, whose dead eclipsed this living, breathing beauty? beauty? Why think of it? It was pleasure enough, for one revelling in form and color, only to gaze, as he did, on the picture to which the drawing-room door below was frame; to ask by what means she had entered his house did not occur to him. Before Sir Rohan began to reason, the tune had ceased, and while he gazed, the girl, glancing round, glided up the apartment out of sight. He remained a

moment, and then, half doubting himself, stole back upon his steps. Two questioning eyes in every darker shadow sought his own, and a longdrawn sob was audible beside him, as, quickening his motions, he sprang up the stairs and confronted two men on the upper landing; one was his gray-haired steward.

"I have been seeking your worship," said he, timorously, but without reply, for the other had seized Sir Rohan's hands, and was pouring forth rapid question and answer over a long-lost friend. "I am not dreaming, then!" said Sir Rohan unsteadily, at last. "This is you, St. Denys,

and your daughter below?"

"I, certainly," was the cheery response, "and my ward below. God give me long life! for the name and fame of St. Denys flow to a rascal when I die."

"We won't talk of dying," said Sir Rohan, looking behind him quickly, "and while we live will grasp what we may. How did you find

me?"

"In the simplest way conceivable. We lunched at an inn yclept the Belvidere Arms, and, remembering that you buried yourself at one time in

Cornwall, I inquired for its patron. Still, I had difficulty in recognizing our gay youth in one taciturn, possessed gentleman, till mine host christened him Sir Rohan!"

The old man had withdrawn. ails you, Rohan," said his friend. trouble!"

"Something

"You are in

"The weather and a walk," was the hurried answer, "and-and dyspepsia! "

"Parent of all blue devils! Come down to this dungeon of yours, into which I have taken the liberty of inviting some sky, alias light and air."

"My friend can take no liberty in my house." A merry bow from the friend prefaced a prescription for good health and spirits, which closed by recommending good company. "For which

"The sky has fallen and dropped you here." "And consequently I shall see a rapid improvement in Monsieur le Cadavre!"

Sir Rohan shuddered again. "I am better," he said directly, "already better." And indeed his friend would have been like a bracing wind blowing through sultry fever regions, did not

his unfortunate choice of words act as a series of electric shocks, constantly thrilling his patient. By this time they were in the drawing-room.

"This is a drawing-room of the Belvidere estate in Cornwall, Sir Rohan," said his friend. "Probably a place unfamiliar to you."

"I should be, perhaps, ashamed to say that a quinquenniad has passed since I have stood in it," replied he whose Ghost had at least taught him to discriminate delicate shades of truth.

"And this is Miriam, my child."

As the girl turned to receive his salutation, he extended his hand. Shy as a bird, her own dropped into it an instant, and brushed away again. Yet there was something positive in that slight touch; most different in its soft, warm sense from the gelid grasp that had so often met his palm,more real it could not be.

"I am very happy," said he, with a grave courtesy which had lost nothing from disuse, "in welcoming the child of St. Denys to my house, although but a dreary place to shelter youth and beauty."

"Well, well," laughed his friend, "a candle would not be brilliant in sunny windows."

"But she has brought the sun in with her." Miriam raised her large, wary eyes, and, throwing back the haughty head, surveyed her host with quick displeasure, motions which did not

escape Sir Rohan.

"I am at a loss as to what title" he began, turning to St. Denys, who interrupted him, saying, as he laid his hand caressingly upon her shoulder,

"No need! Since the morning she had been sixteen years my darling, this child has been afflicted with a whim, and throws off my name and protection and love—"

"Not your love or your protection, father," she murmured, quickly.

"And chooses," he added, "to be known only as Miss Miriam."

"And why?" escaped Sir Rohan's lips before he could recall it. Yet he had been waiting to hear that voice address him, and now it came, low, clear, and full of inflections.

"Because I have no other name," she replied instantly, and with a proud gesture which the possession of sixty titles could not have enhanced. He seemed to have heard it elsewhere.