alas! only a very, very human creature ; | motion, she got up and walked slowly away but she spoke at last, to the best of her wisdom, remembering his old impatience and fastidiousness. Had he not left her for a suspicion? "If that letter goes, Janet," she said, still coldly, "I am afraid you will never see George Hollis again."

to the end of the room where she had been standing when she first entered. Then she came back, smiling sadly. One hand was pressed against her heart. There was a bright very sweet expression on her face that Janet could not see, for she was still staring at the fire.

66

Do not

be unhappy. I shall see him to-morrow, and and try to explain." She was speaking still, and looking intently at Janet, who had started up from her seat; when the clock struck five, and the butler and his assistant came in with the tea.

"Do you think I ever expect to see him again?" exclaimed Janet, indignant. “I Janet," said Mrs. Rowland, in a low am going away; I will never, never see him voice, "I want to say that I was wrong, any more. There is only friendship or I my dear, in what I said just now. You may could not ask. There is some one else he trust George Hollis. I did not do him jusloves. It has only been liking for me." tice. He is an honourable man. Then she went on more fluently, "Just now, when I came down to you, I found another note from Mrs. Meredith, to ask me there. But I shall not go." And Janet thrust a little pink missive, with "Dear Miss Ireton - persuade you-so disappointed all of us-a few days only - ever sincerely yours," &c., into Caroline's hand. Then she covered her burning cheeks from the fire, and sat quite still without speaking. Caroline, too, was silent. She could not but believe the girl's eager honesty. Once more she felt ashamed before her. She envied her, and a gentler thought of what might have been came to her mind.

As for Janet, she was shaken; her faith in her friend was not touched, but her faith in human nature had received a rude blow. Could Caroline be right? was no one to be trusted? Was this the experience of life that people spoke of mysteriously: not one, not one just man in Edom? The two sat staring at the smouldering log. Janet's foot was tapping impatiently against the fender, and the obnoxious steel poker came down with a crash. How strangely people feel round and about and under and over the things that really disquiet them. This crash disturbed Mrs. Rowland more apparently than all that had gone before.

"Do take care, my dear. Who told you about this this engagement of Mr. Hollis?" she said, sharply.

66

'Mrs. Brandiscombe told me a little," said Janet. It was some one he knew long ago; he himself said something one dav. He told me that all his life he had only really loved one woman for years. He said it happened here, at this very house, that he saw her last, and he hated the place. He was called from her suddenly, but she deceived him in some way -never answered his letters. I don't know much more of the story. I only know how he loved her."

Mrs. Rowland didn't speak or move, but sat as if she had not listened, with the screen held up between her soft cheeks and the angry blaze; the screen trembled a little in her hand. At last, with a sudden, quick

66

Mrs. Brandiscombe begged that you would not wait for her if she was after five," said the well-drilled butler.

Janet had blushed up, and it was her turn to look a little strangely. "I won't have any tea, my head aches," she said. "Is that the sun setting? I think I will take another turn. Don't mind me, I - I will come back."

She spoke in a nervous and agitated way, she did not know exactly what had been happening; but somehow Mrs. Rowland's words no longer comforted her; even her kindness failed to touch her. She felt there was something between them; she almost guessed the secret. Poor child! she did not want to know more, and meekly accepted her fate as a matter of course. But a living, breathing rival there before her was a different thing from the vague imaginations of a possibility. She could not sit quietly and hand milk and sugar. She felt faint for want of air. She caught up a cloak in the hall. She ran down some servants' passage, and out by some back-door into the open air. She did not see as she crossed the hall that some one was coming in at the front door.

VII.

JANET was a proud girl, as I have said. The sort of guess which she had made, the idea that Mrs. Rowland herself was the woman whom George Hollis loved, - -was the last drop in her cup. What had she been doing? Had she been mad, blind, dull? Had she known, she would have bitten out her tongue sooner than have spoken to Caroline as she had done. Poor Janet! She exaggerated, as young people do, the horrors of her situation; she painfully shrunk from the thought. "Oh, I wish I was at home, I wish I was at home!"

this was her one thought now. She hurried out into the garden once more, across the front lawn, round to the back of the house. The air revived her. With the evening the wind had gone down, or if it blew it came in softer and more comforting gushes. Where the clouds had parted over the sea a sunset light was breaking, turning grey waters to blue, gilding pale hills with heavenly alchemy. What was this? A quick gleam a darting fiery stream from behind the rent cloud. Suddenly the field was in a western blaze; the donkey was browsing in a dazzling, lovely wave of rainbow light. Was this a new created world of cloud and light? Broken, glittering, rainy, divinely fresh, the clouds and the sunlight were parting, drifting, reflecting one another. Here and there the trees stood in the shade; here and there in the sweet sudden radiance the grasses were golden at Janet's feet; a dazzling flame seemed rising from the sea. Janet's hair and clothes were on fire; she felt as if this fresh light were brightening her heavy heart. It stirred with a thrill of gratitude and love for such sweet wonders. As she stood there still, Janet heard the distant stable-clock strike the half-hour. She began to breathe a little more quietly; a few more hours and she would be gone, she thought. Once safe home she would try never to think of this past bit of her life again.

By a not very extraordinary chance it was Hollis coming who had been at the front door in search of Janet. He had met the luggage-cart about a mile from the house, having walked back part of the way with the Archdeacon to finish the discussion of some arrangements which they had been talking

over.

formed thoughts that passed through Caroline's mind as he came up to her, thoughts of herself, then of Janet, then of self again.

"How do you do?" said Mrs. Rowland. "I hear you only left to-day. I hoped I should see you, though I was afraid I might miss you altogether." She spoke not reproachfully, but with unaffected interest and just a little regret in her voice. Caroline could make the words she used mean anything she liked besides their natural meaning. Hollis, who, to tell the truth, had been unfeignedly sorry to see her at first, for her presence jarred upon him just then, felt mollified by her kindness, notwithstanding the implacability of his disposition. "My aunt will be here directly," Mrs. Rowland went on. "Won't you sit down? We have not met since Florence." Caroline was not kinder than she had been before, but Hollis could not help thinking there was a difference; she was more interested, more agitated, more like the Carry Russell of old days than the gentle, mature, accomplished lady he had seen of late. There was a minute's silence and Hollis asked after the children, and then Mrs. Rowland began once more: "I am glad to have seen you,' she said. "I have been hearing of you from a friend of mine." Mrs. Rowland felt her heart beat violently for a moment.

"What have you been hearing about me!" Hollis asked, with a smile. Caroline resolutely put her old self back into the corner, and then she became quite calm again, and could look up quietly into his face (he stood with his back to the fire for he would not sit down), and try to read what was written there. "Janet was in great trouble, poor child," said Mrs. Rowland. She had some idea that it was her duty to ask you for something for her father, and that she should forfeit your good opinion for ever." Caroline breathed a long breath as she finished this careless little speech. She had done it. Done her best to help her poor little trouble-hearted sister in her need. Had it been an effort? It hardly seemed to her now that it was one. She blushed, and it was a self-approving little glow from her heart in her face, as she again looked up quietly to see how her speech had been taken.

The cart stopped, the driver, knowing Hollis, touched his hat, and saying, "I have a letter for you, sir," put Janet's poor little scrawl into the young man's hand. Poor Janet! had she known that Hollis had come back to answer it himself, no garden end would have been distant enough for her to hide in. I do believe she would have splashed straight into the sea to avoid him. Meanwhile Mr. Hollis had walked into the drawing-room in search of her, and found himself face to face with the very person he had wished to avoid. He thought Mrs. Rowland was not coming till six, and had calculated on a whole half-hour before "I advised her . . . not to ask you," her arrival. After all it was no very terri- said the widow, going on with her knitting ble meeting a pretty gentlewoman, with as quietly as she knew how. She put in a kind face and a friendly greeting, a good her needles triumphantly, and travelled on fire burning, a comfortable chair, (the very somehow, but little Tom never wore that one where Janet had been sitting) drawn particular stocking. "A girl-a very Who shall describe the half-young one, I mean, like Janet - cannot

up to it.

66

My good opinion!" said Hollis, un

easily.

know life, cannot guess how the simplest and most straightforward actions may be misread and misunderstood, and the Archdeacon is an old schemer. When Janet asked me if she could not trust you, I said that no one was to be trusted."

Hollis looked at Mrs. Rowland more and more surprised. What was she talking about; what was her meaning; was she talking of the past? Surely, and the old feeling of something like scorn for the woman who had sold herself seemed to come over him, - he had not been to blame or failed in trust.

so inconceivable and unexpected. Why to do anything to serve you. I had already has he come? Janet thinks where shall she proposed the exchange to your uncle when escape, and then all her strength goes; she I got your note. Dear Janet, don't look so stands quite still like a maiden of stone or overwhelmed," Hollis continued, touched a pillar of salt; it is no use trying to speak by the sudden rush of light and happiness as usual or to look unconscious, she can and sweetness in her face; "only give me only stand still. a right to serve you always, and then you can ask me what you will."

I came back to speak to you," said Hollis, in his usual voice, trying to reassure her. "I met the carrier just now, and he gave me your letter. I hope you don't regret having written it," he said, hurriedly. You don't know what pleasure it gives me

When Caroline came to the window again she saw the two walking, slowly, arm-inarm towards the house, and then she knew what Janet's answer had been.

nant race, to subjugate and absorb inferior ones.
Gradually, but surely, the Arabic has gained
the ascendency over Coptic and Syriac, and is
now the universal language of the people all
through Egypt, Syria, and North-west Africa.
The thorough understanding of all the niceties and
refinements of this language and its difficult and
complicated grammar is the principal object of
these Arabic teachers. It fills the place in their
colleges that the Latin and Greek do in ours;
but the ultimate aim and end of all this labour
is the study of the Koran and its numerous com-
mentaries, which hold the same place with the
Moslems as the Talmud does with the modern
Jews. It is easy for those who behold Islamism
at a distance to speak of it with modified admi-
ration as a system of pure Theism, and its wor-
ship as something which may be, at least to a
certain degree, elevating and purifying in
its character. A nearer view of Islamism would
at once dispel this illusion.
It is a system prac-
tically deadening to the conscience and moral
sense. Those who have, to a certain degree
freed themselves from the trammels of its de-
grading superstitions, are often men of little or
no religious belief; while the mass of worship-
pers have no idea of religion as affecting the
heart or life. With them it consists in a round
of puerile ceremonies; and prayer is nothing
but a formal and mechanical repetition of a string
of epithets applied to the Creator, accompanied
by bodily prostrations and genuflexions.

MOSLEM AND COPTIC ANTIQUITIES IN CAIRO. | languages, analogous to the power of a domiAt last we reached the mosque of Azan, which is also the great Mohammedan college, not only of Cairo, but of the Moslem world, being reckoned the centre of Islam learning and bigotry. Alas for the mistake of those who say Islamism is dying out! Again laying aside our shoes, we passed across a vast square marble quadrangle with massive pillars of the same. On the floor were laid strips of matting, on which numerous groups of white-turbaned men and lads were seated cross-legged on the ground, in little knots of threes and fours, some with books or sheets of manuscript in their hands, some with tin or zinc plates (the substitute for slates), on which they write with pen and ink. All seemed busied in studying or conning tasks. There appeared to be no regular teacher; they seemed to be helping each other mutually, some talking together, or showing their works to each other, some writing on leaves of paper, or sheets of tin, on their hands (desks seem unknown here); and in most groups one reading aloud, and rocking himself to and fro as he read the universal practice with Orientals. Through this outer court we passed into the mosque itself, which was the largest we had yet seen. The whole spacious area was entirely filled up with groups of learners like those we had seen outside; a side room or vestibule was occupied in the same manner. Wherever there was space for them, groups were seated, all intent on their studies; and a hum of busy voices resounding through the building. To the Christian eye it was a very painful sight. Here we saw assembled a multitude of zealous and attentive students, devoting all their powers and their time, with an earnestness and perseverance which might be an example to many well-instructed European A POLYGLOT dictionary in eleven languages is youths to what? to the thorough understand-in course of publication by Signor Calligaris, ing of a false and corrupt religion. These Mo- at Turin. It comprises French, Latin, Italian, hammedan scholars are often exceedingly learned Spanish, Portuguese, German, English, modern in their own way. They devote much time and Greek, written Arabic, spoken Arabic (in Roattention to the cultivation of their own language, man letters), and Turkish, with the pronunciathis remarkable Arabic tongue, which possesses tion. a power of superseding and driving out other

Golden Hours.

From Blackwood's Magazine. COUNT CHARLES DE MONTALEMBERT.

genial kindness. But it is early yet for such softened thoughts; now and then a sob THERE is something very sad in the dying must come in, a pang of farewell, and that out of a generation of the leaders and rulers intolerable sense that nothing more can be of the world. Nothing marks so clearly the said to him, nothing more heard from him, passage of time, the succession of one age which is the soul of grief. Was it only the to another, as this dropping, one by one, other day that he wrote, "let me hear of the familiar names which have been often from you?" and careless life went on, sounds of authority and pre-eminence for and a world of petty affairs prevented the half or quarter of a century. New necessi- response. What matter? one would do it ties, new difficulties, new combinations of to-morrow or to-morrow; and now in all circumstances, have stolen upon us un-heaven and earth there is no way of doing awares, and we are conscious, practically, it, no means of answer. There is no sadder that new men have come in to guide the for- consciousness in life. tunes of nations; but nowhere are the It was in the winter of '65-'66 that Monepochs of contemporary history so clearly talembert's last illness, from its beginning marked out as by graves. One cycle has a very painful one, first attacked him. He ended, another has begun. The old men was so ill in the spring of '66 as to be comwho linger like leaves upon the topmost pelled to give up for a time the work on branches, but emphasize the universal pass- the completion of which he had so much set ing away of all with whom they have been his heart, his great and favourite work, associated. The old order changeth, giv-"Les Moines d'Occident." Early in '67 ing place to new. he described himself as "in a very sad and In such a case as that of Count de Mon- precarious state;" and before the summer talembert the ending has been softened by of that year his physicians had dreaded that a long preliminary chapter of retirement his malady, if cured at all, must yet be a from the world-softened to his friends, very lingering one. His strength was then not to himself. And yet to how many of so far reduced that he had to be carried to his friends will the closing up of that cham- his carriage on the days he was permitted ber in the Rue du Bac, which was the abode an airing; but still every day about five of so much pain, yet of so much vivacious o'clock in the afternoon, his room was full interest in the world, and animated discus- of guests, friends of his life, who called the sion of all its affairs, be like the extinction worn statesman and author by his Christian of a friendly light in the midst of the dark-name, and could enter with him into full For a great part of these years, the discussions of all his life-long pursuits and little simple bedroom which the author of convictions; and, on the other hand, strangthe "Figaro" described the other day to ers from all quarters, whom his illness and his readers, with a particularity more Amer- suffering did not prevent him from receivican than French, has been an audience-ing with all the courtly kindness and genial chamber to which crowds have flocked. grace of his nature. "Your countrymen Like a dream, the writer recalls, as he do not come to see me as much as I could writes, the half-mournful half-smiling con- wish," he wrote not three months before his versation of two or three gentlemen, all of death, notwithstanding the numbers who European name, who were waiting in the sought him continually. His interest was large drawing-room, which formed a kind as fresh in everything that everybody was of antechamber to Montalembert's recep- doing, while he lay there on his weary tion, one afternoon now nearly three years couch, with the close-capped sister in conago. The room was darkened because of stant attendance upon him, as if he had still the summer glare outside, and the animated been in the full current of life. It was a voices came as from ghosts half seen. They relief and help to this rapid, ever-active inwere talking of Cousin, then not long dead; telligence, thus suddenly confined within discussing those peculiarities which are de- four walls, and shut out from personal exfects in a man as long as he lives, but after ertion, to participate, at least by way of his death become, as being habits of his, sympathy, in the work and thought of others. more dear to his friends than the highest His ear was open to everything that was qualities of his character. Are they talking suggested to him; his mind as ready and now more sadly, yet with the smile of rec- vivacious as that of any youth-nay, far ollection already beginning to break up the more so: for youth is too much occupied heaviness of grief, of Montalembert? No with its own affairs to give such full unhesit doubt reminding each other of his out- ating attention to those of others. Whatbreaks of characteristic impatience and en- ever might be the special interest of his visergy, of his sharp sayings, his keen wit, his litor, Montalembert had always some light

ness.