with and followed by regrets for his intrusion, expressions of excessive grat itude. All the time his mind was questioning amazedly.

By the time the speeches which he deemed necessary were finished, he had followed the girl into a spacious room, furnished in the large gay style of the fifties, brilliantly lit, as if for a festival, and warmed by a log fire of generous dimensions. Having led him in, listening silently the while, and put her additional lamp upon the table, she now spoke, with no empressement, almost with a manner of insouciance.

"You are perfectly welcome; my father would never have wished his house to be inhospitable."

With her words his own apologies seemed to lose their significance; he felt a little foolish, and she, with some slight evidence of childish awkward. ness, seemed to seek a pretext for short escape.

"I will tell my sister." These words came with more abruptness, as if the interior excitement was working itself to the surface.

The room was a long one. She went out by a door at the farther end, and, as with intense curiosity he watched her quickly receding form, he noticed that when she thought herself out of his sight she entered the other room with a skip. At that same end of the room hung a full-length portrait of a gentleman. It was natural that Courthope should walk towards it, trying to be come acquainted with some link in the train of circumstances which had raised this enchanted palace in the wilderness; he had not followed to hear, but he overheard.

"Eliz, it's a real young man!"

"No! you are only making up, and" (here a touch of querulousness) "I've often told you that I don't like makeups that one wants too much to be true. I'll only have the Austens and Sir Charles and Evelina and-"

"Eliz! He's not a make-up; the fairies have sent him to our party. Isn't it just fairilly entrancing? He has a curly moustache and a nice nose. He's En

and "shawn't," and "heah," and "theyah"-genuine, no affectation. Oh❞ (here came a little gurgle of joy), “and to-night too! It's the first perfectly joyful thing that has ever come to us."

Courthope moved quietly back and stood before the blazing logs, looking down into them with a smile of pure pleasure upon his lips.

It was not long before the door, which she had left ajar, was re-opened, and a light-wheeled chair was pushed into the room. It contained a slight, elfin-like girl, white-faced, flaxen-haired, sharpfeatured, and arrayed in gorgeous crimson. The elder sister pushed from be. hind. The little procession wore an air of triumphant satisfaction, still tempered by the proprieties.

"This is my sister," said the mistress of the house.

"I am very glad to see you, Mr. Courthope." The tones of Eliz were sharp and thin. She was evidently acting a part, as with the air of a very grand lady she held out her and.

He was somewhat dazzled. He felt it not inappropriate to ask if he had entered fairyland. Eliz would have answered him with fantastic affirmative, but the elder sister, like a sensible child who knew better how to arrange the game, interposed.

"I'll explain it to you. Eliz and I are giving a party to-night. There hasn't been any company in the house since father died four years ago, and we know he wouldn't like us to be dull, so when our stepmother went out, and sent word that she couldn't come back to-night, we decided to have a grand party. There are only to be play-people, you know; all the people in Miss Austen's books are coming, and the nice ones out of 'Sir Charles Grandison.'"

She paused to see if he understood. "Are the "Mysteries of Udolpho' invited?" he asked.

"No, the others we just chose here and there, because we liked them-Evelina, although she was rather silly and we told her that we couldn't have Lord Ormond, and Miss Matty and Brother Peter out of 'Cranford,' and Moses

Wakefield, because we liked him best of the family, and the Portuguese nun who wrote the letters. We thought we would have liked to invite the young man in 'Maud' to meet her, but we decided we should have to draw the line somewhere and leave out the poetrypeople."

The girl, leaning her forearms slightly on the back of her sister's chair, gave the explanation in soft, business-like tones, and there was only the faintest lurking of a smile about the corners of her lips to indicate that she kept in view both reality and fantasy.

"I think that I shall have to ask for an introduction to the Portuguese nun," said Courthope; "the others, I am happy to say, I have met before."

A smile of approval leapt straight out of her dark eyes into his, as if she would have said: "Good boy! you have read quite the right sort of books!"

Eliz was not endowed with the same well-balanced sense of proportion; for the time the imaginary was the real.

"The only question that remains to be decided," she cried, "is, who you would prefer to be. We will let you choose Bingley, or Darcy, or

"It would be fair to tell him," said the other, her smile broadening now, "that it's only the elderly people and notables who have been invited to dinner, the young folks are coming in after; so if you are hungry-" Her soft voice paused, as if suspended in mid-air, allowing him to draw the inference.

"It depends entirely on who you are, who I would like to be." He did not realize that there was undue gallantry in his speech; he felt exactly like another child playing, loyally determined to be her mate, whatever the character that might entail. "I will even be the idiotic Edward if you are Eleanor Dashwood."

Her chin was raised just half an inch higher; the smile that had been peeping from eyes and dimples seemed to retire for the moment

"Oh, we," she said, “are the hostesses. My sister is Eliz King and I am Madge King, and I think you had better be a

real person too; just a Mr. Courthope come in by accident."

"Well, then he can help us in the receiving and chatting to them." Eliz was quite reconciled.

He felt glad to realize that his mistake had been merely playful. "In that case, may I have dinner without growing grey?" He asked it of Madge, and her smile came back, so readily did she forget what she had hardly consciously perceived.

When the sharp-voiced little Eliz had been wheeled into the dining-room to superintend some preparations there before the meal was ready, Courthope could again break through the spell that the imaginary reception imposed. He came from his dressing-room to find Madge at the housewifely act of replenishing the fire. Filled with curiosity, unwilling to ask questions, he remarked that he feared she must often feel lonely, that he supposed Mrs. King did not often make visits unaccompanied by her daughters. "She does not, worse luck!" Madge on her knees replied with childish audacity.

"I hope when she returns she may not be offended by my intrusion."

"Don't hope it," she smiled-"such hope would be vain."

He could not help laughing.

"Is it dutiful then of you"-he paused "or of me?"

"Which do you prefer-to sleep in the barn, or that I should be undutiful and disobey my stepmother?"

In a minute she gave her chin that lift in the air that he had seen before.

"You need not feel uncomfortable about Mrs. King; the house is really mine, not hers, and father always had his house full of company. I am doing my duty to him in taking you in, and in making a feast to please Eliz when the stepmother happens to be away and I can do it peaceably. And when she happens to be here I do my duty to him by keeping the peace with her."

"Is she unkind to you?" he asked, with the ready, overflowing pity that young men are apt to give to pretty women who complain.

There was no bitterness in her toneher philosophy of life was all sweetness. "No! Bless her! God made her, I suppose, just as he made us; so according to the way she is made, she packs away all the linen and silver, she keeps this room shut up for fear it will get worn out, and we never see any visitors. But to-day she went away to St. Philippe to see a dying man-I think she was going to convert him or some thing; but he took a long time to die; and now we may be snowed up for days, and we are going to have a perfectly glorious time." She added hospitably, "You need not feel under the slightest obligation, for it gives us pleasure to have you, and I know that father would have taken you in."

Courthope rose up and followed her glance, almost an adoring glance, to the portrait he had before observed. He went and stood again face to face with it.

A goodly man was painted there, dressed in a judge's robe. Courthope read the lineaments by the help of the living interpretation of the daughter's likeness. Benevolence in the mouth, a love of good cheer and good friends in the rounded cheeks, a lurking sense of the poetry of life in the quiet eyes, and in the brow reason and a keen sense of right proportion dominant. He would have given something to have changed a quiet word with the man in the portrait, whose hospitality, living after him, he was now receiving.

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Madge had been arranging the logs to her satisfaction, she would not accept Courthope's aid, and now she told him who were going to dine with them. She had great zest for the play.

"Mr. and Mrs. Bennett, of course, and we thought we might have Mr. Knightley, because he is a squire and not so very young, even though he is not yet married. Miss Bates, of course, and the Westons. Mrs. Dashwood has declined, of which we are rather glad, but we are having Mrs. Jennings." So she went on with her list. "We could not help asking Sir Charles with Lord and Lady

When they went into the diningroom, the choice spirits deemed worthy to be at the board were each introduced by name to the Lady Eliz, who explained that because of her infirmities she had been unable to have the honor of receiving them in the drawing-room. She made appropriate remarks, inquiring after the relatives of each, offering congratulations or condolences as the case demanded. It was cleverly done. Courthope stood aside, immensely entertained, and when at last he too began to offer spirited remarks to the imaginary guests, he went up in favor so immensely that Eliz cried, "Let Mr. Courthope take the end of the table. Let Mr. Courthope be father. It's much nicer to have a master of the house." She began at once introducing him to the invisible guests as her father, and Madge, if she did not like the fancy, did not cross her will. There was in Madge's manner a large good-humored tolerance.

The table was long, and amply spread with fine glass and silver; nothing was antique, everything was in the oldfashioned tasteless style of a former generation, but the value of solid silver was not small. The homely servingwoman in her peasant-like dress stood aside, submissive, as it seemed, but ignorant of how to behave at so large a dinner. Courthope, who in a visit to the stables had discovered that this French woman with her husband and one young daughter were at present the whole retinue of servants, wondered the more that such precious articles as the young girls and the plate should be safe in so lonely a place.

Madge was seated at the head of the table, Courthope at the foot; Eliz in her

high chair had been wheeled to the centre of one side. Madge, playing the hostess with gentle dignity, was enjoy. ing herself to the full, a rosy, cooing sort of joy in the play, in the feast that she had succeeded in preparing, in her amusement at the literary sallies of Eliz, and, above all perhaps, in the company of the new and unexpected playmate to whom, because of his youth, she attributed the same perfect sympathy with their sentiments which seemed to exist between themselves. Courthope felt this-he felt that he was idealized through no virtue of his own; but it was a delightful sensation, and brought out the best that was in him of wit and pure joyfulness. To Eliz the creatures of her imagination were too real for perfect pleasure; her face was tense, her eyes shot sparkles of light, her voice was high, for her the entertainment of the invisible guests involved real responsibility and effort.

"Asides are allowed, of course," said Eliz, as if pronouncing a debatable rule

at cards.

"Of course," said Madge, "or we could not play."

"It's the greatest fun," cried Eliz, "to hear Sir Charles telling Mr. John Knightley about the good example that a virtuous man ought to set. With 'hands and eyes uplifted' he is explaining the duty he owes to his Maker. It's rare to see John Knightley's face. seated them on purpose with only Miss Matty between them, because I knew she wouldn't interrupt."

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Courthope saw the smile in Madge's eyes was bent upon him as she said softly, "You won't forget that you have Lady Catherine de Bourg at your right hand to look after. I can see that brother Peter has got his eye upon her, and I don't know how she would take the 'seraphim' story."

"If she begins any of her dignified impertinence here," he answered, "I intend to steer her into a conversation with Charlotte, Lady G-."

Courthope had a turkey to carve. He was fain to turn from the guests to ask advice as to its anatomy of Madge, who was carving a ham and assuring Mr.

Woodhouse that it was "thrice baked, exactly as Serle would have done it." "Stupid!-it was apples that were baked," whispered Eliz.

"You see," said Madge, when she had told him how to begin upon the turkey, "we wondered very much what a dinner of two full courses' might be, and where the 'corner dishes' were to be set. We did not quite know-do you?"

"You must not have asides that are not about the people," cried Eliz intensely. "Catherine Moreland's mother is talking common sense to General Tilney and Sir Walter Eliot, and there'll be no end of a row in a minute if you don't divert their attention."

Eliz had more than once to call the other two to account for talking privately adown the long table.

"What a magnificent ham!" he exclaimed. "Do you keep pigs?"

Madge had a frank way of giving family details. "It was once a dear little pig, and we wanted to teach it to take exercise by running after us when we went out, but the stepmother, like Bunyan, 'penned it':

Until at last it came to be,

For length and breadth, the bigness which you see."

More than once he saw Madge's quick wit twinkle through her booklore. When he was looking ruefully at a turkey by no means neatly carved, she gave the comforting suggestion, 'Tis impious in a good man to be sad.'"

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"I thought it one of the evidences of piety."

"It is true that he was 'Young' who said it, but so are we; let us believe it fervently."

When Madge swept across the drawing-room, with her amber skirts trailing, and Eliz had been wheeled in, they received

the after-dinner visitors. Courthope could almost see the room filled with the quaint creations to whom they were both bowing and talking incessantly.

"Mr. Courthope-Miss Jane Fairfaxbelieve you have met before." Madge's voice dropped in a well

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