more marked revolution than usual in a single night. It had got on to the end of August, and there were traces of many fiery fingers upon the leaves on the slopes. It had been a very fine summer, but it was coming prematurely to an end, everybody said, and about the horizon there began to be veils of luminous mist in the morning, and soft haze that veiled the evening light. This autumnal aspect of the world seemed to have come on in that one night. The Virginian creeper round the window had "turned" in several patches of, scarlet and yellow all at once. It was beautiful, but it was the first step towards winter and the chills the first evidence of a year decay ing which makes the spectator pause and think. When Lottie woke, she felt in her heart that consciousness of something, she knew not what, something that had happened to her, that overshadowed her, and forced itself upon her before she could tell what it was, which is the way care manifests itself at our bedsides: something that made her heart heavy the first thing on awaking. Then she remembered what it was. Lottie, we have said, was not a girl who was in the habit of taking advice; but for that once she had taken it, seizing upon the first trustworthy witness she could find who would bring an impartial eye to the problem of her life. She had been very strong in her own opinion before, but when reason was put before her, Lottie could not shut her eyes to it. Neither could she dawdle and delay when there was anything to do. She awoke with the consciousness that some ghost was lurking behind her white curtains. Then with a start and shiver remembered and realized it, and, drawing herself together, made up her mind to act at once. What was the use of putting off? Putting off was the reason why Law was so backward, and Lottie was not one of those who let the grass grow under their feet. The more disagreeable the first step was, the more reason was there that it should be taken to-day. She went down-stairs with a gleam of resolution in her eyes. After the shock of finding out that there is a painful thing to do, the determination to do it at once is a relief. It brings an almost pleasure into the pain to set your face to it bravely and get done with it: there is thus an exhilaration even in what is most disagreeable. So Lottie felt. Her despondency and depression were gone. She had something definite to do, and she would do it, let what obstacle soever stand in the way. She made the family tea and cut the bread with more energy than usual. She was the

first visible, as she always was, but her mind was fully occupied with her own affairs, and she was glad enough to be alone for half an hour. After that she had to go up again, and knock at her father's door to remind him that there was but little time for breakfast before the bell began to ring for matins; but she had taken her own breakfast and begun her work before the captain and Law came down-stairs. When she had poured out their tea for them she sat down in the window-seat with her sewing. She did not take any share in their talk, neither did she watch, as she often did, the stir of morning life in the Dean's Walk — the tradesmen's carts going about, the perambulators from the town pushing upward, with fresh nursemaids behind, to the shady walk on the slopes, now and then a tall red soldier showing against the grey wall of the Abbey opposite, the old chevaliers beginning to turn out, taking their little morning promenade before the bells began. The stir was usually pleasant to Lottie, but she took no notice of it to-day. She was going to matins herself this morning

not perhaps altogether for devotion, but with the idea, after the service, of lying in wait at the north gate for the exit of the signor.

How it was that the subject came under discussion Lottie did not know. She woke to it only when it came across her. self and touched upon her own thoughts. It was Law who was saying something (it was fit for him to say so !), grumbling about the inequality of education, and that girls had just as good a right to work as boys.

"I should like to know," he said, "why I should have to get hold of a lot of books, and trot over to old Ashford, and work like a slave till one o'clock, while she sits as cool and as fresh as can be, and never stirs." He was not addressing anybody in particular, but grumbling to the whole world at large, which was Law's way. Generally, his father took no notice of him, but some prick of sensation in the air no doubt moved him to-day.

"Speak of things you know something about,” said the captain; "that's the best advice I can give you, Law. And let Lottie alone. Who wants her to work? The fresher she looks, and the better she looks, the more likely she is to get a husband; and that's a girl's first duty. Is that the bell?" said Captain Despard, rising, draw. ing himself up, and pulling his collar and wristbands into due display. "Let me hear nothing about work. No daughter of mine shall ever disgrace herself and me in

so was a heroic lover. This was how Rollo had caught her imagination, her deceived imagination, which put into Rollo's looks and words so much that was not really there. This simple yet superlative thread of romance ran through all her thoughts. She leaned back upon the carved oak of the stall, preoccupied, while the choristers chanted, thinking more of all this than of the service. And then, with a sudden pang, there came across her mind the thought of the descent that would be necessary from that white pedestal of her maidenhood, the sheltered and protected position of the girl at home, which alone seemed to be fit and right. She would have to descend from that, and gather up her spotless robes about her, and come out to encounter the storms of the world. All that had elevated her in her own conceit was going from her and what, oh what could he, or any one, find afterwards in her? He would turn away most likely with a sigh or groan from a girl who could thus throw away her veil and her crown, and stand up and confront the world. Lottie seemed to see her downfall with the eyes of her visionary lover, and the anguish that brought with it crushed her very heart.

Did it ever occur to her that an alternative had been offered for her acceptance? Once, for a moment, she saw Purcell's melancholy face look down upon her from the organ-loft, and gave him a kind, halfsad, half-amused momentary thought. Poor fellow! she could have cried for the pain she must have given him, and yet she could have laughed, though she was ashamed of the impulse. Poor boy! it must have been only a delusion; he would forget it; he would find somebody of his own class, she said to herself, uneasy to think she had troubled him, yet with the only half-smile that circumstances had afforded her for days past. Captain Despard, had he known, would have thought Purcell's suit well worthy of consideration in the absence of a better; and the signor, whom Lottie had made up her mind to address, darted fiery glances at her from the organ-loft, taking up his pupil's cause with heat and resentment; but she herself sailed serenely over the Purcell incident altogether, looking down upon it from supreme heights of superiority. It did not occur to her as a thing to be seriously thought of, much less in her confusion and anguish as a reasonable way of escape. And thus the morning went on, the chanting and the reading, and all those outcries to God and appeals to his mercy which his

creatures utter daily with so much calm. Did anybody mean it when they all burst forth, "God have mercy upon us, Christ have mercy upon us"? This cry woke Lottie, and her dreaming soul came back, and she held up her clasped hands in a momentary passion of entreaty. The sudden wildness of the cry in the midst of all that stately solemnity of praying caught her visionary soul. It was as if all the rest had missed His ear, all the music and the poetry, King David harping on his harp, and Handel with his blind face raised to heaven; and nothing was left but to snatch at the garments of the Master as he went away, not hearing, not looking, or appearing not to look and hear. This poor young soul in the midst of her self-questionings and struggles woke up to the passionate reality of that cry. "God have mercy upon us, Christ have mercy upon us!" and then it went away from her again in thunders of glorious music, in solemnity of well-known words, and she lost herself once more in her own thoughts.

Lottie withdrew timidly into the aisle when the service was over. She knew the signor would pass that way, and it seemed to her that it would be easier to speak to him there than to go to his house, which was the only other alternative. But the signor, when he came out, was encircled by a group of his pupils, and darted a vengeful, discouraging glance at her as he passed. He would not pause nor take any notice of the step she made towards him, the wistful look in her face. If he had seen it, it would have given him a certain pleasure to disappoint Lottie, for the signor had a womanish element in him, and was hot and merciless in his partisanship. He cast a glance at her that might have slain her, that was as far from encouraging her as anything could be, and passed quickly by, taking no other notice. Thus her mission was fruitless; and it was the same in the afternoon when she went out by the north door, and made believe to be passing when the musician came out. To do him justice, he had no notion that she wanted him, but wondered a little to find her a second time in his way. He was obliged, as it was outside the Abbey, to take off his hat to her; but he did so in the most grudging, hasty way, and went on talking with his pupils, pretending to be doubly engaged and deeply interested in what the lads were saying. There was no chance then, short of going to his house, of carrying out her resolution for this day.

But in the evening, when all was still,

Lottie who had been sitting at home working and thinking till her heart was sick and her brain throbbing, put on her hat and went out in the dusk to get the air at the door. It was a lovely, quiet night, the moon rising over the grey pinnacles of the Abbey, marking out its great shadow upon the Dean's Walk, and the mignonette smelling sweet in all the little gardens. A few of the old chevaliers were still about, breathing the sweetness of the evening like Lottie herself. Captain Temple, who was among them, came up to her with his old-fashioned fatherly gallantry as soon as he saw her. "Will you take a turn, my dear?" he said. He had no child, and she had never had, so to speak, any father, at least in this way. They went up and down the terrace pavement, and then they crossed the road to the Abbey, from which, though it was so late, the tones of the great organ were beginning to steal out upon the night. "Is this a ghost that is playing, or what can the signor be think ing of?" Captain Temple said. Old Wykeham, that gruff old guardian of the sacred place, was standing with his keys in his hands at the south door. He had not his usual rusty gown, nor his velvet cap, being then in an unofficial capacity; but Wykeham would not have been Wykeham without his keys. And though he was gruff he knew to whom respect was due. "Yessir, there's something going on inside. One o' the signor's fancies. He have got some friends inside, a-playing his voluntaries to them. And if you like, captain, I will let you in in a moment, sir." "Shall we go, my dear?" the old captain said. And next moment they were in the great gloom of the Abbey, which was so different in its solemnity from the soft summer dark outside. There was a gleam of brilliant light in the organ-loft where the signor was playing, which threw tranverse rays out on either side into the darkness, showing vaguely the carved work of the canopies over the stalls, and the faded banners that hung over them. Down in the deep gloom of the choir below a few figures were dimly perceptible. Lottie and her kind old companion did not join these privileged listeners. They kept out side in the nave, where the moon, which had just climbed the height of the great windows, had suddenly burst in, throwing huge, dimly colored pictures of the painted glass upon the floor. Lottie, who was not so sensible as she might have been, preferred this partial light, notwithstanding the mystic charm of the darkness, which was somewhat awful to look in upon

through the open door of the choir. She put her hand, a little tremulous, on the old captain's arm, and stood and listened feeling all her troubles calmed. What was it that thus calmed her perturbed soul? She thought it was the awe of the place, the spell of the darkness and the moonlight, the music that made it all wonderful. The signor was playing a strange piece of old music when the two came in. It was an old litany, and Lottie thought as she listened that she could hear an unseen choir in the far distance, high among the grey pinnacles, on the edge of the clouds, intoning in intricate delicate circles of harmony the responses. Was it the old monks? Was it the angels? Who could tell? Lottie, my love, that is the vox humana stop," said the kind old captain, who knew something about it; and as he, too, was no wiser than other people, he began to whisper an explanation to her of how it was. But Lottie cared nothing about stops. She could hear the solemn singers of the past quiring far off at some unseen altar, the softened distant sweetness of the reply. Her heart rose up into the great floating, circling atmosphere of song. She seemed to get breath again, to get rest to her soul; a strange impulse came over her. She who was so shy, so uncertain of her power, so bitterly unwilling to adopt the trade that was being forced upon her; it was all that she could do to keep herself from singing, joining to those mystical spiritual voices her own that was full of life and youth. Her breast swelled, her lips came apart, her voice all but escaped from her, soaring into that celestial distance. All at once the strain stopped, and she with it, coming down to the Abbey nave again, where she stood in the midst of the dim reflected rubies and amethysts and silvery whites of a great painted window, giddy and leaning upon the old chevalier.

"It was the vox humana. It is too theatrical for my taste, my dear. It was invented by

"Oh, hush, hush," cried Lottie, under her breath; "he is beginning again." This time it was the Pastoral Symphony the signor played music that was never intended for the chill of winter, but for the gleaming stars, the soft-falling dews, the ineffable paleness and tenderness of spring. It came upon Lottie like those same dews from heaven. She grasped the old man's arm, but she could not keep herself from the response which no longer seemed to come back from any unseen and mystic shrine. Why should the old monks