Year: 1875

with all its turmoil and it's witchery, cal any one spare moment to notice a sat little face peeping out of the window of railway cab just driving into Psddingtol station?

 The cab draws up at the end of a lonl line of cabs, and the footman outsid jumps down to open the door.

 Out steps Nan, bag and parasol in on hand, purse in the other and very grav indeed she looks as she solemnly inquire the fare, and marches into the station followed by Thomas.

 Can this shabby little creature be tn, butterfly who but yesterday futtered ant spread her wings among the gay crowds gayest of all herself. full of busy idleness bewildered enchantment, ecstacies of blis and woe? An poor child, her day wal a short one, and now it is over

 It is hard to pass the pleasure-lovinf stream and go against it.

 To remember that few hours before she had felt herself she, even she, child sprite, insignificant drop in the bucket ai she really was-to have been for the time transformed into princess in fairy.land with all sorts of dreams, and fancies, ana possibilities lowering over her : and ther suddenly to wake and find herself shaker up into little red-haired girl going away in hack-cab.

 Nan is dowdy, too, in her travelling costume. It is the same in which she came up to town six weeks before, and very neat and becoming she thought il then but six weeks of fresh muslins, hel new silk, and incessant smartness, have made the old gray seem dim.

 And then the heat of this June day!

 The finest and softest of white dresses abound in the park, and fans futter, and parasols sway gracefully backwards and forwards On her way to the station, Nan has passed carriage after carriage turning in thither, probably passing through, to return to the great rendezvous an hour later, when she will be many miles away.

 Then when evening comes, she knows that her aunt and cousins will be prepar- ing for that delightful party to which she, too, had been invited, and to which she might have so easily gone if only the Wyatts had fixed Friday instead of Thurs day for her coming to them.

 This visit has Leen twice postponed already, and Aunt Eliza, smiling, but serious. thinks 1t will hardly do again.

 Nan submits to her fate.

 T. U disappointed, and Captain Neville little more still but cannot say that she has anything beyond the smallest and most complacent of regrets for her forlorn part ners.

 She does not like leaving Queens Gate, however. That is quite another thing.

 This visit is the point towards which all her lines have converged for the last eight or ten months.

 It was projected in the autumn and given up, taken back into favor, thrown out and reconsidered at least half.a-dozen times before the great decision was ar rived at.

 For it is long way from the stony hills of Westmoreland to the metropolis and girls like Nan Church, whose life goes round and round as if it were turned by one of those long-suffering horses in the old farm-yards, think great deal more of a single days journey, than some of our more delicate and fashionable young madams do of voyage round the world.

 What preparation it takesj What fore bodings on the part of granny does it oc- casion What timid exultant dreams on the part of Nan does it give rise to!

 Hours and hours have the two spent to- gether with only old Trueman as coadiu. tor, contriying that wonderful wardrobe. The fashion-book has worn itself to death in their service. The maids sit at their seams in the workroom unceasingly. And when the climax is at length attained, it is not seemly in their eyes, cunning in its devices, heroic in its concealments? What thought it might-it probably would have made Worth shudder and sicken?

 Does Nan forget these days? No, and she never will.

 Many and many time in the midst of her vortex they rise before her, and her heart gives little tender ache for the foolish things, feeling as if somehow she does them a wrong in that they have grown to look odd and plain, and all but unwearable.

 They are not needed, either.

 Aunt Eliza gives her dresses and bon nets and the silk that granny had fondly hoped might be made up by her cousins maid, is returned gorgeous from a West End dressmaker but for all that, the child's heart has never grown hard and cruel to the old things, and when the last day comes she bravely dons the sober grey with it's plaintive tints, and betakes herself of in the cab. much the same little Nan Church to all intents, as when she hugged and kissed dear granny before all the carriages at Tebay Junction.

 An, we'll her great visit is over.

 There only remains her fortnight at the Wyatts, and with this she would fain dis pense.

 It is years since she saw her cousins, and who can tell what sort of young maid- ems Edie and Deity may have blossomed into, in the interval

 The Honorable Edith and Henrietta Wyatt, are not in town this season.

 When thelr mourning for the old uncle who left Dick all his money was over, it was too late in the year, and Lady Wyatt has not been we'll. Lord Wyatt goes up and down; Dick has been away since Christmas Walter at Christ Church was glad to have his Easter at home, and Dol ly at Eaton has no voice in the matter.

 Accordingly they are all at Wyatt Hall, and Nan wishes they were anywhere else,

 To begin with, she is afraid of going. Aunt Eliza demands why?

 She is afraid of Lady Wyatt. ,.tl.

 A more groundless fear never existed in the bosom of a Caffre.

 She is afraid of Lord Wyatt.

 More groundless still. and more idiotic.

 She is afraid of the girls, of Dick. of Walter. of Dolly. who is up to her shout. der :; afraid of the house, afraid of the servants. This is what she would like to say, but dares not, to Aunt Eliza.

 So she stops abruptly at her fear of Lord Wyatt.

 Of her own uncle

 (Aunt Eliza is Mans aunt on the other side, and Is rather proud of having a niece who can call peer of the realm her owu uncle.)

 Yes. He may be her uncle or not, but she is afraid of him.

 To this she sticks so fast, that Aunt Eliza deigns Co expostulate.

 Nan is foolish, unreasonable. unrelation like, if there is such a term, altogethe, fanciful and absurd. Come, she must no, be silly, but above all, silly or not, shs must not shOtO that she is

 Accordingly Nan goes of. doing hel best to keep her quakings hidden.

 She is dull and sad, and very shy.

 Queens Gate had grown familiar. ani the happiness she had felt there suddenl, assumes gigantic proportions in the re tropect.