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"But he couldn't go unless something was done, and that old house prevented from falling to bits," she urged, as if she thought he would come to see the point of her argument.

"Why didn't you ask Kenton the other night to give him a few thousands?"

"He has a son of his own, why should he? He doesn't want to pull down one house to build up another that perhaps isn't as old as his own— I don't know." She stopped for a moment. "You think it vulgar of me, or 'snobby' as the English people love to say. I heard it in your voice just now when you said I wanted to be a peeress. I do in a way, but it isn't-snobby,-or vulgar; it's because being one is part of it-part of the things that are historical,-the things with which I want to be identified. I don't want to go driving motor-cars to Ascot and Ranelagh, to any of the places where rich people go, or to give big dinners with too much to eat, and big parties with people at them I hardly know, or to lose money at cards; I won't do any of the things that silly people copied from us in the early days, for the right people among us don't do them now-they were just wild oats

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"And had you forgotten all this the other night?"

"Yes, I was forgetting-I'll never forget again."

There was a moment's silence. They stood facing each other, he still wonderstruck; she with

eyes, her hand at her throat as if to steady her voice, and to force from her lips all that with dogged determination she meant to say. She looked like a creature at bay half scared, but full of a strange courage that helped her to forget the conflicting forces in her heart.

At last Wendern spoke. "Well," he said, "this is a strange sideway into Hell for me, the worst turn that things have taken. I wonder why it is I love you? For I do I love you so much that I'd like to throttle you as you stand there-and kiss you till you died."

"I'd love you to do it," burst from her lips.

"Then in God's name be natural," he cried, springing forward. "Let Derbyshire

have your money, every stiver of it, send it round to him packed in American trunks,but let us be together; you love me, and you know it."

"Yes, I love you, and I know it but I'm going to do what I say if I die doing it. Besides, he couldn't take it without me."

"Heiresses

are plentiful enough. Let him patch up his castle and cultivate his land with some other woman's fortune. Your father and mother married because they loved each other-man and woman existed before castles and aristocrats, as you call them, had been invented. Isn't that tradition enough for you to carry on? Do what you like with your money, but let us go away together, back

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to the New World—and you ist and dreamer was speaking shall be queen of it“No——” "Yes yes!" words rushed from him now like a torrent. "We'll put up a shanty on the spot where my father and mother were all the world to each other when they were poor and couldn't see four meals ahead. Let us be poor and live there, as they did, till we can build a palace and buy a crown for you, my dear-my dear who is a fool-as all best loved women are fools

be

"I believe I should happier, I wish I were & beggar.'

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"Be one, as perhaps I may. Let us go out into the open, penniless together-some day we'll build the palace and store it with beautiful things for all the world to see-we shall be its wardens."

"You are talking nonsense, George," she said with a queer little smile, half tender, half longing.

Then suddenly he remembered. "Katherine," he cried, "it's just possible that I shall be a beggar, and soon-soon, in sober truth." After all, the lawsuit might fail; for the moment it seemed that it would mean salvation to him.

"You?"

"If we went forth two beggars trudging along the highway, or sitting by the wayside"-she looked at him in wonder-"we'd seek the magic way-and find it.”

"The magic way?"

"The dream way. Along it are signposts pointing towards realities." Wendern the ideal

For a moment she hesitated, then with a gesture of despair threw up her hands. "I mustn't," she cried, "I mustn't. You come from a country, as I do, where there's money, and ways to get it, but nothing else; and, between us, what I owe my people bars the way. I've got to do what I'm doing, and you won't make me turn away,-I feel it's great."

"Great! High God in heaven-great!" Then he was tender again. "Think what life might be

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"Yes, I'm a dreamer too, and I mustn't wake; I've got to dream-it's waking that often brings misery.' She turned upon him with “I want you to go; I can't bear it any longer-it's too much. I just beg you to go. Nothing will alter it, nothing in the world. I don't mean it to be altered," she added in the dogged tone he had heard before. It kept him at bay: a minute before he would have taken her in his arms at any price, and kissed her a hundred

times, feeling it to be a death song.

He took a step backwards. "I want you to go," she said again; "my mother will be here directly." Then, as if she were still trying to make him see her point, she went on in a sad apologetic voice: "She has wanted me to do thisand it is great; you may scoff, but it is. I am doing the right thing I want to say it again I want you to feel it. The right thing by her and my father. And I'm doing something for the world, this dear Old World that we used to look forward so much to seeing. I'm setting something right in it. Some of us do right in one way, George Wendern, and some in another."

He laughed out in an agony. "The world is full of strange apostles to-day: an hour ago a man was with me who talked of robbing people for their good, as a cure for folly or worldliness, a man I had known for years and had stood beside at the keenest moment of his life. And now you-oh, my God! you, Katherine, have turned yourself into a young missionary who, against the dictates of her own heart, is going out to help the pauper lord; a sweet girl saint, who will have a coronet for her head instead of a halo, a family estate and liveried servants to wait upon her instead of the man she loves beside her and his children about her knees a girl saint who sacrifices herself for what her money may do, and refuses to think of what her womanhood means.

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"Oh, don't, don't," she cried,

and put her arm eyes.

across her

"This hour has swept away the best dream of my life. But go and be my Lady Derbyshire, and have your castle and your attendants, your family diamonds that Kimberley never knew__”

"Oh, how cruel you are-or are you trying to insult me?"

He softened then. "Yes, I am a brute, perhaps," he said. "But think what life might be if we were together!"

"I know," she said passionately, "I know well enough, George. But I wouldn't be satisfied with myself; that's what you don't see. Hark, I think mother is coming.'

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He made a sound of derision. "Your mother—yes, dear, your mother."

The door opened and Mrs Fiffer entered. She hesitated and looked at him curiously, then turned to her daughter and asked, "Have you told Mr Wendern the news?"

"Yes, I have told him," Katherine answered. She was a little breathless; her arm rested on the high back of a chair as if for support.

"And what do you think of it, Mr Wendern?" Mrs Fiffer looked at him again.

"He's a good chap and deserves his luck. though it's colossal."

"I'm glad you like him. What I think is that he hasn't got any of the tricks of some of the young men over here; and then he is poor. Katherine would have felt she wasn't turning her money to proper account if she married a rich man."

"It's a fine idea."

"She was always full of ideas," Mrs Fiffer answered with pride and satisfaction. "Now, Mr Wendern, I want you to tell Mrs Berwick, if you don't mind, that I didn't know it when I saw her this afternoon, or she might think I was unfriendly not to say anything."

"I'll tell her." As if there was no more to say he held out his hand to Mrs Fiffer, looked round at Katherine with a smile, and went.

"What did you say to him -did he mind?" Mrs Fiffer asked.

She

Katherine was standing with her arms thrown up, her hands clasped behind her head; she looked like a wild creature who had run a race and was paying for it with life, and yet knew that the victory had had to be gained at any cost. stared at her mother as if taken by surprise. "Say," she panted, "what did I say? I don't know-but, mother mother," she seemed to be stricken with despair, "all things have to be paid for, and nothing so dearly as money."

"As money?"

"Yes." She shut her eyes and shivered for a moment as if with pain, "It's paid for with life and hope and love. But you don't understand, mother dear, you forget. Go upstairs," she added gently,

"I've done what you wish. I've done my duty to father's money. Go upstairs and be satisfied."

"Well, but"

"Go, mother dear," she entreated, "I must be alone, I must indeed." She kissed the kindly, shrewd face before she closed the door; Mrs Fiffer heard it softly locked.

Then Katherine threw herself down, and rose again and walked to and fro, and had it out with herself. "It's done, it's done, but oh! the misery of it," she moaned; "and George Wendern George Wendern, I love you-I love you and want to be yoursa beggar, a thief, anything in the world, if only I be yours. This is where your arms went, when you took hold of me,”she rested her face down on her sleeves, "Oh, George Wendern, I'm a fool, a fool, and yet what I'm doing is right. You will never dream what it costs me, you will never believe; but it must be right, it must be fine, it is-it is as it's fine sometimes for people to let themselves be put on the rack; I'm on the rack now, but I won't flinch. I'll go through with it—but I love you, love you. George Wendern-George Wendern."

There was a loud knock at the street door; she heard it, though the library was far down the hall. Lord Derbyshire had come.

(To be continued.)

A HERO

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WORSHIPPER-PARTISANSHIP BY TRADITION-CHARLES

JAMES FOX-SIR GEORGE TREVELYAN'S SENSELESS PANEGYRIC

AN ORATOR WITHOUT PRINCIPLE-THE POLICY OF SURRENDER-
GEORGE BORROW-PEDANT AND MAN OF ACTION.

foundations

THE first volume of Sir to the grave completely careGeorge Trevelyan's 'George less of his own profit and the Third and Charles Fox' advantage. Such are the (London: Longmans) is out of of Sir George date in the very hour of its Trevelyan's argument, and it publication. It represents the is not his fault if the whole views of the desperate Whigs, world will not accept his shiftwhich will never again be ex- ing sand for solid rock. pressed by a serious historian on either side the Atlantic. It possesses all those all those qualities which shine in orations delivered on the Fourth of July, to the accompaniment of squibs and crackers, by pious Yankees. It might be read at Coney Island with the help of a megaphone, and illustrated by the familiar setpieces which display one brave American boy putting to rout a whole company of George III.'s "lobsters." As a piece of history it belongs to the dark ages. Its method is simplicity itself. Whatever the English Government did was wrong, merely because the English Government did it. The American rebels were blameless patriots, repelling with honour and courage the wanton attacks of a "criminal" and a "brutal" monarch. Above all, Charles Fox was a person of blameless character and lofty ideals, inspired by pure and devout love of his country, and from the cradle

Sir George Trevelyan is incapable of discovering the truth concerning the American revolution, because he refuses to contemplate its origins with a just and tranquil eye. For him the Stamp Act and all the measures that followed it are crimes against nature. "Lord North," he writes solemnly, "throwing open the casket of Pandora, invited Parliament to wreck to wreck the prosperity of Boston and extinguish the freedom of Massachusetts." And again of the same statesman he says that he "embarked upon the policy of taxing America for the relief of the British Treasury." A writer who bases his researches upon such blind prejudices as these will wander for ever in the dark. The American Rebellion was rendered inevitable on the day whereon Wolfe defeated the French before Quebec. The future lay clearly exposed before the statesmen of the time, French and English

alike.

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