"There is no fear you will join the ranks of the disaffected. Is there, Mr. Lynch ?"

"I believe in moral force, Miss Moore. Moral force is our only force; but I can well understand the feelings of those who are driven to dispair, and have no more to lose. There's that poor, blind woman, whose story you listened to with unaffected kindness-two evictions, without what an individual of moderate capacity would designate justifiable cause. Was not such treatment sufficient to raise animosity against a Government which permits such tyranny over honest poor people in the humbler walks of life? But I'm a man of a peaceful profession or calling, and I think no good comes from acts of insubordination."

"Fight for a robe of gold and you may get a sleeve of it," said Ethna. "I think there would never be anything done for the country only for agitation; though we may be beaten in one struggle, the very effort strengthens us for the next."

"Ah! there speaks the hot heart of youth, Miss Ethna, lionhearted youth; but it often wastes its steam sailing empty vessels that go down for want of ballast. Pardon the liberty of one thirty years your senior, but these are not subjects with which to entertain youth and beauty. Ha! here comes two specimens of the canine breed, heralding the approach of their noble master. I'll give way to more suitable company. May I impress on your memory how serviceable that small portion of his brother's land would be to me? A word in season, Miss Ethna. God bless you. God speed your honour!"

“Hullo, Mr. Lynch! Are you going to cut me?" called out Philip Moore, springing over a bank in the distance.

Mr. Lynch took off his hat with a flourish, stood in the first position, and made an elaborate obeisance.

"Far be it from me, captain, to intrude my company where it would be but a stumbling-block," he said, "and no one should come between the brave and fair. I had the honour of holding intercourse with you yesterday, and must not trespass on your condescension. I wish both your honours a good-morning," and, with another profound bow, Mr. Lynch turned up the lane again and entered his house.

“A rare specimen of the genus pedagogue," said Philip Moore, as they walked along. "He always gives me brevet rank; that servility of manner is a distinguishing characteristic of the Irish."

"I do not think the Irish more servile than anyone else,' answered Ethna, warmly, "and, as for Mr. Lynch, I'd as soon accuse Sir Charles of servility. It is merely that he exaggerates his politeness; he is just as independent as yourself."

"But I am not independent at all; so your comparison is a failure. If I were, I should have gone home to my dinner instead of coming round this way to meet you. The servility is breaking out in me, you see.”

Ethna felt her wrath dying away.

"I hate to hear people abusing their own country," she said— "it is horribly mean. 'Tis like as if a man fancied he got beyond his father and mother, and then began to despise them."

"But, my fiery patriot, a man cannot shut his eyes to the faults of his country."

"I dont't want him to shut his eyes," said the girl; "I only want him not to use magnifying glasses. Every country has faults just as well as Ireland.”

"Ah, you are not up to them, Ethna, my philanthropist. I wish you had a few of those lady-beggars over at the Lodge to deal with, who think you ought to give them a couple of shillings for doing nothing."

"Yes, I know that it is quite likely they would do as little as they could for it; but I also know that you, who abuse them, would do exactly the same. Do you not swear at exercises, drills, and every one of your military duties? If you got a thousand a year to-morrow for inspecting a grasshopper at the Lodge, would you refuse it? No; but if you heard another got two thousand for it, you would be indignant, and immediately apply for two thousand also."

"I wish I were tempted, my dear girl-I wish I were; it would give me strength to answer your arguments."

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Why you shut your eyes to your own faults, and open them on the same faults in those below you, I can't see," continued the girl. "There isn't one of you who wouldn't take money for doing nothing. I know a registrar, and he gets ten pounds a year for writing a few letters; yet he swears over those letters as if he did not get a halfpenny for writing them. If it were one of his own workmen he heard complaining for having to earn his oneand-fourpence a day, he would hold him up as an example of the lazy Irish. I know doctors who get paid for sanitary work they

never perform, and who honestly will tell you it is impossible they could perform it. Are they conscientious enough to throw it up? I should say not. And yet they will denounce the meanness of the lower orders for taking advantage of any chance that comes in their way."

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My fair enthusiast, consider what a close evening it is, and don't get yourself unnecessarily heated. Sit here on the bridge, will you? The ripple of the water will help to tranquillise you. There, is not that luxury? I'll intensify it by a smoke."

He sat on the low parapet, pushed back the hat off his dark, handsome face, and lighted a cigar. The girl bent over the bridge and looked down into the narrow, mountain stream that sang and gurgled beneath. He watched her face for a little; and she, conscious that he was watching it, and becoming gradually unconscious of all things beyond him, the stream and shadowed heavens within it, did not lift her eyes.

"Do not spoil your glove," he said, taking the hand next him, that idly picked the mortar. "What size do you take?" (He unbuttoned the glove and pulled it off). "What nice soft hands you have. A natural position, is it not, your slender little hand in mine ?"

The girl made a faint effort to withdraw it. The colour deepened in her cheeks; her crimson lips parted and trembled. He watched her expressive face with mingled feelings of amusement, curiosity, and wakening interest. She looked very handsome; it was impossible to resist touching the chords of her transparent heart. She loved him. The knowledge gave him pleasant sensations, and inclined him for the moment to half-unconsciously assume all the appearance of true love.

"Will you not leave your hand to me, my Ethna ?" he whispered, drawing her close to him. "What, no answer! Don't you love me, darling? Are you not my own? Do you not love me"

The magical question was asked. The girl answered it by hiding her face on his breast, as is the wont of heroines at such critical moments; and the young man breathed into her ear words of unutterable sweetness.

A great silence seemed to have fallen upon the world, as if time stood still in this supreme moment of her life; and she heard the music of his voice, the rushing streamlet, the beating of her

own heart, and the joyous song of the skylark blend into divine harmony.

After a moment the girl woke from her blissful trance, and drew herself away. He held her hand, looking laughingly into her blushing face, quizzing her for its tell-tale expressiveness, and so they continued for about half-an-hour.

""Tis late," said Ethna. Mother will wonder what has become of me."

"And my dinner! A miracle, by Jove; I have forgotten my dinner. What a beguiler of time you must be, Ethna ?"

"Will you come on to Mona, and I will get dinner for you?" said Ethna.

"I shall come to drink tea," he answered. "I will go to the turn with you."

With a lingering clasp of the hand they parted, and went their different ways.

CHAPTER VII.

A LAND OF ENCHANTMENT.

Ethna walked home through an enchanted land; the earth beneath her feet was as radiant and immaterial as the deep blue heavens above her. He loved her; he had told her so; they were appointed by mysterious destiny to meet, to love, to cleave to each other out of the mighty multitude of human souls. How full and complete had existence become! What a haven of perfect rest she had got into, where all her aspirations were fulfilled, her dreams perfected, her nature ennobled and exalted! How puerile and mean her past life seemed; how ashamed she would be if he, her king, saw its unworthiness her little vanities, jealousies, impatient tempers, indolent habits, and selfishness. By times she was love-exalted and self-abased, and went through all the strange intense delirium of emotion caused by love in one of her passionate and generous temperament.

Philip Moore lighted another cigar and proceeded homewards with a good appetite for his dinner. He was not particularly scrupulous, yet he was not quite pleased with the evening's performance.

"By Jove, who would think she would get so fond of me?", he said. "And of course I could not hold my tongue."

The fact was, Philip Moore liked and rather admired the frank freshness of Ethna's nature, but he was not in love with her, except, perhaps, in exceptionally sentimental half-hours; he had not the least inclination to put his head into the matrimonial yoke ; he enjoyed life very much as he was at present circumstanced, and looked on wedlock as a sober finality for after years. It was not the first time he was principal actor in such tender little scenes as that acted on the bridge; they had lost their delightful novelty and force, and the impression made by them was effaced by any course of events that turned the current of his thoughts. To do him justice, he did not deliberately deceive his cousin, or do anything consciously to win her affections; he liked her society, as is the wont of man as regards a nice woman; he enjoyed it, yet kept himself disattached. Why the mischief would not she do the same?

Perhaps there was some truth in Philip Moore's conclusions that evening, that men would not be half so bad if women let them alone. It is hard to resist pressing the hand that trembles in yours, and is only too willing to be taken; it is hard to refrain from glancing tenderly into eyes that brighten at your coming, and do their share of the gazing. It is diffcult to abstain from pouring tender ambiguities into the little ears that lend such pleased attention. "I wonder why it is," said a young fellow, one day," that you can't talk to some girls for five minutes, but they will bring in something about love or marriage or flirting?" I think the most consistent man-hater must acknowledge that there is a disposition in the female nature to draw man on, perhaps in obedience to some occult natural law; she likes to attract. She is gratified when she succeeds. She finds the races where she is surrounded by young men, and the races where she only sees them surrounding others, very different in their pleasant effects, and it may be unjust sometimes to blame the luckless wight who is smiled upon if he become a little florid in his language, and say more and look more than he intended.

A man and his wife argued one day on the great question of first causes. She contended that she never gave him a second thought until one evening she observed him listening to some remarks of hers, with evident attention. He explained how he never