Years nearly a score have come and gone since Mr. Winch brought home the news of the untimely demise of the whilom heir of Withington Chase.

Many have been the changes under the old roof-tree during that time. Sir Gilbert Clare, who is now entering on his seventy-fourth year, is both a widower and childless. Not only is the second Lady Clare dead, but her three sons have followed her to the tomb. Two of them have died of consumption when on the verge of manhood, while the youngest has been accidentally drowned.

Yes, a lonely, childless old man is Sir Gilbert, but still carrying himself bravely before the world, as if in defiance of all the blows a cruel fate has aimed at him, and still retaining a large measure of his old irritability of temper and imperiousness of manner. Would it be too much to wonder whether his heart is ever touched with compunction, or regret, when his eyes chance to rest on a certain tablet above the family pew--that pew now empty of all but himself--which professes to record the death of his firstborn? That, however, is one of those things known to himself alone.

The venue of our story now changes to St. Oswyth\'s, a town in the Midlands of some twelve to fifteen thousand inhabitants.

It was the fourteenth of May, and Ethel Thursby\'s nineteenth birthday. Nowhere was there a happier girl than she. Breakfast was just over, and she had come out into the garden to gather a posy of such flowers as were already in bloom for the drawing-room table. Earlier there had been congratulations and presents from her aunts. Miss Matilda had given her "such a love" of a gold watch and chain, while Miss Jane\'s gift had taken the shape of an inlaid writing-desk filled with stationery stamped with Ethel\'s monogram, so that really, as she told herself, it was quite a pity her correspondents were so few in number, and that she could not well write to any of them oftener than once a week. Nor had Tamsin forgotten her--dear, rugged, true-hearted Tamsin, who had been her aunt\'s maid, and hers too for that matter, for more years than she could remember. Ethel\'s present from her had been a silver thimble, having engraven on its rim the appropriate legend, "A stitch in time saves nine."

While busying herself with the gathering and arrangement of her flowers, Ethel\'s thoughts were engaged on two very diverse subjects. As she rose from the breakfast-table this morning, her Aunt Matilda had said to her:

"My dear, I and my sister would like to see you in the drawing-room at twelve precisely, when we shall have something of importance to communicate to you."

That the girl should wonder to herself what the "something of importance" could be was but natural.

But just then she had neither time nor inclination to wonder overmuch, her thoughts being almost exclusively taken up by an altogether different matter. The communication which she hoped to be able to make to her aunts a few hours hence, far outweighed, in her estimation, anything they could possibly have to say to her. For had not Launce promised that to-day, on her birthday, to wit, he would take off the embargo of silence he had imposed upon her, and give her leave to inform her aunts of their engagement? It was a secret which had weighed upon her ever since, in response to his persistent entreaties, she had yielded a reluctant consent to an arrangement so totally opposed to her feelings and modes of thought. No one but herself could tell how happy she should feel when it was a secret no longer.

The Miss Thursbys had come to reside at St. Oswyth\'s when Ethel was about two years old. She was an orphan, and who, if not they, should take charge of the parentless girl and bring her up as their own? Even then they were spinsters of mature age, but beyond silvering their hair in some measure, the intervening years had changed them scarcely at all. They belonged to that happy class of persons, with equable tempers, untroubled by dyspepsia and uncorroded by pessimism, whom Time loves to touch with the gentlest of fingers. He does not overlook them entirely, but the furrows he traces on their placid brows are few and far between. And so they go on for years, growing older by gradations so gentle as to be scarcely perceptible; for, say as we will, the old scythe-man has his favourites.

The sisters, on coming to St. Oswyth\'s, had bought Vale View House--a substantial modern-built mansion, standing in its own pleasant grounds, but a world too big for the requirements of their unpretentious establishment. That, however, was nobody\'s business but their own.

There they had settled down, and there, in "quiet innocency," it was their hope to spend the remaining term of their lives.

They had a joint income, derivable in part from property left them by their father, and in part by their brother, of about eight hundred pounds a year. In addition to their faithful Tamsin, they kept a couple of maid-servants, a cook, a youth in buttons, and a man who combined the duties of gardener with those of groom to Flossie, the pony driven by them in their pretty little basket-carriage. They came of a Quaker stock, but their father had seceded when they were quite young. They still, however, retained much of the traditional simplicity of dress and demeanour of their progenitors and "thee\'d" and "thou\'d" each other when they were alone, but rarely, or never, when in the company of others.

Be it known, further, that Miss Matilda and Miss Jane were twins, they having been born within half-an-hour of each other.

Owing, however, to some stupid mismanagement on the part of the nurse, they had got "mixed," so to speak, when only a few hours old, and it was not positively known which of them was the elder.

In this embarrassing state of affairs they had long ago--that is to say, from the date of their commencing to keep house together--come to a mutual arrangement by which they agreed to take it in turns, month and month about, to enact the part of elder sister, during which time the other deferred to her in every way, only, in her turn, to occupy the superior position and be deferred to throughout the following month.

It was an arrangement well understood among the circle of their friends and acquaintance, but, in order that there should be no mistake in the matter, each in turn, during the month she filled the r?le of elder sister, wore round her neck, by way of distinguishing token, an old-fashioned gold chain from which was suspended an equally old-fashioned locket, which, when open, displayed on one side a miniature of their mother, and on the other a lock of their father\'s hair.

Thus it came to pass that whenever people visited at Vale View House, or whenever they were called upon by the sisters, they would nudge each other and whisper, "This is Miss Matilda\'s month," or Miss Jane\'s, according to which of them was wearing the chain and locket; and to that one they would have been considered by the sisters as lacking in good manners, had they failed to address her as "Miss Thursby," or to treat her with an added shade of deference as representing for the time being the head of the family.

By every one who knew them, both rich and poor (and to numbers of poor people they were very well known indeed) the ladies of Vale View were beloved and respected; although it might be that there were not wanting some would-be "superior" persons who smiled to themselves at certain old-fashioned ways and quaint simplicities of speech and manner which they were quite incapable of appreciating. But such people are to be met with everywhere. It was Mrs. Trippington-Fynes, a new-comer at St. Oswyth\'s, and regarded as quite an acquisition to the somewhat restricted circle of society in the little town, who, after having been introduced to the Misses Thursby and chatted with them awhile, remarked to Mrs. Sandilands, wife of the popular squire of that name:

"Do you know, my dear, I find them quite too deliciously archaic."

It was a phrase that was repeated and taken up, and for many a day afterwards the sisters were spoken of by one person or another as being "quite too deliciously archaic, don\'t you know."

But we have left Ethel all this time alone in the garden.

Following her with our eyes, while she pursues her dainty occupation, what do we see? A slender supple figure of medium height, every movement of which betrays an easy unstudied grace with which training has evidently had nothing to do. A small head crowned with plaits and coils of glossy dark brown hair; eyes, too, of a brown so dark that unless you are privileged to gaze into them by sunlight, you would be almost ready to wager that they are absolutely black; large and luminous, with here and there a tiny fleck of ruddy light, they respond instantaneously to every fluctuating emotion of the loving, brave, reverent soul which looks out at you through them. The face, with its candid brow, its rather short straight nose and the soft curves of its chin, has the ineffable charm of purity, of equable pulses, of slow-breathing health both of mind and body; the whole expression is one of sweet, grave steadfastness.

To connect Ethel Thursby in one\'s thoughts with such feminine weaknesses as a fit of hysterics, or an attack of "nerves," would seem as preposterous as to assume that the man in the moon is afflicted after a similar fashion. This morning she is wearing a lavender-coloured frock of some soft clinging stuff which displays to perfection the charming contours of her figure. Her collarette and cuffs are of lace, woven by a crippled girl in a neighbouring village, whom Ethel counts as one among the number of her humble friends.

The sound of footsteps on the gravel of the carriage drive breaks up her reverie. She turns to behold Everard Lisle, and, as she does so, a smile of welcome illumines her face.

The young man in question was the son of the vicar of the parish church of St. Oswyth\'s, and had been intended for the medical profession, for which he had displayed much natural aptitude; but an illness, the result of overwork while a student in Paris, had left him with weakened eyesight.

Having been ordered to give up his studies for a long time to come, and to confine himself to some outdoor occupation, he had chosen to become the pupil and, later on, the assistant to an architect and land surveyor in St. Oswyth\'s; and so much did his new profession prove to his liking, and so well did it agree with his health, that at length he definitively decided to discard the one for which he had originally been intended.

Everard\'s father, the Rev. Harold Lisle, and Sir Gilbert Clare--at that time simply Mr. Clare--had been contemporaries at college, but strangers to each other previously to a certain afternoon, when it had been the good fortune of the former to save the life of the latter, who had been seized with cramp while bathing.

From that time they had never quite lost touch of each other, so that when Sir Gilbert, who always felt that he owed a debt of gratitude to his preserver, became in want of some one to fill the double post of amanuensis to himself--his eyesight having failed him considerably of late--and assistant to his land-steward, Mr. Kinaby, whose health was breaking up, he wrote to the Rev. Harold, offering the position in question to his son, of whose affairs he had some knowledge, by whom it was gladly accepted. Everard Lisle, who had now been a couple of months at Withington Chase, had come over to St. Oswyth\'s to-day for a special purpose, the nature of which will presently appear.

He had known Ethel Thursby for years, and had loved her as long as he had known her.

They had met frequently, sometimes at his own home, for now and then the ladies from Vale View took tea with his mother, and sometimes in general society. When he had first known her she had been still a schoolgirl, and he had told himself that he could afford to wait till she should be of an age to listen to what he had to say to her.

Then had come the break in his prospects consequent on his illness, after which he had had to begin the world afresh. Knowing that he would have to rely solely upon his own exertions--for his father\'s living was far from being a lucrative one and there were several fledgelings still under the parental roof--and that some years must necessarily elapse before he would be able to marry, with rare self-abnegation he determined neither by word nor sign to betray his love to the object of it till he should have some assured prospect of being able to ask her to share with him such a home as she was entitled to expect. To that prospect he had at length attained, and he was here to-day with the determination to tell her all that he had carefully hidden in his heart for so long a time. But delays are dangerous in love, as in so many other of the affairs of life, as Everard was presently destined to find to his cost. He was a well set-up resolute-looking young fellow, clear-eyed and clear-skinned, and groomed to perfection; in brief, as far as appearance was concerned, a typical young Briton of the latter half of the nineteenth century.

He was making directly for the house, but the moment he caught sight of Ethel his face flushed, a sudden sparkle leapt to his eyes, and he at once turned and made across the lawn towards her. In one hand he was carrying a bouquet of choice orchids covered up in tissue paper.

Ethel, seeing him thus unexpectedly, supposed, naturally enough, that he had come to spend a brief holiday at home, not troubling herself to remember that only a couple of months had gone by since he had taken up the duties of his new position.

"This is a surprise," she said smilingly as she gave him her hand. "I quite thought you were a hundred miles away at the least. That\'s about the distance, is it not, to--to--I forget its name--the place where you are now living?"

They turned together and strolled slowly along.

"That is about the distance," he smilingly replied. "Duty ought, perhaps, to have kept me at Withington Chase, but inclination has brought me to St. Oswyth\'s. I did not forget that this is your birthday, Miss Ethel; as a proof of which I venture to offer you these few flowers. Will you deign to accept them with the giver\'s best wishes for your health and happiness." As he spoke he stripped the paper off the bouquet and offered it for Ethel\'s acceptance.

She took it without a shadow of hesitation, first coming to a stand and placing on the lawn the basket in which she had been gathering her own flowers. "Oh, how lovely--how exquisitely lovely!" she exclaimed with unfeigned admiration. Flowers such as those were a revelation to her. "It was very very kind of you, Mr. Lisle, to remember my birthday in such a charming fashion. My aunts will be as delighted as I am. Of course you will come in and see them now that you are here."

Even now there was no dawn of suspicion in her heart as to the real purport of his visit. Everard\'s courage sank a little, but he had come all the way from the Chase to seek his opportunity, and now that he had found it he was not the man to let it slip through his fingers.

"One moment, if you please," he pleaded. "There is something that I wish particularly to say to you."

"Yes?" she said interrogatively, turning her gaze full upon him, with the slightest inflection of surprise in her voice.

Then, all at once, she saw that in his eyes which revealed to her what it was he was about to say to her, and before the clear intense flame of love which glowed in their depths, her own eyes sank abashed and dismayed. To her it came, indeed, as a revelation. For a moment or two all the pulses of her being seemed to stand still. She said to herself, "I am dreaming--presently I shall awake." Everard took her hand and she did not know it. From her unresisting fingers he withdrew the bouquet and placed it on the basket at her feet. It was only when he began to speak that she came to herself. Between the spot where they were standing and the house a large clump of evergreens intervened. From none of the windows could they be overlooked.

Everard, reading in her face some portion of that which was passing through her mind, gave her a few moments in which to recover herself; before saying more. Then, not without misgivings, he resumed:

"It was more, far more, than merely to congratulate you on your birthday and offer you a few flowers that brought me here to-day. It was to tell you that I love you--that I have loved you in secret for years--it was to ask you to be my wife."

A faintly-breathed "Oh!" fluttered from Ethel\'s lips. She withdrew her fingers from his clasp gently but firmly. Everard\'s heart sank still lower, but he went bravely on:

"Many a time before to-day," he continued, "have I been tempted to speak to you, to tell you what I am telling you now, but it was a temptation to which I would not yield. I was a poor man with no prospects worth speaking of; and I would not seek to entangle you in an engagement which might have to last for years. But, after long waiting, Fortune\'s wheel has turned for me, and now----"

He ceased abruptly at the touch of her hand on his sleeve. Her large dark eyes--and at that moment they looked to him larger and darker than they had ever looked before--were gazing into his beseechingly.

"Not a word more--not one, please, Mr. Lisle," she entreated. "Oh, I am so sorry that you have told me this!"

"Is my telling it you, then, of no avail?" he demanded, a little hoarsely.

"Of none whatever," she replied with a slow shake of her head.

His eyes scanned her face searchingly and read there but too surely that his sentence was irrevocable. His chest rose and fell a few times. Not all at once could he command himself.

"So be it," he said at length. "We must all bow to the inevitable. Mine has been the mistake, and mine must be the penalty. I will not urge you by a word more, because I feel how useless it would be to do so. Nor will I longer intrude upon your time. We shall always, I trust, meet as friends in time to come."

"It would grieve me to think otherwise." Then, as she held out her hand: "Always as friends, Mr. Lisle, come what may."

With one hand he lifted his hat and with the other he raised her fingers to his lips.

"I am so sorry," again broke involuntarily from Ethel.

"The sorrow and the regret are for me," answered Everard with a dim smile as, after touching her fingers with his lips, he released them with a sort of gentle reluctance. "For you I trust there are in store many, many returns of to-day, each and all of them crowned with happiness."

Half-a-minute later she was alone.

"Everard Lisle loves me!" she murmured to herself as he disappeared round a bend of the drive. "How strange it seems! And yet, now that he has told me, I can call to mind a dozen little things, any one of which would have revealed his secret to me had I not been so blind. How cruel he must have thought me! how abrupt! And yet what other answer was it possible for me to give him? None whatever."

It may seem strange, nay, perhaps, almost incredible, to that class of young women who are in the habit of regarding three-fourths of the eligible bachelors whom they encounter here and there in society in the light of potential lovers, that Ethel Thursby had never so regarded Everard Lisle. But so it was. She had liked him, she now told herself, far better than she had liked any other of the young men whom she was in the habit of occasionally meeting; but liking is not love, and besides, Launce Keymer had already whispered certain words in her ear.

Perhaps--perhaps, if Everard Lisle had been the first to speak, who could have told what might have happened? Was there some faint premonition in her heart, as this question put itself to her, that he to whom she had given her love might, peradventure, prove less worthy of the gift than Everard would have done?

"No--no!" she told herself almost passionately. "Dear Launce is everything--yes, everything--that any girl could wish for in the man she loves."

Then she began to cry a little, being all the while indignant with herself because her tears would come in her own despite. Then with a start she bethought herself that she had to meet her aunts in the drawing-room at noon, and eleven had struck long ago. She dried her eyes and took up her flowers. More than once, as she walked towards the house, her face was hidden in the bouquet Everard had brought her. What would have been his thoughts had he been there to see?