"I think so. He seems quite the same, only bothered by affairs. Are n't all men bothered by affairs? As a matter of fact, probably, you know more of his concerns than I do. If you ever marry, Mr. Gordon, open your heart to your wife; and let her stand beside you, not apart from you, in interest. Now, good-by, again."

Gordon, pondering on these things, repaired, after his dinner, to his Aunt Effie for a chat. The kind lady, too wholesome to nurse a grudge, did not call him to account for recent neglect of her. She talked, instead, with hearty interest about himself; soothed his ruffled spirit; and finally led him to tell her outspokenly of the wound corroding in his heart.

"I heard it to-day," said Miss Effie, looking blank. "And, my dear, if I were of the crying sort, I'd have cried — then and there. She's your girl, Alec, cut out for you in heaven, and I don't understand this sudden, fantastic alliance with a foreigner."

"Strémof is sui generis," said Gordon, has tening to do justice to his friend.

"All the same, I don't believe in it. I know very well it's because I 'm your nearest relative that Marion has kept away from me. I don't resent that- though I'm sorry. If I could, I'd stretch out a hand to help you, Alec, boy."

'Help me? What do you mean, Aunt Effie? Do you suppose I am a child, to fret after another's prize. Thank God! I'm no weakling; and, if I know myself, this is the last time I shall speak to any living being of her personal relation to me. Please to consider that the stone is rolled before the tomb."

Miss Effie had something on the tip of her tongue, but, like the heroic woman that she was, kept it there.

Alec, picking up a new book from her table, fell to discussing that.

After he had gone, Miss Effie opened a compartment of her desk, and, taking out a faded ambrotype of a soldier in uniform, looked at it for a long time.

XII.

In the camp of the Amazons, now threatened with a disbandment so unwelcome to Mignon, had arisen a spirit of determination on the part of that small campaigner which boded ill for

ican bride.

Whatever the world might assert upon this subject as final, Mignon knew the matter was not yet closed. She was aware that three days yet remained of the fortnight's probation, at the end of which Strémof might be allowed to claim what he aspired to. She had given up talking about it with Marion, but, by watching narrowly, saw that her friend was every day more nervous. How heartily Mignon wanted to cut the knot of difficulty by the simple process of bringing Gordon and Marion together, only she knew. For days it had absorbed her thoughts almost to the exclusion of her platform and her work of canvassing for emancipated women. Had she lived in the artless days of old, she might have followed the method then pursued by ladies desirous of securing the presence of an unwilling gentleman - hiring bravos to abduct him after dark. But, short of this compelling device, she saw none that would accomplish her desire. The little obstacles of conventionality are surely to blame for the gravest miscarryings of human affairs. Knowing for how long a time Gordon had absented himself from Marion, would Mignon be justified in informing him that Marion was unconsciously perhaps as much in love with him as she was repentant of her pledge to Strémof?

Mignon tried to persuade her chum to write to the absent suitor, and tell him frankly she had made a great mistake. But Marion was in an exalted state of devotion to supposed duty. Strémof had convinced her that her life with him would open a broader opportunity for usefulness than any she was likely to find at home. The prospect of living out of New York, and at the same time doing missionary work among those "most interestingly wretched" Russians upon Strémof's estates, kindled in her an excitement she almost mistook for pleasure.

A wise mother, to whom Marion might have carried her case in this exigency, could have demolished its weak points with love and common sense. But what was Marion's only counselor

poor little Mignon, her own head stuffed with distracting aspirations and mistaken aims, with noble fallacies, with puzzling counter-impulses — to advise? Had they not, together, many a time decided that duty to the individual should be subordinated to duty to society at large? Whatever their personal discomfort, must they not, before all things, assist in running the machine of the Brotherhood of Humanity?

But as the days narrowed into hours before Strémof was due to return, Mignon grew unaffectedly desperate to keep him away. In the throes of conflicting feelings she walked over to the hospital to see after her Mrs. Stromeyer,

the wife of the baker out of work, and joint proprietor of the bewitching baby.

Things there were in a bad way for the house of Stromeyer. Not only did poverty still hold the husband hard and fast in its clutches, but the wife was sinking fast. While the baby in another ward slept, all unconscious of his distressed estate in life, the husband, admitted behind the screen around the cot, sat dazed and wretched at the patient's side. The doctors who had just passed on their rounds had told him she would not last out the hour.

Mignon, laying aside the useless cluster of spring blossoms she had brought, stood sorrowful, looking on at this little scene from the drama of every day. Presently the sufferer, opening her eyes, became aware of her visitor, and smiled gratefully.

"That is nice! I am happy," she whispered, her eyes quickly leaving Mignon to seek her husband, her wan hand going out to imprison

his.

"Sha'n't I bring the baby?" asked Mignon, seeing the end was near.

Obtaining leave from the head-nurse, she ran away into a far ward, and, returning with the infant in her arms, leaned down to let it touch the mother's lips.

"That is nice! I am happy," repeated the woman. But she did not look a second time toward the child. Her gaze again sought her husband.

And, as Mignon left them, the man's head had fallen forward upon the bed-clothes, the wife's arm was around his neck.

MIGNON went out of the hospital into the broad sunshine of the jocund day, and walked home slowly. In the seclusion of her room she wrote a note, and sent it by special messenger. Just what influence the pitiful scene at the hospital had in shaping this course of hers she did not allow herself to think.

For the remainder of the afternoon she was restless, growing white and red by turns, starting at every ring of the door-bell. She even renounced an important lecture, to stay indoors, seeing Marion go off to it with ill-disguised satisfaction.

"If any one calls, I am at home, Mary, you will remember at home," she enjoined upon the butterfly maid. And shall it be told of her?-Mignon then selected from her wardrobe a gown, not of the most recent cut, but undoubtedly enticing to the eye-a gown long hung away under others; and twisted anew her golden locks to place the knot at an angle formerly much admired by interested eyes.

This done, she was wrought up to a pitch of excitement that brought on internal tremblings, ill-masked by apparent calm. She tried to read;

VOL. XLIX. II.

tried the piano; she rearranged the flowers, the ornaments on the mantelshelf; then-last resource of expectant woman changed the position of several pieces of heavy furniture. At length, bethinking her of an unfinished essay for a girls' club that was lying upon her desk, she boldly took up her rubber pen-holder, and dashed into a sentence left incomplete:

"Not, O my sisters, until woman shall cease crying out against her wrongs at the hand of man, and set herself to living as if man were not, shall "

Here the clock struck five, and Mignon jumped. Dropping her pen, she turned around to interrogate the clock-face, as if trying to persuade herself it was in the wrong. But it was a very well regulated little timepiece, and obstinately held its own. Five o'clock she had said she would be at home to him at four!

and

To Mignon's dismay, two round, bright tears welled in her eyes, to course their way down the rose-bloom of her cheek. It was a crisis at which any girl might have been excused for an expression of temper against things inanimate. The first object Mignon's eyes rested upon was her uncompleted essay; and tearing the page from the pad, regardless of wasted wisdom, she crumpled it viciously in her hand, and threw it into the fire.

Simultaneously there was a ring at the doorbell of the flat-an insistent, energetic ring, short, sharp, and decisive. Mignon's little heart fell to beating so violently she could hardly breathe. She felt herself wondering if such an internal tumult could possibly show outside. But she retained sufficient self-control to give a glance into the little mirror above the mantelpiece. The door opened. It was the maid, preceding a gentleman.

"Mr. Carleton," said Mary, secretly pleased that this visitor could not, by any stretch of imagination, be converted into one of those "Ladies' Suffering" men of whom she was beginning to be aweary.

Lowndes Carleton did not smile overmuch when Mignon held out her hand to him. He was, at this period of his career, in the condition of the dog Dr. John Brown tells about, of whom his master averred: "Oh, sir, life is full of sariousness to him. He can never get enough o' fechtin'."

"I received your note about half an hour ago," he said with business-like gravity, "and as it seemed to indicate some matter of importance, I came as fast as I could get up-town."

"You are very kind. But I knew you would be," faltered Mignon, as they sat down on opposite sides of the room. This distance, however, was not so great that Carleton, by extending his long legs, could not easily have

succeeded in covering half its width. He studied the crown of his hat, while she, the ready speaker, the silver-tongued oracle of women's meetings, wondered, now that she had him, what use she could make of her acquisition. "It is a hard thing to explain to you why I have asked you to take this trouble," she said at last. "I don't know whether it will make it any better if I say it is for another personother persons- friends of yours and mine, who I think are in great distress that might be remedied if I only knew how to do it."

"I could hardly flatter myself you would send for me on your own account," said he― with unnecessary irrelevancy, Mignon thought. "It has been so long since we met, I did n't quite know whether you would recall my name," she answered-also going off the track with an unpardonable deviation from facts. "But that is neither here nor there. And, not to take any more of your time than I need, let me tell you at once what I mean."

Carleton now lifted his eyes from the crown of his hat, and looked at her. Then Mignon's eyes drooped; she took a paper-knife from the table, and began playing with it upon her lap. "We-my friend, Miss Irving, and I have heard how much your partizanship did for Mr. Gordon in his campaign. I felt sure you admire and appreciate him as all his friends seem to do. And I wanted to ask if you-if you think would it be possible—if you know whether he is in town," she broke down lamely.

"He is in town. I saw him to-day at luncheon. He is very well, very busy, overrun with necessary affairs, and one of the best fellows in the world," Carleton's lips said. His thoughts were concerned with their tumultuous recognition of his favorite gown, his favorite mode of hair-dressing. But he did not know quite enough to take these, upon this occasion, as a tribute to himself.

"I ought to tell you, I think," Mignon went on, warming to her subject, "that, after I wrote to you, I was frightened to death lest I had done what Marion's delicacy would take offense at. You know—maybe you don't know she is one of the most fastidious girls I ever met. But the only thing, in such a case, is to apply it to one's self-and I-"

Mignon stopped, appalled. She ventured a glance at Carleton, to see what effect her slip had had upon him; but his face gave her no satisfaction.

"Won't you go on with your statement?" he said, returning to his hat, she to the paperknife.

"It would be better to ask you what you would think of a pair of people who, I be lieve, truly love each other getting apart for

"You really think so?" cried Mignon, ecstatically.

"Think? I know it. By Jove! where would he have found a girl that could hold a candle to her, even if she did play the mischief with his feelings?"

"But she did not mean to, and she has been wretched ever since-perfectly wretched almost all the time."

"Mignon!" he exclaimed, making an abrupt movement by which his stick, entangled with the fire-irons, knocked them over with a crash.

"Why, Lowndes, how awkward you always are!" she said quite naturally, stooping to put the poker and tongs in place. "Yes, wretched; though she would n't have had anybody know it for the world. And now that a crisis has come in her affairs —”

"A crisis?" he said, turning pale.

"Yes; she has given a conditional promise to another man to marry him. And to-morrow the other man is coming; and, if nothing interferes, she will be bound forever. And, oh! how I can look on and see my poor dear mistaken Marion-”

"Marion?" he thundered.

"Lowndes, don't be so noisy! The servants will hear you in the kitchen. You would never do in a flat."

"But you frightened the very life out of me with your hypothetical heroine, don't you see?"

"I don't know what you mean," she answered, overcome by the old familiar methods into which they had involuntarily fallen. The sound of his voice seemed to her as joyous and inspiring as a bugle. To be near him stirred in her an old delight in living she had quite forgotten.

"You are acting in a very odd way," she said reprovingly; "and unless you sit down again quietly in your chair, I can't finish what I began to say."

"You need n't finish; I understand," he in terrupted breathlessly. "You are for showing me there's a chance for Alec Gordon to get his sweetheart back; and, to satisfy you, I 'I promise now that I won't leave a stone un turned till I bring him here, dead or alive, this evening. Losing her just took the salt out of

his life. And whatever has happened between them since, if he thinks she will have him again, he will come fast enough."

"I don't know that she would like him to think exactly that," cried Mignon, rather alarmed. "A girl could n't well ask a man to come and just talk things over, could she, no matter whether any good is to come out of it? But no, no! I have no authority to say that Marion wants to see him."

"You think it likely?" "Ye-es," she said finally, laying hold, as upon an anchor, of the paper-knife.

You believe there is a moment in a true, honest girl's life when she is ready to put aside nonsense and affectation, and own to the man she has wounded that she is ready to make him forget it all in an eternity of bliss."

"Oh, Marion would never forgive me saying that!" she exclaimed, her face dyed with innocent blushes.

"Let Marion go, Mignon. Let Gordon go. For this little minute think of yourself and me; and tell me if all you 've been saying for her does n't apply to you too, dear.”

"But I'd never have sent for you," she cried, on the verge of tears. "Never, never; and you know it! If my mother were here, it would be different."

The sight of the poor little Bachelor Maid breaking down in a fit of crying in her chair appealed to the best manhood in her lover, and took him, at two strides, across the room away from her.

"I shall go, now, dear," he said, with his hand upon the knob. "Don't fear I will presume on your generosity to her. But it's given me hope; and after I've succeeded as I shall, I promise you-in doing what you want, perhaps you'll not forbid me to come back on my own account."

around the fire in the drawing-room, even Mignon's gaiety flagged. From time to time she glanced at the clock, and sighed.

"What ails you, dear?" said Marion, finally. "One would think you were bewitched." "You and I are brakes upon her wheels," said Mrs. Romaine, rousing herself from painful abstraction. "Come, Marion, give me something pleasant to think of. Tell Mignon and me if to-morrow is really to see you promised to be the future Baroness Strémof."

"I have asked for another day," replied Marion, blushing deeply.

"Thank Heaven!" cried Mignon, clapping her hands.

Mrs. Romaine could not resist a shaft of her old forging:

Reprieve at the final moment? The prisoner mercifully spared for further consideration of her offense? My dear girl, you know your own affairs, but, for Heaven's sake! let a thousand Strémofs be disappointed rather than do yourself the wrong of going into this with any uncertainty."

"But I am certain," said Marion, proudly. "Then, in that case, I retire."

"I am certain of so many things that make others seem less important," the girl went on more gently. "Dear Mrs. Romaine, have confidence in me. I have not found life so full of sunshine that I am likely to rebel if I sometimes wander into shadow in the future."

"What a way for a girl to talk, in anticipation of her married life!" Mrs. Romaine thought; but she did not speak this thought. Instead, she looked at Mignon, and was surprised to see that young lady's recent exaltation of spirit succeeded by a look almost woebegone.

"What's in us all?" said Mrs. Romaine, shrugging. "Depend on it, girls, this is what it will be like when we have finally downed our tyrant man, and undertake to get on with

MRS. ROMAINE came to dine with the girls that evening, saying that her husband had sent word from his office that he might be detained lllate. Neither she nor Marion could account for the extraordinary rise in the barometer of Mignon's spirits. The little maiden was transformed into a creature full of tricksy merriment, her joy bubbling, in spite of her, into all she said and did. Marion, whose wings were tipped with lead, could not follow her friend's flights. In her heart she thought Mignon for the first me a little flippant. Mrs. Romaine, also, was grave and preoccupied. It was a dull banquet, between them; and as they sat afterward

There was a ring, and Mignon's color came back into her pretty face. Her eyes shone, her cheeks dimpled.

Let us agree, then, if these are some of the said tyrants come to call, to make them welcome-no matter who they may be," she exclaimed saucily.

"Judge Irving, for Miss Irving," was the altogether astonishing announcement brought to them.

Marion's face was pale, and her lips were firm, as she walked across the entry into her own sitting-room.

She found her father wandering about the tiny place in his top-coat, having forgotten to remove his hat. He looked shrunken, careworn - denuded of dignity, of importance.