CTHERE'S J1LANY 1 SLIPY 163

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“TOASKED HER TO MARRY ME.”

the comparison, which was foolish of him, poor fellow.

“She said,” he went on, “ that she could trust her own judgment, and did not want anybody clse’s. That might have satisfied anybody, but it did not satisfy me. I wrote again, and begged her to do as T wished, telling her about the housckeeper. At last she wrote that she had done to please me what she never would have done for her- sclf, and she said @ ‘T supposc you expect me to abide by whatever Miss Harris may say.’

“ Do you know that those words gave me a fright. 1 had never doubted till then that Miss Harris would give just the same character of me as she had done before, and also I had only thought of it as giving me more value to Miss Woodroffe. T got

nervous alter Toheard she had really con- sulted the Sibyly and two days later I received these.”

He turned over his pocket-book again and handed to me two papers, sinking back in his chair after he had done so with a oesture that said, * You have the catastrophe and its results before you.”

I'opened one of the papers,and literally L openced it with trembling fingers. There was something tragical in poor John's ges- ture, and 1 the emptiness and silence of the house. My eyes fell upon a sheet of paper, half covered with a ncat, lcgible handwriting, the words of which were much as follows : —

“This writing belongs to a person of stngularly impulsive and cager tempera- ment, casily carricd away by the fecling of