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“ Probably not.” “T thought you were merciful cnough not to taunt me.” said the girl, with an accent of bitter pain in her voiee.

R 25 R Yl R

C“OPHAVE NO WIS

“Tam not taunting you. I am m carnest, Wait. This time next year vou will thank me as the hut of brothers for the boon 1 JIVING YOl

“1 do not understand. 1T have no wish to understand,” said Nasha, almost passion- ately. “'I'his only will T say, that while | am mistress of Eagle’s Gorge, no friend of vours shall cross its threshold D7 "~ She controlled all further expression of feeling and walked away, leaving Volmer Llunhmw The next day he went back to lims, and lite at the sombre castle fell aga into its quict routine. But on the cve of his departure there had swept over Nashis existence o great wave of excitement, which, all unawarces to her, was to prevent her world ever looking the same agamm. She tried to live in her round ol duties; and to

banish the troops of thoughts that would invade her mind 3 she sought to put down

the passionate longings that rose and

STRAND

TO OUNDERSTAND

MAGAZINL.

swelled in her breast ; she resolutely turned from sudden visions of a husband; of a sweet, helpless, thankless thing that should lie o her arms and nestle to her breast ; of clad-faced, brnght- haired thldlcn who sh()uld call her mother, and whose young voices should make music of the echoes around agle's Gorge. She strove to stifle the overpowering - heart-hun- cer - of her awakened womanhood, to drown 1t i Dbitter draughts of recollection and of reali- zation of the actual, but she strove m vain., Her day-drcams became morc frequent, longer, and ever

more [asciating. The vague Prince of her

childish and girlish imaginings rrevocably as- sumed the likeness of a living man- the man of Volmer’s scheme. There were no mirrors in o the inhabited part of Nasha’s home ; they had all been banished to the disused room which was her mother’s bridal chamber, where the tell-tale faces were turned to the wall, and their backs whitened with the dust of years.

[t was thought better for the young mistress of Lagle's Gorge to be sparcd their painful testimony to - her ugliness 5 but she knew their resting-place as well as she knew the reason of their withdrawal, and now that the strange and awful longing for the “hife of which her nerves were scant” had come upon her in all its foree, she remembered the heart-shaped narror imed in silver, which had reflected her mother’s sad eyves, and she was impelled, in her agony ol longimg, to

mount to the tower-room and consult 1ts truthful face. S Am o1 indeed soovery uglv ? T groaned

trembling, she lifted the heavy And the cold, smooth surface scemed o mock her with the answer :

“You know it !”

She carried the thing to her own room, where she polished the delicate silver so that it erew beautiful again, and she locked it away, for fear of Getha’s sharp eyes, among

the airl, as,

vliass,