New York Dispatch

JUL'S SWEETHEART.

BY A. I. B.

CHAPTER III.

"I AM WELL NAMED!"

"Where are you going, Charity?"

Miss Anne's voice, raised to its most acrid pitch, arrests Cherry as, her hand on the green gate, she is preparing to go out as usual, accompanied by Wolf.

"I am going for a walk," she replies slowly; but the color flushes her face.

She stands with her hand still on the gate looking over her shoulder, clad in a holland gown, and with one faint-tinted tea-rose nestling near the milk-white of her throat. Young, straight, and comely she is, though her dress may not be of the most fashionable cut; yet the face that looks from under the brown straw hat is fair enough to turn a man's head.

"Come here; I want you," Miss Anne says more sharply than before, for, in the doctor's absence, she has abundance of opportunity of making Cherry's lot less happy. And now, when the girl comes slowly up the path again, she tells her that she cannot allow her to idle away all this long Summer afternoon, and orders her to take off the brown-straw hat and prepare to cover a most imposing row of jam-pots standing on the kitchen-dresser.

"Wouldn't this evening do?" falters Cherry, looking with a grieved face out at the sunshine and the flowers, and then back at the jam-pots.

"No; this evening won't do," snaps Miss Anne, looking as she used to look long ago when many a time she slapped Cherry's dimpled shoulders when Jim was out.

She is too old to be slapped now; yet Miss Anne looks as if she would like to do it as Cherry tosses down her hat in a fit of bitter disappointment, and sits down at the table with angry eyes and a mutinous face, afraid to disobey, and yet thinking with passionate longing of the green shady wood, and of somebody standing watching and waiting in vain.

With a very bad grace, Cherry snips away at the large sheets of white paper, and ties down the covers over the black currant jam with hot angry fingers, her heart far away amid the sunlight and shadows, and her grieved blue eyes looking out many a time, and oft at the open window where the bees come humming in and out.

"There they are done!" she cries at last triumphantly, and stands up, letting a shower of paper cuttings and the scissors and twine all go rattling down on to the floor; but Miss Anne will not let her victim go yet.

"There is the raspberry jam still," she says inexorably; "fetch it out of the store room, Charity."

Tears-actually tears-spring to Cherry's eyes; her cheeks flush hotly, her voice is very unsteady.

"I can do the rest of it after tea," she says, with a great heart-throb as she thinks of how even now, he may have wearied of waiting and have gone away.

Miss Anne's eyes flash.

"You will do it now," she pronounces, looking full at the angry tears in Cherry's blue eyes.

"It is not worth crying about," she adds, with a sneering smile.

A wave of crimson flushes up to Cherry's fair forehead. She is very decidedly unpinning the large coarse apron that girds her slim form.

Miss Anne watches in the silence of growing wrath as Cherry, having folded up the apron, very deliberately proceeds to dip her hands in a bowl of water to remove the stickiness of her last occupation. Then once more she puts on the brown hat, gives an unconscious touch to the sweet rose at her throat, and faces Miss Anne defiantly.

"I am going out now; and I will cover the raspberry jam after tea."

Her voice is very steady, but her eyes are pleading; she must go to the wood. A stronger will than her own is drawing her there the magic influence that even in absence makes itself felt is strong on her now. Miss Anne turns pale with anger.

"And you dare disobey me," she exclaims—"you, a beggar, living on our charity—a nobody, without a name of your own, or anything!"

She stops breathless, and a great blankness comes into the girl's face at her words.

"Never let her know who she is," Jim had often impressed upon Miss Anne, and up to the present she had respected his wish; but the flood gates of passion have carried away reason, prudence, kindness, and every good thought, leaving only one desire—the humiliation of the proud young creature who stands looking at her with a dazed, half-scared expression.

"Then who am I?" Cherry asks, feeling as if the ground were slipping away from under her feet.

Miss Anne readily tells her, not kindly and lovingly, but hurling it at her, word by word—the story of her birth, the death of her mother, a beggar and an outcast, buried in a pauper's grave, where dock-weeds and thistles grow undisturbed.

Cherry listens to it all, with a lump in her throat, and a hard, stony look settles over her face. Then she proudly draws up her head and strangles the sobs that are coming.

"Charity," she falters, with a break in her voice; "I am well named" and passes out of the house.

Miss Anne looks after her, with a feeling of shame and degradation at her recent exhibition of malice.

The sunlight is slanting through the trees and lying along the meadows, and prone on the grass amid the warm lights and the shadows lies Cherry in all the abandonment of youth's first great passionate grief. Her face is hidden in her hands, and her unbound russet hair is lying in its wealth of dead gold upon the grass.

She sobs and sobs till heart and head alike ache, and her grief is not yet half spent.

"Oh, the sting, the shame of it!" she murmurs, lifting a convulsed face, and looking with streaming eyes down the wooded drive. "Jack. Jack!" she cries softly, and hides her face again

He is not here; he has been gone hours, most probably. She does not want to see him-will never want to see him again; and yet, oh, what a blank life will be without these daily meetings! And she bursts into tears again, and cries as if her heart were breaking.

"My darling-my own darling! What is it Cherry? Tell me. Was it-was it because I had gone away, dear? I waited two hours-upon my word I did, and then I went away; but have come back, you see. Don't cry so dreadfully—don't, Cherry!"

She struggles to her feet and keeps her hand over her face, her head turned away from him.

He looks at her with eyes full of love. Her very dejection is but an added charm. Very softly he touches the silky waves of her rich hair with his hands, and then the red rushes to his face as his arms go round her sobbing, trembling frame.

"Darling, tell me!" he urges, and for a second she looks up with her miserable, tear-disfigured face, her blue eyes dim from long and bitter weeping.

"I wish I were dead!" she sobs.

"Why?" he asks quickly. "Cherry, why do you say that?" —his arms tightening their hold as, weary and tired, she lays her quivering face on his shoulder.

"I can't tell you," she answers, so low that he can hardly hear.

"I only found it out to-day."

"Found out what? Is it anything about me?" he questions, with an uneasy look on his face.

"About you? No. What could there be about you?" Cherry asks, with a long sigh.

"Oh, Jack, I can't tell you, for, when you know, you will go away and never want to see me again"

As if that were possible, my own—my love!" whispering the words so tenderly, his head bent over hers. "And now what is this dreadful thing—surely you can tell me, darling?"

And Cherry tells him, with a voice broken with sobs and her hands convulsively holding his, what she has learned. She listens with a dull pain at her heart for what he shall say—waits passively for the unloosening of his arms.

"As if that could make any difference between you and me!" he says at last in such fond tender tones that hot blushes dye her cheeks.

"Cherry, did you think that anything could make me give you up?"

"I thought"—lifting a tearful face to his gaze with a look of trusting devotion. "Oh, Jack, are you quite, quite sure?"

"I am quite, quite sure that I love you ten thousand times more because there will be no one to interfere-you will be all mine," he assures her, his voice trembling a little, his dark passionate face looking down into hers.

"Love, my love, when will you come to me?"

It is another day—a day of perfect happiness for Cherry, and the dark cloud of yesterday has passed out of her mind, and her eyes are clear and untroubled, and reflect no sorrow in their liquid depths. Jack stands beside her, and the sunlight falls upon them both. They have spent all the afternoon together, and the hours and minutes have taken to themselves wings; and on the morrow are they not going boating -a pic-nic of two?

"You will meet me about a mile down the river, my pet," he says, and her face is radiant with joy. "And mind, don't let any one see you, and, above all, don't let that precious Jim of yours suspect anything."

Cherry smiles up at him blissfully.

"I will manage," she says, with all a woman's love of intrigue, especially in love affairs. "Besides, Jim is away, and his sister won't mind. I often go out for a long ramble by myself, and sometimes don't come in till ever so late; but I have never been in a boat on the river. Oh, how delightful it will be, Jack!" -slipping a confiding hand into his. "I wish it were to-morrow now."

"So do I, darling. I say, Cherry, I'll tell you what we will do after we have gone down the river for a few miles; we will put up the boat and walk across to Ricksleys and get lunch there and look at the shops. You will like that, won't you, darling?"

"Oh, yes!" she assents, joyfully.

"And then," he adds, softly, his fingers closing over hers, "we can drive home in the twilight, if you wish."

"Whatever you like," the girl answers, with a quick, confiding look, and the sweet, liquid music of a thrush singing high in one of the trees overhead is not more full of gladness than Cherry's own soft laugh. "I wish it were to-morrow now!" she says again, like a happy child. "You won't expect me to be dressed very grand, will you, Jack?" she asks, a little wistfully, mentally reviewing her scanty wardrobe. "Because, you see, I have nothing much better than this." touching her rather tumbled holland gown ruefully.

He looks no further than her glowing troubled face and smiles into her eyes, which are uplifted to his.

"Wear anything you like, sweetheart. You would look like a queen even were you in rags" -raising her hands to his lips with a look that brings the hot blood to her forehead. "Some day I will dress you in silks and velvets and furs and laces. How lovely you would look in white satin and one row of great pearls here" touching the milky fairness of her throat.

Cherry draws a long, sighing breath. What a vision his words have called up in her mind! Silks and velvets! She draws up her tall and graceful figure to its full height, and stands before him a model of supple grace and beauty.

"I should like to wear white satin," she says, softly, and then, after wishing her lover good-by, Cherry hastens home.

The next morning dawns bright and fair, and as they are seated at the breakfast-table, Miss Anne, turning to the girl, says:

"I am going to Ricksley to do some shopping, and you may come if you wish."

Cherry looks up with a crimson face and a beating heart. This is the day she is going with Jack down the river—the day of their pic-nic.

"Well," asks Jim's sister, after a pause, "do you want to come?" She wishes to make amends for the bitterness with which she told the story of her birth. The look on Cherry's face has haunted her rather unpleasantly since.

"I want a new bonnet," she goes on, "and you may help to choose it; and, as Jim left some money to get you a new dress, we can get that, too, to-day."

She does not consider it necessary to explain that the new bonnet for her is coming out of the sum intended by Jim for Charity's dress.

Cherry sits silent, with wide-opened eyes and a guilty, frightened look on her face.

"I-I-do not care to go," she answers at last, very low, very shame-facedly, thinking of the blue river winding along, and of Jack, and of the boat, and of all the long, happy day they mean to have together.

Miss Anne is furious.

"You do not care to go! Very well; you can do as you please."

Cherry beats a rapid retreat to the garden, where she lingers in an agony of apprehension till the welcome sound of wheels announces the departure of Jim's sister; and then, with a step light as a fawn, she flies to her own room and hastily pulls down the glorious wealth of her red-gold hair, and with dexterous hands it is brushed and coiled up, shining and bright.

Then she dons a clean pink print-faded it is true, from many an hour's gay swinging in the sunshine on the clothes-line, but a very gala dress to Cherry, who surveys herself with a shy pleasure, and wonders if he will think she looks nice. With a dim idea of looking nautical, she dons a sailor hat, and thus equipped runs down to Jane.

"I am going out for the day, Jane," she begins nervously; "and you won't tell Miss Anne, Jane?" with a little appealing look.

"Indeed I won't, miss," responds Jane cheerfully, fully intending to stay out all day herself too, and thus fully falling in with Cherry's views.

The girl lingers, still watching Jane idly as with a slap and bang, she is damping and folding down Miss Anne's "fine" things.

"Jane," she says suddenly, all unconscious of the sweet wistful look in her most lovely eyes, "do you remember my mother?"

Jane gives a handful of lace and muslin a vicious smack, and looks full at the young face before her, and into her mind comes the recollection of a windy, snowy night, and a wet draggled woman with a baby at her breast.

"Who told you about your mother, Miss Cherry?" she answers evasively, going on with her banging, and folding with greater vigor than ever.

"It was Miss Anne," Cherry replies, hot painful blushes raising to her cheeks; and, oh, Jane, I had no idea that she was only a poor outcast creature, and that I lived here out of charity."

Jane turns her hard yet kind and homely countenance toward the fair troubled one.

"Miss Cherry, let the dead rest, and it is well to let by-gones be by-gones. The master never meant you to know who or what you was, and it's my belief that you've nothing to fret for, for you're the very sunshine of his life."

But Cherry heeds not the latter part of her sentence.

"Jane, was my mother pretty, and was she like a lady?"

"She was both, my dear-both pretty and like a lady. Poor soul! She was only carried in to die; and the doctor promised her to care for you always; and the poor thing died quite happy and trusting-like; and, as you know all the story, Miss Cherry, I may as well tell you that the master took you to his heart from that day, and there you will live and blossom all the days of your life, or I am much mistaken," finishes Jane, taking a sharp glance at the grave unconscious eyes looking so steadily into her own.

"Jane, do you think—did you think, I mean that she—that my mother was married?" the color scorching the fairness of her face as she puts the question with a vain hope that Jane may yet know something more of that dead mother, whose very existence was unknown to her till the other day.

A tinge of outraged virtue colors Jane's maiden cheek-bone.

"I don't know, Miss Cherry," she answers stiffly; and Cherry asks no more.

For a while she fidgets about, and finally betakes herself to the garden, where she gathers a half-open blush rose to fasten in her dress, and comes back into the kitchen again, her heart full of a woman's longing for sympathy from some one when she is in love.

"Jane," she says again very softly, every line of her face, every glance from her eyes betraying her secret, "had you ever a sweetheart?"

Jane's hard face softens.

"Yes, miss," she answers gently, "I had, and we were to have been married; but he was killed in the Crimea;" and Jane's mind goes leaping back over the space of years to two days that remain stamped upon her memory forever the day her soldier-lover sailed away, and that other day, blank and terrible even to her untutored mind, when, among a long list of the dead, she read her sweetheart's name.

"How sad! What a pity!" Cherry says, perching herself upon the table, and looking upon Jane in a completely new light now that she too had a love-story. "And you never married any one else, Jane? I like you for that."

"No; he was the only man as ever asked me," Jane answers prosaically, accounting for her constancy in the most matter-of-fact fashion.

Cherry shakes her bright head.

"I cannot understand how any one could care for any one else, once they really cared for one person," she remarks somewhat vaguely.

This code of reasoning is somewhat beyond Jane; she sprinkles away at her "fine" things so vigorously that a few drops fall glistening and sparkling on Cherry's cheek. She laughs and brushes them away, and jumps off the table. She is as happy as any comely, healthy young maiden, with a handsome lover awaiting her, can well be. And yet her face suddenly clouds.

"Jane," she asks abruptly, hot blushes chasing over her face, "would you say—do you think that my having no relatives—no name, you know—would make much difference if any one cared for me?"

"Do you mean if you was going to be married, Miss Cherry?"

"Yes," she answers, in a low voice, with lowered eyes, and her color coming and going swiftly.

Jane looks at the matter seriously.

"With some it would matter a deal," she says, after turning the subject over in her mind; and then, again, there are some men that would overlook anything if they could only marry the girl they wanted."

"Yes," Cherry says again, hanging on Jane's words with breathless interest.

"So long as a man knew it before the marriage," pronounces the oracle, pausing in her work to give proper emphasis to her words. "I can't see, if he made no objection, why any one else should; but if he found it out after, there might be bad work; and then there are always the children to be considered, and all that."

The blush rose at Cherry's throat looks almost white beside the blazing color in her cheeks now.

"I must go for my walk now," she exclaims, hastily putting both cool hands up to her hot face.

"The doctor will marry her, that's flat," soliloquizes Jane, watching the tall young form flitting out through the garden, "and Miss Cherry likes him, too, or why did she get so red and ask all those questions about marriage and such like?"

CHAPTER IV.

"YOU ARE LOVELY ENOUGH TO TURN ANY MAN'S HEAD."

The river, like a shining blue ribbon, is winding in and out through the flat green fields, and on its placid bosom glides a boat, propelled by the muscular arms of a handsome man faultlessly clad in a tweed suit. Not far distant is a pretty girl, clad in pink, making her way to the river bank.

"She'd a rose in her bonnet,
And, oh, she looked sweet-
Like the little pink flower
That grows in the wheat!"

hums the man softly, as he brings the boat a little nearer the bank, and, springing ashore just as she reaches it, takes her, unrebuked and unresisting, into his arms, and kisses her as often as he will.

And she? Oh, if poor Jim could see the look in her eyes as she smiles back into her lover's face, his patient, loving heart would ache with a pain as yet undreamed of by him!

"And isn't our day perfect?" cries Cherry, the first rapture of the meeting over. "How lovely-how very lovely it all is!" her smiling eyes taking in the blueness of the river, the greenness of the banks, and the fair spreading fields in one quick roving glance.

"More than lovely," he assents emphatically; but his glance strays no further than the girl's most bewitching face. "Come, Cherry, jump into the boat and let us be off."

And, steadied by his hand, she steps lightly in, laughing as the frail craft rocks to and fro.

He seats himself opposite, and they glide swiftly down the stream. What a day of perfect bliss it is! How fast the river flows! Cherry's fingers, pink-tipped and rosy, trail idly through the sparkling water, which flashes like diamonds when she shakes the drops from her hand, and holds it up all wet and shining.

"If I had rings they would fall off," she says, smiling at her lover, and then blushes as she thinks of how soon she shall wear a wedding ring.

And yet a shadow creeps into her eyes as she looks at her bare left hand, and the thought comes into her mind of her mother, with her ringless dead hand folded mutely over its fellow on her breast in a silent appeal for that which man denied—Heaven's mercy. But no sad thoughts rest long on her mind to-day

They are as happy as two children, tasting the very freshness of happiness that youth and health and love alone can give.

On arriving at Ricksley, Jack's eyes wander in search of a suitable place where they can obtain refreshment.

"Come in here, and let us see if we can get lunch."

And Cherry looks in amusement at rows of little marble-topped tables, at which were seated small knots of people intent on lunch.

"This will do. Here, Cherry, sit down," her companion says, and then, immediately the words are uttered, he springs up suddenly, his face flushed, and whispers hurriedly, "Come away, quick"

He dashes out before her to the front of the shop, and Cherry follows him, bewildered at his strange conduct.

"What is the matter, Jack?" she asks almost timidly, looking up into his perturbed countenance.

"I saw some people I know," he replies hastily. "It would never do if they saw me with you."

Great drops are standing out on his forehead from excitement or agitation; his face is quite white as he turns to Cherry.

"I have engaged a private room; we shan't be stared at there," he explains.

"That will be nice," she assents gayly, and follows him through another door and up the stairs, where they are shown into a plainly-furnished sitting-room.

"Now, my darling, what would you like?" he asks, studying the bill of fare. "Shall we have veal cutlets and pears, and ices and strawberries? Would you like that?"

"Yes," smiles Cherry, who is young enough and childlike enough to enjoy something nice to eat.

So the lunch is ordered, and Cherry tastes champagne for the first time in her life.

"It is very nice," she says, and smiles at him over the sparkling wine in her glass. "And such lovely strawberries, Jack-such great, red beauties"

He heaps her plate with the luscious fruit and smiles back into her clear, innocent eyes.

"Fancy," he says softly, "when you and I shall be always together like this!" And at his words her cheeks rival the crimson strawberries on her plate, and her fair head droops a little with a sudden shyness. "How beautiful you look!" he cries rapturously, coming round beside her and holding her blushing face in both his hands. "My little sweetheart, you are lovely enough to turn any man's head."

"And you are sure, quite sure," Cherry asks tremulously, drawing back a little and lifting grave trusting eyes to his face-"you are quite sure, Jack, that you will never, never be sorry for marrying me?"

"Why should I be sorry?" he says, and somehow he does not look full into those uplifted blue eyes.

"Because I have nothing to give you but myself," she replies, her face flushing warmly, and a look of trouble casting a shadow for a moment over the brightness of her happiness.

"And, Jack," she adds gravely, with a quiver in her voice, "I want you to think over it well before before we are married. Do you know, when we were down stairs just now, and you did not like to see those people while with me, I thought-I thought" —and tears are crowding into her eyes now "I thought that perhaps some day you would be ashamed of me when I was your wife."

Before she can say anything more he has taken her in his arms and laid her quivering face upon his breast.

"Never say anything like that to me again, Cherry, or we shall quarrel. Do you think," holding her in a strong, firm clasp-"that I could ever give you up? You are mine, you know, darling -mine for always."

An hour later Cherry and her companion are amusing themselves with looking at the shop-windows, passing comments on the goods displayed, and Cherry laughs as she sees herself reflected in the plate-glass windows, pink gown, sailor hat and all.

"Jack"—the only name she knows him by—wants to buy everything for her that she admires, but Cherry refuses.

"Jim would wonder where I got them from," she says, "and I should have to tell."

"I never thought of that!" he exclaims.

"Well, it won't be long, Cherry, before I can buy you everything you desire, and all the Jims in the world cannot stop me then.'"

"Wait here a second," he cries, suddenly, as he darts into a stationer's shop, and Cherry stands at the door and sees a phaeton, with a pair of gray ponies, coming rapidly down the street.

There is a lady with a little child in the carriage. Cherry has seen the lady before, and knows her to be the sad, unhappy-looking wife of Captain Carew.

The ponies are pulled up opposite to the door where Cherry is standing, and the lady gets out and carefully lifts out the little child.

Cherry, with one backward glance, sees her lover's gray-clad shoulders disappearing through an inner door of the shop. Cherry colors painfully, and moves a few steps down the street.

Mrs. Carew is a long time making her purchases, but presently numerous packages are brought out and put into the carriage, and at last Mrs. Carew comes out, and Cherry watches while she lifts in the little child and carefully wraps her up in shawls. Then the gray ponies go trotting down the street, and not till they are out of sight does Jack come into the street again, and, when he does make his appearance, he has a shamed, troubled expression on his face, and he does not smile in answer to Cherry's questioning glance.

"That was a close shave," he says. "By Jove, I thought we were caught!"

"How sad she looks!" Cherry observes meditatively, thinking of the wistful pale little lady in the pony-carriage. "Oh, Jack, what a cruel man her husband must be" she says, with a sidelong upward glance at his averted face. "How could he be unkind to her, and she looks so sweet and nice? They say' -very gravely and half under her breath-"they say he beats her! Fancy, if you beat me, Jack!" she adds, with a look accompanying the words that shows how utterly impossible to her mind such a thing could be.

"Could you fancy it?" he asks, smiling down at her glowing upturned face. "Perhaps I am doing you a more cruel wrong; perhaps my love will be your curse."

His voice half frightens her: but they are in a crowd, and people cannot go into heroics in a street; and, beside, at this moment Cherry catches sight of Jim's sister bearing full down upon them, and all the pretty color forsakes her cheeks.

"There is Jim's sister! Look!" she cries hastily. "Oh, Jack, she will see me"

"Where? Confound her!" he ejaculates.

"This way!' gasps Cherry. "Quick—come!"

They fly down a turning; and Miss Anne, glancing down the street a second later, sees a girl in a pink dress flying like the wind, and a man in a gray suit hurrying after. The sun catches the girl's red-gold locks as she hurries along; but, not expecting to behold Cherry at Ricksley, Miss Anne looks upon the figure and gait as a chance resemblance, and thinks no more of it.

Breathless and laughing, Cherry reaches the end of the shabby little street and looks up at her companion with flushed cheeks and sparkling eyes that dance with laughter at her angry face.

What a race! Oh, Jack, if she had seen us"

"It would have been no laughing matter," he said bitterly, with no echo of her merriment in voice or look.

The smile dies from her face as she perceives the dark scowl on that of her lover.

"Perhaps we had better go home," she says guiltily. "It is getting late, Jack. Look—the sun is setting, and"—as a cool breeze comes round the corner of the street—"it is getting cold."

All the light-hearted joy has gone out of her voice, and the gloom on his face seems to have cast its shadow over her.

Side by side they walk up the street in silence. Once he takes out his watch and looks at it, and then glances quickly at Cherry's grave downcast face. They have turned in at a railway-station, and her eyes are then suddenly uplifted to his.

"Where are we going, Jack? Why are you bringing me here?" she asks.

His face is flushed, his voice sounds almost harsh; but his eyes shine with a passionate love.

"Will you come?" he asks, bending down and looking full into her frightened face.

"Where?" the girl whispers, trembling all over.

The station is empty, and he draws her, unresisting, into a waiting-room. Cherry sits down upon a chair, and looks at him with wide startled eyes.

"There will be a train in half an hour" he answers, avoiding her gaze, and then, coming quickly forward and laying both arms about her, he says, passionately, "My love, my darling, come with me now. Why need we wait?"

But the proposal is too sudden—too unexpected. Cherry shivers, draws back from his embrace, and bursts into tears.

"Have I frightened you, darling? Don't. Cherry, don't; I can't bear to see you cry! My own, I will make you so happy when you are all mine!"

"Take me home," she cries, in a smothered voice. "Oh, Jack, Jack, don't be angry, but I could never, never go away to be married like that! Oh, indeed, indeed I couldn't; and"—with a burst of irrepressible weeping—"if I might only tell Jim, I think I could be quite happy."

"Confound him" he mutters under his breath, then aloud: "Hush, my sweet stop crying! There I was only testing your love for me. Don't cry, dear. Here are a lot of people. Come along—we must get out of this.

Hang it all, there's a fellow I know! Wait here a moment and follow me directly. I must get a vehicle of some kind to take us home."

He darts out of the waiting-room, and, lighting a cigar, hurries up the platform, to be saluted by a voice in the rear:

"Hallo, Jack, old fellow, where are you off to?"

He makes a hasty excuse to his friend and passes out of the station, and the friend presently sees a very pretty girl, with a lovely, tearful face, come out of the waiting-room and move slowly, with bent head and crimson cheeks, up the platform and out of the station.

Had he gone outside, his curiosity would have been considerably excited by the sight of his friend Jack carefully assisting the pretty girl into a carriage and then getting in himself, ordering the man to drive through the back streets of the town, and home by the most unfrequented road.

It is a lovely evening, with the peaceful shades of twilight stealing over copse and field and wood. Cherry looks out at the world half sadly, and then raises two blue eyes, half penitent and wholly wistful, to the man at her side, who answers the look by gathering both her hands into his clasp and keeping them there.

"Darling," he says, softly—"my own, own darling!"—and into her face comes back the perfect look of trust and happiness it has worn since first she knew him.

"You are not angry with me, Jack?" she whispers.

"Angry with you!" he exclaims, passionately. "As if that were possible! And yet, do you know, I am tempted to go away and leave you just where I found you in the wood under the trees? If I did, would you ever be happy again, Cherry?"

"Never!" she says slowly, her whole heart in her eyes as she answers the question.

"Do you love me so very much then? Don't you think that in time you would forget me, and get to love that Jim of yours, and marry him, and never remember that you had another lover?"

"Don't, Jack!" she cries, with tremulous mouth. "How could I care for any one else when I love you, and you are only saying those things to frighten me?"

"My dearest, dearest heart!" he whispers softly. "No, Cherry, I will not leave you, in your freshness and your loveliness, to be the wife of that great hulking doctor. You shall be mine, and mine only."

"Yes," she answers, with a long-drawn sigh of utter contentment, her hand creeping closer into his.

(To be Continued.)