did. When he opened them again the girl, a dainty dream of white, was

vanishing, and Sprats and Miss Judith were asking him if he didn’t feel well. New-born love fostered dissimulation: he complained of a sick headache. The maternal instinct was immediately aroused in Sprats: she conducted him homewards, stretched him on a comfortable sofa in a darkened room, and bathed his forehead with eau-de-cologne. Her care and attention were pleasant, but Lucian’s thoughts were of the girl whose eyes had smitten him to the heart.

The sick headache formed an excellent cloak for the shortcomings of the afternoon and evening. He recovered sufficiently to eat some lunch, and he afterwards lay on a rug in the garden and was tended by the faithful Sprats with a fan and more eau-de-cologne. He kept his eyes shut most of the time, and thought of Haidee. Her name, he said to himself, must be Haidee--no other name would fit her eyes, her hair, and her red lips. He trembled when he thought of her lips; Sprats noticed it, and wondered if he was going to have rheumatic fever or ague. She fetched a clinical thermometer out of the house and took his temperature. It was quite normal, and she was reassured, but still a little puzzled. When tea-time came she brought his tea and her own out into the garden--she observed that he ate languidly, and only asked twice for strawberries. She refused to allow him to go to church in the evening, and conducted him to the farm herself. On the way, talking of the events of the day, she asked him if he had noticed the stuck-up doll in the earl’s pew. Lucian dissembled, and replied in an indifferent tone--it appeared from his reply that he had chiefly observed the elder lady, and had wondered who she was. Sprats was able to inform him upon this point--she was a Mrs. Brinklow, a connection, cousin, half-cousin, or something, of Lord Simonstower’s, and the girl was her daughter, and her name was Haidee.

Lucian knew it--it was Fate, it was Destiny. He had had dreams that some such mate as this was reserved for him in the Pandora’s box which was now being opened to him. Haidee! He nearly choked with emotion, and Sprats became certain that he was suffering from indigestion. She had private conversation with Miss Pepperdine at the farm on the subject of Lucian’s indisposition, with the result that a cooling draught was administered to him and immediate bed insisted upon. He retired with meek resignation; as a matter of fact solitude was attractive--he wanted to think of Haidee.

In the silent watches of the night--disturbed but twice, once by Miss Pepperdine with more medicine, and once by Miss Judith with nothing but solicitude--he realised the entire situation. Haidee had dawned upon him, and the Thing was begun which made all poets mighty. He would be miserable, but he would be great. She was a high-born maiden, who sat in the pews of earls, and he was--he was not exactly sure what he was. She would doubtless look upon him with scorn: well, he would make the world ring with his name and fame; he would die in a cloud of glory, fighting for some oppressed nation, as Byron did, and then she would be sorry, and possibly weep for him. By eleven o’clock he felt as if he had been in love all his life; by midnight he was asleep and dreaming that Haidee was locked up in a castle on the Rhine, and that he had sworn to release her and carry her away to liberty and love. He woke early next morning, and wrote some verses in the metre and style of my Lord Byron’s famous address to a maiden of Athens; by breakfast-time he knew them by heart.

It was all in accordance with the decrees of Fate that Lucian and Haidee were quickly brought into each other’s company. Two days after the interchange of glances in the church porch the boy rushed into the dining-room at the vicarage one afternoon, and found himself confronted by a group of persons, of whom he for the first bewildering moment recognised but one. When he realised that the earth was not going to open and swallow him, and that he could not escape without shame, he saw that the Earl of Simonstower, Mrs. Brinklow, Mr. Chilverstone, and Sprats were in the room as well as Haidee. It was fortunate that Mrs. Brinklow, who had an eye for masculine beauty and admired pretty boys, took a great fancy to him, and immediately began to pet him in a manner which he bitterly resented. That cooled him, and gave him self-possession. He contrived to extricate himself from her caresses with dignity, and replied to the questions which the earl put to him about his studies with modesty and courage. Sprats conducted Haidee to the garden to inspect her collection of animals; Lucian went with them, and became painfully aware that for every glance which he and Haidee bestowed on rabbits, white mice, piebald rats, and guinea-pigs, they gave two to each other. Each glance acted like an electric thrill--it seemed to Lucian that she was the very spirit of love, made flesh for him to worship. Sprats, however, had an opinion of Miss Brinklow which was diametrically opposed to his own, and she expressed it with great freedom. On any other occasion he would have quarrelled with her: the shame and modesty of love kept him silent; he dared not defend his lady against one of her own sex.

It was in the economy of Lucian’s dream that he and Haidee were to be separated by cruel and inexorable Fate: Haidee, however, had no intention of permitting Fate or anything else to rob her of her just dues. On the afternoon of the very next day Lord Simonstower sent for Lucian to read an Italian magazine to him; Haidee, whose mother loved long siestas on summer days, and was naturally inclined to let her daughter manage her own affairs, contrived to waylay the boy with the beautiful eyes as he left the Castle, and as pretty a piece of comedy ensued as one could wish to see. They met again, and then they met in secret, and Lucian became bold and Haidee alluring, and the woods by the river, and the ruins in the Castle, might have whispered of romantic scenes. And at last Lucian could keep his secret no longer, and there came a day when he poured into Sprats’s surprised and sisterly ear the momentous tidings that he and Haidee had plighted their troth for ever and a day, and loved more madly and despairingly than lovers ever had loved since Leander swam to Hero across the Hellespont.