"Oh, well," he said, in a droll sotto voce, "if it is coming down to a family difference we will continue it in private."

And he abandoned the discussion.

"It seems to me," pursued Mr. Candish, only half conscious that Mrs. Fenton had come to his aid, "that Bishop Blougram represents the most dangerous spirit of the age. His paltering with truth is a form of casuistry of which we see altogether too much nowadays."

"Do you think," asked a timid feminine voice, "that Blougram was quite serious? That he really meant all he said, I mean?"

The president looked at the speaker with despair in his glance; but she was adorably pretty and of excellent social position, so that snubbing was not to be thought of. Moreover, he was thoroughly well trained in keeping his temper under the severest provocation, so he expressed his feelings merely by a deprecatory smile.

"We have the poet's authority," he responded, in a softly patient voice, "for saying that he believed only half."

There was a little rustle of leaves, as if people were looking over their books, in order to find the passage to which he alluded. Then a young girl in the front row of chairs, a pretty creature, just on the edge of womanhood, looked up earnestly, her finger at a line on the page before her.

"I can't make out what this means," she announced, knitting her girlish brow:

"Here, we've got callous to the Virgin's winks
That used to puzzle people wholesomely.'

Of course he can't mean that the Madonna winks; that would be too irreverent."

There were little murmurs of satisfaction that the question had been asked, confusing explanations which evidently puzzled some who had not thought of being confused before; and then another girl, ignoring the fact that the first difficulty had not been disposed of, propounded another.

"Isn't the phrase rather bold," she asked, "where he speaks of 'blessed evil"?"

"Where is that?" some one asked.

"On page 106, in my edition," was the reply; and a couple of moments were given to finding the place in the various books.

"Oh, I see the line," said an old lady, at last. "It's one-two-threefive lines from the bottom of the page:

"And that's what all the blessed evil's for.""

"You don't think," queried the first speaker, appealing personally to the president,that Mr. Browning can really have meant that evil is blessed, do you?"

The president regarded her with an affectionate and fatherly smile. "I think," he said, with an air of settling everything, "that the explanation of his meaning is to be found in the line which follows

"It's use in Time is to environ us.'"

"Heavens!" whispered Fenton to Mrs. Staggchase; "fancy that incarnate respectability environed by blessed evil'!"

66

"For my part," she returned, in the same tone, "I feel as if I were visiting a lunatic asylum."

"Yes, that line does make it beautifully clear," observed the voice of Miss Catherine Penwick; "and I think that's so beautiful about the exposed brain, and lidless eyes, and disemprisoned heart. The image is so exquisite when he speaks of their withering up at once."

Fenton made a droll grimace for the benefit of his neighbor, and then observed with great apparent seriousness:

"The poem is most remarkable for the intimate knowledge it shows of human nature. Take a line like

"Men have outgrown the shame of being fools;'

We can see such striking instances of its truth all about us."

"How can you?" exclaimed Elsie Dimmont, under her breath.

Fenton had not been able wholly to keep out of his tone the mockery which he intended, and several people looked at him askance. Fortunately for him, a nice old gentleman who, being rather hard of hearing, had not caught what was said, now broke in with the inevitable question, which, sooner or later, was sure to come into every discussion of the club :

"Isn't this poem to be most satisfactorily understood when it is regarded as an allegory ?"

The members, however, did not take kindly to this suggestion in the present instance. The question passed unnoticed, while a severe-faced woman inquired, with an air of vast superiority:

"I have understood that Bishop Blougram is intended as a portrait of Cardinal Wiseman; can any one tell me if Gigadibs is also a portrait ?" "Oh, Lord!" muttered Fenton, half audibly. "I can't stand any more of this."

And at that moment a servant came to tell him that his carriage was waiting.

OUR DEAD.

[Sonnets in Shadow. 1887.]

E must be nobler for our dead, be sure,

WE

Than for the quick. We might their living eyes
Deceive with gloss of seeming; but all lies
Were vain to cheat a prescience spirit-pure.

Our soul's true worth and aim, however poor,

They see who watch us from some deathless skies

With glance death-quickened. That no sad surprise

Sting them in seeing, be ours to secure.

Living, our loved ones make us what they dream;
Dead, if they see, they know us as we are.
Henceforward we must be, not merely seem.

Bitterer woe than death it were by far

To fail their hopes who love us to redeem ;

Loss were thrice loss that thus their faith should mar.

Anna Bowman Dodd.

BORN in Brooklyn, N. Y.

A PLANTATION ROSALIND.

[Glorinda. A Story. 1888.]

HEN on the plantation, Withers at once began a diligent search for Glorinda. He went into all the rooms on the ground-floor, but she was not in any of them. He made a tour of the porticos; she was beneath none of them. He strolled through the outhouses and the yard, among the trees in front of the house; only Parthenia and the turkeys inhabited those domains. He was on the eve of asking Parthenia to see if Miss Glory was in her room and would come down to him, when he bethought him of the wood. It came to him with a swift flash of divination that she had surely gone there; she would be the more likely to have gone, since she supposed him off for the day.

The woods, as he entered them, seemed as empty and deserted as the house and park. As he cautiously made his way toward his old hiding-place, his quick ear soon detected the sounds of a voice. It was a voice he knew well now, and it was pitched in a tragic key; but it was still melodious and sonorous. She was there, and was reciting. His heart gave a quickened throb.

He almost crept along, beneath the protecting shelter of the tree-trunks. As he neared his old ambuscade, creep he did in reality, on hands and knees, pushing the briers aside, working his way through the tangled underbrush, letting the weight of his knees and feet strike the crackling forest leaves as lightly as he could. For nothing in the world would he have her see him; he felt it indeed to be a kind of treachery to push his way toward her, to spy her thus unseen. Yet he felt that for nothing in the world would he miss seeing her once more, as he had first seen her, in the comical yet strangely beautiful surroundings which her extraordinary fancy had conjured about her.

He had reached the poke-berries now. He was behind them. In front of him was a protecting cluster of young sumach. The leaves were more brilliantly scarlet than they had been a week since; they made the better shelter. They made also a kind of flaming network through which, as he crouched behind them, Withers could look out into the little amphitheatre in front of him.

The voice was declaiming in strained, affected tones; there were the same misplaced accents, the same melodramatic changes he had heard before. The girl herself he could not see; she was not in her old place, under the great elm. The little dusky audience, however, was in full session. The group of darkies beneath the shade of the great trees was lying in various postures and in the most complete stillness. Ever and anon the canopy of leaves above the recumbent figures would be lifted by a light slow breeze. Then the noon sun would flood the upturned faces and black skins in a bath of broad sunlight; and the motionless little negroes were like so many bronze figures. From the intent expression of their round fixed eyes Withers could divine the direction from which the voice came. They were as still as if under the magnetism of some spell, as through the trees came the fluttering sound of advancing footsteps.

"Come, woo me, woo me! for now I am in a holiday humor and like enough to consent," Glorinda's rich voice cried out. The next instant, as she went on finishing the lines, she came, springing with light steps with hair afloat, her blue mantle caught into wind-swept folds, from the sudden rush she made as she rounded a near tree-trunk. And Glorinda-and Rosalind-stood before Withers's eyes. She had on the famous blue tights. The mantle, the cloak she had worn as Juliet, fell to her knees, the splendid masses of her hair almost covering it. Some tunic she wore beneath, which he could not distinguish; all Withers really saw was the slender line from the knee downward, and the glorious hair that swept her figure like a veil.

"My God! how beautiful she is!" he cried out under his breath.

She was a vision as she stood there, the sun showering its light upon her, crowning her head like an aureole, dusting her brown tresses into a cloud of light, her face swept by the strong fierce brightness till it shone with a transfigured glory. The blue mantle encased her like some royal robe. The delicate limbs, released from their petticoat bondage, freed for the full play of their lovely sinuous action, palpitated in motion beneath, as one sees the stir of life beneath the wing of a bird.

She was reciting Orlando's part now, in the deep bass notes he had heard. before. It was like a child playing at make-believe, he said to himself.

66 How if the kiss be denied?"

said the pseudo-bass voice.

Then she puts you to entreaty,"

Rosalind answered, changing swiftly to falsetto. But in spite of the falsetto she was charming, she was adorable. She was better as Rosalind than she had been as Juliet; she was more coquettish, her touch was lighter, she had more movement and action, Withers said to himself beneath his breath, as he watched her. Nothing could be prettier than her innocent by-play, of the real conception of which she had no more knowledge than a kitten; yet it was charming by-play for all that. Beautiful indeed she was when she clasped her white arms above her head, to look her imaginary Orlando in the face; more adorably lovely still when she made her red lips pout in imitation of a kiss.

Then, all at once, there fell upon the air a terrible stillness.

Glorinda's voice had stopped with an awful suddenness. She was standing quite still, and she was looking at him, full, straight in the eyes. She had seen him through the bushes; he must have ventured too far beyond them.

Glorinda grew at first deadly white. Withers felt his own face to be turning to flame.

It was a full moment before she recovered herself. Then she went oncontinuing, however, to give the lines in a perfectly commonplace voice-in tones which it made Withers's heart ache to hear, they were so treacherously unsteady.

She did not go to the end of the scene. She gave a few more lines, and then stopped. With a sudden access of self-possession she turned toward him, looking him full in the eyes again; through the network of leaves her eyes seemed like two threatening flames in their brilliancy.

She spoke to the negroes, although Withers knew only too well whom she was really addressing. "You may go now; on-it's too hot, and I'm tired. Please go away at once."

I can't go

He knew himself to be dismissed, and yet he could not move; he felt himself to be glued to the spot. He must see her once, cost what it might; he must speak to her and gain her forgiveness.

The little audience had quickly scattered. Withers rose then, pushing his way toward the place where she had been standing. But she was no longer there; she had gone down into the hollow to undress, probably; he would wait. Then a low, stifled sob fell on his ear; the edge of a blue mantle caught his eye. It must be-it was Glorinda; she was lying on the ground, on the other side of the tree-trunk.

She had thrown herself prone upon the ground; she had hidden her face in her mantle; she was sobbing convulsively.

Withers was beside her in an instant. Unconsciously he put his arm about her, as he knelt over her.

"Oh, don't, don't, Miss Glory!" he cried out, as he tried to raise her, to clasp her waist, and to pull her upward. "I-I am a brute; I am ashamed; I can never forgive myself; but oh, for Heaven's sake don't weep! you will break my heart; you will make yourself ill;" and he went on struggling to raise her all the while, to turn her face toward him. But Glory still kept it hidden, now in her mantle, now in the masses of her hair. She was weeping still, but not so violently. She was sobbing softly as she let him pull her toward him, raising her till she was sitting beside him, with her face still buried in her hair. She kept on weeping, but less and less bitterly. Withers stroked the long tresses with his hand, as for a few brief seconds Glorinda's head lay, in the abandonment of her distress, upon his shoulder. He kept on talking all the while in the heat of his remorse and repentance.

"I can never forgive myself-never. I am ashamed,—I am ashamed even to ask you to forgive me for doing such an outrageous thing,-for spying on you like that."