CHAPTER VIII.

"I hope you're a steady driver!" said she, quite pertly, snuggling beside him in her furs.

"Middling, middling!" replied Sir Andrew, clicking to his horses. "But I'll be better able to say when the journey's ended." He expected some natural feminine apprehension at a speech so sinister, but his companion seemed in no way put about.

"You're not a very punctual one at any rate," she pointed out with a mischievous little laugh. "I was almost starving, waiting on that quay."

"I'm sorry," he said, "the road for part of the way's a sheet of ice, and it took me longer than I calculated. The horses have been out to-day already; Mrs. Nish makes the most of them!"

"Mrs. Nish?" said the lady, wondering.

"Of the inn, you know; they're hers. She's mistress," explained Sir Andrew.

"Oh!" said the lady, after a little pause. "Then-then you'll be Mr. Nish?"

He laughed. "Not I," he answered. "Husbands in these parts are not so ready to play second fiddle. Mr. Nish,

poor soul! has lost his interest in horses; he's dead these twenty years." "Then you then you" she began and hesitated.

"I'm her post-boy; just Tam Dunn," replied Sir Andrew quickly, determined to play his part in the farce to the evening's end, and a movement of his companion's shoulder, which was close against his elbow, showed him she received the news with some surprise.

"Do you know?" she remarked with a ripple of amusement, "I-I took you, just for a little, for a gentleman."

"It's possible in the dark!" he said. "There's often very little difference between a post-boy and a gentleman in the dark."

"I feel much safer with a post

boy-driving," said the lady, and sank deeper in her furs; and for a mile they drove through the night in silence. He wondered who she was and why she came to the Schawfield Arms-a stranger-in such weather. There was something pleasant he found in her propinquity, and he was glad she had not taken her place inside. Only an engaging touch of devilry he concluded would have sent her up beside him. Now and then as the carriage swept round a corner her shoulder came softly up against his side and rested there a moment. Her furs, her hair, or her clothes exhaled at times a faint, sweet, alien perfume, more like a memory of the East he had seen than an actual scent; he hated common perfumes! Against the radiance of the carriage-lamps he saw his breath and hers commingle in a vapor. Heavens! what a world of silly social barriers, that breathing the same air and alone in the vast night-vault they should comport themselves like poor dumb creatures apprehensive of each other. For himself, he could have chattered like a brook, but he realized that upon him depended a post-boy's reputation.

The rumor of the tide on the shores of the long sea-arm they had left behind had died away before she spoke again. "I'm thinking of Miss Skene," said she reflectively, "and if she isn't sorry now she made up her mind to stay on the steamer."

"I beg your pardon," said Sir Andrew, baffled by this irrelevance.

"I

Her mood infected him a little, though every nerve had to be at the service of his horses. He, too, loved the night, and no longer rued his bargain with Tam Dunn. Her frankness manifestly came from a wholesome simple heart, and for the first time he began to build up to his inner vision something of a portrait made of the hurried glimpse he had got of her at the quay. She was as tall as Norah, with an open and expectant countenance, that doubtless would be pretty in a friendlier air; quick, fearless, sparkling eyes, with a hint of banter in them; a definite chin; and a confident stretch of a yard from the ground to the nave of the wheel by which she had climbed to the seat she occupied. All else wraps and furs, that are more than clothing,that are masks behind which women conceal the caste and soul. No, stay,there was her mouth, sharing a little of the mockery of her eyes; and a voice most pleasantly modulated. If he had actually been Tam Dunn he would have put to the test-for in that he had some experience-a slight suspicion of the gay coquette, due to her free-andeasy manner.

to have an embarrassing termination. A second's reflection on her tone convinced him she had asked the question in innocence, and he answered that everyone in Schawfield naturally knew Sir Andrew very well.

"A little-little eccentric, they say," she ventured, as if she had substituted on second thoughts the adjective for another not so delicate, and there she opened for Captain Cutlass the very source of fun.

"Daft!" said he, with his chuckle. "Positively daft! I see you have heard of him. But I warn you we'll listen to nothing worse than that to his discredit here in Schawfield"-this last to warn her from any confidence she might regret, rather than from any fear of his hearing things unflattering.

"I know nothing to his discredit," she retorted somewhat sharply, as if she resented the suspicion that she might discuss a baronet's failings with a postboy. "But one hears so many stories of his eccentricities. They say he courted his first wife by telegraph," and her hearer felt the pang of a sensitive heart that finds its sanctuaries invaded by the mob.

"His first wife!" he repeated. "There has not, you know, been a second."

"Oh, I know!" said the lady. "Not yet; but it's as good as settled that there's to be another Lady Schaw; isn't he busy looking for her?" and Sir Andrew realized that he had been singularly ingenuous in his estimate of the public interest in his affairs. "It's what an eccentric man like Sir Andrew Schaw requires before he's very much older, or he'll get into stupid ruts from which he'll never escape, and every year be more unlike his neigh

Her

"Good Lord!" he thought, "can she have discovered?" and not for the first

"You're all for uniformity, I can see!" remarked Sir Andrew, with no thought of irony, and she quickly turned her

head again to look at him in the inadequate light of the star Aldebaran: the remark was somewhat bookish, coming from a post-boy.

"Always!" she confessed, like one who has thought a good deal of the point before. "It would save a lot of trouble if you knew that men were all the same, like the hats they wear. I don't much care for oddities, and I'm sure they don't get as much enjoyment as if they were like other people. If Sir Andrew wasn't odd he wouldn't have very much trouble to find a wife: Lord knows there's plenty of women to pick and choose from!"

"I daresay he's too particular," said the driver.

"No doubt that's his own idea. That's men all over! They flatter themselves that they're very cautious, and have a choice even in picking wives and " She broke off the sentence with a titter of amusement. "Excuse me," she added, "but may I ask if you are married?"

"I'm not so fortunate," said Sir Andrew with sincerity.

"Very well, Tom Dunn," she proceeded with mock solemnity, "I'm glad to hear it, and let me tell you thisI've travelled, and I've learned it: men never reason about anything that's of the least importance to themselves; whatever they do, they do because they must. We're taught in the Shorter Catechism that men are left to the freedom of their own will, but you'll never make me believe it! Not when it comes to choosing wives! reasoning means no more than what we call an instinct in your horses; they have learned to make doors to get out and into a house by, and so have ants, but a world of human beings must be as droll for God to look at as a skep of bees."

Men's

"I used to think that too," said Captain Cutlass, wondering who the mischief he had got.

"And don't you think so now?" she asked him sharply.

"No," he answered, with profound conviction. "Meantime, at least, I'm back to the Shorter Catchism. I'm left to the freedom of my will; if I didn't know it, if I wasn't sure of it, I would kill myself to-morrow."

"For goodness sake!" cried the lady anxiously, "don't begin to preach; I simply can't stand preaching."

"Neither can I," said Captain Cutlass. "I preach so much to myself all week that I grudge the minister's turn on Sunday."

"And am I left to the freedom of my own will?" asked the lady.

"No," said Captain Cutlass; "nobody but me. Do you think you are?"

"Of course I don't," she admitted. "I'm the creature of instinct just as much as your horses."

"It's a pity, madam, you should think so," said Sir Andrew gravely. "We should all of us be sure of our own freedom and responsibility, though convinced that every one else is the slave of circumstance; it's the only conclusion that will make us happy and courageous, and at the same time leave us pity for others and no heart to judge and blame."

His words astonished her; she had been under the impression that she was talking perhaps a little above a postboy's head, and here he was talking just a little above hers.

"You must be-you must be fond of reading," she ventured shyly. "It's not every-man who thinks of these things," and the baronet with some chagrin remembered the reputation of Tam Dunn was to be considered.

"Oh! I never got that from reading," he assured her. "I never got from books but what I brought to them, but I'm like yourself: I have travelled, too; I have been a sailor."

"I was sure of it!" she cried trium

phantly. "I knew at once from something in your manner at the quay that you had seen the world; it's the only kind of education."

"And yet," said Sir Andrew, "almost all that I ever learned worth learning was got in Schawfield. I have no doubt you are fond of reading?"

"I never read-except a lot of silly stories."

"That's bad," said Sir Andrew; "one should never read any but the very best."

It's

"You mean," said she quickly, "that it should always be Shakespeare or nothing. That's ridiculous, Tom Dunn. Everybody has her own best; and mine is fairy tales and romantic novels. just an appetite-the taste for reading stories, a natural hunger of the mind. Some of us are satisfied and healthy fed with common steak and potatoes, and others must have fancy dishes and a lot of sauce. They're very silly if they're proud of it. There's Miss Skene she thinks because the cheapest kind of little story can make me laugh and cry that I'm to be pitied for my taste. The only difference between us that I can see is that it takes a whole box of books from the library to make her laugh or cry, and I can be as merry as I like or sad enough to shed buckets of tears for a penny."

"She ought to envy you your unjaded appetite," agreed Sir Andrew, and chuckled to himself, this time, at the havoc he played with Tam Dunn's reputation.

His eyes were often on the east, not for Aldebaran and the hunter, but for the moon, that should be now uprising over the farther hills, and in a little he saw her gild the ridge a while, and soar at last to light the lands of Schawfield gladly as if she had been sad away from them. How often had he watched her rise, far down the world in foreign harbors, and he home-sick? But not for her own sake did he want

the moon to-night; he sought another glimpse of his companion.

"Tell me," she said abruptly, seeing herself observed; "what is he like, Sir 'Andrew?"

"In looks, or character?" asked the driver, back to his jocular mood again. "In looks, of course; it's the first consideration for a woman."

"Not so odd as his reputation."

"And I was sure he would be!" she said in a tone of disappointment none the less. "I told Miss Skene he was likely to be a hunchback."

"Not SO very!" he assured her. "There's always a touch of vanity about the Schaws that has made them train like horses."

"He's quite accomplished too, I hear."

"That's news to me! He was beat this very afternoon at curling, andand you should hear him try to sing!"

"Oh, but there are other accomplishments, Tom Dunn. I'm assured he's quite poetical."

"I've seen some of his poetry-trash, ma'am! just fair trash, as you might expect from a baronet."

"H'm," she coughed; "perhaps you are not a very good judge. It's plain that you don't very much admire him."

"I've no ill-will to the fellow, I assure you, but we're rather critical of poetry in Schawfield, and I prefer Mr. Reginald Maurice's."

"Who's he?"

"A friend of Sir Andrew's cousin, Norah Grant."

The lady lapsed for a while in silence which she was the first herself to break with a remark that was more embarrassing than any that had gone before. "You haven't told me yet," she said, "anything of Sir Andrew's character."

"The best that can be said for him is that he's quite inoffensive," said her driver, and the words were no sooner uttered than the shying of one of his

horses threw the carriage across the road, and the lady was flung upon his lap. With a jerk of the reins he barely cleared the lip of the ditch; his fare recovered herself, and he had jumped to the bridles of his plunging charges and led them past the shadow that had startled them.

"You weren't afraid?" he said as he took his seat again, surprised that she had shown no sign of trepidation.

"Afraid!" she repeated; "I was never afraid of anything, Tom Dunn-except myself."

"The inn!" she repeated; "oh, dear, no; I'm going to Fancy Farm."

He could hardly trust his ears! "To-to Sir Andrew Schaw's?" he asked, and she laughed maliciously. "You needn't worry," she assured him; "I'll not repeat a word of what you said about his character or his poetry."

In silence he drove her through the village and over the river, along the avenue and up to the door of his dwelling, with some amusing speculation as to what his Aunt Amelia would say if she saw who brought her guest.

A minute later the stranger stood with hastily ejected baggage under the veranda, and watched him with amazement urge his horses with unreasonable haste back to the Schawfield Arms.

A study of fashion articles in the light of expositions of human character instead of human clothes reveals many a curious side-light on human nature. Vanities and weaknesses are naturally expected, and found; but there is, as well, a very curious and most modern note in the continual insistence upon the idea that the really well-dressed woman is independent of fashion. The modes of the moment are for the crowd, we are told-and told so frequently as to become very weary of the remark-while the few and distinguished choose their clothes for themselves independently of what anyone else is wearing. That this is not at all true can easily be observed even without a knowledge of all grades and cliques of averagely well-dressed society, which probably no one person could possess. Indeed quite independently of such knowledge one may

gather a very fair idea of the fallacy of the dictum by examining the pictures which accompany every fashion-plate nowadays. Here we can observe that the more the taste displayed in the dresses at any ceremony, entertainment, or wedding is labelled "unconventional," "daring," original," and so forth, the more it smacks of the freaks that are in vogue at the moment. Neither on paper nor in real life does it appear that women who count as well-dressed at all ever discard the outline, the air, the impression that is in fashion. The women who do so are driving in omnibuses from Hampstead and Kensington art schools, and look it. You can see them any day, in long garments of sad colors and no cut, large beads, freakish and unfashionable hats, and even stockings with big toes and sandals. They discard the current fashions, and with