her beautiful."

"Nor I."

"She bowed with remarkable grace, too. I think, John, for the first time in our lives, we may say we have seen a LADY."

"Most certainly a lady."

"Nay, I only meant that, girl as she is, she is evidently accustomed to what is called 'society.' Which makes it the more likely that her father is the Mr. March who was cousin to the Brithwoods. An odd coincidence."

"A very odd coincidence."

After which brief reply John relapsed into taciturnity.

More than once that morning we recurred to the subject of our neighbours—that is, I did—but John was rather saturnine and uncommunicative. Nay, when, as Mrs. Tod was removing the breakfast, I ventured to ask her a harmless question or two—who Mr. March was, and where he came from?—I was abruptly reproved, the very minute our good landlady had shut the door, for my tendency to "gossip."

At which I only laughed, and reminded him that he had ingeniously scolded me after, not before, I had gained the desired information—namely, that Mr. March was a gentleman of independent property—that he had no friends hereabouts, and that he usually lived in Wales.

"He cannot be our Mr. March, then."

"No," said John, with an air of great relief.

I was amused to see how seriously he took such a trifle; ay, many a time that day I laughed at him for evincing such great sympathy over our neighbours, and especially—which was plain enough to see, though he doubtless believed he entirely disguised it—for that interest which a young man of twenty would naturally take in a very charming and personable young woman. Ay, naturally, as I said to myself, for I admired her too, extremely.

It seems strange now to call to mind that morning, and our light-hearted jests about Miss March. Strange that Destiny should often come thus, creeping like a child to our very doors; we hardly notice it, or send it away with a laugh; it comes so naturally, so simply, so accidentally, as it were, that we recognise it not. We cannot believe that the baby intruder is in reality the king of our fortunes; the ruler of our lives. But so it is continually; and since IT IS, it must be right.

We finished the morning by reading Shakspeare—Romeo and Juliet—at which the old folio seemed naturally to open. There is a time—a sweet time, too, though it