to live without working, and, with a hundred and fifty pounds per annum, could not lack bread and cheese. On his father's death he went to travel on the Continent. He walked wherever walking was possible, carrying his own knapsack, spending little, and seeing much. After more than two years' absence, he returned to England and made his way to Oldchester to see his Aunt Jane, with whom he had maintained an intermittent correspondence. There he found Constance, whom he last remembered as a sallow, self-sufficient schoolgirl, grown to a beautiful young woman. Her sallowness had turned into a creamy pallor, and her self-sufficiency was mitigated, to the masculine judgment, by the depth and softness of a pair of fine dark eyes. Owen, on his part, made a decidedly favourable impression on his cousin. He was not handsome—which mattered little—nor fashionably dressed—which mattered more; but he was well made, and had the grace which belongs to youthful health and strength. And he had, too, that indefinable tone of manner which ensured his recognition as an English gentleman. Constance was by no means insensible to this attraction. If she had not the sentiments which originate the finest manners, she had the perceptions which recognize them. When Mary Raynes and the Burnet girls criticized the roughness of Owen's demeanour, comparing it with Theodore Bransby's "polish," she knew they were wrong. Theodore always behaved with the greatest propriety; but between his manners and Owen's there was the same sort of difference as between a native and a foreigner speaking the same language. The foreigner may often be more accurately correct of the two on minor points, but it is an affair of conscious acquirement, and must inevitably break down now and then; whereas the native talks as naturally as he breathes, and can no more make certain mistakes than an oak tree can put forth willow leaves. Then Owen was very amusing company when he chose to be so,—and he usually did choose to be so when at his Aunt Jane's; and he had good old blood in his veins. This latter fact gave a certain piquancy, in Constance's opinion, to his political theories, which were opposed to the staunch Tory traditions of his family. Constance frequently took her cousin to task on this subject; but with the comfortable conviction to sweeten their controversy that a Rivers could afford to indulge in a little democratic heresy, just as Lord Castlecombe could afford to wear a shabbier coat than any of his tenants.

All these considerations, together with the crowning circumstance