John Charteris, acting as Rudolph Musgrave's friend, had patched up this arrangement; and the colonel and Mrs. Pendomer, so rumor ran, were to be married very quietly after a decent interval. Remained only to deliberate whether this sop to the conventions should be accepted as sufficient.

These details, indeed, were never officially made public, since a discreet police force "found no clues"; for Fred Musgrave (of King's Garden), as befitted the dead man's well-to-do brother, had been at no little pains to insure constabulary shortsightedness, in preference to having the nature of Scott Musgrave's recreations unsympathetically aired.

Among the men of Rudolph Musgrave's generationthose gallant oldsters who were born and bred, and meant to die, in Lichfield,Patricia did not lack for admirers.

Virginia had been nurse in turn to all the children of Rudolph Musgrave's parents; and to the end of her life she appeared to regard the emancipation of the South's negroes as an irrelevant vagary of certain "low-down" and probably "ornery" Yankees as an, in short, quite eminently "tacky" proceeding which very certainly in no way affected her vested right to tyrannize over the Musgrave household.

There was no period in Rudolph Musgrave's life when he could not look back upon this instant and exult because it had been his.

It must be enregistered, not to the man's credit, but rather as a simple fact, that it was never within Colonel Musgrave's power to forget the incident immediately recorded.

For the rest, his deportment in all functions of butlership is best described as super-Chesterfieldian; and, indeed, he was generally known to be a byblow of Captain Beverley Musgrave's, who in his day was Lichfield's arbiter as touched the social graces.

Did you think I was by any chance referring to the man in the moon and the Queen of Sheba?" If ever amazement showed in a man's eyes, it shone now in Rudolph Musgrave's.

He laughed, but she could see how deeply he had been pained by Musgrave's suspicions.

Musgrave's heart was sick within him as he heard the same notes in her voice that echoed in Anne's voice when she spoke of her husband.

Having reached this satisfactory conclusion, Anne began to laughat Musgrave's lack of penetration, probably.

Musgrave's face was alert.

II Into Colonel Musgrave's mental processes during this period it will not do to pry too closely.

Attempting to do that, you became in Rudolph Musgrave's honest eyes regrettably flippant.

He assumed possession of Colonel Musgrave's hand as though the action were a matter of course.

Would it not be, instead, a grateful task more fully to depicture how Rudolph Musgrave's love of Anne won finally to its reward, and these two shared the evening of their lives in tranquil service of unswerving love come to its own at last?

No, the life of Rudolph Musgrave had never risen to the plane of dignity, not even to that of seeming to Rudolph Musgrave a connected and really important transaction on Rudolph Musgrave's part.

Nor yours, nor yours; But Musgrave's love.

Dissemble, till convenient time may serve To think on this despite and Musgrave's love.

Let none hereafter fix her maiden love Too firm on any, lest she feel with me Musgrave's revolt and his inconstancy.

Then doom the earl, and bless poor Musgrave's eyes With Honorea's love; for this in thy hands lies.

On leaving Winson the Coln widens out considerably, and for the next two miles becomes the boundary between Mr. Wykeham-Musgrave's property of Barnsley and the manor of Ablington.

But now, to Captain Musgrave's discomfort, Cynthia Allonby had begun to weep heartbrokenly.

I have taken several drives with Barbara in my new pony-carriageit is a curious sensation being able to order it without being subject to fathers vetoand we have skirted our own park, and have peeped through his close wooden palings at Mr. Musgrave's, have strained our eyes and stretched our necks to catch a glimpse of his old gray house, nestling low down among its elms.

Is not the tale safely buried in the deep grave of Musgrave's and my two hearts? I raise my head, and twice essay to speak.