dark-blue, naval uniform of the early years of the century, his brown hair being tied back into a queue. But for these details the resemblance to himself was absolute. And then, suddenly, with a sense of faintness as though his identity were slipping away from him, and his hold on actuality loosening as he imagined it might loosen in the moments immediately preceding death, Laurence remembered that he had worn a precisely similar costume—that of a naval lieutenant of the time of Nelson—at a fancy dress ball given in his honour, at the country house of certain of his mother's relations, on the eve of his twenty-first birthday. He had been mightily chaffed about his good looks and air of assured conquest upon the occasion in question; and had laughingly replied that he, too, intended to fight his battle of Trafalgar and win it, only that he should take jolly good care not to fall in the hour of success, but to survive and thoroughly enjoy the fruits of victory.

The miniatures were oval, each set in a plain gold band. Laurence turned them over in search of a possible inscription. Upon the reverse of the one were engraved the words—"Agnes, a gift to her dear cousin," and the date, "August 1803." Upon the other—"Laurence, a gift to his dear love," and the same date.

Rain had followed on the stormy splendours of the preceding evening; and as the young man raised his eyes absently and stared out of the great bay-window, he became sensible that the outlook was comfortless enough. The gardens and the distant view were blurred and blotted by driving mist; while, in the room itself, there reigned a singularly blear and cheerless light. A damp, earthy odour, moreover, pervaded the atmosphere, as though the moisture prevailing out of doors had gained access to the house. Carefully, rather sadly, Laurence laid the two miniatures side by side upon the filmy handkerchief. The radiant, pictured faces, the two graceful, young heads turned slightly towards each other as in mutual tenderness and sympathy, offered, he thought, pathetic contrast to the melancholy of this tearful morning. That this young man had in no way wronged the fair and gentle woman, he now felt assured. But that assurance, so perverse is human nature, did not serve to elate him. Far from it. As he looked first at the charming pair, and then at the driving mist, a sense of great loneliness, almost of desolation, came over him; while the word spectre—which, when employed yesterday by his lively hostess Mrs. Bellingham, had seemed of such meagre and even vulgar significance—now occurred to him with a new and immediate meaning. Spectral—that this room was in the present dreary light. While, if the idea 

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