violently as I turned round. Miss Fairlie was
approaching me from the farther end of the
room.

She stopped and hesitated, when our eyes
met, and when she saw that we were alone.
Then, with that courage which women lose so
often in the small emergency, and so seldom in
the great, she came on nearer to me, strangely
pale and strangely quiet, drawing one hand after
her along the table by which she walked, and
holding something at her side, in the other,
which was hidden by the folds of her dress.

"I only went into the drawing-room," she
said, "to look for this. It may remind you of
your visit here, and of the friends you leave
behind you. You told me I had improved very
much when I did it—and I thought you might
like—— "

She turned her head away, and offered me a
little sketch drawn throughout by her own
pencil, of the summer-house in which we had
first met. The paper trembled in her hand as
she held it out to me—trembled in mine, as I
took it from her.

I was afraid to say what I felt—I only
answered: "It shall never leave me; all my life
long it shall be the treasure that I prize most.
I am very grateful for it—very grateful to you,
for not letting me go away without bidding you
good-by."

"Oh!" she said, innocently, "how could I
let you go, after we have passed so many happy
days together!"

"Those days may never return again, Miss
Fairlie—my way of life and yours are very far
apart. But if a time should come, when the
devotion of my whole heart and soul and strength
will give you a moment's happiness or spare you
a moment's sorrow, will you try to remember the
poor drawing-master who has taught you? Miss
Haicombe has promised to trust me—will you
promise, too?"

The farewell sadness in the kind blue eyes
shone dimly through her gathering tears.

"I promise it," she said, in broken tones.
"Oh, don't look at me like that! I promise it
with all my heart."

I ventured a little nearer to her, and held out
my hand.

"You have many friends who love you, Miss
Fairlie. Your happy future is the dear object
of many hopes. May I say, at parting, that it
is the dear object of my hopes too?"

The tears flowed fast down her cheeks. She
rested one trembling hand on the table to steady
herself, while she gave me the other. I took it
in mine—I held it fast. My head drooped over
it, my tears fell on it, my lips pressed it not
in love; oh, not in love, at that last moment,
but in the agony and the self-abandonment of
despair.

"For God's sake, leave me!" she said, faintly.

The confession of her heart's secret burst
from her in those pleading words. I had no
right to hear them, no right to answer them:
they were the words that banished me, in the
name of her sacred weakness, from the room.
It was all over. I dropped her hand; I said no
more. The blinding tears shut her out from my
eyes, and I dashed them away to look at her for
the last time. One look, as she sank into a
chair, as her arms fell on the table, as her fair
tiead dropped on them wearily. One farewell
look; and the door had closed on her—the great
gulf of separation had opened between us—the
image of Laura Fairlie was a memory of the
past already.

FULL OF LIFE.

SOME weeks ago we gathered from Sir
Emerson Tennent's exhaustive work on
Ceylon, a few notes on the home ways of the
elephant. From the same source we now derive
more knowledge of the marvels of a place teeming
with life. So full of life is Ceylon, that the
great forest trees disappear almost instantaneously
after they have fallen to the ground,
being reduced to dust by the white ants and
beetles. Let a man come near with a gun, and
a palmyra palm shall seem to have no creature
in it, when there is a flock of monkeys in
possession hidden cunningly behind its leaves. But
let a dog follow, and the desire of all the
monkeys to look at the dog will set them peeping.
Ouanderu— written in English Wanderoo—
means monkey in the native tongue, and there
are in Ceylon four kinds of Wanderoo. The
Singhalese say that the remains of a monkey
never are found in the forest, and they have a
proverb that "he who has seen a white crow,
the nest of a paddy bird, a straight cocoa-nut
tree, or a dead monkey, will live for ever." Even
at Gibraltar it is believed that the body of a dead
monkey is never found on the rock.

There are two kinds of the graceful little
Loris or Ceylon sloth, a creature that can move
so stealthily as to come unawares on a bird, and
seize it before the alarm of its presence has been
given. Its large bright eyes are prized by the
natives as charms or love potions, and it is said
that they extract them cruelly by holding the
little animal to the fire until its eyeballs burst.
Equally cruel is the mode of taking tortoiseshell
from the hawksbill turtle, by which it is supplied
to commerce. If taken after death the shell is
clouded and milky. Therefore, the turtles are
seized as they repair to the shore to deposit their
eggs, and are hung over fires until heat makes the
desired plates start from the bone to which they
are attached. Then the miserable creatures are
allowed to escape to the water, and so strong is
the instinct at the period of breeding that the
turtles are found to return again and again to
the same spot, though at each visit they may
undergo a repetition of the same torture. At
Celebes, the turtle is killed by blows on the head,
and the shell is detached by use of boiling water.
Indifference to the sufferings of animals is
a characteristic of the Ceylon natives.
Disciples of Buddha, who account it a crime to
take life, are dead to any sense of pain they
may inflict. Pigs with their fore and hind legs
tied together by a cord, are carried dangling on