said, artlessly. "I have not been well—I have
felt sadly weak and nervous lately; and I often
cry without reason when I am alone. I am
better now; I can answer you as I ought, Mr.
Gilmore, I can indeed."

"No, no, my dear," I replied; "we will
consider the subject as done with, for the present.
You have said enough to sanction my taking the
best possible care of your interests; and we
can settle details at another opportunity. Let
us have done with business, now, and talk of
something else."

I led her at once into speaking on other topics.
In ten minutes' time, she was in better spirits;
and I rose to take my leave.

"Come here again," she said, earnestly. "I
will try to be worthier of your kind feeling for
me and for my interests if you will only come
again."

Still clinging to the past—the past which I
represented to her, in my way, as Miss Halcombe
did in hers! It troubled me sorely to see her
looking back, at the beginning of her career,
just as I look back, at the end of mine.

"If I do come again, I hope I shall find you
better," I said—"better and happier. God
bless you, my dear."

She only answered by putting up her cheek
to me to be kissed. Even lawyers have hearts;
and mine ached a little as I took leave of her.

The whole interview between us had hardly
lasted more than half an hour—she had not
breathed a word, in my presence, to explain the
mystery of her evident distress and dismay at
the prospect of her marriage—and yet she had
contrived to win me over to her side of the
question, I neither knew how nor why. I had
entered the room, feeling that Sir Percival Glyde
had fair reason to complain of the manner in
which she was treating him. I left it, secretly
hoping that matters might end in her taking
him at his word and claiming her release. A
man of my age and experience ought to have
known better than to vacillate in this unreasonable
manner. I can make no excuse for myself;
I can only tell the truth, and say—so it was.

The hour for my departure was now drawing
near. I sent to Mr. Fairlie to say that I would
wait on him to take leave if he liked, but that
he must excuse my being rather in a hurry. He
sent a message back, written in pencil on a slip
of paper: "Kind love and best wishes, dear
Gilmore. Hurry of any kind is inexpressibly
injurious to me. Pray take care of yourself.
Good-by."

Just before I left, I saw Miss Halcombe, for
a moment, alone.

"Have you said all you wanted to Laura?"
she asked.

"Yes," I replied. "She is very weak and
nervous—I am glad she has you to take care of
her."

Miss Halcombe's sharp eyes studied my face
attentively.

"You are altering your opinion about Laura,"
she said. "You are readier to make allowances
for her than you were yesterday."

No sensible man ever engages, unprepared,
in a fencing match of words with a woman. I
only answered:

"Let me know what happens. I will do
nothing till I hear from you."

She still looked hard in my face. "I wish it
was all over, and well over, Mr. Gilmore—and
so do you." With those words she left me.

Sir Percival most politely insisted on seeing
me to the carriage door.

"If you are ever in my neighbourhood," he
said, "pray don't forget that I am sincerely
anxious to improve our acquaintance. The
tried and trusted old friend of this family will
be always a welcome visitor in any house of
mine."

A really irresistible man—courteous,
consisiderate, delightfully free from pride—a
gentleman, every inch of him. As I drove away
to the station, I felt as if I could cheerfully do
anything to promote the interests of Sir Percival
Glyde—anything in the world, except drawing
the marriage settlement of his wife.

SINDBAD COME TRUE.

THE story of Sindbad the Sailor in the
Arabian Nights, often referred to as the Arabian
Odyssey, is treated with all due respect in Sir
Emerson Tennent's work on Ceylon. Our old
friend Sindbad there appears as an "Arabian
mariner, whose voyages have had a world-wide
renown, and who, more than any other author,
ancient or modern, has contributed to
familiarise Europe with the name and wonders of
Serendib." Sir Emerson observes of him that
he could not have lived in the reign of
Haroun Alrashchid, who died in the year eight
hundred and eight, his narratives being based
on the recitals of Abou Zeyd and Massoudi,
geographers whose date is about fifty years later.
Concerning Ceylon, it is deduced from Sindbad's
narrative that, while the sea-coast was known
to the Arabians, the interior was little explored,
and was to them a world of mystery. "Hence,
what Sindbad relates of the shore and its
inhabitants is devoid of exaggeration: in his first
visit, the natives who received him were Malabars,
one of whom had learned Arabic, and they were
engaged in irrigating their rice lands from a
tank. These are incidents which are characteristics
of the north-western coast of Ceylon at
the present day; and the commerce for which
the island was remarkable in the ninth and
tenth centuries is implied by the expression of
Sindbad, that on the occasion of his next voyage,
when bearing presents and a letter from the
caliph to the King of Serendib, he embarked at
Bassorah in a ship, and with him were many
merchants."

Sir Emerson was told by a Kandzan chief of
the universal belief of his countrymen that the
elephants near death resort to a valley near
Saffragam, among the mountains to the east of
Adam's Peak, which is reached by a narrow pass
with walls of rock on either side, and that they