'Only to see you! She must have had something very important to say to you, I should think, or she would scarcely have come at such a time.'

He glanced at his daughter sharply as he said this, but did not question her farther, though he would have liked to do so. He had a shrewd suspicion that this visit of Lady Laura's bore some reference to George Fairfax. Had there been a row at the Castle, he wondered? and had my lady come to bully her protégée ?

'I don't suppose they would show her much mercy if she stood in the way of their schemes,' he said to himself. 'His brother's death makes this young Fairfax a very decent match. The property must be worth five or six thousand a year-five or six thousand. I wonder what Daniel Granger's income is? Nearer fifty thousand than five, if I may believe what I have been told.'

Mr. Granger and his daughter called at Mill Cottage next day; the fair Sophia with a somewhat unwilling aspect, though she was decently civil to Mr. and Miss Lovel. Her father had brought her to look at some of Clarissa's sketches, he told his friends.

'I want her to take more interest in landscape art, Mr. Lovel,' he said, and I think your daughter's example may inspire her. Miss Lovel seems to me to have a real genius for landscape. I saw some studies of ferns and underwood that she had done at Hale— full of freedom and of feeling. Sophia doesn't draw badly, but she wants feeling.'

The young lady thus coldly commended gave her head rather a supercilious toss as she replied,

'You must remember that I have higher duties than sketching, papa,' she said; I cannot devote all my existence to ferns and blackberry-bushes.'

'O, yes, of course; you've your schools, and that kind of thing; but you might give more time to art than you do, especially if you left the management of the house more to Mrs. Plumtree. I think you waste time and energy upon details.'

'I hope I know my duty as mistress of a large establishment, papa, and that I shall never feel the responsibility of administering a large income any less than I do at present. It would be a bad thing for you if I became careless of your interests in order to roam about sketching toadstools and blackberry-bushes.'

Mr. Granger looked as if he were rather doubtful upon this point, but it was evidently wisest not to push the discussion too far.

Will you be so kind as to show us your portfolio, Miss Lovel?' he asked.

'Of course she will,' answered her father promptly; 'she will only be too happy to exhibit her humble performances to Miss Granger. Bring your drawing-book, Clary.'

Clarissa would have given the world to refuse. A drawing-book is in some measure a silent confidante. She did not know how far her random sketches-some of them mere vagabondage of the pencil, jotted down half unconsciously-might betray the secrets of her inner life to the cold eyes of Miss Granger.

'I'd better bring down my finished drawings, papa; those that were mounted for you at Belföret,' she said.

'Nonsense, child; Mr. Granger wants to see your rough sketches, not those stiff schoolgirl things, which I suppose were finished by your drawing-master. Bring that book you are always scribbling in. The girl has a kind of passion for art,' said Mr. Lovel, rather fretfully; she is seldom without a pencil in her hand. What are you looking for, Clarissa, in that owlish way? There's your book on that table.'

He pointed to the volume-Clarissa's other self and perpetual companion the very book she had been sketching in when George Fairfax surprised her by the churchyard wall. There was no help for it, no disobeying that imperious finger of her father's; so she brought the book and laid it meekly open before Sophia Granger.

The father and daughter turned over the leaves together. It was a book of bits:' masses of foliage, bramble, and bird's-nest; here the head of an animal, there the profile of a friend; anon a bit of still life; a vase of flowers, with the arabesqued drapery of a curtain for a background; everywhere the evidence of artistic feeling and a practised hand, everywhere a something much above a schoolgirl's art.

She

Miss Granger looked through the leaves with an icy air. was obliged to say 'Very pretty,' or 'Very clever,' once in a way; but this cold praise evidently cost her a severe effort. Not so her father. He was interested in every page, and criticised everything with a real knowledge of what he was talking about, which made Clarissa feel that he was at least no pretender as to the love of art; that he was not a man who bought pictures merely because he was rich and it was the right thing to do.

They came presently to the pages Clarissa had covered at Hale Castle-bits of familiar landscape, glimpses of still-life in the Castle rooms, and lightly-touched portraits of the Castle guests. There was one head that appeared very much oftener than others, and Clarissa felt herself blushing a deeper red every time Mr. Granger paused to contemplate this particular likeness.

He lingered longer over each of these sketches, with rather a puzzled air, and though the execution of these heads was very spirited, he forbore to praise.

There is one face here that I see a good deal of, Miss Lovel,' he said at last. I think it is Mr. Fairfax, is it not?'

'I

Clarissa looked at a profile of George Fairfax dubiously.

'Yes, I believe I meant that for Mr. Fairfax; his is a very easy face to draw, much easier than Lady Geraldine's, though her features are so regular. All my portraits of her are failures.'

'I have only seen one attempt at Lady Geraldine's portrait in this book, Miss Lovel,' said Sophia.

'I have some more on loose sheets of paper, somewhere; and then I generally destroy my failures, if they are quite hopeless.'

'Mr. Fairfax would be quite flattered if he could see how often you have sketched him,' Sophia continued blandly.

Clarissa thought of the leaf George Fairfax had cut out of her drawing-book; a recollection which did not serve to diminish her embarrassment.

'I daresay Mr. Fairfax is quite vain enough without any flattery of that kind,' said Mr. Lovel. And now that you have exhibited your rough sketches, you can bring those mounted drawings, if you like, Clarissa.'

This was a signal for the closing of the book, which Clarissa felt was intended for her relief. She put the volume back upon the little side-table from which she had taken it, and ran upstairs to fetch her landscapes. These Miss Granger surveyed in the same cold tolerant manner with which she had surveyed the sketch-book-the manner of a person who could have done much better in that line herself, if she had cared to do anything so frivolous.

After this Mr. Lovel and his daughter called at the Court; and the acquaintance between the two families being thus formally inaugurated by a dinner and a couple of morning calls, Mr. Granger came very often to the Cottage, unaccompanied by the inflexible Sophia, who began to feel that her father's infatuation was not to be lessened by any influence of hers, and that she might just as well let him take his own way. It was an odious unexpected turn which events had taken; but there was no help for it. Her confidential maid, Hannah Warman, reminded her of that solemn truth whenever she ventured to touch upon this critical subject.

'If your pa was a young man, miss, or a man that had admired a great many ladies in his time, it would be quite different,' said the astute Warman; but never having took notice of any one before, and taking such particular notice of this young lady, makes it clear to any one that's got eyes. Depend upon it, miss, it won't be long before he'll make her an offer; and it isn't likely she'll refuse him-not with a ruined pa to urge her on!'

'I suppose not,' said Sophia disconsolately.

'And after all, miss, he might have made a worse choice. If he were to marry one of those manoeuvring middle-aged widows we've met so often out visiting, you'd have had a regular stepmother, that would have taken every bit of power out of your hands, and treated you like a child. But Miss Lovel seems a very nice young

lady, and being so near your own age will be quite a companion for you.'

'I don't want such a companion. There is no sympathy between Miss Lovel and me; you ought to know that, Warman. Her tastes are the very reverse of mine, in every way. It's not possible we can ever get on well together; and if papa marries her, I shall feel that he is quite lost to me. Besides, how could I ever have any feeling but contempt for a girl who would marry for money? and of course Miss Lovel could only marry papa for the sake of his money.' 'It's done so often nowadays. And sometimes those matches turn out very well-better than some of the love-matches, I've heard say.'

'It's no use discussing this hateful business, Warman,' Miss Granger answered haughtily. Nothing could change my opinion.'

And in this inflexible manner did Daniel Granger's daughter set her face against the woman he had chosen from among all other women for his wife. He felt that it was so, and that there would be a hard battle for him to fight in the future between these two influences; but no silent opposition of his daughter's could weaken his determination to win Clarissa Lovel, if she was to be won by him.

SHOT AND SHELL

An ancient Welsh bard-Ap- something or other, I forget whatsings somewhere, that if the sons of a country only possess courage, that country will be ever preeminent among the nations of the earth.' A charming sentiment in the days when it was made use of, doubtless; and one can imagine the thrill of excitement with which the fiery Celts gripped their swords, as they heard it poured out among a flood of consonants, after some rude banquet. But, lamentable as the confession is, in this nineteenth century of ours, nous avons changé tout cela; and courage-in the fighting sense of the wordis now no use whatever.

Without going into a dissertation upon destructive missiles in general, which would last as long as a Lapland winter, and be twice as dry, we can all recognise the steady march of improvement that has taken place in such articles, and feel that, had as much ingenuity and labour been devoted to the improvement of the human race as there has to perfect the engines for its destruction, we should be very near the millennium indeed. In the old days missiles were much less thought of than men; and listening to stern old Picton's advice to his stormers, Cold iron, men! trust to your cold iron !' we can picture the bloody hand-to-hand fights, and exhibition of that bull-dog ferocity which made Napoleon I. declare that he'd beaten the English half a dozen times, but they wouldn't know it.' Now, as has been said before, all this is changed; and the fact of batteries being badly served in action, or the ammunition not coming up in time, may shake the mightiest throne in Christendom till it totters to the ground.

In the great European war ended but yesterday we heard little of the men in comparison with the guns. One day an account was given of the awful execution done by the mitrailleuse; another, a telegram tells of the splendid working of the Prussian batteries, or of the shortcomings of the French ammunition-train. Amid these events, where both success and failure carry their own lessons to powers neutral now, but who may be whelmed in war to-morrow, some account of our own military establishments and means of providing destructive missiles may not prove uninteresting. We have four great dépôts for the storage of munitions of war, viz. Woolwich, Chatham, Devonport, and Portsmouth; the last three, how-. ever, are subordinate to the former, inasmuch as they are only issuing stations, whereas Woolwich is a manufacturing one.

The Royal Arsenal at Woolwich being the nucleus of all our war