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ALICE LAUDER.

probably shown a friendly and open admiration for his fair new friend. “What does it matter?” she asked herself a dozen times in that one hour; but to that question there was no reply. Still those past days started into life, in spite of all her remonstrances with herself, and they appeared with a colour and pattern of their own far more vivid than anything of the present. It sometimes happens, when a panelled picture, long fixed against the wall, is moved away, that one is startled to see the long forgotten colour and gilding of a bygone day as fresh as the hour they were laid on. So it was with that swiftly passing voyage in the “Suez,” whose every little incident rose again with irrepressible distinctness to her mind. Again the air of the tropics blew on her uncovered hair, and the unceasing recitative of the surf boomed again in her ears, and the huge palm-trees creaked and rustled overhead; and strange scarlet blossoms burned like live coals among the green, while the sea breeze, laden with sparkling particles of salt and spray, flowed over the island. And there was another voice besides that of the surf speaking in her ears; but she refused to listen to it, and in hopes of changing the subject she went again and again over all the picturesque details which the gossip of the little place had

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