"Yes, dear, she will. Order the Order the carriage. She shall not go to bed hungry-nobody shall that you are interested in.

"Oh, after dinner will do." Dinner was ordered immediately, and the brougham an hour after.

At dinner, Vizard gave them all the outline of the Edinburgh struggle, and the pros and cons; during which narrative his female hearers might have been observed to get cooler and cooler, till they reached the zero of perfect apathy. They listened in dead silence; but, when Harrington had done, Fanny said aside to Zoe, "It is all her own fault. What business have women to set up for doctors?"

"Of course not," said Zoe; "only we must not say so. He indulges us in our whims."

Warm partisan of immortal justice, when it was lucky enough to be backed by her affections, Miss Vizard rose directly after dinner, and, with a fine imitation of ardour, said she could lose no more time, she must go and put on her bonnet. "You will come with me, Fanny?"

When I was a girl; or a boy; I forget which-it is so long ago -a young lady, thus invited by an affectionate friend, used to do one of two things: nine times out of ten she sacrificed her inclination, and went; the tenth, she would make sweet, engaging excuses, and beg off. But the girls of this day have invented "silent volition." When you ask them to do anything they don't quite like, they look you in the face bland but full, and neither speak nor move. Miss Dover was a proficient in this graceful form of refusal by dead silence, and resistance by placid inertia. She just looked like the full moon in Zoe's face, and never budged. Zoe, being also a girl of the day, needed no interpretation. "Oh, very well,"

Dr Rhoda Gale never reflected much in the streets; they were to her a field of minute observation; but, when she got home, she sat down and thought over what she had been saying and doing, and puzzled over the character of the man who had relieved her hunger and elicited her autobiography. She passed him in review; settled in her mind that he was a strong character a manly man, who did not waste words; wondered a little at the way he had made her do whatever he pleased; blushed a little at the thought of having been so communicative; yet admired the man for having drawn her out so; and wondered whether she should see him again. She hoped she should. But she did not feel sure.

She sat half an hour thus-with one knee raised a little, and her hands interlaced by a fireplace with a burnt-out coal in it; and byand-by she felt hungry again. But she had no food, and no money.

She looked hard at her ring, and profited a little by contact with the sturdy good sense of Vizard.

She said to herself, "Men understand one another. I believe father would be angry with me for not."

Then she looked tenderly and wistfully at the ring, and kissed it,

and murmured, "Not to-night." You see she hoped she might have a letter in the morning, and so respite her ring.

Then she made light of it, and said to herself, "No matter; qui dort dîne."

But, as it was early for bed, and she could not be long idle, sipping no knowledge, she took up the last good German work that she had bought when she had money, and proceeded to read. She had no candle, but she had a lucifer-match or two, and an old newspaper. With this she made long spills, and lighted one, and read two pages by that paper torch; and lighted another before it was out, and then another, and so on in succession, fighting for knowledge against poverty, as she had fought for it against perfidy.

While she was thus absorbed, a carriage drew up at the door. She took no notice of that; but presently there was a rustling of silk on the stairs, and two voices, and then a tap at the door. "Come in," said she; and Zoe entered just as the last spill burned out.

Rhoda Gale rose, in a dark room; but a gaslight over the way just showed her figure. "Miss Gale?" said Zoe, timidly.

"I am Miss Gale," said Rhoda, quietly, but firmly.

"I am Miss Vizard, the gentleman's sister, that you met in Leices ter Square to-day;" and she took a cautious step towards her.

Rhoda's cheeks burned.

"Miss Vizard," she said, " excuse my receiving you so; but you may have heard I am very poor. My last candle is gone. But perhaps the landlady would lend me one. I don't know. She is very disobliging, and very cruel."

"Then she shall not have the honour of lending you a candle," said Zoe, with one of her gushes.

"Now, to tell the truth," said she, altering to the cheerful, "I'm rather glad. I would rather talk to you in the dark, for a little, just at first. May I?" By this time she had gradually crept up to Rhoda.

"I am afraid you must," said Rhoda. "But, at least, I can offer you a seat."

Zoe sat down, and there was an awkward silence.

"Oh dear," said Zoe; "I don't know how to begin. I wish you would give me your hand, as I can't see your face."

"With all my heart: there." (Almost in a whisper) "He has told me."

Rhoda put the other hand to her face, though it was so dark.

"Oh, Miss Gale, how could you! Only think! Suppose you had killed yourself, or made yourself very ill.

Your mother would have come directly and found you so; and only think how unhappy you would have made her!"

"Can I have forgotten my mother?" asked Rhoda of herself, but aloud.

"Not wilfully, I am sure. But you know geniuses are not always wise in these little things. They want some good humdrum soul to advise them in the common affairs of life. That want is supplied you now, for I am here; ha ha!"

"You are no more commonplace than I am; much less now, I'll be

bound."

"We will put that to the test," said Zoe, adroitly enough. "My view of all this is-that here is a young lady in want of money for a time, as everybody is, now and then, and that the sensible course is to borrow some, till your mother comes over with her apron full of dollars. Now I have twenty pounds to lend, and if you are so mighty sensible as you say, you won't refuse to borrow it."

"Oh, Miss Vizard, you are very good; but I am afraid and ashamed

to borrow. I never did such a . thing."

"Time you began, then. I have -often. But it is no use arguing. You must or you will get poor me finely scolded. Perhaps he was on his good behaviour with you, being a stranger; but at home they expect to be obeyed. He will be sure to say it was my stupidity, and that he would have made you directly."

"Do tell!" cried Rhoda, surprised into an idiom; "as if I'd have taken money from him."

"Why, of course not; but between us it is nothing at all. There" and she put the money in Rhoda's hand, and then held both hand and money rather tightly imprisoned in her larger palm; and began to chatter, so as to leave the other no opening. "Oh blessed darkness, how easy it makes things! does it not? I am glad there was no candle; we should have been fencing and blushing ever so long, and made such a fuss about nothing -and

This prattle was interrupted by Rhoda Gale putting her right wrist round Zoe's neck, and laying her forehead on her shoulder with a little sob. So then they both distilled the inevitable dew-drops.

But as Rhoda was not much given that way, she started up, and said, "Darkness? no; I must see the face that has come here to help me, and not humiliate me. That is the first use I'll make of the money. I am afraid you are rather plain, or you couldn't be so good as all this."

"No," said Zoe, "I'm not reckoned plain. Only as black as a coal."

"All the more to my taste," said Rhoda, and flew out of the room, and nearly stumbled over a figure

seated on a step of the staircase. "Who are you?" said she, sharply. "My name is Severne." "And what are you doing there?" "Waiting for Miss Vizard." "Come in then."

"She told me not."

"Then I tell you to. The idea! Miss Vizard!" "Yes."

"Please have Mr Severne in. Here he is, sitting-like grief-on the steps. I will soon be back."

She flew to the landlady. "Mrs Grip, I want a candle."

"Well, the shops are open," said the woman, rudely.

"Oh, I have no time. Here is a sovereign. Please give me two candles directly, candlesticks and all."

The woman's manner changed directly.

"You shall have them this moment, miss, and my own candlesticks, which they are plated."

She brought them, and advised her only to light one. "They don't carry well, miss," said she. "They are wax-or summat."

"Then they are summat," said Miss Gale, after a single glance at their composition.

"I'll make you a nice hot supper, miss, in half an hour," said the woman, maternally, as if she was going to give it her.

"No, thank you. Bring me a twopenny loaf, and a scuttle of coals."

"La, miss! no more than thatout of a sov'!"

"Yes-THE CHANGE."

Having shown Mrs Grip her father was a Yankee, she darted upstairs with her candles. Zoe came to meet her, and literally dazzled her.

Rhoda stared at her with amazement and growing rapture. "Oh, you beauty!" she cried, and drank her in from head to foot.

"Well," said she, drawing a long breath, "Nature, you have turned out a com-plete article this time, I reckon." Then, as Severne laughed merrily at this, she turned her candle and her eyes full on him very briskly. She looked at him for a moment, with a gratified eye at his comeliness; then she started. "Oh!" she cried.

He received the inspection merrily, till she uttered that ejaculation, then he started a little, and stared at her.

"We have met before," said she, almost tenderly.

"Have we ?" said he, putting on a mystified air.

She fixed him, and looked him through and through. "You don't-remember-me?" asked she. Then, after giving him plenty of time to answer, 66 Well, then, I must be mistaken;" and her words seemed to freeze themselves and her as they fell.

She turned her back on him, and said to Zoe, with a good deal of sweetness and weight, "I have lived to see goodness and beauty united. I will never despair of human nature."

This was too point-blank for Zoe; she blushed crimson, and said, archly, "I think it is time for me to run. Oh, but I forgot; here is my card; we are all at that hotel. If I am so very attractive, you will come and see me. We leave town very soon; will you ?"

"I will," said Rhoda.

"And since you took me for an old acquaintance, I hope you will treat me as one," said Severne, with consummate grace and assurance.

"I will, sir," said she, icily, and with a marvellous curl of the lip that did not escape him.

She lighted them down the stairs, gazed after Zoe, and ignored Severne altogether.

WITHIN a few miles of the city of Júnághar (more properly Júnágarh) there rises one of the most famous mountains in the world, though many of my readers may never have heard of it before. It is Gírnar, or the Lord of Mountains, also called the Sin-destroying Mount, the Mount of Safety, the Golden Mount, the Overshadowing Mount, and by many other similar names. High up on its first peak, above a stupendous precipice, and at a height of nearly 3000 feet, there is a series of magnificent and beautiful temples, sacred to the religion of the Jains a corrupt form of Búdhism and one of which contains their famous Perspiring Statue. On the summit of that peak there is a temple containing a most ancient and sacred Hindu image or rather stone, the Amba Mata or Mother of Gods. The peaks beyond have sacred shrines to which hundreds of thousands of pilgrims yearly ascend. Hundreds of naked devotees besmeared with paint or ashes are scattered over this mountain, exposing themselves to almost incredible hardships. Its last peak, the Dread Mother, shunned by pilgrims, is sacred to Kali or Durga, the blood-stained spouse of Síva the Destroyer; and that peak, with the jungle at its base, is infested by the worst of all devotees-Aghoras, who live on carrion and human flesh, and shun the face of mankind.

Looking up to Gírnar from Júnághar or its neighbourhood, this mountain appears as one lofty, ribbed, and apparently inaccessible peak, of a grey pink and cream colour, from the granite, quartz, and other primitive rocks of which it is

composed, and it presents this appearance all the way up from the sea; but from the road between Júnághar and Jaitpore it is seen laterally as an immense mountain mass, having six separate sharp peaks rising from a base that is itself about 3000 feet high, and affording ample room for any pilgrim to kill himself by climbing, or by throwing himself over precipices as formerly was sometimes done. I not only went up this mountain, but stayed upon it for a week, sleeping usually where the Jain temples are, not far from the summit of the first peak. The Júnághar Durbar did everything to assist me in this, and, otherwise, it would have been difficult to have remained even a night on Gírnar. They placed at my disposal a number of dooly bearers to carry me up the mountain and upon it; and they also attached to me (for reasons of their own) a clever young Brahman, who spoke English, and had remarkably prominent linguistic eyes. This gentleman's name was Muggenlal Trikomji Boosch; but I usually called him the Man of Pleasure, from the meaning of Muggenlal, and because there was no pleasure in his life, he being naturally of a most serious turn of character, and my visit causing him a great deal of overwork and constant anxiety of mind. They also gave me quite another sort of man, a general attendant, called Kooshal, who was to look after my supplies and comfort in general. This was an invaluable person, and he looked as if he had just stepped out of the Arabian Nights. He had two eyes, but one of them was so large, prominent, and luminous, as quite to eclipse the other, and give him the