Under False Pretences. Sergeant Adeline

say with jesting Pilate, What is truth? but do not wait for an answer.'"

      "I think you have both quoted quite enough," said Kitty, lightly. "You forget how little I understand of these deep subjects. I don't know how it is, but Percival always says the things most calculated to annoy people; he never visits papa's studio without abusing modern art, or meets a doctor without sneering at the medical profession, or loses an opportunity of telling Elizabeth, who loves truth for its own sake, that he enjoys trickery and falsehood, and thinks it clever to tell lies."

      "Very well put, Kitty," said Percival, approvingly. "You have hit off your brother's amiable character to the life. Like the child in the story, I could never tell why people loved me so, but now I know."

      There was a general laugh, and also a discordant clatter at the other end of the room, where the children, hitherto unnoticed, had come to blows over a broken toy.

      "What a noise they make!" said Percival, with a frown.

      "Perhaps they had better go away," murmured Mrs. Heron, gently. "Dear Lizzy, will you look after them a little? They are always good with you."

      The girl rose and went silently towards the three children, who at once clustered round her to pour their woes into her ear. She bent down and spoke to them lovingly, as it seemed, and finally quitted the room with one child clinging round her neck, and the others hanging to her gown. Percival gave vent to a sudden, impatient sigh.

      "Miss Murray is fond of children," said Vivian, looking after her pleasantly.

      "And I am not," snapped Kitty, with something of her brother's love of opposition in her tone. "I hate children."

      "You! You are only a child yourself," said he, turning towards her with a kindly look in his grave eyes, and an unwonted smile. But Kitty's wrath was appeased by neither look nor smile.

      "Then I had better join my compeers," she said, tartly. "I shall at least get the benefit of Elizabeth's affection for children."

      Vivian's chair was close to hers, and the tea-table partly hid them from Percival's lynx eyes. Mrs. Heron was half asleep. So there was nothing to hinder Mr. Rupert Vivian from putting out his hand and taking Kitty's soft fingers for a moment soothingly in his own. He did not mean anything but an elderly-brotherly, patronising sort of affection by it; but Kitty was "thrilled through every nerve" by that tender pressure, and sat mute as a mouse, while Vivian turned to her step-mother and began to speak.

      "I had some news this morning of my sister," he said. "You heard of the sad termination to her engagement?"

      "No; what was that?"

      "She was to be married before Christmas to a Mr. Luttrell; but Mr. Luttrell was killed a short time ago by a shot from his brother's gun when they were out shooting together."

      "How very sad!"

      "The brother has gone—or is going—abroad; report says that he takes the matter very much to heart. And Angela is going to live with Mrs. Luttrell, the mother of these two men. I thought these details might be interesting to you," said Vivian, looking round half-questioningly, "because I understand that the Luttrells are related to your young friend—or cousin—Miss Murray."

      "Indeed? I never heard her mention the name," said Mrs. Heron.

      Vivian thought of something that he had recently heard in connection with Miss Murray and the Luttrell family, and wondered whether she knew that if Brian Luttrell died unmarried she would succeed, to a great Scotch estate. But he said nothing more.

      "Where is Elizabeth?" said Percival, restlessly. "She is a great deal too much with these children—they drag the very life out of her. I shall go and find her."

      He marched away, noting as he went, with much dissatisfaction, that Mrs. Heron was inviting Vivian to dinner, and that he was accepting the invitation.

      He went to the top of the house, where he knew that a room was appropriated to the use of the younger children. Here he found Elizabeth for once without the three little Herons. She was standing in the middle of the room, engaged in the prosaic occupation of folding up a table-cloth.

      He stood in the doorway looking at her for a minute or two before he spoke. She was a tall girl, with fine shoulders, and beautiful arms and hands. He noticed them particularly as she held up the cloth, shook it out, and folded it. A clear, fine-grained skin, with a colour like that of a June rose in her cheeks, well-opened, calm-looking, grey-blue eyes, a mass of golden hair, almost too heavy for her head; a well-cut profile, and rather stately bearing, made Elizabeth Murray a noticeable person even amongst women more strictly beautiful than herself. She was poorly and plainly dressed, but poverty and plainness became her, throwing into strong relief the beauty of her rose-tints and finely-moulded figure. She did not start when she saw Percival at the door; she smiled at him frankly, and asked why he had come.

      "Do you know anything of the Luttrells?" he asked, abruptly.

      "The Luttrells of Netherglen? They are my third cousins."

      "You never speak of them."

      "I never saw them."

      "Do you know what has happened to one of them."

      "Yes. He shot his brother by mistake a few days ago."

      "I was thinking rather of the one who was killed," said Percival. "Where did you see the account? In the newspaper?"

      "Yes." Then she hesitated a little. "And I had a letter, too."

      "From the Luttrells themselves?"

      "From their lawyer."

      "And you held your tongue about it?"

      "There was nothing to say," said Elizabeth, with a smile.

      Percival shrugged his shoulders, and went back to the drawing-room.

CHAPTER IX.

       Table of Contents

ELIZABETH'S WOOING.

       Table of Contents

      Percival and his friend dined with the Herons that evening. Mr. Heron was an artist by profession; he was a fair, abstracted-looking man, with gold eye-glasses, which he was always sticking ineffectually upon the bridge of his nose and nervously feeling for when they tumbled down again. He had painted several good pictures in his time, and was in the habit of earning a fairly good income; but owing to some want of management, either on his part or his wife's, his income never seemed quite large enough for the needs of the household. The servants' wages were usually in arrear; the fittings of the house were broken and never repaired; there were wonderful gaps in the furniture and the china, which nobody ever appeared to think of filling up. Rupert remembered the ways of the house when he had boarded there, and was not surprised to find himself dining upon mutton half-burnt and half-raw, potatoes more like bullets than vegetables, and a partially cooked rice-pudding, served upon the remains of at least three dinner-services, accompanied by sour beer and very indifferent claret. Percival did not even pretend to eat; he sat back in his chair and declared, with an air of polite disgust, that he was not hungry. Rupert made up for his deficiencies, however; he swallowed what was set before him and conversed with his hostess, who was quite unconscious that anything was amiss. Mrs. Heron had a vague taste for metaphysics and political economy; she had beautiful theories of education, which she was always intending, at some future time, to put into practice for the benefit of her three little boys, Harry, Willy, and Jack. She spoke of these theories, with her blue eyes fixed on vacancy and her fork poised gracefully in the air, while Vivian laboured distastefully through his dinner, and Percival frowned in silence at the table-cloth.

      "I have always thought," Mrs. Heron was saying sweetly, "that children ought not to be too much controlled. Their