THE RESULT OF PERCIVAL'S ECONOMY.

UDITH'S letter lay on the table still. Bertie had not come to claim it, and she had not come home.

Having ascertained these facts, Percival went to his own room, and finding his tea set ready for him, he ate and drank hurriedly, hesitating whether he should go and meet her. Standing by the window, he looked out on the darkening street. All vulgarity of detail was lost in the softening dusk, and there was something almost picturesque in the opposite roof, whose outline was delicately drawn on the pale blue sky. Everything was refined, subdued, and shadowy in the tender light; but Percival, gazing, saw no charm in the little twilight picture. Sorrow

may be soothed by quiet loveliness, but perplexities absorb all our faculties, and we do not heed the beauty of the world, which is simple and unperplexed. If it is forced upon our notice, the contrast irritates us; it is almost an impertinence. Percival would have been angry had he been called upon to feel the poetry which Bertie had found, only a few days before, in the bit of houseleek growing on that arid waste of tiles. It is true that, in that dim light, the houseleek was only a dusky little knob.

Should he go and meet Judith? Should he wait for her? What would she do? Should he go to St. Sylvester's? By the time he could reach the Church the choristers would have assembled-would the organist be there? While he doubted what to do, his fingers were in his waistcoat pocket, and he incidentally discovered that he had only a shilling and a threepenny piece in it. He went quickly to the table and struck a light. Since he had enrolled himself as Judith Lisle's true