that are so soon to separate for a long parting, or to check the tears that flow for once unrestrained by any care as to what " people may think.” There one may watch the sorrow of those who are to stay, with what, in those who are to go, is often only a nervous, fidgetty desire to be off, which is made still more awkward by an anxious constrained wish to seem sufficiently concerned, and not to fail at the last. And oh! what a difference there is between the sigh of relief with which the traveller settles him or herself to a book or a newspaper, and the lingering weary way in which those left behind pass through the now deserted passages to return to their empty home.

But the very fact of all this being so patent makes one feel as if it was half treacherous and wholly ill-bred to notice more than one can help of what passes; and therefore it is, I suppose, that I have had fewer histories revealed to me in such places than in others which seemed less likely scenes of adventure.

I remember once, though, witnessing a parting which, in spite of many commonplace and a few ridiculous elements, touched me inexpressibly.

It was years and years ago, in the Place Notre Dame des Victories, whence diligences used to start before railways existed; from whence they may still go, for aught I know. The diligence was piled up, and most of the passengers were seated, when I saw a countrywoman taking leave of an ugly, vulgar, stupid looking fellow.

It is difficult to look rustic and a snob at the same time, but he managed to combine the two. He was, I think, rather tipsy, and evidently utterly unfeeling; cutting noisy jokes with some comrades who had come to see him off, and occasionally vouchsafing a half patronizing, half jocular piece of consolation to the woman; and oh! in what an agony of despair she was! She held his hand, and leaned against his shoulder, or, when he turned away, against the wall, and covered her face with her apron. Her hard-working sunburnt hands and her worn face, with more lines in it than I fancy her age warranted, told me of struggling days and toiling nights to earn money for this wretched fellow to spend at the cabaret; and now, after all, some prospect of better pay in the country had arisen, and he was going, and, if anything, I suspect was rather pleased to be freed from the silent reproach of her loving and laborious presence. "What fools women are!" I said to myself—and not for the first time in my life as I looked at him and wondered by what mysterious process, known only to women, she had surrounded this wretched, stupid brute with a halo that transformed him into a hero—no, into something more than a hero to her,—into the one aim and object of her existence. At last I saw her lead him aside, and drawing something from her pocket, place it in his hand. He had the grace to hesitate a moment-only a moment though-and rewarded her by a few words which brought a bright delighted look over her poor face, swollen as it was with crying. I guessed what it must be.

She had given him doubtless all, more than she could reasonably spare, and had reluctantly kept some tiny sum for her own immediate necessities; and now her heart had failed her, it would procure him some additional comfort or pleasure, and he must have that too -and he took it.

I believe when he at last extricated himself from her clinging, unreasoning hold, and climbed up to his seat, that I felt ten times more than he did; and as we creaked, and swung, and jolted on our long dusty journey, if pitying thoughts were sent back to that poor miserable woman, they were from me most certainly, and not from the noisy wretch who was boasting, shouting, and swearing, till he fell into a stupid, tipsy sleep. Poor thing! If unspoken thoughts and wishes can be transmitted, I trust mine reached her; and I hope sincerely too, that she deluded herself into thinking they came from him, and took heart and comfort accordingly.

But if the more educated classes conceal their feelings better, when these do pierce through the ordinary conventional exterior it is perhaps more terrible to see, and generally reveals more complicated and conflicting sufferings.

I remember once coming up to town by the Great Western Railway; a gentleman and his wife entered the carriage at some small station, and travelled about twenty miles with me. I gathered that they had been visiting friends (it was near Christmas time, I remember) and were returning to their own country place.

I saw or I thought I saw a whole story revealed in the two faces, aided by the few commonplace sentences which were exchanged during the short journey. Judge if I was over fanciful or not when I tell you what I saw, and heard, and imagined. They had been brought to the station by their hostess and some other guests; and crushed into the few moments during which the travellers took their seats was a noisy, merry farewell, mixed with some reproaches for the visit having been curtailed.

I had come from Bristol an hour before, taken the pith out of my Times, and so was at leisure to look up, and as usual began to speculate. The husband was middle-aged; looked gentlemanlike, good natured, and shrewd. The wife was some years younger; interesting rather than actually handsome; and though one does not remember complicated details of toilette, I am sure hers was singularly well chosen and elegant. I have an impression only of some rich grey material and delicate muslins and laces, which had a particularly soft effect, and seemed to suit the tall slight figure and the pale refined face I was looking at. A face, however, that, as the train began to move, gradually lost the formal and rather affected smile which had accompanied her farewell; lost, not the smile only, but its look of calm quiet dignity, and changed into an expression of despair: the same look which succeeds any great nervous effort, and seeing the crisis over, knows the necessity and the power of control are gone together.

I remember she had a few deep crimson roses in her hand, and they seemed to quiver with every throb of pain, with every short quick breath that parted her lips, with every nervous contraction of her hand, which grasped them with unconscious tenacity.

"What was it?" I thought.

As her husband carefully arranged a railway wrapper over her feet, adjusted the window, and unfolding his crackling newspaper, took up a comfortable position, he remarked to her that their hosts were very sorry to let them go.

"Very kind, I am sure," he went on to say; "very kind, and so anxious to keep us; for my part I would as soon have stayed a day * or two longer, only you seemed to think we had better return home, so of course I seconded your refusal. But it seemed almost a pity -when you had met old friends too so unexpectedly, after so many years' absence however, you seemed to think we must leave."

"Yes, yes," she murmured, with a strange nervous vehemence beyond the words; "yes, we must leave-better, much better to go home."

Almost as she spoke he became absorbed in his newspaper, and she-in what? In watching the landscape which flew past us-or the distant Wiltshire hills-or the grey winter sky with its driving clouds ? Or, as I could not help thinking, in dreaming of the old friends who were they?-she had met so unexpectedly-of the past which they had once filled-of the few days in which they had met again-or of the calm quiet home to which it was "better to return," and the even, tranquil future which awaited her? Why had they separated so long ago? Ah, that was not easy to guess. Why was it better to go home now? that was easier to fathom perhaps.

Well, I thought, there are bitter struggles going on, heroic resolutions made-hard, very hard moments gone through, even under the smooth, conventional, even life of a prosperous domestic family.

I turned anxiously to the gentleman; I had fancied he looked. shrewd and clever, but, if so, how came he to be so unobservant? Yes, there was no doubt of either fact; and, as he caught my eye, he courteously made an observation or two upon the leading article, which he presumed I had also been studying, which confirmed my impression that he was a sharp, acute man. A question of some piece of mysterious foreign policy was just engaging the attention of the press, and had been worn threadbare with suppositions; and yet he made an entirely new suggestion, based on some minute turn which even the most critical opposition newspaper had overlooked. I forget now how far future events justified him; but right or wrong, it was the remark of a quick, observant intellect.

Why, then, did he not remark what even I saw? Why? Is it not of daily, hourly occurrence that the shrewd and the far-sighted never unveil the thinly-clouded mysteries that lie at their feet? Never see the little coil getting more and more entangled which

they hold in their very hands? So it is, and so it always will be. And as I thought and thought of these two people, he became again absorbed in his paper, and she drifted far, farther away, past happy islands, whose sight brought a flush of remembered joy on her face-through perilous storms where there had been a struggle for life and death, and on, on, over a wide, dreary, dark sea that would one day-but how far off that day seemed-reach to a golden haven of rest and peace. At last the slackening of the train roused us all, and a carriage and servants were waiting my fellow-travellers at the small station where they alighted. I do not think she had even noticed me at all, and he with the merest passing observation; and yet I had felt alternately indignant with his obtuseness, then thankful for it, and guessed at his character, his past and his future, while my heart had ached for her with a pity which, it may be, no other had even dreamed she was needing.

One of my cousins is very fond of loitering over her purchases, and to accompany her on a "shopping" expedition would be weary work for me if I had not the resource of watching and speculating on the neighboring purchasers at the counter. I saw a young lady once in a shop choosing her wedding dress, whose face, with its stern, controlled look of hopeless resignation, told me a good deal. I remember the delight with which her hard, worldly mother expatiated on the richness of the silk and discussed the merits and width of the flounces. By what series of petty persecutions or unfair persuasion had the poor girl been driven to this marriage, I wondered. I never had a stronger desire in my life to speak to a stranger, for I felt as if one word would nerve her even then, and give her strength to extricate herself, and there was no lack of power in her face. It is as well I did not, perhaps, or I might have been given in charge as drunk, or sent home in the tender care of the shopman, as crazy.

What strange alternations of hope and fear I have seen in people waiting for their letters at a country post-office!

How I have heard women, whose trembling voice and flushing face showed how much they hoped and feared, assure a companion that it was "almost impossible they could hear to-day; they did not expect it." A subtle feminine superstition that to say so gives them a better chance; or, perhaps, a slender thread thrown across the disappointment, if it does come; as they can then say-"I did not expect to hear. I said beforehand it was unlikely." And yet the gruff manner and affected unconcern of men has sometimes struck me even more painfully.

I used to fetch my letters once from a north country town regularly on Saturdays. I got there as soon as the box opened, and there, waiting week after week, was an old farmer. I remember the voice in which he asked, "Any letter for me from America yet?" and the eager eyes with which he watched the slow, stupid youth, who deliberately turned over the bundle, and told him there was

none. I know I got so interested for him that once when I caught sight of an American stamped letter, I felt as eager and excited at the chance of its being for him as if I knew why he cared.

I guessed though. I used to fancy at first he had a daughter out there, and feared she was ill or dead; but there was a hurt, mortified look, which would have been bitter if it had not been so very sad, and which decided me at last that it was some good-for-nothing boy sent out as a last chance to America, and whose not writing was rather a proof that he was wanting nothing and caring nothing, than that he was either distressed or ill. Poor old man! the tramp of his hobnailed shoes and the jovial tune that he always whistled as he walked away grew to have a pitiful sound to me. I wonder whether that letter ever came, or whether he comes for it still and never finds it.

"The posts are very uncertain.

I once heard a girl say to her friend.

Letters are always being lost,"

Heaven forgive her for telling such a lie! I not only excused her, but I know I longed to add my testimony to hers, and endorse her assertion, when I saw the heart-broken face of the one who turned away, and looked as if on that letter rested everything in life.

I once lived in a house in London, at a corner which was a favorite place of appointment. You would fancy that there could be little enough romance in meetings between the smart servants out for a holiday and the snobbish looking individuals who are about to escort them to Highbury Barn or Cremorne Gardens. But I can tell you that at that very corner I have seen faces of terrible anxiety and agonized despair, which would have melted the stalls into tears, and sent the dress circle home in hysterics. I have seen glimpses of real tragic plots which would make the most heartrending of three volumed novels, only they would be universally blamed as improbable. Ah! they rise up before me now; all the strangers unconscious of my interest, often of my presence. And if I may sometimes have guessed wrongly, and given more sympathy perhaps than was needed, I know that now and then, for all who care to notice and observe, there are rents in the thick conventional cloud which, in this country especially, hides so jealously all deep emotions either of joy or pain. I doubt whether in any one day we may not, if we choose, amid the daily tramp and traffic of the streets, and the dull monotonous clang of the outer working world, see many pathetic glimpses of inner life, hear many an unspoken word, and give to many unconscious hearts a thought of loving sympathy and compassion.

Will it do them any good? Perhaps not.

I think, at any rate, it will do ourselves no harm.

A.