for surprise. Passing from a state of insensibility into fever, Mona became delirious, and was continually calling for Captain Orde, urging him to come quickly before it was too late, and to speak out at any cost. But that was not all. After a vehement address to him, frequently repeated, she would turn to any one in attendance and say, gently, "You know he is his brother's heir."

Once, when Helen Lestocq, more from curiosity than kindness, came to visit her, Mona raised her head from the pillow, and, after looking at her for an instant, pointed to the door, and imperatively told her to go away, adding, in an explanatory tone to Mrs. Fraser, who was present, "She knows he is his brother's heir."

Dismayed as much as astonished, Helen needed no second bidding, but quickly disappeared, telling Warren, whom she met on the way, that Miss Moreton's mind was completely deranged. Those about her shared the same opinion in a measure, yet Mona had her lucid intervals, when she was as quiet and tractable as a child. If she were mad, there was some method in her madness, as her manner to each one about her was uniform. To Mrs. Fraser she was calm and rational, except that, constantly harping upon the same string, she was always asking her to send for Captain Orde, and when Warren Sinclair was present she was fidgety and uneasy.

The little Frenchwoman appeared to please her, nor did she tire of her volubility. True to her promise to Mr. Sinclair, Madame Sicard nursed Mona with great devotion.

"Monsieur saved my life, and I will take care of his petite, although he threw me away as soon as he knew who it was," she repeated to every one who would listen to her story. "I am grateful, but he think me worth nothing at all," and the little woman laughed all the more merrily when she found her narrative unpalatable to the hero.

There was much in it distressing to Miss Lestocq, and something perplexing to Mrs. Fraser. Having vainly tried to prevent Madame Sicard from designating Miss Moreton as Mr. Sinclair's petite, she was wise enough to enter into her joke of having been thrown away as a chiffon, nevertheless she was greatly puzzled by the new aspect of things, and could not cease to wonder over Mona's fixed idea, repeated with vehement energy, that Captain Orde should be summoned immediately. He had at length been heard of, having written to his banker for money, to be forwarded to Copenhagen, where he purposed going when he left Norway. His letters would naturally be sent there to await his arrival, but no one could calculate upon his movements.

Meanwhile most of the visitors to Tavannes had left; only a few, and those chiefly detained by the indisposition of one or more of the family, remained. The accident of the fire seemed to have the illogical effect of postponing all the arrangements connected with the marriage. No allusion was made to it. Warren Sinclair spent his time chiefly in wandering about the country all day, returning late, tired and exhausted, and even Mrs. Fraser's ardour was quenched for a time.

Under these circumstances Helen began to think that it might be better for her to go to Thornmeade. Her present surroundings were uncomfortable; her position was daily becoming more and more false. It had been Mr. Sinclair's particular wish that she should stay with her mother's family; it was not too

late to comply with it, and could she not yield in such a manner as to make it appear a graceful concession on her part? She did not hide from herself that she had need to conciliate him, and yet was ever haunted by the fear that if once she made Thornmeade her home, she might be neglected, if not forgotten, excluded from every other kind of life. Such was the state of things when, about ten days after the fire, Cecil Orde walked into his sister's primitivo little sitting-room.

LEAVES AND BLOSSOMS.

HE love of flowers, when once it has taken root, grows like the flowers themselves, putting forth branch after branch to cover the bare places of life, and budding

and blossoming afresh year after year, each year a little more freely, a little more brightly, till every bit of leisure is filled with interest and hope, every home space lighted up with colour and penetrated with fragrance. Of late these blessed messengers of spring and summer have been finding their way more and more widely into the homes of the poorest and the abodes of sickness and misery, bearing a message of the mercy which endureth for ever to many a heart which words would fail to reach, rousing no spirit of contradiction in the bitterest, and never wearying the most heart-sick or feeble sufferer. We can never be thankful enough for flowers. It is well worth our while to study how to make the most of them. And this I think we do not always succeed in doing with our gathered flowers, just for want of keeping in mind a few very simple principles of arrangement.

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In the first place, we often mar all their beauty by wrong choice of receptacles for them. And it is the greater pity to do this, because the best are nearly always the simplest. The humblest flower that grows has colours far more beautiful than most glass or china; and be the vessel ever so beautiful in itself, it seldom adds much by its colour to the beauty of the flowers; seldom even tirely harmonises with them, unless, indeed, it is of one uniform and rather neutral tint. For every nosegay, even every single spray of flowers, is already a combination of colours, if only of simple white and green; and generally a perfect combination. And it is seldom, indeed, that a combination already beautiful can be bettered by adding to it another combination of colours, made without special reference to it. As a rule, the fewer colours-we might even say the less colour-a flower vase has, the better it answers its purpose. Nothing is more beautiful for this purpose than clear transparent glass, of some simple form, without any sort of pattern or decoration whatever. Common drinking tumblers, especially if rather deep, answer admirably for most flowers, and are always at hand. One of the loveliest arrangements I ever saw, the recollection of which has haunted me ever since, was a simple bowl of clear glass, standing upon a round piece of

looking-glass, and filled with pure white azaleas with abundance of their own deep-green leaves. The great white blossoms seemed to be suspended in a kind of mysterious atmosphere of their own, all sparkling and radiant, and separating them from everything else in the room while harmonising with all. The use of looking-glass in this way is very important, and not so frequently practised as it might be. Wherever flowers are it is a gain to be able to multiply them, and present different views of them, showing the underside of the leaves, and the profiles of the lovely stems and blossoms; and besides this, the light reflected by them plays among the petals and sets them off in unexpected ways. I would advise every lover of flowers to have a few pieces of looking-glass, of different sizes, and with either glass or the most invisible of metal rims for frames, upon which to place their glasses of cut flowers. They not only multiply beauty, but preserve our tables without the abomination of fluffy mats.

A very simple arrangement, which gave me continual pleasure for many weeks, made itself for me quite unexpectedly by the accidental breaking of a common bedroom water-bottle, leaving a ball of glass like the so-called little "fish-bowls," which have been so much used of late for single flowers on dinner-tables. And, by-the-by, real fish-bowls of various sizes, intended to hold gold fishes, can be bought at Covent Garden and elsewhere very cheaply (from about sixpence to two or three shillings apiece), which would make beautiful glasses for large nosegays, only the opening is so large as to require an abundant supply of flowers to fill it. My broken bottle has an opening of not more than an inch in diameter, so that it grasped firmly about half a dozen long-stalked daffodils, which stood up proudly among their own leaves, with the air of growing out of their glass bulb. Round the opening I stuck in a few ivyleaves, originally, I confess, with the view of hiding the rough broken edges of glass, but the broad dark leaves made an admirable foundation for the pale grey-green leaves and stems of the daffodils, and set off the brightness of their golden heads.

The size and shape of the lip of flower vases is a very important point. Perhaps no general rule can be given about it, but a little practice in arranging flowers soon gives one a kind of instinct about the forms which will give sufficient support to the stems without cramping them, and which will contain a sufficient allowance of water. Even if the water is changed every day (and few people can be troubled to do this) the flowers will not last so long if they have not abundant space of water. Different flowers require such different kinds of support that every one should keep a supply of shallow and deep, spreading and grasping glasses, and remember the fable of the fox and the stork. Soup-plates and pudding-basins are among the most useful vessels for flowers. I can remember delightful days long ago in the country, when our poor cook's patience used to be sorely tried by the rapid disappearance in spring and summer of all her best-loved dishes. They fitted so irresistibly into certain favourite baskets, which asked open-mouthed to be filled with roses-and with roses looking in at the windows and crowding upon the hedges, how could one refuse to satisfy them?

Baskets are among the most charming flowerholders, especially for wild flowers. Not elaborate painted things in white and gold, or fine bleached

construction, like lace-work, but real serviceable wicker baskets. Many of the very prettiest come from the greengrocer's, or may be picked up in outof-the-way villages for a few pence. I make it a point of conscience never to pass by a really pretty basket without buying it, if it is cheap, as almost all the really pretty, because simple, ones are. That is, unless I have enough already of the same pattern, and even then it sometimes costs me a pang to pass it by. It is so pleasant to fancy one will want a few more baskets for one's flowers.

When we are supplied with all we want in the way of baskets, bowls, vases, glasses, etc., comes the question of how to fill them. If possible, let us gather our own flowers, bearing in mind the particular vessel destined to receive them. The perfection. of pleasure in arranging is to be able to step out through the open window to gather just such another spray as we want for this tall glass; such a fern to droop over the edge of that basket; such a crimson bud as will give a point of colour to the bowl we have in hand, as an artist would lay on a dash of chrome or carmine to bring out the warm tints of his picture. But we cannot all have beds of growing flowers under our hands, as the artist has his colourbox; and happily, unlike him, we can hardly go wrong if only we love and admire our colours enough. For the picture is almost made for us, everything is prepared without our labour, and we have only to taste the joy of completion. We are not called upon to make, only to see that we do not mar, what is put into our hands.

In gathering flowers only two mistakes can well be made, but they are disastrous. One is not cutting the stems long enough; the other is not gathering leaves enough. To please the lover of flowers you must be prepared to brave the gardeners; and, indeed, it is better to be content with the commoner flowers, of which you can gather enough to do justice to their manner of growth, than to snip off the choicest rose or lily that ever was grown, just at the base of the flower-stalk, without a bud or a leaf to complete it. Of course we are thankful enough for such "specimen " flowers when we cannot have more, and they may be craftily put in among somebody else's leaves, like cuckoos; but they will never have half their natural grace without their own perfectly adapted leaves and stems, and a sister bud more than doubles the beauty of a fully open blossom. A single blossom cut off by itself is like a portrait of a beautiful woman's head without the figure; we lose half the character, as well as the beauty, of the original, if we miss the pose of the head on the shoulders, the turn of the figure, the finish of the hands and feet. So I would rather have a perfect spray of the common china-rose, with its thorns and its little crimson buds and its delicate dark leaves branching out from it with such individual grace, than the most exquisite golden hothouse rose with two inches of stem, not to mention the possible horror of a wire through its tender petals.

And not only let us have each spray as perfect as possible, flower and bud and leaf forming a natural and unapproachable harmony of growth, but let us have abundance of each flower's own leaves to accompany it in its new sphere. What a cruel mockery it seems to lovers of flowers, living in London, when they go into any of the happily numerous and increasing flower-shops to see bundles of lovely blossoms-cheap and plentiful enough—without a single

leaf of their own! I am in the habit of dealing at three of four of these flower-shops-and glad enough to have them within reach-but no money would buy there the branches and sprays of greenery that the humblest garden supplies in abundance, and upon which half the charm of the flowers depends. What Londoner does not know the bunches of really beautiful geraniums and roses and larkspurs and lilies and escholtzias and nasturtiums and sweetpeas, and all sorts of perfectly hardy and common flowers, tied up without a scrap of green; and the shilling or half-crown's worth of flowers which the shops send one, in a sheet of white paper, each single spray often as lovely and fresh as heart can wish, and plenty for the money, only with not a leaf to bless themselves with except the everlasting layer at the back of fern-leaves-male fern, hard fern, and broad buckler fern-laid quite flat, and used like so much wrapping-paper; sometimes a few sweet-scented geranium-leaves, or as many pennyworths as one likes of maidenhair fronds, which, though so beautiful, are the least serviceable of all possible foliage! Why does not some enterprising florist make a spécialité of foliage? Think of the abundance of long sprays of ivy, the shining berberisleaves, the branches of guelder rose, and ilex and copper beech, the acanthus and mouse-ear, and myrtle sprays, which in every country garden one may gather to make a green bed on which to lay one's bright blossoms. Or if we go into the kitchengarden for the same purpose, what an exquisite background can be made of strawberry or vine or fig-leaves, or even the feathery tops of asparagus and many-coloured carrots, noble artichoke-leaves, and others too many to name! Certainly any shop in which liberally-gathered leaves of these and other kinds were to be had would be worth going far to visit.

But I was speaking of the flowers' own leaves, from which they are so cruelly separated. I constantly see great white arums sold in London shops without one of their leaves, which must be at least as plentiful as the flowers, and which make half their beauty. And eucharis lilies are scarcely ever accompanied by so much as one of their broad green shafts of foliage when they leave their native greenhouses. No doubt gardeners have their reasons for grudging us the leaves of some flowers, but it seems nothing short of heartlessness to separate, for instance, Christmas roses from their noble, dark, branching leaves, or larkspurs from the delicatelycut blue-green leaves, which so wonderfully harmonise with the ultramarine of the blossoms, or roses and geraniums from theirs, with all the delicate adaptation of more or less red tint in the foliage to the varying hues of the flowers. The way in which the various greens are adapted to the infinite variety of rich or delicately-tinted flowers is in itself a lesson in colouring;. and when you can gather your own flowers you ought to feel a scruple of conscience about putting asunder blossom and leaf which have been so wonderfully joined together.

They are sure to supply a perfect harmony, so that if you are at all doubtful of your own powers of arrangement you have but to fill each glass with one kind of flower, among plenty of its own leaves, and your nosegay must be beautiful. One more caution, however, may be needed even in doing this. Do not crowd your flowers; most people put three times too many flowers into one vase. If you really love to

see each one in its perfection you should carefully avoid this, not putting in one more than will allow the growth of each to be clearly visible. The way their lovely heads are poised upon the stems is sure to be full of grace and character, and this is lost by crowding.

If you can trust yourself to venture upon combinations, begin with the simplest, of only two kinds of flowers; more may be added if you see they really improve your arrangement, but cautiously. Selfrestraint is needed as much in arranging flowers as in other works of art, and a certain severity belongs to the most cultivated taste.

I will conclude by describing a few particular flower-harmonies, which have been a joy to me not only for the short day of their actual life, but as a memory for years afterwards, and which any one may use as a hint for fresh experiments.

One of these was contained in a wicker basket of yellowish tint and good shape, with a twisted handle and an invisible pie-dish within; this was filled with dark shining leaves of the Portugal laurel, and from among the intense shadows of these leaves flamed out the most brilliant orange and gold of nasturtiums, melting into the darker fire of crimson-purple petunias. Set in a window where the light shone through the thin petals, these flowers were literally like flames, one changing splendour of glowing firetints.

I must be candid now, and confess that in this particular case their own leaves would have spoilt all. It was an artificial "effect," as the painters say -an exception which proves the rule. I remember the same basket filled entirely with common blue periwinkles in their own leaves, with some of the long sprays wreathed round the handle, being an object of wondering delight and admiration to some friends, who could not have imagined that so lovely an effect could be produced by such simple means. It took a long time to fill, for the periwinkles were small, and each one had to be carefully placed, so as to leave green enough, and not too much, as a background.

Another lovely sight rewarded my almost despairing search for flowers in a much neglected, overgrown garden, where the chickens were accustomed to have things all their own way. Two rather large and deep vases of milky-white glass were filled with long pendulous branches of half-wild guelder rose, the great white balls drooping over the sides of the vases in the most graceful, languid way, and here and there in the middle rising up like a fountain. With these were mixed in some long straggling branches of the palest pink monthly roses, growing in clusters of four or five together, with a wild grace peculiar to such shady wildernesses as had been their birthplace. These pale loose bunches had an inexpressible charm of drooping form and subdued and delicate tints, with a certain wild luxuriance of growth which one rarely sees in properly cultivated garden flowers.

Another combination of white and pink, which I shall not soon forget, was a shallow bowl, or plate, filled with Christmas roses, resting on their own most characteristic and beautiful leaves, intermingled with sprays of coral-coloured begonia. A bowl filled with large moon-daisies and dark ivy-leaves, the ivyleaves chiefly filling up the centre, and the daisies wreathing the edge, lightened by feathery sprays of quaking couch-grass, was a very lasting and harmonious arrangement. Another of most delicate