uncertainty in the life, which had made it
adventurous and agreeable to think of.) "I do not
expect that you have yet learned to judge me
fairly, but you will in time, I am sure."

A pang shot across her face. "Of course,"
she said, hastily. "As I said, we were all
victims of circumstances. I could make allowance.
I saw what engines were set at work.
Someway, I cannot bring myself to talk of these
things with the quiet indifference I ought. But
every day I am learning, and shall learn. The
world is a delightful master."

"I like to talk of old times," he said; "it has
a sort of soothing effect. At home they do not
understand these things. I can get no one to
understand them. Practically, I am a stranger
there. You understand me. I should like now
and again to talk with you over such matters.
But they are too pastoral and unsubstantial.
The worldlings, it seems, and the flatterers, have
stronger claims."

He was determined to force himself into the
web. His foot was on the outer thread.

"How you misjudge me," she said, in the
sweet key her voice sometimes sang in. "I am
as you—we are strangely like—lost in a crowd
of friends who are not friends. There is a
tumultuous crowd pressing round me, and yet I
am alone—as if I was in a desert. These pleasant
airy chattering men, so light and gay, what do
you suppose they can do but chill my heart?
With you I could have sympathy. We are in
the same tone. I could gradually come to know
you better and better, and find a soothing
comfort, as you say, in talking over old times, but—
but——"

Greatly interested, Fermor said, hastily, "But
what—why not tell me?"

She shook her head. "No, no, I have reasons.
Better for me to keep in my present groove—go
on as I have gone on. Forgetfulness, coldness,
heartlessness, indifference—these are the
medicines for me. I should have nothing near
me like sympathy, manliness, generosity, love, nor
appreciation. No, no. Now you will understand
what seemed ungracious—what you took for
barring of doors against you! I thought you
would have understood me better. So, I say,
better cross over the street, and leave me on my
own pathway."

Bewildered by this speech, and strangely
interested, Fermor was not ready with a reply.
Suddenly came pouring in the hollow world,
the pleasant set who sat round Miss Manuel:
critics, biographers, bishops, wits, and the rest.

He went his way in a strange exhilaration.
After all, here was the old charm at work still.
There was something strangely piquant about her.
She made him talk as others did not make him talk.
She was full of genius, and of the dramatic
sense.

But there was a soft mystery about her last
words—a pleasant confusion—above all, a compliment
to him, in that persistent exclusion, that was
welcome. He was pleased to find himself
rehabilitated, and he walked with dreams floating
before him—the old dreams of vanity and
complacency. Work had been resumed with the
censers.

SOMETHING ABOUT CRETE.

WHEN the writer of this was a boy, he
used to be very fond of looking at an old
quarto edition of Tournefort. Such quaint
woodcuts! Women of Scio in gala dress, with
something about their heads like a sack tied
up at each end, such trim jackets, and short
petticoats, and square stomachers looking for
all the world like a newspaper stuck over
the bosom; or the Naxiotes, with more elaborate
toilette, fan in hand, and wearing a strange
quilted sort of external crinoline. It is amusing
to see how much space this grave "Doctor of
Medicine and of the Faculty of Paris," &c. &c.,
devotes to female costume. For instance, he
says: "The ladies of Myconos would be by no
means ungraceful if their dress was somewhat
less ridiculous;" and, taking them as the typical
fashionables of the Archipelago, he gives
three pages of woodcuts containing every
individual thing they wear. "The dress," he tells
us, "is expensive" (the embroidered aprons and
chemisettes certainly have a costly look); "but
it lasts a lifetime." Such engravings are a
great relief to the pictures of weedy-looking
plants which form the staple of Tournefort.
What was, perhaps, more interesting than
anything about dress or manners, was the
following: "Delos is uninhabited; the people
of Myconos rent it of the Grand Signior for
twenty crowns a year, and use it as a
sheepwalk." What profanation! Why not form a
settlement in the sacred island? Twenty crowns!
A mere peppercorn rent! Thought we, if ever
we have the chance, we will be off to the
Archipelago, outbid the men of Myconos, and settle
for life in the sacred centre of "the Isles of
Greece." We suppose we never had the chance;
for here we are still.

But we love the Greek Islands still, and have
maintained a reading acquaintance with all of
them. Let us take Crete first. It is the largest;
it has more of a modern history than most
of the rest. The Venetians held it for over
five hundred years, and wherever the Lion
of St. Mark has been, there is always
something worth telling; indeed, history can count
few more heroic defences than that of Morosini,
in 1668. Then Crete, too, had its war of
independence in 1820, when all the Greek race was
up in arms, and when, but for diplomacy, they
would have won the whole Ægean, if not
Constantinople itself. The Candiotes had made a
most successful rising. They had plenty of
wrongs to avenge: the Cretan "Turks" were
mostly apostate Greeks, and displayed the usual
bitterness of renegades against their countrymen
and quondam co-religionists. They were a
turbulent race, who pretty well set the Porte at
defiance, and who, to the ordinary Mussulman