She is mine!  She is mine! 
By seal as true
To spirit view
As holy scripture writ in dew,
By bond as fair
To vision rare
As holy scripture writ in air,
By writ as wise to spirit eyes
As holy scripture in God’s skies v
She is mine!  She is mine!

Elude me?  Nay,
Ere earth reclaimed
In joy unveils a Heaven regained,
Ere sea unbound,
Unfretting, rolls in mist—­nor sound,
Ere sun and star repentent crash
In scattered ash, across the bar
She is mine I She is mine!

A. L. WREN.

CHAPTER VII.

LOVE—­AND THE SNAKE.

Damocles de Warrenne, gentleman-cadet, on the eve of returning from Monksmead to the Military Academy of Sandhurst, appeared to have something on his mind as he sat on the broad coping of the terrace balustrade and idly kicked his heels.  Every time he had returned to Monksmead from Wellingborough and Sandhurst, he had found Lucille yet more charming, delightful, and lovable.  As her skirts and hair lengthened she became more and more the real companion, the pal, the adviser, without becoming any less the sportsman.

He had always loved her quaint terms of endearment, slang, and epithets, but as she grew into a beautiful and refined and dignified girl, it was still more piquant to be addressed in the highly unladylike (or un-Smelliean) terms that she affected.

Dam never quite knew when she began to make his heart beat quicker, and when her presence began to act upon him as sunshine and her absence as dull cloud; but there came a time when (whether she were riding to hounds in her neat habit, rowing with him in sweater and white skirt, swinging along the lanes in thick boots and tailor-made costume, sitting at the piano after dinner in simple white dinner-gown, or waltzing at some ball—­always the belle thereof for him) he did know that Lucille was more to him than a jolly pal, a sound adviser, an audience, a confidant, and ally.  Perhaps the day she put her hair up marked an epoch in the tale of his affections.  He found that he began to hate to see other fellows dancing, skating, or playing golf or tennis with her.  He did not like to see men speaking to her at meets or taking her in to dinner.  He wanted the blood of a certain neighbouring spring-Captain, a hunter of “flappers” and molester of parlour-maids, home on furlough, who made eyes at her at the Hunt Ball and followed her about all Cricket Week and said something to her which, as Dam heard, provoked her coolly to request him “not to be such a priceless ass”.  What it was she would not tell Dam, and he, magnifying it, called, like the silly raw boy he was, upon the spring-Captain, and gently requested him to “let my cousin alone, Sir, if you don’t mind, or—­er—­I’ll jolly well make you”.  Dam knew things about the gentleman, and considered him wholly unfit to come within a mile of Lucille.  The spring-Captain was