University of Virginia Library

DASHES AT LIFE
WITH A FREE PENCIL.

1. PART I;
HIGH LIFE IN EUROPE,
AND
AMERICAN LIFE.

PREFACE.

It has been with difficult submission to
marketableness that the author has broken up
his statues at the joints, and furnished each
fragment with head and legs to walk alone.
Continually accumulating material, with the
desire to produce a work of fiction, he was as
continually tempted by extravagant prices to
shape these separate forms of society and character
into tales for periodicals; and between
two persuaders—the law of copyright, on the
one hand, providing that American books at
fair prices should compete with books to be
had for nothing, and necessity on the other
hand, pleading much more potently than the
ambition for an adult stature in literary fame—
he has gone on acquiring a habit of dashing
off for a magazine any chance view of life that
turned up to him, and selling in fragmentary
chapters what should have been kept together
and moulded into a proportionate work of imagination.
So has gradually accumulated the
large collection of tales which follow—literally
dashes at life with a free pencile—each one,
though a true copy of a part, conveying, of
course, no portion of the meaning and moral
of a whole. It is as a parcel of fragments—as
a portfolio of sketches for a picture never painted—that
he offers them to the public. Their
lack of what an English critic cleverly calls the
“ponderous goodness of a didactic purpose,”
must be balanced, if at all, by their truth to life,
for they have been drawn mostly from impressions
freshly made, and with no record of what
they were a part of. In proportion to his power
of imagination, the reader will supply the
back-ground and adjuncts—some, no doubt (if
the author may judge by himself), preferring
the sketch to the finished picture.

A word explanatory of the character of Part
I. Most of the stories in it are illustrative of
the distinctions of English society. As a republican
visiting a monarchical country for the
first time, and traversing the barriers of different
ranks with a stranger's privilege, the author's
curiosity was most on the alert to know
how nature's nobility held its own against nobility
by inheritance, and how heart and judgment
were modified in their action by the thin
air at the summit of refinement. Circumstances
in the career of men of genius now living, and
feelings in titled and exclusive circles which
the author had opportunities to study, furnished
hints for the storied illustrations of the distinctions
that interested him, and he has thought
it worth while to present these together, as
bearing upon those relations of aristocratic
life which first interest republican curiosity
abroad.

With these explanations, the author commits
his book to the reader's kind allowance.

LEAVES FROM THE HEART-BOOK OF ERNEST CLAY

1. CHAPTER I.

In a small room, second floor, front, No. —
South Audley street, Grosvenor square, on one of
the latter days of May, five or six years ago, there
stood an inkstand, of which you may buy the like for
three halfpence in most small shops in Soho. It was
stuck in the centre of the table, like the largest of
the Azores, on a schoolboy's amateur map—a large
blot surrounded by innumerable smaller blotlings.
On the top of a small leather portmanteau near by,
stood two pair of varnished-leather boots of a sumptuous
expensiveness, slender, elegant, and without
spot, except the leaf of a crushed orange blossom
clinging to one of the heels. Between the inkstand
and the boots sat the young and then fashionable author
of — —, and the boots and the inkstand
were tolerable exponents of his two opposite
but closely woven existences.

It was two o'clock, P. M., and the author was stirring
his tea. He had been stirring it with the same
velocity three quarters of an hour—for when that cup
should be drank, inevitably the next thing was to
write the first sentence of an article for the New
Month. Mag., and he was prolonging his breakfast,
as a criminal his last prayer.

The “fatigued” sugar and milk were still flying
round the edge of the cup in a whity blue concave,
when the “maid of all work” of his landlord the
baker, knocked at the door with a note.

The tea, which, for some minutes, had turned off a
decreasing ripple from the edge of the arrested spoon,
came to a standstill at the same moment, with the
author's wits. He had seized his pen and commenced:—

“Dear Sir:

“The tale of this month will be called—”

As it was not yet conceived, he found a difficulty
in baptizing it. His eyebrows descended like the
bars of a knight's visor; his mouth, which had expressed
only lassitude and melancholy, shut close,
and curved downward, and he sat for some minutes
dipping his pen in the ink, and, at each dip, adding a
new shoal to the banks of the inky Azores.

A long sigh of relief, and an expansion of every
line of his face into a look of brightening thought gave
token presently that the incubation had been successful.
The gilded note-paper was pushed aside, a broad
and fair sheet of “foreign post” was hastily drawn
from his blotting-book, and forgetful alike of the unachieved
cup of tea, and the waiting “devil” of Marlborough
street, the felicitous author dashed the first
magic word on mid-page, and without title or motto,
traced rapidly line after line, his face clearing of lassitude,
and his eyes of their troubled languor, as the
erasures became fewer, and his punctuations farther
between.

“Any answer to the note, sir?” said the maid-servant,
who had entered unnoticed, and stood close at
his elbow, wondering at the flying velocity of his pen.

He was at the bottom of the fourth page, and in
the middle of a sentence. Handing the wet and blotted
sheet to the servant, with an order for the messenger
to call the following morning for the remainder,
he threw down his pen and abandoned himself to the
most delicious of an author's pleasures—revery in the
mood of composition. He forgot work. Work is to
put such reveries into words. His imagination flew
on like a horse without his rider—gloriously and exultingly,
but to no goal. The very waste made his
indolence sweeter—the very nearness of his task
brightened his imaginative idleness. The ink dried
upon his pen. Some capricious association soon
drew back his thoughts to himself. His eye dulled.
His lips resumed their mingled expression of pride
and voluptuousness. He started to find himself idle,
remembered that had sent off the sheet with a broken
sentence, without retaining even the concluding
word, and with a sigh more of relief than vexation,
he drew on his boots. Presto!—the world of which
his penny-half-penny inkstand was the immortal centre—the
world of heaven-born imagination—melted
from about him! He stood in patent leather—human,
handsome, and liable to debt!

And thus fugitive and easy of decoy, thus compulsory,
irresolute, and brief, is the unchastised toil of
genius—the earning of the “fancy-bread” of poets!

It would be hard if a man who has “made himself
a name” (beside being paternally christened), should
want one in a story—so, if you please, I will name
my hero in the next sentence. Ernest Clay was
dressed to walk to Marlborough street to apply for his
“guinea-a-page” in advance, and find out the concluding
word of his MS., when there was heard a footman's
rap at the street door. The baker on the
ground floor ran to pick up his penny loaves jarred
from the shelves by the tremendous rat-a-tat-tat, and
the maid ran herself out of her shoes to inform Mr.
Clay that Lady Mildred — wished to speak with
him. Neither maid nor baker were displeased at being
put to inconvenience, nor was the baker's hysterical

mother disposed to murmur at the outrageous clatter
which shattered her nerves for a week. There
is a spell to a Londoner in a coronetted carriage which
changes the noise and impudence of the unwhipped
varlets who ride behind it, into music and condescension.

“You were going out,” said Lady Mildred; “can
I take you anywhere?”

“You can take me,” said Clay, spreading out his
hands in an attitude of surrender, “when and where
you please; but I was going to my publisher's.”

The chariot-steps rattled down, and his foot was on
the crimson carpet, when a plain family carriage suddenly
turned out of Grosvenor square, and pulled up
as near his own door as the obstruction permitted.

Ernest changed color slightly, and Lady Mildred,
after a glance through the window behind her, stamped
her little foot and said “Come!”

“One moment!” was his insufficient apology as he
sprang to the window of the other carriage, and with
a manner almost infantile in its cordial simplicity, expressed
his delight at meeting the two ladies who sat
within.

“Have you set up a chariot, Ernest?” said the
younger, laying her hand upon the dark mass of curls
on his temple, and pushing his head gently back that
she might see what equipage stopped the way.

He hesitated a moment, but there was no escape
from the truth.

“It is Lady Mildred, who has just—

“Is she alone?”

The question was asked by the elder lady with a
look that expressed a painfully sad wish to hear him
answer, “No.”

While he hesitated, the more forgiving voice next
him hurriedly broke the silence.

“We are forgetting our errand, Ernest. Can you
come to Ashurst to-morrow?”

“With all my heart.”

“Do not fail! My uncle wishes to see you.
Stay—I have brought you a note from him. Good-by!
Are you going to the rout at Mrs. Rothschild's
to-night?”

“I was not—but if you are going, I will.”

“Till this evening, then?”

The heavy vehicle rolled away, and Ernest crushed
the note in his hand unread, and with a slower step
than suited the impatience of Lady Mildred, returned
to the chariot. The coachman, with that mysterious
instinct that coachmen have, let fall his silk upon the
backs of his spirited horses, and drove in time with
his master's quickened pulses; and at the corner of
Chesterfield street, as the family carriage rolled slowly
on its way to Howell and James's (on an errand connected
with bridal pearls), the lofty-stepping bays of
Lady Mildred dashed by as if all the anger and scorn
of a whole descent of coronets were breathing from
their arched nostrils.

What a boon from nature to aristocracy was the
pride of the horse!

Lady Mildred was a widow of two years' weeds,
thirty-two, and of a certain kind of talent, which will be
explained in the course of this story. She had no personal
charms, except such as are indispensably necessary
to lady-likeness—indispensably necessary, for
that very reason, to any control over the fancy of a
man of imagination. Her upper lip was short enough
to express scorn, and her feet and hands were exquisitely
small. Some men of fancy would exact
these attractions and great many more. But without
these, no woman ever secured even the most transient
homage of a poet. She had one of those faces you
never find yourself at leisure to criticise, or rather she
had one of those siren voices, that, if you heard her
speak before you had found leisure to look at her
features, you had lost your opportunity for ever. Her
voice expressed the presence of beauty, as much as a
carol in a tree expresses the presence of a bird, and
though you saw not the beauty, as you may not see
the bird, it was impossible to doubt it was there. Yet
with all this enchantment in her voice it was the most
changeable music on earth—for hear it when you
would, if she were in earnest, you might be sure it
was the softened echo of the voice to which she was
replying. She never spoke first. She never led the
conversation. She had not (or never used) the talent
which many very common-place women have, of
giving a direction to the feelings and controlling even
the course of thought of superior men who may admire
them. In everything she played a second. She
was silent through all your greetings, through all your
compliments; smiled and listened, if it was for hours,
till your lighter spirits were exhausted and you came
down to the true under tone of your heart; and by the
first-struck chord of feeling and earnest (and her skill
in detecting it was an infallible instinct), she modulated
her voice and took up the strain, and from the echo
of your own soul and the flow of the most throbbing
vein in your own heart, she drew your enchantment
and intoxication. Her manners were a necessary part
of such a character. Her limbs seemed always enchanted
into stillness. When you gazed at her more
earnestly, her eyes gradually drooped, and, again her
enlarged orbs brightened and grew eager as your gaze
retreated. With her slight forefinger laid upon her
cheek, and her gloved hand supporting her arm, she
sat stirless and rapt, and by an indescribable magnetism
you felt that there was not a nerve in your eye, nor a
flutter toward change in the expression of your face,
that was not linked to hers, nerve for nerve, pulsation
for pulsation. Whether this charm would work on
common men it is difficult to say—for Lady Mildred's
passions were invariably men of genius.

You may not have seen such a woman as Lady
Mildred—but you have seen girls like Eve Gore.
There are many lilies, though each one, new-found,
seems to the finder the miracle of nature. She was a
pure, serene-hearted, and very beautiful girl of seventeen.
Her life had been hitherto the growth of love
and care, as the lily she resembled is the growth of
sunshine and dew; and, flower-like, all she had ever
known or felt had turned to spotless loveliness. She
had met the gifted author of her favorite romance at
a country-house where they were guests together, and
I could not. short of a chapter of metaphysics, tell you
how natural it was for these two apparently uncongenial
persons to mingle, like drops of dew. I will
merely say now, that strongly marked as seems the
character of every man of genius, his very capability
of tracking the mazes of human nature, makes him
the very chameleon and Proteus of his species, and
that after he has assimilated himself by turns to every
variety of mankind, his masks never fall off without
disclosing the very soul and type of the most infantine
simplicity. Other men's disguises, too, become a
second nature. Those of genius are worn to their
last day, as loosely as the mantles of the gods.

The kind of man called “a penetrating observer,”
if he had been in the habit of meeting Mr. Clay in
London circles, and had afterward seen him rambling
through the woods of — Park with Eve Gore,
natural, playful sometimes, and sometimes sad, his
manner the reflex of hers, even his voice almost as
feminine as hers, in his fine sympathy with her character
and attractions—one of these shrewd people I say
would have shaken his head and whispered, “poor
girl, how little she understands him!” But of all the
wise and worldly, gentle and simple, who had ever
crossed the path of Ernest Clay, the same child-like
girl was the only creature to whom he appeared utterly
himself—for whom he wore no disguise—to whose

plummet of simple truth he opened the seldom-sounded
depths of his prodigal and passionate heart. Lady
Mildred knew his weaknesses and his genius. Eve
Gore knew his better and brighter nature. And both
loved him.

And now, dear reader, having drawn you the portraits
of my two heroines, I shall go on with a disembarrassed
narrative to the end.

2. CHAPTER II.

Lady Mildred's bays panced proudly up Bond
street, and kept on their way to the publisher's, at
whose door they fretted and champed the bit—they
and their high-born mistress in attendance upon the
poor author who in this moment of despondency complained
of the misappreciation of the world. Of the
scores of people who knew him and his companion
as London celebrities, and who followed the showy
equipage with their eyes, how many, think you, looked
on Mr. Ernest Clay as a misappreciated man?
How many, had they known that the whole errand
of this expensive turn out was to call on the publisher
for the price of a single magazine paper, would have
reckoned those sixteen guineas and the chariot of a
noble lady to come for the payment—five hundred
pounds for your romance, and a welcome to all the
best houses and costliest entertainments of England
—a hundred pounds for your poem and the attention
of a thousand eager admirers—these are some of the
“lengthening shadows” to the author's profits which
the author does not reckon, but which the world does.
To the rest of mankind these are “chattels” priced
and paid for. Twenty thousand a year would hardly
buy for Mr. Clay, simple and uncelebrated, what Mr.
Clay, author, etc., has freely with five hundred. To
whose credit shall the remaining nineteen thousand
five hundred be set down? Common people who pay
for these things are not believers in fairy gifts. They
see the author in a station of society unattainable except
by the wealthiest and best born, with all that
profuse wealth could purchase as completely at his
service as if the bills of cost were to be brought in to
him at Christmas; and besides all this (once more
“into the bargain”) caressed and flattered as no
“golden dulness” ever was or could be. To rate the
revenue of such a pampered idol of fortune, what man
in his senses would inquire merely into the profits of
his book!

And in this lies the whole secret of the envy and
malice which is the peculiar inheritance of genius.
Generous-minded men, all women, the great and rich
who are too high themselves to feel envy, and the poor
and humble who are too low to feel aught but wonder
and grateful admiration—these are the fosterers and
flatterers, the paymasters of the real wealth and the
receivers of the choicest fruits of genius. The aspiring
mediocrity, the slighted and eclipsed pretenders
to genius, are a large class, to whose eyes all brightness
is black, and the great mass of men toil their lives
and utmost energies away for the hundredth part of
what the child of genius wins by his unseen pen—by
the toil which neither hardens his hands nor trenches
on his hours of pleasure. They see a man no comelier
nor better born than they—idle apparently, as the
most spoilt minion of wealth, vying with the best born
in the favor of beautiful and proud women, using all
the goods of fortune with a profuse carelessness, which
the possession of the lamp of Aladdin could not more
than inspire, and by bitter criticism, by ingenious
slander, by continual depreciation, ridicule, and exaggeration
of every pretty foible, they attempt to level
the inequalities of fortune, and repair the flagrant injustice
of the blind goddess to themselves. Upon the
class generally, they are avenged. Their malice
poisons the joy and cripples the fine-winged fancy of
nineteen in the score. But the twentieth is born
proud and elastic, and the shaft his scorn does not
fling back, his light-heartedness eludes, and his is the
destiny which, more than that of kings or saints, proves
the wide inequality in human lot.

I trust, dear reader, that you have been more amused
than Lady Mildred at this half hour's delay at the
publisher's. While I have been condensing into a
theory by scattered observations of London authors,
her ladyship has been musing upon the apparition of
the family carriage of the Gores at Mr. Clay's lodgings.
Lady Mildred's position in society, though she had
the entree to all the best houses in London, precluded
an intimate acquaintance with any unmarried girl—
but she had seen Eve Gore and knew and dreaded her
loveliness. A match of mere interest would have
given her no uneasiness, but she could see far enough
into the nature of this beautiful and fresh-hearted girl
to know that hers would be no divided empire. All
women are conscious that a single-minded, concentrated,
pure affection, melting the whole character into
the heart, is omnipotent in perpetuating fidelity.

“Ernest,” said Lady Mildred, as the chariot sped
from the publisher's door, and took its way to the
Park, “you are grown ceremonious. Am I so new a
friend that you can not open a note in my presence?”

Clay placed the crushed letter in her hand.

“I will have no secrets from you, dear Lady Mildred.
There is probably much in that note that will surprise
you. Break the seal, however, and give me your advice.
I will not promise to follow it.”

The blood flushed to the temples of Lady Mildred
as she read— but her lips, though pale and trembling,
were compressed by a strong effort of self control.
She turned back and read the note again in a murmuring
undertone:—

“Hear me before you condemn, dear Lady Mildred,”
passionately exclaimed Ernest, as she clasped her
hands over the letter and her tears fell fast upon them:
“I was wrong to leave the discovery of this to chance
—I should have dealt more frankly with you—indeed,
if I had had the opportunity—”

Lady Mildred looked up, as if to reproach him for
the evasion half uttered.

“I have seen you daily, it is true, but every hour is
not an hour for confession like this, and besides, my
new love was a surprise, and what I have to confess is
a change in my feelings still more recent—a constantly
brightening vision of a life (pardon me, Lady Mildred!)
deeper a thousand fold, and a thousand times
sweeter and more engrossing than ours.”

“You are frank,” said his pale listener, who had recovered
her self-possession, and seemed bent now, as
usual, only on listening and entering into his feelings.

“I would be so, indeed,” he resumed; “but I have

not yet come to my confession. Life is too short,
Lady Mildred, and youth too vanishing, to waste feeling
on delusion.”

“Such as your love, do you mean, Ernest?”

“Pardon me! Were you my wife—”

Lady Mildred made a slight motion of impatience
with her hand, and unconsciously raised the expressive
arching of her lip.

“I must name this forbidden subject to be understood.
See what a false position is mine! You are
too proud to marry, but have not escaped loving me,
and you wish me to be contented with a perfume on
the breeze, to feel a property in a bird in the sky. It
was very sweet to begin to love you, to win and join
step by step, to have food for hope in what was refused
me. But I am checked, and you are still free. I stand
at an impassable barrier, and you demand that I should
feel united to you.”

“You are ungrateful, Ernest!”

“If I were your slave, I am, for you load me with
favors—but as your lover, no! It does not fill my
heart to open your house to me, to devote to me your
dining hours, your horses and servants, to let the
world know that you love me, to make me your
romance—yet have all the common interests of life
apart, have a station in society apart, and ambition not
mine, a name not mine, and hearth not mine. You
share my wild passions, and my fashionable negations,
not my homely feelings and everyday sorrows. I have
a whole existence into which you never enter. I am
something besides a fashionable author—but not to
you. I have a common human heart—a pillow upon
which lies down no fancy—a morning which is not
spent in sleep or listlessness, but in the earning of my
bread—I have dulness and taciturnity and caprice—
and in all these you have no share. I am a butterfly
and an earth-worm, by turns, and you know me only
on the wing. You do not answer me!”

Lady Mildred, as I have said before, was an admirer
of genius, and though Ernest was excusing an infidelity
to herself, the novelty of his distinctions opened to
her a new chapter in the book of love, and she was
interested far beyond resentment. He was talking
from his heart, too, and every one who has listened to a
murmur of affection, knows what sweetness the breathings
of those deeper veins of feeling infuse into the
voice. To a palled Sybarite like Lady Mildred, there
was a wild-flower freshness in all this that was irresistibly
captivating. A smile stole through her lips instead
of the reproach and anger that he expected.

“I do not answer you, my dear Ernest, for the same
reason I would not tear a leaf out of one of your books
unread. I quite enter into your feelings. I wish I
could hear you talk of them hours longer. Their
simplicity and truth enchant me—but I confess I can
not see what you propose to yourself. Do you think
to reconcile and blend all these contradictory moods
by an imprudent marriage? Or do you mean to vow
your butterfly to celibacy, and marry your worm-fly
alone, and grovel in sympathy rather than take love
with you when you soar, and keep your grovelling to
yourself.”

“I think Eve Gore would love me, soaring or creeping,
Lady Mildred! She would be happier sitting by
my table while I wrote, than driving in this gay crowd
with her chariot. She would lose the light of her life
in absence from me, like a cloud receding from the
moon, whatever stars sparkled around her. She
would be with me at all hours of the day and the night,
sharing every thought that could spring to my lips,
and reflecting my own soul for ever. You will forgive
me for finding out this want, this void, while you loved
me. But I have felt it sickeningly in your bright
rooms, with music and perfume, and the touch of your
hand all conspiring to enchant me. In the very hours
when most men on earth would have envied me, I
have felt the humbler chambers of my heart ache with
loneliness. I have longed for some still and dark retreat,
where the beating of my pulse would be protestation
enough, and where she who loved me was blest
to overflowing with my presence only. Affection is a
glow-worm light, dear Lady Mildred! It pales amid
splendor.”

“But you should have a glow-worm's habits to
relish it, my dear poet. You can not live on a blade
of grass, nor shine brightest out of doors in the rain.
Let us look at it without these Claude Lorraine
glasses, and see the truth. Mr. Thomas Gore offers
you £300 a year with his neice. Your own income,
the moment you marry, is converted from pocket-money
into subsistence—from the purchase of gloves
and Hungary water into butcher's meat and groceries.
You retire to a small house in one of the cheaper streets.
You have been accustomed to drive out continually,
and for several years you have not only been free from
the trouble and expense of your own dinner, but you
have pampered your taste with the varied chefs d'œuvre
of all the best cooks of London. You dine at home
now, feeding several mouths beside your own, on what
is called a family dinner—say, as a good specimen, a
beefsteak and potatoes, with a Yorkshire pudding.
Instead of retiring after your coffee to a brilliantly
lighted drawning-room, where collision with some
portion of the most gifted society of London disciplines
your intellect and polishes your wit and fancy,
you sit down by your wife's work-table, and grow
sleepy over your plans of economy, sigh for the gay
scenes you once moved in, and go to bed to be rid of
your regrets.”

“But why should I be exiled from society, my dear
Lady Mildred? What circle in London would not
take a new grace from the presence of such a woman
as Eve Gore?”

“Oh, marvellous simplicity! If men kept the gates
of society, a la bonne heure!—for then a party would
consist of one man (the host), and a hundred pretty
women. But the “free list” of society, you know,
as well as I, my love-blind friend, is exclusively masculine.
Woman keeps the door, and easy as turns the
hinge to the other sex, it swings reluctant to her own.
You may name a hundred men in your circle whose
return for the hospitality of fashionable houses it
would be impossible to guess at, but you can not
point me out one married woman, whose price of
admission is not as well known and as rigidly exacted,
as the cost of an opera-box.—Those who do not give
sumptuous parties in their turn (and even these must
be well bred and born people), are in the first place
very ornamental; but, besides being pretty, they must
either sing or flirt. There are but two classes of
women in fashionable society—the leaders or party-givers,
and the decoys to young men. There is the
pretty Mrs. —, for example, whose habitation
nobody knows but as a card with an address; and why
is she everywhere? Simply, because she draws four
or five fashionable young men, who would find no inducement
to come if she were not there. Then there
is Mrs. —, who sings enchantingly, and Mrs.
—, who is pretty, and a linguist, and entertains
stupid foreigners, and Mrs. —, who is clever at
charades, and plays quadrilles, and what would Mrs.
Clay do? Is she musical?”

“She is beautiful!”

“Well—she must flirt. With three or four fashionable
lovers—”

“Lady Mildred!”

“Pardon me, I was thinking aloud. Well—I will
suppose you an exception to this Mede-and-Persian
law of the beau monde, and allow for a moment that
Mrs. Clay, with an income of five or six hundred a
year, with no eyes for anybody but her husband,
poor, pretty, and innocent (what a marvel it would be

in May Fair, by-the-way!), becomes as indispensable
to a partie fine as was Mr. Clay while in unmarried
celebrity. Mind, I am not talking of routs and balls,
where anybody can go, because there must be a crowd,
but of petits soupers, select dinners, and entertainments
where every guest is invited as an ingredient to
a well-studied cup of pleasure. I will suppose for an
instant, that a connubial and happy pair could be desirable
in such circles. What part of your income
of five or six hundred a year, do you suppose, would
dress and jewel your wife, keep carriage and servants,
and pay for your concert-tickets and opera-boxes—all
absolutely indispensable to people who go out? Why,
my dear Ernest, your whole income would not suffice
for the half. You must `live shy,' go about in hackney-coaches,
dress economically (which is execrable
in a woman), and endure the neglects and mortifications
which our pampered servants inevitably inflict
on shabby people. Your life would be one succession
of bitter mortifications, difficulties, and heart-burnings.
Believe me, there is no creature on earth
so exquisitely wretched as a man with a fashionable
wife and small means.”

Lady Mildred had been too much accustomed to
the management of men, not to leave Ernest, after this
homily, to his own thoughts. A woman of less
knowledge and tact would have followed up this argument
with an appeal to his feelings. But beside that,
she wished the seed she had thus thrown into his
mind to germinate with thought. She knew that it
was a wise principle in the art of love to be cold by
daylight. Ernest sat silent, with his eyes cast musingly
down to the corner of the chariot, where the smallest
foot and prettiest chaussure conceivable was playing
with the tassel of the window-pull; and reserving
her more effective game of feeling for the evening,
when they were to meet at Mrs. R—'s, she set him
down at his clubhouse with a calm and cold adieu,
and drove home to bathe, dine alone, sleep, and refresh
body and spirit for the struggle against love and
Eve Gore.

3. CHAPTER III.

Genius is lord of the world. Men labor at the
foundation of society, while the lowly lark, unseen
and little prized, sits, hard by, in his nest on the earth,
gathering strength to bear his song up to the sun.
Slowly rise basement and monumental aisle, column
and architrave, dome and lofty tower; and when the
cloud-piercing spire is burnished with gold, and the
fabric stands perfect and wondrous, up springs the forgotten
lark, with airy wheel to the pinnacle, and
standing poised and unwondering on his giddy perch,
he pours out his celestial music till his bright footing
trembles with harmony. And when the song is done,
and mounting thence, he soars away to fill his exhausted
heart at the fountains of the sun, the dwellers
in the towers below look up to the gilded spire
and shout—not to the burnished shaft, but to the
lark—lost from it in the sky.

“Mr. Clay!” repeated the last footman on Mrs. K's
flower-laden staircase.

I have let you down as gently as possible, dear
reader; but here we are in one of the most fashionable
houses in May Fair.

Pardon me a moment! Did I say I had let you
down? What pyramid of the Nile is piled up like
the gradations between complete insignificance and
the effect of that footman's announcement? On the
heels of Ernest, and named with the next breath of
the menial's lips, came the bearer of a title laden
with the emblazoned honors of descent. Had he en
tered a hall of statuary, he could not have been less
regarded. All eyes were on the pale forehead and
calm lips that had entered before him; and the blood
of the warrior who made the name, and of the statesmen
and nobles who had borne it, and the accumulated
honor and renown of centuries of unsullied distinctions—all
these concentrated glories in the midst
of the most polished and discriminating circle on
earth, paled before the lamp of yesterday, burning in
the eye of genius. Where is distinction felt? In
secret, amid splendor? No! In the street and the
vulgar gaze? No! In the bosom of love? She
only remembers it. Where, then, is the intoxicating
cup of homage—the delirious draught for which
brain, soul, and nerve, are tasked, tortured, and
spent—where is it lifted to the lips? The answer
brings me back. Eyes shining from amid jewels,
voices softened with gentle breeding, smiles awakening
beneath costly lamps—an atmosphere of perfume,
splendor, and courtesy—these form the poet's Hebe,
and the hero's Ganymede. These pour for ambition
the draught that slakes his fever—these hold the cup
to lips, drinking eagerly, that would turn away in solitude,
from the ambrosia of the gods!

Clay's walk through the sumptuous rooms of Mrs.
R— was like a Roman triumph. He was borne on
from lip to lip—those before him anticipating his
greeting, and those he left, still sending their bright
and kind words after him. He breathed incense.

Suddenly, behind him, he heard the voice of Eve
Gore. She was making the tour of the rooms on the
arm of a friend, and following Ernest, had insensibly
tried to get nearer to him, and had become flushed
and troubled in the effort. They had never before
met in a large party, and her pride, in the universal
attention he attracted, still more flushed her eyelids
and injured her beauty. She gave him her hand as
he turned; but the greeting that sprang to her lips
was checked by a sudden consciousness that many
eyes were on her, and she hesitated, murmured some
broken words, and was silent. The immediate attention
that Clay had given to her, interrupted at the
same moment the undertoned murmur around him,
and there was a minute's silence, in which the inevitable
thought flashed across his mind that he had over-rated
her loveliness. Still the trembling and clinging
clasp of her hand, and the appealing earnestness of
her look, told him what was in her heart—and when
was ever genius ungrateful for love! He made a
strong effort to reason down his disappointment, and
had the embarrassed girl resumed instantly her natural
ease and playfulness, his sensitive imagination
would have been conquered, and its recoil forgotten.
But love, that lends us words, smiles, tears, all we
want, in solitude, robs us in the gay crowd of everything
but what we can not use—tears! As the man
she worshipped led her on through those bright
rooms, Eve Gore, though she knew not why, felt the
large drops ache behind her eyes. She would have
sobbed if she had tried to speak. Clay had given her
his arm, and resumed his barter of compliment with
the crowd, and with it a manner she had never before
seen. He had been a boy, fresh, frank, ardent, and
unsuspicious, at Annesley Park. She saw him now
in the cold and polished armor of a man who has
been wounded as well as flattered by the world, and
who presents his shield even to a smile. Impossible
as it was that he should play the lover now, she felt
wronged and hurt by his addressing the same tone of
elegant trifling and raillery which was the key of the
conversation around them. She knew, too, that she
herself was appearing to disadvantage; and before a
brief hour had elapsed, she had become a prey to another
feeling—the bitter avarice which is the curse
of all affection for the gifted or the beautiful—an avaarice
that makes every smile given back for admiration,

a germ torn from us—every word, even of thanks for
courtesy, a life-drop of our hearts drank away.
contains the mordent secret of most hearts vowed to
the love of remarkable genius or beauty.

The supper-rooms had been some time open; from
these and the dancing hall, the half-weary guests
were coming back to the deep fauteuils, the fresher
air, and the graver society of the library, which had
served as an apartment of reception. With a clouded
brow, thoughtful and silent, Eve Gore sat with her
mother in a recess near the entrance, and Clay, who
had kept near them, though their conversation had
long since languished, stood in the centre of a small
group of fashionable men, much more brilliant and
far louder in his gayety than he would have been
with a heart at ease. It was one of those nights of
declining May, when the new foliage of the season
seems to have exhausted the air, and though it was
near morning, there came through the open windows
neither coolness nor vitality. Fans, faded wreaths,
and flushed faces, were universal.

A footman stood suddenly in the vacant door.

“Lady Mildred —!”

The announcements had been over for hours, and every
eye was turned on the apparition of so late a comer.

Quietly, but with a step as elastic as the nod of a
water-lily, Lady Mildred glided into the room, and
the high tones and unharmonized voices of the different
groups suddenly ceased, and were succeeded by
a low and sustained murmur of admiration. A white
dress of faultless freshness of fold, a snowy turban,
from which hung on either temple a cluster of crimson
camelias still wet with the night dew; long raven
curls of undisturbed grace falling on shoulders of that
undescribable and dewy coolness which follows a
morning bath, giving the skin the texture and the
opaque whiteness of the lily; lips and skin redolent
of the repose and purity, and the downcast but wakeful
eye so expressive of recent solitude, and so peculiar
to one who has not spoken since she slept.
These were attractions which, in contrast with the
paled glories around, elevated Lady Mildred at once
into the predominant star of the night.

“What news from the bottom of the sea, most
adorable Venus?” said a celebrated artist, standing
out from the group and drawing a line through the
air with his finger as if he were sketching the flowing
outline of her form.

Lady Mildred laid her small hand on Clay's, and
with a smile, but no greeting else, passed on. The
bantering question of the great painter told her that
her spell worked to a miracle, and she was too shrewd
an enchantress to dissolve it by the utterance of a
word. She glided on like a spirit of coolness, calm,
silent, and graceful, and, standing a moment on the
threshold of the apartment beyond, disappeared,
with every eye fixed on her vanishing form in wondering
admiration. Purity was the effect she had produced—purity
in contrast with the flowers in the
room—purity (Ernest Clay felt and wondered at it),
even in contrast with Eve Gore! There was silence
in the library for an instant, and then, one by one, the
gay group around our hero followed in search of the
new star of the hour, and he was left standing alone.
He turned to speak to his silent friends, but the manner
of Mrs. Gore was restrained, and Eve sat pale and
tearful within the curtain of the recess, and looked as
if her heart was breaking.

“I should like—I should like to go home, mother!”
she said presently, with a difficult articulation. “I
think I am not well. Mr. Clay—Ernest—will see,
perhaps, if our carriage is here.”

“You will find us in the shawl-room,” said Mrs.
Gore, following him to the staircase, and looking after
him with troubled eyes.

The carriage was at the end of the line, and could
not come up for an hour. Day was dawning, and
Ernest had need of solitude and thought. He crossed
to the park, and strode off through the wet grass,
bathing his forehead with handfuls of dew. Alas!
the fevered eyes and pallid lips he had last seen were
less in harmony with the calm stillness of the dawn
than the vision his conscience whispered him was
charmed for his destruction. As the cool air brought
back his reason, he remembered Eve's embarrassed
address and his wearisome and vain efforts to amuse
her. He remembered her mother's reproving eye,
her own colder utterance of his name, and then in
powerful relief came up the pictures he had brooded
on since his conversation in the chariot with Lady
Mildred, visions of self-denial and loss of caste opposed
to the enchantments of passion without restraint
or calculation, and his head and heart became
wild with conflicting emotions. One thing was certain.
He must decide now. He must speak to Eve
Gore before parting, and in the tone of his voice, if it
were but a word, there must be that which her love
would interpret as a bright promise or a farewell. He
turned back. At the gate of the park stood one of
the guilty wanderers of the streets, who seized him
by the sleeve and implored charity.

“Who are you?” exclaimed Clay, scarce knowing
what he uttered.

“As good as she is,” screamed the woman, pointing
to Lady Mildred's carriage, “only not so rich! Oh,
we could change places, if all's true.”

Ernest stood still as if his better angel had spoken
through those painted lips. He gasped with the
weight that rose slowly from his heart; and purchasing
his release from the unfortunate wretch who
had arrested his steps, he crossed slowly to the
door crowded with the menials of the gay throng
within.

“Lady Mildred's carriage stops the way!” shouted
a footman, as he entered. He crossed the hall, and
at the door of the shawl-room he was met by Lady
Mildred herself, descending from the hall, surrounded
with a troop of admirers. Clay drew back to let her
pass; but while he looked into her face, it became
radiant with the happiness of meeting him, and the
temptation to join her seemed irresistible. She entered
the room, followed by her gay suite, and last of
all by Ernest, who saw with the first glance at the
Gores that he was believed to have been with her during
the half-hour that had elapsed. He approached
Eve; but the sense of an injustice he could not immediately
remove, checked the warm impulse with
which he was coming to pour out his heart, and
against every wish and feeling of his soul, he was
constrained and cold.

“No, indeed!” exclaimed Lady Mildred, her voice
suddenly becoming audible, “I shall set down Mr.
Clay, whose door I pass. Lord George, ask Mr.
Clay if he is ready.”

Eve Gore suddenly laid her hand on his arm, as if
a spirit had whispered that her last chance for happiness
was poised on that moment's lapse.

“Ernest,” she said, in a voice so unnaturally low
that it made his veins creep with the fear that her
reason was unseated, “I am lost if you go with her
Stay, dear Ernest! She can not love you as I do
I implore you remember that my life—my life—”

“Beg pardon,” said Lord George, laying his hand
familiarly on Clay's shoulder, and drawing him away,
“Lady Mildred waits for you!”

“I will return in an instant, dearest Eve,” he said,
springing again to her side, “I will apologize and be
with you. One instant—only one—”

“Thank God!” said the poor girl, sinking into a
chair and bursting into tears.

Lady Mildred sat in her chariot, but her head
drooped on her breast, and her arm hung lifeless at
her side.

“She is surely ill,” said Lord George; “jump in,
Clay, my fine fellow. Get her home. Shut the door,
Thomas! Go on, coachman!” And away sped the
fleet horses of Lady Mildred, but not homeward.
Clay lifted her head and spoke to her, but receiving
no answer, he busied himself chafing her hands,
and the carriage-blinds being drawn, he thought momently
he should be rid of his charge by their arrival
in Grosvenor square. But the minutes elapsed, and
still the carriage sped on; and surprised at last into
suspicion, he raised his hand to the checkstring, but
the small fingers he had been chafing so earnestly arrested
his arm.

“No, no!” said Lady Mildred, rising from his
shoulder, and throwing her arms passionately around
his neck, “you must go blindfold, and go with me!
Ernest! Ernest!” she continued, as he struggled an
instant to reach the string; but he felt her tears on
his breast, and his better angel ceased to contend with
him. He sank back in the chariot with those fragile
arms wound around him, and, with fever in his brain,
and leaden sadness at his heart, suffered that swift
chariot to speed on its guilty way.

In a small maison de plaisance, which he well knew,
in one of the most romantic dells of Devon, built
with exquisite taste by Lady Mildred, and filled with
all that art and wealth could minister to luxury, Ernest
Clay passed the remainder of the summer, forgetful
of everything beyond his prison of pleasure,
except a voice full of bitter remorse, which sometimes,
in the midst of his abandonment, whispered the
name of Eve Gore.

4. CHAPTER IV.

The rain poured in torrents from the broad leads and
Gothic battlements of — Castle, and the dull and
plashing echoes, sent up with steady reverberation
from the stone pavement of the terrace and courts,
lulled to a late sleep one of most gay and fashionable
parties assembled out of London. It was verging
toward noon, and, startled from a dream of music, by
the entrance of a servant, Ernest Clay drew back the
heavy bed-curtains and looked irresolutely around his
luxurious chamber. The coals in the bright fire
widened their smoking cracks and parted with an indolent
effort, the well-trained menial glided stealthily
about, arranging the preparations for the author's
toilet, the gray daylight came in grayer and softer
through the draped folds which fell over the windows,
and if there was temptation to get up, it extended no
farther than to the deeply cushioned and spacious
chair, over which was flung a dressing-gown of the
loose and flowing fashion, and gorgeous stuff of the
Orient.

“Thomas, what stars are visible to the naked eye
this morning?” said the couchant poet with a heavy
yawn.

“Sir!”

“I asked if Lady Grace was at breakfast?”

“Her ladyship took breakfast in her own room, I
believe, sir!”

“`Qualis rex, talis grex.' Bring mine!”

“Beg pardon, sir?”

“I said I would have an egg and a spatchcock,
Thomas! And, Thomas, see if the duke has done
with the Morning Post.”

“I could have been unusually agreeable to Lady
Grace,” soliloquized the author, as he completed his
toilet; “I feel both gregarious and brilliant this
morning and should have breakfasted below. Strange
that one feels so dexterous-minded sometimes after a
hard drink!—Bacchus waking like Aurora! Thomas,
you forgot the claret! I could coin this efflux of
soul, now, into `burning words,' and I will. What
is the cook's name, Thomas? Gone? So has the
builder of this glorious spatchcock narrowly escaped
immortality! Fairest Lady Grace, the sonnet shall
be yours at the rebound! A sonnet? N—n—no!
But I could write such a love-letter this morning!
Morning Post. `Died at Brighton Mr. William
Brown.' Brown—Brown—what was that pretty girl's
name that married a Brown—a rich William Brown.
Beverley was her name—Julia Beverley—a flower for
the garden of Epicurus—a mate for Leontium! I
loved her till I was stopped by Mr. Brown—loved her?
by Jove, I loved her—as well as I loved anybody that
year. Suppose she were now the widow Brown? If
I thought so, faith! I would write her such a teminiscent
epistle—Why not as it is—on the supposition?
Egad, if it is not her William Brown, it is no
fault of mine. Here goes at a venture!

“To her who was Julia Beverley—

“Your dark eye rests on this once familiar handwriting.
If your pulse could articulate at this moment,
it would murmur he loved me well! He who writes to
you now, after years of silence, parted from you with
your tears upon his lips—parted from you as the last
shadow parts from the sun, with a darkness that must
deepen till morn again. I begin boldly, but the usage
of the world is based upon forgetfulness in absence,
and I have not forgotten. Yet this is not to be a love-letter.

“I am turning back a leaf in my heart. Turn to
it in yours! On a night in June, within the shadow
of the cypress by the fountain of Ceres, in the ducal
gardens of Florence, at the festa of the duke's birth-night,
I first whispered to you of love. Is it so writ in
your tablet? Or were those broken words, and those
dark tresses drooped on my breast, mockeries of a
night—flung from remembrance with the flowers you
wore? Flowers, said I? Oh, Heaven! how beautiful
you were with those lotus-stems braided in your hair,
and the white chalices gleaming through your ringlets
as if pouring their perfume over your shoulders!
How rosy-pale, like light through alabaster, showed
the cheek that shrank from me beneath the betraying
brightness of the moon! How musical above the
murmur of the fountain rose the trembling wonder
at my avowal, and the few faint syllables of forgiveness
and love. I strained you wildly to my heart! Oh,
can that be forgotten!

“With the news that your husband was dead, rushed
back these memories in a whirlwind. For one
brief, one delirious moment, I fancied you might yet
be mine. I write because the delirium is over. Had
it not been, I should be now weeping at your feet—
my life upon your lips!

“I will try to explain to you, calmly, a feeling that
I have. We met in the aisle of Santa Croce—
strangers. There was a winged lightness in your
step, and a lithe wave in the outline of your form, as
you moved through the sombre light, which thrilled
me like the awakening to life of some piece of aerial
sculpture. I watched you to your carriage, and returned
to trace that shadowy aisle for hours, breathing
the same air, and trying to conjure up to my imagination
the radiant vision lost to me, I feared, for ever.
That night your necklace parted and fell at my feet,
in the crowd at the Pitti, and as I returned the warm
jewel to your hand, I recognised the haunting features
which I seemed to live but to see again. By the first
syllable of acknowledgment I knew you—for in your
voice there was that profound sweetness that comes

only from a heart thought-saddened, and therefore
careless of the cold fashion of the world. In the embayed
window looking out on the moonlit terrace of
the garden, I joined you with the confidence of a
familiar friend, and in the low undertone of earnest
and sincerity we talked of the thousand themes with
which the walls of that palace of pilgrimage breathe
and kindle. Chance-guided and ignorant even of
each other's names, we met on the galleries of art, in
the gardens of noble palaces, in the thronged resorts
open to all in that land of the sun, and my heart
expanded to you like a flower, and love entered it with
the fulness of light. Again, I say, we dwelt but upon
themes of intellect, and I had not breathed to you of
the passion that grew hour by hour.

“We met for the last time on the night of the duke's
festa—in that same glorious palace where we had first
blended thought and imagination, or the wondrous
miracles of art. You were sad and lower-voiced than
even your wont, and when I drew you from the crowd,
and wandering with you through the flowering alleys
of the garden, stood at last by that murmuring fountain,
and ceased suddenly to speak—there was the threshold
of love. Did you forbid me to enter? You fell on
my bosom and wept!

“Had I brought you to this by love-making? Did
I flatter or plead my way into your heart? Were you
wooed or importuned? It is true your presence drew
my better angel closer to my side, but I was myself—
such as your brother might be to you—such as you
would have found me through life; and for this—for
being what I was—with no art or effort to win affection,
you drew the veil from between us—you tempted
from my bosom the bird that comes never back—you
suffered me to love you, helplessly and wildly, when
you knew that love such as mine impoverishes life
for ever. The only illimitable trust, the only bound-less
belief on earth, is first love! What had I done to
be robbed of this irrecoverable gem—to be sent wandering
through the world, a hopeless infidel in woman?

“I have become a celebrity since we parted, and
perhaps you have looked into my books, thinking I
might have woven into some one of my many-colored
woofs the bright thread you broke so suddenly. You
found no trace of it, and you thought, perhaps, that
all memory of those simpler hours was drowned in the
intoxicating cup of fame. I have accounted in this
way for your never writing to cheer or congratulate
me. But if this conjecture be true, how little you
know the heart you threw away—how little you know
of the thrice-locked, light-shining, care-hidden casket
in which is treasured up the refused gold of a first
love. What else is there on earth worth hiding and
brooding over? Should I wing such treasures with
words and lose them?

“And now you ask, why, after years of healing
silence, I open this wound afresh, and write to you.
Is it to prove to you that I love you!—to prepare the
way to see you again, to woo and win you? No—
though I was worthy of you once! No—though I
feel living in my soul a passion that with long silence
and imprisonment has become well-nigh uncontrollable.
I am not worthy of you now! My nature is
soiled and world-polluted. I am prosperous and
famous, and could give you the station you never
won, though you trod on my heart to reach it—but
the lamp is out on my altar of truth—I love by my
lips—I mock at faith—I marvel at belief in vows or
fidelity—I would not trust you, no, if you were mine,
I would not trust you though I held every vein of
your bosom like a hound's leash. Till you can rebuke
whim, till you can chain imagination, till you
can fetter blood, I will not believe in woman. Yet this
is your work!

“Would you know why I write to you? Why has
God given us the instinct of outcry in agony, but to
inflict on those who wound us a portion of our-pain?
I would tell you that the fire you kindled so wantonly
burns on—that after years of distracting ambition,
fame, and pleasure, I still taste the bitterness you
threw into my cup—that in secret when musing on
my triumphs, in the crowd when sick with adulation,
in this lordly castle when lapt in luxury and regard—
in all hours and phazes of a life brilliant and exciting
above that of most men, I mourn over that betrayed
affection, I see that averted face, I worship in bitter
despair that surpassing loveliness which should have
been mine in its glory and flower.

“I have made my moan. I have given voice to
my agony. Farewell!”

When Mr. Clay had concluded this “airing of his
vocabulary,” he enclosed it in a hasty note to his
friend, the secretary of legation at the court of
Tuscany, requesting him to call on “two abominable
old maids, by the name of Buggins or Bridgins,” who
represented the scan. mag. of Florence, and could
doubtless tell him how to forward his letter to “the
Browns;” and the castle-bell sounding as he achieved
the superscription, he descended to lunch, very much
lightened of his ennui, but with no more memory of
the “faithless Julia,” than of the claret which had
supplied some of the “intensity” of his style. The
letter—began as a mystification, or, if it had an object
beyond the amusement of an idle hour, intended as a
whimsical revenge for Miss Beverley's preference of
a rich husband to her then undistinguished admirer
—had, in the heat of composition, and quite unconsciously
to Clay, enlisted real feelings, totally disconnected
with the fair Julia, but not the less easily fused
into shape and probability by the facile alchymy of
genius. The reader will see at once that the feelings
expressed in it could never be the work of imagination.
Truth and bitter suffering show through every line,
and all its falsehood or fancy lay in its capricious address
to a woman who had really not the slightest
share in contributing to its material. The irreparable
mischief it occasioned, will be seen in the sequel.

5. CHAPTER V.

While the ambassador's bag is steadily posting over
the hills of Burgundy with Mr. Clay's letter to Julia
Beverley, the reader must be content to gain a little
upon her majesty's courier and look in upon a family
party assembled in the terraced front of a villa in the
neighborhood of Fiesole. The evening was Italian
and autumnal, of a ripe, golden glory, and the air was
tempered to the blood, as daylight is to the eye—so
fitly as to be a forgotten blessing.

A well-made, well-dressed, robust gentleman, who
might be forty-five, or a well-preserved sixty, sat at a
stone table on the westward edge of the terrace. The
London Times lay on his lap, and a bottle of sherry
and a single glass stood at his right hand, and he was
dozing quietly after his dinner. Near a fountain below,
two fair English children played with clusters of
ripe grapes. An Italian nurse, forgetting her charge,
stood with folded arms leaning against a rough garden
statue, and looked vacantly at the sunset sky, while
up and down a level and flowering alley in the slope
of the garden, paced slowly and gracefully Mrs.
William Brown, the mother of these children, the
wife of the gentleman sleeping over his newspaper,
and the heroine of this story.

Julia Beverley had been married five years, and for
three years at least she had relinquished the habit of
dressing her fine person to advantage. Yet in that
untransparent sleeve was hidden an arm of statuary
roundness and polish, and in those carelessly fitted

shoes were disguised feet of a plump diminutiveness
and arched instep worthy to be the theme of a new
Cenerentola. The voluptuous chisel of the Greek
never moulded shoulders and bust of more exquisite
beauty, yet if she had not become unconscious of the
possession of these charms altogether, she had so far
lost the vanity of her girlhood that the prudery of a
quakeress would not have altered a fold of her cashmere.
Her bonnet, as she walked, had fallen back,
and, holding it by one string over her shoulder, she
put away behind her “pearl-round ear” the dark and
heavy ringlet it had tangled in its fall, and, with its
fellow shading her cheek and shoulder in broken
masses of auburn, she presented a picture of luxurious
and yet neglected beauty such as the undress pencil
of Grenze would have revelled in portraying. The
care of such silken fringes as veiled her indolent eyes
is not left to mortals, and the covert loves who curve
these soft cradles and sleep in them, had kept Julia
Beverley's with the fidelity of fairy culture.

The Beverleys had married their daughter to Mr.
Brown with the usual parental care as to his fortune,
and the usual parental forgetfulness of everything else.
There was a better chance for happiness, it is true,
than in most matches of convenience, for the bridegroom,
though past his meridian, was a sensible and
very presentable sort of man, and the bride was naturally
indolent, and therefore likely to travel the road
shaped out for her by the very marked hedges of expectation
and duty. What she had felt for Mr. Clay
during their casual and brief intimacy, will be seen by-and-by,
but it had made no barrier to her union with
Mr. Brown. With a luxurious house, fine horses,
and her own way, the stream of life, for the first year
of marriage, rad smoothly off. The second year was
chequered with misgivings that she had thrown herself
away, and nights of bitter weeping over a destiny
in which no one of her bright dreams of love seemed
possible to be realized, and still habit riveted its thousand
chains, her children grew attractive and attaching,
and by the time at which our story commences,
the warm images of a life of passionate devotion had
ceased to haunt her dreams, sleeping or waking, and
she bade fair to live and die one of the happy many
about whom “there is no story to tell.”

Mr. Brown at this period occupied a villa in the
neighborhood of Florence, and on the arrival of Mr.
Clay's letter at English Embassy, it was at once forwarded
to Fiesole, where it intruded like the serpent
of old on the domestic paradise to which the reader
has been introduced.

Weak and ill-regulated as was the mind of Mrs.
Brown, her first feeling after reading the ardent epistle
of Mr. Clay, was unmingled resentment at its freedom.
Her husband's back was turned to her as he sat on the
terrace, and, ascending the garden steps, she threw the
letter on the table.

“Here is a letter of condolence on your death,”
she said the blood mantling in her cheek, and her
lips arched into an expression of wounded pride and
indignation.

Alas for the slight pivot on which turns the balance
of destiny—her husband slept!

“William!” she said again, but the tone was fainter
and the hand she raised to touch him, stayed suspended
above the fated letter.

Waiting one instant more for an answer, and bending
over her husband to be sure that his sleep was real,
she hastily placed the letter in her bosom, and, with
pale brow and limbs trembling beneath her, fled to
her chamber. Memory had required but an instant
to call up the past, and in that instant, too, the honeyed
flatteries she had glanced over in such haste, had
burnt into her imagination, effacing all else, even the
object for which he had written, and the reproaches
he had lavished on her unfaithfulness. With locked
doors, and curtains dropped between her and the
glowing twilight, she reperused the worshipping
picture of herself, drawn so covertly under the semblance
of complaint, and the feeling of conscious
beauty so long forgotten, stole back into her veins
like the reincarnation of a departed spirit. With a
flashing glance at the tall mirror before her, she stood
up, arching her white neck and threading her fingers
through the loosened masses of her hair. She felt
that she was beautiful—still superbly beautiful. She
advanced to the mirror.

Her bright lips, her pliant motion, the smooth transparence
of her skin, the fulness of vein and limb, all
mingled in one assurance of youth, in a wild desire
for admiration, in a strange, restless, feverish impatience
to be away where she could be seen and
loved—away to fulfil that destiny of the heart which
seemed now the one object of life, though for years
so unaccountably forgotten!

“I was born to be loved!” she wildly exclaimed,
pacing her chamber, and wondering at her own beauty
as the mirror gave back her kindling features and
animated grace of movement; “How could I have
forgotten that I was beautiful?” But at that instant
her husband's voice, cold, harsh, and unimaginative,
forced its way to her ear, and, convulsed with a
tumultuous misery, she could neither struggle with
nor define, she threw herself on her bed and abandoned
herself to an uncontrolled agony of tears.

Let those smile at this paroxysm of feeling whose
“dream has come to pass!” Let those wonder who
have never been startled from their common-place
existence with the heart's bitter question—Is this all!

Reader! are you loved?—loved as you dreamed in
youth you might and must be—loved by the matchless
creature you painted in your imagination, lofty-hearted,
confiding, and radiantly fair? Have you spent your
treasure? Have you lavished the boundless wealth
of your affection? Have you beggared heart and
soul by the wild abandonment to love, of which you
once felt capable?

Lady! of you I ask: Is the golden flow of your
youth coined as it melts away? Are your truth and
fervor, your delicacy and devotedness, your unutterable
depths of tenderness and tears—are they named
on another's lips?—are they made the incense to
Heaven of another's nightly prayer?—Your beauty
is in its pride and flower. Who lays back with idolatrous
caress the soft parting of your hair? Who
smiles when your cheek mantles, and shudders when
it is pale?—Who sits with your slender fingers clasped
in his, — dumb because there are bounds to language,
and trembling because death will divide you?
Oh, the ray of light wasted on the ocean, and the ray
caught and made priceless in a king's diamond—the
wild-flower perishing in the woods, and its sister culled
for culture in the garden of a poet—are not wider
apart in their destiny than the loved and the neglected!
—“Blessed are the beloved,” should read a new
beatitude—“for theirs is the foretaste of Paradise!”

6. CHAPTER VI.

The autumn following found Mr. Clay a pilgrim
for health to the shores of the Mediterranean. Exhausted,
body and soul, with the life of alternate
gayety and passion into which his celebrity had drawn
him, he had accepted, with a sense of exquisite relief,
the offer of a cruise among the Greek Isles in a friend's
yacht, and in the pure stillness of those bright seas,
with a single companion and his books, he idled away
the summer in a luxury of repose and enjoyment such
as only the pleasure-weary can understand. Recruited
in health, and with a mind beginning to yearn once

more for the long foregone stimulus of society, he
landed at Naples in the beginning of October.

“We are not very gay just now,” said the English
minister with whom he hastened to renew an acquaintance
commenced in his former travels, “but the
prettiest woman in the world is `at home' to-night,
and if you are as susceptible as most of the cavaliers
of the Chiaja, you will find Naples attractive enough
after you have seen her.”

“English?”

“Yes—but you can not have known her, for I think
she was never heard of till she came to Naples.”

“Her name?”

“Why, you should hear that after seeing her.
Call her Queen Giovanna and she will come nearer
your prepossession. By-the-by, what have you to do
this morning?”

“I am at your excellency's disposal,”

“Come with me to the atelier of a very clever artist
then, and I will show you her picture. It should be
the man's chef-d'œuvre, for he has lost his wits in
painting it.”

“Literally, do you mean?”

“It would seem so—for though the picture was
finished some months since, he has never taken it off
his easel, and is generally found looking at it. Besides,
he has neither cleaned pallet nor brush since the last
day she sat to him.”

“If he were young and handsome—”

“So he is—and so are scores of the lady's devoted
admirers; but she is either prudent or cold to a degree
that effectually repels hope, and the painter pines with
the rest.”

A few minutes walk brought them to a large room
near the Corso, tenanted by the Venetian artist,
Ippolito Incontri. The minister presented his friend,
and Clay forgot their errand in admiration of the
magnificent brigand face and figure of the painter,
who, after a cold salutation, retreated into the darkest
corner of the point of view, and stood gazing past them
at his easel, silent and unconscious of observation.

“I have seen your wonder,” said Clay, turning to
the picture with a smile, and at the first glance only
remarking its resemblance to a face that should be
familiar to him. “I am surprised that I can not
name her at once, for I am sure I know her well.
But, stay!—the light grows on my eye—no!—with
that expression, certainly not—I am sure, now, that I
have not seen her. Wonderful beauty! Yet there
was a superficial likeness! Have you ever remarked,
Signor Incontri, that, through very intellectual faces,
such as this, you can sometimes see what the countenance
would have been in other circumstances—without
the advantages of education, I mean?”

No answer. The painter was absorbed in his picture,
and Clay turned to the ambassador.

“I have seen somewhere a face, and a very lovely
one, too, that was strangely like these features; yet,
not only without the soul that is here, but incapable,
I should think, of acquiring it by any discipline, either
of thought or feeling.”

“Perhaps it was the original of this, and the painter
has given the soul!”

“He could as soon warm a statue into life as do it.
Invent that look! Oh, he would be a god, not a
painter! Raphael copied, and this man copies; but
nature did the original of this, as he did of Raphael's
immortal beauties; and the departure of the most
vanishing shadow from the truth would be a blot irremediable.”

Clay lost himself in the picture and was silent.
Veil after veil fell away from the expression as he
gazed, and the woman seemed melting out from the
canvass into life. The pose and drapery were nothing.
It was the portrait of a female standing still—perhaps
looking idly out on the sea—lost in revery perhaps—
perhaps just feeling the breath of a coming thought,
the stirring of some lost memory that would presently
awake. The lips were slightly unclosed. The heavy
eyelashes were wakeful yet couchant in their expression.
The large dark orbs lustrous and suffused,
looked of the depth and intense stillness of the mid-night
sky close to the silver rim of a moon high in
heaven. The coloring was warm and Italian, but
every vein of the transparent temple was steeped in
calmness; and even through the bright pomegranate
richness of a mouth full of the capability of passion,
there seemed to breathe the slumberous fragrance of
a flower motionless under its night-burthen of dew.
It portrayed no rank in life. The drapery might have
been a queen's or a contadina's. It was a woman stolen
to the canvass from her inmost cell of privacy,
with her soul unstartled by a human look, and mere
life and freedom from pain or care expressed in her
form and countenance—yet, with all this, a radiance
of beauty, and a sustained loftiness of feeling, as apparent
as the altitude of the stars. It was a matchless
woman incomparably painted; and though not a
man to fall in love with a semblance, Clay felt and
struggled in vain against the feeling, that the creature
drawn in that portrait controlled the next and perhaps
the most eventful revolution of his many-sphered existence.

The next five hours have (for this tale) no history.

“I have perplexed myself in vain since I left you,”
Clay said to the ambassador, as they rolled on their
way to the palace of the fair Englishwoman; “but
when I yield to the secret conviction that I have seen
the adorable original of the picture, I am lost in a
greater mystery—how I ever could have forgotten her.
The coming five minutes will undo the Sphinx's riddle
for me.”

“My life on it you have never seen her,” said his
friend, as the carriage turned through a reverberating
archway, and rapidly making the circuit of a large
court, stopped at the door of a palace blazing with
light.

An opening was made through the crowd, as the
ambassador's name was announced, and Clay followed
him through the brilliant rooms with an agitation to
which he had long been a stranger. Taste, as well
as sumptuous expensiveness, was stamped on everything
around, and there was that indefinable expression
in the assembly, which no one could detect or
appreciate better than Clay, and which is composed,
among other things, of a perfect conviction on the
part of the guests, that their time, presence, and approbation,
are well bestowed where they are.

At the curtained door of a small boudoir, draped
like a tent, a Neapolitan noble of high rank turned
smiling to the ambassador and placed his finger on
his lip. The silken pavilion was crowded, and only
uniforms and heads, fixed in attention, could be seen
by those without; but from the arching folds of the
curtain came a female voice of the deepest and sweetest
melodiousness, reading in low and finely-measured
cadence from an English poem.

“Do you know the voice?” asked the ambassador,
as Clay stood like a man fixed to marble, eagerly
listening.

“Perfectly! I implore you tell me who reads!”

“No!—though your twofold recognisance is singular.
You shall see her before you hear her name.
What is she reading?”

“My own poetry, by Heaven! and yet I can not
name her! This passes belief. I have heard that
voice sob—sob convulsively, and with accents of love—
I have heard it whisper and entreat—you look incredulous,
but it is true. If she do not know me—nay,
if she has not—” he would have said “loved me”—
but the look of scrutiny and surprise on the countenance
of the ambassador checked the imprudent

avowal, and he became aware that he was on dangerous
ground. He relapsed into silence, and crowding
close to the tent, heard the numbers he had long ago
linked and forgotten, breathing in music from those
mysterious lips, and, possessed as he was by suspense
and curiosity, he could have wished that sweet moment
to have lasted for ever. I call upon the poet, if
there be one who reads this idle tale, to tell me if
there is a flattery more exquisite on earth, if there is
a deeper-sinking plummet of pride ever dropped into
the profound bosom of the bard, than the listening to
thoughts born in pain and silence, articulate in the
honeyed accents of woman! Answer me, poet!
Answer me, women beloved of poets, who have
breathed their worshipping incense, and know by
what its bright censor was kindled!

The voice ceased, and there was one moment of
stillness, and then the rooms echoed with acclamation.
“Crown her!” cried a tall old man, who stood near
the entrance covered with military orders. “Crown
her!” repeated every tongue; and from a vase that
hung suspended in the centre of the pavilion, the
fresh flowers were snatched by eager hands and
wreathed into a chaplet. But those without became
clamorous to see the imposition of the crown; and,
clearing a way through the entrance, the old man took
the chaplet from the busy hands that had entwined it,
and crying out with Italian enthusiasm, “A triumph! a
triumph!” led forth the majestic Corinna to the crowd.

The ambassador looked at Clay. He had shrunk
behind the statue of a winged cupid, and though his
eyes were fixed with a gaze of stone on the magnificent
creature who was the centre of all regards, he
seemed by his open lips and heaving chest, to be gasping
with some powerful emotion.

“Give me the chaplet!” suddenly exclaimed the
magnificent idol of the crowd. And with no apparent
emotion, except a glowing spot in her temples, and a
quicker throb in the snowy curve of her neck and
bosom, she waved back the throng upon her right,
and advanced with majestic steps to the statue of Love.

“Welcome, Ernest!” she said in a low voice,
taking him by the hand, and losing, for a scarce perceptible
moment, the smile from her lips. “Here,
my friends!” she exclaimed, turning again, and leading
him from his concealment, “honor to whom honor
is due! A crown for the poet of my country, Ernest
Clay!”

“Clay, the poet!” “The English poet!” “The
author of the poem!” were explanations that ran
quickly through the room, and as the crowd pressed
closer around, murmuring the enthusiasm native to
that southern clime, Julia Beverley sprang upon an ottoman,
and standing in her magnificent beauty conspicuous
above all, she placed the crown upon Clay's
head, and bending gracefully and smilingly over him,
impressed a kiss on his forehead, and said, “This for
the poet!”

And of the many lovers of this superb woman who
saw that kiss, not one showed a frown or turned away,
so natural to the warm impulse of the hour did it
seem—so pure an expression of admiration of genius—
so mere a tribute of welcome from Italy to the bard,
by an inspiration born of its sunny air. Surrounded
with eager claimants for his acquaintance, intoxicated
with flattery, giddy with indefinable emotions of love
and pleasure, Ernest Clay lost sight for a moment of
the face that had beamed on him, and in that moment
she had made an apology of fatigue and retired, leaving
her guests to their pleasures.

7. CHAPTER VII.

“Un amour rechauffe ne vaut jamais rein,” is one
of those common-places in the book of love, which
are true only of the common-place and unimaginative.
The rich gifts of affection, which surfeit the cold
bosom of the dull, fall upon the fiery heart of genius
like spice-wood and incense, and long after the giver's
prodigality has ceased, the mouldering embers lie
warm beneath the ashes of silence, and a breath will
uncover and rekindle them. The love of common
men is a world without moon or stars. When the
meridian is passed, the shadows lengthen, and the
light departs, and the night that follows is dark indeed.
But as the twilight closes on the bright and warm passion
of the poet, memory lights her pale lamp, like
the moon, and brightens as the darkness deepens; and
the warm sacrifices made in love's noon and eve, go
up to their places like stars, and with the light treasured
from that fervid day, shine in the still heaven of
the past, steadfast though silent. If there is a feature
of the human soul in which more than in all others,
the fiend is manifest, it is the masculine ingratitude
for love. What wrongs, what agonies, what unutterable
sorrows are the reward of lavished affection, of
generous self-abandonment, of unhesitating and idolatrous
trust! Yet who are the ungrateful? Men lacking
the imagination which can reclose the faded form
in its youthful beauty! Men dead to the past—with
no perception but sight and touch—to whom woman
is a flower and no more—fair to look on and sweet to
pluck in her pride and perfume but scarce possessed
ere trampled on and forgotten! Genius alone treasures
the perishing flower and remembers its dew and fragrance,
and so, immemorially and well, poets have been
beloved of women.

I am recording the passions of genius. Let me
say to you, lady! (reading this tale understandingly,
for you have been beloved by a poet), trust neither
absence, nor silence, nor untoward circumstances!
He has loved you once. Let not your eye rest on
him when you meet—and if you speak, speak coldly!
For, with a passion strengthened and embellished
tenfold by a memory all imagination, he will love you
again! The hours you passed with him—the caresses
you gave him, the tears you shed, and the beauty
with which you bewildered him, have been hallowed
in poetry, and glorified in revery and dream, and he
will come back to you as he would spring into paradise
were it so lost and recovered!

But to my story!

Clay's memory had now become the home of an all-absorbing
passion. By a succession of mischances,
or by management so adroit as never to alarm his pride,
a week passed over, and he had found no opportunity
of speaking alone to the object of his adoration. She
favored him in public, talked to him at the opera,
leaned on his arm in the crowd, caressed his genius
with exquisite flattery, and seemed at moments to
escape narrowly from a phrase too tender or a subject
that would lead to the past—yet without a violation
of the most palpable tact, love was still an impossible
topic. That he could have held her hand in his, unforbidden—that
he could have pressed her to his
bosom while she wept—that she could have loved
him ever, though but for an hour—seemed to him
sometimes an incredible dream, sometimes a most
passionate happiness only to believe. He left her at
night to pace the sands of the bay till morning, remembering—for
ever remembering—the scene by the
fountain at Florence; and he passed his day between
her palace and the picture of poor Incontri, who loved
her more hopelessly than himself, but found a sympathy
in the growing melancholy of the poet.

“She has no heart,” said the painter; but Clay had
felt it beat against his own, and he fed his love in
silence on that remembrance.

They sat upon the rocks by the gate of the Villa
Real. The sun was just setting and as the waves
formed near the shore and rode in upon the glassy

swell of the bay, there seemed to writhe on each wavy
back a golden serpent, who broke on the sands at their
feet in sparkles of fire. At a little distance lay the
swallow-like yacht, in which Clay had threaded the
Archipelago, and as the wish to feel the little craft
bounding once more beneath him, was checked by the
anchor-like heaviness of his heart, an equestrian party
stopped suddenly on the chiaja.

“There is Mr. Clay!” said the thrilling voice of
Julia Beverley, “perhaps he will take us over in the
yacht. Sorrento looks so blue and tempting in the
distance.”

Without waiting for a repetition of the wish he
had overheard, Clay sprang upon a rock, and made
signal for the boat, and before the crimson of the departing
day had faded from the sky, the fair Julia and
her party of cavaliers, were standing on the deck of the
swift vessel, bound on a moonlight voyage to Sorrento,
and watching on their lee the reddening ribs and lurid
cruption of the volcano. The night was Neapolitan,
and the air was the food of love.

It was a voyage of silence, for the sweetness of life
in such an atmosphere and in the midst of that matchless
bay, lay like a voluptuous burthen in the heart,
and the ripple under the clearing prow was language
enough for all. Incontri leaned against the mast,
watching the moonlit features of the signora with his
melancholy but idolizing gaze, and Clay lay on the
deck at her feet, trying with pressed-down lids to recall
the tearful eyes of the Julia Beverley he had loved at
the fountain.

It was midnight when the breath of the orange
groves of Sorrento, stealing seaward, slackened the
way of the little craft, and running in close under the
rocky foundations of the house of Tasso, Clay dropped
his anchor, and landed his silent party at their haven.
Incontri was sent forward to the inn to prepare their
apartments, and leaning on Clay's arm and her husband's,
the superb Englishwoman ascended to the
overhanging balcony of the dwelling of the Italian
bard, and in a few words of eloquent sympathy in the
homage paid by the world to these shrines of genius,
added to the overflowing heart of her gifted lover one
more intoxicating drop of flattery and fascination.
They strolled onward to the inn, and he bade her good
night at the gate, for he could no longer endure the
fetter of another's presence, and the emotion stifled in
his heart and lips.

I have forgotten the name of that pleasant inn at
Sorrento, built against the side of its mountain shore,
with terraced orange-groves piled above its roof, and
the golden fruit nodding in at its windows. From the
principal floor, you will remember, projects a broad
verandah, jutting upon one of these fruit-darkened
alleys. If you have ever slept there after a scramble
over Scaricatoja, you have risen, even from your
fatigued slumber, to go out and pace awhile that overhanging
garden, oppressed with the heavy perfume of
the orange flowers. Strange that I should forget the
name of that inn! I thought, when the busy part of
my life should be well over, I should go back and die
there.

The sea had long closed over the orbed forehead of
the moon, and still Clay restlessly hovered around the
garden of the inn. Mounting at last to the alley on
a level with the principal chambers of the house, he
saw outlined in shadow upon the curtain of a long
window, a female figure holding a book, with her
cheek resting on her hand. He threw himself on the
grass and gazed steadily. The hand moved from the
cheek, and raised a pencil from the table, and wrote
upon the margin of the volume, and then the pencil
was laid down, and the slender fingers raised the
masses of fallen hair from the shoulder, and threaded
the wavy ringlets indolently as she read: From the
slightest motion of that statuary hand, from the most
fragmented outline of that bird-like neck, Clay would
have known Julia Beverley; and as he watched her
graceful shadow, the repressed and pent-up feelings
of that evening of restraint, fed as they had been by
every voluptuous influence known beneath the moon,
rose to a height that absorbed brain and soul in one
wild tumult of emotion. He sprang to his feet to rush
into her presence, but at that instant a footstep started
from the darkness of a tree, at the extremity of the
alley. He paused and the shadow arose, and laying
aside the book, leaned back, and lifted the tapering
arms, and wound up the long masses of fallen hair,
and then kneeling, remained a few minutes motionless,
with the face buried in the hands.

Clay trembled and felt rebuked.

Once more the flowing drapery swept across the
curtain, the light was extinguished, and the window
thrown open to the night air; and then all was still.

Clay walked to and fro in an agitation bordering on
delirium. “I must speak to her!” he said, murmuring
audibly, and advancing toward the window. But
hurried footsteps started again from the shadow of the
pine, and he stopped to listen. All was silent, and
he stood a moment pressing his hands on his brow,
and trying to struggle with the wild impulse in his
brain. His closed eyes brought back instantly the
unfading picture of Julia Beverley, weeping on his
breast at the fountain, and with one rapid movement
he divided the curtains and stood breathless in her
chamber.

The heavy breathing of the unconscious husband
fell like music on his ear.

“Julia!” he exclaimed in a hoarse whisper, “I am
here—Ernest Clay!”

“You are frantic, Ernest!” said a voice so calm
that it fell on his ear like an assurance of despair.
“I have no feeling for you that answers to this freedom.
Leave my chamber!”

“No!” said Clay, dropping the curtain behind him,
and advancing into the room, “wake your husband if
you will—this is the only spot on earth where I can
breathe, and if you are relentless, here will I die!
Was it false when you said you loved me? Speak,
Julia!”

“Ernest!” she said, in a less assured tone, “I have
done wrong not to check this wild passion earlier, and
I have that to say to you which, perhaps, had better
be said now. I will come to you in the garden.”

“My vessel waits, and in an hour—”

“Nay, nay, you mistake me. But go! I will
follow instantly!”

Vesuvius was burning with an almost smokeless
flame when Clay stood again in the night-air, and every
object was illuminated with the clearness of a conflagration.
At the first glance around, he fancied he
saw figures gliding behind the lurid body of a pine
opposite the window, but in the next moment the curtain
again parted, and Julia Beverley, wrapped in a
cloak, stood beside him on the verandah.

“Stand back!” she said, as he endeavored to put
his arm around her, “I have more than one defender
within call, and I must speak to you where I am.
Will you listen to me, Ernest?”

Clay's breast heaved; but he folded his arms and
leaned against the slender column of the verandah in
silence.

“Were it any other person who had so far forgotten
himself,” she continued, “it would be sufficient
to say, `I can never love you,' and leave my privacy
to be defended by my natural protector. But I wish
to show to you, Ernest, not only that you can have
no hope in loving me, but that you have made me the
mischievous woman I have become. From an humble
wife to a dangerous coquette, the change may
well seem startling—but it is of your working.”

“Mine, madam!” said Clay, whose pride was

aroused with the calm self-possession and repulse of
her tone and manner.

“I have never answered the letter you wrote me.”

“Pardon and spare me!” said Clay, who remembered
at the instant only the whim under which it
was written.

“It awoke me to a new existence,” she continued,
without heeding his confusion, “for it first made me
aware that I could ever be the theme of eloquent admiration.
I had never been praised but in idle compliment,
and by those whose intellect I despised; and
though as a girl I had a vague feeling that I was
slighted and unappreciated, I yielded gradually to the
conviction that the world was right, and that women
sung by poets and described in the glowing language
of romance, were of another mould, I scarce reasoned
upon it. I remember, on first arriving in Italy,
drawing a comparison favorable to myself between
my own beauty and the Fornarina's, and the portraits
of Laura and Leonora D'Este; but as I was loved by
neither painters nor poets, I accused myself of presumption,
and with a sigh, returned to my humility.
My life seemed more vacant than it should be, and I
sometimes wept from an unhappiness I could not define;
and I once or twice met persons who seemed
to have begun to love me, and appreciate my beauty
as I wished, and in this lies the history of my heart
up to the time of your writing to me. That letter,
Ernest—”

“You believed that I loved you then!” passionately
interrupted her listener, “you know now that I
loved you! Tell me so, I implore you!”

“My dear poet,” said the self-possessed beauty,
with a smile expressive of as much mischief as frankness,
“let us be honest. You never loved me! I
never believed it but for one silly hour! Stay!—
stay!—you shall not answer me! I have not left my
bed at this unseasonable hour to listen to protestations.
At least, let me first conclude the history of
my metempsychosis! I can tell it to nobody else,
and like the Ancient Mariner's, it is a tale that must
be told. Revenons! Your very brilliant letter awoke
me from the most profound lethargy by which beauty
such as mine was ever overtaken. A moment's inventory
of my attractions satisfied me that your exquisite
description (written, I have since suspected,
to amuse an idle hour, but done, nevertheless, with
the fine memory and graphic power of genius) was
neither fanciful nor over-colored, and for the first time
in my life I felt beautiful. You are an anatomist of
the heart, and I may say to you that I looked at my
own dark eyes and fine features and person with the
admiration and wonder of a blind beauty restored to
sight and beholding herself in a mirror. You will
think, perhaps, that love for the writer of this magic
letter should have been the inevitable sequel. But I
am here to avert the consequences of my coquetry,
and I will be frank with you. I forgot you in a day!
In the almost insane desire to be seen and appreciated,
painted, sung, and loved, which took possession of me
when the tumult of my first feeling had passed away,
your self-controlled and manageable passion seemed
to me frivolous and shallow.”

“Have you been better loved?” coldly asked Clay.

“I will answer that question before we part. I did
not suffer myself to think of a love that could be
returned—for I had husband and children—and
though I felt that a mutual passion such as I could
imagine, would have absorbed, under happier circumstances,
every energy of my soul, I had no disposition
to make a wreck of another's happiness and honor,
whatever the temptation. Still I must be loved—I
must come out from my obscurity and shine—I must
be the idol of some gifted circle—I must control the
painter's pencil and the poet's pen and the statesman's
scheme—I must sun my beauty in men's eyes, and
be caressed and conspicuous—I must use my gift and
fulfil my destiny! I told my husband this. He secured
my devotion to his peace and honor for ever, by
giving me unlimited control over his fortune and himself.
We came to Naples, and my star, hitherto
clouded in its own humility, sprang at once to the ascendant.
The “attraction of unconscious beauty” is
a poet's fiction, believe me! Set it down in your
books, Ernest—we are our own nomenclators—the
belle as well as the hero! I claimed to be beautiful,
and queened it to the top of my bent—and all Naples
is at my feet! Oh, Ernest! it is a delicious power
to hold human happiness in your control—to be the
loadstar of eminent men and bright intellects! Perhaps
a woman who is absorbed in one passion, finds
in her lover's character and fame room enough for her
pride and her thirst for influence; but to me, giving
nothing in return but the light of my eyes, there
seems scarce in the world celebrity, rank, genius
enough, to limit my ambition. I would be Helen!
I would be Mary of Scots! I would have my beauty
as undisputed and renowned as the Apollo's! Am I
insane or heartless?”

Clay smiled at the abrupt naiveté of the question,
but his eyes were full of visible admiration of the
glowing pictures before him.

“You are beautiful!” was his answer.

“Am I not! Shall I be celebrated hereafter, Ernest?
I should be willing to grow old, if my beauty
were `in amber'—if by some burning line in your
book, some wondrous touch of the pencil, some bold
novelty in sculpture, my beauty would live on men's
lips for ever! Incontri's picture is beautiful and like,
but it is not, if you understand, a conception—it is not
a memoir of the woman as the Cenei's is—it does not
embody a complete fame in itself, like the `Bella' of
Titian, or the `Wife of Giorgione.' If you loved
me, Ernest—”

“If you loved me, Julia!” echoed Clay, with a
tone rather of mockery than sincerity.

“Ah, but you threw me away; and even with my
own consent, I could never be recovered! Believe
me, Ernest, there never was a coquette, who, in some
one of her earlier preferences, had not made a desperate
and single venture of her whole heart's devotion.
That wrecked, she was lost to love. I embarked
with you, soul and heart, and you left to the
mercy of the chance wind a freight that no tide could
bring to port again!”

“You forget the obstacles.”

“A poet! and talk of obstacles in love! Did you
even ask me to run away with you, Ernest! I would
have gone! Ay—coldly as I talk to you now, I
would have followed you to a hovel—for it was first
love to me. Had it been first love to both of us, I
should now be your wife—sharer of your fame! And
oh, how jealous!”

“With your beauty, jealous?”

“Not of flesh-and-blood women, Ernest! With a
wife's opportunities, I could outcharm, with half my
beauty, the whole troop of Circe. I was thinking of
the favors of your pen! Who would I let you describe!
What eyes, what hair, what form but mine
—what character, what name, would I even suffer you
to make immortal! Paul Veronese had a wife with
my avarice. In his hundred pictures there is the
same blue-eyed, golden-haired woman, as much linked
to his fame as Laura to Petrarch's. If he had
drawn her but once, she would have been known as
the woman Paul Veronese painted! She is known
now as the woman he loved. Delicious immortality!”

“Yet she could not have exacted it. That would
have required an intellect which looked abroad—and
poets love no women who are not like birds, content
with the summer around them, and with every thought
in their nest. Paul Veronese's Bionda, with her soft

mild eyes and fair hair, is the very type of such a
woman, and she would not have foregone a caress for
twenty immortalities.”

“May I ask what was my attraction, then?” said
the proud beauty, with a tone of pique.

“Julia Beverley, unconscious and unintellectual!”
answered Clay, drawing on his gloves with the air of
a man who has got through with an interview. “You
have explained your `metempsychosis,' but I was in
love with the form you have cast off. The night
grows chill. Sweet dreams to you!”

“Stay, Mr. Clay! You asked me if I had been
`better loved,' and I promised you an answer. What
think you of a lover who has forgotten the occupation
that gave him bread, abandoned his ambition, and at
all hours of the night is an unrewarded and hopeless
watcher beneath my window?”

“To-night excepted,” said Clay, looking around.

“Incontri!” called Mrs. Brown, without raising
her voice.

Clay started and frowned, as the painter sprang
from the shadow of the pine-tree which had before
attracted his attention. Falling on his knee, the unhappy
lover kissed the jewelled fingers extended to
him, and giving Clay his hand in rising, the poet
sprang back, for he had clapsed the handle of a stiletto!

“Fear not—she does not love you!” said Incontri,
remarking his surprise, and concealing the weapon in
his sleeve.

“I was destined to be cured of my love, either
way,” said Clay, bowing himself off the verandah with
half a shudder and half a smile.

The curtain closed at the same moment over the
retreating form of Julia Beverley, and so turned
another leaf of Clay's voluminous book of love.

8. CHAPTER VIII.

Clay threw the volume aside, in which he had been
reading, and taking up “the red book,” looked for
the county address of Sir Harry Freer, the exponent
(only) of Lady Fanny Freer, who, though the “nicest
possible creature,” is not the heroine of this story.
Sir Harry's ancestral domain turned out to be a portion
of the earth's surface in that county of England
where the old gentry look down upon very famous
lords as too new, and proportionately upon all other
families that have not degenerated since William the
conqueror.

Sir Harry had married an earl's daughter; but as
the earldom was not only the fruit of two generations
of public and political eminence, Sir Harry was not
considered in Cheshire as having made more than a
tolerable match; and if she passed for a “Cheshire
cheese” in London, he passed for but the rind in the
county. In the county therefore there was a lord
paramount of Freer Hall, and in town, a lady paramount
of Brook-street; and it was under the town
dynasty that Miss Blanch Beaufin was invited up from
Cheshire to pass a first winter in London—Miss
Beaufin being the daughter of a descendant of a Norman
retainer of the first Sir Harry, and the relative
position of the families having been rigidly kept up to
the existing epoch.

The address found in the red book was described
upon the following letter:—

Lady Fanny was a warm-hearted, extravagant
beautiful creature of impulse, a passionate friend of
Clay's (for such women there are), without a spice of
flirtation. She was a perennial belle in London; and
he had begun his acquaintance with her by throwing
himself at her head in the approved fashion—in love
to the degree of rose-asking and sonnet-writing. As
she did not laugh when he sighed, however, but only
told him very seriously that she was not a bit in love
with him, and thought he was throwing away his
time, he easily forgave her insensibility, and they became
very warm allies. Spoiled favorite as he was
of London society, Clay had qualities for a very sincere
friendship; and Lady Fanny, full of irregular
talent, had also a strong vein of common sense, and
perfectly understood him. This explanation to the
reader. It would have saved some trouble and pain
if it had been made by some good angel to Sir Harry
Freer.

As the London coach rattled under the bridged
gate of the gloomy old town of Chester, Lady Fanny's
dashing ponies were almost on their haunches with
her impetuous pull-up at the hotel; and returning
with a nod the coachman's respectful bow, she put
her long whip in at the coach window to shake hands
with Clay, and in a few minutes they were again off
the pavements, and taking the road at her ladyship's
usual speed.

“Steady, Flash! steady!” (she ran on, talking to
Clay, and her ponies in the same breath), “doleful
ride down, isn't it?—(keep up, Tom, you villain!)—
very good of you to come, I'm sure, dear Ernest, and
you'll stay; how long will you stay? (down, Flash!)
—Oh, Miss Beaufin! I've something to say to you
about Blanch Beaufin! I didn't answer your Nota
Bene—(go along, Tom! that pony wants blooding)—
because to tell the truth, it's a delicate subject at
Freer Hall, and I would rather talk than write about
it. You see—(will you be done, Flash!)—the
Beaufins, though very nice people, and Blanch quite
a love—(go along, lazy Tom!)—the Beaufins, I say,
are rated rather crockery in Cheshire. And I am
ashamed to own, really quite ashamed, I have not
been near them in a month. Shameful, isn't it?
There's good action, Ernest! Look at that nigh
pony; not a blemish in him; and such a goer in single
harness! Well, I'll go around by the Beaufins
now.”

“Pray consider, Lady Fanny!” interrupted Clay
deprecatingly, “eighteen hours in a coach.”

“Not to go in! oh, not to go in! Blanch is very ill,
and sees nobody;—and (come, Tom! come!)—I only
heard of it this morning—(there's for your laziness,
you stupid horse!,—We'll, just call and ask how she is,
though Sir Harry—”

“Is she very ill, then?” asked Clay, with a concern
which made Lady Fanny turn her eyes from her
ponies' ears to look at him.

“They say, very! Of course, Sir Harry can't forbid
a visit to the sick.”

“Surely he does not forbid you to call on Blanch
Beaufin!”

“Not `forbid' precisely; that wouldn't do—(gently,
sweet Flash! now, Tom! now, lazy! trot fair through
the hollow!)—but I invited her to pass the winter
with me without consulting him, and he liked it well
enough, till he got back among his stupid neighbors
—(well done, Flash! plague take that bothering
whipple-tree!)—and they and their awkward daughters,
whom I might have invited—(whoa! Flash!)—if I

had wanted a menagerie, set him to looking into her
pedigree. There's the house; the old house with
the vines over it yonder! So then, Sir Harry—such
a sweet girl, too—set his face against the acquaintance.
Here we are!—(Whoa, bays! whoa!) Hold the
reins a moment while I run in!”

More to quell a vague and apprehensive feeling of
remorse than to wile away idle time, Clay passed the
reins back to the stripling in gray livery behind, and
walked round Lady Fanny's ponies, expressing his
admiration of them and the turnout altogether.

“Yes, sir,” said the lad, who seemed to have caught
some of the cleverness of his mistress, for he scarce
looked fourteen, “they're a touch above anything in
Cheshire! Look at the forehand of that nigh 'un,
sir!—arm and withers like a greyhound, and yet what
a quarter for trotting, sir! Quite the right thing all
over! Carries his flag that way quite natural; never
was nicked, sir! Did you take notice, begging your
pardon, sir, how milady put through that hollow?
Wasn't it fine, sir? Tother's a goodish nag, too,
but, nothing to Flash; can't spread, somehow; that's
Sir Harry's picking up, and never was a match; no
blood in Tom, sir! Look at his fetlock: underbred,
but a jimpy nag for a roadster, if a man wanted work
out on him. See how he blows, sir, and Flash as
still as a stopped wheel!”

Lady Fanny's reappearance at the door of the
house interrupted her page's eulogy on the bays; and
with a very altered expression of countenance she resumed
the reins, and drove slowly homeward.

“She is very ill, very ill! but she wishes to see
you, and you must go there; but not to-morrow.
She is passing a crisis now, and her physician says,
will be easier if not better, after to-morrow. Poor
girl! dear Blanch! Ah, Clay! but no—no matter;
I shall talk about it with more composure by-and-by
—poor Blanch!”

Lady Fanny's tears rained upon her two hands as
she let out her impatient horses to be sooner at home,
and, in half an hour, Clay was alone in his luxurious
quarters, under Sir Harry's roof, with two hours to
dinner, and more than thoughts enough, and very sad
ones, to make him glad of time and solitude.

Freer Hall was full of company—Sir Harry's company—and
Clay, with the quiet assurance of a London
star, used to the dominant, took his station by Lady
Fanny on entering the drawing-room, and when dinner
was announced, gave her his arm, without troubling
himself to remember that there was a baronet who had
claim to the honor, and of whom he must simply make
a mortal enemy. At table, the conversation ran mainly
in Sir Harry's vein, hunting, and Clay did not even
take the listener's part; but, in a low tone, talked of
London to Lady Fanny—her ladyship (unaccountably
to her husband and his friends, who were used to
furnish her more merriment than revery) pensive
and out of spirits. With the announcement of coffee
in the drawing-room, Clay disappeared with her, and
their evening was tête-a-tête, for Sir Harry and his
friends were three-bottle men, and commonly bade
good-night to ladies when the ladies left the table.
If there had been a second thought in the convivial
squirearchy, they would have troubled their heads
less about a man who did not exhibit the first symptom
of love for the wife—civility to the husband. But
this is a hand-to-mouth world in the way of knowledge,
and nothing is stored but experiences, lifetime
by lifetime.

Another day passed and another, and mystery seemed
the ruling spirit of the hour, for there were enigmas
for all. Regularly, morning and afternoon, the high
stepping ponies were ordered round, and Lady Fanny
(with Mr. Clay for company to the gate) visited the
Beaufins, now against positive orders from the irate
Sir Harry, and daily, Clay's reserve with his beautiful
hostess increased, and his distress of mind with it, for
both he and she were alarmed with the one piece of
unexplained intelligence between them—Miss Beaufin
would see Mr. Clay when she should be dying!
Not before—for worlds not before—and of the physician
constantly in attendance (Lady Fanny often
present), Clay knew that the poor girl besought with
an eagerness, to the last degree touching and earnest,
to know when hope could be given over. She
was indulged, unquestioned, as a dying daughter;
and, whatever might be her secret, Lady Fanny
promised that at the turning hour, come what would
of distressing and painful, she would herself come
with Mr. Clay to her death-bed.

Sir Harry and his friends were in the billiard-room,
and Lady Fanny and Clay breakfasting together, when
a note was brought in by one of the footmen, who
waited for an answer.

“Say that I will come,” said Lady Fanny, “and
stay, George! See that my ponies are harnessed immediately;
put the head of the phaeton up, and let it
stand in the coach-house. And, Timson!” she added
to the butler who stood at the side-table, “if Sir Harry
inquires for me, say that I am gone to visit a sick
friend.”

Lady Fanny walked to the window. It rained in
torrents. There was no need of explanation to Clay;
he understood the note and its meaning.

“The offices connect with the stables by a covered
way,” she said, “and we will get in there. Shall you
be ready in a few minutes?”

“Quite, dear Lady Fanny! I am ready now.”

“The rain is rather fortunate than otherwise,” she
added, in going out, “for Sir Harry will not see us
go; and he might throw an obstacle in the way, and
make it difficult to manage. Wrap well up, Ernest!”

The butler looked inquisitively at Clay and his mistress,
but both were preoccupied, and in ten minutes
the rapid phaeton was on its way, the ponies pressing
on the bit as if the eagerness of the two hearts beating
behind them was communicated through the reins,
and Lady Fanny, contrary to her wont, driving in unencouraging
silence. The three or four miles between
Freer Hall and their destination were soon traversed,
and under the small porte-cochere of the ancient mansion
the ponies stood panting and sheltered.

“Kind Lady Fanny! God bless you!” said a tall,
dark man, of a very striking exterior, coming out to
the phaeton. “And you, sir, are welcome!”

They followed him into the little parlor, where Clay
was presented by Lady Fanny to the mother of Miss
Beaufin, a singularly yet sadly sweet woman in voice,
person, and address; to the old, white-haired vicar,
and to the physician, who returned his bow with a
cold and very formal salute.

“There is no time to be lost,” said he, “and at the
request of Miss Beaufin, Lady Fanny and this gentleman
will please go to her chamber without us. I can
trust your ladyship to see that her remainder of life
is not shortened nor harassed by needless agitation.”

Clay's heart beat violently. At the extremity of
the long and dimly-lighted passage thrown open by
the father to Lady Fanny, he saw a while curtained
bed—the death-bed, he knew, of the gay and fair
flower of a London season, the wonder and idol of
difficult fashion, and unadmiring rank. Blanch Beaufin
had appeared like a marvel in the brilliant circles of
Lady Fanny's acquaintance, a distinguished, unconscious,
dazzling girl, of whom her fair introductress
(either in mischief or good nature) would say nothing
but that she was her neighbor in Cheshire, though
all that nature could lavish on one human creature
seemed hers, with all that high birth could stamp on
mien, countenance, and manners. Clay paid her his
tribute with the rest—the hundred who flattered and
followed her; but she was a proud girl, and though

he seized every opportunity of being near her, nothing
in her manner betrayed to him that he was not counted
among the hundred. A London season fleets fast,
and, taken by surprise with Lady Fanny's early departure
for the country, her farewells were written
on the corners of cards, and with a secret deep buried
in the heart, she was brought back to the retirement
of home.

Brief history of the breaking of a heart!

Lady Fanny started slightly on entering the chamber.
The sick girl sat propped in an arm chair,
dressed in snowy white; even her slight foot appearing
beneath the edge of her dress in a slipper of white
satin. Her brown hair fell in profuse ringlets over
her shoulders; but it was gathered behind into a
knot, and from it depended a white veil, the diamonds
which fastened it, pressing to the glossy curve of her
head, a slender stem of orange-flowers. Her features
were of that slight mould which shows sickness by
little except higher transparency of the blue veins,
and brighter redness in the lips, and as she smiled
with suffused cheek, and held out her gloved hand to
Clay, with a vain effort to articulate, he passed his
hands across his eyes and looked inquiringly at his
friend. He had expected, though he had never
realized, that she would be altered. She looked
almost as he had left her. He remembered her only
as he had oftenest seen her—dressed for ball or party,
and but for the solemnity of the preparation he had
gone through, he might have thought his feelings
had been played upon only; that Blanch Beaufin
was well—still beautiful and well; that he should
again see her in the brilliant circles of London; still
love her as he secretly did, and receive what he now
felt would be under any circumstances a gift of
Heaven, the assurance of a return. This and a world
of confused emotion, tumultuously and in an instant,
rushed through his heart; for there are moments in
which we live lives of feeling and thought; moments,
glances, which supply years of secret or bitter memory.

This is but a sketch—but an outline of a tale over
true. Were there space, were there time to follow
out the traverse thread of its mere mournful incidents,
we might write the reverse side of a leaf of life ever
read partially and wrong—the life of the gay and unlamenting.
Sickness and death had here broken
down a wall of adamant between two creatures, every
way formed for each other. In health and ordinary
regularity of circumstances, they would have loved as
truly and deeply as those in humbler or in more fortunate
relative positions; but they probably would
never have been united. It is the system, the necessary
system of the class to which Clay belonged, to
turn adroitly and gayly off every shaft to the heart;
to take advantage of no opening to affection; to
smother all preference that would lead to an interchange
of hallowed vows; to profess insensibility
equally polished and hardened on the subject of pure
love; to forswear marriage, and make of it a mock
and an impossibility. And whose handiwork is this
unnatural order of society? Was it established by
the fortunate and joyous—by the wealthy and untrammelled,
at liberty to range the world if they liked,
and marry where they chose, but preferring gayety to
happiness, and lawless liberty to virtuous love? No,
indeed! not by these! Show me one such man, and
I will show you a rare perversion of common feeling
—a man who under any circumstances would have
been cold and eccentric. It is not to those able to
marry where they will, that the class of London gay
men owe their system of mocking opinions. But it
is to the companions of fortunate men—gifted like
them, in all but fortune, and holding their caste by
the tenure of forsworn ties—abiding in the paradise
of aristocracy, with pure love for the forbidden fruit!
Are such men insensible to love? Has this forbidden
joy—this one thing hallowed in a bad world; has it no
temptation for the gay man? Is his better nature
quite dead within him? Is he never ill and sad where
gayety can not reach him? Does he envy the rich
young lord (his friend), everything but his blushing
and pure bride? Is he poet or wit, or the mirror of
taste and elegance, yet incapable of discerning the
qualities of a true love; the celestial refinement of a
maiden passion, lawful and fearless, devoted because
spotless, and enduring because made up half of prayer
and gratitude to her Maker? Does he not know distinctions
of feeling, as he knows character in a play?
Does he not discriminate between purity and guilt in
love, as he does in his nice judgment of honor and
taste? Is he gayly dead to the deepest and most
elevated cravings of nature—love, passionate, single-hearted,
and holy? Trust me, there is a bitterness
whose depths we can only fathom by refinement!
To move among creatures embellished and elevated
to the last point of human attainment, lovely and unsullied,
and know yourself (as to all but gazing on and
appreciating them) a pariah and an outcast! to breathe
their air, and be the companion and apparent equal of
those for whose bliss they are created, and to whom
they are offered for choice, with the profusion of
flowers in a garden—(the chooser and possessor of
the brightest your inferior in all else)—to live thus;
to suffer thus, and still smile and call it choice and
your own way to happiness—this is mockery indeed!
He who now stood in the death-room of Blanch
Beaufin, had felt it in its bitterest intensity!

“Mr. Clay!—Ernest!” said the now pale creature,
breaking the silence with a strong effort, for he had
dropped on his knee at her side in ungovernable emotion,
and, as yet, had but articulated her name—“Ernest!
I have but little time for anything—least of all
for disguise or ceremony. I am assured that I am dying.
I am convinced,” she added firmly, taking up
the watch that lay beside her, “that I have been told
the truth, and that when this hourhand comes round
again, I shall be dead. I will conceal nothing. They
have given me cordials that will support me one hour,
and for that hour—and for eternity—I wish—if I may
be so blest—if God will permit—to be your wife!”

Lady Fanny Freer rose and came to her with rapid
steps, and Clay sprang to his feet, and in a passion of
tears exclaimed, “Oh God! can this be true!”

“Answer me quickly!” she continued, in a voice
raised, but breaking through sobs, “an hour is short—
oh how short, when it is the last! I can not stay with
you long, were you a thousand times mine. Tell
me, Ernest!—shall it be?—shall I be wedded ere I
die?—wedded now?”

A passionate gesture to Lady Fanny was all the
answer Clay could make, and in another moment the
aged vicar was in the chamber, with her parents and
the physician, to all of whom a few words explained
a mystery which her bridal attire had already half unravelled.

Blanch spoke quickly—“Shall he proceed, Ernest?”

Her prayer-book was open on her knee, and Clay
gave it to the vicar, who, with a quick sense of sympathy,
and with but a glance at the weeping and silent
parents, read without delay the hallowed ceremonial.

Clay's countenance elevated and cleared as he proceeded,
and Blanch, with her large suffused eyes fixed
on his, listened with a smile, serene, but expressive of
unspeakable rapture. Her beauty had never been so
radiant, so angelic. In heaven, on her bridal night,
beatified spirit as she was, she could not have been
more beautiful!

One instant of embarrassment occurred, unobserved
by the dying bride, but, with the thoughtfulness of
womanly generosity, Lady Fanny had foreseen it, and,

drawing off her own wedding-ring, she passed it into
Ernest's hand ere the interruption became apparent.
Alas! the emaciated hand ungloved to receive it!
That wasted finger pointed indeed to heaven! Till
then, Clay had felt almost in a dream. But here was
suffering—sickness—death! This told what the hectic
brightness and the faultless features would fain
deny—what the fragrant and still unwithering flowers
upon her temples would seem to mock! But the
hectic was already fading, and the flowers outlived the
light in the dark eyes they shaded!

The vicar joined their hands with the solemn adjuration,
“Those whom God hath joined together let
no man put asunder;” and Clay rose from his knees,
and pressing his first kiss upon her lips, strained her
passionately to his heart.

“Mine in heaven!” she cried, giving way at last to
her tears, as she closed her slight arms over his neck;
“mine in heaven! Is it not so, mother! father! is
he not mine now? There is no giving in marriage in
heaven, but the ties, hallowed here, are not forgotten
there! Tell me they are not! Speak to me, my
husband! Press me to your heart, Ernest! Your
wife—oh, I thank God!”

The physician sprang forward and laid his hand
upon her pulse. She fell back upon her pillows, and
with a smile upon her lips, and the tears still wet upon
her long and drooping lashes, lay dead.

Lady Fanny took the mother by the arm, and with
a gesture to the father and the physician to follow,
they retired and left the bridegroom alone.

Life is full of sudden transitions; and the next
event in that of Ernest Clay, was a duel with Sir Harry
Freer—if the Morning Post was to be believed—
“occasioned by the indiscretion of Lady Fanny, who,
in a giddy moment, it appears, had given to her admirer,
Sir Harry's opponent, her wedding-ring!”

9. CHAPTER IX.

Late one night in June two gentlemen arrived at
the Villa Hotel of the Baths of Lucca. They stopped
the low britzka in which they travelled, and, leaving
a servant to make arrangements for their lodging,
linked arms and strolled up the road toward the banks
of the Lima. The moon was chequered at the moment
with the poised leaf of a treetop, and as it passed
from her face, she arose and stood alone in the
steel-blue of the unclouded heavens—a luminous and
tremulous plate of gold. And you know how beautiful
must have been the night, a June night in Italy,
with a moon at the full!

A lady, with a servant following her at a little distance,
passed the travellers on the bridge of the Lima.
She dropped her veil and went by in silence. But
the Freyherr felt the arm of his friend tremble within
his own.

“Do you know her, then?” asked Von Leisten.

“By the thrill in my veins we have met before,”
said Clay; “but whether this involuntary sensation
was pleasurable or painful, I have not yet decided.
There are none I care to meet—none who can be
here.” He added the last few words after a moment's
pause, and sadly.

They walked on in silence to the base of the mountain,
busy each with such coloring as the moonlight
threw on their thoughts, but neither of them was
happy.

Clay was humane, and a lover of nature—a poet,
that is to say—and, in a world so beautiful, could never
be a prey to disgust; but he was satiated with the
common emotions of life. His heart, for ever overflowing,
had filled many a cup with love, but with
strange tenacity he turned back for ever to the first.
He was weary of the beginnings of love—weary of
its probations and changes. He had passed the period
of life when inconstancy was tempting. He
longed now for an affection that would continue into
another world—holy and pure enough to pass a gate
guarded by angels. And his first love—recklessly as
he had thrown it away—was now the thirst of his existence.

It was two o'clock at night. The moon lay broad
upon the southern balconies of the hotel, and every
casement was open to its luminous and fragrant stillness.
Clay and the Freyherr Von Leisten, each in
his apartment, were awake, unwilling to lose the luxury
of the night. And there was one other under
that roof waking, with her eyes fixed on the moon.

As Clay leaned his head on his hand, and looked
outward to the sky, his heart began to be troubled.
There was a point in the path of the moon's rays
where his spirit turned back. There was an influence
abroad in the dissolving moonlight around him which
resistlessly awakened the past—the sealed but unforgotten
past. He could not single out the emotion. He
knew not whether it was fear or hope—pain or pleasure.
He called, through the open window, to Von Leisten.

The Freyherr, like himself, and like all who have
outlived the effervescence of life, was enamored of the
night. A moment of unfathomable moonlight was
dearer to him than hours disenchanted with the sun.
He, too, had been looking outward and upward—but
with no trouble at his heart.

“The night is inconceivably sweet,” he said, as he
entered, “and your voice called in my thought and
sense from the intoxication of a revel. What would
you, my friend?”

“I am restless, Von Leisten! There is some one
near us whose glances cross mine on the moonlight,
and agitate and perplex me. Yet there was but one
on earth deep enough in the life-blood of my being
to move me thus—even were she here! And she is
not here!”

His voice trembled and softened, and the last word
was scarce audible on his closing lips, for the Freyherr
had passed his hands over him while he spoke,
and he had fallen into the trance of the spirit-world.

Clay and Von Leisten had retired from the active
passions of life together, and had met and mingled at
that moment of void and thirst when each supplied
the want of the other. The Freyherr was a German
noble, of a character passionately poetic, and of singular
acquirement in the mystic fields of knowledge.
Too wealthy to need labor, and too proud to submit
his thoughts or his attainments to the criticism or
judgment of the world, he lavished on his own life, and
on those linked to him in friendship, the strange powers
he had acquired, and the prodigal overthrow of his
daily thought and feeling. Clay was his superior,
perhaps, in genius, and necessity had driven him to
develop the type of his inner soul, and leave its impress
on the time. But he was inferior to Von Leisten
in the power of will, and he lay in his control like
a child in its mother's. Four years they had passed
together, much of it in the secluded castle of Von
Leisten, busied with the occult studies to which the
Freyherr was secretly devoted; but travelling down
to Italy to meet the luxurious summer, and dividing
their lives between the enjoyment of nature and the
ideal world they had unlocked. Von Leisten had
lost, by death, the human altar on which his heart
could alone burn the incense of love; and Clay had
flung aside in an hour of intoxicating passion the one
pure affection in which his happiness was sealed—
and both were desolate. But in the world of the
past, Von Leisten, though more irrevocably lonely,
was more tranquilly blest.

The Freyherr released he entranced spirit of his

friend, and bade him follow back the rays of the moon
to the source of his agitation.

A smile crept slowly over the speaker's lips.

In an apartment flooded with the silver lustre of the
night, reclined, in an invalid's chair, propped with pillows,
a woman of singular, though most fragile beauty.
Books and music lay strewn around, and a lamp, subdued
to the tone of the moonlight by an orb of alabaster,
burned beside her. She lay bathing her blue
eyes in the round chalice of the moon. A profusion
of brown ringlets fell over the white dress that enveloped
her, and her oval cheek lay supported on the
palm of her hand, and her bright red lips were parted.
The pure, yet passionate spell of that soft night possessed
her.

Over her leaned the disembodied spirit of him who
had once loved her—praying to God that his soul
might be so purified as to mingle unstartingly, unrepulsively,
in hallowed harmony with hers. And presently
he felt the coming of angels toward him, breathing
into the deepest abysses of his existence a tearful
and purifying sadness. And with a trembling aspiration
of grateful humility to his Maker, he stooped to
her forehead, and with his impalpable lips impressed
upon its snowy tablet a kiss.

It seemed to Eve Gore a thought of the past that
brought the blood suddenly to her cheek. She started
from her reclining position, and, removing the obscuring
shade from her lamp, arose and crossed her hands
upon her wrists, and paced thoughtfully to and fro.
Her lips murmured marticulately. But the thought,
painfully though it came, changed unaccountably to
melancholy sweetness; and, subduing her lamp again,
she resumed her steadfast gaze upon the moon.

Ernest knelt beside her, and with his invisible brow
bowed upon her hand, poured forth, in the voiceless
language of the soul, his memories of the past, his
hope, his repentance, his pure and passionate adoration
at the present hour.

And thinking she had been in a sweet dream, yet
wondering at its truthfulness and power, Eve wept,
silently and long. As the morning touched the east,
slumber weighed upon her moistened eyelids, and
kneeling by her bedside she murmured her gratitude
to God for a heart relieved of a burden long borne,
and so went peacefully to her sleep.

It was in the following year, and in the beginning
of May. The gay world of England was concentrated
in London, and at the entertainments of noble
houses there were many beautiful women and many
marked men. The Freyherr Von Leisten, after
years of absence, had appeared again, his mysterious
and undeniabe superiority of mien and influence
again yielded to, as before, and again bringing to his
feet the homage and deference of the crowd he moved
among. To his inscrutable power the game of society
was easy, and he walked where he would through
its barriers of form.

He stood one night looking on at a dance. A lady
of a noble air was near him, and both were watching
the movements of the loveliest woman present, a creature
in radiant health, apparently about twenty-three,
and of matchless fascination of person and manner.
Von Leisten turned to the lady near him to inquire
her name, but his attention was arrested by the re
semblance between her and the object of his admiring
curiosity, and he was silent.

The lady had bowed before he withdrew his gaze,
however.

“I think we have met before!” she said; but at
the next instant a slight flush of displeasure came to her
cheek, and she seemed regretting that she had spoken.

“Pardon me!” said Von Leisten, “but—if the
question be not rude—do you remember where?”

She hesitated a moment.

“I have recalled it since I have spoken,” she continued;
“but as the remembrance of the person who
accompanied you always gives me pain, I would willingly
have unsaid it. One evening of last year, crossing
the bridge of the Lima, you were walking with
Mr. Clay. Pardon me—but, though I left Lucca
with my daughter on the following morning, and saw
you no more, the association, or your appearance,
had imprinted the circumstance on my mind.”

“And is that Eve Gore?” said Von Leisten, musingly,
gazing on the beautiful creature now gliding
with light step to her mother's side.

But the Freyherr's heart was gone to his friend.

As the burst of the waltz broke in upon the closing
of the quadrille, he offered his hand to the fair girl,
and as they moved round to the entrancing music, he
murmured in her ear, “He who came to you in the
moonlight of Italy will be with you again, if you are
alone, at the rising of to-night's late moon. Believe
the voice that then speaks to you!”

It was with implacable determination that Mrs.
Gore refused, to the entreaties of Von Leisten, a renewal
of Clay's acquaintance with her daughter.
Resentment for the apparent recklessness with which
he had once sacrificed her maiden love for an unlawful
passion—scornful unbelief of any change in his
character—distrust of the future tendency of the
powers of his genius—all mingled together in a hostility
proof against persuasion. She had expressed
this with all the positiveness of language, when her
daughter suddenly entered the room. It was the
morning after the ball, and she had risen late. But
though subdued and pensive in her air, Von Leisten
saw at a glance that she was happy.

“Can you bring him to me?” said Eve, letting her
hand remain in Von Leisten's, and bending her deep
blue eyes inquiringly on his.

And with no argument but tears and caresses, and
an unexplained assurance of her conviction of the repentant
purity and love of him to whom her heart
was once given, the confiding and strong-hearted
girl bent, at last, the stern will that forbade her happiness.
Her mother unclasped the slight arms from her
neck, and gave her hand in silent consent to Von Leisten.

The Freyherr stood a moment with his eyes fixed
on the ground. The color fled from his cheeks, and
his brow moistened.

“I have called him,” he said—“he will be here!”

An hour elapsed, and Clay entered the house. He
had risen from a bed of sickness, and came, pale and
in terror—for the spirit-summons was powerful. But
Von Leisten welcomed him at the door with a smile,
and withdrew the mother from the room, and left Ernest
alone with his future bride—the first union, save
in spirit, after years of separation.

THE MARQUIS IN PETTICOATS.
(THE OUTLINE FROM A FRENCH MEMOIR.)

I introduce you at once to the Marquis de la Chetardie—a
diplomatist who figured largely in the gay
age of Louis XV.—and the story is but one of the
illuminated pages of the dark book of diplomacy.

Charles de la Chetardie appeared for the first time
to the eyes of the king at a masquerade ball, given at
Versailles, under the auspices of la belle Pompadour.
He was dressed as a young lady of high rank, making
her début; and, so perfect was his acting, and the deception
altogether, that Louis became enamored
of the disguised marquis, and violently excited the
jealousy of “Madame,” by his amorous attentions.
An eclaircissement, of course, took place, and the result
was a great partiality for the marquis's society,
and his subsequent employment, in and out of petticoats,
in many a scheme of state diplomacy and royal
amusement.

La Chetardie was at this time just eighteen. He
was very slight, and had remarkably small hands and
feet, and the radiant fairness of his skin and the luxuriant
softness of his profuse chestnut curls, might
justly have been the envy of the most delicate woman.
He was, at first, subjected to some ridicule for his
effeminacy, but the merry courtiers were soon made
aware, that, under this velvet fragility lay concealed
the strength and ferocity of the tiger. The grasp of
his small hand was like an iron vice, and his singular
activity, and the cool courage which afterward gave
him a brilliant career on the battle-field, established
him, in a very short time, as the most formidable
swordsman of the court. His ferocity, however, lay
deeply concealed in his character, and, unprovoked,
he was the gayest and most brilliant of merry companions.

This was the age of occult and treacherous diplomacy,
and the court of Russia, where Louis would
fain have exercised an influence (private as well as political
in its results), was guarded by an implacable
Argus, in the person of the prime minister, Bestucheff.
Aided by Sir Hambury Williams, the English ambassador,
one of the craftiest men of that crafty period, he
had succeeded for some years in defeating every attempt
at access to the imperial ear by the secret emissaries
of France. The sudden appearance of La
Chetardie, his cool self-command, and his successful
personation of a female, suggested a new hope to the
king, however; and, called to Versailles by royal mandate,
the young marquis was taken into cabinet confidence,
and a secret mission to St. Petersburgh, in
petticoats, proposed to him and accepted.

With his instructions and secret despatches stitched
into his corsets, and under the ostensible protection of
a scientific man, who was to present him to the tzarine
as a Mademoiselle de Beaumont, desirous of entering
the service of Elizabeth, the marquis reached St. Petersburg
without accident or adventure. The young
lady's guardian requested an audience through Bestucheff,
and having delivered the open letters recommending
her for her accomplishments to the imperial
protection, he begged leave to continue on his scientific
tour to the central regions of Russia.

Congé was immediately granted, and on the disappearance
of the savant, and before the departure of
Bestucheff, the tzarine threw off all ceremony, and
pinching the cheeks and imprinting a kiss on the fore
head of the beautiful stranger, appointed her, by one
of those sudden whims of preference against which
her ministers had so much trouble to guard, lectrice
intime et particulière—in short, confidential personal
attendant. The blushes of the confused marquis, who
was unprepared for so affectionate a reception, served
rather to heighten the disguise, and old Bestucheff
bowed himself out with a compliment to the beauty
of Mademoiselle de Beaumont, veiled in a diplomatic
congratulation to her imperial mistress.

Elizabeth was forty and a little passée, but she still
had pretensions, and was particularly fond of beauty
in her attendants, female as well as male. Her favorite,
of her personal suite, at the time of the arrival of
the marquis, was an exquisite little creature who had
been sent to her, as a compliment to this particular
taste, by the Dutchess of Mecklenberg-Strelitz—a kind
of German “Fenella,” or “Mignon,” by the name of
Nadége Stein. Not much below the middle size,
Nadége was a model of symmetrical proportion, and
of very extraordinary beauty. She had been carefully
educated for her present situation, and was highly
accomplished; a fine reader, and a singularly sweet
musician and dancer. The tzarine's passion for this
lovely attendant was excessive, and the arrival of a new
favorite of the same sex was looked upon with some
pleasure by the eclipsed remainder of the palace
idlers.

Elizabeth summoned Nadége, and committed Mademoiselle
de Beaumont temporarily to her charge;
but the same mysterious magnetism which had reached
the heart of the tzarine, seemed to kindle, quite as
promptly, the affections of her attendant. Nadége
was no sooner alone with her new friend, than she
jumped to her neck, smothered her with kisses, called
her by every endearing epithet, and overwhelmed her
with questions, mingled with the most childlike exclamations
of wonder at her own inexplicable love for
a stranger. In an hour, she had shown to the new
demoiselle all the contents of the little boudoir in which
she lived; talked to her of her loves and hates at the
Russian court; of her home in Mecklenberg, and her
present situation—in short, poured out her heart with
the naif abandon of a child. The young marquis had
never seen so lovely a creature; and, responsibly as he
felt his difficult and delicate situation, he returned the
affection so innocently lavished upon him, and by the
end of this first fatal hour, was irrecoverably in love.
And, gay as his life had been at the French court, it
was the first, and subsequently proved to be the deepest,
passion of his life.

On the tzarine's return to her private apartment, she
summoned her new favorite, and superintended, with
condescending solicitude, the arrangements for her
palace lodging. Nadége inhabited a small tower adjoining
the bedroom of her mistress, and above this
was an unoccupied room, which, at the present suggestion
of the fairy little attendant, was allotted to the
new-comer. The staircase opened by one door into
the private gardens, and by the opposite, into the corridor
leading immediately to the imperial chamber.
The marquis's delicacy would fain have made some
objection to this very intimate location; but he could
hazard nothing against the interests of his sovereign,
and he trusted to a speedy termination of his disguise

with the attainment of his object. Meantime, the
close neighborhood of the fair Nadége was not the
most intolerable of necessities.

The marquis's task was a very difficult one. He
was instructed, before abandoning his disguise and delivering
his secret despatches, to awaken the interest
of the tzarine on the two subjects to which the documents
had reference: viz., a former partiality of her
majesty for Louis, and a formerly discussed project of
seating the Prince de Conti on the throne of Poland.
Bestucheff had so long succeeded in cutting off all
approach of these topics to the ear of the tzarine, that
her majesty had probably forgotten them altogether.

Weeks passed, and the opportunities to broach these
delicate subjects had been inauspiciously rare. Mademoiselle
de Beaumont, it is true, had completely
eclipsed the favorite Nadége; and Elizabeth, in her
hours of relaxation from state affairs, exacted the constant
attendance of the new favorite in her private
apartments. But the almost constant presence of
some other of the maids of honor, opposed continual
obstacles and interruptions, and the tzarine herself
was not always disposed to talk of matters more serious
than the current trifles of the hour. She was
extremely indolent in her personal habits; and often
reclining at length upon cushions on the floor of her
boudoir, she laid her imperial head in the lap of the
embarrassed demoiselle, and was soothed to sleep by
reading and the bathing of her temples. And during
this period, she exacted frequently of the marquis, with
a kind of instinctive mistrust, promises of continuance
for life in her personal service.

But there were sweeter hours for the enamored La
Chetardie than those passed in the presence of his
partial and imperial mistress. Encircled by sentinels,
and guarded from all intrusion of other eyes, in the
inviolable sanctuary of royalty, the beautiful Nadége,
impassioned she knew not why, in her love for her
new companion, was ever within call, and happy in
devoting to him all her faculties of caressing endearment.
He had not yet dared to risk the interests of
his sovereign by a disclosure of his sex, even in the
confidence of love. He could not trust Nadége to
play so difficult a part as that of possessor of so embarrassing
a secret in the presence of the shrewd and
observing tzarine. A betrayal, too, would at once put
an end to his happiness. With the slight arm of the
fair and relying creature about his waist, and her head
pressed close against his breast, they passed the balmy
nights of the Russian summer in pacing the flowery
alleys of the imperial garden, discoursing, with but
one reserve, on every subject that floated to their lips.
It required, however, all the self-control of La Chetardie,
and all the favoring darkness of the night, to conceal
his smiles at the naive confessions of the unconscious
girl, and her wonderings at the peculiarity of her
feelings. She had thought, hitherto, that there were
affections in her nature which could only be called forth
by a lover. Yet now, the thought of caressing another
than her friend—of repeating to any human ear, least
of all to a man, those new-born vows of love—filled
her with alarm and horror. She felt that she had
given her heart irrevocably away—and to a woman!
Ah, with what delirious, though silent passion, La
Chetardie drew her to his bosom, and, with the pressure
of his lips upon hers, interrupted those sweet
confessions!

Yet the time at last drew near for the waking from
this celestial dream. The disguised diplomatist had
found his opportunity, and had successfully awakened
in Elizabeth's mind both curiosity and interest as to
the subjects of the despatches still sewed safely in his
corsets. There remained nothing for him now but to
seize a favorable opportunity, and, with the delivery
of his missives, to declare his sex to the tzarine. There
was risk to life and liberty in this, but the marquis
knew not fear, and he thought but of its consequences
to his love.

In La Chetardie's last interview with the savant who
conducted him to Russia, his male attire had been
successfully transferred from one portmanteau to the
other, and it was now in his possession, ready for the
moment of need. With his plans brought to within a
single night of the dénouement, he parted from the
tzarine, having asked the imperial permission for an
hour's private interview on the morrow, and, with gentle
force excluding Nadége from his apartment, he
dressed himself in his proper costume, and cut open
the warm envelope of his despatches. This done, he
threw his cloak over him, and, with a dark lantern in
his hand, sought Nadége in the garden. He had determined
to disclose himself to her, renew his vows of
love in his proper guise, and arrange, while he had
access and opportunity, some means for uniting their
destinies hereafter.

As he opened the door of the turret, Nadége flew
up the stair to meet him, and observing the cloak in
the faint glimmer of the stars, she playfully endeavored
to envelope herself in it. But, seizing her hands,
La Chetardie turned and glided backward, drawing
her after him toward a small pavilion in the remoter
part of the garden. Here they had never been interrupted,
the empress alone having the power to intrude
upon them, and La Chetardie felt safe in devoting this
place and time to the double disclosure of his secret
and his suppressed passion.

Persuading her with difficulty to desist from putting
her arms about him and sit down without a caress, he
retreated a few steps, and in the darkness of the pavilion,
shook down his imprisoned locks to their masculine
abandon, threw off his cloak, and drew up the
blind of his lantern. The scream of surprise, which
instantly parted from the lips of Nadége, made him
regret his imprudence in not having prepared her for
the transformation, but her second thought was mirth,
for she could believe it of course to be nothing but a
playful masquerade; and with delighted laughter she
sprang to his neck, and overwhelmed him with her
kisses—another voice, however, joining very unexpectedly
in the laughter!

The empress stood before them!

For an instant, with all his self possession, La Chetardie
was confounded and dismayed. Siberia, the
knout, the scaffold, flitted before his eyes, and Nadége
was the sufferer! But a glance at the face of the
tzarine reassured him. She, too, took it for a girlish
masquerade!

But the empress, unfortunately, was not disposed to
have a partner in her enjoyment of the society of this
new apparition of “hose and doublet.” She ordered
Nadége to her turret, with one of those petulant commands
which her attendants understood to admit of no
delay, and while the eclipsed favorite disappeared with
the tears of unwilling submission in her soft eyes, La
Chetardie looked after her with the anguish of eternal
separation at his heart, for a presentiment crowded
irresistibly upon him that he should never see her
more!

The empress was in slippers and robe de nuit, and,
as if fate had determined that this well-kept secret
should not survive the hour, her majesty laid her arm
within that of her supposed masquerader, and led the
way to the palace. She was wakeful, and wished to
be read to sleep. And, with many a compliment to
the beauty of her favorite in male attire, and many a
playful caress, she arrived at the door of her chamber.

But the marquis could go no farther. He had hitherto
been spared the embarrassment of passing this
sacred threshold, for the passée empress had secrets
of toilet for the embellishment of her person, which
she trusted only to the eyes of an antiquated attendant.
La Chetardie had never passed beyond the boudoir

which was between the antechamber and the bed-room,
and the time had come for the disclosure of his
secret. He fell on his knees and announced himself
a man!

Fortunately they were alone. Incredulous at first,
the empress listened to his asseverations, however,
with more amusement than displeasure, and the immediate
delivery of the despatches, with the commenditions
of the disgnised ambassador by his royal master
to the forgiveness and kindness of the empress,
amply secured his pardon. But it was on condition
that he should resume his disguise and remain in her
service.

Alone in his tower (for Nadége had disappeared, and
he knew enough of the cruelty of Elizabeth to dread
the consequences to the poor girl of venturing on direct
inquiries as to her fate), La Chetardie after a few
weeks fell ill; and fortunate, even at this price, to
escape from the silken fetters of the enamored tzarine,
he departed under the care of the imperial physician,
for the more genial climate of France—not without
reiterated promises of return, however, and offers, in
that event, of unlimited wealth and advancement.

But, as the marquis made his way slowly toward
Vienna, a gleam of light dawned on his sadness.
The Princess Sophia Charlotte was newly affianced to
George the Third of England, and this daughter of
the house of Mecklenberg had been the playmate of
Nadége Stein, from infancy till the time when Nadége
was sent to the tzarine by the Dutchess of Mecklenberg.
Making a confidant of the kind physician who
accompanied him, La Chetardie was confirmed, by the
good man's better experience and knowledge, in the
belief that Nadége had shared the same fate of every
female of the court who had ever awakened the jealousy
of the empress. She was doubtless exiled to
Siberia; but, as she had committed no voluntary fault,
it was probably without other punishment; and, with
a playmate on the throne of England, she might be
demanded and recovered ere long, in all her freshness
and beauty. Yet the recent fate of the fair Eudoxie
Lapoukin, who, for an offence but little more distasteful
to the tzarine, had been pierced through the tongue
with hot iron, whipped with the knout, and exiled for
life to Siberia; hung like a cloud of evil augury over
his mind.

The marquis suddenly determined that he would see
the affianced princess, and plead with her for her friend,
before the splendors of a throne should make her inaccessible.
The excitement of this hope had given
him new life, and he easily persuaded his attendant, as
they entered the gates of Vienna, that he required his
attendance no farther. Alone with his own servants,
he resumed his female attire, and directed his course
to Mecklenberg-Strelitz.

The princess had maintained an intimate correspondence
with her playmate up to the time of her
betrothal, and the name of Mademoiselle de Beaumont
was passport enough. La Chetardie had sent
forward his servant, on arriving at the town, in the
neighborhood of the ducal residence, and the reply
to his missive was brought back by one of the officers
in attendance, with orders to conduct the demoiselle
to apartments in the castle. He was received with all
honor at the palace-gate by a chamberlain in waiting,
who led the way to a suite of rooms adjoining those
of the princess, where, after being left alone for a few
minutes, he was familiarly visited by the betrothed
girl, and overwhelmed, as formerly by her friend, with
most embarrassing caresses. In the next moment,
however, the door was hastily flung open, and Nadége,
like a stream of light, fled through the room, hung
upon the neck of the speechless and overjoyed marquis,
and ended with convulsions of mingled tears and
laughter. The moment that he could disengage himself
from her arms, La Chetardie requested to be left
for a moment alone. He felt the danger and impropriety
of longer maintaining his disguise. He closed
his door on the unwilling demoiselles, hastily changed
his dress, and, with his sword at his side, entered the
adjoining reception-room of the princess, where Mademoiselle
de Beaumont was impatiently awaited.

The scene which followed, the mingled confusion
and joy of Nadége, the subsequent hilarity and masquerading
at the castle, and the particulars of the
marriage of the Marquis de la Chetardie to his fair
fellow maid-of-honor, must be left to the reader's imagination.
We have room only to explain the reappearance
of Nadége at Mecklenberg.

Nadége retired to her turret at the imperative command
of the empress, sad and troubled; but waited
wakefully and anxiously for the re-entrance of her disguised
companion. In the course of an hour, however,
the sound of a sentinel's musket, set down at her
door, informed her that she was a prisoner. She knew
Elizabeth, and the Dutchess of Mecklenberg, with an
equal knowledge of the tzarine's character, had provided
her with a resource against the imperial cruelty,
should she have occasion to use it. She crept to the
battlements of the tower, and fastened a handkerchief
to the side looking over the public square.

The following morning, at daylight, Nadége was
summoned to prepare for a journey, and, in an hour,
she was led between soldiers to a carriage at the palace-gate,
and departed by the northern egress of the
city, with a guard of three mounted cossacks. In two
hours from that time, the carriage was overtaken, the
guard overpowered, and the horses' heads turned in
the direction of Moscow. After many difficulties and
dangers, during which she found herself under the
charge of a Mecklenbergian officer in the service of
the tzarine, she reached Vienna in safety, and was immediately
concealed by her friends in the neighborhood
of the palace at Mecklenberg, to remain hidden
till inquiry should be over. The arrival of Mademoiselle
de Beaumont, for the loss of whose life or liberty
she had incessantly wept with dread and apprehension,
was joyfully communicated to her by her friends; and
so the reader knows some of the passages in the early
life of the far-famed beauty in the French court in
the time of Louis XV.—the Marchioness de la Chetardie.

“BEAUTY AND THE BEAST;”
OR, HANDSOME MRS. TITTON AND HER PLAIN HUSBAND.

I have always been very fond of the society of
portrait-painters. Whether it is, that the pursuit of
a beautiful and liberal art softens their natural qualities,
or that, from the habit of conversing while engrossed
with the pencil, they like best that touch-and-go
talk which takes care of itself; or, more probably
still, whether the freedom with which they are admitted
behind the curtains of vanity and affection gives
a certain freshness and truth to their views of things
around them—certain it is, that, in all countries, their
rooms are the most agreeable of haunts, and they
themselves most enjoyable of cronies.

I had chanced in Italy to make the acquaintance of
S—, an English artist of considerable cleverness
in his profession, but more remarkable for his frank
good breeding and his abundant good nature. Four
years after, I had the pleasure of renewing my intercourse
with him in London, where he was flourishing,
quite up to his deserving, as a portrait-painter. His
rooms were hard by one of the principal thorough-fares,
and, from making an occasional visit, I grew to
frequenting them daily, often joining him at his early
breakfast, and often taking him out with me to drive
whenever we changed to tire of our twilight stroll.
While rambling in Hyde Park, one evening, I mentioned
for the twentieth time, a singularly ill-assorted
couple I had once or twice met at his room—a woman
of superb beauty attended by a very inferior-looking
and ill-dressed man. S— had, previously, with
a smile at my speculations, dismissed the subject
rather crisply; but, on this occasion, I went into some
surmises as to the probable results of such “pairing
without matching,” and he either felt called upon to
defend the lady, or made my misapprehension of her
character an excuse for telling me what he knew about
her. He began the story in the Park, and ended it
over a bottle of wine in the Haymarket—of course
with many interruptions and digressions. Let me see
if I can tie his broken threads together.

“That lady is Mrs. Fortescue Titton, and the
gentleman you so much disparage is, if you please,
the incumbrance to ten thousand a year—the money
as much at her service as the husband by whom she
gets it. Whether he could have won her had he been

I will not assert, especially to one who looks on them
as `Beauty and the Beast;' but that she loves him,
or at least prefers to him no handsomer man, I may
say I have been brought to believe, in the way of my
profession.”

“You have painted her, then?” I asked rather
eagerly, thinking I might get a sketch of her face to
take with me to another country.

“No, but I have painted him—and for her—and it
is not a case of Titania and Bottom, either. She is
quite aware he is a monster, and wanted his picture
for a reason you would never divine. But I must begin
at the beginning.

“After you left me in Italy, I was employed by the
earl of —, to copy one or two of his favorite
pictures in the Vatican, and that brought me rather
well acquainted with his son. Lord George was a gay
youth, and a very `look-and-die' style of fellow, and,
as much from admiration of his beauty as anything
else, I asked him to sit to me, on our return to London.
I painted him very fantastically in an Albanian
cap and oriental morning-gown and slippers, smoking
a narghile—the room in which he sat, by the way,
being a correct portrait of his own den, a perfect
museum of costly luxury. It was a pretty gorgeous
turn-out in the way of color, and was severely criticised,
but still a good deal noticed—for I sent it to the exhibition.

“I was one day going into Somerset-house, when
Lord George hailed me from his cab. He wished to
suggest some alteration in his picture, or to tell me
of some criticism upon it, I forget exactly what; but
we went up together. Directly before the portrait,
gazing at it with marked abstraction, stood a beautiful
woman, quite alone; and as she occupied the only
point where the light was favorable, we waited a moment
till she should pass on—Lord George, of course,
rather disposed to shrink from being recognised as the
original. The woman's interest in the picture seemed
rather to increase, however, and what with variations
of the posture of her head, and pulling at her glove
fingers, and other female indications of restlessness
and enthusiasm, I thought I was doing her no injustice
by turning to my companion with a congratulatory
smile.

“ `It seems a case, by Jove!' said Lord George, trying
to look as if it was a matter of very simple occurrence;
`and she's as fine a creature as I've seen this
season! Eh, old boy? we must run her down, and
see where she burrows—and there's nobody with her,
by good luck!'

“A party entered just then, and passed between her
and the picture. She looked annoyed, I thought, but
started forward and borrowed a catalogue of a little
girl, and we could see that she turned to the last page,
on which the portrait was numbered, with, of course,
the name and address of the painter. She made a
memorandum on one of her cards, and left the house.
Lord George followed, and I too, as far as the door,
where I saw her get into a very stylishly appointed
carriage and drive away, followed closely by the cab
of my friend, whom I had declined to accompany.

“You wouldn't have given very heavy odds against
his chance, would you?” said S—, after a moment
pause.

“No, indeed!” I answered quite sincerely.

“Well, I was at work, the next morning, glazing a
picture I had just finished, when the servant brought
up the card of Mrs. Fortescue Titton. I chanced to
be alone, so the lady was shown at once into my painting
room, and lo! the incognita of Somerset-House.
The plot thickens, thought I! She sat down in my
`subject' chair, and, faith! her beauty quite dazzled
me! Her first smile—but you have seen her, so I'll
not bore you with a description.

“Mrs. Titton blushed on opening her errand to me,
first inquiring if I was the painter of `No 403' in the
exhibition, and saying some very civil things about the

picture. I mentioned that it was a portrait of Lord
George — (for his name was not in the catalogue),
and I thought she blushed still more confusedly—
but that, I think now, was fancy, or at any rate had
nothing to do with feeling for his lordship. It was
natural enough for me to be mistaken, for she was very
particular in her inquiries as to the costume, furniture,
and little belongings of the picture, and asked me
among other things, whether it was a flattered likeness;—this
last question very pointedly, too!

“She arose to go. Was I at leisure, and could I
sketch a head for her, and when?

“I appointed the next day, expecting of course that
the subject was the lady herself, and scarcely slept
with thinking of it, and starved myself at breakfast to
have a clear eye, and a hand wide awake. And at
ten she came, with her Mr. Fortescue Titton! I was
sorry to see that she had a husband, for I had indulged
myself with a vague presentiment that she was a
widow; but I begged him to take a chair, and prepared
the platform for my beautiful subject.

“`Will you take your seat?' I asked, with all my
suavity, when my palette was ready.

“`My dear,' said she, turning to her husband, and
pointing to the chair, `Mr. S— is ready for you.'

“I begged pardon for a moment, crossed over to
Verey's and bolted a beef-steak! A cup of coffee, and
a glass of Curaçoa, and a little walk round Hanover-square,
and I recovered from the shock a little. It
went very hard, I give you my word.

“I returned, and took a look, for the first time, at
Mr. Titton. You have seen him, and have some idea
of what his portrait might be, considered as a pleasure
to the artist—what it might promise, I should rather
say, for, after all, I ultimately enjoyed working at it,
quite aside from the presence of Mrs. Titton. It was
the ugliest face in the world, but full of good-nature;
and, as I looked closer into it, I saw, among its coarse
features, lines of almost feminine delicacy, and capabilities
of enthusiasm of which the man himself was
probably unconscious. Then a certain helpless style
of dress was a wet blanket to him. Rich from his
cradle, I suppose his qualities had never been needed
on the surface. His wife knew them.

“From time to time, as I worked, Mrs. Titton came
and looked over my shoulder. With a natural desire
to please her, I, here and there, softened a harsh line,
and was going on to flatter the likeness—not as successful
as I could wish, however, for it is much easier
to get a faithful likeness than to flatter without destroying
it.

“`Mr. S—,' said she, laying her hand on my
arm as I thinned away the lumpy rim of his nostril,
`I want, first, a literal copy of my husband's features.
Suppose, with this idea, you take a fresh canvass?'

“Thoroughly mystified by the whole business, I
did as she requested; and, in two sittings, made a
likeness of Titton which would have given you a face-ache.
He shrugged his shoulders at it, and seemed
very glad when the bore of sitting was over; but they
seemed to understand each other very well, or, if not,
he reserved his questions till there could be no restraint
upon the answer. He seemed a capital fellow, and I
liked him exceedingly.

“I asked if I should frame the picture and send it
home? No! I was to do neither. If I would be kind
enough not to show it, nor to mention it to any one,
and come the next day and dine with them en famille,
Mrs. Titton would feel very much obliged to me.
And this dinner was followed up by breakfasts and
lunches and suppers, and, for a fortnight, I really lived
with the Tittons—and pleasanter people to live with,
by Jove, you haven't seen in your travels, though you
are `a picked man of countries!”

“I should mention, by the way, that I was always
placed opposite Titton at table, and that he was a good
deal with me, one way and another, taking me out
you do, for a stroll, calling and sitting with me when
I was at work, etc. And as to Mrs. Titton—if I did
not mistrust your arriere penseé, I would enlarge a
little on my intimacy with Mrs. Titton!—But, believe
me when I tell you, that, without a ray of flirtation,
we became as cozily intimate as brother and sister.”

“And what of Lord George, all this time?” I asked.

“Oh, Lord George!—Well, Lord George of course
had no difficulty in making Mrs. Titton's acquaintance,
though they were not quite in the same circle, and he
had been presented to her, and had seen her at a party
or two, where he managed to be invited on purpose—
but of this, for a while, I heard nothing. She had not
yet seen him at her own house, and I had not chanced
to encounter him. But let me go on with my story.

“Mrs. Titton sent for me to come to her, one
morning rather early. I found her in her boudoir, in
a negligé morning-dress, and looking adorably beautiful,
and as pure as beautiful, you smiling villain! She
seemed to have something on her mind about which she
was a little embarrassed, but I knew her too well to lay
any unction to my soul. We chatted about the weather
a few moments, and she came to the point. You will
see that she was a woman of some talent, mon ami!

“`Have you looked at my husband's portrait since
you finished it?' she asked.

“`No, indeed!' I replied rather hastily—but immediately
apologized.

“`Oh, if I had not been certain you would not,'
she said with a smile, `I should have requested it, for
I wished you to forget it, as far as possible. And now
let me tell you what I want of you! You have got,
on canvass, a likeness of Fortescue as the world sees
him. Since taking it, however, you have seen him
more intimately, and—and—like his face better, do
you not?'

“`Certainly! certainly!' I exclaimed, in all sincerity.

“`Thank you! If I mistake not, then, you do not,
when thinking of him, call up to your mind the
features in your portrait, but a face formed rather of
his good qualities, as you have learned to trace them
in his expression.'

“`True,' I said, `very true!'

“`Now, then,' she continued, leaning over to me
very earnestly, `I want you to paint a new picture,
and without departing from the real likeness, which
you will have to guide you, breathe into it the expression
you have in your ideal likeness. Add, to what
the world sees, what I see, what you see, what all who
love him see, in his plain features. Idealize it,
spiritualize it—and without lessening the resemblance.
Can this be done?'

“I thought it could. I promised to do my utmost.

“`I shall call and see you as you progress in it.'
she said, `and now, if you have nothing better to do,
stay to lunch, and come out with me in the carriage.
I want a little of your foreign taste in the selection of
some pretty nothings for a gentleman's toilet.'

“We passed the morning in making what I should
consider very extravagent purchases for anybody but
a prince royal, winding up with some delicious cabinet
pictures and some gems of statuary—all suited only,
I should say, to the apartments of a fastidious luxuriast.
I was not yet at the bottom of her secret.

“I went to work upon the new picture with the
zeal always given to an artist by an appreciative and
confiding employer. She called every day and made
important suggestions, and at last I finished it to her
satisfaction and mine; and, without speaking of it as
a work of art, I may give you my opinion that Titton
will scarcely be more embellished in the other world
—that is, if it be true, as the divines tell us, that our
mortal likeness will be so far preserved, though improved
upon, that we shall be recognisable by our
friends. Still I was to paint a third picture—a cabinet

full length—and for this the other two were but studies,
and so intended by Mrs. Fortescue Titton. It was
to be an improvement upon Lord George's portrait
(which of course had given her the idea), and was to
represent her husband in a very costly, and an exceedingly
recherché morning costume—dressing-gown,
slippers, waistcoat, and neckcloth, worn with perfect
elegance, and representing a Titton with a faultless
attitude (in a fauteuil, reading), a faultless exterior,
and around him the most sumptuous appliances of
dressing-room luxury. This picture cost me a great
deal of vexation and labor, for it was emphatically a
fancy picture—poor Titton never having appeared in
that character, even `by particular desire.' I finished
it however, and again, to her satisfaction. I afterward
added some finishing touches to the other two, and
sent them home, appropriately framed according to
very minute instructions.”

“How long ago was this?” I asked.

“Three years,” replied S—, musing over his wine.

“Well—the sequel?” said I, a little impatient.

“I was thinking how I should let it break upon you,
as it took effect upon her acquaintances—for, understand,
Mrs. Titton is too much of a diplomatist to do
anything obviously dramatic in this age of ridicule.
She knows very well that any sudden `flare-up' of her
husband's consequence—any new light on his character
obviously calling for attention—would awaken
speculation and set to work the watchful anatomizers
of the body fashionable. Let me see! I will tell you
what I should have known about it, had I been only
an ordinary acquaintance—not in the secret, and not
the painter of the pictures.

“Some six months after the finishing of the last
portrait, I was at a large ball at their house. Mrs.
Titton's beauty, I should have told you, and the style
in which they lived, and very possibly a little of Lord
George's good will, had elevated them from the wealthy
and respectable level of society to the fashionable and
exclusive. All the best people went there. As I was
going in, I overtook, at the head of the stairs, a very
clever little widow, an acquaintance of mine, and she
honored me by taking my arm and keeping it for a
promenade through the rooms. We made our bow
to Mrs. Titton and strolled across the reception room,
where the most conspicuous object, dead facing us,
with a flood of light upon it, was my first veracious
portrait of Titton! As I was not known as the artist,
I indulged myself in some commonplace exclamations
of horror.

“`Do not look at that,' said the widow, `you will
distress poor Mrs. Titton. What a quiz that clever
husband of hers must be to insist on exposing such a
carieature!

“`How insist upon it?' I asked.

“`Why, have you never seen the one in her boudoir?
Come with me!'

“We made our way through the apartments to the
little retreat lined with silk, which the morning lounge
of the fair mistress of the house. There was but one
picture, with a curtain drawn carefully across it—my
second portrait! We sat down on the luxurious
cushions, and the widow went off into a discussion of
it and the original, pronouncing it a perfect likeness,
not at all flattered, and very soon begging me to redraw
the curtain, lest we should be surprised by Mr.
Titton himself.

“`And suppose we were?' said I.

“`Why, he is such an oddity!' replied the widow
lowering her tone. `They say that in this very house
he has a suite of apartments entirely to himself, furnished
with a taste and luxury really wonderful! There
are two Mr. Tittons, my dear friend!—one a perfect
Sybarite, very elegant in his dress when he chooses
to be, excessively accomplished and fastidious, and
brilliant and fascinating to a degree!—(and in this
character they say he won that superb creature for a
wife), and the other Mr. Titton is just the slovenly
monster that everybody sees! Isn't it odd!'

“`Queer enough!' said I, affecting great astonishment;
`pray, have you ever been into these mysterious
apartments?'

“`No!—they say only his wife and himself and one
confidential servant ever pass the threshold. Mrs.
Titton don't like to talk about it—though one would
think she could scarcely object to her husband's being
thought better of. It's pride on his part—sheer pride
—and I can understand the feeling very well! He's
a very superior man, and he has made up his mind
that the world thinks him very awkward and
ugly, and he takes a pleasure in showing the world
that he don't care a rush for its opinion, and has resources
quite sufficient within himself. That's the
reason that atrocious portrait is hung up in the best
room, and this good-looking one covered up with a
curtain! I suppose this wouldn't be here if he could
have his own way, and if his wife wasn't so much in
love with him!'

“This, I assure you,” said S—, “is the impression
throughout their circle of acquaintances.
The Tittons themselves maintain a complete silence
on the subject. Mr. Fortescue Titton is considered
a very accomplished man, with a very proud and very
secret contempt for the opinions of the world—dressing
badly on purpose, silent and simple by design, and only
caring to show himself in his real character to his
beautiful wife, who is thought to be completely in love
with him, and quite excusable for it! What do you
think of the woman's diplomatic talents?”

“I think I should like to know her,” said I; “but
what says Lord George to all this?”

“I had a call from Lord George not long ago,”
replied S—, “and for the first time since our
chat at Somerset-House, the conversation turned upon
the Tittons.

“`Devilish sly of you!' said his lordship, turning
to me half angry, `why did you pretend not to know
the woman at Somerset-House? You might have
saved me lots of trouble and money, for I was a month
or two finding out what sort of people they were—
feeing the servants and getting them called on and
invited here and there—all with the idea that it was
a rich donkey with a fine toy that didn't belong to him!”

“`Well!' exclaimed I—

“`Well!—not at all well! I made a great ninny
of myself, with that satirical slyboots, old Titton,
laughing at me all the time, when you, that had
painted him in his proper character and knew what a
deep devil he was, might have saved me with but half
a hint!'

“`You have been in the lady's boudoir then!'

“`Yes, and in the gentleman's sanctum sanctorum!
Mrs. Titton sent for me about some trumpery thing
or other, and when I called, the servant showed me in
there by mistake. There was a great row in the house
about it, but I was there long enough to see what a
monstrous nice time the fellow has of it, all to himself,
and to see your picture of him in his private
character. The picture you made of me was only a
copy of that, you sly traitor! And I suppose Mrs.
Titton didn't like your stealing from hers, did she—
for, I take it that was what ailed her at the exhibition,
when you allowed me to be so humbugged!'

“I had a good laugh, but it was as much at the
quiet success of Mrs. Titton's tactics as at Lord
George's discomfiture. Of course, I could not undeceive
him. And now,” continued S—, very
good-naturedly, “just ring for a pen and ink, and I'll
write a note to Mrs. Titton, asking leave to bring you
there this evening, for it's her `night at home,' and
she's worth seeing, if my pictures, which you will see
there, are not.”

BROWN'S DAY WITH THE MIMPSONS.

We got down from an omnibus in Charing-Cross.

“Sovereign or ha'penny?” said the cad, rubbing
the coin between his thumb and finger.

“Sovereign, of course!” said B— confidently,
pocketing the change which the man had ready for
the emergency in a bit of brown paper.

It was a muggy, misty, London twilight. I was
coming up to town from Blackheath, and in the
crowded vehicle had chanced to encounter my compatriot
B— (call it Brown), who had been lionizing
the Thames tunnel. In the course of conversation,
it came out that we were both on the town for
our dinner, and as we were both guests at the Traveller's
Club, we had pulled the omnibus-string at the
nearest point, and, after the brief dialogue recorded
above, strolled together down Pall Mall.

As we sat waiting for our fish, one of us made a remark
as to the difference of feel between gold and
copper coin, and Brown, fishing in his pocket for
money to try the experiment, discovered that the
doubt of the cad was well founded, for he had unconsciously
passed a halfpenny for a sovereign.

“People are very apt to take your coin at your own
valuation!” said Brown, with a smile of some meaning,
“and when they are in the dark as to your original
coinage (as the English are with regard to Americans
abroad), it is as easy to pass for gold as for copper.
Indeed, you may pass for both in a day, as I have
lately had experience. Remind me presently to tell
you how. Here comes the fried sole, and it's troublesome
talking when there are bones to fight shy of—
the `flow of sole' to the contrary notwithstanding.”

I will take advantage of the hiatus to give the reader
a slight idea of my friend, as a preparation for his
story.

Brown was the “mirror of courtesy.” He was
also the mirror of vulgarity. And he was the mirror
of everything else. He had that facility of adaptation
to the society he was in, which made him seem
born for that society, and that only; and, without calculation
or forethought—by an unconscious instinct,
indeed—he cleverly reflected the man and manners
before him. The result was a popularity of a most
varied quality. Brown was a man of moderate fortune
and no profession. He had travelled for some
years on the continent, and had encountered all classes
of Englishmen, from peers to green-grocers, and as
he had a visit to England in prospect, he seldom parted
from the most chance acquaintance without a volunteer
of letters of introduction, exchange of addresses,
and similar tokens of having “pricked through
his castle wall.” When he did arrive in London, at
last, it was with a budget like the postman's on Valentine's
day, and he had only to deliver one letter in
a score to be put on velvet in any street or square
within the bills of mortality. Sagacious enough to
know that the gradations of English society have the
facility of a cat's back (smooth enough from the head
downward), he began with a most noble duke, and at
the date of his introduction to the reader, was on the
dinner-list of most of the patricians of May Fair.

Presuming that you see your man, dear reader, let
us come at once to the removal of the cloth.

“As I was calling myself to account, the other day,
over my breakfast,” said Brown, filling his glass and
pushing the bottle, “it occurred to me that my round
of engagements required some little variation. There's
a `toujours perdrix,' even among lords and ladies, particularly
when you belong as much to their sphere,
and are as likely to become a part of it, as the fly revolving
in aristocratic dust on the wheel of my lord's
carriage. I thought, perhaps, I had better see some
other sort of people.

“I had, under a presse papier on the table, about a
hundred letters of introduction—the condemned remainder,
after the selection, by advice, of four or five
only. I determined to cut this heap like a pack of
cards, and follow up the trump.

“`John Mimpson, Esq., House of Mimpson and
Phipps, Mark's Lane, London.'

“The gods had devoted me to the acquaintance of
Mr. (and probably Mrs.) John Mimpson. After turning
over a deal of rubbish in my mind, I remembered
that the letter had been given me five years before by
an American merchant—probably the correspondent
of the firm in Mark's Lane. It was a sealed letter,
and said in brackets on the back, `Introducing Mr.
Brown.' I had a mind to give it up and cut again,
for I could not guess on what footing I was introduced,
nor did I know what had become of the writer—nor
had I a very clear idea how long a letter of
recommendation will hold its virtue. It struck me
again that these difficulties rather gave it a zest, and
I would abide by the oracle. I dressed, and, as the
day was fine, started to stroll leisurely through the
Strand and Fleet street, and look into the shop-windows
on my way—assuring myself, at least, thus
much of diversion in my adventure.

“Somewhere about two o'clock, I left daylight behind,
and plunged into Mark's Lane. Up one side
and down the other—`Mimpson and Co.' at last, on a
small brass plate, set in a green baize door. With my
unbuttoned coat nearly wiped off my shoulder by the
strength of the pulley, I shoved through, and emerged
in a large room, with twenty or thirty clerks perched
on high stools, like monkeys in a menagerie.

“`First door right!' said the nearest man, without
raising his eyes from the desk, in reply to my inquiry
for Mr. Mimpson.

“I entered a closet, lighted by a slanting skylight,
in which sat my man.

“`Mr. John Mimpson?'

“`Mr. John Mimpson!'

“After this brief dialogue of accost, I produced my
letter, and had a second's leisure to examine my new
friend while he ran his eye over the contents. He
was a rosy, well-conditioned, tight-skinned little man,
with black hair, and looked like a pear on a chair.
(Hang the bothering rhymes!) His legs were completely
hid under the desk, so that the ascending eye
began with his equatory line, and whether he had no
shoulders or no neck, I could not well decide—but it
was a tolerably smooth plane from his seat to the top
curl of his sinciput. He was scrupulously well dressed,
and had that highly washed look which marks the
city man in London—bent on not betraying his `diggins'
by his complexion.

“I answered Mr. Mimpson's inquiries about our
mutual friend with rather a hazardous particularity,
and assured him he was quite well (I have since discovered
that he has been dead three years), and conversation
warmed between us for ten minutes, till we

were ready to part sworn friends. I rose to go, and
the merchant seemed very much perplexed.

“`To-morrow,' said he, rubbing the two great business
bumps over his eyebrows—`no—yes—that is to
say, Mrs. Mimpson—well, it shall be to-morrow!
Can you come out to Rose Lodge, and spend the day
to-morrow?'

“`With great pleasure,' said I, for I was determined
to follow my trump letter to extremities.

“`Mrs. Mimpson,' he next went on to say, as he
wrote down the geography of Rose Lodge—`Mrs.
Mimpson expects some friends to-morrow—indeed,
some of her very choice friends. If you come early,
you will see more of her than if you just save your
dinner. Bring your carpetbag, of course, and stay
over night. Lunch at two—dine at seven. I can't
be there to receive you myself, but I will prepare Mrs.
Mimpson to save you all trouble of introduction.
Hampstead road. Good morning, my dear sir.'

“So, I am in for a suburban bucolic, thought I, as I
regained daylight in the neighborhood of the Mansion
House.

“It turned out a beautiful day, sunny and warm;
and had I been sure of my navigaton, and sure of my
disposition to stay all night, I should have gone out
by the Hampstead coach, and made the best of my
way, carpetbag in hand. I went into Newman's for a
postchaise, however, and on showing him the written
address, was agreeably surprised to find he knew
Rose Lodge. His boys had all been there.

“Away I went through the Regent's park, behind
the blood-posters, blue jacket and white hat, and,
somewhere about one o'clock, mounted Hampstead
Hill, and in ten minutes thence was at my destination.
The postboy was about driving in at the open gate,
but I dismounted and sent him back to the inn to
leave his horses, and then depositing my bag at the
porter's lodge, walked up the avenue. It was a much
finer place, altogether, than I expected to see.

“Mrs. Mimpson was in the garden. The dashing
footman who gave me the information, led me through
a superb drawing-room and out at a glass door upon
the lawn, and left me to make my own way to the lady's
presence.

“It was a delicious spot, and I should have been
very glad to ramble about by myself till dinner, but,
at a turn in the grand-walk, I came suddenly upon
two ladies.

“I made my bow, and begged leave to introduce
myself as `Mr. Brown.'

“With a very slight inclination of the head, and no
smile whatever, one of the ladies asked me if I had
walked from town, and begged her companion (without
introducing me to her) to show me in to lunch.
The spokester was a stout and tall woman, who had
rather an aristocratic nose, and was not handsome,
but, to give her her due, she had made a narrow
escape of it. She was dressed very showily, and evidently
had great pretensions; but, that she was not
at all glad to see Mr. Brown, was as apparent as was
at all necessary. As the other, and younger lady,
who was to accompany me, however, was very pretty,
though dressed very plainly, and had, withal, a look
in her eye which assured me she was amused with my
unwelcome apparition, I determined, as I should not
otherwise have done, to stay it out, and accepted
her convoy with submissive civility—very much inclined,
however, to be impudent to somebody, somehow.

“The lunch was on a tray in a side-room, and I
rang the bell and ordered a bottle of champagne. The
servant looked surprised, but brought it, and meantime
I was getting through the weather and the other
commonplaces, and the lady saying little, was watching
me very calmly. I liked her looks, however, and
was sure she was not a Mimpson.

“`Hand this to Miss Armstrong!' said I to the footman,
pouring out a glass of champagne.

“`Miss Bellamy, you mean, sir.'

“I rose and bowed, and, with as grave a courtesy
as I could command, expressed my pleasure at my
first introduction to Miss Bellamy—through Thomas,
the footman! Miss Bellamy burst into a laugh, and
was pleased to compliment my American manners,
and in ten minutes we were a very merry pair of
friends, and she accepted my arm for a stroll through
the grounds, carefully avoiding the frigid neighborhood
of Mrs. Mimpson.

“Of course I set about picking Miss Bellamy's
brains for what information I wanted. She turned
out quite the nicest creature I had seen in England—
fresh, joyous, natural, and clever; and as I was delivered
over to her bodily, by her keeper and feeder, she
made no scruple of promenading me through the
grounds till the dressing-bell—four of the most agreeable
hours I have to record in my travels.

“By Miss Bellamy's account, my advent that day
was looked upon by Mrs. Mimpson as an enraging
calamity. Mrs. Mimpson was, herself, fourth cousin
to a Scotch lord, and the plague of her life was the
drawback to the gentility of her parties in Mimpson's
mercantile acquaintance. She had married the little
man for his money, and had thought, by living
out of town, to choose her own society, with her husband
for her only incumbrance; but Mimpson vowed
that he should be ruined in Mark's Lane, if he did
not house and dine his mercantile fraternity and their
envoys at Rose Lodge, and they had at last compromised
the matter. No Yankee clerk, or German
agent, or person of any description, defiled by trade,
was to be invited to the Lodge without a three days'
premonition to Mrs. Mimpson, and no additions were
to be made, whatever, by Mr. M., to Mrs. M's dinners,
soirées, matinees, archery parties, suppers, dejeuners,
tableaux, or private theatricals. This holy
treaty, Mrs. Mimpson presumed, was written `with a
gad of steel on a leaf of brass'—inviolable as her cousin's
coat-of-arms.

“But there was still `Ossa on Pelion.' The dinner
of that day had a diplomatic aim. Miss Mimpson
(whom I had not yet seen) was ready to `come
out,' and her mother had embarked her whole soul in
the enterprise of bringing about that debut at Almack's.
Her best card was a certain Lady S—,
who chanced to be passing a few days in the neighborhood,
and this dinner was in her honor—the company
chosen to impress her with the exclusiveness of
the Mimpsons, and the prayer for her ladyship's influence
(to procure vouchers from one of the patronesses)
was to be made, when she was `dieted to their
request.' And all had hitherto worked to a charm.
Lady S— had accepted—Ude had sent his best
cook from Crockford's—the Belgian chargé and a
Swedish attaché were coming—the day was beautiful,
and the Lodge was sitting for its picture; and on the
very morning, when every chair at the table was ticketed
and devoted, what should Mr. Mimpson do, but send
back a special messenger from the city, to say that he
had forgotten to mention to Mrs. M. at breakfast, that he
had invited Mr. Brown! Of course he had forgotten
it, though it would have been as much as his
eyes were worth to mention it in person to Mrs.
Mimpson.

“To this information, which I give you in a lump,
but which came to light in the course of rather a desultory
conversation, Miss Bellamy thought I had
some title, from the rudeness of my reception. It
was given in the shape of a very clever banter, it is
true, but she was evidently interested to set me right
with regard to Mr. Mimpson's good intentions in my
behalf, and, as far as that and her own civilities would
do it, to apologise for the inhospitality of Rose Lodge.

Very kind of the girl—for I was passing, recollect,
at a most ha'penny valuation.

“I had made some casual remark touching the absurdity
of Almack's aspirations in general, and Mrs.
Mimpson's in particular, and my fair friend, who of
course fancied an Almack's ticket as much out of Mr.
Brown's reach as the horn of the new moon, took up
the defence of Mrs. Mimpson on that point, and undertook
to dazzle my untutored imagination by a picture
of this seventh heaven—as she had heard it described—for
to herself, she freely confessed, it was not
even within the limits of dream-land. I knew this
was true of herself, and thousands of highly-educated
and charming girls in England; but still, looking at
her while she spoke, and seeing what an ornament she
would be to any ballroom in the world, I realized,
with more repugnance than I had ever felt before, the
arbitrary barriers of fashion and aristocracy. As accident
had placed me in a position to `look on the reverse
of the shield,' I determined, if possible, to let
Miss Bellamy judge of its color with the same advantage.
It is not often that a plebeian like myself
has the authority to

“We were near the open window of the library,
and I stepped in and wrote a note to Lady —
(one of the lady patronesses; and the kindest friend I
have in England), asking for three vouchers for the
next ball. I had had occasion once or twice before to
apply for similar favors, for the countrywomen of my
own, passing through London on their travels, and I
knew that her ladyship thought no more of granting
them than of returning bows in Hyde Park. I did
not name the ladies for whom the three tickets were
intended, wishing to reserve the privilege of handing
one to Miss Mimpson, should she turn out civil and
presentable. The third, of course, was to Miss Bellamy's
chaperon, whoever that might be, and the
party might be extended to a quartette by the `Monsieur
De Trop' of the hour—cela selon. Quite a dramatic
plot—wasn't it?

“I knew that Lady — was not very well, and
would be found at home by the messenger (my post-boy),
and there was time enough between soup and
coffee to go to London and back, even without the
spur in his pocket.

“The bell rang, and Miss Bellamy took herself off
to dress. I went to my carpetbag in the bachelor
quarters of the house, and through a discreet entretien
with the maid who brought me hot water, became
somewhat informed as to my fair friend's position in
the family. She was the daughter of a gentleman who
had seen better days. They lived in a retired cottage
in the neighborhood; and, as Miss Bellamy and a
younger sister were both very highly accomplished,
they were usually asked to the Lodge, whenever there
was company to be entertained with their music.

“I was early in the drawing-room, and found there
Mrs. Mimpson and a tall dragoon of a young lady I
presumed to be her daughter. She did not introduce
me. I had hardly achieved my salutary salaam when
Miss Bellamy came in opportunely, and took me off
their hands, and as they addressed no conversation to
us, we turned over music, and chatted in the corner
while the people came in. It was twilight in the reception-room,
and I hoped, by getting on the same
side of the table with Lady S— (whom I had
the honor of knowing), to escape recognizance till
we joined the ladies in the drawing-room after dinner.
As the guests arrived, they were formally introduced
to Miss Mimpson by the mother, and everybody but
myself was formally presented to Lady S—, the
exception not noticeable, of course, among thirty
people. Mr. Mimpson came late from the city, pos
sibly anxious to avoid a skirmish on the subject of his
friend Brown, and he entered the room barely in time
to hand Lady S— in to dinner.

“My tactics were ably seconded by my unconscious
ally. I placed myself in such a position at table,
that, by a little management, I kept Miss Bellamy's
head between me and Lady S—, and my name
was not so remarkable as to draw attention to me
when called on to take wine with the peccant spouse
of the Scotch lord's cousin. Meantime I was very
charmingly entertained—Miss Bellamy not having, at
all, the fear of Mrs. Mimpson before her eyes, and
apparently finding the Yankee supercargo, or cotton
clerk, or whatever he might be, quite worth trying her
hand upon. The provender was good, and the wine
was enough to verify the apocrypha—at least for the
night—`a man remembering neither sorrow nor debt'
with such glorious claret.

“As I was vis-a-vis to Miss Mimpson, and only two
plates removed from her mother, I was within reach
of some syllable or some civility, and one would have
thought that good-breeding might exact some slight
notice for the devil himself, under one's own roof by
invitation; but the large eyes of Miss Aurelia and her
mamma passed over me as if I had on the invisible
ring of Gyges. I wonder, by-the-way, whether the
ambitious youths who go to London and Paris with
samples, and come back and sport `the complete varnish
of a man' acquired in foreign society—I wonder
whether they take these rubs to be part of their polishing!

“The ladies rose and left us, and as I had no more
occasion to dodge heads, or trouble myself with humility,
I took Lady S—'s place at old Mimpson's
right hand, and was immediately recognised with great
empressement by the Belgian chargé, who had met me
`very often, in very agreeable society.' Mimpson
stared, and evidently took it for a bit of flummery or
a mistake; but he presently stared again, for the butler
came in with a coronetted note on his silver tray,
and the seal side up, and presented it to me with a
most deferential bend of his white coat. I felt the
vouchers within, and pocketed it without opening, and
we soon after rose and went to the drawing-room for
our coffee.

“Lady S— sat with her back to the door, besieged
by Mrs. Mimpson; and at the piano, beside
Miss Bellamy, who was preparing to play, stood one
of the loveliest young creatures possibly to fancy. A
pale and high-bred looking lady in widow's weeds sat
near them, and I had no difficulty in making out who
were the after-dinner additions to the party. I joined
them, and was immediately introduced by Miss Bellamy
to her mother and sister, with whom (after a
brilliant duet by the sisters) I strolled out upon the
lawn for an hour—for it was a clear night, and the
moon and soft air almost took me back to Italy. And
(perhaps by a hint from Miss Bellamy) I was allowed
to get on very expeditiously in my acquaintance with
her mother and sister.

“My new friends returned to the drawing-room,
and as the adjoining library was lighted, I went in and
filled up the blank vouchers with the names of Mrs.
Bellamy and her daughters. I listened a moment to
the conversation in the next room. The subject was
Almack's, and was discussed with great animation.
Lady S—, who seemed to me trying to escape
the trap they had baited for her, was quietly setting
forth the difficulties of procuring vouchers, and recommending
to Mrs. Mimpson not to subject herself
to the mortification of a refusal. Old Mimpson
backed up this advice with a stout approval, and this
brought Mrs. Mimpson out `horse and foot,' and she
declared that she would submit to anything, do anything,
give anything, rather than fail in this darling
object of her ambition. She would feel under eternal

inexpressible obligations to any friend who would procure,
for herself and daughter, admission for but one
night to Almack's.

“And then came in the sweet voice of Miss Bellamy,
who `knew it was both wrong and silly, but she
would give ten years of her life to go to one of Almack's
balls, and in a long conversation she had had
with Mr. Brown on the subject that morning—'

“`Ah!' interrupted Lady S—, `if it had been
the Mr. Brown, you would have had very little trouble
about it.'

“`And who is the Mr. Brown?' asked Mrs. Mimpson.

“`The pet and protegé of the only lady patroness
I do not visit,' said Lady S—, `and unluckily,
too, the only one who thinks the vouchers great rubbish,
and gives them away without thought or scruple.'

“At that moment I entered the room.

“`Good heavens!' screamed Lady S—, `is
that his ghost? Why, Mr. Brown!' she gasped, giving
me her hand very cautiously, `do you appear
when you are talked of like—like—like—'

“`Like the devil? No! But I am here in the
body, and very much at your ladyship's service,' said
I, `for of course you are going to the duke's to-night,
and so am I. Will you take me with you, or shall
my po-chay follow where I belong—in your train?”

“`I'll take you, of course,' said her ladyship, rising,
`but first about these vouchers. You have just come,
and didn't hear our discussion. Mrs. Mimpson is extremely
anxious that her daughter should come out
at Almack's, and as I happened to say, the moment
before you entered, that you were the very person to
procure the tickets from Lady —. How very
odd that you should come in just then! But tell
us—can you?'

“A dead silence followed the question. Mrs.
Mimpson sat with her eyes on the floor, the picture
of dismay and mortification. Miss Mimpson blushed
and twisted her handkerchief, and Miss Bellamy
looked at her hostess, half amused and half distressed.

“I handed the three vouchers to Miss Bellamy,
and begged her acceptance of them, and then turning
to Lady S—, without waiting for a reply, regretted
that, not having had the pleasure of being presented
to Mrs. Mimpson, I had not felt authorized to
include her in my effort to oblige Miss Bellamy.

“And what with old Mimpson's astonishment, and
Lady S—'s immediate tact in covering, by the
bustle of departure, what she did not quite understand,
though she knew it was some awkward contre
temps or other, I found time to receive Miss Bellamy's
thanks, and get permission from the mother to
call and arrange this unexpected party, and in ten
minutes I was on my way to London with Lady
S—, amusing her almost into fits with my explanations
of the Mimpson mystery.

“Lady S— was to be still at Hampstead for a
few days, and, at my request, she called with me on
the Bellamys, and my request, she called with me on
the Bellamys, and invited the girls up to town. Rose
Bellamy, the younger, is at this moment one of the
new stars of the season accordingly, and Miss Bellamy
and I carry on the war, weekly, at Almack's,
and nightly at some waxlight paradise or other, and
Lady S— has fallen in love with them both, and
treats them like daughters.

“So you see, though I passed for a ha'penny with
the Mimpsons, I turned out a sovereign to the Bellamys.

“Pass the bottle!”

MR. AND MRS. FOLLETT;
OR, THE DANGERS OF MEDDLING WITH MARRIED PEOPLE.

There are two commodities, much used by gentlemen,
neither of which will bear tinkering or tampering
with—matrimony and patent leather. Their necessities
are fair weather and untroubled wear and tear.
Ponder on the following melancholy example!

My friend Follett married a lady contrary to my
advice. I gave the advice contrary to my wont and
against my will. He would have it. The lady was a
tolerably pretty woman, on whose original destiny it
was never written that she should be a belle. How
she became one is not much matter; but nature being
thoroughly taken by surprise with her success, had
neglected to provide the counterpoise. I say it is no
great matter how she became a belle—nor is it—for if
such things were to be accounted for to the satisfaction
of the sex, the world have little time for other speculations;
but I will devote a single paragraph to the
elucidation of this one of many mysteries, for a reason
I have. Fœnam habet in cornu.

Poets are the least fastidious, and the least discriminating
of men, in their admiration of women (vide
Byron), partly because their imagination, like sunshine,
glorifies all that turns to it, and partly because
the voluptuous heart, without which they were not
poets, is both indolent and imperial, from both causes
waiting always to be sought. In some circles, bards
are rather comets than stars, and the one whose orbit
for a few days intersected that of Miss Adele Burnham,
was the exclusive marvel of the hour. Like other po
ets, the one of which I speak was concentrative in his
attentions, and he chose (why, the gods knew better
than the belles of the season) to have neither eyes nor
ears, flowers, flatteries, nor verses, for any other than
Miss Burnham. He went on his way, but the incense,
in which he had enveloped the blest Adele, lingered
like a magic atmosphere about her, and Tom Follett
and all his tribe breathed it in blind adoration. I trust
the fair reader has here nodded her head, in evidence
that this history of the belleship of Miss Burnham is
no less brief than natural and satisfactory.

When Follett came to me with the astounding information
that he intended to propose to Miss Burnham
(he had already proposed and been accepted, the
traitor)! my fancy at once took the prophetic stride so
natural on the first breaking of such news, and in the
five minutes which I took for reflection, I had travelled
far into that land of few delusions—holy matrimony.
Before me, in all the changeful variety of a magic
mirror, came and went the many phases of which that
multiform creature, woman, is susceptible. I saw her
in diamonds and satin, and in kitchen-apron and curl-papers;
in delight, and in the dumps; in supplication,
and in resistance; shod like a fairy in French shoes,
and slip-shod (as perhaps fairies are, too, in their bed-rooms
and dairies). I saw her approaching the climacteric
of age, and receding from it—a mother, a
nurse, an invalid—mum over her breakfast, chatty over
her tea—doing the honors at Tom's table, and mending

with sober diligence Tom's straps and suspenders.
The haleidoscope of fancy exhausted its combinations.

“Tom!” said I (looking up affectionately, for he
was one of my weakness, was Tom, and I indulged
myself in loving him without a reason), “Miss Burnham
is in the best light where she is. If she cease
to be a belle, as of course she will, should she marry—”

“Of course!” interrupted Tom very gravely.

Well, in that case, she lays off the goddess, trust
me! You will like her to dress plainly —”

“Quite plain!”

“And stripped of her plumage, your bird of paradise
would nothing but a very indifferent hen—with the
disadvantage of remembering that she had been a bird
of paradise.”

“But it was not her dress that attracted the brilliant
author of —”

Possibly not. But as the false gods of mythology
are only known by their insignia, Jupiter by his thunderbolt,
and Mercury by his talaria and caduceus, so
a woman, worshipped by accident, will find a change
of exterior nothing less than a laying aside of her divinity.
That's a didactic sentence, but you will know
what I mean, when I tell you that I myself can not see
a pair of coral ear-rings without a sickness of the
heart, though the woman who once wore them, and
who slighted me twenty years ago, sits before me in
church, without diverting a thought from the sermon.
Don't marry her, Tom!”

Six weeks after this conversation, I was at the wedding
and reader will please pass to the rear the
six succeeding months—short time as it seems—to
record a change in the bland sky of matrimony. It was
an ellipse in our friendship as well; for advice (contrary
to our wishes and intentions) is apt to be resented
and I fancied, from the northerly bows I received
from Mrs. Follett, that my friend had made a merit to
her of having married contrary to my counsel. At the
end of this period Tom called on me.

Follett, I should have said, was a man of that undecided
exterior which is perfectly at the mercy of a cravat
or waistcoat. He looked “snob” or “nob,” according
to the care with which he had made his toilet.
While a bachelor, of course, he could never afford in
public a negligence or a mistake, and was invariably
an elegant man, harmonious and “pin-point” from
straps to whiskers. But alas! the security of wedded
life! When Tom entered my room, I perused him
as a walking homily. His coat, still made on the old
mersure, was buttoned only at the top, the waist being
rather sung, and his waistcoat pockets loaded with the
copper which in his gayer days he always left on the
counter. His satin cravat was frayed and brownish,
with the tie slipped almost under his ear. The heel
of his right boot (he trod straight on the other foot)
almost looked him in the face. His pantaloons (the
one article of dress in which there are no gradations—
nothing, if not perfect) were bulged and strained. He
wore a frightfully new hat, no gloves, and carried a
baggy brown umbrella, which was, in itself, a most expressive
portrait of “gone to seed.” Tom entered
with his is usual uppish carriage, and, through the how-d'ye-dos,
and the getting into his chair, carried off the
old manner to a charm. In talking of the weather, a
moment after, his eye fell on his stumpy umbrella,
which, with an unconscious memory of an old affectation
wit his cane, he was balancing on the toe of his
boot, and the married look slid over him like a mist.
Down went his head between his shoulders, and down
went the corners of his mouth—down the inflation of
his chest like a collapsed balloon; and down, in its
youth and expression it seemed to me, every muscle
of his face. He had assumed in a minute the style
and countenance of a man ten years older.

I smiled. How could I but smile!

“Then you have heard of it!” exclaimed Tom,
suddenly starting to his feet, and flushing purple to the
roots of his hair.

“Heard of what?”

My look of surprise evidently took him aback; and,
seating himself again with confused apologies, Tom
proceeded to “make a clean breast,” on a subject
which I had not anticipated.

It seemed that, far from moulting her feathers after
marriage, according to my prediction, Mrs. Follett
clearly thought that she had not yet “strutted her
hour,” and, though everything Tom could wish behind
the curtain, in society she had flaunted and flirted, not
merely with no diminution of zest from the wedding-day,
but, her husband was of opinion, with a ratio
alarmingly increasing. Her present alliance was with
a certain Count Hautenbas, the lion of the moment,
and though doubtless one in which vanity alone was
active, Tom's sense of connubial propriety was at its
last gasp. He could stand it no longer. He wished
my advice in the choice between two courses. Should
he call out the Frenchman, or should he take advantage
of the law's construction of “moral insanity,” and
shut her up in a mad-house.

My advice had been of so little avail in the first instance,
that I shrank from troubling Tom with any
more of it, and certainly should have evaded it altogether,
but for an experiment I wished to make, as
much for my own satisfaction as for the benefit of that
large class, the unhappy married.

“Your wife is out every night, I suppose, Tom?”

“Every night when she has no party at home.”

“Do you go with her always?”

“I go for her usually—but the truth is, that since
I married, parties bore me, and after seeing my wife off,
I commonly smoke and snooze, or read, or run into
Bob Thomas's and `talk horse,' till I have just time to
be in at the death.”

“And when you get there, you don't dance?”

“Not I, faith! I haven't danced since I was married!”

“But you used to be the best waltzer of the day.”

“Well, the music sometimes gets into my heels
now, but, when I remember I am married, the fit cools
off. The deuce take it! a married man shouldn't be
seen whirling round the room with a girl in his arms!”

“I presume that were you still single, you would
fancy your chance to be as good for ladies' favors as
any French count's that ever came over?”

“Ehem! why—yes!”

Tom pulled up his collar.

“And if you had access to her society all day and
all night, and the Frenchman only an hour or two in
the evening, any given lady being the object, you would
bet freely on your own head?”

“I see your drift,” said Tom, with a melancholy
smile, “but it won't do!”

“No, indeed—it is what would have done. You had
at the start a much better chance with your wife than
Count Hautenbas; but husbands and lovers are the
`hare and the tortoise' of the fable. We must resort
now to other means. Will you follow my advice, as
well as take it, should I be willing again to burn my
fingers in your affairs?”

The eagerness of Tom's protestations quite made
the amende to my mortified self-complacency, and I
entered zealousy into my little plot for his happiness.
At this moment I heartily wish I had sent him and his
affairs to the devil, and (lest I should forget it at the
close of this tale) I here caution all men, single and
double, against “meddling or making,” marring or
mending, in matrimonial matters. The alliteration
may, perhaps, impress this salutary counsel on the
mind of the reader.

I passed the remainder of the day in repairing the
damage of Tom's person. I had his whiskers curled

and trimmed even (his left whisker was an inch nearer
his nose than the right), and his teeth looked to by the
dentist. I stood by, to be sure that there was no carelessness
in his selection of patent leathers, and on his
assuring me that he was otherwise well provided, I
suffered him to go home to dress, engaging him to
dine with me at seven.

He was punctual to the hour. By Jove, I could
scarce believe it was the same man. The consciousness
of being well dressed seemed to have brightened
his eyes and lips, as it certainly changed altogether his
address and movements. He had a narrow escape of
being handsome. After all, it is only a “man of mark,”
or an Apollo, who can well afford to neglect the outer
man; and a judicious negligence, or a judicious plainness,
is probably worth the attention of both the man
of mark and the Apollo. Tom was quite another order
of creature—a butterfly that was just now a worm—
and would have been treated with more consideration
in consequence, even by those least tolerant of “the
pomps and vanities.” We dined temperately, and I
superseded the bottle by a cup of strong green tea, at
an early moment after the removal of the cloth, determined
to have Tom's wits in as full dress as his person.
Without being at all a brilliant man, he was—
the next best thing—a steady absorbent; and as most
women are more fond of giving than receiving in all
things, but particularly in conversation. I was not uneasy
as to his power of making himself agreeable. Nor
was he, faith!

The ball of the night was at the house of an old
friend of my own, and Mr. and Mrs. Follett were but
newly introduced to the circle. I had the company
very clearly in my eye, therefore, while casting about
for dramatis personœ, and fixing upon Mrs. Beverly
Fairlie, for the prominent character, I assured success,
though being very much in love with that coquettish
widow myself, I had occasion for some self-denial
in the matter. Of Mrs. Fairlie's weak points
(on which it seemed necessary that I should enlighten
Tom), I had information not to be acquired short of
summering and wintering her, and with my eye solely
directed to its effect upon Mrs. Follett, I put the clues
into my friend's hands in a long after-dinner conversation.
As he seemed impatient to open the campaign
after getting these definite and valuable instructions, I
augured well for his success, and we entered the ballroom
in high spirits.

It was quite enough to say to the mischievous widow
that another woman was to be piqued by any attentions
she might choose to pay Mr. Follett. Having said
thus much, and presented Tom, I sought out Mrs.
Follett myself, with the double purpose of breaking
up the monopoly of Mons. Hautenbas, and of directing
her attention, should it be necessary, to the suavities
between Tom and the widow.

It was a superb ball, and the music, as Tom said,
went to the heels. The thing he did well was waltzing,
and after taking a turn or two with Mrs. Fairlie,
the rustic dame ran up to Mrs. Follett with the most
innocent air imaginable, and begged the loan of her
husband for the rest of the evening! I did not half
like the look of earnest with which she entered into
the affair, indeed, and there was little need of my
taking much trouble to enlighten Mrs. Follett; for a
woman so surprised with a six months' husband I never
saw. They were so capitally matched, Tom and the
widow, in size, motion, style of waltzing, and all, that
not we only, but the whole party, were occupied with
observing and admiring them. Mrs. Follett and I (for
a secret sympathy, somehow, drew us together, as the
thing went on) kept up a broken conversation, in which
the count was even less interested than we; and after
a few ineffectual attempts to draw her into the tea-room,
the Frenchman left us in pique, and we gave
ourselves up to the observation of the couple who (we
presumed) severally belonged to us. They carried on
the war famously, to be sure! Mrs. Fairlie was a
woman who could do as she liked, because she would;
and she cared not a straw for the very pronouncé demonstration
of engrossing one man for all the quadrilles,
waltzes, and galopades, beside being with him to supper.
Once or twice I tried to find an excuse for leaving
Mrs. Follett, to put in an oar for myself; but the
little woman clung to me as if she had not the courage
to undertake another person's amusement, and, new
and sudden as the feeling must have been, she was
pale and wretched, with a jealousy more bitter probably
than mine. Tom never gave me a look after the
first waltz; and as to the widow, she played her part
with rather more zeal than we set down for her.
I passed altogether an uncomfortable night, for a
gay one, and it was a great relief to me when
Mrs. Follett asked me to send Tom for the carriage.

“Be so kind as to send a servant for it,” said Follett,
very coolly, “and say to Mrs. Follett, that I will
join her at home. I am going to sup, or rather breakfast,
with Mrs. Beverly Fairlie!”

Here was a mess!

“Shall I send the count for your shawl?” I asked,
after giving this message, and wishing to know whether
she was this side of pride in her unhappiness.

The little woman burst into tears.

“I will sit in the cloak-room till my husband is
ready,” she said; “go to him, if you please, and implore
him to come and speak to me.”

As I said before, I wished the whole plot to the
devil. We had achieved our object, it is true—and
so did the man who knocked the breath out of his
friend's body, in killing a fly on his back. Tom is
now (this was years ago) a married flirt of some celebrity,
for after coming out of the widow's hands with a
three months' education, he had quite forgot to be
troubled about Mrs. Follett; and instead of neglecting
his dress, which was his only sin when I took him
in hand, he now neglects his wife, who sees him, as
women are apt to see their husbands, through other
women's eyes. I presume they are doomed to quite
as much unhappiness as would have fallen to their lot,
had I let them alone—had Mrs. Follett ran away with
the Frenchman, and had Tom died a divorced sloven.
But when I think that, beside achieving little for them,
I was the direct means of spoiling Mrs. Beverly Fairlie
for myself, I think I may write myself down as a
warning to meddlers in matrimony.

THE COUNTESS NYSCHRIEM,
AND THE HANDSOME ARTIST.

That favored portion of the light of one summer's
morning that was destined to be the transparent bath
of the master-pieces on the walls of the Pitti, was
pouring in a languishing flood through the massive
windows of the palace. The ghosts of the painters
(who, ministering to the eye only, walk the world from
cock-crowing to sunset) were haunting invisibly the
sumptuous rooms made famous by their pictures;
and the pictures themselves, conscious of the presence
of the fountain of soul from which gushed the soul
that is in them, glowed with intoxicated mellowness
and splendor, and amazed the living students of the
gallery with effects of light and color till that moment
undiscovered.

[And now, dear reader, having paid you the compliment
of commencing my story in your vein (poetical),
let me come down to a little every-day brick-and-mortar,
and build up a fair and square common-sense
foundation.]

Graeme McDonald was a young highlander from
Rob Roy's country, come to Florence to study the
old masters. He was an athletic, wholesome, handsome
fellow, who had probably made a narrow escape
of being simply a fine animal; and, as it was, you
never would have picked him from a crowd as anything
but a hussar out of uniform, or a brigand perverted
to honest life. His peculiarity was (and this I
foresee is to be an ugly sentence), that he had peculiarities
which did not seem peculiar. He was full of
genius for his art, but the canvass which served him
him as a vent, gave him no more anxiety than his
pocket-handkerchief. He painted in the palace, or
wiped his forehead on a warm day with equally small
care, to all appearance, and he had brought his mother
and two sisters to Italy, and supported them by a most
heroic economy and industry—all the while looking as
if the “silver moon” and all the small change of the
stars would scarce serve him for a day's pocket-money.
Indeed, the more I knew of McDonald, the more I
became convinced that there was another man built
over him. The painter was inside. And if he had
free thoroughfare and use of the outer man's windows
and ivory door, he was at any rate barred from hanging
out the smallest sign or indication of being at any
time “within.” Think as hard as he would—devise,
combine, study, or glow with enthusiasm—the proprietor
of the front door exhibited the same careless
and smiling bravery of mien, behaving invariably as if
he had the whole tenement to himself, and was neither
proud of, nor interested in the doings of his more
spiritual inmate—leading you to suppose, almost,
that the latter, though billeted upon him, had not
been properly introduced. The thatch of this common
tenement was of jetty black hair, curling in most
opulent prodigality, and, altogether, it was a house
that Hadad, the fallen spirit, might have chosen, when
becoming incarnate to tempt the sister of Absalom.

Perhaps you have been in Florence, dear reader,
and know by what royal liberality artists are permitted
to bring their easels into the splendid apartments of
the palace, and copy from the priceless pictures on
the walls. At the time I have my eye upon (some
few years ago), McDonald was making a beginning
of a copy of Titian's Bella, and near him stood the
easel of a female artist who was, copying from the
glorious picture of “Judith and Holofernes,” in the
same apartment. Mademoiselle Folie (so she was
called by the elderly lady who always accompanied
her) was a small and very gracefully-formed creature,
with the plainest face in which attraction could possibly
reside. She was a passionate student of her art,
pouring upon it apparently the entire fulness of her
life, and as unconsciously forgetful of her personal
impressions on those around her, as if she wore the
invisible ring of Gyges. The deference with which
she was treated by her staid companion drew some
notice upon her, however, and her progress, in the
copy she was making, occasionally gathered the artists
about her easel; and, altogether, her position among
the silent and patient company at work in the different
halls of the palace, was one of affectionate and tacit
respect. McDonald was her nearest neighbor, and
they frequently looked over each other's pictures, but,
as they were both foreigners in Florence (she of Polish
birth, as he understood), their conversation was in
French or Italian, neither of which languages were
fluently familiar to Graeme, and it was limited generally
to expressions of courtesy or brief criticism of
each other's labors.

As I said before, it was a “proof-impression” of a
celestial summer's morning, and the thermometer
stood at heavenly idleness. McDonald sat with his
maul-stick across his knees, drinking from Titian's
picture. An artist, who had lounged in from the
next room, had hung himself by the crook of his arm
over a high peg, in his comrade's easel, and every now
and then he volunteered an observation to which he
expected no particular answer.

“When I remember how little beauty I have seen
in the world,” said Ingarde (this artist), “I am inclined
to believe with Saturninus, that there is no resurrection
of bodies, and that only the spirits of the good
return into the body of the Godhead—for what is
ugliness to do in heaven!”

McDonald only said, “hm—hm!”

“Or rather,” said Ingarde again, “I should like to
fashion a creed for myself, and believe that nothing
was immortal but what was heavenly, and that the
good among men and the beautiful among women
would be the only reproductions hereafter. How will
this little plain woman look in the streets of the New
Jerusalem, for example? Yet she expects, as we all
do, to be recognisable by her friends in Heaven, and,
of course, to have the same irredeemably plain face!
(Does she understand English, by the way—for she
might not be altogether pleased with my theory!”)

“I have spoken to her very often,” said McDonald,
“and I think English is Hebrew to her—but my theory
of beauty crosses at least one corner of your argument,
my friend! I believe that the original type of
every human face is beautiful, and that every human
being could be made beautiful, without, in any essential
particular, destroying the visible identity. The likeness
preserved in the faces of a family through several
generations is modified by the bad mental qualities,
and the bad health of those who hand is down. Remove
these modifications, and, without destroying the
family likeness, you would take away all that mars the

beauty of its particular type. An individual countenance
is an integral work of God's making, and God
`saw that it was good' when he made it. Ugliness,
as you phrase it, is the damage that type of countenance
has received from the sin and suffering of life. But
the type can be restored, and will be, doubtless, in
Heaven!”

“And you think that little woman's face could be
made beautiful?”

“I know it.”

“Try it, then! Here is your copy of Titian's
`Bella,' all finished but the face. Make an apotheosis
portrait of your neighbor, and while it harmonizes
with the body of Titian's beauty, still leave it recognisable
as her portrait, and I'll give in to your theory—
believing in all other miracles, if you like, at the same
time!”

Ingarde laughed, as he went back to his own picture,
and McDonald, after sitting a few minutes lost in
revery, turned his easel so as to get a painter's view
of his female neighbor. He thought she colored
slightly as he fixed his eyes upon her; but, if so, she
apparently became very soon unconscious of his gaze,
and he was soon absorbed himself in the task to which
his friend had so mockingly challenged him.

2. II.

[Excuse me, dear reader, while with two epistles I
build a bridge over which you can cross a chasm of a
month in my story.]

McDonald's answer was as follows:—

Rather agitated than surprised seemed Mademoiselle
Folie, when, the next day, as she arranged her brushes
upon the shelf of her easel, her handsome neighbor
commenced, in the most fluent Italian he could command,
to invite her to his wedding. Very much
surprised was McDonald when she interrupted him
in English, and begged him to use his native tongue,
as madame, her attendant, would not then understand
him. He went on delightedly in his own honest
language, and explained to her his imaginative admiration,
though he felt compunctious, somewhat,
that so unreal a sentiment should bring the blood into
her cheek. She thanked him—drew the cloth from
the upper part of her own picture, and showed him an
admirable portrait of his handsome features, substituted
for the masculine head of Judith in the original from
which she copied—and promised to be at his wedding,

and to listen sharply for her murmured name in his
vow at the altar. He chanced to wear at the moment
a ring of red cornelian, and he agreed with her that
she should stand where he could see her, and, at the
moment of his putting the marriage ring upon the
bride's fingers, that she should put on this, and for
ever after wear it, as a token of having received his
spiritual vows of devotion.

The day came, and the splendid equipage of the
countess dashed into the square of Santa Maria, with
a veiled bride and a cold bridegroom, and deposited
them at the steps of the church. And they were followed
by other coroneted equipages, and gayly dressed
from each—the mother and sisters of the bridegroom
gayly dressed, among them, but looking pale
with incertitude and dread.

The veiled bride was small, but she moved gracefully
up the aisle, and met her future husband at the
altar with a low courtesy, and made a sign to the priest
to proceed with the ceremony. McDonald was color
less, but firm, and indeed showed little interest, except
by an anxious look now and then among the crowd of
spectators at the sides of the altar. He pronounced
with a steady voice, but when the ring was to be put
on, he looked around for an instant, and then suddenly,
and to the great scandal of the church, clasped his
bride with a passionate ejaculation to his bosom.
The cornelian ring was on her finger—and the Countess
Nyschriem and Mademoiselle Folie—his bride and
his fancy queen—were one.

This curious event happened in Florence some
eight years since—as all people then there will remember—and
it was prophesied of the countess that
she would have but a short lease of her handsome and
gay husband. But time does not say so. A more
constant husband than McDonald to his plain and
titled wife, and one more continuously in love, does
not travel and buy pictures, and patronize artists—
though few except yourself and I, dear reader, know
the philosophy of it!

MY ONE ADVENTURE AS A BRIGAND.

I was standing in a hostelry, at Geneva, making a
bargain with an Italian for a place in a return carriage
to Florence, when an Englishman, who had been in
the same steamer with me on Lake Leman, the day
before, came in and stood listening to the conversation.
We had been the only two passengers on board,
but had passed six hours in each other's company
without speaking. The road to an Englishman's
friendship is to have shown yourself perfectly indifferent
to his acquaintance, and, as I liked him from the
first, we were now ready to be conscious of each other's
existence.

“I beg pardon,” said he, advancing in a pause of
the vetturino's oration, “will you allow me to engage
a place with you? I am going to Florence, and, if
agreeable to you, we will take the carriage to ourselves.”

I agreed very willingly, and in two hours we were
free of the gates of Geneva, and keeping along the
edge of the lake in the cool twilight of one of the loveliest
of heaven's summer evenings. The carriage was
spaciously contrived for four; and, with the curtains
up all around, our feet on the forward seat, my companion
smoking, and conversation bubbling up to
please itself, we rolled over the smooth road, gliding
into the first chapter of our acquaintance as tranquilly
as Geoffrey Crayon and his reader into the first chapter
of anything he has written.

My companion (Mr. St. John Elmslie, as put down
in his passport) seemed to have something to think of
beside propitiating my good will, but he was considerate
and winning, from evident high breeding, and
quite open, himself, to my most scrutinizing study.
He was about thirty, and, without any definite beauty,
was a fine specimen of a man. Probably most persons
would have called him handsome. I liked him
better, probably, from the subdued melancholy with
which he brooded on his secret thought, whatever it
might be—sad men, in this world of boisterous gayety
or selfish ill-humor, interesting me always.

From that something, on which his memory fed in
quiet but constant revery, nothing aroused my companion
except the passing of a travelling carriage, going
in the other direction, on our own arrival at an inn.
I began to suspect, indeed, after a little while, that
Elmslie had some understanding with our vetturino,
for, on the approach of any vehicle of pleasure, our
horses became restiff, and, with a sudden pull-up,
stood directly across the way. Out jumped my friend
to assist in controlling the restiff animals, and, in the
five minutes during which the strangers were obliged
to wait, we generally saw their heads once or twice
thrust inquiringly from the carriage window. This
done, our own vehicle was again wheeled about, and
the travellers allowed to proceed.

We had arrived at Bologna with but one interruption
to the quiet friendliness of our intercourse. Apropos
of some vein of speculation, I had asked my companion
if he were married. He was silent for a moment, and
then, in a jocose tone of voice, which was new to me,
replied, “I believe I have a wife—somewhere in Scotland.”
But though Elmslie had determined to show
me that he was neither annoyed nor offended at my
inquisitiveness, his manner changed. He grew ceremonious.
For the remainder of that day, I felt uncomfortable,
I scarce knew why; and I silently determined
that if my friend continued so exceedingly well-bred
in his manner for another day, I should find an
excuse for leaving him at Bologna.

But we had left Bologna, and, at sunset of a warm
day, were slowly toiling up the Apennines. The inn to
which we were bound was in sight, a mile or two above
us, and, as the vetturino stopped to breathe his horses,
Elmslie jumped from the carriage and started to walk
on. I took advantage of his absence to stretch myself
over the vacated cushions, and, on our arrival at the
inn, was soundly asleep.

My friend's voice, in an unusual tone, awoke me,
and, by his face, as he looked in at the carriage window,
I saw that he was under some extraordinary excitement.
This I observed by the light of the stable-lantern—for
the hostelry, Italian fashion, occupied
the lower story of the inn, and our carriage was driven
under the archway, where the faint light from without
made but little impression on the darkness. I followed
Elmslie's beckoning finger, and climbing after him up
the stairway of stone, stood in a large refectory occupying
the whole of the second story of the building.

At the first glance I saw that there was an English
party in the house. An Italian inn of the lower order
has no provision for private parties, and few, except
English travellers, object to joining the common evening

meal. The hall was dark with the twilight, but a
large curtain was suspended across the farther extremity,
and, by the glimmer of lights, and an occasional
sound of a knife, a party was within supping in
silence.

“If you speak, speak in Italian,” whispered Elmslie,
taking me by the arm, and leading me on tiptoe to
one of the corners of the curtain.

I looked in and saw two persons seated at a table—
a bold and soldierly-looking man of fifty, and a young
lady, evidently his daughter. The beauty of the last-mentioned
person was so extraordinary that I nearly
committed the indiscretion of an exclamation in English.
She was slight, but of full and well-rounded
proportions, and she sat and moved with an eminent
grace and ladylikeness altogether captivating.
Though her face expressed a settled sadness, it was
of unworn and faultless youth and loveliness, and
while her heavily-fringed eyes would have done, in
their expression, for a Niobe, Hebe's lips were not
more ripe, nor Juno's arched more proudly. She was
a blonde, with eyes and eyelashes darker than her
hair—a kind of beauty almost peculiar to England.

The passing in of a tall footman, in a plain livery of
gray, interrupted my gaze, and Elmslie drew me away
by the arm, and led me into the road in front of the
locanda. The night had now fallen, and we strolled
up and down in the glimmer of the starlight. My
companion was evidently much disturbed, and we
made several turns after I had seen very plainly that
he was making up his mind to communicate to me the
secret.

“I have a request to make of you,” he said, at last;
“a service to exact, rather, to which there were no
hope that you would listen for a moment if I did not
first tell you a very singular story. Have a little patience
with me, and I will make it as brief as I can—
the briefer, that I have no little pain in recalling it with
the distinctness of description.”

I expressed my interest in all that concerned my
new friend, and begged him to go on.

“Hardly six years ago,” said Elmslie, pressing my
arm gently in acknowledgment of my sympathy, “I
left college and joined my regiment, for the first time,
in Scotland. By the way, I should re-introduce myself
to you as Viscount S—, of the title of which,
then, I was in prospect. My story hinges somewhat
upon the fact that, as an honorable captain, a nobleman
in expectancy, I was an object of some extraneous
interest to the ladies who did the flirting for the
garrison. God forgive me for speaking lightly on the
subject!

“A few evenings after my arrival, we had been dining
rather freely at mess, and the major announced to us
that we were invited to take tea with a linen-draper,
whose house was a popular resort of the officers of
the regiment. The man had three or four daughters,
who, as the phrase goes, `gave you a great deal for
your money,' and, for romping and frolicking, they
had good looks and spirit enough. The youngest was
really very pretty, but the eldest, to whom I was exclusively
presented by the major, as a sort of quiz on
a new-comer, was a sharp and sneering old maid, red-headed,
freckled, and somewhat lame. Not to be outdone
in frolic by my persecutor, I commenced making
love to Miss Jacky in mock heroics, and we were soon
marching up and down the room, to the infinite entertainment
of my brother officers, lavishing on each other
every possible term of endearment.

“In the midst of this, the major came up to me with
rather a serious face.

“`Whatever you do,' said he, `for God's sake don't
call the old girl your wife. The joke might be serious.'

“It was quite enough that I was desired not to do
anything in the reign of misrule then prevailing. I
immediately assumed a connubial air, to the best of
my dramatic ability, begged Miss Jacky to join me in
the frolic, and made the rounds of the room, introducing
the old girl as Mrs. Elmslie, and receiving from
her quite as many tendernesses as were bearable by
myself or the company present. I observed that the
lynx-eyed linen-draper watched this piece of fun very
closely, and my friend, the major, seemed distressed
and grave about it. But we carried it out till the
party broke up, and the next day the regiment was
ordered over to Ireland, and I thought no more, for
awhile, either of Miss Jacky or my own absurdity.

“Two years afterward, I was, at a drawing-room at
St. James's, presented, for the first time, by the name
which I bear. It was not a very agreeable event to me,
as our family fortunes were inadequate to the proper
support of the title, and on the generosity of a maternal
uncle, who had been at mortal variance with my father,
depended our hopes of restoration to prosperity. From
the mood of bitter melancholy in which I had gone
through the ceremony of an introduction, I was aroused
by the murmur in the crowd at the approach of a young
girl just presented to the king. She was following a
lady whom I slightly knew, and had evidently been
presented by her; and, before I had begun to recover
from my astonishment at her beauty, I was requested
by this lady to give her protegé an arm and follow to a
less crowded apartment of the palace.

“Ah, my friend! the exquisite beauty of Lady
Melicent—but you have seen her. She is here, and
I must fold her in my arms to-night, or perish in the
attempt.

“Pardon me!” he added, as I was about to interrupt
him with an explanation. “She has been—she
is—my wife! She loved me and married me, making
life a heaven of constant ecstacy—for I worshipped
her with every fibre of my existence.”

He paused and gave me his story brokenly, and I
waited for him to go on without questioning.

“We had lived together in absolute and unclouded
happiness for eight months, in lover-like seclusion at
her father's house, and I was looking forward to the
birth of my child with anxiety and transport, when the
death of my uncle left me heir to his immense fortune,
and I parted from my greater treasure to go and pay
the fitting respect at his burial.

“I returned, after a week's absence, with an impatience
and ardor almost intolerable, and found the door
closed against me.

“There were two letters for me at the porter's lodge
—one from Lord A—, my wife's father, informing
me that the Lady Melicent had miscarried and was
dangerously ill, and enjoining upon me as a man of
honor and delicacy, never to attempt to see her again;
and another from Scotland, claiming a fitting support
for my lawful wife, the daughter of the linen-draper.
The proofs of the marriage, duly sworn to and certified
by the witnesses of my fatal frolic, were enclosed,
and on my recovery, six weeks after, from the delirium
into which these multiplied horrors precipitated me, I
found that, by the Scotch law, the first marriage was
valid, and my ruin was irrevocable.”

“And how long since was this?” I inquired, breaking
in upon his narration for the first time.

“A year and a month—and till to-night I have not
seen her. But I must break through this dreadful
separation now—and I must speak to her, and press
her to my breast—and you will aid me?”

“To the last drop of my blood, assuredly. But
how?”

“Come to the inn! You have not supped, and we
will devise as you eat. And you must lend me your
invention, for my heart and brain seem to me going
wild.”

Two hours after, with a pair of loaded pistols in my
breast, we went to the chamber of the host, and bound

him and his wife to the posts of their beds. There
was but one man about the house, the hostler, and we
had made him intoxicated with our travelling flask of
brandy. Lord A— and his daughter were still sitting
up, and she, at her chamber window, was watching
the just risen moon, over which the clouds were
rapidly very rapidly. Our business was, now, only
with them, as, in their footman, my companion had
found an attached creature, who remembered him, and
willingly agreed to offer no interruption.

After taking a pull at the brandy-flask myself (for,
inspite of my blackened face and the slouched hat of
the hostler, I required some fortification of the muscles
of my face before doing violence to an English
nobleman), I opened the door of the chamber which
must be passed to gain access to that of Lady Melicent.
It was Lord A—'s sleeping-room, and, though
the light was extinguished, I could see that he was
still up, and sitting at the window. Turning my lantern
inward, I entered the room and set it down, and,
to my relief, Lord A— soliloquized in English, that
it was the host with a hint that it was time to go to
bed. My friend was at the door, according to my arrangement,
ready to assist me should I find any difficulty;
but, from the dread of premature discovery of
the person, he was to let me manage it alone if possible.

Lord A— sat unsuspectingly in his chair, with
his head turned half way over his shoulders to see why
the officious host did not depart. I sprung suddenly
upon him, drew him backward and threw him on his
face and, with my hand over his mouth, threatened
him with death, in my choicest Italian, if he did not
remain passive till his portmanteau had been looked
into. I thought he might submit, with the idea that
it was only a robbery, and so it proved. He allowed
me, after a short struggle, to tie his hands behind him,
and march him down to his carriage, before the muzzle
of my pistol. The hostelry was still as death, and,
shutting his carriage door upon his lordship, I mounted
guard.

The night seemed to me very long, but morning
dawned, and, with the earliest gray, the postillions
came knocking at the outer door of the locanda. My
friend went out to them, while I marched back Lord
A— to his chamber, and, by immense bribing, the
horses were all put to our carriage a half hour after,
and the outraged nobleman was left without the means
of pursuit till their return. We reached Florence in
safety, and pushed on immediately to Leghorn, where
we took the steamer for Marseilles and eluded arrest,
very much to my most agreeable surprise.

By a Providence that does not always indulge mortals
with removing those they wish in another world,
Lord S— has lately been freed from his harrowing
chain by the death of his so-called lady; and, having
re-married Lady Melicent, their happiness is renewed
and perfect. In his letter to me, announcing it, he
gives me liberty to tell the story, as the secret was divulged
to Lord A— on the day of his second nuptials.
He said nothing, however, of his lordship's
forgiveness for my rude handling of his person, and,
in ceasing to be considered a brigand, possibly I am
responsible as a gentleman.

WIGWAM versus ALMACK'S.

1. CHAPTER I.

In one of the years not long since passed to your
your account and mine by the recording angel, gentle reader
I was taking my fill of a delicious American June,
as Ducrow takes his bottle of wine, on the back of a
beloved horse. In the expressive language of the
raftsment on the streams of the West, I was “following”
the Chemung—a river whose wild and peculiar
loveliness is destined to be told in undying song, whenever
America can find leisure to look up her poets.
Such bathing of the feet of precipices, such kissing
of flowery slopes, such winding in and out of the bosoms
of round meadows, such frowning amid broken
rocks, and smiling through smooth valleys, you would
never believe could go in this out-of-doors world,
unvisited and uncelebrated.

Not far from the ruins of a fortification, said to have
been built by the Spaniards before the settlement of
New-England by the English, the road along the Chemung
dwindles into a mere ledge at the foot of a
precipice, the river wearing into the rock at this spot
by a black and deep eddy. At the height of your lip
above the carriage track, there gushes from the rock
a stream of the size and steady clearness of a glass
rod, and all around it in the small rocky lap which it
has worn away, there grows a bed of fragrant mint,
kept by the shade and moisture of a perpetual green,
bright as emerald. Here stops every traveller who is
not upon an errand of life or death, and while his
horse stands up to his fetlocks in the river, he parts
the dewy stems of the mint, and drinks, for once in
his life, like a fay or a poet. It is one of those exquisite
spots which paint their own picture insensibly
in the memory, even while you look on them, natural
“Daguerrotypes,” as it were; and you are surprised,
years afterward, to find yourself remembering every
leaf and stone, and the song of every bird that sung
in the pine-trees overhead while you were watching
the curve of the spring-leap. As I said before, it will
be sung and celebrated, when America sits down weary
with her first century of toil, and calls for her minsterls,
now toiling with her in the fields.

Within a mile of this spot, to which I had been
looking forward with delight for some hours, I overtook
a horseman. Before coming up with him I had
at once decided he was an Indian. His relaxed limbs
swaying to every motion of his horse with the grace
and ease of a wreath of smoke, his neck and shoulders
so cleanly shaped, and a certain watchful look about
his ears which I cannot define, but which you see in
a spirited horse—were infallible marks of the race
whom we have driven from the fair land of our independence.
He was mounted upon a small black horse
—of the breed commonly called Indian ponies, now
not very common so near the Atlantic—and rode with
a slack rein and air, I thought, rather more dispirited
than indolent.

The kind of morning I have described, is, as every
one must remember, of a sweetness so communicative
that one would think two birds could scarce meet on
the wing without exchanging a carol; and I involuntarily
raised my bridle after a minute's study of the
traveller before me, and in a brief gallop was at his
side. With the sound of my horse's feet, however,
he changed in all his characteristics to another man—
sat erect in his saddle, and assumed the earnest air of
an American who never rides but upon some errand;

and, on his giving me back my “good morning” in
the unexceptionable accent of the country, I presumed
I had mistaken my man. He was dark, but not
darker than a Spaniard, of features singularly handsome
and regular, dressed with no peculiarity except
an otter-skin cap of a silky and golden-colored fur, too
expensive and rare for any but a fanciful, as well as a
luxurious purchaser. A slight wave in the black hair
which escaped from it, and fell back from his temples,
confirmed me in the conviction that his blood was of
European origin.

We rode on together with some indifferent conversation,
till we arrived at the spring-leap I have described,
and here my companion, throwing his right
leg over the neck of his poney, jumped to the ground
very actively, and applying his lips to the spring, drank
a free draught. His horse seemed to know the spot,
and, with the reins on his neck, trotted on to a shallower
ledge in the river and stood with the water to
his knees, and his quick eye turned on his master with
an expressive look of satisfaction.

“You have been here before,” I said, tying my
less disciplined horse to the branch of an overhanging
shrub.

“Yes—often!” was his reply, with a tone so quick
and rude, however, that, but for the softening quality
of the day, I should have abandoned there all thought
of further acquaintance.

I took a small valise from the pommel of my saddle,
and while my fellow-traveller sat on the rock-side
looking moodily into the river, I drew forth a flask of
wine and a leathern cup, a cold pigeon wrapped in a
cool cabbage leaf, the bigger end of a large loaf, and
as much salt as could be tied up in the cup of a large
water-lily—a set-out of provender which owed its
daintiness to the fair hands of my hostess of the night
before.

The stranger's first resemblance to an Indian had
probably given a color to my thoughts, for, as I handed
him a cup of wine, I said, “I wish the Shawanee
chief to whose tribe this valley belongs, were here to
get a cup of my wine.”

The young man sprang to his feet with a sudden
flash through his eyes, and while he looked at me, he
seemed to stand taller than, from my previous impression
of his height, I should have thought possible.
Surprised as I was at the effect of my remark, I did
not withdraw the cup, and with a moment's searching
look into my face, he changed his attitude, begged
pardon rather confusedly, and, draining the cup, said
with a faint smile, “The Shawanee chief thanks
you!”

“Do you know the price of land in the valley?” I
asked, handing him a slice of bread with the half
pigeon upon it, and beginning to think it was best to
stick to commonplace subjects with a stranger.

“Yes!” he said, his brow clouding over again. “It
was bought from the Shawanee chief you speak of for
a string of beads the acre. The tribe had their burial-place
on the Susquehannah, some twenty miles from
this, and they cared little about a strip of a valley
which, now, I would rather have for my inheritance
than the fortune of any white man in the land.”

“Throw in the landlord's daughter at the village
below,” said I, “and I would take it before any half-dozen
of the German principalities. Have you heard
the news of her inheritance?”

Another moody look and a very crisp “Yes,” put
a stop to all desire on my part to make further advances
in my companion's acquaintance. Gathering my
pigeon bones together, therefore, and putting them on
the top of a stone where they would be seen by the
first “lucky dog” that passed, flinging my emptied
water-lily on the river, and strapping up cup and flask
once more in my valise, I mounted, and with a crusty
good morning, set off at a hand-gallop down the river.

My last unsuccessful topic was, at the time I write
of, the subject of conversation all through the neighborhood
of the village toward which I was travelling.
The most old-fashioned and comfortable inn on the
Susquehannah, or Chemung, was kept at the junction
of these two noble rivers, by a certain Robert Plymton,
who had “one fair daughter and no more.” He was
a plain farmer of Connecticut, who had married the
grand-daughter of an English emigrant, and got, with
his wife, a chest of old papers, which he thought had
better be used to mend a broken pane or wrap up groceries,
but which his wife, on her death-bed, told him
“might turn out worth something.” With this slender
thread of expectation, he had kept the little chest
under his bed, thinking of it perhaps once a year, and
satisfying his daughter's inquisitive queries with a
shake of his head, and something about “her poor
mother's tantrums,” concluding usually with some
reminder to keep the parlor in order, or mind her
housekeeping. Ruth Plymton had had some sixteen
“winters' schooling,” and was known to be much
“smarter” (Anglicé, cleverer), than was quite necessary
for the fulfilment of her manifold duties. Since
twelve years of age (the period of her mother's death)
she had officiated with more and more success as barmaid
and host's daughter to the most frequented inn
of the village, till now, at eighteen, she was the only
ostensible keeper of the inn, the old man usually being
absent in the fields with his men, or embarking his
grain in an “ark,” to take advantage of the first
freshet. She was civil to all comers, but her manner
was such as to make it perfectly plain even to the
rudest raftsman and hunter, that the highest respect
they knew how to render to a woman was her due.
She was rather unpopular with the girls of the village
from what they called her pride and “keeping to herself,”
but the truth was, that the cheap editions of
romances which Ruth took instead of money for the
lodging of the itinerant book-pedlars, were more
agreeable companions to her than the girls of the village;
and the long summer forenoons, and half the
long winter nights, were little enough for the busy
young hostess, who, seated on her bed, devoured tales
of high-life which harmonized with some secret longing
in her breast—she knew not and scarce thought
of asking herself why.

I had been twice at Athens (by this classical name
is known the village I speak of), and each time had
prolonged my stay at Plymton's inn for a day longer
than my horse or my repose strictly exacted. The
scenery at the junction is magnificent, but it was
scarce that. And I cannot say that it was altogether
admiration of the host's daughter; for though I breakfasted
late for the sake of having a clean parlor while
I ate my broiled chicken, and, having been once to
Italy, Miss Plymton liked to pour out my tea and hear
me talk of St. Peter's and the Carnival, yet there was
that marked retenu and decision in her manner that
made me feel quite too much like a culprit at school,
and large and black as her eyes were, and light and
airy as were all her motions, I mixed up with my propensity
for her society, a sort of dislike. In short, I
never felt a tenderness for a woman who could “queen
it” so easily, and I went heart-whole on my journey,
though always with a high respect for Ruth Plymton,
and a pleasant remembrance of her conversation.

The story which I had heard farther up the river
was, briefly, that there had arrived at Athens an Englishman,
who had found in Miss Ruth Plymton, the
last surviving descendant of the family of her mother;
that she was the heiress to a large fortune, if the
proof of her descent were complete, and that the contents
of the little chest had been the subject of a
week's hard study by the stranger, who had departed
after a vain attempt to persuade old Plymton to accompany
him to England with his daughter. This

was the rumor, the allusion to which had been received
with such repulsive coldness by my dark companion
at the spring-leap.

American is so much of an asylum for despairing
younger sons and the proud and starving branches of
great families, that a discovery of heirs to property
among people of very inferior condition, is by no
means uncommon. It is a species of romance in real
life, however, which we never believe upon hearsay,
and I rode on to the village, expecting my usual reception
by the fair damsel of the inn. The old sign
still hung askew as I approached, and the pillars of
the old wooden “stoop” or portico, were as much off
their perpendicular as before, and true to my augury,
out stepped my fair acquaintance at the sound of my
horse's feet, and called to Reuben the ostler, and gave
me an unchanged welcome. The old man was down
at the river side, and the key of the grated bar hung
at the hostess's girdle, and with these signs of times
as they were, my belief in the marvellous tale vanished
into thin air.

“So you are not gone to England to take possession?”
I said.

He serious “No!” unsoftened by any other remark,
put a stop to the subject again, and taking myself
to task for having been all day stumbling on
mal-apropos subjects, I asked to be shown to my room,
and spent the hour or two before dinner in watching
the chickens from the window, and wondering a great
deal as to the “whereabouts” of my friend in the
otter-skin cap.

The evening of that day was unusually warm, and
I strolled down to the bank of the Susquehannah, to
bathe. The moon was nearly full and half way to the
zenith, and between the lingering sunset and the clear
splendor of the moonlight, the dusk of the “folding
hour” was forgotten, and the night went on almost as
radiant as day. I swam across the river, delighting
myself with the gold rims of the ripples before my
breast, and was within a yard or two of the shore on
my return, when I heard a woman's voice approaching
in earnest conversation. I shot forward and drew myself
in beneath a large clump of alders, and with only
my head out of water, lay in perfect concealment.

“You are not just, Shahatan!” were the first words
I distinguished, in a voice I immediately recognised
as that of my fair hostess. “You are not just. As
far as I know myself I love you better than any one I
ever saw—but”—

As she hesitated, the deep low voice of my companion
at the spring-leap, uttered in a suppressed and
impatient guttural, “But what?” He stood still with
his back to the moon, and while the light fell full on
her face, she withdrew her arm from his and went on.

“I was going to say that I do not yet know myself
or the world sufficiently to decide that I shall always
love you. I would not be too hasty in so important a
thing, Shahatan! We have talked of it before, and
therefore I may say to you, now, that the prejudices
of my father and all my friends are against it.”

“My blood”—interrupted the young man, with a
movement of impatience.

She laid her hand on his arm. “Stay! the objection
is not mine. Your Spanish mother, besides,
shows more in your look and features than the blood
of your father. But it would still be said I married
an Indian, and though I care little for what the village
would say, yet I must be certain that I shall love you
with all my heart and till death, before I set my face
with yours against the prejudices of every white man
and woman in my native land! You have urged me
for my secret, and there it is. I feel relieved to have
unburthened my heart of it.”

“That secret is but a summer old!” said he, half
turning on his heel, and looking from her upon the
moon's path across the river.

“Shame!” she replied; “you know that long before
this news came, I talked with you constantly of
other lands, and of my irresistible desire to see the
people of great cities, and satisfy myself whether I
was like them. That curiosity, Shahatan, is, I fear,
even stronger than my love, or at least, it is more impatient;
and now that I have the opportunity fallen to
me like a star out of the sky, shall I not go? I must.
Indeed I must.”

The lover felt that all had been said, or was too
proud to answer, for they fell into the path again, side
by side, in silence, and at a slow step were soon out of
my sight and hearing. I emerged from my compulsory
hiding-place wiser than I went in, dressed and
strolled back to the village, and finding the old landlord
smoking his pipe alone under the portico, I lighted
a cigar, and sat down to pick his brains of the little
information I wanted to fill out the story.

I took my leave of Athens on the following morning,
paying my bill duly to Miss Plymton, from whom
I requested a receipt in writing, for I foresaw without
any very sagacious augury beside what the old man
told me, that it might be an amusing document by-and-by.
You shall judge by the sequel of the story,
dear reader, whether you would like it in your book
of autographs.

Not long after the adventure described in the preceding
chapter, I embarked for a ramble in Europe.
Among the newspapers which were lying about in the
cabin of the packet, was one which contained this
paragraph, extracted from a New-Orleans Gazette.
The American reader will at once remember it:—

“Extraordinary attachment to savage life.—The officers
at Fort — (one of the most distant outposts
of human habitation in the west), extended their hospitality
lately to one of the young protegés of government,
a young Shawanee chief, who has been educated
at public expense for the purpose of aiding in the
civilization of his tribe. This youth, the son of a
Shawanee chief by a Spanish mother, was put to a
preparatory school in a small village on the Susquehannah,
and subsequently was graduated at —
College with the first honors of his class. He had
become a most accomplished gentleman, was apparently
fond of society, and, except in a scarce distinguishable
tinge of copper color in his skin, retained
no trace of his savage origin. Singular to relate,
however, he disappeared suddenly from the fort, leaving
behind him the clothes in which he had arrived,
and several articles of a gentleman's toilet; and as the
sentry on duty was passed at dawn of the same day by
a mounted Indian in the usual savage dress, who gave
the pass-word in issuing from the gate, it is presumed
it was no other than the young Shahatan, and that he
has joined his tribe, who were removed some years
since beyond the Mississippi.”

The reader will agree with me that I possessed the
key to the mystery.

As no one thinks of the thread that disappears in an
intricate embroidery till it comes out again on the
surface, I was too busy in weaving my own less interesting
woof of adventure for the two years following,
to give Shahatan and his love even a passing thought.
On a summer's night in 18—, however, I found myself
on a banquette at an Almack's ball, seated beside
a friend who, since we had met last at Almack's, had
given up the white rose of girlhood for the diamonds
of the dame, timidity and blushes for self-possession
and serene sweetness, dancing for conversation, and
the promise of beautiful and admired seventeen for the
perfection of more lovely and adorable twenty-two.
She was there as chaperon to a younger sister, and it
was delightful in that whirl of giddy motion, and more
giddy thought, to sit beside a tranquil and unfevered

mind and talk with her of what was passing, without
either bewilderment or effort.

“What is it,” she said, “that constitutes aristocratic
beauty?—for it is often remarked that it is seen nowhere
in such perfection as at Almack's; yet, I have
for a half-hour looked in vain among these handsome
faces for a regular profile, or even a perfect figure. It
is not symmetry, surely, that gives a look of high
breeding—nor regularity of feature.”

“If you will take a leaf out of a traveller's book,”
I replied, “we may at least have the advantage of
a comparison. I remember recording, when travelling
in the East, that for months I had not seen an
irregular nose or forehead in a female face; and, almost
universally, the mouth and chin of the Orientals
are, as well as the upper features, of the most classic
correctness. Yet where, in civilized countries, do
women look lower-born or more degraded?”

“Then it is not in the features,” said my friend.

“No, nor in the figure, strictly,” I went on to say,
“for the French and Italian women (vide the same
book of mems), are generally remarkable for shape and
fine contour of limb, and the French are, we all know
(begging your pardon), much better dancers, and more
graceful in their movements, than all other nations.
Yet what is more rare than a `thorough-bred' looking
Frenchwoman?”

“We are coming to a conclusion very fast,” she
said, smiling. “Perhaps we shall find the great secret
in delicacy of skin, after all.”

“Not unless you will agree that Broadway in New-York
is the `prato fiarito,' of aristocratic beauty—for
nowhere on the face of the earth do you see such
complexions. Yet, my fair countrywomen stoop too
much, and are rather too dressy in their tastes to convey
very generally the impression of high birth.”

“Stay!” interrupted my companion, laying her
hand on my arm with a look of more meaning than I
quite understood; “before you commit yourself farther
on that point, look at this tall girl coming up the
floor, and tell me what you think of her, apropos to
the subject.”

“Why, that she is the very forth-shadowing of
noble parentage,” I replied, “in step, air, form—everything.
But surely the face is familiar to me.”

“It is the Miss Trevanion whom you said you had
never met. Yet she is an American, and with such a
fortune as hers, I wonder you should not have heard
of her at least.”

“Miss Trevanion! I never knew anybody of the
name, I am perfectly sure—yet that face I have seen
before, and I would stake my life I have known the
lady, and not casually either.”

My eyes were riveted to the beautiful woman who
now sailed past with a grace and stateliness that were
the subject of universal admiration, and I eagerly attempted
to catch her eye; but on the other side of
her walked one of the most agreeable flatterers of the
hour, and the crowd prevented my approaching her,
even if I had solved the mystery so far as to know in
what terms to address her. Yet it was marvellous
that I could ever have seen such beauty and forgotten
the when and where, or that such fine and unusually
lustrous eyes could ever have shone on me without
inscribing well in my memory their “whereabout”
and history.

“Well!” said my friend, “are you making out
your theory, or are you `struck home' with the first
impression, like many another dancer here to-night?”

“Pardon me! I shall find out presently, who Miss
Trevanion is—but, meantime, revenous. I will tell
you where I think lies the secret of the aristocratic
beauty of England. It is in the lofty maintien of the
head and bust—the proud carriage; if you remark, in
all these women—the head set back, the chest elevated
and expanded, and the whole port and expression,
that of pride and conscious superiority. This, mind
you, though the result of qualities in the character, is
not the work of a day, nor perhaps of a single generation.
The effect of expanding the breast and preserving
the back straight, and the posture generally
erect, is the high health and consequent beauty of
those portions of the frame; and the physical advantage,
handed down with the pride which produced it,
from mother to child, the race gradually has become
perfect in those points, and the look of pride and high-bearing
is now easy, natural, and unconscious. Glance
your eye around and you will see that there is not a
defective bust, and hardly a head ill set on, in the
room. In an assembly in any other part of the world,
to find a perfect bust with a gracefully carried head, is
as difficult as here to find the exception.”

“What a proud race you make us out, to be sure,”
said my companion, rather dissentingly.

“And so you are, eminently and emphatically
proud,” I replied. “What English family does not
revolt from any proposition of marriage from a foreigner?
For an English girl to marry a Frenchman
or an Italian, a German or a Russian, Greek, Turk, or
Spaniard, is to forfeit a certain degree of respectability,
let the match be as brilliant as it may. The first
feeling on hearing of it is against the girl's sense of
delicacy. It extends to everything else. Your soldiers,
your sailors, your tradesmen, your gentlemen,
your common people, and your nobles, are all (who
ever doubted it, you are mentally asking) out of all
comparison better than the same ranks and professions
in any other country. John Bull is literally surprised
if any one doubts this—nay, he does not believe that
any one does doubt it. Yet you call the Americans
ridiculously vain because they believe their institutions
better than yours, that their ships fight as well, their
women are as fair, and their men as gentlemanly as
any in the world. The `vanity' of the French, who
believe in themselves, just as the English do, only in a
less blind entireness of self-glorification, is a common
theme of ridicule in English newspapers; and the
French and the Americans, for a twentieth part of
English intolerance and self-exaggeration, are written
down daily by the English, as the two vainest nations
on earth.”

“Stop!” said my fair listener, who was beginning
to smile at my digression from female beauty to national
pride; “let me make a distinction there. As the
English and French are quite indifferent to the opinion
of other nations on these points, and not at all
shaken in their self-admiration by foreign incredulity,
theirs may fairly be dignified by the name of pride.
But what shall I say of the Americans, who are in a
perpetual fever at the ridicule of English newspapers,
and who receive, I understand, with a general convulsion
throughout the states, the least slur in a review,
or the smallest expression of disparagement in a tory
newspaper. This is not pride, but vanity.”

“I am hit, I grant you. A home thrust that I wish
I could foil. But here comes Miss Trevanion, again,
and I must make her out, or smother of curiosity. I
leave you a victor.”

The drawing of the cord which encloses the dancers,
narrowed the path of the promenaders so effectually,
that I could easily take my stand in such a
position that Miss Trevanion could not pass without
seeing me. With my back to one of the slight pillars
of the orchestra, I stood facing her as she came
down the room; and within a foot or two of my position,
yet with several persons between us, her eye
for the first time rested on me. There was a sudden
flush, a look of embarrassed but momentary curiosity,
and the beautiful features cleared up, and I saw, with
vexatious mortification, that she had the advantage
of me, and was even pleased to remember where we
had met. She held out her hand the next moment,

but evidently understood my reserve, for, with a mischievous
compression of the lips, she leaned over, and
said in a voice intended only for my ear, “Reuben!
take the gentleman's horse!”

My sensations were very much those of the Irishman
who fell into a pit in a dark night, and catching
a straggling root in his descent, hung suspended by
incredible exertion and strength of arm till morning,
when daylight disclosed the bottom, at just one inch
below the points of his toes. So easy seemed the
solution—after it was discovered.

Miss Trevanion (ci-devant Plymton) took my arm.
Her companion was engaged to dance. Our meeting
at Almack's was certainly one of the last events either
could have expected when we parted—but Almack's
is not the place to express strong emotions. We
walked leisurely down the sides of the quadrilles to
the tea-room, and between her bows and greetings to
her acquaintances, she put me au courant of her
movements for the last two years—Miss Trevanion
being the name she had inherited with the fortune
from her mother's family, and her mother's high but
distant connexions having recognised and taken her
by the hand in England. She had come abroad with
the representative of her country, who had been at
the trouble to see her installed in her rights, and had
but lately left her on his return to America. A house
in May Fair, and a chaperon in the shape of a card-playing
and aristocratic aunt, were the other principal
points in her parenthetical narration. Her communicativeness,
of course, was very gracious, and indeed
her whole manner was softened and mellowed down,
from the sharpness and hauteur of Miss Plymton.
Prosperity had improved even her voice.

As she bent over her tea, in the ante-room, I could
not but remark how beautiful she was by the change
usually wrought by the soft moisture of the English
air, on persons from dry climates—Americans particularly.
That filling out and rounding of the features,
and renewing and freshening of the skin, becoming
and improving to all, had to her been like Juno's
bath. Then who does not know the miracles of
dress? A circlet of diamonds whose “water” was
light itself, followed the fine bend on either side backward
from her brows, supporting, at the parting of her
hair, one large emerald. And on what neck (ay—
even of age) is not a diamond necklace beautiful?
Miss Trevanion was superb.

The house in Grosvenor Place, at which I knocked
the next morning, I well remembered as one of the
most elegant and sumptuous in London. Lady L—
had ruined herself in completing and furnishing it,
and her parties “in my time” were called, by the most
apathetic blasé, truly delightful.

“I bought this house of Lady L—,” said Miss
Trevanion, as we sat down to breakfast, “with all its
furniture, pictures, books, incumbrances, and trifles,
even to the horses in the stables, and the coachman
in his wig; for I had too many things to learn, to
study furniture and appointments, and in this very
short life, time is sadly wasted in beginnings. People
are for ever getting ready to live. What think you?
Is it not true in everything?”

“Not in love, certainly.”

“Ah! very true!” And she became suddenly
thoughtful, and for some minutes sipped her coffee in
silence. I did not interrupt it, for I was thinking of
Shahatan, and our thoughts very possibly were on the
same long journey.

“You are quite right,” said I, looking round at the
exquisitely-furnished room in which we were breakfasting,
“you have bought these things at their intrinsie
value, and you have all Lady L—'s taste, trouble,
and vexation for twenty years, thrown into the bar
gain. It is a matter of a lifetime to complete a house
like this, and just as it is all done, Lady L— retires,
an old woman, and you come all the way from a
country-inn on the Susquehannah to enjoy it. What
a whimsical world we live in!”

“Yes!” she said, in a sort of soliloquizing tone,
“I do enjoy it. It is a delightful sensation to take a
long stride at once in the art of life—to have lived for
years believing that the wants you felt could only be
supplied in fairy-land, and suddenly to change your
sphere, and discover that not only these wants, but a
thousand others, more unreasonable, and more imaginary,
had been the subject of human ingenuity
and talent, till those who live in luxury have no wants—
that science and chymistry and mechanics have left
no nerve in the human system, no recess in human
sense, unquestioned of its desire, and that every desire
is supplied! What mistaken ideas most people
have of luxury! They fancy the senses of the rich
are over-pampered, that their zest of pleasure is always
dull with too much gratification, that their
health is ruined with excess, and their tempers spoiled
with ease and subserviency. It is a picture drawn by
the poets in times when money could buy nothing but
excess, and when those who were prodigal could only
be gaudy and intemperate. It was necessary to practise
upon the reverse, too; and hence all the world is
convinced of the superior happiness of the ploughman,
the absolute necessity of early rising and coarse
food to health, and the pride that must come with the
flaunting of silk and satin.”

I could not but smile at this cool upset of all the
received philosophy of the poets.

“You laugh,” she continued, “but is it not true
that in England, at this moment, luxury is the science
of keeping up the zest of the senses rather than
of pampering them—that the children of the wealthy
are the healthiest and fairest, and the sons of the aristocracy
are the most athletic and rational, as well as
the most carefully nurtured and expensive of all classes—that
the most costly dinners are the most digestible,
the most expensive wines the least injurious, the
most sumptuous houses the best ventilated and wholesome,
and the most aristocratic habits of life the most
conducive to the preservation of the constitution and
consequent long life. There will be excesses, of
course, in all spheres, but is not this true?”

“I am wondering how so gay a life as yours could
furnish such very grave reflections.”

“Pshaw! I am the very person to make them. My
aunt (who, by-the-way, never rises till four in the afternoon)
has always lived in this sublimated sphere,
and takes all these luxuries to be matters of course,
as much as I take them to be miracles. She thinks
a good cook as natural a circumstance as a fine tree,
and would be as much surprised and shocked at the
absence of wax candles, as she would at the going out
of the stars. She talks as if good dentists, good milliners,
opera-singers, perfumers, etc., were the common
supply of nature, like dew and sunshine to the
flowers. My surprise and delight amuse her, as the
child's wonder at the moon amuses the nurse.”

“Yet you call this dull unconsciousness the perfection
of civilized life.”

“I think my aunt altogether is not a bad specimen
of it, certainly. You have seen her, I think.”

“Frequently.”

“Well, you will allow that she is still a very handsome
woman. She is past fifty, and has every faculty
in perfect preservation; an erect figure, undiminished
delicacy and quickness in all her senses and
tastes, and is still an ornament to society, and an attractive
person in appearance and conversation. Contrast
her (and she is but one of a class) with the
women past fifty in the middle and lower walks of life
in America. At that age, with us, they are old

women in the commonest acceptation of the term.
Their teeth are gone or defective from neglect, their
faces are wrinkled, their backs bent, ther feet enlarged,
their voices cracked, their senses impaired, their relish
in the joys of the young entirely gone by. What
makes the difference? Costly care. The physician
has watched over her health at a guinea a visit. The
dentist has examined her teeth at twenty guineas a
year. Expensive annual visits to the seaside have renewed
her skin. The friction of the weary hands of
her maid has kept down the swelling of her feet and
preserved their delicacy of shape. Close and open
carriages at will, have given her daily exercise, either
protected from the damp, or refreshed with the fine
air of the country. A good cook has kept her digestion
untaxed, and good wines have invigorated without
poisoning her constitution.”

“This is taking very unusual care of oneself, however.”

“Not at all. My aunt gives it no more thought
than the drawing on of her glove. It is another advantage
of wealth, too, that your physician and dentist
are distinguished persons who meet you in society,
and call on you unprofessionally, see when they are
needed, and detect the approach of disease before
you are aware of it yourself. My aunt, though `naturally
delicate,' has never been ill. She was watched
in childhood with great cost and pains, and, with the
habit of common caution herself, she is taken such
care of by her physician and servants, that nothing
but some extraordinary fatality could bring disease
near her.”

“Blessed are the rich, by your showing.”

“Why, the beatitudes were not written in our times.
If long life, prolonged youth and beauty, and almost
perennial health, are blessings, certainly, now-a-days,
blessed are the rich.”

“But is there no drawback to all this? Where
people have surrounded themselves with such costly
and indispensable luxuries, are they not made selfish
by the necessity of preserving them? Would any
exigence of hospitality, for instance, induce your aunt
to give up her bed, and the comforts of her own room,
to a stranger?”

“Oh dear, no!”

“Would she eat her dinner cold for the sake of
listening to an appeal to her charity?”

“How can you fancy such a thing?”

“Would she take a wet and dirty, but perishing
beggar-woman into her chariot on her way to a dinner-party,
to save her from dying by the roadside?”

“Um—why, I fear she would be very nearsighted
till she got fairly by.”

“Yet these are charities that require no great effort
in those whose chambers are less costly, whose
stomachs are less carefully watched, and whose carriages
and dresses are of a plainer fashion.”

“Very true!”

“So far, then, `blessed are the poor!' But is not
the heart slower in all its sympathies among the rich?
Are not friends chosen and discarded, because their
friendship is convenient or the contrary? Are not
many worthy people `ineligible' acquaintances, many
near relations unwelcome visiters, because they are
out of keeping with these costly circumstances, or
involve some sacrifice of personal luxury? Are not
people, who would not preserve their circle choice
and aristocratic, obliged to inflict cruel insults on
sensitive minds, to slight, to repulse, to neglect, to
equivocate and play the unfeeling and ungrateful, at
the same time that to their superiors they must often
sacrifice dignity, and contrive, and flatter, and deceive—all
to preserve the magic charm of the life you
have painted so attractive and enviable?”

“Heigho! it's a bad world, I believe!” said Miss
Trevanion, betraying by that ready sigh, that even
while drawing the attractions of high life, she had not
been blind to this more unfavorable side of the picture.

“And, rather more important query still, for an
heiress,” I said, “does not an intimate acquaintance
with these luxurious necessities, and the habit of
thinking them indispensable, make all lovers in this
class mercenary, and their admiration, where there is
wealth, subject, at least, to scrutiny and suspicion?”

A quick flush almost crimsoned Miss Trevanion's
face, and she fixed her eyes upon me so inquisitively
as to leave me in no doubt that I had inadvertently
touched upon a delicate subject. Embarrassed by a
searching look, and not seeing how I could explain
that I meant no allusion, I said hastily, “I was thinking
of swimming across the Susquehannah by moonlight.”

“Puck is at the door, if you please, miss!” said
the butler, entering at the moment.

“Perhaps while I am putting on my riding-hat,”
said Miss Trevanion, with a laugh, “I may discover
the connexion between your last two observations. It
certainly is not very clear at present.”

I took up my hat.

“Stay—you must ride with me. You shall have
the groom's horse, and we will go without him. I
hate to be chased through the park by a flying servant—one
English fashion, at least, that I think uncomfortable.
They manage it better where I learned
to ride,” she added with a laugh.

“Yes, indeed! I do not know which they would
first starve to death in the backwoods—the master for
his insolence in requiring the servant to follow him,
or the servant for being such a slave as to obey.”

I never remember to have seen a more beautiful
animal than the highbred blood-mare on which my
ci-devant hostess of the Plymton inn rode through
the park gates, and took the serpentine path at a free
gallop. I was as well mounted myself as I had ever
been in my life, and delighted, for once, not to fret a
hundred yards behind; the ambitious animal seemed
to have wings to his feet.

“Who ever rode such a horse as this,” said my
companion, “without confessing the happiness of
riches! It is the one luxury of this new life that I
should find it misery to forego. Look at the eagerness
of his ears! See his fine limbs as he strikes forward!
What nostrils! What glossy shoulders!
What bounding lightness of action! Beautiful Puck!
I could never live without you! What a shame to
nature that there are no such horses in the wilderness!”

“I remember seeing an Indian pony,” said I, watching
her face for the effect of my observation, “which
had as many fine qualities, though of a different
kind—at least when his master was on him.”

She looked at me inquiringly.

“By-the-way, too, it was at your house on the Susquehannah,”
I added, “you must remember the
horse—a black, double-jointed—”

“Yes, yes! I know. I remember. Shall we
quicken our pace? I hear some one overtaking us,
and to be passed with such horses as ours were a
shame indeed.”

We loosed our bridles and flew away like the wind;
but a bright tear was presently tossed from her
dark eyelash, and fell glittering on the dappled shoulder
of her horse. “Her heart is Shahatan's,” thought
I, “whatever chance there may be that the gay honorable
who is at our heels may dazzle her into throwing
away her hand.”

Mounted on a magnificent hunter, whose powerful
and straightforward leaps soon told against the lavish
and high action of our more showy horses, the Hon.
Charles — (the gentleman who had engrossed the
attention of Miss Trevanion the night before at

Almack's) was soon beside my companion, and leaning
from his saddle, was taking pains to address conversation
to her in a tone not meant for my ear. As the
lady picked out her path with a marked preference
for his side of the road, I of course rode with a free
rein on the other, rather discontented, however, I
must own, to be playing Monsieur de Trop. The
Hon. Charles, I very well knew, was enjoying a temporary
relief from the most pressing of his acquaintances
by the prospect of his marrying an heiress, and
in a two years' gay life in London I had traversed his
threads too often to believe that he had a heart to be
redeemed from dissipation, or a soul to appreciate the
virtues of a high-minded woman. I found myself,
besides, without wishing it, attorney for Shahatan in
the case.

Observing that I “sulked,” Miss Trevanion, in the
next round, turned her horse's head toward the Serpentine
Bridge, and we entered into Kensington Gardens.
The band was playing on the other side of the
ha-ha, and fashionable London was divided between
the equestrians on the road, and the promenaders on
the greensward. We drew up in the thickest of the
crowd, and presuming that, by Miss Trevanion's tactics,
I was to find some other acquaintance to chat
with while our horses drew breath, I spurred to a little
distance, and sat mum in my saddle with forty or
fifty horsemen between me and herself. Her other
companion had put his horse as close by the side of
Puck as possible; but there were other dancers at
Almack's who had an eye upon the heiress, and their
tête-à-tête was interrupted presently by the how-d'ye-do's
and attentions of half a dozen of the gayest men
about town. After looking black at them for a moment,
Charles — drew bridle, and backing out of
the press rather unceremoniously, rode to the side of
a lady who sat in her saddle with a mounted servant
behind her, separated from me by only the trunk of a
superb lime-tree. I was fated to see all the workings
of Miss Trevanion's destiny.

“You see what I endure for you!” he said, as a
flush came and went in his pale face.

“You are false!” was the answer. “I saw you
ride in—your eyes fastened to hers—your lips open
with watching for her words—your horse in a foam
with your agitated and nervous riding. Never call
her a giraffe, or laugh at her again, Charles! She is
handsome enough to be loved for herself, and you
love her!”

“No, by Heaven!”

The lady made a gesture of impatience and whipped
her stirrup through the folds of her riding-dress till it
was heard even above the tinkling triangle of the band.

“No!” he continued, “and you are less clever than
you think, if you interpret my excitement into love.
I am excited—most eager in my chase after this woman.
You shall know why. But for herself—good
heavens!—why, you have never heard her speak!
She is never done wondering at silver forks, never
done with ecstatics about finger-glasses and pastilles.
She is a boor—and you are silly enough to put her
beside yourself!”

The lady's frown softened, and she gave him her
whip to hold while she reimprisoned a stray ringlet.

“Keep an eye on her, while I am talking to you,”
he continued, “for I must stick to her like her shadow.
She is full of mistrust, and if I lose her by the
want of attention for a single hour, that hour will cost
me yourself, dearest, first and most important of all,
and it will cost me England or my liberty—for failing
this, I have not a chance.”

“Go! go!” said the lady, in a new and now anxious
tone, touching his horse at the same time with
the whip he had just restored to her, “she is off!
Adieu!”

And with half a dozen attendants, Miss Trevanion
took the road at a gallop, while her contented rival
followed at a pensive amble, apparently quite content
to waste the time as she best might till dinner. The
handsome fortune-hunter watched his opportunity
and regained his place at Miss Trevanion's side, and
with an acquaintance, who was one of her self-selected
troop, I kept in the rear, chatting of the opera,
and enjoying the movement of a horse of as free and
admirable action as I had ever felt communicated,
like inspiration, through my blood.

I was resumed as sole cavalier and attendant at
Hyde Park gate.

“Do you know the Baroness —?” I asked, as
we walked our horses slowly down Grosvenor Place.

“Not personally,” she replied, “but I have heard
my aunt speak of her, and I know she is a woman of
most seductive manners, though said to be one of
very bad morals. But from what Mr. Charles —
tells me, I fancy high play is her only vice. And
meantime she is received everywhere.”

“I fancy,” said I, “that the Hon. Charles — is
good authority for the number of her vices, and begging
you, as a parting request, to make this remark
the key to your next month's observation, I have the
honor to return this fine horse to you, and make my
adieux.”

“But you will come to dinner! And, by-the-by,
you have not explained to me what you meant by
`swimming across the Susquehannah,' in the middle
of your breakfast, this morning.”

While Miss Trevanion gathered up her dress to
mount the steps, I told her the story which I have
already told the reader, of my involuntary discovery,
while lying in that moonlit river, of Shahatan's unfortunate
passion. Violently agitated by the few words
in which I conveyed it, she insisted on my entering
the house, and waiting while she recovered herself
sufficiently to talk to me on the subject. But I had
no fancy for match-making or breaking. I reiterated
my caution touching the intimacy of her fashionable
admirer with the baroness, and said a word of praise
of the noble savage who loved her.

2. CHAPTER II.

In the autumn of the year after the events outlined
in the previous chapter, I received a visit at my residence
on the Susquehannah, from a friend I had never
before seen a mile from St. James's street—a May-fair
man of fashion who took me in his way back from
Santa Fe. He stayed a few days to brush the cobwebs
from a fishing-rod and gun which he found in
inglorious retirement in the lumber-room of my cottage,
and, over our dinners, embellished with his trout
and woodcock, the relations of his adventures (compared,
as everything was, with London experience exclusively)
were as delightful to me as the tales of
Scheherezade to the calif.

“I have saved to the last,” he said, pushing me the
bottle, the evening before his departure, “a bit of romance
which I stumbled over in the prairie, and I
dare swear it will surprise you as much as it did me,
for I think you will remember having seen the heroine
at Almack's.”

“At Almack's?”

“You may well stare. I have been afraid to tell
you the story, lest you should think I drew too long
a bow. I certainly should never be believed in London.”

“Well—the story?”

“I told you of my leaving St. Louis with a trading
party for Santa Fe. Our leader was a rough chap,
big-boned, and ill put together, but honestly fond of
fight, and never content with a stranger till he had

settled the question of which was the better man. He
refused at first to take me into his party, assuring me
that his exclusive services and those of his company
had been engaged at a high price, by another gentleman.
By dint of drinking `juleps' with him, however,
and giving him a thorough `mill' (for though
strong as a rhinoceros, he knew nothing of `the science'),
he at last elected me to the honor of his friendship,
and took me into the party as one of his own
men.

“I bought a strong horse, and on a bright May
morning the party set forward, bag and baggage, the
leader having stolen a march upon us, however, and
gone ahead with the person who hired his guidance.
It was fine fun at first, as I have told you, to gallop
away over the prairie without fence or ditch, but I
soon tired of the slow pace and the monotony of the
scenery, and began to wonder why the deuce our
leader kept himself so carefully out of sight—for in
three days' travel I had seen him but once, and then
at our bivouac fire on the second evening. The men
knew or would tell nothing, except that he had one
man and a packhorse with him, and that the `gentleman'
and he encamped farther on. I was under promise
to perform only the part of one of the hired carriers
of the party, or I should soon have made a push to
penetrate `the gentleman's' mystery.

“I think it was on the tenth day of our travels that
the men began to talk of falling in with a tribe of Indians,
whose hunting-grounds we were close upon,
and at whose village, upon the bank of a river, they
usually got fish and buffalo-hump, and other luxuries
not picked up on the wing. We encamped about
sunset that night as usual, and after picketing my
horse, I strolled off to a round mound not far from the
fire, and sat down upon the top to see the moon rise.
The east was brightening, and the evening was delicious.

“Up came the moon, looking like one of the duke
of Devonshire's gold plates (excuse the poetry of the
comparison), and still the rosy color hung on in the
west, and turning my eyes from one to the other, I at
last perceived, over the southwestern horizon, a mist
slowly coming up, which indicated the course of a
river. It was just in our track, and the whim struck
me to saddle my horse and ride on in search of the
Indian village, which, by their description, must be on
its banks.

“The men were singing songs over their supper,
and with a flask of brandy in my pocket, I got off unobserved,
and was soon in a flourishing gallop over the
wild prairie, without guide or compass. It was a silly
freak, and might have ended in an unpleasant adventure.
Pass the bottle and have no apprehensions,
however.

“For an hour or so, I was very much elated with
my independence, and my horse too seemed delighted
to get out of the slow pace of the caravan. It was as
light as day with the wonderful clearness of the atmosphere,
and the full moon and the coolness of the
evening air made exercise very exhilarating. I rode
on, looking up occasionally to the mist, which retreated
long after I thought I should have reached the
river, till I began to feel uneasy at last, and wondered
whether I had not embarked in a very mad adventure.
As I had lost sight of our own fires, and might miss
my way in trying to retrace my steps, I determined to
push on.

“My horse was in a walk, and I was beginning to
feel very grave, when suddenly the beast pricked up
his ears and gave a loud neigh. I rose in my stirrups,
and looked round in vain for the secret of his improved
spirits, till with a second glance forward, I discovered
what seemed the faint light reflected upon the smoke
of a concealed fire. The horse took his own counsel,
and set up a sharp gallop for the spot, and a few min
utes brought me in sight of a fire half concealed by a
clump of shrubs, and a white object near it, which to
my surprise developed to a tent. Two horses picketed
near, and a man sitting by the fire with his hands
crossed before his shins, and his chin on his knees,
completed the very agreeable picture.

“`Who goes there?' shouted this chap, springing
to his rifle as he heard my horse's feet sliding through
the grass.

“I gave the name of the leader, comprehending at
once that this was the advanced guard of our party;
but though the fellow lowered his rifle, he gave me a
very scant welcome, and motioned me away from the
tent-side of the fire. There was no turning a man out
of doors in the midst of a prairie; so, without ceremony,
I tethered my horse to his stake, and getting
out my dried beef and brandy, made a second supper
with quite as good an appetite as had done honor to
the first.

“My brandy-flask opened the lips of my sulky friend
after a while, though he kept his carcass very obstinately
between me and the tent, and I learned that the
leader (his name was Rolfe, by-the-by), had gone on
to the Indian village, and that `the gentleman' had
dropped the curtain of his tent at my approach, and
was probably asleep. My word of honor to Rolfe that
I would `cut no capers' (his own phrase in administering
the obligation), kept down my excited curiosity,
and prevented me, of course, from even pumping the
man beside me, though I might have done so with a
little more of the contents of my flask.

“The moon was pretty well overhead when Rolfe
returned, and found me fast asleep by the fire. I awoke
with the trampling and neighing of horses, and, springing
to my feet, I saw an Indian dismounting, and Rolfe
and the fire-tender conversing together while picketing
their horses. The Indian had a tall feather in his cap,
and trinkets on his breast, which glittered in the moonlight;
but he was dressed otherwise like a white man,
with a hunting-frock and very loose large trowsers.
By the way, he had moccasins, too, and a wampum
belt; but he was a clean-limbed, lithe, agile-looking
devil, with an eye like a coal of fire.

“`You've broke your contract, mister!' said Rolfe,
coming up to me; `but stand by and say nothing.'

“He then went to the tent, gave an `ehem!' by
way of a knock, and entered

“`It's a fine night!' said the Indian, coming up to
the fire and touching a brand with the toe of his moccasin.

“I was so surprised at the honest English in which
he delivered himself, that I stared at him without answer.

“`Do you speak English?' he said.

“`Tolerably well,' said I, `but I beg your pardon
for being so surprised at your own accent that I forgot
to reply to you. And now I look at you more closely,
I see that you are rather Spanish than Indian.'

“`My mother's blood,' he answered rather coldly,
`but my father was an Indian, and I am a chief.'

“`Well, Rolfe,' he continued, turning the next instant
to the trader, who came toward us, `who is this
that would see Shahatan?'

“The trader pointed to the tent. The curtain was
put aside, and a smart-looking youth, in a blue cap
and cloak, stepped out and took his way off into the
prairie, motioning to the chief to follow.

“`Go along! he won't eat ye!' said Rolfe, as the
Indian hesitated, from pride or distrust, and laid his
hand on his tomahawk.

“I wish I could tell you what was said at that interview,
for my curiosity was never so strongly excited.
Rolfe seemed bent on preventing both interference and
observation, however, and in his loud and coarse voice
commenced singing and making preparations for his
supper; and, persuading me into the drinking part of

it, I listened to his stories and toasted my shins till I
was too sleepy to feel either romance or curiosity;
and leaving the moon to waste its silver on the wilderness,
and the mysterious colloquists to ramble and
finish their conference as they liked, I rolled over on
my buffalo-skin and dropped off to sleep.

“The next morning I rubbed my eyes to discover
whether all I have been telling you was not a dream,
for tent and demoiselle had evaporated, and I lay with
my feet to the smouldering fire, and all the trading
party preparing for breakfast around me. Alarmed at
my absence, they had made a start before sunrise to
overtake Rolfe, and had come up while I slept. The
leader after a while gave me a slip of paper from the
chief, saying that he should be happy to give me a
specimen of Indian hospitality at the Shawanee village,
on my return from Santa Fe—a neat hint that I
was not to intrude upon him at present.”

“Which you took?”

“Rolfe seemed to have had a hint which was probably
in some more decided shape, since he took it for
us all. The men grumbled at passing the village without
stopping for fish, but the leader was inexorable,
and we left it to the right and `made tracks,' as the
hunters say, for our destination. Two days from there
we saw a buffalo—”

“Which you demolished. You told me that story
last night. Come, get back to the Shawanees! You
called on the village at your return?”

“Yes, and an odd place it was. We came upon it
from the west, Rolfe having made a bend to the westward,
on his return back. We had been travelling all
day over a long plain, wooded in clumps, looking very
much like an immense park, and I began to think that
the trader intended to cheat me out of my visit—for
he said we should sup with the Shawanees that night,
and I did not in the least recognise the outline of the
country. We struck the bed of a small and very beautiful
river, presently, however, and after following it
through a wood for a mile, came to a sharp brow
where the river suddenly descended to a plain at least
two hundred feet lower than the table-land on which
we had been travelling. The country below looked
as if it might have been the bed of an immense lake,
and we stood on the shore of it.

“I sat on my horse geologizing in fancy about this
singular formation of land, till, hearing a shout, I
found the party had gone on, and Rolfe was hallooing
to me to follow. As I was trying to get a glimpse of
him through the trees, up rode my old acquaintance
Shahatan, with his rifle across his thigh, and gave me
a very cordial welcome. He then rode on to show me
the way. We left the river, which was foaming among
some fine rapids, and by a zig-zag side-path through
the woods, descended about half way to the plain,
where we rounded a huge rock, and stood suddenly in
the village of the Shawanees. You can not fancy any
thing so picturesque. On the left, for a quarter of a
mile, extended a natural steppe, or terrace, a hundred
yards wide, and rounding in a crescent to the south.
The river came in toward it on the right in a superb
cascade, visible from the whole of the platform, and
against the rocky wall at the back, and around on the
edge overlooking the plain, were built the wigwams
and log-huts of the tribe, in front of which lounged
men, women, and children, enjoying the cool of the
summer evening. Not far from the base of the hill
the river reappeared from the woods, and I distinguished
some fields planted with corn along its banks,
and horses and cattle grazing. What, with the pleasant
sound of the falls, and the beauty of the scene altogether,
it was to me more like the primitive Arcadia
we dream about, than anything I ever saw.

“Well, Rolfe and his party reached the village presently,
for the chief had brought me by a shorter cut,
and in a moment the whole tribe was about us, and
the trader found himself apparently among old acquaintances.
The chief sent a lad with my horse
down into the plain to be picketed where the grass was
better, and took me into a small hut, where I treated
myself to a little more of a toilet than I had been accustomed
to of late, in compliment to the unusual
prospect of supping with a lady. The hut was lined
with bark, and seemed used by the chief for the same
purpose, as there were sundry articles of dress and
other civilized refinements hanging to the bracing-poles,
and covering a rude table in the corner.

“Fancy my surprise, on coming out, to meet the
chief strolling up and down his prairie shelf with, not
one lady, but half a dozen—a respectable looking gentleman
in black (I speak of his coat), and a bevy of
nice-looking girls, with our Almack's acquaintance in
the centre—the whole party, except the chief, dressed
in a way that would pass muster in any village in England.
Shahatan wore the Indian's blanket, modified
with a large mantle of fine blue cloth, and crossed over
his handsome bare chest something after the style of
a Hieland tartan. I really never saw a better made or
more magnificent looking fellow, though I am not sure
that his easy and picturesque dress would not have improved
a plainer man.

“I remembered directly that Rolfe had said something
to me about missionaries living among the Shawanees,
and I was not surprised to hear that the gentleman
in a black coat was a reverend, and the ladies the
sisterhood of the mission. Miss Trevanion seemed
rather in haste to inform me of the presence of `the
cloth,' and in the next breath claimed my congratulations
on her marriage! She had been a chieftainess
for two months.

“We strolled up and down the grassy terrace, dividing
our attention between the effects of the sunset on
the prairie below and the preparations for our supper,
which was going on by the light of pine-knots stuck
in the clefts of the rock in the rear. A dozen Indian
girls were crossing and recrossing before the fires,
and with the bright glare upon the precipice, and the
moving figures, wigwams, &c., it was like a picture of
Salvator Rosa's. The fair chieftainess, as she glided
across occasionally to look after the people, with a step
as light as her stately figure would allow, was not the
least beautiful feature of the scene. We lost a fine
creature when we let her slip through our fingers, my
dear fellow!”

“Thereby hangs a tale, I have little doubt, and I
can give you some data for a good guess at it—but as
the `nigger song' has it—

“We had everything the wilderness could produce
—appetites included. Lying in the track of the trading-parties,
Shahatan, of course, made what additions
he liked to the Indian mode of living, and except that
our table was a huge buffalo-skin stretched upon stakes,
the supper might have been a traveller's meal among
Turks or Arabs, for all that was peculiar about it. I
should except, perhaps, that no Turk or Arab ever saw
so pretty a creature as the chief's sister, who was my
neighbor at the feast.”

“So—another romance!”

“No, indeed! For though her eyes were eloquent
enough to persuade one to forswear the world and turn
Shawanee, she had no tongue for a stranger. What
little English she had learned of the missionaries she
was too sly to use, and our flirtation was a very unsatisfactory
pantomime. I parted from her at night in
the big wigwam, without having been out of ear-shot
of the chief for a single moment; and as Rolfe was inexorable
about getting off with the daybreak the next
morning, it was the last I saw of the little fawn. But
to tell you the truth, I had forty minds between that

and St. Louis to turn about and have another look
at her.

“The big wigwam, I should tell you, was as large
as a common breakfast-room in London. It was built
of bark very ingeniously sewed together, and lined
throughout with the most costly furs, even the floor
covered with highly-dressed bear-skins. After finishing
our supper in the open air, the large curtain at the
door, which was made of the most superb gold-colored
otters, was thrown up to let in the blaze of the pine
torches stuck in the rock opposite, and, as the evening
was getting cool, we followed the chieftainess to her
savage drawing-room, and took coffee and chatted till
a late hour, lounging on the rude, fur-covered couches.
I had not much chance to talk with our old
friend, but I gathered from what little she said that
she had been disgusted with the heartlessness of London,
and preferred the wilderness with one of nature's
nobility to all the splendors of matrimony in high-life.
She said, however, that she should try to induce Shahatan
to travel abroad for a year or two, and after that,
she thought their time would be agreeably spent in
such a mixture of savage and civilized life as her fortune
and his control over the tribe would enable them
to manage.”

When my friend had concluded his story, I threw
what little light I possessed upon the undeveloped
springs of Miss Trevanion's extraordinary movements,
and we ended our philosophizings on the subject by
promising ourselves a trip to the Shawanees some day
together. Now that we are together in London, however,
and have had the benefit of Mrs. Melicent's additional
chapter, with the still later news that Shahatan
and his wife were travelling by the last accounts in the
east, we have limited our programme to meeting them
in England, and have no little curiosity to see whether
the young savage will decide like his wife in the question
of “Wigwam versus Almack's.”

MISS JONES'S SON.

One night, toward the close of the London season
—the last week in August, or thereabouts—the Deptford
omnibus set down a gentleman at one of the small
brick-block cottages on the Kent road. He was a
very quietly disposed person, with a face rather inscrutable
to a common eye, and might, or might not,
pass for what he was—a man of mark. His age was
perhaps thirty, and his manners and movements had
that cool security which can come only from conversance
with a class of society that is beyond being
laughed at. He was handsome—but when the style
of a man is well pronounced, that is an unobserved
trifle.

Perhaps the reader will step in to No. 10, Verandah
Row, without further ceremony.

The room—scarce more than a squirrel-box from
back to front—was divided by folding doors, and the
furniture was fanciful and neatly kept. The canary-bird,
in a very small cage, in the corner, seemed rather
an intruder on such small quarters. You could scarce
give a guess what style of lady was the tenant of such
miniature gentility.

The omnibus passenger sat down in one of the little
cane-bottomed and straight backed chairs, and presently
the door opened and a stout elderly woman, whose
skirts really filled up the remaining void of the little
parlor, entered with a cordial exclamation, and an
affectionate embrace was exchanged between them.

“Well, my dear mother!” said the visiter, “I am
off to-morrow to Warwickshire to pass the shooting
season, and I came to wind up your household clockwork,
to go for a month—(ticking, I am sorry to say!)
What do you want? How is the tea-caddy?”

“Out of green, James, but the black will do till you
come back. La! don't talk of such matters when you
are just going to leave me. I'll step up stairs and
make you out a list of my wants presently. Tell me
—where are you going in Warwickshire? I went to
school in Warwickshire. Dear me! the lovers I had
there! Well, well! Where did you say you were
going?”

“To the marquis of Headfort—Headfort court, I
think his place is called—a post and a half from Stratford.
Were you ever there, mother?”

“I there, indeed! no, my son! But I had a lover
near Stratford—young Sir Humphrey Fencher, he
was then—old Sir Humphrey now! I'm sure he re
members me, long as it is since I saw him—and, James,
I'll give you a letter to him. Yes—I should like to
know how he looks, and what he will say to my grown-up
boy. I'll go and write it now, and I'll look over
the groceries at the same time. If you move your
chair, James, don't crush the canary-bird!”

The mention of the letter of introduction lingered
in the ear of the gentleman left in the parlor, and
smiling to himself with a look of covert humor, he
drew from his pocket a letter of which it reminded
him—the letter of introduction, on the strength of
which he was going to Warwickshire. As this and
the one which was being written up stairs, were the
two pieces of ordnance destined to propel the incidents
of our story, the reader will excuse us for presenting
them as a “make ready.”

And here follows the letter of Mrs. S— to her
ancient lover, the baronet of Warwickshire:—

It was a morning astray from paradise when S—
awoke at Stratford. Ringing for his breakfast, he requested
that the famous hostess of the red horse
would grace him so far as to join him over a muffin
and a cup of coffee, and between the pauses of his
toilet, he indited a note, enclosing his mother's letter
of introduction to Sir Humphrey.

Enter dame hostess, prim and respectful, and as
breakfast proceeded, S— easily informed himself
of the geography of Tally-ho hall, and the existing
branch and foliage of the family tree. Sir Humphrey's
domestic circle consisted of a daughter and a neice
(his only son having gone with his regiment to the
Canada wars), and the hall lay half way to Headfort
court—the Fenchers his lordship's nearest neighbors,
Mrs. Boniface was inclined to think.

S— divided his morning very delightfully between
the banks of the Avon, and the be-scribbled
localities of Shakspere's birth and residence, and by
two o'clock the messenger had returned with this note
from Sir Humphrey:—

As the crack wit and diner-out of his time, S—
was as well known to the brilliant society of London
as the face of the “gold stick in waiting” at St.
James's, and, with his very common name, he was a
little likely to be recognised out of his peculiar sphere
as the noble lord, when walking in Cheapside, to be
recognised as the “stick,” so often mentioned in the
Court Journal. He had delayed his visit to Headfort
court for a day, and undertaken to deliver his mother's
letter, and look up her lang-syne lover, very much as
he would stop in the Strand to purchase her a parcel
of snuff—purely from the filial habit of always doing
her bidding, even in whims. He had very little curiosity
to see a Warwickshire Nimrod, and, till his postchaise
stopped at the lodge-gate of Tally-ho hall, it
had never entered his head to speculate upon the
ground of his introduction to Sir Humphrey, nor to
anticipate the nature of his reception. His name had
been so long to him an “open sesame,” that he had
no doubt of its potency, and least of all when he pronounced
it at an inferior gate in the barriers of society.

The dressing-bell had rang, and S— was shown
into the vacant drawing-room, where he buried himself
in the deepest chair he could find, and sat looking
at the wall with the composure of a barber's customer
waiting to be shaved. There presently entered two
young ladies, very showily dressed, who called him
Mr. “Jones,” in replying to his salutation, and im
mediately fell to promenading between the two old
mirrors at the extremities of the room, discoursing
upon topics evidently chosen to exclude the newcomer
from the conversation. With rather a feeling
that it was their loss, not his, S— recomposed
himself in the leathern chair and resumed the perusal
of the oaken ceiling. The neglect sat upon him a
little uncomfortable withal.

“How d'ye do, young man! What! you are Miss
Jones's son, eh?” was the salutation of a burly old
gentleman, who now entered and shook hands with
the great incognito. “Here, 'Bel! Fan! Mr. Jones,
My daughter and my niece, Mr. Jones!”

S— was too indignant for a moment to explain
that Miss Jones had changed her name before his
birth, and on second thought, finding that this real
character was not suspected, and that he represented
to Sir Humphrey simply the obscure son of an obscure
girl, pretty, thirty years ago, he fell quietly into the
role expected of him, and walked patiently in to dinner
with Miss Fencher, who accepted his arm for that
purpose, but forgot to take it!

It was hard to be witty as a Mr. Jones, but the habit
was strong and the opportunities were good, and
S—, warming with his first glass of sherry, struck
out some sparks that would have passed for gems of
the first water, with choicer listeners; but wit is slowly
recognised when not expected, and though now and
then the young ladies stared, and now and then the
old baronet chuckled and said “egad! very well!'
there was evidently no material rise in the value of
Mr. Jones, and he at last confined his social talents
exclusively to his wine-glass and nut-picker, feeling,
spite of himself, as stupid as he seemed.

Relieved of the burden of replying to their guess,
the young ladies now took up a subject which evidently
lay nearest their hearts—a series of dejeuners, the
first of which was to come off the following morning
at Headfort court. As if by way of caveat, in case
Mr. Jones should fancy that he could be invited to
accompany Sir Humphrey, Miss Fencher took the
trouble to explain that these were, by no means, common
country entertainments, but exclusive and select
parties, under the patronage of the beautiful and witty
Lady Imogen Bellasys, now a guest at Headfort.
Her ladyship had not only stipulated for societé choisie,
but had invited down a celebrated London wit, a great
friend of her own, to do the mottoes and keep up the
spirit of the masques and tableaux. Indeed, Miss
Fencher considered herself as more particularly the
guest and ally of Lady Imogen, never having been
permitted during her mother's life to visit Headfort
(though she did not see what the marquis's private
character had to do with his visiting list), and she expected
to be called upon to serve as a sort of maid of
honor, or in some way to assist Lady Imogen, who
had invited her very affectionately, after church, on
Sunday. She thought, perhaps, she had better wake
up Sir Humphrey while she thought of it (and while
papa was good natured, as he always was after dinner),
and exact of him a promise that the great London
Mr., what d'ye call 'im, should be invited to pass a
week at Tally-ho hall—for, of course, as mutual
allies of Lady Imogen, Miss Fencher and he would
become rather well acquainted.

To this enlightenment, of which we have given only
a brief resumér, Mr. Jones listened attentively, as he
was expected to do, and was very graciously answered,
when by way of feeling one of the remote pulses of
his celebrity, he ventured to ask for some further particulars
about the London wit aforementioned. He
learned, somewhat to his disgust, that his name was
either Brown or Simpson, some very common name,
however, but that he had a wonderful talent for writing
impromptu epigrams on people and singing them afterward
to impromptu music on the piano, and that he

was supposed to be a natural son of Talleyrand or
Lord Byron, Miss Fencher had forgotten which. He
had written something, but Miss Fencher had forgotten
what. He was very handsome—no, very plain
—indeed, Miss Fencher had forgotten which—but it
was one or the other.

At this crisis of the conversation Sir Humphrey
roused from his post-prandial snooze, and begged Mr.
Jones to pass the port and open the door for the
ladies. By the time the gloves were rescued from
under the table, the worthy baronet had drained a
bumper, and, with his descending glass, dropped his
eyes to the level of his daughter's face, where they
rested with paternal admiration. Miss Fencher was
far from ill-looking, and she well knew that her father
waxed affectionate over his wine.

“Papa!” said she, coming behind him, and looking
down his throat, as he strained his head backward,
leaving his reluctant double chin resting on his cravat.
“I have a favor to ask, my dear papa!”

“He shall go, my dear! he shall go! I have been
thinking of it—I'll arrange it, Bel, I'll arrange it! Go
your ways, chick, and send me my slippers!” gurgled
the baronet, with his usual rapid brevity, when slightly
elevated.

Miss Fencher turned quite pale.

“Pa—pa!” she exclaimed, with horror in her voice,
coming round front, “pa—pa!—good gracious! Do
you know it is the most exclusive—however, papa!
let us talk that over in the other room. What I wish
to ask is quite another matter. You know that
Mr.— Mr.—”

“The gentleman you mean is probably James
S—,” interrupted Mr. Jones.

“Thank you, sir, so it is!” continued Miss Fencher,
putting her hand upon the Baronet's mouth, who was
about to speak—“It is Mr. James S—; and
what I wish, papa, is, to have Mr. James S— invited
to pass a week with us. You know, papa, we
shall be very intimate—James S— and I—both
of us assisting Lady Imogen, you know, papa! and
—and—stay till I get some note-paper—will you,
dear papa?”

“You will have your way, chick, you will have
your way,” sighed Sir Humphrey, getting his spectacles
out of a very tight pocket on his hip. “But,
bless me, I can't write in the evening. Mr. Jones—
perhaps Mr. Jones will write the note for me—just
present my compliments to Mr. S—, and request
the honor, and all that—can you do it, Mr. Jones?”

S— rapidly indited a polite note to himself,
which he handed to Miss Fencher for her approbation,
and meantime entered the butler with the coffee.

“Stuggins!” cried Sir Humphrey—“I wish Mr.
Jones—”

“Good Heavens! papa!” exclaimed Miss Fencher,
ending the remainder of her objurgation in a whisper
in her father's ear. But the baronet was not in a
mood to be controlled.

“My love!—Bel, I say!—he shall go. You d-d-d-diddedent
see Miss Jones's letter. He's a p-p-p-pattern
of filial duty!—he gives his mother a house, and all
she wants!—he's a good son, I tell you! St-Stuggins,
come here! Pass the port, Jones, my good fellow!”

Stuggins stepped forward a pace, and presented his
white waistcoat, and Miss Fencher flounced out of the
room in a passion.

“Stuggins!” said the old man, a little more tranquilly,
since he had no fear now of being interrupted,
“I wish my friend, Mr. Jones, here, to see this cock-a-hoop
business to-morrow. It'll be a fine sight, they
tell me. I want him to see it, Stuggins! You understand
me. His mother, Miss Jones, was a pretty girl,
Stuggins! And she'll be very glad to hear that her
boy has seen such a fine show—eh, Jones? eh, Stuggins?
Well, you know what I want. The Headfort
tenants will have a place provided for them, of course
—some shrubbery, eh?—some gallery—some place
behind the musicians, where they are out of the way,
but can see—isn't it so? eh? eh?”

“Yes, Sir Humphrey—no doubt, Sir Humphrey!”
acceded Stuggins, with his ears still open to know how
the details were to be managed.

“Well—very well—and you'll take Jones with you
in the dickey—eh?—Thomas will go on the box—eh?
Will that do?—and Mr. Jones will stay with us
to-night, and perhaps you'll show him his room, now,
and talk it over, eh, Stuggins?—good night, Mr.
Jones!—good night, Jones, my good fellow!”

And Sir Humphrey, having done this act of grateful
reminiscence for his old sweetheart, managed to
find his way into the next room unaided.

S— had begun, by this time, to see “straw for
his bricks,” in the course matters were taking; and
instead of throwing a decanter after Sir Humphrey,
and knocking down the butler for calling him Mr.
Jones, he accepted Stuggins's convoy to the housekeeper's
room, and with his droll stories and funny
ways, kept the maids and footmen in convulsions of
laughter till break of day. Such a merry time had
not come off in servants' hall for many a day, and of
many a precious morsel of the high life below stairs
of Tally-ho hall did he pick the brains of the delighted
Abigails.

The ladies, busied with their toilets, had their
breakfasts in their own rooms, and Mr. Jones did not
make his appearance till after the baronet had achieved
his red herring and seltzer. The carriage came round
at twelve, and the ladies stepped in, dressed for triumph,
tumbled after by burly Sir Humphrey, who required
one side of the vehicle to himself—Mr. Jones outside,
on the dickey with Stuggins, as previously arranged.

Half way up the long avenue of Headfort court,
Stuggins relinquished the dickey to its rightful occupant,
Thomas, and, with Mr. Jones, turned off by
a side path that led to the dairy and offices—the latter
barely saving his legs, however, for the manœuvre
was performed servant fashion, while the carriage kept
its way.

Lord Headfort was a widower, and his niece, Lady
Imogen Bellasys, the wittiest and loveliest girl in
England, stood upon the lawn for the mistress of the
festivities. She had occasion for a petticoat aid-de-camp,
and she knew that Lord Headfort wished to
propitiate his Warwickshire neighbors; and as Miss
Fencher was a fine grenadier looking girl, she promoted
her to that office immediately on her arrival,
decking her for the nonce with a broad blue riband of
authority. Miss Fencher made the best use of her
powers of self congratulation, and thanked God privately
besides, that Sir Humphrey had provided an eclipse
for Mr. Jones; for with the drawback of presenting
such a superfluous acquaintance of their own to the
fastidious eyes of Lady Imogen, she felt assured that
her new honors would never have arrived to her.
She had had a hint, moreover, from her dressing-maid,
of Mr. Jones' comicalities below stairs; and
the fact that he was a person who could be funny in
a kitchen, was quite enough to confirm the aristocratic
instinct by which she had at once pronounced upon
his condition. If her papa had been gay in his youth,
there was no reason why every Miss Jones should
send her child to him to be made a gentleman of!
“Filial pattern,” indeed!

The gayeties began. The French figurante, despatched
by Lord Vaurien from the opera, made up
her tableaux from the beauties, and those who had
ugly faces, but good figures, tried their attitudes on
the archery-lawn, and those whose complexions would
stand the aggravation, tripped to the dancing tents,
and the falcon was flown, and the greyhounds were
coursed, and a few couple of Warwickshire lads tried

their backs at a wrestling fall, and the time wore on.
But to Lady Imogen's shrewd apprehension, it wore
on very heavily. There was no wit afloat. Nobody
seemed gayer than he meant to be. The bubble was
wanting to their champagne of enjoyment. Miss
Fencher's blue riband went to and fro like a pendulum,
perpetually crossing the lawn between Lady Imogen
and the footman in waiting, to inquire if a post-chaise
had arrived from London.

“I will never forgive that James S—, never!”
pettishly vowed her ladyship, as Miss Fencher came
back for the fiftieth time with no news of his arrival.

“Better feed your menagerie at once!” whispered
Lord Headfort to his niece, as he caught a glance at
her vexed face in passing.

The decision with which the order was given to
serve breakfast, seemed to hurry the very heat of the
kitchen fires, for in an incredibly short time, the hot
soups and delicate entremets of Monsieur Dupres
were on the tables, and breakfast was announced. The
band played a march, the games were abandoned, Miss
Fencher followed close upon the heels of her chef, to
secure a seat in her neighborhood, and in ten minutes
a hundred questions of precedence were settled, and
Sir Humphrey, somewhat to his surprise, and as much
to his delight, was called to the left hand of the marquis.
Tally-ho hall was in the ascendant.

During the first assault upon the soups, the band
played a delicious set of waltzes, terminating with the
clatter of changing plates. But at the same moment,
above all the ring of impinging china, arose a shout
of laughter from a party somewhere without the
pavilion, and so sustained and hearty was the peal,
that the servants stood petrified with their dishes,
and the guests sat in wondering silence. The steward
was instantly despatched to enforce order, and Lord
Headfort explained, that the tenants were feasted on
beef and ale, in the thicket beyond, though he could
scarce imagine what should amuse them so uncommonly.

“They have promised to maintain order, my lord!”
said the steward, returning, and stooping to his master's
ear, “but there is a droll gentleman among them, my
lord!”

“Then I dare swear it's better fun than this!”
mumbled his lordship for the steward's hearing, as
he looked round upon the unamused faces in his
neighborhood.

“Headfort,” cried Lady Imogen, presently, from
the other end of the table, “did you send to Stratford
for S—, or did you not? Let us know whether
there is a chance of his coming!”

“Upon my honor, Lady Imogen, my own chariot
has been at the Stratford inn, waiting for him since
morning,” was the marquis's answer. “Vaurien wrote
that he had booked him by the mail of the night before!
I'd give a thousand pounds if he were here!”

Bursts of laughter, breaking through all efforts to
suppress them, again rose from the offending quarter.

“It's a Mr. Jones, my lord,” said the steward,
speaking between the marquis and Sir Humphrey;
“he's a friend of Sir Humphrey's butler—and—if you
will excuse me, my lord—Stuggins says he is the son
of a Miss Jones, formerly an acquaintance of Sir
Humphrey's!”

Red as a turkey-cock grew the old baronet in a
moment. “I beg ten thousand pardons for having
intruded him here, my lord!” said Sir Humphrey;
“it's a poor lad that brought me a letter from his
mother, and I told Stuggins—”

But here Stuggins approached with a couple of
notes for his master, and, begging permission of the
marquis, Sir Humphrey put on his spectacles to read.
The guests at the table, meantime, were passing the
wine very slowly, and conversation more slowly still,
and, with the tranquillity that reigned in the pavilion,
the continued though half-smothered merriment of
the other party was provokingly audible.

“Can't we borrow a little fun from those merry
people?” cried Lady Imogen, throwing up her eyes
despairingly as the marquis exchanged looks with her.

“If we could persuade Sir Humphrey to introduce
his friend, Jones, to us—”

“I introduce him!” exclaimed the fuming baronet,
tearing off his spectacles in a rage, “read that before
you condescend to talk of noticing such a varlet!
Faith! I think he's the clown from a theatre, or the
waiter from a pot-house!”

The marquis read:—

“Sir Humphrey Fencher.”

The excitement of Sir Humphrey, and the amused
face of the marquis as he read, had drawn Lady Imogen
from her seat, and as he read aloud, at her request, the
urgent epistle of Mr. Jones, she clapped her hands
with delight, and insisted on having him in. Sir
Humphrey declared he should take it as an affront if
the thing was insisted on, and Miss Fencher, who had
followed to her father's chair, and heard the reading
of the note, looked the picture of surprised indignation.
“Insolent! vulgar! abominable!” was all the compliment
she ventured upon, however.

“Will you let me look at Mr. Jones's note?” said
Lady Imogen.

“Good Heavens!” she exclaimed, after glancing at
it an instant, “I was sure it must-be he!”

And out ran the beautiful queen of the festivities,
and the next moment, to Sir Humphrey's amazement,
and Miss Fencher's utter dismay, she returned, dragging
in, with her own scarf around his body, and her
own wreath of roses around his head, the friend of
Stuggins—the abominable Jones! Up jumped the
marquis, and called him by name (not Jones), and
seized him by both hands, and up jumped with delighted
acclamation half a dozen other of the more
distinguished guests at table, and the merriment was
now on the other side of the thicket.

It was five or ten minutes before they were again
seated at table, S— on Lady Imogen's right hand,
but there were two vacant chairs, for Sir Humphrey
and his daughter had taken advantage of the confusion
to disappear, and the field was open, therefore, for a
full account of Mr. Jones's adventures above and below
stairs at Tally-ho hall. A better subject never fell
into the hand of that inimitable humorist, and gloriously
he made use of it.

As he concluded, amid convulsions of laughter, the
butler brought in a note addressed to James S—,
Esq., which had been given him by Stuggins early
in the day—his own autograph invitation to the hospitalities
of Tally-ho hall!

LADY RACHEL.

I once had a long conversation with a fellow-traveller
in the coupé of a French diligence. It was a
bright moonlight night, early in June—not at all the
scene or season for talking long on very dry topics—
and with a mutual abandon which must be explained
by some theory of the silent sympathies, we fell to
chatting rather confidentially on the subject of love.
He gave me some hints as to a passage in his life
which seemed to me, when he told it, a definite and
interesting story; but in recalling it to mind afterward,
I was surprised to find how little he really said,
and how much, from seeing the man and hearing his
voice, I was enabled without effort to supply. To
save roundabout, I'll tell the story in the first person,
as it was told to me, begging the reader to take my
place in the coupé and listen to a very gentlemanly
man, of very loveable voice and manners; supplying,
also, as I did, by the imagination, much more than is
told in the narration.

“I am inclined to think that we are sometimes best
loved by those whom we least suspect of being interested
in us; and while a sudden laying open of hearts
would give the lie to many a love professed, it would,
here and there, disclose a passion which, in the ordinary
course of things, would never have been betrayed.
I was once a little surprised with a circumstance
of the kind I allude to.

“I had become completely domesticated in a family
living in the neighborhood of London—I can
scarce tell you how, even if it were worth while. A
chance introduction, as a stranger in the country,
first made me acquainted with them, and we had gone
on, from one degree of friendship to another, till I
was as much at home at Lilybank as any one of the
children. It was one of those little English paradises,
rural and luxurious, where love, confidence, simplicity,
and refinement, seem natural to the atmosphere, and I
thought, when I was there, that I was probably as
near to perfect happiness as I was likely to be in the
course of my life. But I had my annoyance even
there.

“Mr. Fleming (the name is fictitious, of course)
was a man of sufficient fortune, living, without a profession,
on his means. He was avowedly of the middle
class, but his wife, a very beautiful specimen of
the young English mother, was very highly connected,
and might have moved in what society she pleased.
She chose to find her happiness at home, and leave
society to come to her by its own natural impulse and
affinity—a sensible choice, which shows you at once
the simple and rational character of the woman.
Fleming and his wife were very fond of each other,
but, at the same time, very fond of the companionship
of those who were under their roof; and between
them and their three or four lovely children, I could
have been almost contented to have been a prisoner
at Lilybank, and to have seen nobody but its charming
inmates for years together.

“I had become acquainted with the Flemings, however,
during the absence of one of the members of
the family. Without being at all aware of any new
arrival in the course of the morning, I went late to
dinner after a long and solitary ride on horseback, and
was presented to Lady Rachel —, a tall and reserved-looking
person, sitting on Fleming's right
hand. Seeing no reason to abate any of my outward
show of happiness, or to put any restraint on the natural
impulse of my attentions, I took my accustomed
seat by the sweet mistress of the house, wrapped up
my entire heart, as usual, in every word and look
that I sent toward her, and played the schoolboy that
I felt myself, uncloudedly frank and happy. Fleming
laughed and mingled in our chat occasionally, as he
was wont to do, but a glance now and then at his
stately right-hand neighbor, made me aware that I
was looked upon with some coolness, if not with a
marked disapproval. I tried the usual peace-offerings
of deference and marked courtesy, and lessened
somewhat the outward show of my happiness, but
Lady Rachel was apparently not propitiated. You
know what it is to have one link cold in the chain of
sympathy around a table.

“The next morning I announced my intention of
returning to town. I had hitherto come and gone at
my pleasure. This time the Flemings showed a determined
opposition to my departure. They seemed
aware that my enjoyment under their roof had been,
for the first time, clouded over, and they were not
willing I should leave till the accustomed sunshine
was restored. I felt that I owed them too much to
resist any persuasion of theirs against my own feelings
merely, and I remained.

“But I determined to overcome Lady Rachel's
aversion—a little from pique, I may as well confess,
but mostly for the gratification I knew it would give
to my sweet friends and entertainers. The saddle is
my favorite thinking-place. I mounted a beautiful
hunter which Fleming always put at my disposal
while I stayed with them, and went off for a long gallop.
I dismounted at an inn, some miles off, called
for black wax, and writing myself a letter, despatched
it to Lilybank. To play my part well, you will easily
conceive, it was necessary that my kind friends should
not be in the secret.

“The short road to the heart of a proud woman, I
well knew, was pity. I came to dinner that day a
changed man. It was known through the family, of
course, that a letter sealed with black had arrived for
me, during my ride, and it gave me the apology I
needed for a sudden alteration of manner. Delicacy
would prevent any one, except Mrs. Fleming, from
alluding to it, and she would reserve the inquiry till
we were alone. I had the evening before me, of
course.

“Lady Rachel, I had remarked, showed her superiority
by habitually pitching her voice a note or two
below that of the persons around her—as if the repose
of her calm mind was beyond the plummet of
their superficial gayety. I had also observed, however,
that if she succeeded in rebuking now and then
the high spirits of her friends, and lowered the general
diapason till it harmonized with her own voice,
she was more gratified than by any direct compliment
or attention. I ate my soup in silence, and while the
children, and a chance guest or two, were carrying on
some agreeable banter in a merry key, I waited for
the first opening of Lady Rachel's lips, and, when
she spoke, took her tone like an echo. Without looking
at her, I commenced a subdued and pensive description
of my morning's ride, like a man unconsciously
awakened from his revery by a sympathetic
voice, and betraying, by the tone in which he spoke,

he chord to which he responded. A newer guest
had taken my place, next to Mrs. Fleming, and I was
opposite Lady Rachel. I could feel her eyes suddenly
fixed on me as I spoke. For the first time, she
addressed a remark to me, in a pause of my description.
I raised my eyes to her with as much earnestness
and deference as I could summon into them,
and, when I had listened to her and answered her observation,
kept them fastened on her lips, as if I hoped
she would speak to me again—yet without a smile,
and with an expression that I meant should be that
of sadness, forgetful of usages, and intent only on an
eager longing for sympathy. Lady Rachel showed
her woman's heart, by an almost immediate change
of countenance and manner. She leaned slightly
over the table toward me, with her brows lifted from
her large dark eyes, and the conversation between us
became continuous and exclusive. After a little while,
my kind host, finding that he was cut off from his
other guests by the fear of interrupting us, proposed
to give me the head of the table, and I took his place
at the left hand of Lady Rachel. Her dinner was
forgotten. She introduced topics of conversation
such as she thought harmonized with my feelings,
and while I listened, with my eyes alternately cast
down or raised timidly to hers, she opened her heart
to me on the subject of death, the loss of friends, the
vanity of the world, and the charm, to herself, of sadness
and melancholy. She seemed unconscious of the
presence of others as she talked. The tears suffused
her fine eyes, and her lips quivered, and I found, to
my surprise, that she was a woman, under that mask
of haughtiness, of the keenest sensibility and feeling.
When Mrs. Fleming left the table, Lady Rachel
pressed my hand, and, instead of following into the
drawing-room, went out by the low window upon the
lawn. I had laid up some little food for reflection as
you may conceive, and I sat the next hour looking
into my wineglass, wondering at the success of my
manœuvre, but a little out of humor with my own hypocrisy,
notwithstanding.

“Mrs. Fleming's tender kindness to me when I
joined her at the tea-table, made me again regret
the sacred feelings upon which I had drawn for
my experiment. But there was no retreat. I excused
myself hastily, and went out in search of Lady
Rachel, meeting her ladyship, as I expected, slowly
pacing the dark avenues of the garden. The dimness
of the starlight relieved me from the effort of keeping
sadness in my countenance, and I easily played out
my part till midnight, listening to an outpouring of
mingled kindness and melancholy, for the waste of
which I felt some need to be forgiven.

“Another day of this, however, was all that I could
bring my mind to support. Fleming and his wife had
entirely lost sight—in sympathy with my presumed
affliction—of the object of detaining me at Lilybank,
and I took my leave, hating myself for the tender
pressure of the hand, and the sad and sympathizing
farewells which I was obliged to receive from them.
I did not dare to tell them of my unworthy ruse.
Lady Rachel parted from me as kindly as the rest,
and I had gained my point with the loss of my self-esteem.
With a prayer that, notwithstanding this deceit
and misuse, I might find pity when I should indeed
stand in need of it, I drove from the door.

“A month passed away, and I wrote, once more, to
my friends at Lilybank, that I would pass a week
with them. An occurrence, in the course of that
month, however, had thrown another mask over my
face, and I went there again with a part to play—and,
as if by a retributive Providence, it was now my need
of sympathy that I was most forced to conceal. An
affair which I saw no possibility of compromising, had
compelled me to call out a man who was well known
as a practical duelist. The particulars would not in
terest you. In accepting the challenge, my antagonist
asked a week's delay, to complete some important
business from which he could not withdraw his attention.
And that week I passed with the Flemings.

“The gayety of Lilybank was resumed with the
smile I brought back, and chat and occupation took
their natural course. Lady Rachel, though kind and
courteous, seemed to have relapsed into her reserve,
and, finding society an effort, I rode out daily alone,
seeing my friends only at dinner and in the evening.
They took it to be an indulgence of some remainder
of my former grief, and left me consequently to the
disposition of my own time.

“The last evening before the duel arrived, and I
bade my friends good-night as usual, though with
some suppressed emotion. My second, who was to
come from town and take me up at Lilybank on his
way to the ground, had written to me that, from what
he could gather, my best way was to be prepared for
the worst, and, looking upon it as very probably the
last night of my life, I determined to pass it waking,
and writing to my friends at a distance. I sat down
to it, accordingly, without undressing.

“It was toward three in the morning that I sealed
up my last letter. My bedroom was on the ground-floor,
with a long window opening into the garden;
and, as I lifted my head up from leaning over the seal,
I saw a white object standing just before the casement,
but at some little distance, and half buried in the darkness.
My mind was in a fit mood for a superstitious
feeling, and my blood crept cold for a moment; I
passed my hand across my eyes—looked again. The
figure moved slowly away.

“To direct my thoughts, I took up a book and
read. But, on looking up, the figure was there again,
and, with an irresistible impulse, I rushed out to the
garden. The figure came toward me, but, with its
first movement, I recognised the stately step of Lady
Rachel.

“Confused at having intruded on her privacy, for I
presumed that she was abroad for solitude, and with
no thought of being disturbed, I turned to retire.
She called to me, however, and, sinking upon a garden-seat,
covered her face with her hands. I stood
before her, for a moment, in embarrassed silence.

“`You keep late hours,' she said, at last, with a
tremulous voice, but rising at the same time and, with
her arm put through mine, leading me to the thickly-shaded
walk.

“`To-night I do,' I replied; `letters I could not
well defer—'

“`Listen to me!' interrupted Lady Rachel. `I
know your business for the morning—'

“I involuntarily released my arm and started back.
The chance of an interruption that would seem dishonorable
flashed across my mind.

“`Stay!' she continued; `I am the only one in the
family who knows of it, and my errand with you is
not to hinder this dreadful meeting. The circumstances
are such, that, with society as it is, you could
not avoid it with honor.'

“I pressed her arm with a feeling of gratified justification
which quite overcame, for the moment, my
curiosity as to the source of her knowledge of the
affair.

“`You must forgive me,' she said, `that I come to
you like a bird of ill omen. I can not spare the precious
moments to tell you how I came by my information
as to your design. I have walked the night
away, before your window, not daring to interrupt you
in what was probably the performance of sacred duties.
But I know your antagonist—I know his demoniac
nature, and—pardon me!—I dread the worst!'

“I still walked by her side in silence. She resumed,
though strongly agitated.

“`I have said that I justify you in an intention

which will probably cost you your life. Yet, but for
a feeling which I am about to disclose to you, I should
lose no time and spare no pains in preventing this
meeting. Under such circumstances, your honor
would be less dear to me than now, and I should be
acting as one of my sex who had but a share of interest
in resisting and striving to correct this murderous
exaction of public opinion. I would condemn
duelling in argument—avoid the duellist in society—
make any sacrifice with others to suppress it in the
abstract—but, till the feeling changes in reference to
it, I could not bring myself to sacrifice, in the honor
of the man I loved, my world of happiness for my
share only.'

“`And mean you to say—' I began, but, as the
light broke upon my mind, amazement stopped my
utterance.

“`Yes—that I love you!—that I love you!' murmured
Lady Rachel, throwing herself into my arms,
and fastening her lips to mine in a long and passionate
kiss—`that I love you, and, in this last hour of
your life, must breathe to you what I never before
breathed to mortal!'

“She sank to the ground, and, with handfuls of
dew, swept up from the grass of the lawn, I bathed
her temples, as she leaned senseless against my knee.
The moon had risen above the trees, and poured its
full radiance on her pale face and closed eyes. Her
hair loosened and fell in heavy masses over her shoulders
and bosom, and, for the first time, I realized
Lady Rachel's extraordinary beauty. Her features
were without a fault, her skin was of marble fairness
and paleness, and her abandonment to passionate feeling
had removed, for the instant, a hateful cloud of
pride and superciliousness that, at all other times, had
obscured her loveliness. With a newborn emotion
in my heart, I seized the first instant of returning
consciousness, and pressed her, with a convulsive eagerness,
to my bosom.

“The sound of wheels aroused me from this delirious
dream, and, looking up, I saw the gray of
the dawn struggling with the moonlight. I tore myself
from her arms, and the moment after was whirling
away to the appointed place of meeting.

“I was in my room, at Lilybank, dressing, at eleven
of that same day. My honor was safe, and the affair
was over, and now my whole soul was bent on this
new and unexpected vision of love. True—I was
but twenty-five, and Lady Rachel probably twenty
years older—but she loved me—she was highborn and
beautiful—and love is not so often brought to the lip
in this world, that we can cavil at the cup which holds
it. With these thoughts and feelings wrangling tumultuously
in my heated blood, I took the following
note from a servant at my door.

“`Lady Rachel — buries in entire oblivion the
last night past. Feelings over which she has full control
in ordinary circumstances, have found utterance
under the conviction that they were words to the dying.
They would never have been betrayed without
impending death, and they will never, till death be
near to one of us, find voice, or give token of existence
again. Delicacy and honor will prompt you to
visit Lilybank no more.'

“Lady Rachel kept her room till I left, and I have
never visited Lilybank, nor seen her since.”

THE PHANTOM-HEAD UPON THE TABLE.

1. CHAPTER I.
SHOWING THE HUMILIATIONS OF THE BARRIERS OF
HIGH-LIFE.

There is no aristocracy in the time o' night. It
was punctually ten o'clock, in Berkeley square. It
rained on the nobleman's roof. It rained on the beggar's
head. The lamps, for all that was visible except
themselves, might as well have been half way to the
moon, but even that was not particular to Berkeley
square.

A hack cabriolet groped in from Bruton street.

“Shall I ring any bell for you, sir?” said the cabman,
pulling aside the wet leather curtain.

“No! I'll get out anywhere! Pull up to the side-walk!”

But the passenger's mind changed while paying his
shilling.

“On second, thoughts, my good fellow, you may
knock at the large door on the right.”

The driver scrambled up the high steps and gave a
single knock—such a knock as the drivers of only the
poor and unfashionable are expected to give, in well-regulated
England.

The door was opened only to a crack, and a glittering
livery peered through. But the passenger was
close behind, and setting his foot against the door, he
drove back the suspicious menial and walked in.
Three men, powdered and emblazoned in blue and
gold, started to their feet, and came toward the apparent
intruder. He took the wet cap from his head,
deliberately flung his well-worn cloak into the arms
of the nearest man, and beckoning to another, pointed
to his overshoes. With a suppressed titter, two of
the footmen disappeared through a side-door, and the
third, mumbling something about sending up one of
the stable-boys, turned to follow them.

The new-comer's hand passed suddenly into the
footman's white cravat, and, by a powerful and sudden
throw, the man was brought to his knee.

“Oblige me by unbuckling that shoe!” said the
stranger in a tone of imperturbable coolness, setting
his foot upon the upright knee of the astonished menial.

The shoe was taken off, and the other set in its
place upon the plush-covered leg, and unbuckled, as
obediently.

“Keep them until I call you to put them on again!”
said the wearer, taking his gloves from his pockets, as
the man arose, and slowly walking up and down the
hall while he drew them leisurely on.

From the wet and muddy overshoes had been delivered
two slight and well-appointed feet, however,
shining in pliable and unexceptionable jet. With a
second look, and the foul-weather toggery laid aside,
the humbled footman saw that he had been in error,
and that, hack-cab and dirty overshoes to the contrary
notwithstanding, the economising guest of “my lord”
would appear, on the other side of the drawing-room
door, only at home on “velvet of three pile”—an elegant
of undepreciable water!

“Shall I announce you, sir?” respectfully inquired
the servant.

“If Lord Aymar has come up from the dinner table—yes!
If the ladies are alone—no!”

“Coffee has just gone in to the ladies, sir!”

“Then I'll find my own way!”

Lady Aymar was jamming the projecting diamond
of a bracelet through and through the thick white
leaf of an Egyptian kala, lost apparently in an eclipse
of revery—possibly in a swoon of slumberous digestion.
By the drawing-room light, in her negligent
posture, she looked of a ripeness of beauty not yet
sapped by one autumnal minute—plump, drowsy, and
voluptuous. She looked up as the door opened.

“Spiridion!”

“Sappho!”

“Don't be silly!—how are you, Count Pallardos?
And how like a ghost you come in, unannounced!
Suppose I had been tying my shoe, or anything?”

“Is your ladyship quite well?”

“I will take coffee and wake up to tell you! Was
I asleep when you opened the door? They were all
so dull at dinner. Ah me! stupid or agreeable, we
grow old all the same! How am I looking, Spiridion?”

“Ravishingly! Where is Lady Angelica?”

“Give me another lump of sugar! La! don't you
take coffee?”

“There are but two cups, and this was meant for
a lip of more celestial earth—has she been gone
long?”

The door opened, and the rustling dress of Lady
Angelica Aymar made music in the room. Oh, how
gloriously beautiful she was, and how changed was
Count Spiridion Pallardos by her coming in! A
minute before so inconsequent, so careless and complimentary—now
so timid, so deferential, so almost
awkward in every motion!

The name of “Greek count” has been for a long
time, in Europe, the synonym for “adventurer”—a
worse pendant to a man's name, in high life at least,
than “pirate” or “robber.” Not that a man is peculiar
who is trying to make the most out of society and
would prefer an heiress to a governess, but that it is a
disgrace to be so labelled! An adventurer is the same
as any other gentleman who is not rich, only without
a mask.

Count Pallardos was lately arrived from Constantinople,
and was recognised and received by Lord Aymar
as the son of a reduced Greek noble who had been
the dragoman to the English embassy when his lordship
was ambassador to the Porte. With a promptness
a little singular in one whose patronage was so
difficult to secure, Lord Aymar had immediately procured,
for the son of his old dependant, a small employment
as translator in the Foreign office, and with
its most limited stipend for his means, the young
count had commenced his experience of English life.
His acquaintance with the ladies of Lord Aymar's
family was two stages in advance of this, however.
Lady Aymar remembered him well as the beautiful
child of the lovely Countess Pallardos, the playfellow
of her daughter Angelica on the shore of the Bosphorus;
and on his first arrival in England, hearing
that the family of his patron was on the coast for sea-bathing,
Spiridion had prepared to report himself first
to the female portion of it. Away from society in a
retired cottage ornée upon the seashore, they had received
him with no hinderance to their appreciation or
hospitality; and he had thus been subjected, by accident,
to a month's unshared intoxication with the
beauty of the Lady Angelica. The arrival of the
young Greek had been made known to Lord Aymar
by his lady's letters, and the situation had been procured
for him; but Pallardos had seen his lordship
but once, and this was his first visit to the town establishment
of the family.

The butler came in with a petit verre of Miladi,
for Miladi, and was not surprised, as the footmen
would have been, to see Lady Angelica on her knee,
and Count Pallardos imprisoning a japonica in the
knot a la Grecque of that head of Heaven's most
heavenly moulding. Brother and sister, Cupid and
Psyche, could not have been grouped with a more
playful familiarity.

“Spiridion!”—said Lady Aymar—“I shall call you
Spiridion till the men come up—how are you lodged,
my dear! Have you a bath in your dressing-room?”

“Pitcher and bowl of the purest crockery, my dear
lady! May I venture to draw this braid a little closer,
Angelica—to correct the line of this raven mass on
your cheek? It robs us now of a rose-leaf's breadth
at least—flat burglary, my sweet friend!”

But the Lady Angelica sprang to her feet, for a
voice was heard of some one ascending from the
dining-room. She flung herself into a dormeuse,
Spiridion twirled his two fingers at the fire, as if bodily
warmth was the uppermost necessity of the moment,
and enter Lord Aymar, followed by a great statesman
a famous poet, one sprig of unsurpassed nobility, and
one wealthy dandy commoner.

Lord Aymar nodded to his protegé, but the gentlemen
grouped themselves, for a moment, around a silver
easel, upon which stood a Correggio, a late purchase
of which his lordship had been discoursing, and in
that minute or two the name and quality of the stranger
were communicated to the party—probably, for
they took their coffee without further consciousness
of his presence.

The statesman paired off to a corner with his host
to talk politics, the poet took the punctured flower
from the lap of Lady Aymar, and commenced mending,
with patent wax wafers, from the ormolu desk
near by, the holes in the white leaves; and the two ineffables
lingered a moment longer over their Curaçoa.

Pallardos drew a chair within conversation-reach of
Lady Angelica, and commenced an unskilful discussion
of the opera of the night before. He felt angry,
insulted, unseated from his self-possession, yet he
could not have told why. The two young men lounged
leisurely across the room, and the careless Lord Frederick
drew his chair partly between Pallardos and
Lady Angelica, while Mr. Townley Manners reclined
upon an ottoman behind her and brought his lips
within whisper-shot of her ear, and, with ease and unforced
nonsense, not audible nor intended to be audible
to the “Greek adventurer,” they inevitably engrossed
the noble beauty.

The blood of Count Spiridion ran round his heart
like a snake coiled to strike. He turned to a portfolio
of drawings for a cover to self-control and self-communing,
for he felt that he had need of summoning
his keenest and coldest judgment, his boldest and
wariest courage of conduct and endurance, to submit
to, and outnerve and overmaster, his humiliating position.
He was under a roof of which he well knew
that the pride and joy of it, the fair Lady Angelica,
the daughter of the proud earl, had given him her
heart. He well knew that he had needed reserve and
management to avoid becoming too much the favorite
of the lady mistress of that mansion; yet, in it, he had
been twice insulted grossly, cuttingly, but in both
cases unresentably—once by unpunishable menials,
of whom he could not even complain without exposing
and degrading himself, and once by the supercilious
competitors for the heart he knew was his own—
and they too, unpunishable!

At this moment, at a sign from Lady Aymar, her
lord swung open the door of a conservatory to give
the room air, and the long mirror, set in the panel,
showed to Spiridion his own pale and lowering features.
He thanked Heaven for the chance! To see
himself once more was what he bitterly needed!—to
see whether his head had shrunk between his shoulders—whether
his back was crouched—whether his
eyes and lips had lost their fearlessness and pride! He

had feared so—felt so! He almost wondered that he
did not look like a dependant and a slave! But oh,
no! The large mirror showed the grouped figures
of the drawing-room, his own the noblest among them
by nature's undeniable confession! His clear, statuary
outline of features—the finely-cut arches of his
lips—the bold, calm darkness of his passionate eyes—
his graceful and high-born mien,—all apparent enough
to his own eye when seen in the contrast of that mirrored
picture—he was not changed!—not a slave—not
metamorphosed by that hour's humiliation! He
clenched his right hand, once, till the nails were driven
through his glove into the clammy palm, and then
rose with a soft smile on his features, like the remainder
of a look of pleasure.

“I have found,” said he, in a composed and musical
tone, “I have found what we were looking for, Lady
Angelica!”

He raised the large portfolio from the print-stand,
and setting it open on his knee, directly between Lord
Frederick and Lady Angelica, cut off that nobleman's
communication with her ladyship very effectually,
while he pointed out a view of the Acropolis at Athens.
Her ladyship was still expressing her admiration of the
drawing, when Spiridion turned to the astonished gentleman
at her ear.

“Perhaps, sir,” said he, “in a lady's service, I may
venture to dispossess you of that ottoman! Will you
be kind enough to rise?”

With a stare of astonishment, the elegant Mr.
Townley Manners reluctantly complied; and Spiridion,
drawing the ottoman in front of Lady Angelica,
set the broad portfolio upon it, and seating himself at
her feet upon the outer edge, commenced a detailed
account of the antiquities of the grand capitol. The
lady listened with an amused look of mischief in her
eye, Lord Frederick walked once around her chair
humming an air very rudely, Mr. Manners attempted
in vain to call Lady Angelica to look at something
wonderful in the conservatory, and Spiridion's triumph
was complete. He laid aside the portfolio after a moment
or two, drew the ottoman back to its advantageous
position, and, self-assured and at his ease, engrossed
fully and agreeably the attention of his heart's mistress.

Half an hour elapsed. Lord Aymar took a kind
of dismission attitude before the fire, and the guests
one and all took their leave. They were all cloaking
together in the entry, when his lordship leaned over
the bannister.

“Have you your chariot, Lord Frederick?” he
asked.

“Yes—it's at the door now!”

“Lady Aymar suggests that perhaps you'll set down
Count Pallardos, on your way!”

“Why—ah, certainly, certainly!” replied Lord
Frederick, with some hesitation.

“My thanks to Lady Aymar,” said Spiridion very
quietly, “but say to her ladyship that I am provided
with overshoes and umbrella! Shall I offer your lordship
half of the latter?” added he in another key,
leaning with cool mock-earnestness toward Lord
Frederick, who only stared a reply as he passed out to
his chariot.

And marvelling who would undergo such humiliations
and such antagonism as had been his lot that
evening, for anything else than the love of a Lady
Angelica, Count Spiridion stepped forth into the rain
to grope his way to his obscure lodgings in Parliament
street.

2. CHAPTER II.
SHOWING A GENTLEMAN'S NEED OF A HORSE.

It was the hour when the sun in heaven is supposed
to be least promiscuous—the hour when the
five hundred fashionables of London West-End receive
his visit in the open air, to the entire exclusion
(it is presumed) of the remaining population of the
globe. The cabs and jarveys, the vehicles of the despised
public, rolled past the forbidden gate of Hyde
park, and the echo stationed in the arched portal announced
the coroneted carriages as they nicely nibbled
the pleased gravel in passing under. A plebeian or
two stood outside to get a look at the superior beings
whose daily list of company to dine is the news most
carefully furnished to the instructed public. The
birds (having “fine feathers”) flew over the iron railing
unchallenged by the gate-keeper. Four o'clock
went up to Heaven's gate with the souls of those who
had died since three, and with the hour's report of the
world's sins and good deeds; and at the same moment
a chariot rolled into the park, holding between its
claret panels the embellished flesh and blood of Lady
Aymar and her incomparable daughter.

A group of gay men on horseback stood at the bend
of “Rotten Row,” watching the comers-in; and within
the inner railing of the park, among the promenaders
on foot, was distinguishable the slight figure of Count
Pallardos, pacing to and fro with step somewhat irregular.
As Lady Aymar's chariot went by, he bowed
with a frank and ready smile, but the smile was quickly
banished by a flushed cheek and lowering brow, for,
from the group of mounted dandies, dashed out Lord
Frederick Beauchief, upon a horse of unparalleled
beauty, and with a short gallop took and kept his place
close at the chariot window.

Pallardos watched them till the turn of the ring took
them from his sight. The fitness of the group—the
evident suitableness of Lord Frederick's position at
that chariot window, filled him with a jealousy he could
no longer stifle. The contest was all unequal, it was
too palpable to deny. He, himself, whatever his person
or qualities, was, when on foot, in the place allotted
to him by his fortunes—not only unnoticed by the
contagious admiration of the crowd, but unable even
to obey his mistress, though beckoned by her smile to
follow her! That superb animal, the very type of
pride and beauty, arching his glossy neck and tossing
his spirited head before the eyes of Lady Angelica,
was one of those unanalyzed, undisputed vouchers for
the owner's superiority, which make wealth the devil's
gift—irresistible but by the penetrating and cold judgment
of superior beings. How should a woman, born
with the susceptible weaknesses of her sex, most impressible
by that which is most showy and beautiful—
how should she be expected to reason coldly and with
philosophic discrimination on this subject?—how separate
from Lord Frederick, the mere man, his subservient
accompaniments of wealth, attendance, homage
from others, and infatuated presumption in himself?
Nay—what presumption in Spiridion Pallardos (so
he felt, with his teeth set together in despair, as he
walked rapidly along)—to suppose that he could contend
successfully against this and a thousand such advantages
and opportunities, with only his unpriced,
unproved love to offer her, with a hand of poverty!
His heart ran drowningly over with the bitterness of
conviction!

After a few steps, Pallardos turned back with an in
stinctive though inexplicable desire to hasten the pang
of once more meeting them as they came round the
ring of the park. Coming toward him, was one of the
honorable officials of Downing street, with whom he
had been thrown in contact, a conceited and well-born
diner-out, mounted on a handsome cob, but
with his servant behind him on a blood hunter.
Mr. Dallinger was walking his horse slowly along the
fence, and, as he came opposite Pallardos, he drew
rein.

“Count!” said he, in that patronising tone which is
tossed over the head of the patronised like a swan's

neck over the worm about to be gobbled, “a—a—a—
do you know Spanish?”

“Yes. Why?”

“A—a—I've a job for you! You know Moreno,
the Spanish secretary—well, his wife—she will persist
in disguising her billet-doux in that stilted language,
and—you know what I want—suppose you come and
breakfast with me to-morrow morning?”

Pallardos was mentally crowding his contemptuous
refusal into the smallest phrase that could convey repulse
to insolence, when the high-stepping and foam-spattered
forelegs of Lady Aymar's bays appeared under
the drooping branch of the tree beyond him. The
next instant, Lord Frederick's easily-carried head
danced into sight—a smile of perfect self-satisfaction
on his face, and his magnificent horse, excited by the
constant check, prancing at his proudest. At the moment
they passed, Dallinger's groom, attempting to
restrain the impatience of the spirited hunter he was
upon, drew the curb a little too violently, and the man
was thrown. The sight of the empty saddle sent a
thought through the brain of Pallardos like a shaft.

“May I take a little of the nonsense out of that
horse for you?” said he quickly, springing over the
railing, and seizing the rein, to which the man still
held, while the frighted horse backed and reared
toward his master.

“A—a—yes, if you like!”

Pallardos sprang into the saddle, loosened the rein
and leaned forward, and with three or four powerful
bounds, the horse was at the other window of the
chariot. Away, with the bursted trammels of heart
and brain, went all thoughts of the horse's owner, and
all design, if any had flashed on his mind, of time or
place for restoring him. Bred in a half-civilized country,
where the bold hand was often paramount to law,
the Greek had no habit of mind likely to recognise in
a moment of passion even stronger barriers of propriety
than he was now violating; and, to control his
countenance and his tongue, and summon his resources
for an apparently careless and smiling contest of
attraction with his untroubled rival, was work enough
for the whole mind and memory, as well as for all the
nerve and spirit of the excited Greek. He laid his
hand on the chariot window, and thinking no more of
the horse he was subduing than the air he breathed,
broke up his powerful gallop to a pace that suited him,
and played the lover to the best of his coolness and
ability.

“We saw you walking just now, and were lamenting
that you were not on horseback,” said Lady Aymar,
“for it is a sweet evening, and we thought of
driving out for a stroll in old Sir John Chasteney's
grounds at Bayswater. Will you come, Spiridion?
Tell White to drive there!”

Lord Frederick kept his place, and with its double
escort, the equipage of the Aymars sped on its way to
Bayswater. Spiridion was the handsomer man, and
the more graceful rider, and, without forcing the difficult
part of keeping up a conversation with those
within the chariot, he soon found his uneasiness displaced
by a glow of hope and happiness; for Lady
Angelica, leaning far back in her seat, and completely
hidden from Lord Frederick, kept her eyes watchfully
and steadily upon the opposite side where rode her less
confident lover. The evening was of summer's softest
and richest glory, breezy and fragrant; and as the sun
grew golden, the party alighted at the gates of Chasteney
park—in tune for love, it must needs be, if ever
conspiring smiles in nature could compel accord in
human affections.

Ah, happy Spiridion Pallardos! The Lady Angelica
called him to disengage her dress from the step
of the carriage, and her arm was in his when he arose,
placed there as confidingly as a bride's, and with a
gentle pressure that was half love and half mischief—
for she quite comprehended that Lord Frederick's
ride to Bayswater was not for the pleasure of a twilight
stroll through Chasteney park with her mother! That
mother, fortunately, was no duenna. She had pretensions
of her own to admiration, and she was only
particular as to the quantity. Her daughter's division
with her of the homage of their male acquaintances,
was an evil she indolently submitted to, but she was
pleased in proportion as it was not obtruded upon her
notice. As Pallardos and the Lady Angelica turned
into one of the winding alleys of the grounds, Lady
Aymar bent her large eyes very fixedly upon another,
and where such beautiful eyes went before, her small
feet were very sure to follow. The twilight threw its
first blur over the embowering foliage as the parties
lost sight of each other, and, of the pair who are the
hero and heroine of this story, it can only be disclosed
that they found a heaven (embalmed, for their particular
use, in the golden dusk of that evening's twilight),
and returned to the park gate in the latest minute
before dark, sworn lovers, let come what would!
But meantime, the happy man's horse had disappeared,
as well he might have been expected to do, his
bridle having been thrown over a bush by the engrossed
Pallardos, when called upon to assist Lady
Angelica from her carriage, and milord's groom and
miladi's footman having no sovereign reasons for securing
him. Lord Frederick laughed till the count
accepted the offer of Lady Aymar to take him home,
bodkin-wise, between herself and her daughter; and for
the happiness of being close pressed to the loving side
of the Lady Angelica for one hour more, Pallardos
would willingly have lost a thousand horses—his own
or the honorable Mr. Dallinger's. And, by the way,
of Mr. Dallinger and his wrath, and his horseless
groom, Spiridion began now to have a thought or two
of an uncomfortable pertinacity of intrusion.

3. CHAPTER III.
SHOWING WHAT MAKES A HORSE-STEALER A GENTLEMAN.

It was the first day of September, and most of the
gold threads were drawn from the tangled and varicolored
woof of London society. “The season” was
over. Two gentlemen stood in the window of Crockford's,
one a Jew barrister (kersey enough for more
russet company by birth and character, but admitted
to the society of “costly stuff” for the equivalent he
gave as a purveyor of scandal), and the other a commoner,
whose wealth and fashion gave him the privilege
of out-staying the season in town, without publishing
in the Morning Post a better reason than inclination
for so unnatural a procedure.

Count Spiridion Pallardos was seen to stroll slowly
up St. James street, on the opposite side.

“Look there, Abrams!” said Mr. Townley Manners,
“there's the Greek who was taken up at one
time by the Aymars. I thought he was transported.”

“No! he still goes to the Aymars, though he is
`in Coventry' everywhere else. Dallinger had him
arrested—for horse-stealing, wasn't it? The officer
nabbed him as he was handing Lady Angelica out of
her carriage in Berkeley square. I remember hearing
of it two months ago. What a chop-fallen blackguard
it looks!”

“Blackguard! Come, come, man!—give the devil
his due!” deprecated the more liberal commoner;
“may be it's from not having seen a gentleman for the
last week, but, hang me if I don't think that same
horse-stealer turning the corner is as crack-looking a
man as I ever saw from this window. What's o'clock?”

“Half-past four,” replied the scandal-monger, swallowing,

with a bland smile, what there was to swallow
in Manners's two-edged remark, and turning suddenly
on his heel.

Pallardos slowly took his way along Picadilly, and
was presently in Berkeley square, at the door of the
Aymars. The porter admitted him without question,
and he mounted, unannounced, to the drawing-room.
The ladies sat by the window, looking out upon the
garden.

“Is it you, Spiridion?” said Lady Aymar, “I had
hoped you would not come to-day!”

“Oh, mamma!” appealed Lady Angelica.

“Welcome all other days of the year, my dear
Pallardos—warmly welcome, of course”—continued
Lady Aymar, “but—to-day—oh God! you have no
idea what the first of September is—to us—to my
husband!”

Lady Aymar covered her face with her hands, and
the tears streamed through her fingers.

“Pardon me,” said Pallardos—“pardon me, my
dear lady, but I am here by the earl's invitation, to
dine at six.”

Lady Aymar sprang from her seat in astonishment.

“By the earl's invitation, did you say? Angelica,
what can that mean? Was it by note, Count Pallardos?”

“By note,” he replied.

“I am amazed!” she said, “truly amazed! Does
he mean to have a confidant for his family secret? Is
his insanity on one point affecting his reason on all?
What shall we do, Angelica?”

“We may surely confide in Spiridion, whatever the
meaning of it, or the result”—gently murmured Lady
Angelica.

“We may—we may!” said Lady Aymar. “Prepare
him for it as you will. I pray Heaven to help me
through with this day without upsetting my own
reason. I shall meet you at dinner, Spiridion.”

With her hands twisted together in a convulsive
knot, Lady Aymar slowly and musingly passed into
the conservatory on her way to her own room, leaving
to themselves two lovers who had much to talk of
beside dwelling upon a mystery which, even to Lady
Angelica, who knew most of it, was wholly inexplicable.
Yet it was partially explained by the trembling
girl—explained as a case of monomania, and with the
brevity of a disagreeable subject, but listened to by
her lover with a different feeling—a conviction as of a
verified dream, and a vague, inexplicable terror which
he could neither reason down nor account for. But
the lovers must be left to themselves, by the reader as
well as by Lady Aymar; and meantime, till the dinner
hour, when our story begins again, we may glance at
a note which was received, and replied to, by Lord
Aymar in the library below.

It seemed like the first day after a death, in the
house of Lord Aymar. An unaccountable hush prevailed
through the servants' offices; the gray-headed
old butler crept noiselessly about, making his preparations
for dinner, and the doors, that were opened
and shut, betrayed the careful touch of apprehension.
With penetrating and glassy clearness, the kitchen
clock, seldom heard above stairs, resounded through
the house, striking six.

In the same neglected attire which she had worn in
the morning, Lady Aymar re-entered the drawing-room.
The lids were drawn up around her large eyes
with a look of unresisting distress, and she walked
with relaxed steps, and had, altogether, an air absent
and full of dread. The interrupted lovers ceased
talking as she approached, but she did not remark the
silence, and walked, errandless, from corner to corner.

The butler announced dinner.

“May I give your ladyship an arm?” asked Pallardos.

“Oh God! is it dinner-time already!” she exclaimed
with a voice of terror. “Williams! is Lord Aymar
below?”

“In the dining-room, miladi.”

She took Spiridion's arm, and they descended the
stairs. As they approached the dining-room, her arm
trembled so violently in his that he turned to her with
the fear that she was about to fall. He did not speak.
A vague dread, which was more than he had caught
from her looks—a something unaccountably heavy at
his own heart—made his voice cling to his throat.
He bowed to Lord Aymar.

His noble host stood leaning upon the mantel-piece,
pale, but seeming less stern and cold than suffering
and nerved to bear pain.

“I am glad to see you, my dear count!” he said,
giving him his hand with an affectionateness that he
had never before manifested. “Are you quite well?”
he added, scrutinizing his features closely with the
question—“for, like myself, you seem to have grown
pale upon this—September dulness.”

“I am commonly less well in this month than in
any other,” said Pallardos, “and—now I think of it—
I had forgotten that I arose this morning with a
depression of spirits as singular as it was unendurable.
I forgot it, when I received your lordship's note, in
the happiness the day was to bring me.”

The lovers exchanged looks, unremarked, apparently,
by either Lord or Lady Aymar, and the conversation
relapsed into the commonplaces of dinner-table
civility. Spiridion observed that the footmen
were excluded, the old butler alone serving them at
table; and that the shutters, of which he got a chance
glimpse between the curtains, were carefully closed.
Once or twice Pallardos roused himself with the
thought that he was ill playing the part of an agreeable
guest, and proposed some question that might
lead to discussion; but the spirits of Lady Angelica
seemed frighted to silence, and Lord and Lady Aymar

were wholly absorbed, or were at least unconscious of
their singular incommunicativeness.

Dinner dragged on slowly—Lady Aymar retarding
every remove with terrified and flurried eagerness.
Pallardos remarked that she did not eat, but she asked
to be helped again from every dish before its removal.
Her fork rattled on the plate with the trembling of her
hand, and, once or twice, an outbreak of hysterical
tears was evidently prevented by a stern word and look
from Lord Aymar.

The butler leaned over to his mistress's ear.

“No—no—no! Not yet—not yet!” she exclaimed,
in a hurried voice, “one minute more!” But the
clock at that instant struck seven, counted by that
table company in breathless silence. Pallardos felt
his heart sink, he knew not why.

Lord Aymar spoke quickly and hoarsely.

“Turn the key, Williams.”

Lady Aymar screamed and covered her face with
her hands.

“Remove the cloth!” he again ordered precipitately.

The butler's hand trembled. He fumbled with the
corner of the cloth a moment, and seemed to want
strength or courage to fulfil his office. With a sudden
effort Lord Aymar seized and threw the cloth to the
other end of the apartment.

“There!” cried he, starting to his feet, and pointing
to the bare table, “there! there!” he repeated,
seizing the hand of Lady Angelica, as she arose terrified
upon her feet. “See you nothing? Do you see
nothing?”

With a look, at her father, of blank inquiry—a look
of pity at her mother, sunk helpless upon the arm of
her chair—a look at Pallardos, who with open mouth,
and eyes starting from their sockets, stood gazing upon
the table, heedless of all present—she answered—
“Nothing—my dear father!—nothing!”

He flung her arm suddenly from his hand.

“I knew it,” said he, with angry emphasis. “Take
her, shameless woman! Take your child, and begone!”

But Pallardos laid his hand upon the earl's arm.

“My lord! my lord!” he said, in a tone of fearful
suppression of outcry, “can we not remove this
hideous object! How it glares at you!—at me!
Why does it look at me! What is it, Lord Aymar?
What brings that ghastly head here? Oh God!
oh God! I have seen it so often!”

“You?—you have seen it?” suddenly asked Lady
Aymar in a whisper. “Is there anything to see? Do
you see the same dreadful sight, Spiridion?” Her
voice rose with the last question to a scream.

Pallardos did not answer. He had forgotten the
presence of them all. He struggled a moment, gasping
and choking for self-control, and then, with a sudden
movement, clutched at the bare table. His empty
hand slowly opened, and his strength sufficed to pass
his finger across the palm. He staggered backward
with an idiotic laugh, and was received in his fall by
the trembling arms of Lady Angelica. A motion
from Lord Aymar conveyed to his faithful servant
that the phantom was vanishing! The door was flung
open and the household summoned.

“Count Pallardos has fainted from the heat of the
room,” said Lord Aymar. “Place him upon my
bed! And—Lady Aymar!—will you step into the
library—I would speak with you a moment!”

There was humility and beseechingness in the last
few words of Lord Aymar, which fell strangely on the
ear of the affrighted and guilty woman. Her mind
had been too fearfully tasked to comprehend the
meaning of that changed tone, but, with a vague
feeling of relief, she staggered through the hall, and
the door of the library closed behind her.

4. CHAPTER IV.

A letter from Lord Aymar to Lady Angelica will
put the story forward a little:—

With one more letter, perhaps, the story will be
sufficiently told.

GETTING TO WINDWARD.

1. CHAPTER I.

London is an abominable place to dine. I mean,
of course, unless you are free of a club, invited out, or
pay a ridiculous price for a French dinner. The unknown
stranger, adrift on the streets, with a traveller's
notions of the worth of things to eat, is much worse
off, as to his venture for a meal, than he would be in
the worst town of the worst province of France—much
worse off than he would be in New York or New Orleans.
There is a “Very's,” it is true, and there are
one or two restaurants, so called, in the Haymarket;
but it is true, notwithstanding, that short of a two-guinea
dinner at the Clarendon, or some hotel of this
class, the next best thing is a simple pointed steak with
potatoes, at a chop-house. The admirable club-system
(admirable for club-members) has absorbed all the
intermediate degrees of eating-houses, and the traveller's
chance and solitary meal must be either absurdly
expensive, or dismally furnished and attended.

The only real liberty one ever enjoys in a metropolis
is the interval (longer or shorter, as one is more or
less a philosopher) between his arrival and the delivery
of his letters of introduction. While perfectly
unknown, dreading no rencontre of acquaintances, subject
to no care of dress, equipage, or demeanor, the
stranger feels, what he never feels afterward, a complete
abandon to what immediately surrounds him, a
complete willingness to be amused in any shape which
chance pleases to offer, and, his desponding loneliness
serving him like the dark depths of a well, he sees lights
invisible from the higher level of amusement.

Tired of my solitary meals in the parlor of a hotel
during my first week in London, I made the round of
such dining-places as I could inquire out at the West
End—of course, from the reserved habits of the country
toward strangers, making no acquaintances, and
scarce once exchanging a glance with the scores who
sat at the tables around me. Observation was my only
amusement, and I felt afterward indebted to those silent
studies of character for more acquaintance with
the under-crust of John Bull, than can be gathered
from books or closer intercourse. It is foreign to my
present purpose, however, to tell why his pride should
seem want of curiosity, and why his caution and delicacy
should show like insensibility and coldness. I
am straying from my story.

The covered promenade of the Burlington Arcade
is, on rainy days, a great allure for a small chop-house
hard by, called “The Blue Posts.” This is a snug
little tavern, with the rear of its two stories cut into a
single dining-room, where chops, steaks, ale, and punch,
may be had in unusual perfection. It is frequented
ordinarily by a class of men peculiar, I should think,
to England—taciturn, methodical in their habits, and
highly respectable in their appearance—men who seem
to have no amusements and no circle of friends, but
who come in at six and sit over their punch and the
newspapers till bed time, without speaking a syllable,
except to the waiter, and apparently turning a cold
shoulder of discouragement to any one in the room
who may be disposed to offer a passing remark. They
hang their hats daily on the same peg, daily sit at the
same table (where the chair is turned down for them
by Villiam, the short waiter), daily drink a small pitcher
of punch after their half-pint of sherry, and daily read,
from beginning to end, the Herald, Post, and Times,
with the variation of the Athenæum and Spectator, on
Saturdays and Sundays. I at first hazarded various
conjectures as to their condition in life. They were
evidently unmarried, and men of easy though limited
means—men of no great care, and no high hopes, and
in a fixed station; yet of that degree of intelligence
and firm self-respect which, in other countries (the

United States, certainly, at least), would have made
them sought for in some more social and higher sphere
than that with which they seemed content. I afterward
obtained something of a clue to the mystery of
the “Blue Posts” society, by discovering two of the
most respectable looking of its customers in the exercise
of their daily vocations. One, a man of fine phrenological
development, rather bald, and altogether very
intellectual in his “os sublime,” I met at the rooms of
a fashionable friend, taking his measure for pantaloons.
He was the foreman of a celebrated Bond-street tailor.
The other was the head-shopman of a famous haberdasher
in Regent street; and either might have passed
for Godwin the novelist, or Babbidge the calculator—
with those who had seen those great intellects only in
their imaginations. It is only in England, that men
who, like these, have read or educated themselves far
above their situations in life, would quietly submit to
the arbitrary disqualifications of their pursuits, and
agree unresistingly to the sentence of exile from the
society suited to their mental grade. But here again
I am getting away from my story.

It was the close of a London rainy day. Weary of
pacing my solitary room, I sallied out as usual, to the
Burlington Arcade (I say as usual, for in a metropolis
where it rains nine days out of ten, rainy-weather resorts
become habitual). The little shops on either
side were brightly lit, the rain pattered on the glass
roof overhead, and to one who had not a single acquaintance
in so vast a city, even the passing of the
crowd and the glittering of lights seemed a kind of
society. I began to speculate on the characters of
those who passed and repassed me in the turns of the
short gallery; and the dinner-hours coming round, and
the men gradually thinning off from the crowd, I adjourned
to the Blue Posts with very much the feeling
of a reader interrupted in the progress of a novel. One
of the faces that had most interested me was that of a
foreigner, who, with a very dejected air, leaned on the
arm of an older man, and seemed promenading to kill
time, without any hope of killing his ennui. On seating
myself at one of the small tables, I was agreeably
surprised to find the two foreigners my close neighbors,
and in the national silence of the company present,
broken only by the clatter of knives and forks, it
was impossible to avoid overhearing every word spoken
by either. After a look at me, as if to satisfy themselves
that I, too, was a John Bull, they went on with
their conversation in French, which, so long as it was
confined to topics of drink and platter, weather and
news, I did not care to interrupt. But with their
progress through a second pint of sherry, personal topics
came up, and as they seemed to be conversing with
an impression that their language was not understood,
I felt obliged to remind them that I was overhearing
unwillingly what they probably meant for a private
conversation. With a frankness which I scarcely expected,
they at once requested me to transfer my glass
to their table, and calling for a pitcher of punch, they
extended their confidence by explaining to me the
grounds of the remarks I had heard, and continuing to
converse freely on the subject. Through this means,
and a subsequent most agreeable acquaintance, I possessed
myself of the circumstances of the following
story; and having thus shown the reader (rather digressively,
I must own) how I came by it, I proceed
in the third person, trusting that my narration will not
now seem like the “coinage of the brain.”

The two gentlemen dining at the Blue Posts on the
rainy day just mentioned, were Frenchmen, and political
exiles. With the fortunes of the younger, this
story has chiefly to do. He was a man past the sentimental
age, perhaps nearer thirty-seven than thirty-five,
less handsome than distinguished in his appearance,
yet with one of those variable faces which
are handsome for single instants once in a half
hour, more or less. His companion called him Belaccueil.

“I could come down to my circumstances,” he said
to Monsieur St. Leger, his friend, “if I knew how. It
is not courage that is wanting. I would do anything
for a livelihood. But what is the first step? What
is the next step from this? This last dinner—this last
night's lodging—I am at the end of my means; and
unless I accept of charity from you, which I will not,
to-morrow must begin my descent. Where to put my
foot?”

He stopped and looked down into his glass, with the
air of a man who only expects an answer to refute its
reasoning.

“My dear Belaccueil,” said the other, after a moment's
hesitation, “you were famous in your better
days for almost universal accomplishment. Mimic,
dancer, musician, cook—what was there in our merry
carnival-time, to which you did not descend with success,
for mere amusement? Why not now for that
independence of livelihood to which you adhere so
pertinaciously?”

“You will be amused to find,” he answered, “how
well I have sounded the depths of every one of these
resources. The French theatre of London has refused
me, point-blank, all engagement, spite of the
most humiliating exhibitions of my powers of mimicry
before the stage-manager and a fifth-rate actress. I
am not musician enough for a professor, though very
well for an amateur, and have advertised in vain for
employment as a teacher of music, and—what was
your other vocation!—cook! Oh no! I have just
science enough to mend a bad dinner and spoil a good
one, though I declare to you, I would willingly don
the white cap and apron and dive for life to the basement.
No, my friend, I have even offered myself as
assistant dancing-master, and failed! Is not that
enough? If it is not, let me tell you, that I would
sweep the crossings, if my appearance would not excite
curiosity, or turn dustman, if I were strong enough
for the labor. Come down! Show me how to come
down, and see whether I am not prepared to do it.
But you do not know the difficulty of earning a penny
in London. Do you suppose, with all the influence
and accomplishments I possess, I could get the place
of this scrubby waiter who brings us our-cigars? No,
indeed! His situation is a perfect castle—impregnable
to those below him. There are hundreds of poor
wretches within a mile of us who would think themselves
in paradise to get his situation. How easy it is
for the rich to say, `go and work!' and how difficult
to know how and where!”

Belaccueil looked at his friend as if he felt that he
had justified his own despair, and expected no comfort.

“Why not try matrimony?” said St. Leger. “I
can provide you the means for a six months' siege,
and you have better qualification for success than nine
tenths of the adventurers who have succeeded.”

“Why—I could do even that—for with all hope of
prosperity, I have of course given up all idea of a romantic
love. But I could not practise deceit, and
without pretending to some little fortune of my own,
the chances are small. Besides, you remember my
ill luck at Naples.”

“Ah, that was a love affair, and you were too honest.”

“Not for the girl, God bless her! She would have
married me, penniless as I was, but through the interference
of that officious and purse-proud Englishman,
her friends put me hors de combat.”

“What was his name? Was he a relative?”

“A mere chance acquaintance of their own, but the
entered at once upon the office of family adviser. He
was rich, and he had it in his power to call me an adventurer.
I did not discover his interference till some

time after, or he would perhaps have paid dearly for
his nomenclature.”

“Who did you say it was?”

“Hitchings! Mr. Plantagenet Hitchings, of Hitching
Park, Devonshire—and the one point, to which I
cling, of a gentleman's privileges, is that of calling him
to account, should I ever meet him.”

St. Leger smiled and sat thoughtfully silent for a
while. Belaccueil pulled apart the stems of a bunch
of grapes on his plate, and was silent with a very different
expression.

“You are willing,” said the former, at last, “to teach
music and dancing for a proper compensation.”

“Parbleu! Yes!”

“And if you could unite this mode of support with
a very pretty revenge upon Mr. Plantagenet Hitchings
(with whom, by the way, I am very well acquainted),
you would not object to the two-fold thread in
your destiny?”

“They would be threads of gold, mon ami!” said
the surprised Belaccueil.

St. Leger called for pen, ink, and paper, and wrote
a letter at the Blue Posts, which the reader will follow
to its destination, as the next step in this story.

2. CHAPTER II.

A green angel (I mean an angel ignorant of the
world) would probably suppose that the feeding of
these animal bodies of ours, if not done in secret, must
at least be the one act of human life separated entirely
from the more heavenly emotions. Yet the dinner is
a meal dear to lovers; and novelists and tale-tellers
choose the moments stolen from fork and plate for the
birth and interchange of the most delicious and tender
sentiments of our existence. Miss Hitchings, while
unconsciously shocking Monsieur Sansou by tilting
her soup-plate for the last spoonful of vermicelli, was
controlling the beating of a heart full of feminine and
delicate tenderness; and as the tutor was careful never
to direct his regards to the other end of the table (for
reasons of his own), Miss Henrietta laid the unction
to her soul that such indifference to the prettiest girl
who had ever honored them as a guest, proved the
strength of her own magnet, and put her more at ease
on the subject of Monsieur Sansou's admiration. He,
indeed, was committing the common fault of men
whose manners are naturally agreeable—playing that
passive and grateful game of courtesy and attention so
easy to the object of regard, and so delightful to woman,
who is never so blest as in bestowing. Besides,
he had an object in suppressing his voice to the lowest
audible pitch, and the rich and deep tone, sunk only to
escape the ear of another, sounded, to the watchful
and desiring sense of her to whom it was addressed,
like the very key-note and harmony of affection.

At a table so surrounded with secrets, conversation
flagged, of course. Mr. Hitchings thought thought it very
up-hill work to entertain Miss Hervey, whose heart
and senses were completely absorbed in the riddle of
Belaccueil's disguise and presence; Mr. Hervey, the
uncle, found old Mrs. Plantagenet rather absent, for
the smitten dame had eyes for every movement of
Monsieur Sansou; and the tutor himself, with his resentment
toward his host, and his suspicions of the
ove of his daughter, his reviving passion for Miss
Hervey, and his designs on Mrs. Plantagenet, had
enough to render him as silent as the latter could wish,
and as apparently insensible to the attraction of the
fair stranger.

How little we know what is in the bosoms of those
around us! How natural it is, however, to feel and
act as if we knew—to account for all that appears on
the surface by the limited acquaintance we have with
circumstances and feelings—to resent an indifference
of which we know not the cause—to approve or condemn,
without allowance for chagrin, or despair, or
love, or hope, or distress—any of the deep undercurrents
for ever at work in the depths of human bosoms.
The young man at your side at a dinner-party may
have a duel on his hands for the morning, or a disgrace
imminent in credit or honor, or a refused heart or an
accepted one, newly crushed or newly made happy;
or (more common still, and less allowed for) he may
feel the first impression of disease, or the consequences
of an indigestion; and, for his agreeableness or
disagreeableness, you try to account by something in
yourself, some feeling toward yourself—as if you and
you only could affect his spirits or give a color to his
mood of manners. The old man's thought of death,
the mother's overwhelming interest in her child, the
woman's up-spring of emotion or love, are visiters to
the soul that come unbidden and out of time, and you
can neither feast nor mourn, secure against their interruption.
It would explain many a coldness, could
we look into the heart concealed from us. We should
often pity when we hate, love when we think we can
not even forgive, admire where we curl the lip with
scorn and indignation. To judge without reserve of
any human action is a culpable temerity, of all our
sins the most unfeeling and frequent.

I will deal frankly with you, dear reader. I have
arrived at a stage of my story which, of all the stages
of story-writing, I detest the most cordially. Poets
have written about the difficulty of beginning a story
(vide Byron)—Ca ne me coute pas; others of the ending.
That I do with facility, joy, and rejoicing. But
the love pathos of a story—the place where the reader
is expected to sigh, weep, or otherwise express his
emotion—that is the point, I confess, the most difficult
to write, and the most unsatisfactory when written.
“Pourquoy, Sir Knight?” Not because it is difficult
to write love-scenes—according to the received mode—
not that it is difficult to please those (a large majority)
who never truly loved, and whose ideas, therefore, of
love and its making, are transcendentalized out of all
truth and nature—not that it would be more labor to
do this than to copy a circular, or write a love-letter
for a modest swain (this last my besetting occupation)
—but because, just over the inkstand there peers a
face, sometimes of a man of forty, past the nonsense
of life, but oftener of some friend, a woman who has
loved, and this last more particularly knows that
true love is never readable or sensible—that if its language
be truly written, it is never in polished phrase
or musical cadence—that it is silly, but for its concealed
meaning, embarrassed and blind, but for the
interpreting and wakeful heart of one listener—that
love, in short, is the god of unintelligibility, mystery,
and adorable nonsense, and, of course, that which I
have written (if readable and sensible) is out of taste
and out of sympathy, and none but fancy-lovers and
enamored brains (not hearts) will approve or believe it.

D'Israeli the younger is one of the few men of genius
who, having seen truth without a veil, dare to reveal
the vision; and he has written Henrietta Temple
—the silliest yet truest love-book of modern time.
The critics (not an amative race) have given him a
benefit of the “besom” of ridicule, but D'Israeli, far
from being the effeminate intellect they would make
him, is one of the most original and intrepid men of
genius living, and whether the theme be “wine, woman,
or war,” he writes with fearless truth, piquancy,
and grace. Books on love, however, should be read
by lovers only, and pity it is, that there is not an ink
in chemistry, invisible save to the eye kindled with amatory
fire. But “to our muttons.”

It was not leap-year, but Monsieur Belaccueil, on
the day of the dinner-party at Hitchings park, was
made aware (I will not say by proposals, for ladies make

known their inclinations in ways much less formidable)
—he was made aware, I say, that the hearts of three
of the party were within the flight of his arrow. Probably
his humble situation reversed the usual relative
position of the sexes in the minds of the dame and
damsels—and certainly there is no power woman exercises
so willingly as a usurpation of the masculine
privilege. I have stated my objection to detail the
dialogue between Miss Hitchings and her tutor at the
dinner-table. To be recorded faithfully, the clatter
of silver forks on China, the gurgle of wine, the interruptions
of the footmen with champagne and vegetables,
should all be literally interspersed—for to all the
broken sentences (so pathetic when properly punctuated—vide
Neal's novels) these were the sequels and
the accompaniments: “No, thank you!” and “If you
please,” and “May I fill your glass?”—have filled out,
to the perfect satisfaction of the lady, many an unfinished
sentence upon which depended the whole destiny
of her affections; and, as I said before, the truth
is not faithfully rendered when these interstices are
unsupplied.

It was dark when the ladies left the dinner-table,
followed by Monsieur Sansou, and, at the distance of
a few feet from the windows opening on the lawn, the
air was black and impenetrable. There were no stars
visible and no moon, but the clouds which were gathering
after a drought, seemed to hush the air with
their long expected approach, and it was one of those
soft, still, yet murky and fragrant nights when the
earth seems to breathe only—without light, sound, or
motion. What lover does not remember such a night?

Oppressed with the glaring lights and the company
of people she cared nothing about, Miss Hervey
stepped out upon the lawn, and with her face lifted as
if to draw deeper inhalations of the dew and freshness,
she strolled leisurely over the smooth carpet of grass.
At a slight turn to avoid a clump of shrubbery, she
encountered Belaccueil, who was apologizing and
about to pass her, when she called him by his name,
and passing her arm through his, led him on to the
extremity of the lawn. A wire fence arrested their
progress, and leaning against it, Miss Hervey inquired
into the cause of the disguise she had penetrated, and
softened and emboldened by the fragrant darkness,
said all that a woman might say of tenderness and encouragement.
Belaccueil's heart beat with pride and
gratified amour propre, but he confined himself to the
expression of this feeling, and leaving the subject open,
took advantage of Mrs. Plantagenet's call to Miss
Hervey from the window, to leave her and resume his
ramble through the grounds.

The supper tray had been brought in, and the party
were just taking their candles to separate, when the
tutor entered at the glass door and arrested the steps
of Mrs. Plantagenet. She set down her candle and
courtesied a good-night to the ladies (Mr. Hitchings had
gone to bed, for wine made him sleepy, and Mr. Hervey
always retired early—where he was bored), and
closing the windows, mixed a glass of negus for Monsieur
Sansou; and, herself pulling a sandwich to
pieces, deliberately, and it must be confessed, somewhat
patronisingly, invited the Frenchman to become
her lord. And after a conversation, which (la verite
avant tout) turned mainly on will and investments, the
window dame sailed blissfully to bed, and Belaccueil
wrote the following letter to his friend and adviser:—

“My dear St. Leger: Enclosed you have the
only surviving lock of my grizzled wig—sign and symbol
that my disguises are over and my object attained.
The wig burns at this instant in the grate, item my
hand-ruffles, item sundry embroidered cravats a la
vielle cour, item (this last not without some trouble at
my heart) a solitary love-token from Constantia Hervey.
One faded rose—given me at Pæstum, the day
before I was driven disgraced from her presence by
the interference of this insolent fool—one faded rose
has crisped and faded into smoke with the rest. And
so fled from the world the last hope of a warm and
passionate heart, which never gave up its destiny till
now—never felt that it was made in vain, guarded, refined,
cherished in vain, till that long-loved flower lay
in ashes. I am accustomed to strip emotion of its
drapery—determined to feel nothing but what is real—yet this moment, turn it and strip it, and deny its illusions
as I will, is anguish. `Self-inflicted,' you smile
and say!

“You will marvel what stars will not come into
conjunction, when I tell you that Miss Hervey is at
this moment under the same roof with me and my
affianced bride, and you will marvel what good turn I
have done the devil, that he should, in one day, offer
me my enemy's daughter, my enemy's fortune (with
the drawback of an incumbrance), and the woman who
I thought had spurned me. After all, it is a devil's
gift—for in choosing that to which I am most impelled,
I crush hope, and inflict pain, and darken my own
heart for ever. I could not have done this once.
Manhood and poverty have embittered me.

“Miss Hitchings has chosen to fall in love with her
tutor. She is seventeen, a sweet blonde, with large,
suffused eyes, tender, innocent, and (without talent)
singularly earnest and confiding. I could be very
happy with such a woman, and it would have been a
very tolerable revenge (failing the other) to have stolen
her from her father. But he would have disinherited
and forgotten us, and I have had enough of poverty,
and can not afford to be forgotten—by my enemy.

“You never saw Miss Hervey. It is not much to
tell you she is the most beautiful woman I have met.
If she were not beautiful, her manners would win all
hearts. If her manners were less fascinating, her singular
talents would make her remarkable. She is not
appreciated, because her beauty blinds people to her
talents, and her manners make them forget her beauty.
She is something in the style of the Giorgione we
adored at Venice—a transparently dark beauty, with
unfathomable eyes and lashes that sweep her cheek;
her person tall and full, and her neck set on like Zenobia's.
Yet she is not a proud woman—I think she
is not. She is too natural and true to do anything
which looks like pride, save walk like an empress.
She says everything rightly—penetrates instantly to
the core of meaning—sings, dances, talks, with the
ease, confidence, grace, faultlessness, with which a
swallow flies. Perfection in all things is her nature.
I am jotting down her qualities now as they are allowed
by the world. I will not write of them like a
lover. Oh, my friend, with what plummet can you
fathom the depth of my resentments, when, for them.
I forego possession of this woman! She offered me,
two hours since, the unqualified control of her destiny!
She asked me with tremulous voice to forgive
her for the wrong done me in Italy. She dropped
that faultless and superb head on my bosom, and told
me that she loved me—and I never answered! The
serpent in my heart tied up my tongue, and with cold
thanks and fiend-like resistance to the bliss of even
once pressing her to my bosom, I left her. I do not
know myself when I remember that I have done this.
I am possessed—driven out—by some hard and bitter
spirit who neither acts nor speaks like me. Yet could
I not undo what I have done.

“To-morrow morning will disappear Monsieur Sansou
from Hitchings park, and, on the brief condition
of a brief ceremony, the law, the omnipotent law, will
deliver into my hands the lands, tenements, goods,
chattels, and liberty of my enemy—for even so deeply,
has he sunk into the open pocket of Mrs. Plantagenet!
She holds mortgages on all he has, for money
advanced, and all that is hers will be mine, without
reserve. The roof I have been living in degradation

under, will be to-morrow my own. The man who
called me an adventurer, who stood between me and
my love, who thrust me from my heaven without cause
or provocation—the meddling fool who boasts that he
saved a countrywoman from a French swindler (he
has recurred to it often in my presence), will be tomorrow
my dependant, beggar for shelter, suppliant
for his liberty and subsistence! Do you ask if
that outweighs the love of the woman I have lost?
Alas! yes.

“You are older, and have less taste for sentiment
even than I. I will not bore you with my crowd of
new feelings in this situation. My future wife is amiable
and good. She is also vain, unattractive, and old.
I shall be kind to her and endeavor that she shall not
be disenchanted, and if I can make her happy, it may
mollify my penance for the devil with which I am possessed.
Miss Hitchings will lose nothing by having
loved me, for she shall be the heiress of my wealth,
and her father—but I will not soil my heart by
thinking of an alleviation to his downfall.

“Farewell, mon ami. Congratulate and pity me.

“Adolphe Belaccueil.”

In one of the most fashionable squares of London
lives, “in the season,” Monsieur Belaccueil, one of
the most hospitable foreigners in that great metropolis.
He is a pensive and rather melancholy-looking
man by day; but society, which he seems to seek like
an opiate to restless feeling, changes him to a gay
man, the most mirth-loving of Amphytrions. His
establishment is presided over by his wife, who, as his
society is mostly French, preserves a respectable silence,
but seems contented with her lot and proud of
her husband; while in Miss Plantagenet (ci-devant
Hitchings) his guests find his table's chief attraction—
one of the prettiest heiresses and most loveable girls in
London. How deeply Monsieur Belaccueil still rejoices
at his success in “getting to windward,” is matter of
problem. Certainly there is one chariot which passes
him in his solitary ride in the park, to which he bows
with a pang of unabating and miserable anguish. And
if the occupant of that plain chariot share at all in his
suffering, she has not the consolation to which he flies
in society—for a more secluded and lonely woman
lives not in the great solitude of London, than Constantia
Hervey.

THE WIFE BEQUEATHED AND RESUMED.

The following story was told to the writer by a lady
in France—told during supper at a ball, and of course
only partially. The interstices have been supplied in
writing it, and the main thread of the narrative may
be relied on as fact. The names are fictitious:—

A beautiful girl of seventeen, in the convent-parlor
of Saint Agatha. She is dressed as a novice, and the
light breaks off from the curve of the raven hair put
away under the close-fitting cap—breaks off almost in
sparkles. For so it may—as an artist knows. Her
eyes are like hounds in the leash—fiery and eager.
And if, in those ever-parted and forward-pressing lips
there is a possibility of languid repose, the proof of it
lies in the future. They are sleepless and dreamless,
as yet, with a thirst unnamed and irrepressible, for the
passions of life. Her name is Zelie.

But we can not make the past into the present.
Change the tense—for Zelie is dead now, or we could
not record her strange story.

There was a ring at the convent door, and presently
entered Colonel Count Montalembert, true to his appointment.
He had written to the lady-abbess to
request an interview with the daughter of his comrade,
dead on the frozen track of the retreat from
Moscow. Flahault was to him, as his right hand to
his left, and as he covered up the stiffened body with
snow, he had sworn to devote his life to that child
whose name was last on the lips closed for ever. The
Count Montalembert was past fifty, and a constant
sufferer from his wounds; and his physicians had
warned him that death was not far off. His bearing
was still noble and soldierly, however, and his frank
and clear eye had lost little of its lustre.

“I wrote to you the particulars of your father's
death, my child,” said the colonel, after the abbess
had left them alone, at his request. “I could not
dwell on it again without more emotion than is well
for me. I must be brief even with what I have to say
to his daughter—for that, too, will move me overmuch.
You are very lovely, Zelie.”

“You are very kind!” answered the novice, blushing,
and dropping her long lashes upon her cheek.

“Very lovely, I say, and must love and be beloved.
It is a woman's destiny, and your destiny more than
most women's.”

The count gazed into the deep eyes of his eager
listener, and seemed embarrassed to know how to proceed.

“Hear me through,” he said, “before you form an
opinion of my motives. And first answer me a bold
question. Have you any attachment—have you ever
seen a man you could love and marry?”

“No!” murmured the blushing novice, after a moment's
hesitation.

“But you are likely to love, soon and rashly, once
free in the world—and that is one evil against which
I will make myself your shield. And there is another
—which I am only sorry that I need your permission
and aid in averting.”

Zelie looked up inquiringly.

“Poverty—the grave of love—the palsy of the
heart—the oblivion of beauty and grace! To avert
this from you, I have a sacrifice to demand at your
hands.”

Again the count stopped in embarrassment almost
painful, and Mademoiselle Montalembert with difficulty
suppressed her impatience.

“My physicians tell me,” he resumed, in a tone
lower and calmer, “that my lease of life is wearing
rapidly to a close. A year hence lies its utmost and
inevitable limit. Could you live in the world, without
love, for one year, Zelie?”

“Monsieur!” was her surprised exclamation.

“Then listen to my proposal. I have a fortune
while I live, large enough for your most ambitious
desires. But it is left to me with conditions which
forbid my conveying it through any link save marriage,
and to my widow only for life. To give it
you, I regret deeply for your sake to say, I must wed
you. You start—do not answer me now. I leave you
to revolve this in your mind till to-morrow. Remember
that I shall not trouble you long, and that the
name of Montalembert is as noble as your own, and
that you require a year, perhaps more than a year, to
recover from your first dizzy gaze upon the world. I

shall put no restraint upon you. I have no wish but
to fulfil my duty to my dead comrade in arms, and to
die, knowing that you will well bestow your heart
when I am gone. Adieu!”

The count disappeared, and, with her clasped hands
pressed to her forehead, the novice paced the convent-parlor
until the refectory bell rang for dinner.

It was an evening of June, in the gardens of Versailles.
It was an evening of June, also, in the pest-house
of St. Lazarus, and in the cell of the condemned
felon in St. Pelagie. Time, even in his holyday dress,
visits indiscriminately—the levelling caitiff! Have the
unhappy any business with June?

But the gardens of Versailles were beginning to
illuminate, and the sky faded, with a glory more festal
than sunlight, with the radiance of a myriad of
glittering lamps, embellishing even the trees and flowers
beyond the meaning of nature. The work of the
architect and the statuary at once stood idealized, and
draped in an atmosphere of fairy-land, and the most
beautiful woman of the imperial court became more
beautiful as she stepped into the glare of the alley of
fountains. And who should that be—the fairest flower
of French nobility—but the young Countess Montalembert,
just blooming through the close of her first
year of wedlock!

The Count Montalembert stepped with her from the
shade of the orange-grove, and, without her arm, fell
behind scarce perceptibly, that he might keep his eye
filled with the grace of her motion, without seeming
to worship her before the world. With every salient
flow of that cloud-like drapery onward—with every
twinkling step of those feet of airy lightness—the dark
eyelashes beneath the soldier's brow lifted and drooped
again, as if his pulse of life and vision were alone
governed by her swan-like motion. The count had
forgotten that he was to die. The year allotted to
him by his physicians had passed, and, far from falling
gradually to his doom, his figure had straightened, and
his step grown firm, and his cheek and lip and eye had
brightened with returning health. He had drank life
from love. The superb Zelie had proved grateful and
devoted, and at the chateau of Montalembert, in
southern France, she had seemed content to live with
him, and him only, the most assiduous of nurses in
all her glorious beauty. But though this was Paradise
to the count, his reason, not his heart, told him
it was imprisonment to her, and he had now been a
month at the sumptuous court of Napoleon, an attendant
upon a wife who was the star of the time—the
beloved of all the court's gay beholders.

As the Montalemberts strolled toward the chateau,
which was now emitting floods of light from its many
windows, a young soldier, with a slight mustache just
shading his Grecian lip, joined them from a side-path,
and claimed the hand of the countess for a waltz.
The mercurial music at the same instant fled through
the air, and under an exclamation at its thrilling
sweetness, the countess concealed from her husband
an emotion which the trembling of her slight hand
betrayed instantly to her partner. With a bow of affected
gayety to the count, she quickened her pace,
and in another moment stood blushing in the dazzling
ring of waltzers, the focus herself of all eyes open to
novelty and beauty.

De Mornay, the countess's partner, was but an ensign
in the imperial guard. He had but his sword.
Not likely to be called handsome, or to be looked
upon as attractive or dangerous by any but the most
penetrating of his own sex, he had that philtre, that
inexplicable something, which at once commended
him to woman. His air was all earnest. The suppressed
devotion of life and honor breathed in his
voice. He seemed ever hiding his heart with pain—
shamed with betrayed adoration—calm by the force of
a respect that rebuked passion. He professed no gal
lantries. He professed nothing. His eyes alone, large,
steadfast, imploring, conveyed language of love. An
hour of that absorbing regard—an apparently calm,
unimpassioned hour of the intercourse common to
those newly met—sufficed to awaken in the bosom of
the countess an interest alarming to himself, and dangerous
to her content as the wife of another. Strange
she thought it, that, as the low and deferential tones
of De Mornay fell on her ear, they seemed to expel
from her heart allshe had hitherto treasured—ambition
for the splendors of the court, passion for admiration,
and even her gratitude for her husband. A
hut in the forest, with De Mornay only, was the Paradise
now most present to the dreams and fancy of the
proud wife of Montalembert.

As his wife left him, the count thrust his hand into
his breast with a gesture of controlled emotion, and
turned aside, as if to seek once more the retired covert
he had left. But his steps were faltering. At the
entrance of the alley he turned again, and walking
rapidly to the chateau, entered the saloon trembling
to the measured motion of the dancers.

Waiting for an opportunity to float into the giddy
ring, De Mornay stood with his arm around the waist
of the countess. Montalembert's face flushed, but he
stepped to a column which supported the orchestra,
and looked on unobserved. Her transparent cheek
was so near to the lips of her partner, that his breath
must warm it. Her hand was pressed—ay, by the
bend of her gloved wrist, pressed hard—upon the
shoulder of De Mornay. Her bosom throbbed perceptibly
in its jewelled vest. She leaned toward him
with a slight sway of her symmetrical waist, and
away, like two smoke wreaths uniting, away in voluptuous
harmony of movement, gazing into each other's
eyes, murmuring inaudibly to the crowd—lips, cheeks,
and eyes, in passionate neighborhood—away floated
the wife and friend of Montalembert in the authorized
commerce of the gay world. Their feet chased each
other, advancing, retreating, amid the velvet folds of
her dress. Her waist was drawn close to his side in
the more exciting passages of the music. Her luxuriant
tresses floated from her temples to his. She
curved her swan-like neck backward, and, with a look
of pleasure, which was not a smile, gave herself up to
the thrilling wedlock of music and motion, her eyes
half-drooped and bathed in the eager gaze of De
Mornay's. Montalembert's face was pallid and his
eye on fire. The cold sweat stood on his forehead.
He felt wronged, though the world saw all. With his
concealed hand he clenched his breast till he drew
blood. There was a pause in the music, and with a
sudden agony at the thought of receiving his wife
again from the hands of De Mornay, Montalembert
fled on to the open air.

An hour elapsed.

“I ask a Heaven for myself, it is true, but not much
for you to give!” said a voice approaching through
the shadowy alley of the garden.

The count lay on the ground with his forehead
pressed to the marble pedestal of a statue, and he
heard, with the voice, the rustling of a female dress,
and the rattling of a sabre-chain and spurs.

“But one ringlet, sacred to me,” continued the
voice, in a tone almost feminine with its pleading earnestness;
“not given to me, no, no!—that were a
child's desire!—but mine, though still playing on this
ivory shoulder, and still lying neatly beneath that veined
temple—mine with your knowledge only, and
caressed and cared for, morn and night, with the
thought that it is mine! Oh, Zelie! there is no
wrong to Montalembert in this! Keep it from his
touch! Let him not breathe upon it! Let not the
wind blow that one ringlet toward him! And when it
kisses your cheek, and plays with the envied breeze
upon your bosom—think—think of the soul of De

Mornay, bound in it! Oh, God! why am I made
capable of love like this!”

There was no reply, and long ere Montalembert
had recovered from his amazement at these daring
words, the sound of their footsteps had died away.

Pass two years. It is enough to wait on Time in
the Present. In the Past and Future, the graybeard,
like other ministers out of place, must do without
usher and secretary.

It was a summer's noon on the Quai D'Orsay, of
Paris. The liveried lacqueys of the princely hotels
were lounging by the heavy gateways of stone, or
leaning over the massy parapet of the river. And,
true to his wont, the old soldier came with the noon,
creeping from the “Invalides,” to take his seat under
the carved lion of the Montalemberts. He had served
under the late count, and the memory of his house
was dear to the old veteran. The sabre-cut which had
disfigured his face, was received, he said, while fighting
between Montalembert and Flahault, and to see
the daughter of the one, and the gay heir of the
other's wife and fortune, he made a daily pilgrimage
to the Quai, and sat in the sun till the countess drove
out in her chariot.

By the will of the first husband of Zelie de Flahault,
the young De Mornay, to become her husband
and share her fortune, was compelled to take the
name and title of Count Montalembert, subject to the
imperial accord. Napoleon had given the rank unwillingly,
and as a mark of respect to the last will of
a brave man who had embellished the title—for the
eagle-eye of the Corsican read the soul of De Mornay
like an illuminated book, and knew the use he
would make of fortune and power.

In the quadrangle of the hotel Montalembert, there
were two carriage-landings, or two persons, and the
apartments were separated into two entirely distinct
establishments. In one suite the young count chose
to live at his pleasure, en garcon, and in the other the
mixed hospitalities of the house were given, and the
countess was there, and there only, at home. At this
moment the court was ringing with the merry laughter
of the count's convives, for he had a bachelor party
to breakfast, and the wine seemed, even at that early
hour of the day, to have taken the ascendant. The
carriages of the bacchanalians lined one side of the
court, and the modest chariot of the countess stood
alone at the door on the other; for it was near the
hour for promenade in the Champs Elysees.

It was an hour after noon when the countess descended.
She came slowly, drawing on her glove,
and the old soldier at the gate rose quickly to his feet,
and leaned forward to gaze on her. She had changed
since the death of her father's friend—the brave Montalembert,
to whom she owed her fortune. But she
was still eminently beautiful. Thought, perhaps sadness,
had dimmed to a sweet melancholy the bright
sparkle of her glance, and her mouth, no longer
fiercely spirited, was firm but gentle. Her curtains
of sable lashes moved languidly over her drooping
eye. She looked like one who was subdued in her
hopes, not in her courage, and like one who had shut
the door of her heart upon its unextinguishable fires
to let them burn on, but in secret. She was dressed
more proudly than gayly, and she wore upon her
breast one memorial of her first husband—his own
black cross that he had worn in battle, and in the few
happy days of his wedlock, and which he had sent her
from his death-bed.

At the moment the countess stepped from her
threshold, the door on the opposite side of the quadrangle
was thrown open, and, with a boisterous laugh,
the count sprang into his phaeton, calling to one of
his party to follow him. His companion shrank back
on seeing the countess, and in that moment's delay
the door of the carriage was closed and the coachman
ordered to drive on. The count's whip had waved
over his spirited horses, however, and as they stood
rearing and threatening to escape from their excited
master, his friend sprang to his side, the reins were
suddenly loosed, and with a plunge which threatened
to tear the harness from their backs, they leaped forward.
In the next moment, the horses of both vehicles
were drawn upon their haunches, half locked together
in the narrow gateway, and with a blow from the crutch
of the old veteran who rushed from the porter's lodge,
the phaeton was driven back against the wall, the pole
broken, and the count and his friend precipitated upon
the pavement. The liberated horses flew wildly
through the gate, and then followed a stillness like
that of midnight in the court—for on the pavement,
betrayed by her profusion of fair locks, loosened by
the fall, lay a woman in man's attire, the dissolute
companion of the count, in his daylight revel. Uninjured
himself, the count stood a moment, abashed
and motionless, but the old soldier, with folded arms
and the remnant of his broken crutch in his hand,
looked sternly on the scene, and as the servants started
from their stupor to raise the insensible woman,
the countess, reading her husband's impulse in his
looks, sprang from the open door of the chariot, and
interposed between him and his intended victim.
With the high-born grace of noble, the soldierly in
valid accepted her protection, and followed her to her
chariot; and, ordered to drive to the Hospital of the
Invalides, the coachman once more turned slowly to
the gateway.

The night following, at the opera. Paris was on
the qui vive of expectation, for a new prima donna
was to make her debut before the emperor.

Paris was also on the qui vive for the upshot of a
certain matter of scandal. The eclaircissement at the
hotel Montalembert had been followed, it is said, by
open war between the count and countess; and, determined
to carry out his defiance, the dissolute husband
had declared to his associates that he would
produce at the opera, in a box opposite to his wife,
the same person whose appearance she had resented,
and in the same attire. It was presumed, by the
graver courtiers who had heard this, that the actors in
this brutal scene, if it should be carried out, would be
immediately arrested by the imperial guard.

The overture commenced to a crowded house, and
before it was half played, the presence of the count
and his companion, in a conspicuous box on the left
of the circle, drew the attention of every eye. The
Montalemberts were the one subject of conversation.
The sudden disappearance of the old count, his death
in a distant province, his will relative to his widow and
De Mornay—all the particulars of that curious inheritance
of wife and fortune, by written testament—were
passed from lip to lip.

There was a pause at the close of the overture.
The house was silent, occupied partly in looking at
the audacious count and his companion, partly in
watching for the entrance of the injured countess.

A sudden light illuminated the empty box, shed
from the lobby lamps upon the curtains at the opening
of the door, and the Countess Montalembert entered,
with every eye in that vast assembly bent
anxiously upon her. But how radiantly beautiful,
and how strangely dressed! Her toilet was that of
a bride. Orange-flowers were woven into her long
raven tresses, and her robe of spotless white was folded
across her bust with the simplicity of girlhood. A
white rose-bud breathed on her bosom, and bracelets
of pearls encircled her wrists of alabaster. And her
smile, as she took her seat and looked around upon
her friends—oh! that was bridal too!—unlike any
look known lately upon her face—joyous, radiant,
blissful, as the first hour of acknowledged love. Never
had Zelie de Flahault looked so triumphantly

beautiful. The opera-glasses from every corner of the
house remained fixed upon her. A murmur arose
gradually, a murmur of admiration succeeding the
silent wonder of her first entrance; and but for the
sudden burst of music from the orchestra, heralding
the approach of the emperor, it would have risen into
a shout of spontaneous homage.

The emperor came in.

But who is there!—at the right hand of Napoleon
—smiled upon by the emperor, as the emperor seldom
smiled, decorated with the noblest orders of France—
a star on his breast?—Montalembert!

“Montalembert! Montalembert!” resounded from
a thousand voices.

Was he risen from the dead? Was this an apparition—the
indignant apparition of the first husband—
risen to rebuke the unmanly brutality of the second?
Would the countess start at the sight of him?

Look! she turns to the illuminated box of the emperor!
She smiles—with a radiant blush of joy and
happiness she smiles—she lifts that ungloved and
unjewelled hand, decorated only with a plain gold
ring, and waves it to the waved hand of Montalembert!—the
brave, true, romantic Montalembert. For,
with the quickness of French divination, the whole
story is understood by the audience. And there is
not a brain so dull as not to know, that the audacious
invalid veteran was the disguised count, watching over
the happiness of her whose destiny of love he had too
rashly undertaken to make cloudless—make cloudless
at the expense of a crushed heart, and a usurped hearth,
and a secret death and burial, if so much were necessary.

But he is a happy bridegroom now. And Adolphe
de Mornay is once more an untitled ensign—plucked
for ever from the chaste heart and bosom of the devoted
wife of Montalembert.

And Montalembert himself—whose springs of life
were fed only by love—died when that fountain of love
was broken; for his wife died in childbed one year
after his return to her, and he followed her in one day.
Never man was more loved than he. Surely never
man more deserved it.

A REVELATION OF A PREVIOUS LIFE.

The death of a lady, in a foreign land, leaves me at
liberty to narrate the circumstances which follow.

A few words of previous explanation, however.

I am inclined to believe, from conversations on the
subject with many sensible persons, that there are few
men who have not had, at different intervals in their
lives, sudden emotions, currents of thought, affections
of mind and body, which, not only were wholly disconnected
with the course of life thus interrupted, but
seemed to belong to a wholly different being.

Perhaps I shall somewhere touch the reader's experience
by describing rather minutely, and in the first
person, some sensations of this kind not unusual to
myself.

Walking in a crowded street, for example, in perfect
health, with every faculty gayly alive, I suddenly lose
the sense of neighborhood. I see—I hear—but I
feel as if I had become invisible where I stand, and
was, at the same time, present and visible elsewhere.
I know everything that passes around me, but I seem
disconnected and (magnetically speaking) unlinked
from the human beings near. If spoken to at such a
moment, I answer with difficulty. The person who
speaks seems addressing me from a world to which I
no longer belong. At the same time, I have an irresistible
inner consciousness of being present in another
scene of every-day life—where there are streets, and
houses, and people—where I am looked on without
surprise as a familiar object—where I have cares,
fears, objects to attain—a different scene altogether,
and a different life, from the scene and life of which I
was a moment before conscious. I have a dull ache
at the back of my eyes for the minute or two that this
trance lasts, and then, slowly and reluctantly, my
absent soul seems creeping back, the magnetic links
of conscious neighborhood, one by one, re-attach, and
I resume my ordinary life, but with an irrepressible
feeling of sadness.

It is in vain that I try to fix these shadows as they
recede. I have struggled a thousand times in vain to
particularize and note down what I saw in the strange
city to which I was translated. The memory glides
from my grasp with preternatural evasiveness.

In a book called “The Man of Two Lives,” similar
sensations to these are made the basis of the story.
Indeed, till I saw that book, the fear of having my
sanity suspected sealed my lips on the subject.

I have still a reserve in my confession. I have
been conscious, since boyhood, of a mental peculiarity
which I fear to name while I doubt that it is possessed
by others than myself—which I should not allude to
now, but that it forms a strange link of identity
between me and another being to be mentioned in this
story.

I may say, also, without attaching any importance
to it, except as it bears upon this same identity, that,
of those things which I have no occasion to be taught,
or which I did, as the common phrase is, by intuition,
drawing was the easiest and most passionately followed
of my boyish pursuits.

With these preliminaries, and probably some similar
experience of his own, the reader may happily form
a woof on which to embroider the following circumstances.

Travelling through Styria, some years since, I
chanced to have, for a fellow-occupant of the coupé
of a diligence, a very courteous and well-bred person, a
gentleman of Gratz. As we rolled slowly along on the
banks of the Muer, approaching his native town, he
very kindly invited me to remain with him a day or
two, offering me, as an inducement, a presentation at
the soirée of a certain lady of consequence, who was
to receive, on the night of our arrival, and at whose
house I should see some fair specimens of the beauty
of Styria.

Accepted.

It was a lovely summer's night, when we strolled
through the principal street toward our gay destination,
and as I drew upon my friend's arm to stop him
while the military band of the fortress finished a delicious
waltz (they were playing in the public square),
he pointed out to me the spacious balconies of the

countess's palace, whither we were going, crowded
with the well-dressed company, listening silently to
the same enchanting music. We entered, and after
an interchange of compliments with the hostess, I
availed myself of my friend's second introduction to
take a stand in one of the balconies beside the person I
was presented to, and under cover of her favor, to hear
out the unfinished music of the band.

As the evening darkened, the lights gleamed out
from the illuminated rooms more brightly, and most
of the guests deserted the balconies and joined the
gayer circles within. The music ceased at the beat
of the drum. My companion in the balcony was a
very quiet young lady, and, like myself, she seemed
subdued by the sweet harmonies we had listened to,
and willing to remain without the shadow of the curtain.
We were not alone there, however. A tall
lady, of very stately presence, and with the remains of
remarkable beauty, stood on the opposite side of the
balcony, and she, too, seemed to shrink from the glare
within, and cling to the dewy darkness of the summer
night.

After the cessation of the music, there was no
longer an excuse for intermittent conversation, and,
starting a subject which afforded rather freer scope, I
did my best to credit my friend's flattering introduction.
I had discoursed away for half an hour very
unreservedly, before I discovered that, with her hand
upon her side, in an attitude of repressed emotion, the
tall lady was earnestly listening to me. A third person
embarrasses even the most indifferent dialogue. The
conversation languished, and my companion rose and
took my arm for a promenade through the rooms.

Later in the evening, my friend came in search of
me to the supper-room.

“Mon ami!” he said, “a great honor has fallen out
of the sky for you. I am sent to bring you to the
beau reste of the handsomest woman of Styria—
Margaret, Baroness R—, whose chateau I pointed
out to you in the gold light of yesterday's sunset.
She wishes to know you—why I can not wholly divine—
for it is the first sign of ordinary feeling that she has
given in twenty years. But she seems agitated, and
sits alone in the countess's boudoir. Allons-y!”

As we made our way through the crowd, he hastily
sketched me an outline of the lady's history: “At
seventeen taken from a convent for a forced marriage
with the baron whose name she bears; at eighteen a
widow, and, for the first time, in love—the subject of
her passion a young artist of Vienna on his way to
Italy. The artist died at her chateau—they were to
have been married—she has ever since worn weeds
for him. And the remainder you must imagine—for
here we are!”

The baroness leaned with her elbow upon a small
table of or molu, and her position was so taken that I
seated myself necessarily in a strong light, while her
features were in shadow. Still, the light was sufficient
to show me the expression of her countenance.
She was a woman apparently about forty-five, of noble
physiognomy, and a peculiar fulness of the eyelid—
something like to which I thought I remembered to
have seen in a portrait of a young girl, many years
before. The resemblance troubled me somewhat.

“You will pardon me this freedom,” said the baroness
with forced composure, “when I tell you
that—a friend—whom I have mourned twenty-five
years—seems present to me when you speak.”

I was silent, for I knew not what to say. The baroness
shaded her eyes with her hand, and sat silent
for a few moments, gazing at me.

“You are not like him in a single feature,” she
resumed, “yet the expression of your face, strangely,
very strangely, is the same. He was darker—
slighter”—

“Of my age?” I inquired, to break my own silence.
For there was something in her voice which gave me
the sensation of a voice heard in a dream.

“Oh God! that voice! that voice!” she exclaimed
wildly, burying her face in her hands, and giving way
to a passionate burst of tears.

“Rodolph,” she resumed, recovering herself with
a strong effort, “Rodolph died with the promise on
his lips that death should not divide us. And I have
seen him! Not in dreams—not in revery—not at
times when my fancy could delude me. I have seen
him suddenly before me in the street—in Vienna—
here—at home at noonday—for minutes together,
gazing on me. It is more in latter years that I have
been visited by him; and a hope has latterly sprung
into being in my heart—I know not how—that in
person, palpable and breathing, I should again hold
converse with him—fold him living to my bosom.
Pardon me! You will think me mad!”

I might well pardon her; for, as she talked, a vague
sense of familiarity with her voice, a memory, powerful,
though indistinct, of having before dwelt on
those majestic features, an impulse of tearful passionateness
to rush to her embrace, well nigh overpowered
me. She turned to me again.

“You are an artist?” she said, inquiringly.

“No; though intended for one, I believe, by nature.”

“And you were born in the year —.”

“I was!”

With a scream she added the day of my birth, and
waiting an instant for my assent, dropped to the floor
and clung convulsively and weeping to my knees.

“Rodolph! Rodolph!” she murmured faintly, as
her long gray tresses fell over her shoulders, and her
head dropped insensible upon her breast.

Her cry had been heard, and several persons entered
the room. I rushed out of doors. I had need to be
in darkness and alone.

It was an hour after midnight when I re-entered my
hotel. A chasseur stood sentry at the door of my
apartment with a letter in his hand. He called me by
name, gave me his missive, and disappeared. It was
from the baroness, and ran thus:—

“You did not retire from me to sleep. This letter
will find you waking. And I must write, for my heart
and brain are overflowing.

“Shall I write to you as a stranger?—you whom I
have strained so often to my bosom—you whom I have
loved and still love with the utmost idolatry of mortal
passion—you who have once given me the soul that,
like a gem long lost, is found again, but in a newer
casket! Mine still—for did we not swear to love
for ever!

“But I am taking counsel of my own heart only.
You may still be unconvinced. You may think that
a few singular coincidences have driven me mad.
You may think that, though born in the same hour
that my Rodolph died, possessing the same voice, the
same countenance, the same gifts—though by irresistible
consciousness I know you to be him—my lost
lover returned in another body to life—you may still
think the evidence incomplete—you may, perhaps,
even now, be smiling in pity at my delusion. Indulge
me one moment.

“The Rodolph Isenberg whom I lost, possessed a
faculty of mind, which, if you are he, answers with the
voice of an angel to my appeal. In that soul resided,
and wherever it be, must now reside, the singular
power”

(The reader must be content with my omission of
this fragment of the letter. It contained a secret
never before clothed in language—a secret that will die
with me, unless betrayed by what indeed it may lead
to—madness! As I saw it in writing—defined accurately
and inevitably in the words of another—I felt as

if the innermost chamber of my soul was suddenly
laid open to the day—I abandoned doubt—I answered
to the name by which she called me—I believed in the
previous existence of which my whole life, no less than
these extraordinary circumstances, had furnished me
with repeated evidence. But, to resume the letter.)

“And now that we know each other again—now
that I can call you by name, as in the past, and be
sure that your inmost consciousness must reply—
a new terror seizes me! Your soul comes back,
youthfully and newly clad, while mine, though of
unfading freshness and youthfulness within, shows to
your eye the same outer garment, grown dull with
mourning and faded with the wear of time. Am I
grown distasteful? Is it with the sight only of this
new body that you look upon me? Rodolph!—spirit
that was my devoted and passionate admirer! soul
that was sworn to me for ever!—am I—the same Margaret,
refound and recognised, grown repulsive? Oh
God! What a bitter answer would this be to my
prayers for your return to me!

“I will trust in Him whose benign goodness smiles
upon fidelity in love. I will prepare a fitter meeting
for two who parted as lovers. You shall not see me
again in the house of a stranger and in a mourning
attire. When this letter is written, I will depart at
once for the scene of our love. I hear my horses
already in the court-yard, and while you read this I
am speeding swiftly home. The bridal dress you were
secretly shown the day before death came between us,
is still freshly kept. The room where we sat—the
bowers by the stream—the walks where we projected
our sweet promise of a future—they shall all be made
ready. They shall be as they were! And I—oh
Rodolph, I shall be the same! My heart is not
grown old, Rodolph! Believe me, I am unchanged
in soul! And I will strive to be—I will strive to
look—God help me to look and be — as of
yore!

“Farewell now! I leave horses and servants to
wait on you till I send to bring you to me. Alas, for
any delay! but we, will pass this life and all other
time together. We have seen that a vow of eternal
union may be kept—that death can not divide those
who will to love for ever! Farewell now!

“Margaret.”

Circumstances compelled me to read this letter
with but one feeling, exquisite pain! Love lasts till
death, but it is mortal! The affections, however
intense and faithful (I now know), are part of the
perishable coil, forgotten in the grave. With the
memory of this love of another life, haunting me
through my youth, and keeping its vow of visitation,
I had given the whole heart of my second youth to
another. Affianced to her, waited for by her, bound
to her by vows which death had not divided, I had but
one course to pursue. I left Gratz in an hour, never
to return.

A few days since I was walking alone in the
crowded thoroughfare of the city where I live. Suddenly
my sense of presence there fell off me. I
walked on, but my inward sight absorbed all my consciousness.
A room which was familiar to me shut
me in, and a bed hung in mourning became apparent.
In another instant a figure laid out in a winding-sheet,
and partially covered with a velvet pall, grew distinct
through the dimness, and in the low-laid head I recognised,
what a presentiment had already betrayed to
me, the features of Margaret, Baroness R—. It
will be still months before I can see the announcement
of her death. But she is dead.

AMERICAN LIFE.

COUNT POTT'S STRATEGY.

There were five hundred guardian angels (and of
course as many evil spirits), in and about the merry
premises of Congress Hall. Each gay guest had his
pair; but though each pair had their special ministry
(and there was here and there a guest who would not
have objected to transform his, for the time being, into
a pair of trotting ponies), the attention of the cherubic
troop, it may fairly be presumed, was directed mainly
to the momentous flirtations of Miss C. Sophy Onthank,
the dread disposer of the destinies of eighty
thousand innocent little dollars.

Miss Chittaline Sophy (though this is bladding,
for that mysterious “C.” was generally condemned
to travel in domino)—Miss Chittaline Sophy, besides
her good and evil spirit already referred to, was under
the additional watch and ward of a pair of bombazine
aunts, Miss Charity Onthank and Miss Sophy the
same, of whom she was the united namesake.—
“Chittaline” being the embellished diminutive of
“Charity.” These Hesperian dragons of old maids
were cut after the common pattern of such utensils,
and of course would not dignify a description; though
this disparaging remark (we must stop long enough to
say) is not at all to the prejudice of that occasional
love-of-an-old-maid that one does sometimes see—
that four-leaved clover of virginity—that star apart in
the spilled milk of the Via Lactea:—

But the two elderly Misses Onthank were not of this
category.

By the absence of that Junonic assurance, common
to those ladies who are born and bred heiresses, Miss
C. Sophy's autograph had not long been an object of
interest at the bank. She had all the air of having
been “brought up at the trough,” as the French
phrase it,

and her belle-ship was still a surprise to her. Like
the red-haired and freckled who find, when they get
to Italy, that their flaming peculiarities are considered
as captivating signs of a skin too delicate for exposure,
she received with a slight incredulity the homage to
her unseen charms—homage not the less welcome for
exacting from the giver an exercise of faith and imagination.
The same faith and imagination, she was
free to suppose, might find a Venus within her girdle,
as the sculptor sees one in the goodly block of marble,
lacking only the removal of its clumsy covering by
chisel and sandpaper. With no visible waist, she was
as tall as a pump, and riotously rosy like a flowering
rhododendron. Hair brown and plenty of it. Teeth
white and all at home. And her voice, with but one
semitone higher, would have been an approved contralto.

Having thus compressed into a couple of paragraphs
what would have served a novelist for his first ten
chapters, permit us, without the bother of intermediate
mortar or moralizing (though this is rather a mixed
figure), to lay on the next brick in the shape of a hint
at the character of Miss Onthank's two prominent
admirers.

Mr. Greville Seville was a New York beau. He
had all the refinement that could possibly be imported.
He had seen those who had seen all that is visible in
the fashionable man of London and Paris, and he was
well versed in the conduits through which their
several peculiarities found their way across the Atlantic.
Faultlessly booted, pantalooned, waistcoated, and shirted,
he could afford to trust his coat and scarf to Providence,
and his hat to Warnock or Leary. He wore
a slightly restrained whisker, and a faint smut of an
imperial, and his gloves fitted him inexorably. His
figure was a matter of course. He was brought up in
New York, and was one of the four hundred thousand
results (more or less) of its drastic waters—washy and
short. And he had as good a heart as is compatible
with the above personal advantages.

It would very much have surprised the “company”
at Congress Hall, to have seen Mr. Chesterfield Potts
put down as No. 2, in the emulous contest for the two
hands of Miss Onthank. The count (he was commonly
called “Count Potts,” a compliment to good
manners not unusual in America), was, by his own
label, a man of “thirty and upward”—by the parish
register possibly sixty-two. He was an upright, well-preserved,
stylish looking man, with an expensive wig,
fine teeth (commonly supposed not to be indigenous),
and a lavish outlay of cotton batting, covering the retreat
of such of his muscular forces as were inclined
to retire from the field. What his native qualities
might be was a branch of knowledge long since lost to
the world. His politeness had superseded the necessity
of any particular inquiry into the matter; indeed,
we are inclined to believe his politeness had superseded
his character altogether. He was as incapable of the
impolite virtues (of which there are several) as of the
impolite vices. Like cricketing, punning, political
speech making, and other mechanical arts, complimenting
may be brought to a high degree of dexterity,
and Count Potts, after a practice of many years,
could, over most kinds of female platitude, spread a
flattering unction humbugative to the most suspicious
incredulity. As he told no stories, made no puns,
volunteered but little conversation, and had the air of
a modest man wishing to avoid notice, the blockheads
and the very young girls stoutly denied his fascination.

But in the memory of the riper belles, as they went
to sleep night after night, lay snugly lodged and carefully
treasured, some timely compliment, some soothing
word, and, though credited to “old Potts,” the
smile with which it was gracefully re-acknowledged
the next morning at breakfast, would have been warm
enough for young Ascanius. “Nice old Potts!” was
the faint murmur of many a bright lip turning downward
to the pillow in the “last position.”

And now, dear reader, you have an idea of the forces
in the field, and you probably know how “the war is
carried on” at Saratoga. Two aunts and a guardian
angel versus an evil spirit and two lovers—Miss Onthank's
hand, the (well-covered) bone of contention.
Whether the citadel would speedily yield, and which
of these two rival knights would bear away the palm
of victory, were questions upon which the majority
of lookers-on were doomed to make erroneous predictions.
The reader of course is in the sagacious
minority.

Mr. Potts' income was a net answer to his morning
prayer. It provided his “daily bread” but no provender
for a horse. He probably coveted Miss Onthank
as much for her accompanying oats as for her personal
avoirdupois, since the only complaint with which he
ever troubled his acquaintances, was one touching his
inability to keep an equipage. Man is instinctively a
centaur, he used to say, and when you cut him off
from his horse and reduce him to his simple trunk
(and a trunk was all the count's worldly furniture), he
is but a mutilated remainder, robbed of his natural
locomotive.

It was not authenticated in Wall street that Mr.
Greville Seville was reasonably entitled to horse-flesh
and caparison; but he had a trotting wagon and two
delicious cropped sorrels; and those who drove in his
company were obliged to “down with the dust” (a
bon mot of Count Potts'). Science explains many of
the enigmas of common life, however, and the secret
of Mr. Seville's equipment and other means of going
on swimmingly, lay in his unusually large organ of
hope. He was simply anticipating the arrival of 1840,
a year in which he had reason to believe there would
be paid in to the credit of the present Miss Onthank
a sufficient sum to cover his loosest expenditure.
The intermediate transfer to himself of her rights to
the same, was a mere filling up of an outline, his mind
being entirely made up as to the conditional incumbrance
of the lady's person. He was now paying her
some attentions in advance, and he felt justified in
charging his expenses on the estate. She herself
would wish it, doubtless, if she could look into the
future with his eyes.

By all the common data of matrimonial skirmishing,
a lover with horses easily outstrips a lover with
none. Miss C. Sophy, besides, was particularly fond of
driving, and Seville was an accomplished whip. There
was no lack of the “golden opportunity” of tête-à-tête,
for, with a deaf aunt and somebody else on the back
seat, he had Miss Onthank to himself on the driving
box, and could talk to his horses in the embarrassing
pauses. It looked a clear case to most observers;
and as to Seville, he had studied out a livery for his
future footman and tiger, and would not have taken an
insurance at a quarter per cent.

But Potts—ah! Potts had traced back the wires of
woman's weaknesses. The heiress had no conversation
(why should she have it and money too?), and
the part of her daily drive which she remembered with
most pleasure, was the flourish of starting and returning—managed
by Potts with a pomp and circumstance
that would have done honor to the goings and comings
of Queen Victoria. Once away from the portico, it
was a monotonous drag through the dust for two or
three hours, and as most ladies know, it takes a great
deal of chit-chat to butter so large a slice of time;
for there was no making love, parbleu! Miss Chittaline
Onthank was of a stratum of human nature susceptible
of no sentiment less substantial than a kiss,
and when the news, and the weather, and the virtues
of the sorrel ponies, were exhausted, the talk came to
a stand-still. The heiress began to remember with
alarm that her education had been neglected, and that
it was a relief to get back to old Potts and the portico.

Fresh from his nap and warm bath, the perfumed
count stepped out from the group he had purposely
collected, gave her his hand with a deferential inquiry,
spread the loungers to the right and left like an “usher
of the black rod,” and with some well-studied impromptu
compliment, waited on her to her chamber
door. He received her again after her toilet, and for
the remainder of the day devoted his utmost powers
to her aggrandizement. If talking alone with her, it
was to provoke her to some passage of school-girl
autobiography, and listen like a charmed stone to the
harp of Orpheus. If others were near, it was to catch
her stupidities half uttered and twist them into sense
before they came to the ground. His own clevernesses
were prefaced with “As you remarked yesterday,
Miss Onthank,” or, “As you were about to say
when I interrupted you.” If he touched her foot, it
was “so small he didn't see it.” If she uttered an
irredeemable and immitigable absurdity, he covered
its retreat with some sudden exclamation. He called
her pensive, when she was sleepy and vacant. He
called her romantic, when he couldn't understand her.
In short, her vanity was embodied—turned into a
magician and slave—and in the shape of Count Chesterfield,
Potts ministered to her indefatigably.

But the summer solstice began to wane. A week
more was all that was allotted to Saratoga by that
great American commander, General Consent.

Count Potts came to breakfast in a shawl cravat!

“Off, Potts?”

“Are you flitting, my dear count?”

“What—going away, dear Mr. Potts?”

“Gracious me! don't go, Mr. Potts!”

The last exclamation was sent across the table in a
tone of alarm by Miss C. Sophy, and responded to
only by a bow of obsequious melancholy.

Breakfast was over, and Potts arose. His baggage
was at the door. He sought no interview with Miss
Onthank. He did not even honor the two bombazinities
with a farewell. He stepped up to the group of
belles, airing their demi-toilettes on the portico, said
“Ladies! au revoir!” took the heiress's hand and put
it gallantly toward his lips, and walked off with his
umbrella, requesting the driver to pick him up at the
spring.

“He has been refused!” said one.

“He has given Seville a clear field in despair!” said
another. And this was the general opinion.

The day crept on. But there was an emptiness
without Potts. Seville had the field to himself, and
as there was no fear of a new squatter, he thought he
might dispense with tillage. They had a very dull
drive and a very dull dinner, and in the evening, as
there was no ball, Seville went off to play billiards.
Miss Onthank was surrounded, as usual, by the belles
and beaux, but she was down flat—unmagnetized, ungalvanized.
The magician was gone. Her stupid
things “stayed put.” She was like a glass bead lost
from a kaleidoscope.

That weary week was spent in lamentations over
Potts. Everybody praised him. Everybody complimented
Miss Onthank on her exclusive power of
monopoly over such porcelain ware. The two aunts
were his main glorifiers; for, as Potts knew, they
were of that leathery toughness that only shines on
you with rough usage.

We have said little, as yet, of Miss Onthank's capabilities
in the love line. We doubt, indeed, whether

she rightly understood the difference between loving
and being born again. As to giving away her heart,
she believed she could do what her mother did before
her, but she would rather it would be one of her back
teeth, if that would do as well. She liked Mr. Potts
because he never made any difficulty about such
things.

Seville considered himself accepted, though he had
made no direct proposition. He had asked whether
she preferred to live in country or town—she said
“town.” He had asked if she would leave the choice
and management of horses and equipages to him—
she said “be sure!” He had asked if she had any
objection to his giving bachelor dinners occasionally
—she said “la! no!” As he understood it, the whole
thing was most comfortably arranged, and he lent
money to several of his friends on the strength of it—
giving his note, this is to say.

On a certain morning, some ten days after the departure
of the count from Saratoga, Miss Onthank
and her two aunts sat up in state in their parlor at the
City hotel. They always went to the City hotel
because Willard remembered their names, and asked
after their uncle the major. Mr. Seville's ponies and
wagon were at the door, and Mr. Seville's father,
mother, seven sisters, and two small brothers, were in
the progress of a betrothal visit—calling on the future
Mrs. Greville Seville.

All of a sudden the door was thrown open, and enter
Count Potts!

Up jumped the enchanted Chittaline Sophy.

“How do you do, Mr. Potts?”

“Good morning, Mr. Potts!” said the aunts in a
breath.

“D'ye-do, Potts!” said Seville, giving him his fore-finger,
with the air of a man rising from winning at
cards.

Potts made his compliments all round. He was
about sailing for Carolina, he said, and had come to
ask permission of Miss Onthank to leave her sweet
society for a few years of exile. But as this was the
last of his days of pleasure, at least till he saw Miss
Onthank again, he wished to be graced with the honor
of her arm for a promenade in Broadway. The ladies
and Mr. Seville doubtless would excuse her if she put
on her bonnet without further ceremony.

Now Potts's politenesses had such an air of irresistible
authority that people fell into heir track like cars
after a locomotive. While Miss Onthank was bonneting
and shawling, the count entertained the entire
party most gayly, though the Sevilles thought it rather
unceremonious in the affianced miss to leave them in
the midst of a first visit, and Mr. Greville Seville had
arranged to send his mother home on foot, and drive
Miss Onthank out to Harlem.

“I'll keep my horses here till you come back!” he
shouted after them, as she tripped gayly down stairs
on the count's arm.

And so he did. Though it was two hours before
she appeared again, the impatient youth kept the old
aunts company, and would have stayed till night, sorrels
and all—for in that drive he meant to “name the day,”
and put his creditors at ease.

“I wouldn't even go up stairs, my dear!” said the
count, handing her to the wagon, and sending up the
groom for his master, “it's but an hour to dine, and
you'll like the air after your fatigue. Ah, Seville,
I've brought her back! Take good care of her for
my sake, my good fellow!”

“What the devil has his sake to do with it, I wonder?”
said Seville, letting his horses off like two rockets
in harness.

And away they went toward Harlem; and in about
an hour, very much to the surprise of the old aunts,
who were looking out of the parlor window, the young
lady dismounted from an omnibus! Count Potts had
come to dine with them, and he tripped down to meet
her with uncommon agility.

“Why, do you know, aunties,” she exclaimed, as
she came up stairs, out of breath, “do you know that
Mr. Seville, when I told him I was married already to
Mr. Potts, stopped his wagon, and p-p-put me into an
omnibus!”

“Married to Mr. Potts!” screamed Aunt Charity.

“Married to Mr. Potts!” screamed Aunt Sophy.

“Why—yes, aunties; he said he must go south,
if I didn't!” drawled out the bride, with only a very
little blush indeed. “Tell aunties all about it, Mr.
Potts!”

And Mr. Potts, with the same smile of infallible
propriety, which seemed a warrant for everything he
said or did, gave a very sketchy account of his morning's
work, which, like all he undertook, had been exceedingly
well done—properly witnessed, certified, &c.,
&c., &c. All of which shows the very sound policy
of first making yourself indispensable to people you
wish to manage. Or, put it receipt-wise:—

To marry a flat:—First, raise her up till she is
giddy. Second, go away, and let her down. Third,
come back, and offer to support her, if she will give
you her hand.

“Simple comme bonjour” as Balsac says.

THE FEMALE WARD.

Most men have two or more souls, and Jem Thalimer
was a doublet, with sets of manners corresponding.
Indeed one identity could never have served the
pair of him! When sad—that is to say, when in disgrace
or out of money—he had the air of a good man
with a broken heart. When gay—flush in pocket
and happy in his little ambitions—you would have
thought him a dangerous companion for his grandmother.
The last impression did him more injustice
than the first, for he was really very amiably disposed
when depressed, and not always wicked when gay—
but he made friends in both characters. People sel
dom forgive us for compelling them to correct their
first impressions of us, and as this was uniformly the
case with Jem, whether he had begun as saint or sinner,
he was commonly reckoned a deep-water fish;
and, where there were young ladies in the case, early
warned off the premises. The remarkable exception
to this rule, in the incident I am about to relate, arose,
as may naturally be supposed, from his appearing, during
a certain period, in one character only.

To begin my story fairly, I must go back for a moment
to our junior Jem in college, showing, by a little
passage in our adventures, how Thalimer and I

became acquainted with the confiding gentleman to
be referred to.

A college suspension, very agreeably timed, in June,
left my friend Jem and myself masters of our travels
for an uncertain period; and as our purse was always
in common, like our shirts, love-letters, and disgraces,
our several borrowings were thrust into a wallet which
was sometimes in his pocket, sometimes in mine, as
each took the turn to be paymaster. With the (intercepted)
letters in our pockets, informing the governors
of our degraded position, we travelled very
prosperously on—bound to Niagara, but very ready to fall
into any obliquity by the way. We arrived at Albany,
Thalimer chancing to be purser, and as this function
tacitly conferred, on the holder, all other responsibilities,
I made myself comfortable at the hotel for the
second day and the third—up to the seventh—rather
wondering at Jem's depressed spirits and the sudden
falling off of his enthusiasm for Niagara, but content
to stay if he liked, and amusing myself in the
side-hill city passably well. It was during my rambles
without him in this week that he made the acquaintance
of a bilious-looking person lodging at the
same hotel—a Louisianian on a tour of health. This
gentleman, whom he introduced to me by the name
of Dauchy, seemed to have formed a sudden attachment
to my friend, and as Jem had a “secret sorrow”
unusual to him, and the other an unusual secretion
of bile, there was of course between them that “secret
sympathy” which is the basis of many tender
friendships. I rather liked Mr. Dauchy. He seemed
one of those chivalric, polysyllabic southerners, incapable
of a short word or a mean action, and, interested
that Jem should retain his friendship, I was not sorry
to find our departure follow close on the recovery of
his spirits.

We went on toward Niagara, and in the irresistible
confidence of canal travelling I made out the secret
of my fidus achates. He had attempted to alleviate
the hardship of a deck-passage for a bright-eyed girl
on board the steamer, and, on going below to his
berth, left her his greatcoat for a pillow. The stuffed
wallet, which somewhat distended the breast-pocket,
was probably in the way of her downy cheek, and
Jem supposed that she simply forgot to return the
“removed deposite”—but he did not miss his money
till twelve hours after, and then, between lack of
means to pursue her, and shame at the sentiment he
had wasted, he kept the disaster to himself, and passed
a melancholy week in devising means for replenishing.
Through this penseroso vein, however, lay his way
out of the difficulty, for he thus touched the soul
and funds of Mr. Dauchy. The correspondence
(commenced by the repayment of the loan) was kept
up stragglingly for several years, bolstered somewhat
by barrels of marmalade, boxes of sugar, hommony,
&c., till finally it ended in the unlooked-for consignment
which forms the subject of my story.

Jem and myself had been a year out of college, and
were passing through that “tight place” in life, commonly
understood in New England as “the going in
at the little end of the horn.” Expected by our parents
to take to money-making like ducks to swimming,
deprived at once of college allowance, called
on to be men because our education was paid for, and
frowned upon at every manifestation of a lingering
taste for pleasure—it was not surprising that we, sometimes
gave tokens of feeling “crowded,” and obtained
somewhat the reputation of “bad subjects”—(using
this expressive phrase quite literally). Jem's share
of this odor of wickedness was much the greater, his
unlucky deviltry of countenance doing him its usual
disservice; but like the gentleman to whom he was
attributed as a favorite protegé, he was “not so black
as he was painted.”

We had been so fortunate as to find one believer in
the future culmination of our clouded stars—Gallagher,
“mine host”—and for value to be received when
our brains should fructify, his white soup and “red-string
Madeira,” his game, turtle, and all the forthcomings
of the best restaurant of our epoch, were
served lovingly and charged moderately. Peace be
with the ashes of William Gallagher! “The brains”
have fructified, and “the value” has been received—
but his name and memory are not “filed away” with
the receipt; and though years have gone over his
grave, his modest welcome, and generous dispensation
of entertainment and service, are, by one at least of
those who enjoyed them, gratefully and freshly remembered!

We were to dine as usual at Gallagher's at six—one
May day which I well remember. I was just addressing
myself to my day's work, when Jem broke into
my room with a letter in his hand, and an expression
on his face of mingled embarrassment and fear.

“What the deuce to do with her!” said he, handing
me the letter.

“A new scrape, Jem?” I asked, as I looked for an
instant at the Dauchy coat-of-arms on a seal as big as
a dollar.

“Scrape?—yes, it is a scrape!—for I shall never
get out of it reputably. What a dunce old Dauchy
must be to send me a girl to educate! I a young
lady's guardian! Why, I shall be the laugh of the
town! What say? Isn't it a good one?”

I had been carefully perusing the letter while Thalimer
walked soliloquizing about the room. It was
from his old friend of marmalades and sugars, and in
the most confiding and grave terms, as if Jem and he
had been a couple of contemporaneous old bachelors,
it consigned to his guardianship and friendly counsel,
Miss Adelmine Lasacque, the only daughter of a
neighboring planter! Mr. Lasacque having no friends
at the north, had applied to Mr. Dauchy for his guidance
in the selection of a proper person to superintend
her education, and as Thalimer was the only correspondent
with whom Mr. Dauchy had relations of
friendship, and was, moreover, “fitted admirably for
the trust by his impressive and dignified address,” (?)
he had “taken the liberty,” &c., &c.

“Have you seen her?” I asked, after a long laugh,
in which Jem joined but partially.

“No, indeed! She arrived last night in the New
Orleans packet, and the captain brought me this letter
at daylight, with the young lady's compliments.
The old seadog looked a little astounded when I announced
myself. Well he might, faith! I don't look
like a young lady's guardian, do I?”

“Well—you are to go on board and fetch her—is
that it?”

“Fetch her! Where shall I fetch her? Who is
to take a young lady of my fetching? I can't find a
female academy that I can approve—”

I burst into a roar of laughter, for Jem was in earnest
with his scruples, and looked the picture of unhappiness.

“I say I can't find one in a minute—don't laugh,
you blackguard!—and where to lodge her meantime?
What should I say to the hotel-keepers? They all
know me? It looks devilish odd, let me tell you, to
bring a young girl, without matron or other acquaintances
than myself, and lodge her at a public house.”

“Your mother must take your charge off your
hands.”

“Of course that was the first thing I thought of.
You know my mother! She don't half believe the
story, in the first place. If there is such a man as
Mr. Dauchy, she says, and if this is a `Miss Lasacque,'
all the way from Louisiana, there is but one
thing to do—send her back in the packet she came
in! She'll have nothing to do with it! There's
more in it than I am willing to explain. I never

mentioned this Mr. Dauchy before. Mischief will come
of it! Abduction's a dreadful thing! If I will make
myself notorious, I need not think to involve my
mother and sisters! That's the way she talks about it.”

“But couldn't we mollify your mother?—for, after
all, her countenance in the matter will be expected.”

“Not a chance of it!”

“The money part of it is all right?”

“Turn the letter over. Credit for a large amount
on the Robinsons, payable to my order only!”

“Faith! it's a very hard case if a nice girl with
plenty of money can't be permitted to land in Boston!
You didn't ask the captain if she was pretty?”

“No, indeed! But pretty or plain, I must get her
ashore and be civil to her. I must ask her to dine!
I must do something besides hand her over to a
boarding-school! Will you come down to the ship
with me?”

My curiosity was quite aroused, and I dressed immediately.
On our way down we stopped at Gallagher's,
to request a little embellishment to our ordinary dinner.
It was quite clear, for a variety of reasons, that she must
dine with her guardian there, or nowhere. Gallagher
looked surprised, to say the least, at our proposition
to bring a young lady to dine with us, but he made no
comment beyond a respectful remark that “No. 2
was very private!”

We had gone but a few steps from Devonshire
street when Jem stopped in the middle of the side-walk.

“We have not decided yet what we are to do with
Miss Lasacque all day, nor where we shall send her
baggage, nor where she is to lodge to-night. For
Heaven's sake, suggest something!” added Jem, quite
out of temper.

“Why, as you say, it would be heavy work to walk
her about the streets from now till dinner-time—eight
hours or more! Gallagher's is only an eating-house,
unluckily, and you are so well known at all the hotels,
that, to take her to one of them without a chaperon,
would, to say the least, give occasion for remark.
But here, around the corner, is one of the best boarding-houses
in town, kept by the two old Misses Smith.
You might offer to put her under their protection.
Let's try.”

The Misses Smith were a couple of reduced gentlewomen,
who charged a very good price for board
and lodging, and piqued themselves on entertaining
only very good company. Begging Jem to assume
the confident tone which the virtuous character of his
errand required, I rang at the door, and in answer to
our inquiry for the ladies of the house, we were shown
into the basement parlor, where the eldest Miss Smith
sat with her spectacles on, adding new vinegar to some
pots of pickles. Our business was very briefly stated.
Miss Smith had plenty of spare room. Would we
wait a moment till she tied on the covers to her pickle-jars?

The cordiality of the venerable demoiselle evidently
put Thalimer in spirits. He gave me a glance which
said very plainly, “You see we needn't have troubled
our heads about this!”—but the sequel was to come.

Miss Smith led the way to the second story, where
were two very comfortable unoccupied bedrooms.

“A single lady?” she asked.

“Yes,” said Jem, “a Miss Lasacque of Louisiana.”

“Young, did you say?”

“Seventeen, or thereabout, I fancy.” (This was a
guess, but Jem chose to appear to know all about
her.)

“And—ehem!—and—quite alone?”

“Quite alone—she is come here to go to school.”

“Oh, to go to school! Pray—will she pass her
vacations with your mother?”

“No!” said Jem, coughing, and looking rather embarrassed.

“Indeed! She is with Mrs. Thalimer at present,
I presume.”

“No—she is still on shipboard! Why, my dear
madam, she only arrived from New Orleans this
morning.”

“And your mother has not had time to see her?
I understand. Mrs. Thalimer will accompany her
here, of course.”

Jem began to see the end of the old maid's catechism,
and thought it best to volunteer the remainder
of the information.

“My mother is not acquainted with this young lady's
friends,” he said; “and, in fact, she comes introduced
only to myself.”

“She has a guardian, surely?” said Miss Smith,
drawing back into her Elizabethan ruff with more
dignity than she had hitherto worn.

“I am her guardian!” replied Jem, looking as red
and guilty as if he had really abducted the young lady,
and was ashamed of his errand.

The spinster bit her lips and looked out of the
window.

“Will you walk down stairs for a moment, gentlemen,”
she resumed, “and let me speak to my sister.
I should have told you that the rooms might possibly be
engaged. I am not quite sure—indeed—ehem—pray
walk down and be seated a moment.”

Very much to the vexation of my discomfited
friend, I burst into a laugh as we closed the door of
the basement parlor behind us.

“You don't realize my confoundedly awkward position,”
said he. “I am responsible for every step I
take, to the girl's father in the first place, and then to
my friend Dauchy, one of the most chivalric old
cocks in the world, who, at the same time, could never
understand why there was any difficulty in the
matter! And it does seem strange, that in a city with
eighty thousand inhabitants, it should be next to impossible
to find lodging for a virtuous lady, a stranger!”

I was contriving how to tell Thalimer that “there
was no objection to the camel but for the dead cat
hung upon its neck,” when a maidservant opened the
door with a message—“Miss Smith's compliments,
and she was very sorry she had no room to spare!”

“Pleasant!” said Jem, “very pleasant! I suppose
every other keeper of a respectable house will be
equally sorry. Meantime, it's getting on toward noon,
and that poor girl is moping on shipboard, wondering
whether she is ever to be taken ashore! Do you
think she might sleep at Gallagher's?”

“Certainly not! He has, probably, no accommodations
for a lady, and, to lodge in a restaurant, after
dining with you there, would be an indiscreet first
step, in a strange city, to say the least. But let us
make our visit to your fair ward, my dear Jem! Perhaps
she has a face innocent enough to tell its own
story—like the lady who walked through Erin `with
the snow-white wand.”'

The vessel had lain in the stream all night, and was
just hauling up to the wharf with the moving tide.
A crowd of spectators stood at the end of her mooring
cable, and, as she warped in, universal attention
seemed to be given to a single object. Upon a heap
of cotton-bales, the highest point of the confused
lumber of the deck, sat a lady under a sky-blue parasol.
Her gown was of pink silk; and by the volume
of this showy material which was presented to the
eye, the wearer, when standing, promised to turn out
of rather conspicuous stature. White gloves, a pair
of superb amethyst bracelets, a string of gold beads
on her neck, and shoulders quite naked enough for a
ball, were all the disclosures made for a while by the
envious parasol, if we except a little object in blue,
which seemed the extremity of something she was
sitting on, held in her left hand—and which turned
out to be her right foot in a blue satin slipper!

I turned to Thalimer. He was literally pale with
consternation.

“Hadn't you better send for a carriage to take your
ward away?” I suggested.

“You don't believe that to be Miss Lasacque, surely!”
exclaimed Jem, turning upon me with an imploring
look.

“Such is my foreboding,” I replied; “but wait a
moment. Her face may be pretty, and you, of course,
in your guardian capacity, may suggest a simplification
of her toilet. Consider!—the poor girl was
never before off the plantation—at least, so says old
Dauchy's letter.”

The sailors now began to pull upon the sternline,
and, as the ship came round, the face of the unconscious
object of curiosity stole into view. Most of the spectators,
after a single glance, turned their attention
elsewhere with a smile, and Jem, putting his hands
into his two coat-pockets behind him, walked off toward
the end of the pier, whistling to himself very energetically.
She was an exaggeration of the peculiar
physiognomy of the south—lean rather than slight,
sallow rather than pale. Yet I thought her eyes fine.

Thalimer joined me as the ship touched the dock,
and we stepped on board together. The cabinboy
confirmed our expectations as to the lady's identity,
and putting on the very insinuating manner which
was part of his objectionable exterior, Jem advanced
and begged to know if he had the honor of addressing
Miss Lasacque.

Without loosing her hold upon her right foot, the
lady nodded.

“Then, madam!” said Jem, “permit me to introduce
to you your guardian, Mr. Thalimer!”

“What, that old gentleman coming this way?”
asked Miss Lasacque, fixing her eyes on a custom-house
officer who was walking the deck.

Jem handed the lady his card.

“That is my name,” said he, “and I should be
happy to know how I can begin the duties of my office!”

“Dear me!” said the astonished damsel, dropping
her foot to take his hand, “isn't there an older Mr.
James Thalimer? Mr. Dauchy said it was a gentleman
near his own age!”

“I grow older, as you know me longer!” Jem replied
apologetically; but his ward was too well satisfied
with his appearance, to need even this remarkable
fact to console her. She came down with a slide
from her cotton-bag elevation, called to the cook to
bring the bandbox with the bonnet in it, and meantime
gave us a brief history of the inconveniences she
had suffered in consequence of the loss of her slave,
Dinah, who had died of sea-sickness three days out.
This, to me, was bad news, for I had trusted to a “lady's
maid” for the preservation of appearances, and
the scandal threatening Jem's guardianship looked,
in consequence, very imminent.

“I am dying to get my feet on land again!” said
Miss Lasacque, putting her arm in her guardian's,
and turning toward the gangway—her bonnet not
tied, nor her neck covered, and thin blue satin slippers,
though her feet were small, showing forth in
contrast with her pink silk gown, with frightful conspicuousness!
Jem resisted the shoreward pull, and
stood motionless and aghast.

“Your baggage,” he stammered at last.

“Here, cook!” cried the lady, “tell the captain,
when he comes aboard, to send my trunks to Mr.
Thalimer's! They are down in the hold, and he told
me he couldn't get at 'em till to-morrow,” she added,
by way of explanation to Thalimer.

I felt constrained to come to the rescue.

“Pardon me, madam!” said I, “there is a little
peculiarity in our climate, of which you probably are
not advised. An east wind commonly sets in about
noon, which makes a shawl very necessary. In consequence,
too, of the bronchitis which this sudden
change is apt to give people of tender constitutions,
the ladies of Boston are obliged to sacrifice what is
becoming, and wear their dresses very high in the
throat.”

“La!” said the astonished damsel, putting her
hand upon her bare neck, “is it sore throat that you
mean? I'm very subject to it, indeed! Cook! bring
me that fur-tippet out of the cabin! I'm so sorry my
dresses are all made so low, and I haven't a shawl unpacked
either!—dear! dear!”

Jem and I exchanged a look of hopeless resignation,
as the cook appeared with the chinchilli tippet.
A bold man might have hesitated to share the conspicuousness
of such a figure in a noon promenade,
but we each gave her an arm when she had tied the
soiled riband around her throat, and silently set forward.

It was a bright and very warm day, and there seemed
a conspiracy among our acquaintances, to cross
our path. Once in the street, it was not remarkable
that they looked at us, for the towering height at
which the lady carried her very showy bonnet, the
flashy material of her dress, the jewels and the chinchilli
tippet, formed an ensemble which caught the eye
like a rainbow; and truly people did gaze, and the
boys, spite of the unconscious look which we attempted,
did give rather disagreeable evidence of being
amused. I had various misgivings, myself, as to the
necessity for my own share in the performance, and,
at every corner, felt sorely tempted to bid guardian
and ward good morning; but friendship and pity prevailed.
By streets and lanes not calculated to give
Miss Lasacque a very favorable first impression of
Boston, we reached Washington street, and made an
intrepid dash across it, to the Marlborough hotel.

Of this public house, Thalimer had asked my opinion
during our walk, by way of introducing an apology
to Miss Lasacque for not taking her to his own
home. She had made it quite clear that she expected
this, and Jem had nothing for it but to draw such a
picture of the decrepitude of Mr. Thalimer, senior,
and the bedridden condition of his mother (as stout
a couple as ever plodded to church!) as would satisfy
the lady for his short-comings in hospitality. This
had passed off very smoothly, and Miss Lasacque entered
the Marlboro', quite prepared to lodge there,
but very little aware (poor girl!) of the objections to
receiving her as a lodger.

Mr. —, the proprietor, had stood in the archway
as we entered. Seeing no baggage in the lady's
train, however, he had not followed us in, supposing,
probably, that we were callers on some of his guests.
Jem left us in the drawing-room, and went upon his
errand to the proprietor, but after half an hour's absence,
came back, looking very angry, and informed
us that no rooms were to be had! Instead of taking
the rooms without explanation, he had been unwise
enough to “make a clean breast” to Mr. —, and
the story of the lady's being his “ward,” and come
from Louisiana to go to school, rather staggered that
discreet person's credulity.

Jem beckoned me out, and we held a little council
of war in the entry. Alas! I had nothing to suggest.
I knew the puritan metropolis very well—I knew its
phobia was “the appearance of evil.” In Jem's care-for-nothing
face lay the leprosy which closed all doors
against us. Even if we had succeeded, by a coup-de-main,
in lodging Miss Lasacque at the Marlboro', her
guardian's daily visits would have procured for her, in
the first week, some intimation that she could no
longer be accommodated.

“We had best go and dine upon it,” said I; “worst
come to the worst, we can find some sort of dormitory
for her at Gallagher's, and to-morrow she must be put

to school, out of the reach of your `pleasant, but
wrong society.”'

“I hope to Heaven she'll `stay put,”' said Jem,
with a long sigh.

We got Miss Lasacque again under way, and avoiding
the now crowded pavé of Washington street, made
a short cut by Theatre Alley to Devonshire street and
Gallagher's. Safely landed in “No. 2,” we drew a
long breath of relief. Jem rang the bell.

“Dinner, waiter, as soon as possible.”

“The same that was ordered at six, sir?”

“Yes, only more champagne, and bring it immediately.
Excuse me, Miss Lasacque,” added Jem,
with a grave bow, “but the non-appearance of that
east wind my friend spoke of, has given me an unnatural
thirst. Will you join me in some champagne
after your hot walk?”

“No, thank you,” said the lady, untying her tippet,
“but, if you please, I will go to my room before
dinner!”

Here was trouble, again! It had never occurred to
either of us, that ladies must go to their rooms before
bedtime.

“Stop!” cried Jem, as she laid her hand on the
bell to ring for the chamber-maid, “excuse me—I
must first speak to the landlord—the room—the room
is not ready, probably!”

He seized his hat, and made his exit, probably wishing
all confiding friends, with their neighbor's daughters,
in a better world! He had to do with a man of
sense, however. Gallagher had but one bedroom in
the house, which was not a servant's room, and that
was his own. In ten minutes it was ready, and at the
lady's service. A black scullion was promoted for the
nonce, to the post of chamber-maid, and, fortunately,
the plantation-bred girl had not been long enough
from home to be particular. She came to dinner as
radiant as a summer-squash.

With the door shut, and the soup before us, Thalimer's
spirits and mine flung off their burthens together.
Jem was the pleasantest table-companion in
the world, and he chatted and made the amiable to his
ward, as if he owed her some amends for the awkward
position of which she was so blessedly unconscious.
Your “dangerous man” (such as he was voted), inspires,
of course, no distrust in those to whom he
chooses to be agreeable. Miss Lasacque grew, every
minute, more delighted with him. She, too, improved
on acquaintance. Come to look at her closely, Nature
meant her for a fine showy creature, and she was
“out of condition,” as the jockeys say—that was all!
Her features were good, though gamboged by a
southern climate, and the fever-and-ague had flattened
what should be round and ripe lips, and reduced
to the mere frame, what should be the bust and neck
of a Die Vernon. I am not sure I saw all this at the
time. Her subsequent chrysalis and emergence into
a beautiful woman, naturally color my description
now. But I did see, then, that her eyes were large
and lustrous, and that naturally she had high spirit,
good abilities, and was a thorough woman in sentiment,
though deplorably neglected—for, at the age
of twenty, she could hardly read and write! It was
not surprising that she was pleased with us! She was
the only lady present, and we were the first coxcombs
she had ever seen, and the day was summery, and the
dinner in Gallagher's best style. We treated her like
a princess; and the more agreeable man of the two
being her guardian, and responsible for the propriety
of the whole affair, there was no chance for a failure.
We lingered over our coffee; and we lingered over
our chassecafé; and we lingered over our tea; and,
when the old South struck twelve, we were still at the
table in “No. 2,” quite too much delighted with each
other to have thought of separating. It was the venerated
guardian who made the first move, and, after
ringing up the waiter to discover that the scullion had,
six hours before, made her nightly disappearance, the
lady was respectfully dismissed with only a candle for
her chamber-maid, and Mr. Gallagher's room for her
destination—wherever that might be!

We dined together every successive day for a week,
and during this time the plot rapidly thickened. Thalimer,
of course, vexed soul and body, to obtain for
Miss Lasacque a less objectionable lodging—urged
scarcely more by his sense of propriety than by a
feeling for her good-natured host, who, meantime,
slept on a sofa. But the unlucky first step of dining
and lodging a young lady at a restaurant, inevitable
as it was, gave a fatal assurance to the predisposed
scandal of the affair, and every day's events heightened
its glaring complexion. Miss Lasacque had ideas
of her own, and very independent ones, as to the
amusement of her leisure hours. She had never been
before where there were shops, and she spent her first
two or three mornings in perambulating Washington
street, dressed in a style perfectly amazing to beholders,
and purchasing every description of gay trumpery—the
parcels, of course, sent to Gallagher's, and
the bills to James Thalimer, Esq.! To keep her out
of the street, Jem took her, on the third day, to the
riding-school, leaving her (safely enough, he thought),
in charge of the authoritative Mr. Roulstone, while
he besieged some school-mistress or other to undertake
her ciphering and geography. She was all but
born on horseback, however, and soon tired of riding
round the ring. The street-door was set open for a
moment, leaving exposed a tempting tangent to the
circle, and out flew Miss Lasacque, saving her “Leghorn
flat” by a bend to the saddle-bow, that would
have done credit to a dragoon, and no more was seen,
for hours, of the “bonnie black mare” and her rider.

The deepening of Miss Lasacque's passion for Jem,
would not interest the reader. She loved like other
women, timidly and pensively. Young as the passion
was, however, it came too late to affect her manners
before public opinion had pronounced on them. There
was neither boarding-house nor “private female academy”
within ten miles, into which “Mr. Thalimer's
young lady” would have been permitted to set her
foot—small as was the foot, and innocent as was the
pulse to which it stepped.

Uncomfortable as was this state of suspense, and
anxious as we were to fall into the track marked
“virtuous,” if virtue would only permit; public opinion
seemed to think we were enjoying ourselves quite
too prosperously. On the morning of the seventh day
of our guardianship, I had two calls after breakfast,
one from poor Gallagher, who reported that he had
been threatened with a prosecution of his establishment
as a nuisance, and another from poorer Jem,
whose father had threatened to take the lady out of
his hands, and lodge her in the insane asylum!

“Not that I don't wish she was there,” added Jem,
“for it is a very fine place, with a nice garden, and
luxurious enough for those who can pay for them, and
faith, I believe it's the only lodging-house I've not applied
to!”

I must shorten my story. Jem anticipated his
father, by riding over, and showing his papers constituting
him the guardian of Miss Lasacque, in which
capacity, he was, of course, authorized to put his
ward under the charge of keepers. Everybody who
knows Massachusetts, knows that its insane asylums
are sometimes brought to bear on irregular morals, as
well as on diseased intellects, and as the presiding officer
of the institution was quite well assured that
Miss Lasacque was well qualified to become a patient,
Jem had no course left but to profit by the error.
The poor girl was invited, that afternoon, to take a
drive in the country, and we came back and dined
without her, in abominable spirits, I must say

Provided with the best instruction, the best of care
taken of her health, and the most exemplary of matrons
interesting herself in her patient's improvements,
Miss Lasacque rapidly improved—more rapidly, no
doubt, than she ever could have done by control less
rigid and inevitable. Her father, by the advice of the
matron, was not informed of her location for a year,
and at the end of that time he came on, accompanied
by his friend, Mr. Dauchy. He found his daughter
sufficiently improved in health, manners, and beauty,
to be quite satisfied with Jem's discharge of his trust,
and we all dined very pleasantly in “No. 2;” Miss
Lasacque declining, with a blush, my invitation to her
to make one of the party.

TWO BUCKETS IN A WELL.

“Five hundred dollars a year!” echoed Fanny
Bellairs, as the first silver gray of the twilight spread
over her picture.

“And my art,” modestly added the painter, prying
into his bright copy of the lips pronouncing upon
his destiny.

“And how much may that be at the present rate
of patronage—one picture a year painted for love!”

“Fanny, how can you be so calculating!”

“By the bumps over my eyebrows, I suppose.
Why, my dear coz, we have another state of existence
to look forward to—old man-age and old woman-age!
What am I to do with five hundred dollars a year,
when my old frame wants gilding—(to use one of
your own similes)—I shan't always be pretty Fanny
Bellairs!”

“But, good Heavens! we shall grow old together!”
exclaimed the painter, sitting down at her feet, “and
what will you care for other admiration, if your husband
see you still beautiful, with the eyes of memory and
habit.”

“Even if I were sure he would so look upon me!”
answered Miss Bellairs more seriously, “I can not
but dread an old age without great means of embellishment.
Old people, except in poetry and in very
primitive society, are dishonored by wants and cares.
And, indeed, before we are old—when neither young
nor old—we want horses and ottomans, kalydor and
conservatories, books, pictures, and silk curtains—all
quite out of the range of your little allowance, don't
you see!”

“You do not love me, Fanny!”

“I do—and will marry you, Philip—as I, long ago,
with my whole heart promised. But I wish to be
happy with you—as happy, quite as happy, as is at all
possible, with our best efforts and coolest, discreetest
management. I laugh the matter over sometimes,
but I may tell you, since you are determined to be in
earnest, that I have treated it, in my solitary thought,
as the one important event of my life—(so indeed it
is!)—and, as such, worthy of all fore-thought, patience,
self-denial, and calculation. To inevitable ills I can
make up my mind like other people. If your art were
your only hope of subsistence—why—I don't know—
(should I look well as a page?)—I don't know that I
couldn't run your errands and grind your paints in
hose and doublet. But there is another door open
for you—a counting-house door, to be sure—leading
to opulence and all the appliances of dignity and happiness,
and through this door, my dear Philip, the art
you would live by comes to pay tribute and beg for
patronage. Now, out of your hundred and twenty
reasons, give me the two stoutest and best, why you
should refuse your brother's golden offer of partnership—my
share, in your alternative of poverty, left for
the moment out of the question.”

Rather overborne by the confident decision of his
beautiful cousin, and having probably made up his
mind that he must ultimately yield to her. Philip replied
in a lower and more dejected tone:—

“If you were not to be a sharer in my renown,
should I be so fortunate as to acquire it, I should feel
as if it were selfish to dwell so much on my passion
for distinction and my devotion to my pencil as the
means of winning it. My heart is full of you—but it
is full of ambition too, paradox though it be. I can
not live ignoble. I should not have felt worthy to
press my love upon you—worthy to possess you—
except with the prospect of celebrity in my art. You
make the world dark to me, Fanny! You close down
the sky, when you shut out this hope! Yet it shall
be so.”

Philip paused a moment and the silence was uninterrupted.

“There was another feeling I had, upon which I
have not insisted,” he continued. “By my brother's
project, I am to reside almost wholly abroad. Even
the little stipend I have to offer you now, is absorbed
of course by the investment of my property in his
trading capital, and marriage, till I have partly enriched
myself, would be even more hopeless than at present.
Say the interval were five years—and five years of
separation!”

“With happiness in prospect, it would soon pass,
my dear Philip!”

“But is there nothing wasted in this time? My
life is yours—the gift of love. Are not these coming
five years the very flower of it?—a mutual loss,
too, for are they not, even more emphatically, the very
flower of yours? Eighteen and twenty-five are ages at
which to marry, not ages to defer. During this time the
entire flow of my existence is at its crowning fulness
—passion, thought, joy, tenderness, susceptibility to
beauty and sweetness—all I have that can be diminished
or tarnished or made dull by advancing age and
contact with the world, is thrown away for its spring
and summer. Will the autumn of life repay us for
this? Will it—even if we are rich and blest with
health, and as capable of an unblemished union as
now? Think of this a moment, dear Fanny!”

“I do—it is full of force and meaning, and could
we marry now, with a tolerable prospect of competency,
it would be irresistible. But poverty in wedlock,
Philip—”

“What do you call poverty! If we can suffice for
each other, and have the necessaries of life, we are not
poor! My art will bring us consideration enough—
which is the main end of wealth, after all—and of
society, speaking for myself only, I want nothing.
Luxuries for yourself, Fanny, means for your dear
comfort and pleasure, you should not want if the
world held them, and surely the unbounded devotion
of one man to the support of the one woman he loves,
ought to suffice for the task! I am strong—I am

capable of labor—I have limbs to toil, if my genius
and my present means fail me, and, oh, Heaven, you
could not want!”

“No, no, no! I thought not of want!” murmured
Miss Bellairs, “I thought only—”

But she was not permitted to finish the sentence.

“Then my bright picture for the future may be
realized!” exclaimed Philip, knitting his hands together
in a transport of hope. “I may build up a
reputation, with you for the constant partner of its
triumphs and excitements! I may go through the
world and have some care in life besides subsistence,
how I shall sleep, and eat, and accumulate gold; some
companion, who, from the threshold of manhood,
shared every thought—and knew every feeling—some
pure and present angel who walked with me and purified
my motives and ennobled my ambitions, and received
from my lips and eyes, and from the beating
of my heart, against her own, all the love I had to give
in a lifetime. Tell me, Fanny! tell me, my sweet
cousin! is not this a picture of bliss, which, combined
with success in my noble art, might make a Paradise
on earth for you and me?”

The hand of Fanny Bellairs rested on the upturned
forehead of her lover as he sat at her feet in the
deepening twilight, and she answered him with such
sweet words as are linked together by spells known
only to woman—but his palette and pencils were,
nevertheless, burned in solemn holocaust that very
night, and the lady carried her point, as ladies must.
And to the importation of silks from Lyons was devoted,
thenceforth, the genius of a Raphael—perhaps!
Who knows?

The reader will naturally have gathered from this
dialogue that Miss Fanny Bellairs had black eyes,
and was rather below the middle stature. She was a
belle, and it is only belle-metal of this particular
description which is not fusible by “burning words.”
She had mind enough to appreciate fully the romance
and enthusiasm of her cousin, Philip Ballister, and
knew precisely the phenomena which a tall blonde
(this complexion of woman being soluble in love and
tears), would have exhibited under a similar experiment.
While the fire of her love glowed, therefore,
she opposed little resistance and seemed softened and
yielding, but her purpose remained unaltered, and she
rang out “no!” the next morning, with a tone as little
changed as a convent-bell from matins to vespers,
though it has passed meantime through the furnace
of an Italian noon.

Fanny was not a designing girl, either. She might
have found a wealthier customer for her heart than
her cousin Philip. And she loved this cousin as truly
and well as her nature would admit, or as need be,
indeed. But two things had conspired to give her
the unmalleable quality just described—a natural disposition
to confide, first and foremost, on all occasions,
in her own sagacity, and a vivid impression made upon
her mind by a childhood of poverty. At the age of
twelve she had been transferred from the distressed
fireside of her mother, Mrs. Bellairs, to the luxurious
roof of her aunt, Mrs. Ballister, and her mother dying
soon after, the orphan girl was adopted and treated as
a child; but the memory of the troubled health at
which she had first learned to observe and reason,
colored all the purposes and affections, thoughts,
impulses and wishes of the ripening girl, and to think
of happiness in any proximity to privation seemed to
her impossible, even though it were in the bosom of
love. Seeing no reason to give her cousin credit for
any knowledge of the world beyond his own experience,
she decided to think for him as well as love him, and
not being so much pressed as the enthusiastic painter
by the “besoin d'aimer et de se faire aimer,” she very
composedly prefixed, to the possession of her hand,
the trifling achievement of getting rich—quite sure
that if he knew as much as she, he would willingly run
that race without the incumbrance of matrimony.

The death of Mr. Ballister, senior, had left the
widow and her two boys more slenderly provided for
than was anticipated—Phil's portion, after leaving
college, producing the moderate income before mentioned.
The elder brother had embarked in his father's
business, and it was thought best on all hands for the
younger Ballister to follow his example. But Philip,
whose college leisure had been devoted to poetry and
painting, and whose genius for the latter, certainly,
was very decided, brought down his habits by a resolute
economy to the limits of his income, and took
up the pencil for a profession. With passionate enthusiasm,
great purity of character, distaste for all
society not in harmony with his favorite pursuit, and
an industry very much concentrated and rendered
effective by abstemious habits, Philip Ballister was
very likely to develop what genius might lie between
his head and hand, and his progress in the first year
had been allowed by eminent artists to give very
unusual promise. The Ballisters were still together
under the maternal roof, and the painter's studies
were the portraits of the family, and Fanny's picture
of course much the most difficult to finish. It would
be very hard if a painter's portrait of his liege mistress,
the lady of his heart, were not a good picture, and
Fanny Bellairs on canvass was divine accordingly. If
the copy had more softness of expression than the
original (as it was thought to have), it only proves that
wise men have for some time suspected, that love is
more dumb than blind, and the faults of our faultless
idols are noted, however unconsciously. Neither
thumb-screws nor hot coals—nothing probably but repentance
after matrimony—would have drawn from
Philip Ballister, in words, the same confession of his
mistress's foible that had oozed out through his
treacherous pencil!

Cupid is often drawn as a stranger pleading to be
“taken in,” but it is a miracle that he is not invariably
drawn as a portrait-painter. A bird tied to the muzzle
of a gun—an enemy who has written a book—an Indian
prince under the protection of Giovanni Bulletto (Tuscan
for John Bull),—is not more close upon demolition,
one would think, than the heart of a lady delivered
over to a painter's eyes, posed, draped and lighted
with the one object of studying her beauty. If there
be any magnetism in isolated attention, any in steadfast
gazing, any in passes of the hand hither and thither
—if there be any magic in ce doux demi-jour so loved
in France, in stuff for flattery ready pointed and feathered,
in freedom of admiration, “and all in the way of
business”—then is a loveable sitter to a love-like
painter in “parlous” vicinity (as the new school would
phrase it), to sweet-heart-land! Pleasure in a vocation
has no offset in political economy as honor has
(“the more honor the less profit,”) or portrait-painters
would be poorer than poets.

And malgré his consciousness of the quality which
required softening in his cousin's beauty, and malgré
his rare advantages for obtaining over her a lover's
proper ascendency, Mr. Philip Ballister bowed to the
stronger will of Miss Fanny Bellairs, and sailed for
France on his apprenticeship to Mammon.

The reader will please to advance five years. Before
proceeding thence with our story, however, let
us take a Parthian glance at the overstepped interval.

Philip Ballister had left New York with the triple
vow that he would enslave every faculty of his mind
and body to business, that he would not return till he
had made a fortune, and that such interstices as might
occur in the building up of this chateau for felicity
should be filled with sweet reveries about Fanny Bellairs.
The forsworn painter had genius, as we have

before hinted, and genius is (as much as it is any one
thing), the power of concentration. He entered upon
his duties accordingly with a force, and patience of
application, which soon made him master of what are
called business habits, and, once in possession of the
details, his natural cleverness gave him a speedy insight
to all the scope and tactics of his particular field of
trade. Under his guidance, the affairs of the house
were soon in a much more prosperous train, and after
a year's residence at Lyons, Philip saw his way very
clear to manage them with a long arm and take up his
quarters in Paris.

“Les fats sont les seuls hommes qui aient soin d'eux
mêmes,” says a French novelist, but there is a period,
early or late, in the lives of the cleverest men, when
they become suddenly curious as to their capacity for
the graces. Paris, to a stranger who does not visit in
the Faubourg St. Germain, is a republic of personal
exterior, where the degree of privilege depends with
Utopian impartiality on the style of the outer man;
and Paris, therefore, if he is not already a Bachelor
of Arts (qu?—beau's Arts), usually serves the traveller
as an Alma Mater of the pomps and vanities.

Phil. Ballister, up to the time of his matriculation
in Chaussée D'Antin, was a romantic-looking sloven.
From this to a very dashing coxcomb is but half a step,
and to be rid of the coxcombry and retain a look of
fashion, is still within the easy limits of imitation.
But—to obtain superiority of presence with no apparent
aid from dress and no describable manner, and to display
at the same time every natural advantage in effective
relief, and, withal, to adapt this subtle philtre,
not only to the approbation of the critical and censorious,
but to the taste of fair women gifted with judgment
as God pleases—this is a finish not born with
any man (though unsuccessful if it do not seem to be),
and never reached in the apprenticeship of life, and
never reached at all by men not much above their
fellows. He who has it, has “bought his doublet in
Italy, his round hose in France, his bonnet in Germany,
and his behavior everywhere,” for he must know,
as a chart of quicksands, the pronounced models of
other nations; but to be a “picked man of countries,”
and to have been a coxcomb and a man of fashion, are,
as a painter would say, but the setting of the palette
toward the making of the chef-d'œuvre.

Business prospered and the facilities of leisure increased,
while Ballister passed through these transitions
of taste, and he found intervals to travel, and
time to read, and opportunity to indulge; as far as he
could with the eye only, his passion for knowledge in
the arts. To all that appertained to the refinement
of himself, he applied the fine feelers of a delicate and
passionate construction, physical and mental, and, as
the reader will already have included, wasted on culture
comparatively unprofitable, faculties that would have
been better employed but for the meddling of Miss
Fanny Bellairs.

Ballister's return from France was heralded by the
arrival of statuary and pictures, books, furniture, and
numberless articles of tasteful and costly luxury. The
reception of these by the family at home threw rather
a new light on the probable changes in the long-absent
brother, for, from the signal success of the business
he had managed, they had very paturally supposed
that it was the result only of unremitted and plodding
care. Vague rumors of changes in his personal appearance
had reached them, such as might be expected
from conformity to foreign fashions, but those who
had seen Philip Ballister in France, and called subsequently
on the family in New York, were not people
qualified to judge of the man, either from their own
powers of observation or from any confidence he was
likely to put forward while in their society. His
letters had been delightful, but they were confined to
third-person topics, descriptions of things likely to interest
them, &c., and Fanny had few addressed personally
to herself, having thought it worth while, for
the experiment's sake or for some other reason, to see
whether love would subsist without its usual pabulum
of tender correspondence, and a veto on love-letters
having served her for a parting injunction at Phil's
embarkation for Havre. However varied by their
different fancies, the transformation looked for by the
whole family was substantially the same—the romantic
artist sobered down to a practical, plain man of business.
And Fanny herself had an occasional misgiving
as to her relish for his counting-house virtues and
manners; though, on the detection of the feeling, she
immediately closed her eyes upon it, and drummed
up her delinquent constancy for “parade and inspection.”

All bustles are very much alike (we use the word
as defined in Johnson), and the reader will appreciate
our delicacy, besides, in not intruding on the first reunion
of relatives and lovers long separated.

The morning after Philip Ballister's arrival, the
family sat long at breakfast. The mother's gaze
fastened untiringly on the features of her son—still her
boy—prying into them with a vain effort to reconcile
the face of the man with the cherished picture of the
child with sunny locks, and noting little else than the
work of inward change upon the countenance and expression.
The brother, with the predominant feeling
of respect for the intelligence and industry of one who
had made the fortunes of the house, read only subdued
sagacity in the perfect simplicity of his whole exterior.
And Fanny—Fanny was puzzled. The bourgeoisie
and leger-bred hardness of manner which she had
looked for were not there, nor any variety of the
“foreign slip-slop” common to travelled youth, nor
any superciliousness, nor (faith!) any wear and tear
of youth or good looks—nothing that she expected—
nothing! Not even a French guard-chain!

What there was in her cousin's manners and exterior,
however, was much more difficult to define by
Miss Bellairs than what there was not. She began the
renewal of their intercourse with very high spirits,
herself—the simple nature and unpretendingness of
his address awakening only an unembarrassed pleasure
at seeing him again—but she soon began to suspect
there was an exquisite refinement in this very simplicity,
and to wonder at “the trick of it;” and after
the first day passed in his society, her heart beat when
he spoke to her, as it did not use to beat when she
was sitting to him for her picture, and listening to his
passionate love-making. And with all her faculties she
studied him. What was the charm of his presence! He
was himself, and himself only. He seemed perfect, but
he seemed to have arrived at perfection like a statue,
not like a picture—by what had been taken away, not
by what had been laid on. He was as natural as a bird,
and as graceful and unembarrassed. He neither forced
conversation, nor pressed the little attentions of the drawing-room,
and his attitudes were full of repose; yet she
was completely absorbed in what he said, and she had
been impressed imperceptibly with his high-bred politeness,
and the singular elegance of his person. Fanny
felt there was a change in her relative position to her
cousin. In what it consisted, or which had the advantage,
she was perplexed to discover—but she bit
her lips as she caught herself thinking that if she were
not engaged to marry Philip Ballister, she should
suspect that she had just fallen irrecoverably in love
with him.

It would have been a novelty in the history of Miss
Bellairs that any event to which she had once consented,
should admit of reconsideration; and the
Ballister family, used to her strong will, were confirmed
fatalists as to the coming about of her ends and
aims. Her marriage with Philip, therefore, was

discussed, cœur ouvert, from his first arrival, and, indeed,
in her usual fashion of saving others the trouble
of making up their minds, “herself had named the
day.” This, it is true, was before his landing, and
was then, an effort of considerable magnanimity, as
the expectant Penelope was not yet advised of her
lover's state of preservation or damages by eares and
keeping. If Philip had not found his wedding-day
fixed on his arrival, however, he probably would have
had a voice in the naming of it, for with Fanny's new
inspirations as to his character, there had grown up a
new flower in her garden of beauties—timidity!
What bird of the air had sown the seed in such a soil
was a problem to herself—but true it was!—the confident
belle had grown a blushing trembler! She
would as soon have thought of bespeaking her wings
for the sky, as to have ventured on naming the day in
a short week after.

The day was named, however, and the preparations
went on—nem. con.—the person most interested (after
herself) accepting every congratulation and allusion,
touching the event, with the most impenetrable suavity.
The marbles and pictures, upholstery and services,
were delivered over to the order of Miss Bellairs, and
Philip, disposed, apparently, to be very much a recluse
in his rooms, or at other times, engrossed by troops
of welcoming friends, saw much less of his bride elect
than suited her wishes, and saw her seldom alone. By
particular request, also, he took no part in the 'plenishing
and embellishing of the new abode—not permitted
even to inquire where it was situated, and under this
cover, besides the pleasure of having her own way,
Fanny concealed a little secret, which, when disclosed,
she now felt, would figure forth to Philip's comprehension,
her whole scheme of future happiness. She had
taken the elder brother into her counsels a fortnight
after Philip's return, and, with his aid and consent,
had abandoned the original idea of a house in town,
purchased a beautifully-secluded estate and cottage
ornée, on the East river, and transferred thither all the
objects of art, furniture, &c. One room only of the
maternal mansion was permitted to contribute its
quota to the completion of the bridal dwelling—the
wing, never since inhabited, in which Philip had made
his essay as a painter—and without variation of a cobweb,
and with whimsical care and effort on the part
of Miss Fanny, this apartment was reproduced at
Revedere—her own picture on the easel, as it stood
on the night of his abandonment of his art, and palette,
pencils and colors in tempting readiness on the table.
Even the fire-grate of the old studio had been re-set
in the new, and the cottage throughout had been refitted
with a view to occupation in the winter. And
to sundry hints on the part of the elder brother, that
some thought should be given to a city residence—
for the Christmas holydays, at least—Fanny replied,
through a blush, that she should never wish to see the
town—with Philip at Revedere!

Five years had ripened and mellowed the beauty
of Fanny Bellairs, and the same summer-time of youth
had turned into fruit the feeling left by Philip in bud
and flower. She was ready now for love. She had
felt the variable temper of society, and there was a
presentiment in the heart of receding flatteries, and
the winter of life. It was with mournful self-reproach
that she thought of the years wasted in separation, of
her own choosing, from the man she loved, and with
the power to recall time, she would have thanked
God with tears of joy for the privilege of retracing
the chain of life to that link of parting. Not worth a
day of those lost years, she bitterly confessed to herself,
was the wealth they had purchased.

It lacked as little as one week of “the happy day,”
when the workmen were withdrawn from Revedere,
and the preparations for a family breakfast, to be succeeded
by the agreeable surprise to Philip of inform
ing him he was at home, were finally completed. One
or two very intimate friends were added to the party,
and the invitations (from the elder Ballister) proposed
simply a dejeuner sur l'herbe in the grounds of an unoccupied
villa, the property of an acquaintance.

With the subsiding of the excitement of return, the
early associations which had temporarily confused and
colored the feelings of Philip Ballister, settled gradually
away, leaving uppermost once more the fastidious
refinement of the Parisian. Through this medium,
thin and cold, the bubbles from the breathing of the
heart of youth, rose rarely and reluctantly. The Ballisters
held a good station in society, without caring
for much beyond the easy conveniences of life, and
Fanny, though capable of any degree of elegance, had
not seen the expediency of raising the tone of her
manners above that of her immediate friends. Without
being positively distasteful to Philip, the family
circle, Fanny included, left him much to desire in the
way of society, and unwilling to abate the warmth of
his attentions while with them, he had latterly pleaded
occupation more frequently, and passed his time in
the more congenial company of his library of art.
This was the less noticed that it gave Miss Bellairs
the opportunity to make frequent visits to the workmen
at Revedere, and in the polished devotion of her
betrothed, when with her, Fanny saw nothing reflected
but her own daily increasing tenderness and admiration.

The morning of the fête came in like the air in an
overture—a harmony of all the instruments of summer.
The party were at the gate of Revedere by ten,
and the drive through the avenue to the lawn drew a
burst of delighted admiration from all. The place was
exquisite, and seen in its glory, and Fanny's heart was
brimming with gratified pride and exultation. She
assumed at once the dispensation of the honors, and
beautiful she looked with her snowy dress and raven
ringlets flitting across the lawn, and queening it like
Perdita among the flowers. Having narrowly escaped
bursting into tears of joy when Philip pronounced the
place prettier than anything he had seen in his travels,
she was, for the rest of the day, calmly happy, and
with the grateful shade, the delicious breakfast in the
grove, the rambling and boating on the river, the hours
passed off like dreams, and no one even hinted a regret
that the house itself was under lock and bar. And
so the sun set, and the twilight came on, and the
guests were permitted to order round their carriages
and depart, the Ballisters accompanying them to the
gate. And, on the return of the family through the
avenue, excuses were made for idling hither and thither,
till lights began to show through the trees, and by
the time of their arrival at the lawn, the low windows
of the cottage poured forth streams of light, and the
open doors, and servants busy within, completed a
scene more like magic than reality. Philip was led in
by the excited girl who was the fairy of the spell, and
his astonishment at the discovery of his statuary and
pictures, books and furniture, arranged in complete
order within, was fed upon with the passionate delight
of love in authority.

When an hour had been spent in examining and
admiring the different apartments, an inner room was
thrown open, in which supper was prepared, and this
fourth act in the day's drama was lingered over in untiring
happiness by the family.

Mrs. Ballister, the mother, rose and retired, and
Philip pleaded indisposition, and begged to be shown
to the room allotted to him. This was ringing-up the
curtain for the last act sooner than had been planned by
Fanny, but she announced herself as his chamberlain,
and with her hands affectionately crossed on his arm,
led him to a suite of rooms in a wing still unvisited,
and with a good-night kiss left him at the open door
of the revived studio, furnished for the night with a

bachelor's bed. Turning upon the threshold, he
closed the door with a parting wish of sweet dreams,
and Fanny, after listening a moment with a vain hope
of overhearing some expression of pleasure, and lingering
again on her way back, to be overtaken by her
surprised lover, sought her own bed without rejoining
the circle, and passed a sleepless and happy night of
tears and joy.

Breakfast was served the next morning on a terrace
overlooking the river, and it was voted by acclamation,
that Fanny never before looked so lovely. As none
but the family were to be present, she had stolen a
march on her marriage wardrobe, and added to her
demi-toilet a morning cap of exquisite becomingness.
Altogether, she looked deliciously wife-like, and did
the honors of the breakfast-table with a grace and
sweetness that warmed out love and compliments even
from the sober soil of household intimacy. Philip
had not yet made his appearance, and they lingered
long at table, till at last a suggestion that he might be
ill started Fanny to her feet, and she ran to his door
before a servant could be summoned.

The rooms were open, and the bed had not been
occupied. The candle was burned to the socket, and
on the easel, resting against the picture, was a letter
addressed—“Miss Fanny Bellairs.”

LIGHT VERVAIN.

The foregoing is a leaf from a private diary which I
kept at Rome. In making a daily entry of such
passing stuff as interests us, we sometimes, amid much
that should be ticketed for oblivion, record that which
has a bearing, important or amusing, on the future;
and a late renewal of my acquaintance with Mr. F—,
followed by a knowledge of some fortunate changes
in his worldly condition, has given that interest to this
otherwise unimportant scrap of diary which will be
made apparent presently to the reader. A vague
recollection that I had something in an old book
which referred to him, induced me to look it up, and
I was surprised to find that I had noted down, in this
trifling anecdote, what turned out to be the mainspring
of his destiny.

F— returned to his native country after five years
study of the great masters of Italy. His first pictures
painted at Rome procured for him, as is stated in the
diary I have quoted, a high reputation. He carried
with him a style of his own which was merely stimulated
and heightened by his first year's walk through
the galleries of Florence, and the originality and boldness
of his manner of coloring seemed to promise a
sustained novelty in the art. Gradually, however, the
awe of the great masters seemed to overshadow his
confidence in himself, and as he travelled and deepened
his knowledge of painting, he threw aside feature
after feature of his own peculiar style, till at last he
fell into the track of the great army of imitators, who
follow the immortals of the Vatican as doomed ships
follow the Flying Dutchman.

Arrived at home, and depending solely on his art
for a subsistence, F— commenced the profession to
which he had served so long an apprenticeship. But
his pictures sadly disappointed his friends. After the
first specimens of his acquired style in the annual exhibitions,
the calls at his rooms became fewer and
farther between, and his best works were returned
from the galleries unsold. Too proud to humor the
popular taste by returning to what he considered an
inferior stage of his art, he stood still with his reputation
ebbing from him, and as his means, of course,
depended on the tide of public favor, he was soon involved
in troubles before which his once-brilliant hopes
rapidly faded.

At this juncture he received the following letter:—

Mrs. F—, as will be seen from the style of her letter,
is a woman of decision and cleverness, and of such
a helpmeet, in the way of his profession as well as in
the tenderer relations of life, F— was sorely in need.
By her common-sense counsels and persuasion, he
has gone back with his knowledge of the art to the
first lights of his own powerful genius, and with
means to command leisure and experiment, he is,
without submitting the process to the world, perfecting
a manner which will more than redeem his early
promise.

As his career, though not very uncommon or dramatic,
hinged for its more fortunate events on an act
of high-spirited politeness, I have thought, that in
this age of departed chivalry, the story was worth
preserving for its lesson.

NORA MEHIDY;
OR, THE STRANGE ROAD TO THE HEART OF MR. HYPOLET LEATHERS.

Now, Heaven rest the Phœnicians for their pleasant
invention of the art of travel.

This is to be a story of love and pride, and the hero's
name is Hypolet Leathers.

You have smiled prematurely, my friend and reader,
if you “think you see” Mr. Leathers foreshadowed,
as it were, in his name.

(Three mortal times have I mended this son of a
goose of a pen, and it will not—as you see by the
three unavailing attempts recorded above—it will not
commence, for me, this tale, with a practicable beginning.)

The sun was rising (I think this promises well)—
leisurely rising was the sun on the opposite side of the
Susquehannah. The tall corn endeavored to lift its
silk tassel out of the sloppy fog that had taken upon
itself to rise from the water and prognosticate a hot fair
day, and the driver of the Binghamton stage drew over
his legs a two-bushel bag as he cleared the street of
the village, and thought that, for a summer's morning,
it was “very cold”—wholly unaware, however,
that, in murmuring thus, he was expressing himself
as Hamlet did while waiting for his father's ghost upon
the platform.

Inside the coach were three passengers. A gentleman
sat by the window on the middle seat, with his
cloak over his lap, watching the going to heaven of
the fog that had fulfilled its destiny. His mind was
melancholy—partly for the contrast he could not but
draw between this exemplary vapor and himself, who
was “but a vapor,”[1] and partly that his pancreas began
to apprehend some interruption of the thorough-fare
above—or, in other words, that he was hungry
for his breakfast, having gone supperless to bed. He
mused as he rode. He was a young man, about
twenty-five, and had inherited from his father, John
Leathers, a gentleman's fortune, with the two drawbacks
of a name troublesome to Phœbus (“Phœbus!
what a name!”), and premature gray hair. He was,
in all other respects, a finished and well-conditioned
hero—tall, comely, courtly, and accomplished—and
had seen the sight-worthy portions of the world, and
knew their differences. Travel, indeed, had become
a kind of diseased necessity with him—for he fled
from the knowledge of his name, and from the observation
of his gray hair, like a man fleeing from two
fell phantoms. He was now returning from Niagara,

and left the Mohawk route to see where the Susquehannah
makes its Great Bend in taking final leave of
Mr. Cooper, who lives above; and at the village of
the Great Bend he was to eat that day's breakfast.

On the back seat, upon the leather cushion, behind
Mr. Leathers, sat two other chilly persons, a middle-aged
man and a girl of sixteen—the latter with her
shawl drawn close to her arms, and her dark eyes bent
upon her knees, as if to warm them (as unquestionably
they did). Her black curls swung out from her
bonnet, like ripe grapes from the top of an arbor—
heavy, slumberous, bulky, prodigal black curls—oh,
how beautiful! And I do not know that it would be
a “trick worth an egg” to make any mystery of these
two persons. The gentleman was John Mehidy, the
widowed tailor of Binghamton, and the lady was Nora
Mehidy, his daughter; and they were on their way to
New York to change the scene, Mrs. Mehidy having
left the painful legacy of love—her presence—behind
her. For, ill as he could afford the journey, Mr. Mehidy
thought the fire of Nora's dark eyes might be
put out with water, and he must go where every
patch and shred would not set her a weeping. She
“took it hard,” as they describe grief for the dead in
the country.

The Great Bend is a scene you may look at with
pleasure, even while waiting for procrastinated prog,
and Hypolet Leathers had been standing for ten minutes
on the high bank around which the Susquehannah
sweeps, like a train of silver tissue after a queen
turning a corner, when past him suddenly tripped Nora
Mehidy bonnetless, and stood gazing on the river
from the outer edge of the precipice. Leathers's visual
consciousness dropped into that mass of clustering
hair like a ring into the sea, and disappeared.
His soul dived after it, and left him with no sense or
remembrance of how his outer orbs were amusing
themselves. Of what unpatented texture of velvet,
and of what sifting of diamond dust were those lights
and shadows manufactured! What immeasurable
thickness in those black flakes—compared, with all
locks that he had ever seen, as an edge of cocoameat,
fragrantly and newly broken, to a torn leaf, limp
with wilting. Nora stood motionless, absorbed in the
incomparable splendor of that silver hook bent into
the forest—Leathers as motionless, absorbed in her
wilderness of jetty locks—till the barkeeper rang the
bell for them to come to breakfast. Ah, Hypolet!
Hypolet! what dark thought came to share, with that
innocent beefsteak, your morning's digestion!

That tailors have, and why they have, the handsomest
daughters, in all countries, have been points
of observation and speculation for physiology, written
and unwritten. Most men know the fact. Some
writers have ventured to guess at the occult secret.
But I think “it needs no ghost, come from the grave,”
to unravel the matter. Their vocation is the embellishment—partly
indeed the creation—of material
beauty. If philosophy sit on their shears (as it should
ever), there are questions to decide which discipline
the sense of beauty—the degree in which fashion
should be sacrificed to becomingness, and the resistance
to the invasion of the poetical by whim and
usage, for example—and as a man thinketh—to a certain
degree—so is his daughter. Beauty is the business-thought
of every day, and the desire to know
how best to remedy its defects is the ache and agony
of the tailor's soul, if he be ambitious. Why should
not this have its exponent on the features of the race,
as other strong emotions have—plastic and malleable
as the human body is, by habit and practice. Shakspere,
by-the-way, says—

and I own to the dulness of never till now apprehending
that this remarkable passage typifies the steeping
of superfine broadcloth (made into superfine habits)
into the woof and warp of the tailor's idiosyncracy.
Q. E. D.

Nora Mehidy had ways with her that, if the world
had not been thrown into a muss by Eve and Adam,
would doubtless have been kept for queens. Leathers
was particularly struck with her never lifting up
her eyelids till she was ready. If she chanced to be
looking thoughtfully down when he spoke to her,
which was her habit of sadness just now, she heard
what he had to say and commenced replying—and
then, slowly, up went the lids, combing the loving air
with their long lashes, and no more hurried than the
twilight taking its fringes off the stars. It was adorable—altogether
adorable! And her hands and lips,
and feet and shoulders, had the same contemptuous
and delicious deliberateness.

On the second evening, at half-past five—just half
an hour too late for the “Highlander” steamer—the
“Binghamton stage” slid down the mountain into
Newburgh. The next boat was to touch at the pier
at midnight, and Leathers had six capacious hours to
work on the mind of John Mehidy. What was the
process of that fiendish temptation, what the lure and
the resistance, is a secret locked up with Moloch—
but it was successful! The glorious chevelure of the
victim—(sweet descriptive word—chevelure!)—the
matchless locks that the matchlocks of armies should
have defended—went down in the same boat with Nora
Mehidy, but tied up in Mr. Leathers' linen pocket-handkerchief!
And, in one week from that day, the
head of Hypolet Leathers was shaven nude, and the
black curls of Nora Mehidy were placed upon its
irritated organs in an incomparable WIG!!

A year had elapsed. It was a warm day, in No. 77
of the Astor, and Hypolet Leathers, Esq., arrived a
week before by the Great Western, sat aiding the
evaporation from his brain by lotions of iced lavender.
His wig stood before him, on the blockhead that was
now his inseparable companion, the back toward him;
and, as the wind chased of the volatile lavender from
the pores of his skull, he toyed thoughtfully with the
lustrous curls of Nora Mehidy. His heart was on
that wooden block! He dressed his own wig habitually,
and by dint of perfuming, combing, and caressing
those finger-like ringlets—he had tangled up his
heart in their meshes. A phantom, with the superb
face of the owner, stayed with the separated locks, and
it grew hourly more palpable and controlling. The
sample had made him sick at heart for the remainder.
He wanted the rest of Nora Mehidy. He had come
over for her. He had found John Mehidy, following
his trade obscurely in a narrow lane, and he had asked
for Nora's hand. But though this was not the whole
of his daughter, and he had already sold part of her
to Leathers, he shook his head over his shiny shears.
Even if Nora could be propitiated after the sacrifice
she had made (which he did not believe she could be),
he would as lief put her in the world of spirits as in a
world above him. She was his life, and he would not
give his life willingly to a stranger who would take it
from him, or make it too fine for his using. Oh, no!
Nora must marry a tailor, if she marry at all—and
this was the adamantine resolution, stern and without
appeal, of John Mehidy.

Some six weeks after this, a new tailoring establishment
of great outlay and magnificence was opened
in Broadway. The show-window was like a new revelation
of stuff for trowsers, and resplendent, but not
gaudy, were the neckcloths and waistcoatings—for
absolute taste regined over all. There was not an article
on show possible to William street—not a waistcoat
that, seen in Maiden lane, would not have been
as unsphered as the Lost Pleiad in Botany Bay. It
was quite clear that there was some one of the firm

of “Mehidy & Co.” (the new sign) who exercised
his taste “from within, out,” as the Germans say of
the process of true poetry. He began inside a gentleman,
that is to say, to guess at what was wanted for
a gentleman's outside. He was a tailor-gentleman,
and was therefore, and by that quality only, fitted to
be a gentleman's tailor.

The dandies flocked to Mehidy & Co. They
could not be measured immediately—oh no! The
gentleman to be built was requested to walk about the
shop for a half hour, till the foreman got him well in
his eye, and then to call again in a week. Meantime
he would mark his customer in the street, to see how
he performed. Mehidy & Co. never ventured to take
measure for terra incognita. The man's gait, shrug,
speed, style, and quality, were all to be allowed for,
and these were not seen in a minute. And a very
sharp and stylish looking fellow seemed that foreman
to be. There was evidently spoiled some very capable
stuff for a lord when he was made a tailor.

And, faith! it was a study to see him take a customer's
measure! The quiet contempt with which he
overruled the man's indigenous idea of a coat!—the
rather satirical comments on his peculiarities of wearing
his kerseymere!—the cool survey of the adult to
be embellished, as if he were inspecting him for admission
to the grenadiers! On the whole, it was a
nervous business to be measured for a coat by that
fellow with the devilish fine head of black hair!

And, with the hair upon his head, from which Nora
had once no secrets—with the curls upon his cheek
and temples which had once slumbered peacefully
over hers, Hypolet Leathers, the foreman of “Mehidy
& Co.,” made persevering love to the tailor's magnificent
daughter. For she was magnificent! She
had just taken that long stride from girl to woman,
and her person had filled out to the imperial and voluptuous
model indicated by her deliberate eyes.
With a dusky glow in her cheek, that looked like a
peach teinted by a rosy twilight, her mouth, up to the
crimson edge of its bow of Cupid, was moulded with
the slumberous fairness of newly wrought sculpture,
and gloriously beautiful in expression. She was a
creature for whom a butterfly might do worm over
again—to whose condition in life, if need be, a prince
might proudly come down. Ah, queenly Nora Mehidy!

But the wooing—alas! the wooing throve slowly!
That lovely head was covered again with prodigal
locks, in short and massive clusters, but Leathers was
pertinacious as to his property in the wig, and its becomingness
and indispensableness—and to be made
love to by a man in her own hair!—to be obliged to
keep her own dark curls at a respectful distance!—to
forbid all intercourse between them and their children-ringlets,
as it were—it roughened the course of
Leathers's true love that Nora must needs be obliged
to reason on such singular dilemmas. For, though a
tailor's daughter, she had been furnished by nature
with an imagination!

But virtue, if nothing more and no sooner, is its
own reward, and in time “to save its bacon.” John
Mehidy's fortune was pretty well assured in the course
of two years, and made, in his own line, by his proposed
son-in-law, and he could no longer refuse to
throw into the scale the paternal authority. Nora's
hair was, by this time, too, restored to its pristine
length and luxuriousness, and, on condition that Hypolet
would not exact a new wig from his new possessions,
Nora, one summer's night, made over to him
the remainder. The long-exiled locks revisited their
natal soil, during the caresses which sealed the compact,
and a very good tailor was spoiled the week
after, for the married Leathers became once more a
gentleman at large, having bought, in two instalments,
at an expense of a hundred dollars, a heart, and two
years of service, one of the finest properties of which
Heaven and a gold ring ever gave mortal the copyhold!

THE PHARISEE AND THE BARBER.

Sheafe lane, in Boston, is an almost unmentionable
and plebeian thoroughfare, between two very
mentionable and patrician streets. It is mainly used
by bakers, butchers, urchins going to school, and
clerks carrying home parcels—in short, by those who
care less for the beauty of the road than for economy
of time and shoe-leather. If you please, it is a shabby
hole. Children are born there, however, and people
die and marry there, and are happy and sad there, and
the great events of life, more important than our
liking or disliking of Sheafe lane, take place in it
continually. It used not to be a very savory place.
Yet it has an indirect share of such glory as attaches
to the birth-places of men above the common. The
(present) great light of the Unitarian church was born
at one end of Sheafe lane, and one of the most accomplished
merchant gentlemen in the gay world of New
York was born at the other. And in the old Haymarket
(a kind of cul-de-sac, buried in the side of
Sheaf lane), stood the dusty lists of chivalric old
Roulstone, a gallant horseman, who in other days
would have been a knight of noble devoir, though in
the degeneracy of a Yankee lustrum, he devoted his
soldierly abilities to the teaching of young ladies how
to ride.

Are you in Sheafe lane? (as the magnetisers inquire).
Please to step back twenty-odd years, and
take the hand of a lad with a rosy face (ourself—for
we lived in Sheafe lane twenty-odd years ago), and
come to a small house, dingy yellow, with a white
gate. The yard is below the level of the street.
Mind the step.

The family are at breakfast in the small parlor
fronting on the street. But come up this dark staircase,
to the bedroom over the parlor—a very neat
room, plainly furnished; and the windows are curtained,
and there is one large easy chair, and a stand
with a bible open upon it. In the bed lies an old man
of seventy, deaf, nearly blind, and bed-ridden.

We have now shown you what comes out of the
shadows to us, when we remember the circumstances
we are about to body forth in a sketch, for it can
scarcely be called a story.

It wanted an hour to noon. The Boylston clock
struck eleven, and close on the heel of the last stroke
followed the tap of the barber's knuckle on the door

of the yellow house in Sheafe lane. Before answering
to the rap, the maid-of-all-work filled a tin can from
the simmering kettle, and surveying herself in a three-cornered
bit of looking-glass, fastened on a pane of the
kitchen window; then, with a very soft and sweet
“good morning,” to Rosier, the barber, she led the
way to the old man's room.

“He looks worse to-day,” said the barber, as the
skinny hand of the old man crept up tremblingly to
his face, conscious of the daily office about to be performed
for him.

“They think so below stairs,” said Harriet, “and
one of the church is coming to pray with him to-night.
Shall I raise him up now?”

The barber nodded, and the girl seated herself near
the pillow, and lifting the old man, drew him upon her
breast, and as the operation went rather lingeringly on,
the two chatted together very earnestly.

Rosier was a youth of about twenty-one, talkative
and caressing, as all barbers are; and what with his
curly hair and ready smile, and the smell of soap that
seemed to be one of his natural properties, he was a
man to be thought of over a kitchen fire. Besides, he
was thriving in his trade, and not a bad match. All of
which was duly considered by the family with which
Harriet lived, for they loved the poor girl.

Poor girl, I say. But she was not poor, at least if
it be true that as a woman thinketh so is she. Most
people would have described her as a romantic girl.
And so she was, but without deserving a breath of the
ridicule commonly attached to the word. She was
uneducated, too, if any child of New England can be
called uneducated. Beyond school-books and the
Bible, she had read nothing but the Scottish Chiefs,
and this novel was to her what the works of God are
to others. It could never become familiar. It must
be the gate of dream-land; what the moon is to a
poet, what a grove is to a man of revery, what sunshine
is to all the world. And she mentioned it as
seldom as people praise sunshine, and lived in it as
unconsciously.

Harriet had never before been out to service. She
was a farmer's daughter, new from the country. If
she was not ignorant of the degradation of her condition
in life, she forgot it habitually. A cheerful and
thoughtful smile was perpetually on her lips, and the
hardships of her daily routine were encountered as
things of course, as clouds in the sky, as pebbles in
the inevitable path. He attention seemed to belong
to her body, but her consciousness only to her
imagination. In her voice and eyes there was no
touch or taint of her laborious servitude, and if
she had suddenly been “made a lady,” there would
have been nothing but her hard hands to redeem from
her low condition. Then, hard-working creature as
she was, she was touchingly beautiful. A coarse eye
would have passed her without notice, perhaps, but a
painter would not. She was of a fragile shape, and had
a slight stoop, but her head was small and exquisitely
moulded, and her slender neck, round, graceful, and
polished, was set upon her shoulders with the fluent
grace of a bird's. Her hair was profuse, and of a
tinge almost yellow in the sun, but her eyes were of a
blue, deep almost to blackness, and her heavy eye-lashes
darkened them still more deeply. She had the
least possible color in her cheeks. Her features were
soft and unmarked, and expressed delicacy and repose,
though her nostrils were capable of dilating with an
energy of expression that seemed wholly foreign to
her character.

Rosier had first seen Harriet when called in to the
old man, six months before, and they were now supposed
by the family to be engaged lovers, waiting only
for a little more sunshine on the barber's fortune.
Meantime, they saw each other at least half an hour
every morning, and commonly passed their evenings
together, and the girl seemed very tranquilly happy in
her prospect of marriage.

At four o'clock on the afternoon of the day before
mentioned, Mr. Flint was to make a spiritual visit to
the old man. Let us first introduce him to the reader.

Mr. Asa Flint was a bachelor of about forty-five,
and an “active member” of a church famed for its
zeal. He was a tall man, with a little bend in his
back, and commonly walked with his eyes upon the
ground, like one intent on meditation. His complexion
was sallow, and his eyes dark and deeply set; but
by dint of good teeth, and a little “wintry redness in
his cheek,” he was good-looking enough for all his
ends. He dressed in black, as all religious men must
(in Boston), and wore shoes with black stockings the
year round. In his worldly condition, Mr. Flint had
always been prospered. He spent five hundred dollars
a year in his personal expenses, and made five thousand
in his business, and subscribed, say two hundred
dollars a year to such societies as printed the name of
the donors. Mr. Flint had no worldly acquaintances.
He lived in a pious boarding-house, and sold all his
goods to the members of the country churches in
communion with his own. He “loved the brethren,”
for he wished to converse with no one who did not see
heaven and the church at his back—himself in the
foreground, and the other two accessories in the perspective.
Piety apart, he had found out at twenty-five,
that, as a sinner he would pass through the world
simply Asa Flint—as a saint, he would be Asa Flint
plus eternity and the respect of a large congregation.
He was a shrewd man, and chose the better part.
Also, he remembered, sin is more expensive than
sanctity.

At four o'clock Mr. Flint knocked at the door. At
the same hour there was a maternal prayer-meeting at
the vestry, and of course it was to be numbered
among his petty trials that he must find the mistress
of the house absent from home. He walked up
stairs, and after a look into the room of the sick man,
despatched the lad who had opened the door for him,
to request the “help” of the family to be present at
the devotions.

Harriet had a rather pleasing recollection of Mr.
Flint. He had offered her his arm, a week before, in
coming out from a conference meeting, and had “presumed
that she was a young lady on a visit” to the
mistress! She arranged her 'kerchief and took the
kettle off the fire.

Mr. Flint was standing by the bedside with folded
hands. The old man lay looking at him with a kind
of uneasy terror in his face, which changed, as Harriet
entered, to a smile of relief. She retired modestly to
the foot of the bed, and, hidden by the curtain, open
only at the side, she waited the commencement of the
prayer.

“Kneel there, little boy!” said Mr. Flint, pointing
to a chair on the other side of the light-stand, “and
you, my dear, kneel here by me! Let us pray!”

Harriet had dropped upon her knees near the corner
of the bed, and Mr. Flint dropped upon his, on
the other side of the post, so that after raising his
hands in the first adjuration, they descended gradually,
and quite naturally, upon the folded hands of the
neighbor—and there they remained. She dared not
withdraw them, but as his body rocked to and fro in
his devout exercise, she drew back her head to avoid
coming into farther contact, and escaped with only his
breath upon her temples.

It was a very eloquent prayer. Mr. Flint's voice,
in a worldly man, would have been called insinuating,
but its kind of covert sweetness, low and soft, seemed,
in a prayer, only the subdued monotony of reverence
and devotion. But it won upon the ear all the same.
He began, with a repetition of all the most sublime
ascriptions of the psalmist, filling the room, it appeared

to Harriet, with a superhuman presence. She trembled
to be so near him with his words of awe. Gradually
he took up the more affecting and tender passages
of scripture, and drew the tears into her eyes
with the pathos of his tone and the touching images
he wove together. His hand grew moist upon hers,
and he leaned closer to her. He began, after a short
pause, to pray for her especially—that her remarkable
beauty might not be a snare to her—that her dove-like
eyes might beam only on the saddened faces of
the saints—that she might be enabled to shun the
company of the worldly, and consort only with God's
people—and that the tones of prayer now in her ears
might sink deep into her heart as the voice of one
who would never cease to feel an interest in her temporal
and eternal welfare. His hand tightened its
grasp upon hers, and his face turned more toward
her; and as Harriet, blushing, spite of the awe
weighing on her heart, stole a look at the devout
man, she met the full gaze of his coal-black eyes
fixed unwinkingly upon her. She was entranced.
She dared not stir, and she dared not take her
eyes from his. And when he came to his amen, she
sank back upon the ground, and covered her face with
her hands. And presently she remembered, with
some wonder, that the old man, for whom Mr. Flint
had come to pray, had not been even mentioned in
the prayer.

The lad left the room after the amen, and Mr. Flint
raised Harriet from the floor and seated her upon a
chair out of the old man's sight, and pulled a hymnbook
from his pocket, and sat down beside her. She
was a very enthusiastic singer, to say the least, and he
commonly led the singing at the conferences, and so,
holding her hand that she might beat the time with
him, he passed an hour in what he would call very
sweet communion. And by this time the mistress of
the family came home, and Mr. Flint took his leave.

From that evening, Mr. Flint fairly undertook the
“eternal welfare” of the beautiful girl. From her
kind mistress he easily procured for her the indulgence
due to an awakened sinner, and she had permission
to frequent the nightly conference, Mr. Flint
always charging himself with the duty of seeing her
safely home. He called sometimes in the afternoon,
and had a private interview to ascertain the “state of
her mind,” and under a strong “conviction” of something
or other, the excited girl lived now in a constant
revery, and required as much looking after as a child.
She was spoiled as a servant, but Mr. Flint had only
done his duty by her.

This seemed all wrong to Rosier, the barber, however.
The bright, sweet face of the girl he thought
to marry, had grown sad, and her work went all amiss
—he could see that. She had no smile, and almost
no word, for him. He liked little her going out at
dusk when he could not accompany her, and coming
home late with the same man always, though a very
good man, no doubt. Then, once lately, when he
had spoken of the future, she had murmured something
which Mr. Flint had said about “marrying with
unbelievers,” and it stuck in Rosier's mind and troubled
him. Harriet grew thin and haggard besides,
though she paid more attention to her dress, and
dressed more ambitiously than she used to do.

We are reaching back over a score or more of
years for the scenes we are describing, and memory
drops here and there a circumstance by the way. The
reader can perhaps restore the lost fragments, if we
give what we remember of the outline.

The old man died, and Rosier performed the last
of his offices to fit him for the grave, and that, if we
remember rightly, was the last of his visits, but one,
to the white house in Sheafe lane. The bed was
scarce vacated by the dead, ere it was required again
for another object of pity. Harriet was put into it
with a brain fever. She was ill for many weeks, and
called constantly on Mr. Flint's name in her delirium;
and when the fever left her, she seemed to have but
one desire on earth—that he should come and see
her. Message after message was secretly carried to
him by the lad, whom she had attached to her with
her uniform kindness and sweet temper, but he never
came.. She relapsed after a while into a state of stupor,
like idiocy, and when day after day passed without
amendment, it was thought necessary to send for
her father to take her home.

A venerable looking old farmer, with white hairs,
drove his rough wagon into Sheafe lane one evening,
we well remember. Slowly, with the aid of his long
staff, he crept up the narrow staircase to his daughter's
room, and stood a long time, looking at her in
silence. She did not speak to him.

He slept upon a bed made up at the side of hers,
upon the floor, and the next morning he went out
early for his horse, and she was taken up and dressed
for the journey. She spoke to no one, and when the
old man had breakfasted, she quietly submitted to be
carried toward the door. The sight of the street first
seemed to awaken some recollection, and suddenly in
a whisper she called to Mr. Flint.

“Who is Mr. Flint?” asked the old man.

Rosier was at the gate, standing there with his hat
off to bid her farewell. She stopped upon the side-walk,
and looked around hurriedly.

“He is not here—I'll wait for him!” cried Harriet,
in a troubled voice, and she let go her father's arm
and stepped back.

They took hold of her and drew her toward the
wagon, but she struggled to get free, and moaned like
a child in grief. Rosier took her by the hand and
tried to speak to her, but he choked, and the tears
came to his eyes. Apparently she did not know him.

A few passers-by gathered around now, and it was
necessary to lift her into the wagon by force, for the
distressed father was confused and embarrassed with
her struggles, and the novel scene around him. At
the suggestion of the mistress of the family, Rosier
lifted her in his arms and seated her in the chair intended
for her, but her screams began to draw a crowd
around, and her struggles to free herself were so violent,
that it was evident the old man could never take
her home alone. Rosier kindly offered to accompany
him, and as he held her in her seat and tried to sooth her,
the unhappy father got in beside her and drove away.

She reached home, Rosier informed us, in a state
of dreadful exhaustion, still calling on the name that
haunted her; and we heard soon after, that she relapsed
into a brain fever, and death soon came to her
with a timely deliverance from her trouble.

MRS. PASSABLE TROTT.

The temerity with which I hovered on the brink
of matrimony when a very young man could only be
appreciated by a fatuitous credulity. The number
of very fat mothers of very plain families who can
point me out to their respectable offspring as their
once imminent papa, is ludicrously improbable. The
truth was that I had a powerful imagination in my
early youth, and no “realizing sense.” A coral necklace,
warm from the wearer—a shoe with a little round
stain in the sole—anything flannel—a bitten rosebud
with the mark of a tooth upon it—a rose, a glove, a
thimble—either of these was agony, ecstasy! To anything
with curls and skirts, and especially if encircled
by a sky-blue sash, my heart was as prodigal as a
Croton hydrant. Ah me!

But, of all my short eternal attachments, Fidelia
Balch (since Mrs. P. Trott) was the kindest and fairest.
Faithless of course she was, since my name
does not begin with a T.—but if she did not continue
to love me—P. Trott or no P. Trott—she was shockingly
forsworn, as can be proved by several stars,
usually considered very attentive listeners. I rather
pitied poor Trott—for I knew

and he was rich and forty-odd. But they seemed to
live very harmoniously, and if I availed myself of
such little consolations as fell in my way, it was the
result of philosophy. I never forgot the faithless
Fidelia.

This is to be a disembowelled narrative, dear reader
—skipping from the maidenhood of my heroine to
her widowhood, fifteen years—yet I would have you
supply here and there a betweenity. My own sufferings
at seeing my adored Fidelia go daily into another
man's house and shut the door after her, you can
easily conceive. Though not in the habit of rebelling
against human institutions, it did seem to me that the
marriage ceremony had no business to give old Trott
quite so much for his money. But the aggravating
part of it was to come! Mrs. P. Trott grew prettier
every day, and of course three hundred and sixty-five
noticeable degrees prettier every year! She
seemed incapable of, or not liable to, wear and tear;
and probably old Trott was a man, in-doors, of very
even behavior. And, it should be said too, in explanation,
that, as Miss Balch, Fidelia was a shade too
fat for her model. She embellished as her dimples
grew shallower. Trifle by trifle, like the progress of
a statue, the superfluity fell away from nature's original
Miss Balch (as designed in Heaven), and when
old Passable died (and no one knew what that P.
stood for, till it was betrayed by the indiscreet plate
on his coffin) Mrs. Trott, thirty-three years old, was
at her maximum of beauty. Plump, taper, transparently
fair, with an arm like a high-conditioned Venus,
and a neck set on like the swell of a French horn,
she was consumedly good-looking. When I saw in
the paper, “Died. Mr. P. Trott,” I went out and
walked passed the house, with overpowering emotions.
Thanks to a great many refusals, I had been faithful!
I could bring her the same heart, unused and undamaged,
which I had offered her before! I could
generously overlook Mr. Trott's temporary occupation
(since he had left us his money!)—and when her
mourning should be over—the very day—the very
hour—her first love should be ready for her, good as
new!

I have said nothing of any evidences of continued
attachment on the part of Mrs. Trott. She was a
discreet person, and not likely to compromise Mr. P.
Trott till she knew the strength of his constitution.
But there was one evidence of lingering preference
which I built upon like a rock. I had not visited her
during these fifteen years. Trott liked me not—you
can guess why! But I had a nephew, five years old
when Miss Balch was my “privately engaged,” and
as like me, that boy, as could be copied by nature.
He was our unsuspecting messenger of love, going to
play in old Balch's garden when I was forbidden the
house, unconscious of the billet-doux in the pocket
of his pinafore; and to this boy, after our separation,
seemed Fidelia to cling. He grew up to a youth of
mind and manners, and still she cherished him. He
all but lived at old Trott's, petted and made much of
—her constant companion—reading, walking, riding—
indeed, when home from college, her sole society.
Are you surprised that, in all this, there was a tenderness
of reminiscence that touched and assured me?
Ah—

I thought it delicate, and best, to let silence do its
work during that year of mourning. I did not whisper
even to my nephew Bob the secret of my happiness.
I left one card of condolence after old Trott's
funeral, and lived private, counting the hours. The
slowest kind of eternity it appeared!

The morning never seemed to me to break with so
much difficulty and reluctance as on the anniversary
of the demise of Mr. Passable Trott—June 2, 1840.
Time is a comparative thing, I well know, but the
minutes seemed to stick, on that interminable morning.
I began to dress for breakfast at four—but details
are tiresome. Let me assure you that twelve
o'clock, A. M., did arrive! The clocks struck it, and
the shadows verified it.

I could not have borne an accidental “not at home,”
and I resolved not to run the risk of it. Lovers, besides,
are not tied to knockers and ceremony. I bribed
the gardener. Fidelia's boudoir, I knew, opened upon
the lawn, and it seemed more like love to walk in.
She knew—I knew—Fate and circumstance knew and
had ordained—that that morning was to be shoved up,
joined on, and dovetailed to our last separation. The
time between was to be a blank. Of course she expected
me.

The garden door was ajar—as paid for. I entered,
traversed the vegetable beds, tripped through the flower-walk,
and—oh bliss!—the window was open! I
could just see the Egyptian urn on its pedestal of
sphinxes, into which I knew (per Bob) she threw all
her fading roses. I glided near. I looked in at the
window.

Ah, that picture! She sat with her back to me—
her arm—that arm of rosy alabaster—thrown carelessly
over her chair—her egg-shell chin resting on her
other thumb and forefinger—her eyelids sweeping her
cheek—and a white—yes! a white bow in her hair.

And her dress was of snowy lawn—white, bridal
white! Adieu, old Passable Trott!

I wiped my eyes and looked again. Old Trott's
portrait hung on the wall, but that was nothing. Her
guitar lay on the table, and—did I see aright?—a
miniature just beside it! Perhaps of old Trott—taken
out for the last time. Well—well! He was a
very respectable man, and had been very kind to her,
most likely.

“Ehem!” said I, stepping over the sill, “Fidelia!”

She started and turned, and certainly looked surprised.

“Mr. G—!” said she.

“It is long since we parted!” I said, helping myself
to a chair.

“Quite long!” said Fidelia.

“So long that you have forgotten the name of
G—?” I asked tremulously.

“Oh no!” she replied, covering up the miniature
on the table by a careless movement of her scarf.

“And may I hope that that name has not grown
distasteful to you?” I summoned courage to say.

“N—, no! I do not know that it has, Mr. G—!”

The blood returned to my fainting heart! I felt as
in days of yore.

“Fidelia!” said I, “let me not waste the precious
moments. You loved me at twenty—may I hope that
I may stand to you in a nearer relation! May I venture
to think that our family is not unworthy of a
union with the Balches?—that, as Mrs. G—, you
could be happy?”

Fidelia looked—hesitated—took up the miniature,
and clasped it to her breast.

“Do I understand you rightly, Mr. G—!” she
tremulously exclaimed. “But I think I do! I remember
well what you were at twenty! This picture
is like what you were then—with differences, it is true,
but still like! Dear picture!” she exclaimed again,
kissing it with rapture.

(How could she have got my miniature?—but no
matter—taken by stealth, I presume. Sweet and eager
anticipation!)

“And Robert has returned from college, then?”
she said, inquiringly.

“Not that I know of,” said I.

“Indeed!—then he has written to you!”

“Not recently!”

“Ah, poor boy! he anticipated! Well, Mr. G—!
I will not affect to be coy where my heart has been so
long interested.”

(I stood ready to clasp her to my bosom.)

“Tell Robert my mourning is over—tell him his
name” (the name of G—, of course) “is the music
of my life, and that I will marry whenever he
pleases!”

A horrid suspicion crossed my mind.

“Pardon me!” said I; “whenever he pleases, did
you say? Why, particularly, when he pleases?”

“La! his not being of age is no impediment, I
hope!” said Mrs. Trott, with some surprise. “Look
at his miniature, Mr. G—! It has a boyish look,
it's true—but so had you—at twenty!”

Hope sank within me! I would have given worlds
to be away. The truth was apparent to me—perfectly
apparent. She loved that boy Bob—that child—
that mere child—and meant to marry him! Yet how
could it be possible! I might be—yes—I must be,
mistaken. Fidelia Balch—who was a woman when
he was an urchin in petticoats!—she to think of marrying
that boy! I wronged her—oh I wronged her!
But, worst come to the worst, there was no harm in
having it perfectly understood.

“Pardon me!” said I, putting on a look as if I
expected a shout of laughter for the mere supposition,
“I should gather—(categorically, mind you!—
only categorically)—I should gather from what you
said just now—(had I been a third person listening,
that is to say—with no knowledge of the parties)—I
should really have gathered that Bob—little Bob—was
the happy man, and not I! Now don't laugh at me!”

“You the happy man!—Oh, Mr. G—! you are
joking! Oh no! pardon me if I have unintentionally
misled you—but if I marry again, Mr. G—, it will
be a young man!!! In short, not to mince the matter,
Mr. G—! your nephew is to become my husband
(nothing unforeseen turning up), in the course
of the next week! We shall have the pleasure of
seeing you at the wedding, of course! Oh no! You!
I should fancy that no woman would make two unequal
marriages, Mr. G—! Good morning, Mr.
G—!”

I was left alone, and to return as I pleased, by the
vegetable garden or the front door. I chose the latter,
being somewhat piqued as well as inexpressibly
grieved and disappointed. But philosophy came to
my aid, and I soon fell into a mood of speculation.

“Fidelia is constant!” said I to myself—“constant,
after all! She made up her mouth for me at twenty.
But I did not stay twenty! Oh no! I, unadvisedly,
and without preparatively cultivating her taste for
thirty-five, became thirty-five. And now what was she
to do? Her taste was not at all embarked in Passable
Trott, and it stayed just as it was—waiting to be
called up and used. She locks it up decently till old
Trott dies, and then reproduces—what? Why, just
what she locked up—a taste for a young man at
twenty—and just such a young man as she loved when
she was twenty! Bob—of course! Bob is like me—
Bob is twenty! Be Bob her husband!

But I cannot say I quite like such constancy!

THE SPIRIT-LOVE OF “IONE S—,”
(SINCE DISCOVERED TO BE MISS JONES.)

Not long ago, but before poetry and pin-money
were discovered to be cause and effect, Miss Phebe
Jane Jones was one of the most charming contributors
to a certain periodical now gone over “Lethe's wharf.”
Her signature was “Ione S—!” a neat anagram,
out of which few would have picked the monosyllable
engraved upon her father's brass knocker. She wrote
mostly in verse; but her prose, of which you will
presently see a specimen or two, was her better vein—
as being more easily embroidered, and not cramped
with the inexorable fetters of rhyme. Miss Jones
abandoned authorship before the New Mirror was established,
or she would, doubtless, have been one of
its paid contributors—as much (“we” flatter ourselves)
as could well be said of her abilities.

The beauty of hectics and hollow chests has been
written out of fashion; so I may venture upon the
simple imagery of truth and nature. Miss Jones was

as handsome as a prize heifer. She was a compact,
plump, wholesome, clean-limbed, beautifully-marked
animal, with eyes like inkstands running over; and a
mouth that looked, when she smiled, as if it had never
been opened before, the teeth seemed so fresh and unhandled.
Her voice had a tone clear as the ring of a
silver dollar; and her lungs must have been as sound
as a pippin, for when she laughed (which she never
did unless she was surprised into it, for she loved melancholy),
it was like the gurgling of a brook over the
pebbles. The bran-new people made by Deucalion
and Pyrrha, when it cleared up after the flood, were
probably in Miss Jones's style.

But do you suppose that “Ione S—” cared any
thing for her looks! What—value the poor perishing
tenement in which nature had chosen to lodge her
intellectual and spiritual part! What—care for her
covering of clay! What—waste thought on the chain
that kept her from the Pleiades, of which, perhaps,
she was the lost sister (who knows)? And, more than
all—oh gracious!—to be loved for this trumpery-drapery
of her immortal essence!

Yes—infra dig. as it may seem to record such an
unworthy trifle—the celestial Phebe had the superfluity
of an every-day lover. Gideon Flimmins was willing
to take her on her outer inventory alone. He
loved her cheeks—he did not hesitate to admit! He
loved her lips—he could not help specifying! He had
been known to name her shoulders! And, in taking
out a thorn for her with a pair of tweezers one day, he
had literally exclaimed with rapture that she had a
heavenly little pink thumb! But of “Ione S—”
he had never spoken a word. No, though she read
him faithfully every effusion that appeared—asked his
opinion of every separate stanza—talked of “Ione
S—” as the person on earth she most wished to see
(for she kept her literary incog.)—Gideon had never
alluded to her a second time, and perseveringly, hatefully,
atrociously, and with mundane motive only, he
made industrious love to the outside and visible Phebe!
Well! well!

Contiguity is something, in love; and the Flimminses
were neighbors of the Joneses. Gideon had
another advantage—for Ophelia Flimmins, his eldest
sister, was Miss Jones's eternally attached friend. To
explain this, I must trouble the reader to take notice
that there were two streaks in the Flimmins family.
Fat Mrs. Flimmins, the mother (who had been dead a
year), was a thorough “man of business,” and it was
to her downright and upright management of her husband's
wholesale and retail hat-lining establishment,
that the family owed its prosperity; for Herodotus
Flimmins, whose name was on the sign, was a flimsy-ish
kind of sighing-dying man, and nobody could ever
find out what on earth he wanted. Gideon and the
two fleshy Miss Flimminses took after their mother;
but Ophelia, whose semi-translucent frame was the
envy of her faithful Phebe, was, with very trifling exceptions,
the perfect model of her sire. She devotedly
loved the moon. She had her preferences among the
stars of heaven. She abominated the garish sun. And
she and Phebe met by night—on the sidewalk around
their mutual nearest corner—deeply veiled to conceal
their emotion from the intruding gaze of such stars as
they were not acquainted with—and there they communed!

I never knew, nor have I any, the remotest suspicion
of the reasoning by which these commingled spirits
arrived at the conclusion that there was a want in their
delicious union. They might have known, indeed,
that the chain of bliss, ever so far extended, breaks off
at last with an imperfect link—that though mustard
and ham may turn two slices of innocent bread into a
sandwich, there will still be an unbuttered outside.
But they were young—they were sanguine. Phebe,
at least, believed that in the regions of space there ex
isted—“wandering but not lost”—the aching worser
half of which she was the “better”—some lofty intellect,
capable of sounding the unfathomable abysses of
hers—some male essence, all soul and romance, with
whom she could soar finally, arm-in-arm, to their native
star, with no changes of any consequence between
their earthly and their astral communion. It occurred
to her at last that a letter addressed to him, through
her favorite periodical, might possibly reach his eye.
The following (which the reader may very likely remember
to have seen) appeared in the paper of the
following Saturday:—

It was an inky night. The moon was in her private
chamber. The stars had drawn over their heads the
coverlet of clouds and pretended to sleep. The street
lamps heartlessly burned on.

Twelve struck with “damnable iteration.”

On tiptoe and with beating heart Phebe Jane left
her father's area. Ophelia Flimmins followed her at
a little distance, for Ione was going to meet her spirit-bridegroom,
and receive a renewal of his ante-vital
vows; and she wished her friend, the echo of her soul,
to overhear and witness them. For oh—if words were
anything—if the soul could be melted and poured,
lava-like, upon “satin post”—if there was truth in feelings
magnetic and prophetic—then was he who had
responded to, and corresponded with, Ione S— (she
writing to “I,” and he to “P”), the ideal for whom
she had so long sighed—the lost half of the whole so
mournfully incomplete—her soul's missing and once
spiritually Siamesed twin! His sweet letters had
echoed every sentiment of her heart. He had agreed
with her that outside was nothing—that earthly beauty
was poor, perishing, pitiful—that nothing that could
be seen, touched, or described, had anything to do
with the spiritually-passionate intercourse to which
their respective essences achingly yearned—that, unseen,
unheard, save in whispers faint as a rose's sigh
when languishing at noon, they might meet in communion
blissful, superhuman, and satisfactory.

Yet where fittingly to meet—oh agony! agony!

The street-lamps two squares off had been taken up
to lay down gas. Ophelia Flimmins had inwardly
marked it. Between No. 126 and No. 132, more particularly,
the echoing sidewalk was bathed in unfathomable
night—for there were vacant lots occupied as
a repository for used-up omnibuses. At the most
lonely point there stood a tree, and, fortunately, this
night, in the gutter beneath the tree, stood a newly-disabled
`bus of the Knickerbocker line—and (sweet
omen!) it was blue! In this covert could the witnessing
Ophelia lie perdu, observing unseen through the
open door; and beneath this tree was to take place the
meeting of souls—the re-interchange of sky-born vows
—the immaterial union of Ithuriel and Ione! Bliss!
bliss!—exquisite to anguish.

But—oh incontinent vessel—Ophelia had blabbed!
The two fat Miss Flimminses were in the secret—
nay, more—they were in the omnibus! Ay—deeply
in, and portentously silent, they sat, warm and wondering,
on either side of the lamp probably extinguished
for ever! They knew not well what was to
be. But whatever sort of thing was a “marriage of
soul,” and whether “Ithuriel” was body or nobody—
mortal man or angel in a blue scarf—the Miss Flimminses
wished to see him. Half an hour before the
trysting-time they had fanned their way thither, for a
thunder-storm was in the air and the night was intolerably
close; and, climbing into the omnibus, they reciprocally
loosened each other's upper hook, and with
their moistened collars laid starchless in their laps,
awaited the opening of the mystery.

Enter Ophelia, as expected. She laid her thin hand
upon the leather string, and, drawing the door after
her, leaned out of its open window in breathless suspense
and agitation.

Ione's step was now audible, returning from 132.
Slowly she came, but invisibly, for it had grown suddenly
pitch-dark; and only the far-off lamps, up and
down the street, served to guide her footsteps.

But hark! the sound of a heel! He came! They
met! He passed his arm around her and drew her
beneath the tree—and with whispers, soft and low,
leaned breathing to her ear. He was tall. He was in
a cloak. And, oh ecstasy, he was thin! But thinkest
thou to know, oh reader of dust, what passed on those
ethereal whispers? Futile—futile curiosity! Even to
Ophelia's straining ear, those whispers were inaudible.

But hark! a rumble! Something wrong in the
bowels of the sky! And pash! pash!—on the resounding
roof of the omnibus—fell drops of rain—fitfully!
fitfully!

“My dear!” whispered Ophelia (for Ione had borrowed
her chip hat, the better to elude recognition),
“ask Ithuriel to step in.”

Ithuriel started to find a witness near, but a whisper
from Ione reassured him, and gathering his cloak
around his face, he followed his spirit-bride into the
'bus.

The fat Miss Flimminses contracted their orbed
shapes, and made themselves small against the padded
extremity of the vehicle; Ophelia retreated to the middle,
and, next the door, on either side, sat the starry
bride and bridegroom—all breathlessly silent. Yet
there was a murmur—for five hearts beat within that
'bus's duodecimal womb; and the rain pelted on the
roof, pailsful-like and unpityingly.

But slap! dash! whew! heavens!—In rushed s
youth, dripping, dripping!

“Get out!” cried Ione, over whose knees he drew
himself like an eel pulled through a basket of centorted
other eels.

“Come, come, young man!” said a deep bass voice,
of which everybody had some faint remembrance.

“Oh!” cried one fat Miss Flimmins.

“Ah!” screamed the other.

“What?—dad!” exclaimed Gideon Flimmins, who
had dashed into the sheltering 'bus to save his new
hat—“dad here with a girl!”

But the fat Flimminses were both in convulsions.
Scream! scream! scream!

A moment of confusion! The next moment a sadden
light! A watchman with his lantern stood at the
door.

“Papa!” ejaculated three of the ladies.

“Old Flimmins!—my heart will burst!” murmured
Ione.

The two fat girls hurried on their collars; and Gideon,
all amazement at finding himself in such a family
party at midnight in a lonely 'bus, stepped out and entered
into converse with the guardian of the night.

The rain stopped suddenly, and the omnibus gave
up its homogeneous contents. Old Flimmins, who
was in a violent perspiration, gave Gideon his cloak to
carry, and his two arms to his two pingnid adult
pledges. Gideon took Ophelia and Phebe, and they
mizzled. Mockery! mockery!

Ione is not yet gone to the spirit-sphere—kept here
partly by the strength of the fleshy fetter over which
she mourned, and partly by the dove-tailed duties consequent
upon annual Flimminses. Gideon loves her
after the manner of this world—but she sighs “when
she hears sweet music,” that her better part is still
unappreciated—unfathomed—“cabined, cribbed, confined!”

MABEL WYNNE.

Mabel Wynne was the topmost sparkle on the
crest of the first wave of luxury that swept over New
York. Up to her time, the aristocratic houses were
furnished with high buffets, high-backed and hair-bottomed
mahogany chairs, one or two family portraits,
and a silver tray on the side-board, containing cordials
and brandy for morning-callers. In the centre of the
room hung a chandelier of colored lamps, and the
lighting of this and the hiring of three negroes (to
“fatigue,” as the French say, a clarinet, a baseviol,
and a violin) were the only preparations necessary for
the most distinguished ball. About the time that
Mabel left school, however, some adventurous pioneer
of the Dutch haut ton ventured upon lamp-stands for
the corners of the rooms, stuffed red benches along
the walls, and chalked floors; and upon this a French
family of great beauty, residing in the lower part of
Broadway, ventured upon a fancy ball with wax-candles
instead of lamps, French dishes and sweetmeats instead
of pickled oysters and pink champagne; and,
the door thus opened, luxury came in like a flood.
Houses were built on a new plan of sumptuous arrangement,
the ceiling stained in fresco, and the
columns of the doors within painted in imitation of
bronze and marble; and at last the climax was topped
by Mr. Wynne, who sent the dimensions of every
room in his new house to an upholsterer in Paris,
with carte blanche as to costliness and style, and the
fournisseur to come out himself and see to the arrangement
and decoration.

It was Manhattan tea-time, old style, and while
Mr. Wynne, who had the luxury of a little plain
furniture in the basement, was comfortably taking his
toast and hyson below stairs, Miss Wynne was just
announced as “at home,” by the black footman, and
two of her admirers made their highly-scented entrée.
They were led through a suite of superb rooms, lighted
with lamps hid in alabaster vases, and ushered in
at a mirror-door beyond, where, in a tent of fluted silk,
with ottomans and draperies of the same stuff, exquisitely
arranged, the imperious Mabel held her
court of 'teens.

Mabel Wynne was one of those accidents of sovereign
beauty which nature seems to take delight in misplacing
in the world—like the superb lobelia flashing
among the sedges, or the golden oriole pluming his
dazzling wings in the depth of a wilderness. She
was no less than royal in all her belongings. Her
features expressed consciousness of sway—a sway
whose dictates had been from infancy anticipated.
Never a surprise had startled those languishing eyelids
from their deliberateness—never a suffusion other than
the humid cloud of a tender and pensive hour had
dimmed those adorable dark eyes. Or, so at least it
seemed!

She was a fine creature, nevertheless—Mabel
Wynne! But she looked to others like a specimen
of such fragile and costly workmanship that nothing
beneath a palace would be a becoming home for her.

“For the present,” said Mr. Bellallure, one of the
gentlemen who entered, “the bird has a fitting cage.”

Miss Wynne only smiled in reply, and the other
gentleman took upon himself to be the interpreter of
her unexpressed thought.

“The cage is the accessory—not the bird,” said
Mr. Blythe, “and, for my part, I think Miss Wynne
would show better the humbler her surroundings.
As Perdita upon the greensward, and open to a shepherd's
wooing, I should inevitably sling my heart upon
a crook—”

“And forswear that formidable, impregnable vow of
celibacy?” interrupted Miss Wynne.

“I am only supposing a case, and you are not likely
to be a shepherdess on the green.” But Mr. Blythe's
smile ended in a look of clouded revery, and, after
a few minutes' conversation, ill sustained by the gentlemen,
who seemed each in the other's way, they
rose and took their leave—Mr. Bellallure lingering
last, for he was a lover avowed.

As the door closed upon her admirer. Miss Wynne
drew a letter from her portfolio, and turning it over
and over with a smile of abstracted curiosity, opened
and read it for the second time. She had received it
that morning from an unknown source, and as it was
rather a striking communication, perhaps the reader
had better know something of it before we go on.

It commenced without preface, thus:—

“On a summer morning, twelve years ago, a
chimney-sweep, after doing his work and singing his
song, commenced his descent. It was the chimney
of a large house, and becoming embarrassed among
the flues, he lost his way and found himself on the
hearth of a sleeping-chamber occupied by a child.
The sun was just breaking through the curtains of
the room, a vacated bed showed that some one had
risen lately, probably the nurse, and the sweep, with
an irresistible impulse, approached the unconscious
little sleeper. She lay with her head upon a round
arm buried in flaxen curls, and the smile of a dream
on her rosy and parted lips. It was a picture of
singular loveliness, and something in the heart of that
boy-sweep, as he stood and looked upon the child,
knelt to it with an agony of worship. The tears gushed
to his eyes. He stripped the sooty blanket from
his breast, and looked at the skin white upon his side.
The contrast between his condition and that of the
fair child sleeping before him brought the blood to his
blackened brow with the hot rush of lava. He knelt
beside the bed on which she slept, took her hand in
his sooty grasp, and with a kiss upon the white and
dewy fingers poured his whole soul with passionate
earnestness into a resolve.

“Hereafter you may learn, if you wish, the first
struggles of that boy in the attempt to diminish the
distance between yourself and him—for you will have
understood that you were the beautiful child he saw
asleep. I repeat that it is twelve years since he stood
in your chamber. He has seen you almost daily since
then—watched your going out and coming in—fed his
eyes and heart on your expanding beauty, and informed
himself of every change and development in your
mind and character. With this intimate knowledge
of you, and with the expansion of his own intellect,
his passion has deepened and strengthened. It possesses
him now as life does his heart, and will endure
as long. But his views with regard to you have
changed, nevertheless.

“You will pardon the presumption of my first
feeling—that to attain my wishes I had only to become
your equal. It was a natural error—for my
agony at realizing the difference of our conditions in

life was enough to absorb me at the time—but it is
surprising to me how long that delusion lasted. I am
rich now. I have lately added to my fortune the last
acquisition I thought desirable. But with the thought
of the next thing to be done, came like a thunderbolt
upon me the fear that after all my efforts you might
be destined for another! The thought is simple
enough. You would think that it would have haunted
me from the beginning. But I have either unconsciously
shut my eyes to it, or I have been so absorbed
in educating and enriching myself that that goal only
was visible to me. It was perhaps fortunate for my
perseverance that I was so blinded. Of my midnight
studies, of my labors, of all my plans, self-denials, and
anxieties, you have seemed the reward! I have never
gained a thought, never learned a refinement, never
turned over gold and silver, that it was not a step
nearer to Mabel Wynne. And now, that in wordly
advantages, after twelve years of effort and trial, I
stand by your side at last, a thousand men who never
thought of you till yesterday are equal competitors
with me for your hand!

“But, as I said, my views with regard to you have
changed. I have, with bitter effort, conquered the
selfishness of this one lifetime ambition. I am devoted
to you, as I have been from the moment I first
saw you—life and fortune. These are still yours—
but without the price at which you might spurn them.
My person is plain and unattractive. You have seen
me, and shown me no preference. There are others
whom you receive with favor. And with your glorious
beauty, and sweet, admirably sweet qualities of character,
it would be an outrage to nature that you should
not choose freely, and be mated with something of
your kind. Of those who now surround you I see no
one worthy of you—but he may come! Jealousy
shall not blind me to his merits. The first mark of
your favor (and I shall be aware of it) will turn upon
him my closest, yet most candid scrutiny. He must
love you well—for I shall measure his love by my
own. He must have manly beauty, and delicacy, and
honor—he must be worthy of you, in short—but he
need not be rich. He who steps between me and you
takes the fortune I had amassed for you. I tell you
this that you may have no limit in your choice—for the
worthiest of a woman's lovers is often barred from her
by poverty.

“Of course I have made no vow against seeking
your favor. On the contrary, I shall lose no opportunity
of making myself agreeable to you. It is against
my nature to abandon hope, though I am painfully
conscious of my inferiority to other men in the qualities
which please a woman. All I have done is to
deprive my pursuit of its selfishness—to make it subservient
to your happiness purely—as it still would be
were I the object of your preference. You will hear
from me at any crisis of your feelings. Pardon my
being a spy upon you. I know you well enough to
be sure that this letter will be a secret—since I wish
it. Adieu.”

Mabel laid her cheek in the hollow of her hand and
mused long on this singular communication. It stirred
her romance, but it wakened still more her curiosity.
Who was he? She had “seen him and shown him
no preference!” Which could it be of the hundred
of her chance-made acquaintances? She conjectured
at some disadvantage, for “she had come out” within
the past year only, and her mother having long been
dead, the visiters to the house were all but recently
made known to her. She could set aside two thirds
of them, as sons of families well known, but there
were at least a score of others, any one of whom might,
twelve years before, have been as obscure as her
anonymous lover. Whoever he might be, Mabel
thought he could hardly come into her presence again
without betraying himself, and, with a pleased smile
at the thought of the discovery, she again locked up
the letter.

Those were days (to be regretted or not, as you
please, dear reader!) when the notable society of
New York revolved in one self-complacent and clearly-defined
circle. Call it a wheel, and say that the
centre was a belle and the radii were beaux—(the
periphery of course composed of those who could
“down with the dust”). And on the fifteenth of July
regularly and imperatively, this fashionable whee
rolled off to Saratoga.

“Mabel! my daughter!” said old Wynne, as he
bade her good night the evening before starving for
the springs, “it is useless to be blind to the fact that
among your many admirers you have several very
pressing lovers—suiters for your hand I may safely
say. Now, I do not wish to put any unnecessary restraint
upon your choice, but as you are going to a
gay place, where you are likely to decide the matter
in your own mind, I wish to express an opinion. You
may give it what weight you think a father's judgment
should have in such matters. I do not like Mr.
Bellallure—for, beside my prejudice against the man,
we know nothing of his previous life, and he may be
a swindler or anything else. I do like Mr. Blythe—
for I have known him many years, he comes of a
most respectable family, and he is wealthy and worthy.
These two seem to me the most in earnest, and you
apparently give them the most of your time. If the decision
is to be between them, you have my choice.
Good night, my love!”

Some people think it is owing to the Saratoga
water. I differ from them. The water is an “alterative,”
it is true—but I think people do not so much
alter as develop at Saratoga. The fact is clear enough
—that at the springs we change our opinions of almost
everybody—but (though it seems a bold supposition
at first glance) I am inclined to believe it is because
we see so much more of them! Knowing people in
the city and knowing them at the springs is very much
in the same line of proof as tasting wine and drinking
a bottle. Why, what is a week's history of a city acquaintance?
A morning call thrice a week, a diurnal
bow in Broadway, and perhaps a quadrille or two in
the party season. What chance in that to ruffle a
temper or try a weakness? At the springs, now, dear
lady, you wear a man all day like a shoe. Down at
the platform with him to drink the waters before breakfast—strolls
on the portico with him till ten—drives with
him to Barheight's till dinner—lounges in the drawing-room
with him till tea—dancing and promenading
with him till midnight—very little short altogether of
absolute matrimony; and, like matrimony, it is a very
severe trial. Your “best fellow” is sure, to be found
out, and so is your plausible fellow, your egotist, and
your “spoon.”

Mr. Beverly Bellallure had cultivated the male
attractions with marked success. At times he probably
thought himself a plain man, and an artist who
should only paint what could be measured with a rule,
would have made a plain portrait of Mr. Bellallure.
But—the atmosphere of the man! There is a physiognomy
in movement—there is aspect in the harmonious
link between mood and posture—there is expression
in the face of which the features are as much
a portrait as a bagpipe is a copy of a Scotch song.
Beauty, my dear artist, can not always be translated
by canvass and oils. You must paint “the magnetic
fluid” to get a portrait of some men. Sir Thomas
Lawrence seldom painted anything else—as you may
see by his picture of Lady Blessington, which is like
her without having copied a single feature of her face.
Yet an artist would be very much surprised if you
should offer to sit to him for your magnetic atmosphere—though
it expresses (does it not?) exactly

what you want when you order a picture! You wish
to be painted as your appear to those who love you—
a picture altogether unrecognisable by those who love
you not.

Mr. Bellallure, then, was magnetically handsome
—positively plain. He dressed with an art beyond
detection. He spent his money as if he could dip it
at will out of Pactolus. He was intimate with nobody,
and so nobody knew his history; but he wrote himself
on the register of Congress hall as “from New
York,” and he threw all his forces into one unmistakable
demonstration—the pursuit of Miss Mabel
Wynne.

But Mr. Bellallure had a formidable rival. Mr.
Blythe was as much in earnest as he, though he played
his game with a touch-and-go freedom, as if he
was prepared to lose it. And Mr. Blythe had very
much surprised those people at Saratoga who did not
know that between a very plain man and a very elegant
man there is often but the adding of the rose-leaf to
the brimming jar. He was perhaps a little gayer
than in New York, certainly a little more dressed,
certainly a little more prominent in general conversation—but
without any difference that you could swear
to, Mr. Blythe, the plain and reliable business man,
whom everybody esteemed without particularly admiring,
had become Mr. Blythe the model of elegance
and ease, the gentleman and conversationist
par excellence. And nobody could tell how the statue
could have lain so long unsuspected in the marble.

The race for Miss Wynne's hand and fortune was
a general sweepstakes, and there were a hundred men
at the springs ready to take advantage of any falling
back on the part of the two on the lead; but with
Blythe and Bellallure Miss Wynne herself seemed
fully occupied. The latter had a “friend at court”
—the belief, kept secret in the fair Mabel's heart, that
he was the romantic lover of whose life and fortune
she had been the inspiration. She was an eminently
romantic girl with all her strong sense; and the devotion
which had proved itself so deep and controlling
was in reality the dominant spell upon her heart.
She felt that she must love that man, whatever his
outside might be, and she construed the impenetrable
silence with which Bellallure received her occasional
hints as to his identity, into a magnanimous determination
to win her without any advantage from the
romance of his position.

Yet she sometimes wished it had been Mr. Blythe!
The opinion of her father had great weight with her;
but, more than that, she felt instinctively that he was
the safer man to be intrusted with a woman's happiness.
If there had been a doubt—if her father had
not assured her that “Mr. Blythe came of a most
respectable family”—if the secret had wavered between
them—she would have given up to Bellallure
without a sigh. Blythe was everything she admired
and wished for in a husband—but the man who had
made himself for her, by a devotion unparalleled even
in her reading of fiction, held captive her dazzled imagination,
if not her grateful heart. She made constant
efforts to think only of Bellallure, but the efforts
were preceded ominously with a sigh.

And now Bellallure's star seemed in the ascendant—
for urgent business called Mr. Wynne to the city, and
on the succeeding day Mr. Blythe followed him,
though with an assurance of speedy return. Mabel
was left under the care of an indulgent chaperon, who
took a pleasure in promoting the happiness of the
supposed lovers; and driving, lounging, waltzing, and
promenading, Bellallure pushed his suit with ardor
unremitted. He was a skilful master of the art of
wooing, and it would have been a difficult woman indeed
who would not have been pleased with his society—but
the secret in Mabel's breast was the spell by
which he held her.

A week elapsed, and Bellallure pleaded the receip
of unexpected news, and left suddenly for New York—
to Mabel's surprise exacting no promise at parting
though she felt that she should have given it with reluctance.
The mail of the second day following
brought her a brief letter from her father, requesting
her immediate return; and more important still, a note
from her incognito lover. It ran thus:—

“You will recognise my handwriting again. I have
little to say—for I abandon the intention I had formed
to comment on your apparent preference. Your happiness
is in your own hands. Circumstances which
will be explained to you, and which will excuse this
abrupt forwardness, compel me to urge you to an immediate
choice. On your arrival at home, you will
meet me in your father's house, where I shall call to
await you. I confess tremblingly, that I still cherish
a hope. If I am not deceived—if you can consent to
love me—if my long devotion is to be rewarded—take
my hand when you meet me. That moment will decide
the value of my life. But be prepared also to
name another if you love him—for there is a necessity,
which I can not explain to you till you have
chosen your husband, that this choice should be made
on your arrival. Trust and forgive one who has so
long loved you!”

Mabel pondered long on this strange letter. Her
spirit at moments revolted against its apparent dictation,
but there was the assurance, which she could
not resist trusting, that it could be explained and forgiven.
At all events, she was at liberty to fulfil its
requisitions or not—and she would decide when the
time came. Happy was Mabel—unconsciously happy—in
the generosity and delicacy of her unnamed
lover! Her father, by one of the sudden reverses of
mercantile fortune, had been stripped of his wealth
in a day! Stunned and heart-broken, he knew not
how to break it to his daughter, but he had written
for her to return. His sumptuous house had been
sold over his head, yet the purchaser, whom he did
not know, had liberally offered the use of it till his
affairs were settled. And, meantime, his ruin was
made public. The news of it, indeed, had reached
Saratoga before the departure of Mabel—but there
were none willing to wound her by speaking of it.

The day was one of the sweetest of summer, and
as the boat ploughed her way down the Hudson, Mabel
sat on the deck lost in thought. Her father's
opinion of Bellallure, and his probable displeasure at
her choice, weighed uncomfortably on her mind.
She turned her thoughts upon Mr. Blythe, and felt surprised
at the pleasure with which she remembered his
kind manners and his trust-inspiring look. She began
to reason with herself more calmly than she had
power to do with her lovers around her. She confessed
to herself that Bellallure might have the romantic
perseverance shown in the career of the chimney-sweep,
and still be deficient in qualities necessary
to domestic happiness. There seemed to her something
false about Bellallure. She could not say in
what—but he had so impressed her. A long day's
silent reflection deepened this impression, and Mabel
arrived at the city with changed feelings. She prepared
herself to meet him at her father's house, and
show him by her manner that she could accept neither
his hand nor his fortune.

Mr. Wynne was at the door to receive his daughter,
and Mabel felt relieved, for she thought that his pressence
would bar all explanation between herself and
Bellallure. The old man embraced her with an effusion
of tears which she did not quite understand, but
he led her to the drawing-room and closed the door.
Mr. Blythe stood before her!

Forgetting the letter—dissociated wholly as it was,
in her mind, with Mr. Blythe—Mabel ran to him
with frank cordiality and gave him her hand! Blythe

stood a moment—his hand trembling in hers—and as
a suspicion of the truth flashed suddenly on Mabel's
mind, the generous lover drew her to his bosom and
folded her passionately in his embrace. Mabel's
struggles were slight, and her happiness unexpectedly
complete.

The marriage was like other marriages.

Mr. Wynne had drawn a little on his imagination
in recommending Mr. Blythe to his daughter as “a
young man of most respectable family.”

Mr. Blythe was the purchaser of Mr. Wynne's superb
house, and the old man ended his days under its
roof—happy to the last in the society of the Blythes,
large and little.

Mr. Bellallure turned out to be a clever adventurer,
and had Mabel married him, she would have been
Mrs. Bellallure No. 2—possibly No. 4. He thought
himself too nice a young man for monopoly.

I think my story is told—if your imagination has
filled up the interstices, that is to say.

THE GHOST-BALL AT CONGRESS HALL.

It was the last week of September, and the keeper
of “Congress hall” stood on his deserted colonnade.
The dusty street of Saratoga was asleep in the stillness
of village afternoon. The whittlings of the stagerunners
at the corners, and around the leaning posts,
were fading into dingy undistinguishableness. Stiff
and dry hung the slop-cloths at the door of the livery
stable, and drearily clean was doorway and stall.
“The season” was over.

“Well, Mr. B—!” said the Boniface of the
great caravansary, to a gentlemanly-looking invalid,
crossing over from the village tavern on his way to
Congress spring, “this looks like the end of it! A
slimmish season, though, Mr. B—! Gad, things
isn't as they used to be in your time! Three months
we used to have of it, in them days, and the same
people coming and going all summer, and folks' own
horses, and all the ladies drinking champagne! And
every `hop' was as good as a ball, and a ball—when do
you ever see such balls now-a-days? Why, here's
all my best wines in the cellar; and as to beauty—
pooh!—they're done coming here, any how, are the
belles, such as belles was!”

“You may say that, mine host, you may say that!”
replied the damaged Corydon, leaning heavily on his
cane,—“what—they're all gone, now, eh—nobody at
the `United States?”'

“Not a soul—and here's weather like August!—
capital weather for young ladies to walk out evenings,
and, for a drive to Barheight's—nothing like it! It's
a sin, I say, to pass such weather in the city! Why
shouldn't they come to the springs in the Indian
summer, Mr. B—?”

Coming events seemed to have cast their shadows
before. As Boniface turned his eyes instinctively
toward the sand hill, whose cloud of dust was the
precursor of new pilgrims to the waters, and the sign
for the black boy to ring the bell of arrival, behold, on
its summit, gleaming through the nebulous pyramid,
like a lobster through the steam of the fisherman's
pot, one of the red coaches of “the People's Line.”

And another!

And another!

And another!

Down the sandy descent came the first, while the
driver's horn, intermittent with the crack of his whip,
set to bobbing every pine cone of the adjacent wilderness.

“Prrr—ru—te—too—toot—pash!—crack!—snap!
—prrrr—r—rut—rut—rrut!! G'lang!—Hip!”

Boniface laid his hand on the pull of the porter's
bell, but the thought flashed through his mind that
he might have been dreaming—was he awake?

And, marvel upon wonder!—a horn of arrival from
the other end of the village! And as he turned his
eyes in that direction, he saw the dingier turnouts
from Lake Sacrament—extras, wagons—every variety
of rattletrap conveyance—pouring in like an Irish
funeral on the return, and making (oh, climax more
satisfactory!) straight, all, for Congress Hall!

Events now grew precipitate—

Ladies were helped out with green veils—parasols
and baskets were handed after them—baggage was
chalked and distributed—(and parasols, baskets, and
baggage, be it noted, were all of the complexion that
innkeepers love, the indefinable look which betrays
the owner's addictedness to extras)—and now there
was ringing of bells; and there were orders for the
woodcocks to be dressed with pork chemises, and for
the champagne to be iced, the sherry not—and
through the arid corridors of Congress hall floated
a delicious toilet air of cold cream and lavender—and
ladies' maids came down to press out white dresses,
while the cook heated the curling irons—and up and
down the stairs flitted, with the blest confusion of
other days, boots and iced sangarees, hot water, towels,
and mint-juleps—all delightful, but all incomprehensible!
Was the summer encored, or had the Jews
gone back to Jerusalem? To the keeper of Congress
hall the restoration of the millenium would have
been a rush-light to this second advent of fun-and-fashion-dom!

Thus far we have looked through the eyes of the
person (pocket-ually speaking) most interested in the
singular event we wished to describe. Let us now
(tea being over, and your astonishment having had
time to breathe) take the devil's place at the elbow of
the invalided dandy beforementioned, and follow him
over to Congress Hall. It was a mild night and, as I
said before (or meant to, if I did not), August, having
been prematurely cut off by his raining successor,
seemed up again, like Hamlet's governor, and bent on
walking out his time.

Rice (you remember Rice—famous for his lemonades
with a corrective)—Rice, having nearly ignited
his forefinger with charging wines at dinner, was out
to cool on the colonnade, and B—, not strong
enough to stand about, drew a chair near the drawing-room
window, and begged the rosy barkeeper to throw
what light he could upon this multitudinous apparition.
Rice could only feed the fire of his wonder
with the fuel of additional circumstances. Coaches
had been arriving from every direction till the house
was full. The departed black band had been stopped
at Albany, and sent back. There seemed no married
people in the party—at least, judging by dress and
flirtation. Here and there a belle, a little on the
wane, but all most juvenescent in gayety, and (Rice

thought) handsomer girls than had been at Congress
hall since the days of the Albany regency (the regency
of beauty), ten years ago! Indeed, it struck Rice
that he had seen the faces of these lovely girls before,
though they whom he thought they resembled had
long since gone off the stage—grandmothers, some of
them, now!

Rice had been told, also, that there was an extraordinary
and overwhelming arrival of children and
nurses at the Pavilion Hotel, but he thought the
report smelt rather like a jealous figment of the
Pavilioners. Odd, if true—that's all!

Mr. B— had taken his seat on the colonnade, as
Shakspere expresses it, “about cock-shut time”—
twilight—and in the darkness made visible of the
rooms within, he could only distinguish the outline of
some very exquisite, and exquisitely plump figures
gliding to and fro, winged, each one, with a pair of
rather stoutish, but most attentive admirers. As the
curfew hour stole away, however, the ladies stole away
with it, to dress; and at ten o'clock the sudden outbreak
of the full band in a mazurka, drew Mr.
B—'s attention to the dining-room frontage of the
colonnade, and, moving his chair to one of the windows,
the cockles of his heart warmed to see the
orchestra in its glory of old—thirteen black Orpheuses
perched on a throne of dining-tables, and the black
veins on their shining temples strained to the crack
of mortality with their zealous execution. The
waiters, meantime, were lighting the tin Briareus (that
spermaciti monster so destructive to broadcloth), and
the side-sconces and stand-lamps, and presently a
blaze of light flooded the dusty evergreens of the
facade, and nothing was wanting but some fashionable
Curtius to plunge first into the void—some adventurous
Benton, “to set the ball in motion.”

Wrapped carefully from the night-air in his cloak
and belcher, B— sat, looking earnestly into the
room, and to his excited senses there seemed, about
all this supplement to the summer's gayety, a weird
mysteriousness, an atmosphere of magic, which was
observable, he thought, even in the burning of the
candles! And as to Johnson, the sable leader of the
band—“God's-my-life,” as Bottom says, how like a
tormented fiend writhed the cremona betwixt his chin
and white waistcoat! Such music, from instruments
so vexed, had never split the ears of the Saratoga
groundlings since the rule of Saint Dominick (in
whose hands even wine sparkled to song)—no, not
since the golden age of the Springs, when that lord of
harmony and the nabobs of lower Broadway made, of
Congress hall, a paradise for the unmarried? Was
Johnson bewitched? Was Congress hall repossessed
by the spirits of the past? If ever Mr. B—, sitting
in other years on that resounding colonnade, had felt
the magnetic atmosphere of people he knew to be up
stairs, he felt it now! If ever he had been contented,
knowing that certain bright creatures would presently
glide into the visual radius of black Johnson, he felt
contented, inexplicably, from the same cause now—
expecting, as if such music could only be their herald,
the entrance of the same bright creatures, no older,
and as bright after years of matrimony. And now and
then B— pressed his hand to his head—for he was
not quite sure that he might not be a little wandering
in his mind.

But suddenly the band struck up a march! The
first bar was played through, and B— looked at
the door, sighing that this sweet hallucination—this
waking dream of other days—was now to be scattered
by reality. He could have filliped that mercenary
Ethiopian on the nose for playing such music to such
falling off from the past as he now looked to see
enter.

A lady crossed the threshold on a gentleman's arm.

“Ha! ha!” said B—, trying with a wild effort to
laugh, and pinching his arm into a blood-blister,
“come—this is too good! Helen K—! oh, no!
Not quite crazy yet, I hope—not so far gone yet!
Yet it is! I swear it is! And not changed either!
Beautiful as ever, by all that is wonderful! Psha!
I'll not be mad! Rice!—are you there? Why, who
are these coming after her? Julia L—! Anna
K—, and my friend Fanny! The D—s! The
M—s! Nay, I'm dreaming, silly fool that I am!
I'll call for a light! Waiter!! Where the devil's
the bell?”

And as poor B— insisted on finding himself in
bed, reached out his hand to find the bell-pull, one of
the waiters of Congress hall came to his summons.
The gentleman wanted nothing, and the waiter
thought he had cried out in his nap; and rather
embarrassed to explain his wants, but still unconvinced
of his freedom from dream-land, B— drew his hat
over his eyes, and his cloak around him, and screwed
up his courage to look again into the enchanted ballroom.

The quadrilles were formed, and the lady at the
head of the first set was spreading her skirts for the
arant-deux. She was a tall woman, superbly handsome,
and moved with the grace of a frigate at sea
with a nine-knot breeze. Eyes capable of taking in
lodgers (hearts, that is to say) of any and every calibre
and quality, a bust for a Cornelia, a shape all love and
lightness, and a smile like a temptation of Eblis—
there she was—and there were fifty like her—not like
her, exactly, either, but of her constellation—belles,
every one of them, who will be remembered by old
men, and used for the disparagement of degenerated
younglings—splendid women of Mr. B—'s time,
and of the palmy time of Congress hall—

Out on your staring and unsheltered lantern of
brick—your “United States hotel,” stiff, modern, and
promiscuous! Who ever passed a comfortable hour
in its glaring cross-lights, or breathed a gentle sentiment
in its unsubdued air and townish open-to-dustiness!
What is it to the leafy dimness, the cool shadows,
the perpetual and pensive demi-jour—what to the
ten thousand associations—of Congress hall! Who
has not lost a heart (or two) on the boards of that
primitive wilderness of a colonnade! Whose first
adorations, whose sighs, hopes, strategies, and flirtations,
are not ground into that warped and slipper-polished
floor, like heartache and avarice into the
bricks of Wall street! Lord bless you, madam!
don't desert old Congress hall! We have done going
to the Springs—(we)—and wouldn't go there again
for anything, but a good price for a pang—(that is,
except to see such a sight as we are describing)—but
we can not bear, in our midsummer flit through the
Astor, to see charming girls bound for Saratoga, and
hear no talk of Congress hall! What! no lounge
on those proposal sofas—no pluck at the bright green
leaves of those luxuriant creepers while listening to
“the voice of the charmer”—no dawdle on the steps
to the spring (mamma gone on before)—no hunting
for that glow-worm in the shrubbery by the music-room—no
swing—no billiards—no morning gossips
with the few privileged beaux admitted to the up-stairs
entry, ladies' wing?

than assist or mingle in such ungrateful forgetfulness
of pleasure-land! But what do we with a digression
in a ghost-story?

The ball went on. Champagne of the “exploded”
color (pink) was freely circulated between the dances—
(rosy wine suited to the bright days when all things
were tinted rose)—and wit, exploded, too, in these

leaden times, went round with the wine; and as a
glass of the bright vintage was handed up to old
Johnson, B— stretched his neck over the windowsill
in an agony of expectation, confident that the
black ghost, if ghost he were, would fail to recognise
the leaders of fashion, as he was wont of old, and to
bow respectfully to them before drinking in their presence.
Oh, murder! not he! Down went his black
poll to the music-stand, and up, and down again, and
at every dip, the white roller of that unctuous eye was
brought to bear upon some well-remembered star of
the ascendant! He saw them as B— did! He
was not playing to an unrecognised company of latecomers
to Saratoga—anybodies from any place! He,
the unimaginative African, believed evidently that
they were there in flesh—Helen, the glorious, and all
her fair troop of contemporaries!—and that with them
had come back their old lovers, the gay and gallant
Lotharios of the time of Johnson's first blushing
honors of renown! The big drops of agonized horror
and incredulity rolled off the forehead of Mr. B—!

But suddenly the waiters radiated to the side-doors,
and with the celestial felicity of star-rising and morning-breaking,
a waltz was found playing in the ears
of the revellers! Perfect, yet when it did begin!
Waltzed every brain and vein, waltzed every swimming
eye within the reach of its magic vibrations!
Gently away floated couple after couple, and as they
circled round to his point of observation, B— could
have called every waltzer by name—but his heart was
in his throat, but his eyeballs were hot with the stony
immovableness of his long gazing.

Another change in the music! Spirits of bedevilment!
could not that waltz have been spared! Boniface
stood waltzing his head from shoulder to shoulder
—Rice twirled the head-chambermaid in the entry—
the black and white boys spun round on the colonnade
—the wall-flowers in the ball-room crowded their
chairs to the wall—the candles flared embracingly—
ghosts or no ghosts, dream or hallucination, B—
could endure no more! He flung off his cloak and
hat, and jumped in at the window. The divine Emily
C— had that moment risen from tying her shoe.
With a nod to her partner, and a smile to herself,
B— encircled her round waist, and away he flew
like Ariel, light on the toe, but his face pallid and
wild, and his emaciated legs playing like sticks in his
unfilled trousers. Twice he made the circuit of the
room, exciting apparently less surprise than pleasure
by his sudden appearance; then, with a wavering halt,
and his hand laid tremulously to his forehead, he flew
at the hall-door at a tangent, and rushing through
servants and spectators, dashed across the portico, and
disappeared in the darkness! A fortnight's brain-fever
deprived him of the opportunity of repeating this remarkable
flourish, and his subsequent sanity was established
through some critical hazard.

There was some inquiry at supper about “old
B—,” but the lady who waltzed with him knew
as little of his coming and going as the managers;
and, by one belle, who had been at some trouble in
other days to quench his ardor, it was solemnly believed
to be his persevering apparition.

The next day there was a drive and dinner at Bar
height's, and back in time for ball and supper; and
the day after there was a most hilarious and memorable
fishing-party to Saratoga lake, and all back again
in high force for the ball and supper; and so like a
long gala-day, like a short summer carnival, all frolic,
sped the week away. Boniface, by the third day, had
rallied his recollections, and with many a scrape and
compliment, he renewed his acquaintance with the
belles and beaux of a brighter period of beauty and
gallantry. And if there was any mystery remaining
in the old functionary's mind as to the identity and
miracle of their presence and reunion, it was on the
one point of the ladies' unfaded loveliness—for, saving
a half inch aggregation in the waist, which was rather
an improvement than otherwise, and a little more fulness
in the bust, which was a most embellishing difference,
the ten years that had gone over them had
made no mark on the lady portion of his guests; and
as to the gentlemen—but that is neither here nor there.
They were “men of mark,” young or old, and their
wear and tear is, as Flute says, “a thing of naught.”

It was revealed by the keeper of the Pavilion, after
the departure of the late-come revellers of Congress
hall, that there had been constant and secret visitations
by the belles of the latter sojourn, to the numerous
infantine lodgers of the former. Such a troop
of babies and boys, and all so lovely, had seldom
gladdened even the eyes of angels, out of the cherubic
choir (let alone the Saratoga Pavilion), and though,
in their white dresses and rose-buds, the belles afore
spoken of looked like beautiful elder sisters to those
motherless younglings, yet when they came in, mothers
confessed, on the morning of departure, openly
to superinted the preparations for travel, they had so
put off the untroubled maiden look from their countenances,
and so put on the indescribable growing-old-iness
of married life in their dress, that, to the
eye of an observer, they might well have passed for
the mothers of the girls they had themselves seemed
to be, the day before, only.

Who devised, planned, and brought about, this practical
comment on the needlessness of the American
haste to be old, we are not at liberty to mention. The
reader will have surmised, however, that it was some
one who had observed the more enduring quality of
beauty in other lands, and on returning to his own,
looked in vain for those who, by every law of nature,
should be still embellishing the society of which he
had left them the budding flower and ornament. To
get them together again, only with their contemporaries,
in one of their familiar haunts of pleasure—to
suggest the exclusion of everything but youthfulness
in dress, amusement, and occupation—to bring to
meet them their old admirers, married like themselves,
but entering the field once more for their smiles against
their rejuvenescent husbands—to array them as belles
again, and see whether it was any falling off in beauty
or the power of pleasing which had driven them from
their prominent places in social life—this was the obvious
best way of doing his immediate circles of
friends the service his feelings exacted of him; the
only way, indeed, of convincing these bright creatures
that they had far anticipated the fading hour of bloom
and youthfulness. Pensez-y!

BORN TO LOVE PIGS AND CHICKENS.

The guests at the Astor House were looking mournfully
out of the drawing-room windows, on a certain
rainy day of an October passed over to history. No
shopping—no visiting! The morning must be passed
in-doors. And it was some consolation to those who
were in town for a few days to see the world, that their
time was not quite lost, for the assemblage in the large
drawing-room was numerous and gay. A very dressy
affair is the drawing-room of the Astor, and as full of
eyes as a peacock's tail—(which, by the way, is also a
very dressy affair). Strangers who wish to see and be
seen (and especially “be seen”) on rainy days, as well
as on sunny days, in their visits to New York, should,
as the phrase goes, “patronize” the Astor. As if
there was any patronage in getting the worth of your
money!

Well—the people in the drawing-room looked a
little out of the windows, and a great deal at each
other. Unfortunately, it is only among angels and
underbred persons that introductions can be dispensed
with, and as the guests of that day at the Astor House
were mostly strangers to each other, conversation was
very fitful and guarded, and any movement whatever
extremely conspicuous. There were four very silent
ladies on the sofa, two very silent ladies in each of the
windows, silent ladies on the ottomans, silent ladies in
the chairs at the corners, and one silent lady, very
highly dressed, sitting on the music-stool, with her
back to the piano. There was here and there a gentleman
in the room, weather-bound and silent; but
we have only to do with one of these, and with the
last-mentioned much-embellished young lady.

“Well, I can't sit on this soft chair all day, cousin
Meg!” said the gentleman.

“'Sh!—call me Margaret, if you must speak so
loud,” said the lady. “And what would you do out
of doors this rainy day? I'm sure it's very pleasant
here.”

“Not for me. I'd rather be thrashing in the barn.
But there must be some `rainy-weather work' in the
city as well as the country. There's some fun, I know,
that's kept for a wet day, as we keep corn-shelling and
grinding the tools.”

“Dear me!”

“Well—what now?”

“Oh, nothing!—but I do wish you wouldn't bring
the stable with you to the Astor House.”

The gentleman slightly elevated his eyebrows, and
took a leaf of music from the piano, and commenced
diligently reading the mystic dots and lines. We have
ten minutes to spare before the entrance of another
person upon the scene, and we will make use of the
silence to conjure up for you, in our magic mirror,
the semblance of the two whose familiar dialogue we
have just jotted down.

Miss Margaret Pifflit was a young lady who had a
large share of what the French call la beauté du diable—youth
and freshness. (Though, why the devil
should have the credit of what never belonged to him,
it takes a Frenchman, perhaps, to explain.) To look
at, she was certainly a human being in very high perfection.
Her cheeks were like two sound apples; her
waist was as round as a stove-pipe; her shoulders had
two dimples just at the back, that looked as if they
defied punching to make them any deeper; her eyes
looked as if they were just made, they were so bright
and new; her voice sounded like “C sharp” in a new
piano; and her teeth were like a fresh break in a
cocoa-nut. She was inexorably, unabatedly, desperately
healthy. This fact, and the difficulty of uniting
all the fashions of all the magazines in one dress,
were her two principal afflictions in this world of care.
She had an ideal model, to which she aspired with
constant longings—a model resembling in figure the
high-born creatures whose never-varied face is seen
in all the plates of fashion, yet, if possible, paler and
more disdainful. If Miss Pifflit could have bent her
short wrist with the curve invariably given to the well-gloved
extremities of that mysterious and nameless
beauty; if she could but have sat with her back to
her friends, and thrown her head languishingly over
her shoulder without dislocating her neck; if she
could but have protruded from the flounce of her
dress a foot more like a mincing little muscle-shell,
and less like a jolly fat clam; in brief, if she could
have drawn out her figure like the enviable joints of a
spy-glass, whittled off more taperly her four extremities,
sold all her uproarious and indomitable roses for
a pot of carmine, and compelled the publishers of the
magazines to refrain from the distracting multiplicity
of their monthly fashions—with these little changes
in her allotment, Miss Pifflit would have realized all
her maiden aspirations up to the present hour.

A glimpse will give you an idea of the gentleman
in question. He was not much more than he looked
to be—a compact, athletic young man of twenty-one,
with clear, honest blue eyes, brown face, where it was
not shaded by the rim of his hat, curling brown hair,
and an expression of fearless qualities, dashed just
now by a tinge of rustic bashfulness. His dress was
a little more expensive and gayer than was necessary,
and he wore his clothes in a way which betrayed that
he would be more at home in shirt-sleeves. His hands
were rough, and his attitude that of a man who was
accustomed to fling himself down on the nearest
bench, or swing his legs from the top rail of a fence,
or the box of a wagon. We speak with caution of
his rusticity, however, for he had a printed card, “Mr.
Ephraim Bracely,” and he was a subscriber to the
“Spirit of the Times.” We shall find time to say a
thing or two about him as we get on.

“Eph.” Bracely and “Meg” Pifflit were “engaged.”
With the young lady it was, as the French
say, faute de mieux, for her beau-ideal (or, in plain
English, her ideal beau) was a tall, pale young gentleman,
with white gloves, in a rapid consumption. She
and Eph. were second cousins, however, and as she
was an orphan, and had lived since childhood with his
father, and, moreover, had inherited the Pifflit farm,
which adjoined that of the Bracelys, and, moreover,
had been told to “kiss her little husband; and love
him always” by the dying breath of her mother, and
(moreover third) had been “let be” his sweetheart by
the unanimous consent of the neighborhood, why, it
seemed one of those matches made in Heaven, and
not intended to be travestied on earth. It was understood
that they were to be married as soon as the
young man's savings should enable him to pull down
the old Pifflit house and build a cottage, and, with a
fair season, that might be done in another year.
Meantime, Eph. was a loyal keeper of his troth,
though never having the trouble to win the young

lady, he was not fully aware of the necessity of court-ship,
whether or no; and was, besides, somewhat unsusceptible
of the charms of moonlight, after a hard
day's work at haying or harvesting. The neighbors
thought it proof enough of his love that he never
“went sparking” elsewhere, and as he would rather
talk of his gun or his fishing-rod, his horse or his
crop, pigs, politics, or anything else, than of love or
matrimony, his companions took his engagement with
his cousin to be a subject upon which he felt too
deeply to banter, and they neither invaded his domain
by attentions to his sweetheart, nor suggested thought
by allusions to her. It was in the progress of this
even tenor of engagement, that some law business
had called old Farmer Bracely to New York, and the
young couple had managed to accompany him. And
of course nothing would do for Miss Pifflit but “the
Astor.”

And now, perhaps, the reader is ready to be told
whose carriage is at the Vesey street door, and
who sends up a dripping servant to inquire for Miss
Pifflit

It is allotted to the destiny of every country-girl to
have one fashionable female friend in the city—somebody
to correspond with, somebody to quote, somebody
to write her the particulars of the last elopement,
somebody to send her patterns of collars, and the rise
and fall of tournures, and such other things as are not
entered into by the monthly magazines. How these
apparently unlikely acquaintances are formed, is as
much a mystery as the eternal youth of post-boys,
and the eternal duration of donkeys. Far be it from
me to pry irreverently into those pokerish corners of
the machinery of the world. I go no farther than
the fact, that Miss Julia Hampson was an acquaintance
of Miss Pifflit's.

Everybody knows “Hampson and Co.”

Miss Hampson was a good deal what the Fates had
tried to make her. If she had not been admirably
well dressed, it would have been by violent opposition
to the united zeal and talent of dressmakers and milliners.
These important vicegerents of the Hand that
reserves to itself the dressing of the butterfly and
lily, make distinctions in the exercise of their vocation.
Wo be to an unloveable woman, if she be not
endowed with taste supreme. She may buy all the
stuffs of France, and all the colors of the rainbow,
but she will never get from those keen judges of fitness
the loving hint, the admiring and selective persuasion,
with which they delight to influence the
embellishment of sweetness and loveliness. They
who talk of “anything's looking well on a pretty
woman,” have not reflected on the lesser providence
of dressmakers and milliners. Woman is never mercenary
but in monstrous exceptions, and no trades-woman
of the fashion will sell taste or counsel; and,
in the superior style of all charming women, you see,
not the influence of manners upon dress, but the affectionate
tribute of these dispensers of elegance to
the qualities they admire. Let him who doubts, go
shopping with his dressy old aunt to-day, and to-morrow
with his dear little cousin.

Miss Hampson, to whom the supplies of elegance
came as naturally as bread and butter, and occasioned
as little speculation as to the whence or how, was as
unconsciously elegant, of course, as a well-dressed
lily. She was abstractly a very beautiful girl, though
in a very delicate and unconspicuous style; and by
dint of absolute fitness in dressing, the merit of her
beauty, by common observers at least, would be half
given to her fashionable air and unexceptionable toilet.
The damsel and her choice array, indeed, seemed
the harmonious work of the same maker. How much
was nature's gift, and how much was bought in Broadway,
was probably never duly understood by even her
most discriminate admirer.

But we have kept Miss Hampson too long upon the
stairs.

The two young ladies met with a kiss, in which (to
the surprise of those who had previously observed
Miss Mifflit) there was no smack of the latest fashion.

“My dear Julia!”

“My dear Margerine!” (This was a romantic variation
of Meg's, which she had forced upon her
intimate friends at the point of the bayonet.)

Eph. twitched, remindingly, the jupon of his cousin,
and she introduced him with the formula which she
had found in one of Miss Austin's novels.

“Oh, but there was a mock respectfulness in that
deep courtesy,” thought Eph. (and so there was—for
Miss Hampson took an irresistible cue from the inflated
ceremoniousness of the introduction).

Eph. made a bow as cold and stiff as a frozen horse-blanket.
And if he could have commanded the
blood in his face, it would have been as dignified and
resentful as the eloquence of Red Jacket—but that
rustic blush, up to his hair, was like a mask dropped
over his features.

“A bashful country-boy,” thought Miss Hampson,
as she looked compassionately upon his redhot forehead,
and forthwith dismissed him entirely from her
thoughts.

With a consciousness that he had better leave the
room, and walk off his mortification under an umbrella,
Eph. took his seat, and silently listened to the
conversation of the young ladies. Miss Hampson had
come to pass the morning with her friend, and she
took off her bonnet, and showered down upon her
dazzling neck a profusion of the most adorable brown
ringlets. Spite of his angry humiliation, the young
farmer felt a thrill run through his veins as the heavy
curls fell indolently about her shoulders. He had
never before looked upon a woman with emotion. He
hated her—oh, yes! for she had given him a look
that could never be forgiven—but for somebody, she
must be the angel of the world. Eph. would have
given all his sheep and horses, cows, crops, and haystacks,
to have seen the man she would fancy to be
her equal. He could not give even a guess at the
height of that conscious superiority from which she
individually looked down upon him; but it would
have satisfied a thirst which almost made him scream,
to measure himself by a man with whom she could
be familiar. Where was his inferiority? What was
it? Why had he been blind to it till now? Was
there no surgeon's knife, no caustic, that could carve
out, or cut away, burn or scarify, the vulgarities she
looked upon so contemptuously? But the devil take
her superciliousness, nevertheless!

It was a bitter morning to Eph. Bracely, but still it
went like a dream. The hotel parlor was no longer
a stupid place. His cousin Meg had gained a consequence
in his eyes, for she was the object of caress
from this superior creature—she was the link which
kept her within his observation. He was too full of
other feelings just now to do more than acknowledge the
superiority of this girl to his cousin. He felt it in
his after thoughts, and his destiny then, for the first
time, seemed crossed and inadequate to his wishes.

(We hereby draw upon your imagination for six
months, courteous reader. Please allow the teller to
show you into the middle of the following July.)

Bracely farm, ten o'clock of a glorious summer
morning—Miss Pifflit extended upon a sofa in despair.
But let us go back a little.

A week before, a letter had been received from
Miss Hampson, who, to the delight and surprise of
her friend Margerine, had taken the whim to pass a
month with her. She was at Rockaway, and was
sick and tired of waltzing and the sea. Had Farmer
Bracely a spare corner for a poor girl?

But Miss Pifflit's “sober second thought” was utter
consternation. How to lodge fitly the elegant Julia
Hampson? No French bed in the house, no boudoir,
no ottomans, no pastilles, no baths, no Psyche to
dress by. What vulgar wretches they would seem to
her. What insupportable horror she would feel at
the dreadful inelegance of the farm. Meg was pale
with terror and dismay as she went into the details of
anticipation.

Something must be done, however. A sleepless
night of reflection and contrivance sufficed to give
some shape to the capabilities of the case, and by
daylight the next morning the whole house was in
commotion. Meg had fortunately a large bump of
constructiveness, very much enlarged by her habitual
dilemmas-toilet. A boudoir must be constructed.
Farmer Bracely slept in the dried apple-room, on
the lower floor, and he was no sooner out of his
bed than his bag and baggage were tumbled up stairs,
his gun and Sunday whip were taken down from their
nails, and the floor scoured, and the ceiling white-washed.
Eph. was by this time returned from the
village with all the chintz that could be bought, and a
paper of tacks, and some new straw carpeting; and by
ten o'clock that night the four walls of the apartment
were covered with the gayly-flowered material, the
carpet was nailed down, and old Farmer Bracely
thought it a mighty nice, cool-looking place. Eph.
was a bit of a carpenter, and he soon knocked together
some boxes, which, when covered with chintz, and
stuffed with wool, looked very like ottomans; and,
with a handsome cloth on the round-table, geraniums
in the windows, and a chintz curtain to subdue the
light, it was not far from a very charming boudoir,
and Meg began to breathe more freely.

But Eph. had heard this news with the blood hot in
his temples. Was that proud woman coming to look
again upon him with contempt, and here, too, where
the rusticity, which he presumed to be the object of
her scorn, would be a thousand times more flagrant
and visible? And yet, with the entreaty on his lip
that his cousin would refuse to receive her, his heart
had checked the utterance—for an irresistible desire
sprung suddenly within him to see her, even at the
bitter cost of tenfold his former mortification.

Yet, as the preparations for receiving Miss Hampson
went on, other thoughts took possession of his
mind. Eph. was not a man, indeed, to come off second
best in the long pull of wrestling with a weakness.
His pride began to show its colors. He remembered
his independence as a farmer, dependant
on no man, and a little comparison between his pursuits,
and life, such as he knew it to be, in a city, soon
put him, in his own consciousness at least, on a par
with Miss Hampson's connexions. This point once
attained, Eph. cleared his brow, and went whistling
about the farm as usual—receiving without reply,
however, a suggestion of his cousin Meg's, that he
had better burn his old straw hat, for, in a fit of absence,
he might possibly put it on while Miss Hampson
was there.

Well, it was ten o'clock on the morning after
Miss Hampson's arrival at Bracely farm, and, as we
said before, Miss Pifflit was in despair. Presuming
that her friend would be fatigued with her journey,
she had determined not to wake her, but to order
breakfast in the boudoir at eleven. Farmer Bracely
and Eph. must have their breakfast at seven, however,
and what was the dismay of Meg, who was pouring
out their coffee as usual, to see the elegant Julia rush
into the first kitchen, courtesy very sweetly to the old
man, pull up a chair to the table, apologise for being
late, and end this extraordinary scene by producing
two newly-hatched chickens from her bosom! She
had been up since sunrise, and out at the barn, down
by the river, and up in the haymow, and was perfectly
enchanted with everything, especially the dear little
pigs and chickens!

“A very sweet young lady!” thought old Farmer
Bracely.

“Very well—but hang your condescension!” thought
Eph., distrustfully.

“Mercy on me!—to like pigs and chickens!” mentally
ejaculated the disturbed and bewildered Miss Pifflit.

But with her two chicks pressed to her breast
with one hand, Miss Hampson managed her coffee
and bread and butter with the other, and chattered
away like a child let out of school. The air was so
delicious, and the hay smelt so sweet, and the trees in
the meadow were so beautiful, and there were no stiff
sidewalks, and no brick houses, and no iron railings,
and so many dear speckled hens, and funny little
chickens, and kind-looking old cows, and colts, and
calves, and ducks, and turkeys—it was delicious—it
was enchanting—it was worth a thousand Saratogas
and Rockaways. How anybody could prefer the city
to the country, was to Miss Hampson matter of incredulous
wonder.

“Will you come into the boudoir?” asked Miss
Pifflit, with a languishing air, as her friend Julia rose
from breakfast.

“Boudoir!” exclaimed the city damsel, to the infinite
delight of old Bracely, “no, dear! I'd rather go
out to the barn! Are you going anywhere with the
oxen to-day, sir?” she added, going up to the gray-headed
farmer caressingly, “I should so like to ride
in that great cart!”

Eph. was a little suspicious of all this unexpected
agreeableness, but he was naturally too courteous not
to give way to a lady's whims. He put on his old
straw hat, and tied his handkerchief over his shoulder
(not to imitate the broad riband of a royal order, but
to wipe the sweat off handily while mowing), and offering
Miss Hampson a rake which stood outside the
door, he begged her to be ready when he came by
with the team. He and his father were bound to the
far meadow, where they were cutting hay, and would
like her assistance in raking.

It was a “specimen” morning, as the magazines
say, for the air was temperate, and the whole country
was laden with the smell of the new hay, which somehow
or other, as everybody knows, never hinders or
overpowers the perfume of the flowers. Oh, that
winding green lane between the bushes was like an
avenue to paradise. The old cart jolted along
through the ruts, and Miss Hampson, standing up
and holding on to old Farmer Bracely, watched the
great oxen crowding their sides together, and looked
off over the fields, and exclaimed, as she saw glimpses
of the river between the trees, and seemed veritably
and unaffectedly enchanted. The old farmer, at least,
had no doubt of her sincerity, and he watched her,
and listened to her, with a broad honest smile of admiration
on his weather-browned countenance.

The oxen were turned up to the fence, while the
dew dried off the hay, and Eph. and his father turned
to mowing, leaving Miss Hampson to ramble about
over the meadow, and gather flowers by the river-side.
In the course of an hour, they began to rake up, and
she came to offer her promised assistance, and stoutly
followed Eph. up and down several of the long swaths,
tilll her face glowed under her sunbonnet as it never
had glowed with waltzing. Heated and tired at last,
she made herself a seat with the new hay under a
large elm, and, with her back to the tree, watched the
labors of her companions.

Eph. was a well-built and manly figure, and all he
did in the way of his vocation, he did with a fine display
of muscular power, and (a sculptor would have
thought) no little grace. Julia watched him as he
stepped along after his rake on the elastic sward, and

she thought, for the first time, what a very handsome
man was young Bracely, and how much more finely
a man looked when raking hay, than a dandy when
waltzing. And for an hour she sat watching his motion,
admiring the strength with which he pitched up
the hay, and the grace and ease of all his movements
and postures; and, after a while, she began to feel
drowsy with fatigue, and pulling up the hay into a fragrant
pillow, she lay down and fell fast asleep.

It was now the middle of the forenoon, and the old
farmer, who, of late years, had fallen into the habit
of taking a short nap before dinner, came to the big
elm to pick up his waistcoat and go home. As he approached
the tree, he stopped, and beckoned to his son.

Eph. came up and stood at a little distance, looking
at the lovely picture before him. With one delicate
hand under her cheek, and a smile of angelic content
and enjoyment on her finely cut lips, Julia Hampson
slept soundly in the shade. One small foot escaped
from her dress, and one shoulder of faultless polish
and whiteness showed between her kerchief and her
sleeve. Her slight waist bent to the swell of the hay,
throwing her delicate and well-moulded bust into
high relief; and all over her neck, and in large clusters
on the tumbled hay, lay those glossy brown ringlets,
admirably beautiful and luxuriant.

And as Eph. looked on that dangerous picture of
loveliness, the passion, already lying perdu in his
bosom, sprung to the throne of heart and reason.

(We have not room to do more than hint at the
consequences of this visit of Miss Hampson to the
country. It would require the third volume of a
novel to describe all the emotions of that month at
Bracely farm, and bring the reader, point by point,
gingerly and softly, to the close. We must touch
here and there a point only, giving the reader's imagination
some gleaning to do after we have been over
the ground.)

Eph. Bracely's awakened pride served him the good
turn of making him appear simply in his natural character
during the whole of Miss Hampson's visit. By
the old man's advice, however, he devoted himself to
the amusement of the ladies after the haying was
over; and what with fishing, and riding, and scenery-hunting
in the neighborhood, the young people were
together from morning till night. Miss Pifflit came
down unwillingly to plain Meg, in her attendance on
her friend in her rustic occupations, and Miss Hampson
saw as little as possible of the inside of the boudoir.
The barn, and the troops of chickens, and all
the out-door belongings of the farm, interested her
daily, and with no diminution of her zeal. She
seemed, indeed, to have found her natural sphere in
the simple and affectionate life which her friend Margerine
held in such superfine contempt; and Eph.,
who was the natural mate to such a spirit, and himself,
in his own home, most unconsciously worthy of
love and admiration, gave himself up irresistibly to
his new passion.

And this new passion became apparent, at last, to
the incredulous eyes of his cousin. And that it was
timidly, but fondly returned by her elegant and high-bred
friend, was also very apparent to Miss Pifflit.
And after a few jealous struggles, and a night or two
of weeping, she gave up to it tranquilly—for, a city
life and a city husband, truth to say, had long been
her secret longing and secret hope, and she never had
fairly looked in the face a burial in the country with
the “pigs and chickens.”

She is not married yet, Meg Pifflit—but the rich
merchant, Mr. Hampson, wrecked completely with
the disastrous times, has found a kindly and pleasant
asylum for his old age with his daughter, Mrs. Bracely.
And a better or lovelier farmer's wife than Julia,
or a happier farmer than Eph., can scarce be found
in the valley of the Susquehannah.

THE WIDOW BY BREVET.

Let me introduce the courteous reader to two ladies.

Miss Picklin, a tall young lady of twenty-one, near
enough to good-looking to permit of a delusion on the
subject (of which, however, she had an entire monopoly),
with cheeks always red in a small spot, lips not
so red as the cheeks, and rather thin, sharpish nose,
and waist very slender; and last (not least important),
a very long neck, scalded on either side into a resemblance
to a scroll of shrivelled parchment, which might
or might not be considered as a mis-fortune—serving
her as a title-deed to twenty thousand dollars. The
scald was inflicted, and the fortune left in consequence,
by a maiden aunt who, in the babyhood of Miss Picklin,
attempted to cure the child's sore throat by an application
of cabbage-leaves steeped in hot vinegar.

Miss Euphemia Picklin, commonly called Phemie
—a good-humored girl, rather inclined to be fat, but
gifted with several points of beauty of which she was
not at all aware, very much a pet among her female
friends, and admitting, with perfect sincerity and submission,
her sister's exclusive right to the admiration
of the gentlemen of their acquaintance.

Captain Isaiah Picklin, the father of these ladies,
was a merchant of Salem, an importer of figs and opium,
and once master of the brig “Simple Susan,”
which still plied between his warehouse and Constantinople—nails
and codfish the cargo outward. I have
not Miss Picklin's permission to mention the precise
date of the events I am about to record, and leaving
that point alone to the imagination of the reader, I
shall set down the other particulars and impediments
in her “course of true love” with historital fidelity.

Ever since she had been of sufficient age to turn her
attention exclusively to matrimony, Miss Picklin had
nourished a presentiment that her destiny was exotic;
that the soil of Salem was too poor, and the indigenous
lovers too mean; and that, potted in her twenty thousand
dollars, she was a choice production, set aside for
flowering in a foreign clime, and destined to be transplanted
by a foreign lover. With this secret in her
bosom, she had refused one or two gentlemen of middle
age, recommended by her father, beside sundry
score of young gentlemen of slender revenues in her
own set of acquaintances, till, if there had been anything
beside poetry in Shakspere's assertion that it is—

the neighboring “brush barrens” of Saugus would
have sold in lots at a premium. It was possibly from
the want of nightingales, to whose complaining notes
the gentleman of Verona “turned his distresses,” that
the discarded of Salem preferred the consolations of
Phemie Picklin.

News to the Picklins! Hassan Keui, the son of old

Abdoul Keui, was coming out in the “Simple Susan!”
A Turk—a live Turk—a young Turk, and the son of
her father's rich correspondent in Turkey! “Ah me!”
thought Miss Picklin.

The captain himself was rather taken aback. He
had known old Abdoul for many years, had traded and
smoked with him in the cafés of Galata, had gone out
with him on Sundays to lounge on the tombstones at
Scutari, and had never thought twice about his yellow
gown and red trowsers; but what the deuce would be
thought of them in Salem? True, it was his son;
but a Turk's clothes descend from father to son
through three generations; he knew that, from remembering
this very boy all but smothered in a sort of
saffron blanket, with sleeves like pillowcases—his first
assumption of the toga virilis (not that old Picklin
knew Latin, but such was “his sentiment better expressed”).
Then he had never been asked to the
house of the Stamboul merchant, not introduced to
his wives nor his daughters (indeed, he had forgotten
that old Keui was near cutting his throat for asking
after them)—but of course it was very different in Salem.
Young Keui must be the Picklin guest, fed and
lodged, and the girls would want to give him a tea-party.
Would he sit on a chair, or want cushions on
the floor? Would he come to dinner with his breast
bare, and leave his boots outside? Would he eat rice
pudding with his fingers? Would he think it indecent
if the girls didn't wear linen cloths, Turkey fashion,
over their mouths and noses? Would he bring
his pipes? Would he fall on his face and say his
prayers four times a day, wherever he should be (with
a clean place handy)? What would the neighbors
say? The captain worked himself into a violent perspiration
with merely thinking of all this.

The Salemites have a famous museum, and know
“what manner of thing is your crocodile;” but a live
Turk consigned to Captain Picklin! It set the town
in a fever!

It would leave an indelicate opening for a conjecture
as to Miss Picklin's present age, were I to state
whether or not the arrival of the “Simple Susan” was
reported by telegraph. She ran in with a fair wind
one Sunday morning, and was immediately boarded by
the harbor-master and Captain Picklin; and there, true
to the prophetic boding of old Isaiah, the young Turk
sat cross-legged on the quarter-deck, in a white turban
and scarlet et ceteras, smoking his father's identical
pipe—no other, the captain would have taken his oath!

Up rose Hassan, when informed who was his visiter,
and taking old Picklin's hand, put it to his forehead.
The weather-stained sea-captain had bleached in the
counting-house, and he had not, at first sight remembered
the old friend of his father. He passed the pipe
into Isaiah's hand and begged him to keep it as a memento
of Abdoul, for his father had died at the last
Ramazan. Hassan had come out to see the world,
and secure a continuance of codfish and good-will from
the house of Picklin, and the merchant got astride the
tiller of his old craft, and smoked this news through
his amber-mouthed legacy, while the youth went below
to get ready to go ashore.

The reader of course would prefer to share the first
impressions of the ladies as to the young Mussulman's
personal appearance, and I pass at once, therefore, to
their disappointment, surprise, mortification, and vexation;
when, as the bells were ringing for church, the
front door opened, their father entered, and in followed
a young gentleman in frockcoat and trowsers! Yes,
and in his hand a hat—a black hat—and on his feet no
yellow boots, but calfskin, mundane and common calfskin,
and with no shaved head, and no twisted shawl
around his waist; nothing to be seen but a very handsome
young man indeed, with teeth like a fresh slice
of cocoa-nut meat, and a very deliberate pronunciation
to his bad English.

Miss Picklin's disappointment had to be slept upon,
for she had made great outlay of imagination upon the
pomp and circumstance of wedding a white Othello in
the eyes of wondering Salem; but Phemie's surprise
took but five minutes to grow into a positive pleasure;
and never suspecting, at any time, that she was visible
to the naked eye during the eclipsing presence of her
sister, she sat with a very admiring smile upon her
lips, and her soft eyes fixed earnestly on the stranger,
till she had made out a full inventory of his features,
proportions, manners, and other stuff available in
dream-land. What might be Hassan's impression of
the young ladies, could not be gathered from his manner;
for, in the first place, there was the reserve which
belonged to him as a Turk, and, in the second place,
there was a violation of all oriental notions of modesty
in their exposing their chins to the masculine observation;
and though he could endure the exposure, it
was of course with that diffidence of gaze which accompanies
the consciousness of improper objects—
adding to his demeanor another shade of timidity.

Miss Picklin's shoulders were not invaded quite to
the limits of terra cognita by the cabbage-leaves which
had exercised such an influence on her destiny; and
as the scalds somewhat resembled two maps of South
America (with Patagonia under each ear), she usually,
in full dress, gave a clear view of the surrounding
ocean—wisely thinking it better to have the geography
of her disfigurement well understood, than, by
covering a small extremity (as it were the isthmus of
Darien), to leave an undiscovered North America to
the imagination. She appeared accordingly at dinner
in a costume not likely to diminish the modest embarrassment
of Mr. Keui (as she chose to call him)—extremely
decolleté, in a pink silk dress with short sleeves,
and in a turban with a gold fringe—the latter, of
course, out of compliment to his country. “Money
is power,” even in family circles, and it was only Miss
Picklin who exercised the privilege of full dress at
a mid-day dinner. Phemie came to table dressed as
at breakfast, and if she felt at all envious of her sister's
pink gown and elbows to match, it did not appear in
her pleasant face or sisterly attention. The captain
would allow anything, and do almost anything, for his
rich daughter; but as to dining with his coat on, in hot
weather, company or no company, he would rather—

though that is not the way he expressed it. The parti carré, therefore (for there was no Mrs. Picklin), was,
in the matter of costume, rather incongruous, but, as
the Turk took it for granted that it was all according
to the custom of the country, the carving was achieved
by the shirt-sleeved captain, and the pudding “helped”
by his bare-armed daughter, with no particular commotion
in the elements. Earthquakes do not invariably
follow violations of etiquette—particularly where
nobody is offended.

After the first day, things took their natural course
—as near as they were able. Hassan was not very
quick at conversation, always taking at least five minutes
to put together for delivery a sentence of English,
but his laugh did not hang fire, nor did his nods
and smiles; and where ladies are voluble (as ladies
sometimes are), this paucity of ammunition on the
gentleman's part is no prelude to discomfiture. Then
Phemie had a very fair smattering of Italian, and that
being the business language of the Levant, Hassan
took refuge in it whenever brought to a stand-still in
English—a refuge, by the way, of which he seemed
inclined to avail himself oftener than was consistent
with Miss Picklin's exclusive property in his attention.
Rebellious though Hassan might secretly have
been to this authority over himself, Phemie was no accomplice,
natural modesty combining with the long

habit of subserviency to make her even anticipate the
exactions of the heiress; and so Miss Picklin had
“Mr. Keui” principally to herself, promenading him
through the streets of Salem, and bestowing her
sweetness upon him from his morning entrance to his
evening exit; Phemie relieving guard very cheerfully,
while her sister dressed for dinner. It was possibly
from being permitted to converse in Italian during this
half hour, that Hassan made it the only part of the
day in which he talked of himself and his house on
the Bosphorus, but that will not account also for Phemie's
sighing while she listened—never having sighed
before in her life, not even while the same voice was
talking English to her sister.

Without going into a description of the Picklin tea-party,
at which Hassan was induced to figure in his
oriental costume, while Miss Picklin sat by him on a
cushion, turbaned and (probably) cross-legged, à la
Sultana, and without recording other signs satisfactory
to the Salemites, that the young Turk had fallen
to the scalded heiress—

I must come plump to the fact that, on the Monday
following (one week after his arrival), Hassan left Salem,
unaccompanied by Miss Picklin. As he had
asked for no private interview in the best parlor, and
had made his final business arrangements with the
captain, so that he could take passage from New York
without returning, some people were inclined to fancy
that Miss Picklin's demonstrations with regard to him
had been a little premature. And “some people”
chose to smile. But it was reserved for Miss Picklin
to look round in church, in about one year from this
event, and have her triumph over “some people;”
for she was about to sail for Constantinople—“sent
for,” as the captain rudely expressed it. But I must
explain.

The “Simple Susan” came in, heavily freighted
with a consignment from the house of Keui to Picklin
& Co., and a letter from the American consul at Constantinople
wrapped in the invoice. With the careful
and ornate wording of an official epistle, it stated that
Effendi Hassan Keui had called on the consul, and
partly from the mistrust of his ability to express himself
in English on so delicate a subject, but more particularly
for the sake of approaching the object of his
affections with proper deference and ceremony, he had
requested that officer to prepare a document conveying
a proposal of marriage to the daughter of Captain
Picklin. The incomplete state of his mercantile arrangements,
while at Salem the previous year, would
account for his silence on the subject at that time, but
he trusted that his preference had been sufficiently
manifest to the lady of his heart; and as his prosperity
in business depended on his remaining at Constantinople,
enriching himself only for her sake, he was
sure that the singular request appended to his offer
would be taken as a mark of his prudence rather than
as a presumption. The cabin of the “Simple Susan,”
as Captain Picklin knew, was engaged on her next passage
to Constantinople by a party of missionaries, male
and female, and the request was to the intent that, in
case of an acceptance of his offer, the fair daughter of
the owner would come out, under their sufficient protection,
to be wedded, if she should so please, on the
day of her arrival in the “Golden Horn.”

As Miss Picklin had preserved a mysterious silence
on the subject of “Mr. Keui's” attentions since his
departure, and as a lady with twenty thousand dollars
in her own right is, of course, quite independent of
parental control, the captain, after running his eye
hastily through the document, called to the boy who
was weighing out a quintal of codfish, and bid him
wrap the letter in a brown paper and run with it to
Miss Picklin—taking it for granted that she knew
more about the matter than he did, and would explain
it all, when he came home to dinner.

In thinking the matter over, on his way home, it
occurred to old Picklin that it was worded as if he had
but one daughter. At any rate, he was quite sure
that neither of his daughters was particularly specified,
either by name or age. No doubt it was all right,
however. The girls understood it.

“So, it's you, miss!” he said, as Miss Picklin looked
round from the turban she was trying on before
the glass.

“Certainly, pa! who else should it be?”

And there ended the captain's doubts, for he never
again got sight of the letter, and the turmoil of preparation
for Miss Picklin's voyage, made the house
anything but a place for getting answers to impertinent
questions. Phemie, whom the news had made silent
and thoughtful, let drop a hint or two that she would
like to see the letter; but a mysterious air, and “La!
child, you wouldn't understand it,” was check enough
for her timid curiosity, and she plied her needle upon
her sister's wedding dress with patient submission.

The preparations for the voyage went on swimmingly.
The missionaries were written to, and willingly
consented to chaperon Miss Picklin over the seas,
provided her union with a pagan was to be sanctified
with a Christian ceremonial. Miss Picklin replied
with virtuous promptitude that the cake for the wedding
was already soldered up in a tin case, and that
she was to be married immediately on her arrival,
under an awning on the brig's deck, and she hoped
that four of the missionaries' wives would oblige her
by standing up as her bridesmaids. Many square
feet of codfish were unladen from the “Simple Susan”
to make room for boxes and bags, and one large case
was finally shipped, the contents of which had been
shopped for by ladies with families—no book of oriental
travels making any allusion to the sale of such
articles in Constantinople, though, in the natural
course of things, they must be wanted as much in
Turkey as in Salem.

The brig was finally cleared and lay off in the stream,
and on the evening before the embarkation the missionaries
arrived and were invited to a tea-party at the
Picklins. Miss Picklin had got up a little surprise
for her friends with which to close the party—a
“walking tableau.” as she termed it, in which she
should suddenly make her apparition at one door,
pass through the room, and go out at the other,
dressed as a sultana, with a muslin kirtle and satin
trowsers. She disappeared accordingly half an hour
before the breaking up; and, conversation rather
languishing in her absence, the eldest of the missionaries
rose to conclude the evening with a prayer, in
the midst of which Miss Picklin passed through the
room unperceived—the faces of the company being
turned to the wall.

The next morning at daylight the “Simple Susan”
put to sea with a fair wind, and at the usual hour for
opening the store of Picklin and Co., she had dropped
below the horizon. Phemie sat upon the end of
the wharf and watched her till she was out of sight,
and the captain walked up and down between two
puncheons of rum which stood at the distance of a
quarter-deck's length from each other, and both father
and daughter were silent. The captain had a confused
thought or two besides the grief of parting, and Phemie
had feelings quite as confused, which were not all
made up of sorrow for the loss of her sister. Perhaps
the reader will be at the trouble of spelling out their
riddles while I try to let him down softly to the catastrophe
of my story.

Without confessing to any ailment whatever, the
plump Phemie paled and thinned from the day of her
sister's departure. Her spirits, too, seemed to keep

her flesh and color company, and at the end of a
month the captain was told by one of the good dames
of Salem that he had better ask a physician what
ailed her. The doctor could make nothing out of it
except that she might be fretting for the loss of her
sister, and he recommended a change of scene and
climate. That day Captain Brown, an old mate of
Isaiah's, dropped in to eat a family dinner and say
good-by, as he was about sailing in the new schooner
Nancy for the Black sea—his wife for his only passenger.
Of course he would be obliged to drop anchor
at Constantinople to wait for a fair wind up the
Bosphorus, and part of his errand was to offer to take
letters and nicknackeries to Mrs. Keui. Old Picklin
put the two things together, and over their glass of
wine he proposed to Brown to take Phemie with Mrs.
Brown to Constantinople, leave them both there on a
visit to Mrs. Keui, till the return of the Nancy from
the Black sea, and then re-embark them for Salem.
Phemie came into the room just as they were touching
glasses on the agreement, and when the trip was
proposed to her she first colored violently, then grew
pale and burst into tears; but consented to go. And,
with such preparations as she could make that evening,
she was quite ready at the appointed hour, and
was off with the land-breeze the next morning, taking
leave of nobody but her father. And this time the
old man wiped his eyes very often before the departing
vessel was “hull down,” and was heartily sorry he
had let Phemie go without a great many presents and
a great many more kisses.

A fine, breezy morning at Constantinople!

Rapidly down the Bosphorus shot the caique of
Hassan Keui, bearing its master from his country-house
at Dolma-batchi to his warehouses at Galata.
Just before the sharp prow rounded away toward the
Golden Horn, the merchant motioned to the caikjis
to rest upon their oars, and, standing erect in the
slender craft, he strained his gaze long and with anxious
earnestness toward the sea of Marmora. Not a
sail was to be seen coming from the west, except a
man-of-war with a crescent flag at the peak, lying off
toward Scutari from Seraglio point, and with a sigh
that carried the cloud off his brow, Hassan gayly
squatted once more to his cushions, and the caique
sped merrily on. In and out, among the vessels at
anchor, the airy bark threaded her way with the dexterous
swiftness of a bird, when suddenly a cable rose
beneath her and lifted her half out of the water. A
vessel newly-arrived was hauling in to a close anchorage,
and they had crossed her hawser as it rose to the
surface. Pitched headlong into the lap of the nearest
caikji, the Turk's snowy turban fell into the water and
was carried by the eddy under the stern of the vessel
rounding to, and as the caique was driven backward
to regain it, the bareheaded owner sank back aghast—
Simple Susan of Salem staring him in the face in
golden capitals.

“Oh! Mr. Keui! how do you do!” cried a well-remembered
voice, as he raised himself to fend off
by the rudder of the brig. And there she stood
within two feet of his lips—Miss Picklin in her bridal
veil, waiting below in expectant modesty, and though
surprised by his peep into the cabin windows, excusing
it as a natural impatience in a bridegroom coming to
his bride.

The captain of the Susan, meantime, had looked
over the tafferel and recognised his old passenger, and
Hassan, who would have given a cargo of opium for
an hour to compose himself, mounted the ladder
which was thrown out to him, and stepped from the
gangway into Miss Picklin's arms! She had rushed
up to receive him, dressed in her muslin kirtle and
satin trousers, though, with her dramatic sense of
propriety, she had intended to remain below till summoned
to the bridal. The captain, of course, kept
back from delicacy, but the missionaries stood in a
cluster gazing on the happy meeting, and the sailors
looked over their shoulders as they heaved at the
windlass. As Miss Picklin afterward remarked, “it
would have been a tableau vivant if the deck had not
been so very dirty!”

Hassan wiped his eyes, for he had replaced his wet
turban on his head, but what with his escape from
drowning, and what with his surprise and embarrassment
(for he had a difficult part to play, as the reader
will presently understand), he had lost all memory
of his little stock of English. Miss Picklin drew him
gently by the hand to the quarter-deck, where, under
an awning fringed with curtains partly drawn, stood a
table with a loaf of wedding-cake upon it, and a bottle
of wine and a bible. She nodded to the Rev. Mr.
Criffin, who took hold of a chair and turned it round,
and placing it against his legs with the baok toward
him, looked steadfastly at the happy couple.

“Good morning—good night—your sister—aspetta!
per amor' di Dio!” cried the bewildered Hassan,
giving utterance to all the English he could remember,
and seizing the bride by the arm.

“These ladies are my bridesmaids,” said Miss
Picklin, pointing to the missionaries' wives who stood
by in their bonnets and shawls. “I dare say he expected
my sister would come as my bridesmaid!”
she added, turning to Mr. Griffin to explain the outbreak
as she understood it.

Hassan beat his hand upon his forehead, walked
twice up and down the quarterdeck, looked around
over the Golden Horn as if in search of an interpreter
to his feelings, and finally walked up to Miss Picklin
with a look of calm resignation, and addressed to her
and to the Rev. Mr. Griffin a speech of three minutes,
in Italian. At the close of it he made a very ceremonious
salaam, and offered his hand to the bride;
and, as no one present understood a syllable of what
he had intended to convey in his address, it was received
as probably a welcome to Turkey, or perhaps
a formal repetition of his offer of heart and hand. At
any rate, Miss Picklin took it to be high time to blush
and take off her glove, and the Rev. Mr. Griffin then
bent across the back of the chair, joined their hands
and went through the ceremony, ring and all. The
ladies came up, one after another, and kissed the
bride, and the gentlemen shook hands with Hassan,
who received their good wishes with a curious look
of unhappy resignation, and after cutting the cake and
permitting the bride to retire for a moment to calm
her feelings and put on her bonnet, the bridegroom
made rather a peremptory movement of departure,
and the happy couple went off in the caique toward
Dolma-batchi amid much waving of handkerchiefs
from the missionaries, and hurrahs from the Salem
hands of the Simple Susan.

And now, before giving the reader a translation of
the speech of Hassan before the wedding, we must
go back to some little events which had taken place
one month previously at Constantinople.

The Nancy arrived off Seraglio Point after a very
remarkable passage, having still on her quarter the
northwest breeze which had stuck to her like a blood-hound
ever since leaving the harbor of Salem. She
had brought it with her to Constahtinople indeed, for
twenty or thirty vessels which had been long waiting
a favorable wind to encounter the adverse current of
the Bosphorus, were loosing sail and getting under
way, and the pilot, knowing that the destination of the
Nancy was also to the Black sea, strongly dissuaded
Captain Brown from dropping anchor in the horn,
with a chance of losing the good luck, and lying, perhaps
a month, wind-bound in harbor. Understanding
that the captain's only object in stopping was to leave
the two ladies with Keui the opium-merchant, the
pilot, who knew his residence at Dolma-batchi, made

signal for a caique, and kept up the Bosphorus.
Arriving opposite the little village of which Hassan's
house was one of the chief ornaments, the ladies
were lowered into the caique and sent ashore—
expecting of course to be received with open arms
by Mrs. Keui—and then, spreading all her canvass,
the swift little schooner sped on her way to Trebisond.

Hassan sat in the little pavilion of his house which
looked out on the Bosphorus, eating his pillau, for it
was the noon of a holyday, and he had not been that
morning to Galata. Recognising at once the sweet
face of Phemie as the caique came near the shore,
he flew to meet her, supposing that the “Simple
Susan” had arrived, and that the lady of his love
had chosen to come and seek him. The reader
will understand of course that there was no “Mrs.
Keui.”

And now to shorten my story.

Mrs. Brown and Phemie were in Hassan's own house,
with no other acquaintance or protector on that side
of the world, and there was no possibility of escaping
a true explanation. The mistake was explained, and
explained to Brown's satisfaction. Phemie was the
“daughter” of Captain Picklin, to whom the offer was
transmitted, and as, by blessed luck, the Nancy had
outsailed the Simple Susan, Providence seemed to
have chosen to set right for once, the traverse of true
love. The English embassy was at Burgurlu, only
six miles above, on the Bosphorus, and Hassan and
his mother and sisters, and Mrs. Brown and Phemie
were soon on their way thither in swift caiques, and
the happy couple were wedded by the English chaplain.
The arrival of the Simple Susan was of course looked
for, by both Hassan and his bride, with no little dismay.
She had met with contrary winds on the
Atlantic, and had been caught in the Archipelago by
a Levanter, and from the damage of the last she had
been obliged to come to anchor off the little island of
Paros and repair. This had been a job of six weeks,
and meantime the Nancy had given them the go-by,
and reached Constantinople.

Hassan was daily on the look-out for the brig in his
trips to town, and on the morning of her arrival, his
mind being put at ease for the day by his glance
toward the sea of Marmora, the stumbling so suddenly
and so unprepared on the object of his dread, completely
bewildered and unnerved him. Through all
his confusion, however, and all the awkwardness of
his situation, there ran a feeling of self-condemnation,
as well as pity for Miss Picklin; and this had driven
him to the catastrophe described above. He felt that
he owed her some reparation, and as the religion
which he was educated did not forbid a plurality of
wives, and there was no knowing but possibly she
might be inclined to “do in Turkey as Turkeys do,”
he felt it incumbent on himself to state the fact of
his previous marriage, and then offer her the privilege
of becoming Mrs. Keui No. 2, if she chose to accept.
As he had no English at his command, he stated his
dilemma and made his offer in the best language he
had—Italian—and with the results the reader has been
made acquainted.

Of the return passage of Miss Picklin, formerly
Mrs. Keui, under the charge of Captain and Mrs.
Brown, in the schooner Nancy, I have never learned
the particulars. She arrived at Salem in very good
health, however, and has since been distinguished
principally by her sympathy for widows—based on
what, I can not very positively say. She resides at
present in Salem with her father. Captain Picklin,
who is still the consignee of the house of Keui, having
made one voyage out to see the children of his
daughter Phemie and strengthen the mercantile connexion.
His old age is creeping on him, undistinguished
by anything except the little monomania of reading
the letters from his son-in-law at least a hundred
times, and then wafering them up over the fireplace
of his counting-room—in doubt, apparently, whether
he rightly understands the contents.

THOSE UNGRATEFUL BLIDGIMSES.

—Winter's Tale.

F—, the portrait-painter, was a considerable ally
of mine at one time. His success in his art brought
him into contact with many people, and he made
friends as a fastidious lady buys shoes—trying on a
great many that were destined to be thrown aside. It
was the prompting, no doubt, of a generous quality—
that of believing all people perfect till he discovered
their faults—but as he cut loose without ceremony
from those whose faults were not to his mind, and as
ill-fitting people are not as patient of rejection as ill-fitting
shoes, the quality did not pass for its full value,
and his abusers were “thick as leaves in Vallambrosa.”
The friends who “wore his bleeding roses,”
however (and of these he had his share), fought his
battles quite at their own-charge. What with plenty
of pride, and as plentiful a lack of approbativeness,
F— took abuse as a duck's back takes rain—buoyant
in the shower as in the sunshine.

“Well, F—!” I said, as I occupied his big chair
one morning while he was at work, “there was great
skirmishing about you last night at the tea-party!”

“No!—really? Who was the enemy?”

“Two ladies, who said they travelled with you
through Italy, and knew all about you—the Blidgimses.”

“Oh, the dear old Blidgimses—Crinny and Ninny—the
ungrateful monsters! Did I ever tell you
of my nursing those two old girls through the cholera?”

“No. But before you go off with a long story,
tell me how you can stand such abominable back-biting?
It isn't once in a way, merely!—you are
their whole stock in trade, and they vilify you in every
house they set foot in. The mildest part of it is
criminal slander, my good fellow! Why not do the
world a service, and show that slander is actionable,
though it is committed in good society?”

“Pshaw! What does it amount to?

and in this particular instance, the jury would probably
give the damages the other way—for if they
hammer at me till doomsday, I have had my fun out
of them—my quid pro quo!”

“Well, preface your story by telling me where
you met them. I never knew by what perverse thread
you were drawn together.”

“A thread that might have drawn me into much
more desperate extremity—a letter from the most lovable
of women, charging me to become the trusty
squire of these errant damsels wherever I should encounter
them. I was then studying in Italy. They
came to Florence, where I chanced to be, and were
handed over to me without dog, cat, or waiting-maid,
by a man who seemed ominously glad to be rid of
them. As it was the ruralizing season, and all the
world was flocking to the baths of Lucca, close by,
they went there till I could get ready to undertake
them—which I did, with the devotion of a courier in
a new place, one fig-desiring evening of June.”

“Was there a delivery of the great seal?” I asked,
rather amused at F—'s circumstantial mention of
his introitus to office.

“Something very like it, indeed. I had not fairly
got the blood out of my face, after making my salaam,
when Miss Crinny Blidgims fished up from
some deep place she had about her, a memorandum-book,
with a well-thumbed brown paper cover, and
gliding across the room, placed it in my hands as people
on the stage present pocket-books—with a sort
of dust-flapping parabola. Now if I have any particular
antipathy, it is to the smell of old flannel, and as
this equivocal-looking object descended before my
nose—faith! But I took it. It was the account-book
of the eatables and drinkables furnished to the
ladies in their travels, the prices of eggs, bread, figs,
et cetera, and I was to begin my duties by having up
the head waiter of the lodging-house, and holding inquisition
on his charges. The Blidgimses spoke no
Italian, and no servant in the house spoke English,
and they were bursting for a translator to tell him that
the eggs were over-charged, and that he must deduct
threepence a day for wine, for they never touched it!”

“`What do the ladies wish?' inquired the dumbfounded
waiter, in civil Tuscan.

“`What does he say? what does he say?' cried
Miss Corinna, in resounding nasal.

“`Tell the impudent fellow what eggs are in Dutchess
county!' peppered out Miss Katrina, very sharply.

“Of course I translated with a discretion. There
was rather an incongruity between the looks of the
damsels and what they were to be represented as saying—Katrina
Blidgims living altogether in a blue opera-hat
with a white feather.”

I interrupted F— to say that the blue hat was
immortal, for it was worn at the tea-party of the night
before.

“I had enough of the blue hat and its bandbox before
we parted. It was the one lifetime extravagance
of the old maid, perpetrated in Paris, and as it covered
the back seam of a wig (a subsequent discovery
of mine), she was never without it, except when bonneted
to go out. She came to breakfast in it, mended
her stockings in it, went to parties in it. I fancy it
took some trouble to adjust it to the wig, and she devoted
to it the usual dressing-hours of morning and
dinner; for in private she wore a handkerchief over
it, pinned under her chin, which had only to be whipped
off when company was announced, and this, perhaps,
is one of the secrets of its immaculate, yet
threadbare preservation. She called it her abbo!”

“Her what?”

“You have heard of the famous Herbault, the
man-milliner, of Paris? The bonnet was his production,
and called after him with great propriety.
In Italy, where people dress according to their condition
in life, this perpetual abbo was something à la
princesse, and hence my embarrassment in explaining
to Jacomo, the waiter, that Signorina Katrina's high
summons concerned only an overcharge of a penny
in the eggs!”

“And what said Jacomo?”

“Jacomo was incapable of an incivility, and begged
pardon before stating that the usual practice of the
house was to charge half a dollar a day for board and
lodging, including a private parlor and bedroom, three
meals and a bottle of wine. The ladies, however,
had applied through an English gentleman (who
chanced to call on them, and who spoke Italian), to
have reductions made on their dispensing with two
dishes of meat out of three, drinking no wine, and
wanting no nuts and raisins. Their main extravagance
was in eggs, which they ate several times a
day between meals, and wished to have cooked and
served up at the price per dozen in the market. On
this they had held conclave below stairs, and the result
had not been communicated, because there was
no common language; but Jacomo wished, through
me, respectfully to represent, that the reductions from
the half dollar a day should be made as requested,
but that the eggs could not be bought, cooked, and
served up (with salt and bread, and a clean napkin),
for just their price in the market. And on this point
the ladies were obstinate. And to settle this difficulty
between the high contracting parties, cost an argument
of a couple of hours, my first performance as
translator in the service of the Blidgimses. Thenceforward,
I was as necessary to Crinny and Ninny—
(these were their familiar diminutives for Corinna and
Katrina)—as necessary to Crinny as the gift of speech,
and to Ninny as the wig and abbo put together. Obedient
to the mandate of the fair hand which had consigned
me to them, I gave myself up to their service,
even keeping in my pocket their frowsy grocery-book—though
not without some private outlay in
burnt vinegar. What penance a man will undergo
for a pretty woman who cares nothing about him!”

“But what could have started such a helpless pair
of old quizzes upon their travels?”

“I wondered myself till I knew them better.
Crinny Blidgims had a tongue of the liveliness of an
eel's tail. It would have wagged after she was skinned
and roasted. She had, beside, a kind of pinchbeck
smartness, and these two gifts, and perhaps the name
of Corinna, had inspired her with the idea that she
was an improvisatrice. So, how could she die without
going to Italy?”

“And Ninny went for company?”

“Oh, Miss Ninny Blidgims had a passion too!
She had come out to see Paris. She had heard that,
in Paris, people could renew their youth, and she
thought she had done it, with her abbo. She thought,
too, that she must have manners to correspond. So,
while travelling in her old bonnet, she blurted out her
bad grammer as she had done for fifty years, but in
her blue hat she simpered and frisked to the best of
her recollection. Silly as that old girl was, however
she had the most pellucid set of ideas on the prices
of things to eat. There was no humbugging her on
that subject, even in a foreign language. She filled
her pockets with apples, usually, in our walks; and
the translating between her and a street-huckster, she
in her abbo and the apple-woman in Italian rags, was
vexatious to endure, but very funny to remember. I
have thought of painting it, but, to understand the
picture, the spectator must make the acquaintance of
Miss Fanny Blidgims—rather a pill for a connoisseur!
But by this time you are ready to approfond, as the
French aptly say, the depths of my subsequent distresses.

THE STORY.

“I had been about a month at Lucca, when it was
suddenly proposed by Crinny that we should take a

vetturino together, and go to Venice. Ninny and she
had come down to dinner with a sudden disgust for
the baths—owing, perhaps, to the distinction they had
received as the only strangers in the place who were
not invited to the ball of a certain prince, our next-door
neighbor. The Blidgimses and their economies, in
fact, had become the joke of the season, and, as the
interpreter in the egg-trades, I was mixed up in the
omelette, and as glad to escape from my notoriety as
they. So I set about looking up the conveyance with
some alacrity.

“By the mass, it was evidently a great saving of
distance to cross the mountains to Modena, and of
course a great saving of expense, as vetturinos are
paid by the mile; but the guide-books stated that the
road was rough, and the inns abominable, and recommended
to all who cared for comfort to make a circumbendibus
by the way of Florence and Bologna.
Ninny declared she could live on bread and apples,
however, and Crinny delighted in mountain air—in
short, economy carried it, and after three days' chaffering
with the owner of a rattletrap vettura, we set off
up the banks of the Lima without the blessing of
Jacomo, the head waiter.

“We soon left the bright little river, and struck
into the mountains, and as the carriage crept on very
slowly, I relieved the horses of my weight and walked
on. The ladies did the same thing whenever they
came in sight of an orchard, and for the first day
Ninny munched the unripe apples and seemed getting
along very comfortably. The first night's lodging
was execrable, but as the driver assured us it was the
best on the route, we saved our tempers for the worst,
and the next day began to penetrate a country that
looked deserted of man, and curst with uninhabitable
sterility. Its effect upon my spirits, as I walked on
alone, was as depressing as the news of some trying
misfortune, and I was giving it credit for one redeeming
quality—that of an opiate to a tongue like Crinny
Blidgims's—when both the ladies began to show symptoms
of illness. It was not long after noon, and we
were in the midst of a waste upland, the road bending
over the horizon before and behind us, and neither
shed nor shelter, bush, wall, or tree, within reach of
the eye. The only habitation we had seen since morning
was a wretched hovel where the horses were fed
at noon, and the albergo, where we should pass the
night, was distant several hours—a long up-hill
stretch, on which the pace of the horses could not
possibly be mended. The ladies were bent double in
the carriage, and said they could not possibly go on.
Going back was out of the question. The readiest
service I could proffer was to leave them and hurry
on to the inn, to prepare for their reception.

“Fortunately our team was unicorn-rigged—one
horse in advance of a pair. I took off the leader, and
galloped away.

“Well, the cholera was still lingering in Italy, and
stomachs must be cholera-proof to stand a perpetual
diet of green apples, even with no epidemic in the air.
So I had a very clear idea of the remedies that would
be required on their arrival.

“At a hand-gallop I reached the albergo in a couple
of hours. It was a large stone barrack, intended, no
doubt, as was the road we had travelled, for military
uses. A thick stone wall surrounded it, and it stood
in the midst, in a pool of mud. From the last eminence
before arriving, not another object could be
descried within a horizon of twenty miles diameter,
and a whitish soil of baked clay, browned here and
there by a bit of scanty herbage, was foreground and
middle and background to the pleasant picture. The
site of the barrack had probably been determined by
the only spring within many miles, and by the dryness
without and the mud within the walls, it was contrived
for a monopoly by the besieged.

“I cantered in at the unhinged gate, and roared
out `casa!' `cameriere!' `botega!' till I was frightened
at my own voice.

“No answer. I threw my bridle over a projection
of the stone steps, and mounted, from an empty
stable which occupied the ground floor (Italian
fashion), to the second story, which seemed equally
uninhabited. Here were tables, however, and wooden
settees, and dirty platters—the first signs of life. On
the hearth was an iron pot and a pair of tongs, and
with these two musical instruments I played a tune
which I was sure would find ears, if ears there were
on the premises. And presently a heavy foot was
heard on the stair above, and with a sonorous yawn
descended mine host—dirty and stolid—a goodly pattern
of the `fat weed on Lethe's wharf,' as you would
meet in a century. He had been taking his siesta,
and his wife had had a colpo di sole, and was confined
helplessly to her bed. The man John was out tending
sheep, and he, the host, was vicariously, cook,
waiter, and chambermaid. What might be the pleasure
of il signore?

“My pleasure was, first, to see the fire kindled and
the pot put over, and then to fall into a brown
study.

“Two fine ladies with the cholera—two days' journey
from a physician—a fat old Italian landlord for
nurse and sole counsellor—nobody who could understand
a word they uttered, except myself, and not a
drug nor a ministering petticoat within available
limits! Then the doors of the chambers were without
latches or hinges, and the little bed in each great
room was the one article of furniture, and the house
was so still in the midst of that great waste, that all
sounds and movements whatever, must be of common
cognisance! Should I be discharging my duty to
ladies under my care to leave them to this dirty old
man? Should I offer my own attendance as constant
nurse, and would the service be accepted? How, in
the name of Robinson Crusoe, were these delicate
damsels to be `done for'?

“As a matter of economy in dominos, as well as to
have something Italian to bring home, I had bought at
Naples the costume of a sister of charity, and in it I
had done all my masquerading for three carnivals. It
was among my baggage, and it occurred to me
whether I had not better take the landlord into my
confidence, and bribe him to wait upon the ladies, disguised
in coif and petticoat. No—for he had a mustache,
and spoke nothing but Italian. Should I do it
myself?

“I paced up and down the stone floor in an agony
of dilemma.

“In the course of half an hour I had made up my
mind. I called to Boniface, who was watching the
boiling pot, and made a clean breast to him of my
impending distresses, aiding his comprehension by
such eye-water as landlords require. He readily undertook
the necessary lies, brought out his store of
brandy, added a second bed to one of the apartments,
and promised faithfully to bear my sex in mind, and
treat me with the reverence due my cross and rosary.
I then tore out a leaf of the grocery book, and wrote
with my pencil a note to this effect, to be delivered to
the ladies on their arrival:—

“The delivery of this was subject, of course, to
the condition of the ladies when they should arrive,
though I had a presentiment they were in for a serious
business.

“And, true to my boding, they did arrive, exceedingly
ill. An hour earlier than I had looked for him,
the vetturino came up with foaming horses at a tugging
trot, frightened half out of his senses. The
ladies were dying, he swore by all the saints, before he
dismounted. He tore open the carriage door, shouted
for il signore and the landlord, and had carried both
the groaning girls up stairs in his arms, before fat
Boniface, who had been killing a sheep in the stable,
could wash his hands and come out to him. To his
violent indignation, the landlord's first care was to
unstrap the baggage and take off my portmanteau,
condescending to give him neither why nor wherefore,
and as it mounted the stairs on the broad shoulders of
my faithful ally, it was followed by a string of oaths
such as can rattle off from nothing but the voluble
tongue of an Italian.

“I immediately despatched the note by the host,
requesting him to come back and `do my dress,' and
in half an hour sister Benedetta's troublesome toilet
was achieved, and my old Abigail walked around me,
rubbing his hands, and swore I was a `meraviglia di
belleza.' The lower part of my face was covered by
the linen coif, and the forehead was almost completely
concealed in the plain put-away of a `false front;'
and, unless the Blidgimses had reconnoitred my nose
and eyes very carefully, I was sure of my disguise.
The improvements in my figure were, unluckily,
fixtures in the dress, for it was very hot; but by the
landlord's account they were very becoming. Do you
believe the old dog tried to kiss me?

“The groans of Ninny, meantime, resounded
through the house, for, as I expected, she had the
worst of it. Her exclamations of pain were broken
up, I could also hear, by sentences in a sort of spiteful
monotone, answered in regular `humphs!' by Crinny—Crinny
never talking except to astonish, and being
as habitually crisp to her half-witted sister as she was
fluent to those who were capable of surprise. Fearing
that some disapprobation of myself might find its
way to Ninny's lips, and for several other reasons
which occurred to me, I thought it best to give the
ladies another half hour to themselves, and by way of
testing my incognito, bustled about in the presence of
the vetturino, warming oil and mixing brandies-and-water,
and getting used to the suffocation of my petticoats—for
you have no idea how intolerably hot they
are, with trowsers under.

“Quite assured, at last, I knocked at the door.

“`That's his nun!' said Ninny, after listening an
instant.

“`Come in!—that is to say, entrez!' feebly murmured
Crinny.

“They were both in bed, rolled up like pocket-handkerchiefs;
but Ninny had found strength to band-box
her wig and abbo, and array herself in a nightcap
with an exceedingly broad frill. But I must not
trench upon the `secrets of the prison-house.' You
are a bachelor, and the Blidgimses are still in a `world
of hope.'

“I walked in and leaned over each of them, and
whispered a benedicite, felt their pulses, and made
signs that I understood their complaints and they need
not trouble themselves to explain; and forthwith I commenced
operations by giving them their grog (which
they swallowed without making faces, by-the-by), and,
as they relaxed their postures a little, I got one foot at
a time hung over to me from the side of the bed into
the pail of hot water, and set them to rubbing themselves
with the warm oil, while I vigorously bathed
their extremities. Crinny, as I very well knew, had
but five-and-twenty words of French, just sufficient to
hint at her wants, and Ninny spoke only such English
as Heaven pleased, so I played the ministering angel
in safe silence—listening to my praises, however, for I
handled Ninny's irregular doigts du pied with a tenderness
that pleased her.

“Well—you know what the cholera is. I knew
that at the Hotel Dieu at Paris, women who had not
been intemperate were oftenest cured by whiskey
punches, and as brandy toddies were the nearest approach
of which the resources of the place admitted,
I plied my patients with brandy toddy. In the weak
state of their stomachs, it produced, of course, a delirious
intoxication, and as I began very early in the
morning, there were no lucid intervals in which my
incognito might be endangered. My ministrations
were, consequently, very much facilitated, and after
the second day (when I really thought the poor girls
would die), we fell into a very regular course of hospital
life, and for one, I found it very entertaining.
Quite impressed with the idea that sister Bellidettor
(as Ninny called me) understood not a word of English,
they discoursed to please themselves, and I was
obliged to get a book, to excuse, even to their tipsy
comprehension, my outbreaks of laughter. Crinny
spouted poetry and sobbed about Washington Irving,
who, she thought, should have been her lover, and
Ninny sat up in bed, and, with a small glass she had
in the back of a hair-brush, tried on her abbo at every
possible angle, always ending by making signs to sister
Bellidettor to come and comb her hair! There was a
long, slender, mustache remaining on the back of the
bald crown, and after putting this into my hand, with
the hair-brush, she sat with a smile of delight till she
found my brushing did not come round to the front!

“`Why don't you brush this lock?' she cried,
`this—and this—and this!' making passes from her
shining skull down to her waist, as if, in every one, she
had a handful of hair! And so, for an hour together,
I threaded these imaginary locks, beginning where
they were rooted `long time ago,' and passing the
brush off to the length of my arm—the cranium,
when I had done, looking like a balloon of shot silk,
its smooth surface was so purpled with the friction of
the bristles. Poor Ninny! She has great temptation
to tipple, I think—that is, `if Maeassar won't bring
back the lost chevelure!'

“About the fifth day, the ladies began to show
signs of convalescence, and it became necessary to
reduce their potations. Of course they grew less
entertaining, and I was obliged to be much more on
my guard. Crinny fell from her inspiration, and
Ninny from her complacency, and they came down to
their previous condition of damaged spinsters, prim
and peevish. `Needs must' that I should `play out
the play,' however, and I abated none of my petits
soins for their comfort, laying out very large anticipations
of their grateful acknowledgments for my dramatic
chivalry, devotion, and delicacy!”

“Well—they are ungrateful!” said I, interrupting
F— for the first time in his story.

“Now, are not they? They should at least, since
they deny me my honors, pay me for my services as
maid-of-all-work, nurse, hair-dresser, and apothecary!
Well, if I hear of their abusing me again, I'll send in
my bills. Wouldn't you? But, to wind up this long
story.

“I thought that perhaps there might be some little
circumstances connected with my attentions which
would look best at a distance, and that it would be
more delicate to go on and take leave at Modena as

sister Benedetta, and rejoin them the next morning in
hose and doublet as before—reserving to some future
period the clearing up of my apparently recreant desertion.
On the seventh morning, therefore, I instructed
old Giuseppe, the landlord, to send in his bill
to the ladies while I was dressing, and give notice to
the vetturino that he was to take the holy sister to
Modena in the place of il signore, who had gone on
before.

“Crinny and Ninny were their own reciprocal
dressing-maids, but Crinny's fingers had weakened by
sickness much more than her sister's waist had diminished,
and, in the midst of shaving, in my own room,
I was called to `finish doing' Ninny, who backed up
to me with her mouth full of pins, and the breath, for
the time being, quite expelled from her body. As I
was straining, very red in the face, at the critical hook,
Giuseppe knocked at the door, with the bill, and the
lack of an interpreter to dispute the charges, brought
up the memory of the supposed `absquatulator' with
no very grateful odor. Before I could finish Miss
Ninny and get out of the room, I heard myself
charged with more abominations, mental and personal,
than the monster that would have made the fortune of
Trinculo. Crinny counted down half the money, and
attempted, by very expressive signs, to impress upon
Giuseppe that it was enough; but the only palm of
the old publican was patiently held out for more, and
she at last paid the full demand, fairly crying with vexation.

“Quite sick of the new and divers functions to
which I had been serving an apprenticeship in my
black petticoat, I took my place in the vettura, and
dropped veil, to be sulky in one lump as far as Modena.
I would willingly have stopped my ears, but after
wearing out their indignation at the unabated charges
of old Giuseppe, the ladies took up the subject of the
expected donation to the charity-fund of sister Benedetta,
and their expedients to get rid of it occupied
(very amusingly to me) the greater part of a day's
travel. They made up their minds at last, that half a
dollar would be as much as I could expect for my
week's attendance, and Crinny requested that she
should not be interrupted while she thought out the
French for saying as much when we should come to
the parting.

“I was sitting quietly in the corner of the vettura,
the next day, felicitating myself on the success of my
masquerade, when we suddenly came to a halt at the
gate of Modena, and the doganiere put his mustache
in at the window, with `passaporti, signore!'

“Murder! thought I—here's a difficulty I never
provided for!

“The ladies handed out their papers, and I thrust
my hand through the slit in the side of my dress and
pulled mine from my pocket. As of course you
know, it is the business of this gatekeeper to compare
every traveller with the description given of him in
his passport. He read those of the Blidgimses and
looked at them—all right. I sat still while he opened
mine, thinking it possible he might not care to read
the description of a sister of charity. But to my dismay
he did—and opened his eyes, and looked again
into the carriage.

“`Aspetta, caro!' said I, for I saw it was of no use.
I gathered up my bombazine and stepped out into the
road. There were a dozen soldiers and two or three
loungers sitting on a long bench in the shade of the gateway.
The officer read through the description once
more, and then turned to me with the look of a functionary
who has detected a culprit. I began to pull up
my petticoat. The soldiers took their pipes out of their
mouths and uttered the Italian `keck' of surprise.
When I had got as far as the knee, however, I came
to the rolled-up trowsers, and the officer joined in the
sudden uproar of laughter. I pulled my black petticoat
over my head, and stood in my waistcoat and
shirt-sleeves, and bowed to the merry official. The
Blidgimses, to my surprise, uttered no exclamation,
but I had forgotten my coif. When that was unpinned,
and my whiskers came to light, their screams
became alarming. The vetturino ran for water, the
soldiers started to their feet, and in the midst of the
excitement, I ordered down my baggage and resumed
my coat and cap, and repacked under lock and key
the sister Benedetta. And not quite ready to encounter
the Blidgimses, I walked on to the hotei and
left the vetturino to bring on the ladies at his leisure.

“Of course I had no control over accidents, and
this exposure was unlucky; but if I had had time to
let myself down softly on the subject, don't you see it
would have been quite a different sort of an affair? I
parted company from the old girls at Modena, however,
and they were obliged to hire a man-servant who
spoke English and Italian, and probably the expense
of that was added to my iniquities. Anyhow, abusing
me this way is very ungrateful of these Blidgimses.
Now, isn't it?”