LEWIS ARUNDEL

“Scarcely so much, mamma; indeed, it wants a quarter of nine yet. The coach does not arrive till half-past eight, and he has quite four miles to walk afterwards.”

“Oh! this waiting, it destroys me,” rejoined the first speaker, rising from her seat and pacing the room with agitated steps. “How you can contrive to sit there, drawing so quietly, I do not comprehend!”

“Does it annoy you, dear mamma? Why did you not tell me so before?” returned Rose gently, putting away her drawing-apparatus as she spoke. No one would have called Rose Arundel handsome, or even pretty, and yet her face had a charm about it—a charm that lurked in the depths of her dreamy grey eyes, and played about the corners of her mouth when she smiled, and sat like a glory upon her high, smooth forehead. Both she and her mother were clad in the deepest mourning, and the traces of some recent heartfelt sorrow might be discerned in either face. A stranger would have taken them for sisters, rather than for mother and daughter; for there were lines of thought on Rose’s brow which her twenty years scarcely warranted, while Mrs. Arundel, at eight-and-thirty, looked full six years younger, despite her widow’s cap.

“I have been thinking, Rose,” resumed the elder lady, after a short pause, during which she continued pacing the room most assiduously, “I have been thinking that if we were to settle near some large town, I could give lessons in music and singing: my voice is as good as ever it was—listen;” and, seating herself at a small cottage piano, she began to execute some difficult solfeggi in a rich, clear soprano, with a degree of ease and grace which proved her to be a finished singer; and, apparently carried away by the feeling the music had excited, she allowed her voice to flow, as it were unconsciously, into the words of an Italian song, which she continued for some moments, without noticing a look of pain which shot across her daughter’s pale features. At length, suddenly breaking off, she exclaimed in a voice broken with emotion, “Ah! what am I singing?” and, burying her face in her handkerchief, she burst into a flood of tears: it had been her husband’s favourite song.

Recovering herself more quickly than from the violence of her grief might have been expected, she was about to resume her walk, when, observing for the first time the expression of her daughter’s face, she sprang towards her, and placing her arm caressingly round her waist, kissed her tenderly, exclaiming in a tone of the fondest affection, “Rose, my own darling, I have distressed you by my heedlessness, but I forget everything now!” She paused; then added, in a calmer tone, “Really, love, I have been thinking seriously of what I said just now about teaching. If I could but get a sufficient number of pupils, it would be much better than allowing you to go out as governess, for we could live together then; and I know I shall never be able to part with you. Besides, you would be miserable, managing naughty children all day long—throwing away your talents on a set of stupid little wretches,—such drudgery would ennui you to death.”

“And do you think, mamma, that I could be content to live in idleness and allow you to work for my support?” replied Rose, while a faint smile played over her expressive features. “Oh, no! Lewis will try to obtain some appointment: you shall live with him and keep his house, while I go out as governess for a few years; and we must save all we can, until we are rich enough to live together again.”

“And perhaps some day we may be able to come back and take the dear old cottage, if Lewis is very lucky and should make a fortune,” returned Mrs. Arundel. “How shall we be able to bear to leave it!” she added, glancing round the room regretfully.

“How, indeed!” replied Rose, with a sigh; “but it must be done. Lewis will not feel it as we shall—he has been away so long.”

“It seems an age,” resumed Mrs. Arundel, musing. “How old was he when he left Westminster?”

“Sixteen, was he not?” replied Rose.

“And he has been at Bonn three years. Why, Rose, he must be a man by this time!”

“Mr. Frere wrote us word he was the taller of the two by half a head last year, if you recollect,” returned Rose.

“Hark!” exclaimed Mrs. Arundel, starting up and going to the window, which opened in the French fashion upon a small flower-garden. As she spoke, the gate-bell rang smartly, and in another moment the person outside, having apparently caught sight of the figure at the window, sprang lightly over the paling, crossed the lawn in a couple of bounds, and ere the slave of the bell had answered its impatient summons, Lewis was in his mother’s arms.

After the first greeting, in which smiles and tears had mingled in strange fellowship, Mrs. Arundel drew her son towards a table, on which a lamp was burning, saying as she did so, “Why, Rose, can this be our little Lewis? He is as tall as a grenadier! Heads up, sir!—Attention!—You are going to be inspected. Do you remember when the old sergeant used to drill us all, and wanted to teach Rose to fence?”

Smiling at his mother’s caprice, Lewis Arundel drew himself up to his full height, and, placing his back against the wall, stood in the attitude of a soldier on parade—his head just touching the frame of a picture which hung above him. The light of the lamp shone full upon the spot where he had stationed himself, displaying a face and figure on which a mother’s eye might well rest with pride and admiration. Considerably above the middle height, his figure was slender, but singularly graceful; his head small and intellectual looking. The features, exquisitely formed, were, if anything, too delicately cut and regular; which, together with a brilliant complexion and long silken eyelashes, tended to impart an almost feminine character to his beauty. The expression of his face, however, effectually counteracted any such tendency; no one could observe the flashing of the dark eyes, the sarcastic curl of the short upper lip, the curved nostril slightly drawn back, the stern resolution of the knitted brow, without tracing signs of pride unbroken, stormy feelings and passions unsubdued, and an iron will, which, according as it might be directed, must prove all-powerful for good or evil. His hair, which he wore somewhat long, was, like his mother’s, of that jet black colour characteristic of the inhabitants of a southern clime rather than of the descendants of the fair-haired Saxons, while a soft down of the same dark hue as his clustering curls fringed the sides of his face, affording promise of a goodly crop of whiskers. Despite the differences of feature and expression,—and they were great,—there was a decided resemblance between the brother and sister, and the same indescribable charm, which made it next to impossible to watch Rose Arundel without loving her, shed its sunshine also over Lewis’s face when he smiled.

After surveying her son attentively, with eyes which sparkled with surprise and pleasure, Mrs. Arundel exclaimed, “Why, how the boy is altered! Is he not improved, Rose?” As she spoke, she involuntarily glanced from Lewis to the picture under which he stood. It was a half-length portrait of a young man, in what appeared to be some foreign uniform, the hand resting on the hilt of a cavalry sabre. The features, though scarcely so handsome, were strikingly like those of Lewis Arundel, the greatest difference being in the expression, which was more joyous, and that the hair in the portrait was of a rich brown instead of black. After comparing the two for a moment, Mrs Arundel attempted to speak, but her voice failing from emotion, she burst into tears, and hastily left the room.

“Why, Rose, what is it?” exclaimed Lewis in surprise; “is my mother ill?”

“No; it is your likeness to that picture, Lewis love, that has overcome her: you know it is a portrait of our dearest father” (her voice faltered as she pronounced his name), “taken just after they were married, I believe.”

Lewis regarded the picture attentively, then averting his head as if he could not bear that even Rose should witness his grief, he threw himself on a sofa and concealed his face with his hands. Recovering himself almost immediately, he drew his sister gently towards him, and placing her beside him, asked, as he stroked her glossy hair—

“Rose, dearest, how is it that I was not informed of our poor father’s illness? Surely a letter must have miscarried!”

“Did not mamma explain to you, then, how sudden it was?”

“Not a word: she only wrote a few hurried lines, leading me to prepare for a great shock; then told me that my father was dead; and entreating me to return immediately, broke off abruptly, saying she could write no more.”

“Poor mamma! she was quite overcome by her grief, and yet she was so excited and so anxious to save me, she would do everything herself. I wished her to let me write to you, but she objected, and I was afraid of annoying her.”

“It was most unfortunate,” returned Lewis; “in her hurry she misdirected the letter; and, as I told you when I wrote, I was from home at the time, and did not receive it till three weeks after it should have reached me. I was at a rifle-match got up by some of the students, and had just gained the prize, a pair of silver-mounted pistols, when her letter was put into my hand. Fancy receiving such news in a scene of gaiety!”

“How exquisitely painful! My poor brother!” said Rose, while the tears she could no longer repress dimmed her bright eyes. After a moment she continued, “But I was going to tell you,—it was more than a month ago,—poor papa had walked over to Warlington to negotiate about selling one of his paintings. Did you know that he had lately made his talent for painting serve as a means of adding to our income?”

“Richard Frere told me of it last year,” replied Lewis.

“Oh yes, Mr. Frere was kind enough to get introductions to several picture-dealers, and was of the greatest use,” continued Rose. “Well, when papa came in, he looked tired and harassed; and in answer to my questions, he said he had received intelligence which had excited him a good deal, and added something about being called upon to take a very important step. I left him to fetch a glass of wine, and when I returned, to my horror, his head was leaning forward on his breast, and he was both speechless and insensible. We instantly sent for the nearest medical man, but it was of no use; he pronounced it to be congestion of the brain, and gave us no hope: his opinion was but too correct; my dear father never spoke again, and in less than six hours all was over.”

“How dreadful!” murmured Lewis. “My poor Rose, how shocked you must have been!” After a few minutes’ silence he continued, “And what was this news which produced such an effect upon my father?”

“Strange to say,” replied Rose, “we have not the slightest notion. No letter or other paper has been found which could at all account for it, nor can we learn that papa met any one at Warlington likely to have brought him news. The only clue we have been able to gain is that Mr. Bowing, who keeps the library there, remarked that papa came in as usual to look at the daily papers, and as he was reading, suddenly uttered an exclamation of surprise and put his hand to his brow. Mr. Bowing was about to inquire whether anything was the matter, when he was called away to attend to a customer; and when he was again at liberty papa had left the shop. Mr. Bowing sent us the paper afterwards, but neither mamma nor I could discover in it anything we could imagine at all likely to have affected papa so strongly.”

“How singular!” returned Lewis, musing. “What could it possibly have been? You say my father’s papers have been examined?”

“Yes, mamma wrote to Mr. Coke, papa’s man of business in London, and he came down directly, but nothing appeared to throw any light on the matter. Papa had not even made a will.” She paused to dry the tears which had flowed copiously during this narration, then continued: “But oh! Lewis, do you know we are so very, very poor?”

“I suspected as much, dear Rose; I knew my father’s was a life income. But why speak in such a melancholy tone? Surely my sister has not grown mercenary?”

“Scarcely that, I hope,” returned Rose, smiling; “but there is some difference between being mercenary and regretting that we are so poor that we shall be unable to live together: is there not, Lewis dear?”

“Unable to live together?” repeated Lewis slowly. “Yes, well, I may of course be obliged to leave you, but I shall not accept any employment which will necessitate my quitting England, so I shall often come and take a peep at you.”

“Oh! but, Lewis love, it is worse than that—we shall not be able to—— Hush! here comes mamma; we will talk about this another time.”

“Why, Lewis,” exclaimed Mrs. Arundel, entering the room with a light elastic step, without a trace of her late emotion visible on her animated countenance, “what is this? Here’s Rachel complaining that you have brought a wild beast with you, which has eaten up all the tea-cakes.”

“Let alone fright’ning the blessed cat so that she’s flowed up the chimley like a whirlpool, and me a’most in fits all the time, the brute! But I’ll not sleep in the house with it, to be devoured like a cannibal in my quiet bed, if there was not another sitivation in Sussex!” And here Rachel, a stout serving-woman, with a face which, sufficiently red by nature, had become the deepest crimson from fear and anger, burst into a flood of tears, which, mingling with a tolerably thick deposit of soot, acquired during the hurried rise and progress of the outraged cat, imparted to her the appearance of some piebald variety of female Ethiopian Serenader.

“Rachel, have you forgotten me?” inquired Lewis, as soon as he could speak for laughing. “What are you crying about? You are not so silly as to be afraid of a dog? Here, Faust, where are you?” As he spoke he uttered a low, peculiar whistle; and in obedience to his signal a magnificent Livonian wolf-hound, which bore sufficient likeness to the animal it was trained to destroy to have alarmed a more discriminating zoologist than poor Rachel, sprang into the room, and, delighted at rejoining his master, began to testify his joy so roughly as not only to raise the terror of that damsel to screaming point, but to cause Mrs. Arundel to interpose a chair between herself and the intruder, while Rose, pale but silent, shrank timidly into a corner of the apartment. In an instant the expression of Lewis’s face changed; his brow contracted, his mouth grew stern, and fixing his flashing eyes upon those of the dog, he uttered in a deep, low voice some German word of command; and as he spoke the animal dropped at his feet, where it crouched in a suppliant attitude, gazing wistfully at his master’s countenance, without offering to move.

“You need not have erected a barricade to defend yourself, my dear mother,” said Lewis, as a smile chased the cloud which had for a moment shaded his features; “the monster is soon quelled. Rose, you must learn to love Faust—he is my second self; come and stroke him.”

Thus exhorted, Rose approached and patted the dog’s shaggy head, at first timidly, but more boldly when she found that he still retained his crouching posture, merely repaying her caresses by fixing his bright, truthful eyes upon her face lovingly, and licking his lips with his long red tongue.

“Now, Rachel,” continued Lewis, “it is your turn; come, I must have you good friends with Faust.”

“No, I’m much obliged to you, sir, I couldn’t do it, indeed—no disrespect to you, Mr. Lewis, though you have growed a man in foreign parts. I may be a servant of all work, but I didn’t engage myself to look after wild beasts, sir. No! nor wouldn’t, if you was to double my wages, and put the washin’ out—I can’t abear them.”

“Foolish girl! it’s the most good-natured dog in the world. Here, he’ll give you his paw; come and shake hands with him.”

“I couldn’t do it, sir; I’m jest a-going to set the tea-things. I won’t, then, that’s flat,” exclaimed Rachel, waxing rebellious in the extremity of her terror, and backing rapidly towards the door.

“Yes, you will,” returned Lewis quietly; “every one does as I bid them.” And grasping her wrist, while he fixed his piercing glance sternly upon her, he led her up to the dog, and in spite of a faint show of resistance, a half-frightened, half-indignant “I dare say, indeed,” and a muttered hint of her conviction “that he had lately been accustomed to drive black nigger slaves in Guinea,” with an intimation “that he’d find white flesh and blood wouldn’t stand it, and didn’t ought to, neither,” succeeded in making her shake its great paw, and finally (as she perceived no symptoms of the humanivorous propensities with which her imagination had endowed it), pat its shaggy sides. “There, now you’ve made up your quarrel, Faust shall help you to carry my things upstairs,” said Lewis; and slinging a small travelling valise round the dog’s neck, he again addressed him in German, when the well-trained animal left the room with the astonished but no longer refractory Rachel.

“You must be a conjurer, Lewis,” exclaimed his mother, who had remained a silent but amused spectator of the foregoing scene. “Why, Rachel manages the whole house. Rose and I do exactly what she tells us, don’t we, Rose? What did you do to her? was it mesmerism?”

“I made use of one of the secrets of the mesmerist, certainly,” replied Lewis; “I managed her by the power of a strong will over a weak one.”

“I should hardly call Rachel’s a weak will,” observed Rose, with a quiet smile.

“You must confess, at all events, mine is a stronger,” replied Lewis. “When I consider it necessary to carry a point, I usually find some way of doing it; it was necessary for the sake of Faust’s well-being to manage Rachel, and I did so.”

He spoke carelessly, but there was something in his bearing and manner which told of conscious power and inflexible resolution, and you felt instinctively that you were in the presence of a masterspirit.

Tea made its appearance; Rachel, upon whom the charm still appeared to operate, seeming in the highest possible good humour,—a frame of mind most unusual with that exemplary woman, who belonged to that trying class of servants who, on the strength of their high moral character and intense respectability, see fit to constitute themselves a kind of domestic scourges, household horse-hair shirts (if we may be allowed the expression), and, bent on fulfilling their mission to the enth, keep their martyred masters and mistresses in a constant state of mental soreness and irritation from morning till night.

Tea came,—the cakes demolished by the reprobate Faust in the agitation of his arrival (he was far too well-bred a dog to have done such a thing had he had time for reflection) having been replaced by some marvellous impromptu resulting from Rachel’s unhoped-for state of mind. The candles burned brightly; the fire (for though it was the end of May, a fire was still an agreeable companion) blazed and sparkled cheerily, but yet a gloom hung over the little party. One feeling was uppermost in each mind, and saddened every heart. He whom they had loved with a deep and tender affection, such as but few of us are so fortunate as to call forth, the kind and indulgent husband and father, the dear friend rather than the master of that little household, had been taken from amongst them; and each word, each look, each thought of the past, each hope for the future, served to realise in its fullest bitterness the heavy loss they had sustained. Happy are the dead whose virtues are chronicled, not on sculptured stone, but in the faithful hearts of those whom they have loved on earth!

During the evening, in the course of conversation, Mrs. Arundel again referred to the project of teaching music and singing. Lewis made no remark on the matter at the time, though his sister fancied, from his compressed lip and darkened brow, that it had not passed him unobserved. When the two ladies were about to retire for the night, Lewis signed to his sister to remain; and having lighted his mother’s candle, kissed her affectionately, and wished her good-night, he closed the door. There was a moment’s silence, which was broken by Lewis saying abruptly, “Rose, what did my mother mean about giving singing lessons?”

“Dear, unselfish mamma!” replied Rose, “always ready to sacrifice her own comfort for those she loves! She wants, when we leave the cottage, to settle near some large town, that she may be able to teach music and singing (you know what a charming voice she has), in order to save me from the necessity of going out as governess.”

“Leave the cottage! go out as governess!” repeated Lewis in a low voice, as if he scarcely understood the purport of her words. “Are you mad?”

“I told you, love, we are too poor to continue living here, or indeed anywhere, in idleness; we must, at all events for a few years, work for our living; and you cannot suppose I would let mamma——”

“Hush!” exclaimed Lewis sternly, “you will distract me.” He paused for some minutes in deep thought; then asked, in a cold, hard tone of voice, which, to one skilled in reading the human heart, told of intense feelings and stormy passions kept down by the power of an iron will, “Tell me, what is the amount of the pittance that stands between us and beggary?”

“Dear Lewis, do not speak so bitterly; we have still each other’s love remaining, and Heaven to look forward to; and with such blessings, even poverty need not render us unhappy.” And as she uttered these words, Rose leaned fondly upon her brother’s shoulder, and gazed up into his face with a look of such deep affection, such pure and holy confidence, that even his proud spirit, cruelly as it had been wounded by the unexpected shock, could not withstand it. Placing his arm round her, he drew her towards him, and kissing her high, pale brow, murmured—

“Forgive me, dear Rose; I have grown harsh and stern of late—all are not true and good as you are. Believe me, it was for your sake and my mother’s that I felt this blow: for myself, I heed it not, save as it impedes freedom of action. And now answer my question, What have we left to live upon?”

“About £100 a year was what Mr. Coke told mamma.”

“And, on an average, what does it cost living in this cottage as comfortably as you have been accustomed to do?”

“Poor papa used to reckon we spent £200 a year here.”

“No more, you are certain?”

“Quite.”

Again Lewis paused in deep thought, his brow resting on his hand. At length he said, suddenly—

“Yes, it no doubt can be done, and shall. Now, Rose, listen to me. While I live and can work, neither my mother nor you shall do anything for your own support, or leave the rank you have held in society. You shall retain this cottage, and live as you have been accustomed to do, and as befits the widow and daughter of him that is gone.”

“But, Lewis——”

“Rose, you do not know me. When I left England I was a boy: in years, perhaps, I am little else even yet; but circumstances have made me older than my years, and in mind and disposition I am a man, and a determined one. I feel strongly and deeply in regard to the position held by my mother and sister, and therefore on this point it is useless to oppose me.”

Rose looked steadily in his face, and saw that what he said was true; therefore, exercising an unusual degree of common sense for a woman, she held her tongue, and let a wilful man have his way.

Reader, would you know the circumstances which had changed Lewis Arundel from a boy to a man? They are soon told. He had loved, foolishly perhaps, but with all the pure and ardent passion, the fond and trusting confidence of youth—he had loved, and been deceived.

Lewis had walked some miles that day, and had travelled both by sea and land; it may therefore reasonably be supposed that he was tolerably sleepy. Nevertheless, before he went to bed he sat down and wrote the following letter:—

“My dear Frere,—There were but two men in the world of whom I would have asked a favour, or from whom I would accept assistance—my poor father was one, you are the other. A week since I received a letter to tell me of my father’s death: to-day I have returned to England to learn that I am a beggar. Had I no tie to bind me, no one but myself to consider, I should instantly quit a country in which poverty is a deadly sin. In Germany or Italy I could easily render myself independent, either as painter or musician; and the careless freedom of the artist life suits me well; but the little that remains from my father’s scanty fortune is insufficient to support my mother and sister. Therefore I apply to you, and if you can help me, you may—your willingness to do so, I know. I must obtain, immediately, some situation or employment which will bring me in £200 a year; though, if my purchaser (for I consider that I am selling myself) will lodge and feed me, as he does his horse or his dog, £50 less would do. I care not what use I am put to, so that no moral degradation is attached to it. You know what I am fit for, as well 01-better than I do myself. I have not forgotten the Greek and Latin flogged into us at Westminster, and have added thereto French, Italian, and, of course, German; besides picking up sundry small accomplishments, which may induce somebody to offer a higher price for me; and as the more I get, the sooner I shall stand a chance of becoming my own master again, I feel intensely mercenary. Write as soon as possible, for, in my present frame of mind, inaction will destroy me. I long to see you again, old fellow. I have not forgotten the merry fortnight we spent together last year, when I introduced you to student-life in the ‘Vaterland’; nor the good advice you gave me, which if I had acted on—— Well, regrets are useless, if not worse. Of course I shall have to come up to town, in which case we can talk; so, as I hate writing, and am as tired as a dog, I may as well wind up. Good-bye till we meet.

“Your affectionate Friend,

“Lewis Arundel.

“P.S.—Talking of dogs, you don’t know Faust—I picked him up after you came away last year; but wherever I go, or whoever takes me, Faust must go also. He is as large as a calf, which is inconvenient, and I doubt whether he is full-grown yet. I dare say you think this childish, and very likely you are right, but I must have my dog. I can’t live among strangers without something to love, and that loves me; so don’t worry me about it, there’s a good fellow. Can’t you write to me to-morrow?”

Having in some measure relieved his mind by finishing this letter, Lewis undressed, and sleep soon effaced the lines which bitter thoughts and an aching heart had stamped upon his fair young brow.

CHAPTER II.—SHOWING HOW LEWIS LOSES HIS TEMPER, AND LEAVES HIS HOME.

“Has the post come in yet, Rose?” inquired Mrs. Arundel, as she made her appearance in the breakfast-room the following morning.

“No, mamma; it is late to-day, I think.”

“It is always late when I particularly expect a letter; that old creature Richards the postman has a spite against me, I am certain, because I once said in his hearing that he looked like an owl—the imbecile!”

“Oh, mamma! he’s a charming old man, with his venerable white hair.”

“Very likely, my dear, but he’s extremely like an owl, nevertheless,” replied Mrs. Arundel, cutting bread and butter with the quickness and regularity of a steam-engine as she spoke.

“Here’s the letters, ma’am,” exclaimed Rachel, entering with a polished face beaming out of a marvellous morning cap, composed of a species of opaque muslin (or some analogous female fabric), which appeared to be labouring under a violent eruption of little thick dots, strongly suggestive of small-pox. “Here’s the letters, ma’am. If you please, I can’t get Mr. Lewis out of bed nohow, though I’ve knocked at his door three times this here blessed morning; and the last time he made a noise at me in French, or some other wicked foreigneering lingo; which is what I won’t put up with—no! not if you was to go down upon your bended knees to me without a hassock.”

“Give me the letters, Rachel,” said Mrs. Arundel eagerly.

“Letters, indeed!” was the reply, as, with an indignant toss of the head, Rachel, whose temper appeared to have been soaked in vinegar during the night, flung the wished-for missives upon the table. “Letters, indeed! them’s all as you care about, and not a poor gal as slaves and slaves, and gets insulted for her trouble; but I’m come to——”

“You’re come to bring the toast just at the right moment,” said Lewis, who had approached unobserved, “and you’re going down to give Faust his breakfast; and he is quite ready for it, too, poor fellow!”

As he spoke, a marvellous change seemed to come over the temper and countenance of Rachel: her ideas, as she turned to leave the room, may be gathered from the following soliloquy, which appeared to escape her unawares:—“He’s as ’andsome as a duke, let alone his blessed father; but them was shocking words for a Christian with a four years’ carikter to put up with.”

During Rachel’s little attempt at an émeute, which the appearance of Lewis had so immediately quelled, Mrs. Arundel had been eagerly perusing a letter, which she now handed to Rose, saying, with an air of triumph, “Read that, my dear.”

“Good news, I hope, my dear mother, from your manner?” observed Lewis, interrogatively.

“Excellent news,” replied Mrs. Arundel gaily. “Show your brother the letter, Rose. Oh! that good, kind Lady Lombard!” Rose did as she was desired, but from the anxiety with which she scanned her brother’s countenance, as he hastily ran his eye over the writing, it was evident she doubted whether the effect the letter might produce upon him would be altogether of an agreeable nature. Nor was her suspicion unfounded, for as he became acquainted with its contents a storm-cloud gathered upon Lewis’s brow. The letter was as follows:—

“My dear Mrs. Arundel,—To assist the afflicted, and to relieve the unfortunate, as well by the influence of the rank and station which have been graciously entrusted to me, as by the judicious employment of such pecuniary superfluity as the munificence of my poor dear late husband has placed me in a position to disburse, has always been my motto through life. The many calls of the numerous dependents on the liberality of the late lamented Sir Pinchbeck, with constant applications from the relatives of his poor dear predecessor (the Girkins are a very large family, and some of the younger branches have turned out shocking pickles), reduce the charitable fund at my disposal to a smaller sum than, from the noble character of my last lamented husband’s will, may generally be supposed. I am, therefore, all the more happy to be able to inform you that, owing to the too high estimation in which my kind neighbours in and about Comfortown hold any recommendation of mine, I can, should you determine on settling near our pretty little town, promise you six pupils to begin with, and a prospect of many more should youi method of imparting instruction in the delightful science of music realise the very high expectations raised by my eulogium on your talents, vocal and instrumental. That such will be the case I cannot doubt, from my recollection of the touching manner in which, when we visited your sweet little cottage on our (alas! too happy) wedding trip, you and your dear departed sang, at my request, that lovely thing, ‘La ci darem la mano.’ (What a fine voice Captain Arundel had!) I dare say, with such a good memory as yours, you will remember how the late Sir Pinchbeck observed that it put him in mind of the proudest moment of his life, when at St. George’s, Hanover Square, his friend, the Very Reverend the Dean of Dinnerton, made him the happy husband of the relict of the late John Girkin. Ah! my dear madam, we widows learn to sympathise with misfortune; one does not survive two such men as the late Mr. Girkin, though he was somewhat peppery at times, and the late lamented Sir Pinchbeck Lombard, in spite of his fidgety ways and chronic cough, without feeling that a vale of tears is not desirable for a permanency. If it would be any convenience to you when you part with your cottage (I am looking out for a tenant for it) to stay with me for a week or ten days, I shall be happy to receive you, and would ask a few influential families to hear you sing some evening, which might prove useful to you. Of course I cannot expect you to part with your daughter, as she will so soon have to quit you (I mentioned her to my friend Lady Babbycome, but she was provided with a governess), and wish you to understand my invitation extends to her also.

“I am, dear Madam, ever your very sincere friend,

“Sarah Matilda Lombard.

“P.S.—Would your son like to go to Norfolk Island for fourteen years? I think I know a way of sending him free of expense. The climate is said to produce a very beneficial effect on the British constitution; and with a salary of sixty pounds a year, and an introduction to the best society the Island affords, a young man in your son’s circumstances would scarcely be justified in refusing the post of junior secretary to the governor.”

“Is the woman mad?” exclaimed Lewis impetuously, as he finished reading the foregoing letter, “or what right has she to insult us in this manner?”

“Insult us, my dear,” replied Mrs. Arundel quickly, disregarding a deprecatory look from Rose. “Lady Lombard has answered my note informing her that I wished for musical pupils with equal kindness and promptitude. Mad, indeed! she is considered a very superior woman by many people, I can assure you, and her generosity and good nature know no bounds.”

“Perish such generosity!” was Lewis’s angry rejoinder. “Is it not bitterness enough to have one’s energies cramped, one’s free-will fettered by the curse of poverty, but you must advertise our wretchedness to the world, and put it in the power of a woman, whose pride of purse and narrowness of mind stand forth in every line of that hateful letter, to buy a right to insult us with her patronage? You might at least have waited till you knew you had no other alternative left. What right have you to degrade me, by letting yourself down to sue for the charity of any one?”

“Dearest Lewis,” murmured Rose, imploringly, “remember it is mamma you are speaking to.”

“Rose, I do remember it; but it is the thought that it is my mother, my honoured father’s widow, who, by her own imprudence, to use the mildest term, has brought this insult upon us, that maddens me.”

“But, Lewis,” interposed Mrs. Arundel, equally surprised and alarmed at this unexpected outburst, “I cannot understand what all this fuss is about; I see no insult; on the contrary, Lady Lombard writes as kindly——”

An exclamation of ungovernable anger burst from Lewis, and he appeared on the point of losing all self-control, when Rose, catching his eye, glanced for a moment towards her father’s portrait. Well did she read the generous though fiery nature of him with whom she had to deal: no sooner did Lewis perceive the direction of her gaze, than, by a strong effort, he checked all further expression of his feelings, and turning towards the window, stood apparently looking out for some minutes. At length he said abruptly—

“Mother, you must forgive me; I am hot and impetuous, and all this has taken me so completely by surprise. After all, it was only my affection for you and Rose which made me resent your patronising friend’s impertinent benevolence; but the fact is, I hope and believe you have been premature in asking her assistance. I have little doubt I shall succeed in obtaining a situation or employment of some kind, which will be sufficiently lucrative to prevent the necessity of your either giving up the cottage, or being separated from Rose. I have written to Frere about it, and expect to hear from him in a day or two.”

“My dear boy, would you have us live here in idleness and luxury, while you are working yourself to death to enable us to do so?” said Mrs. Arundel, her affection for her son overcoming any feeling of anger which his opposition to her pet scheme had excited.

“I do not see that the working need involve my death,” replied Lewis. “Perhaps,” he added, with a smile, “you would prefer my embracing our Lady Patroness’s scheme of a fourteen years’ sojourn in Norfolk Island. I think I could accomplish that object without troubling anybody: I have only to propitiate the Home Office by abstracting a few silver spoons,—and Government, in its fatherly care, would send me there free of expense, and probably introduce me to the best society the Island affords, into the bargain.”

“Poor dear Lady Lombard! I must confess that part of her letter was rather absurd,” returned Mrs. Arundel; “but we must talk more about this plan of yours, Lewis; I never can consent to it.”

“You both can and will, my dear mother,” replied Lewis, playfully but firmly; “however, we will leave this matter in abeyance till I hear from Frere.”

And thus, peace being restored, they sat down to breakfast forthwith,

Lewis feeling thankful that he had restrained his anger ere it had led him to say words to his mother which he would have regretted deeply afterwards, and amply repaid for any effort it might have cost him by the bright smile and grateful pressure of the hand with which his sister rewarded him. Happy the man whose guardian angel assumes the form of such a sister and friend as Rose Arundel!

Rachel was spared the trouble of calling her young master the following morning, as, when that worthy woman, animated with the desperate courage of the leader of a forlorn hope, approached his room, determined to have him up in spite of any amount of the languages of modern Europe to which she might be exposed, she found the door open and the bird flown; the fact being that Lewis and Faust were taking a scamper across the country, to their mutual delectation, and the alarming increase of their respective appetites. Moreover, Faust, in his ignorance of the Game Laws and the Zoology of the land of his adoption, would persist in looking for a wolf in the preserves of Squire Tilbury, and while thus engaged could not resist the temptation of killing a hare, just by way of keeping his jaws in practice; owing to which little escapade he got his master into a row with an underkeeper, who required first knocking down and then propitiating by a half-sovereign before he could be brought to see the matter in a reasonable light.

This gave a little interest and excitement to his morning ramble, and Lewis returned to breakfast in a high state of health and spirits. A letter from his friend Frere awaited his arrival; it ran as follows:—

“Dear Lewis,—If you really mean what you say (and you are not the man I take you to be if you don’t), I know of just the thing to suit you. The pay is above your mark, so that’s all right; and as to the work—well, it has its disagreeables, that’s not to be gainsaid; but life is not exactly a bed of roses—or, if it is, the thorns have got the start of the flowers nine times out of ten, as you will know before long, if you have not found it out already. In these sort of matters (not that you know anything about the matter yet, but I do, which is all the same) it is half the battle to be first in the field; ergo, if £300 a year will suit your complaint, get on the top of the first coach that will bring you to town, and be with me in time for dinner. I have asked a man to meet you, who knows all about the thing I have in view for you. Pray remember me to Mrs. Arundel and your sister, although I have not as yet the pleasure of their personal acquaintance. Don’t get into the dolefuls, and fancy yourself a victim; depend upon it, you are nothing of the kind. Mutton on table at half-past six, and Faust is specially invited to eat the bone.

“So good-bye till we meet.

“Yours for ever and a day,

“Richard Frere.”

“There!” said Lews, handing the epistle to his mother, “now that’s something like a letter: Frere’s a thorough good fellow, every inch of him, and a real true friend into the bargain. I’ll take whatever it is he has found for me, if it is even to black shoes all day; you and Rose shall remain here, and Lady Lombard may go to——”

“Three hundred a year! Why, my dear Lewis, it’s quite a little fortune for you!” interrupted Mrs. Arundel delightedly.

“I wonder what the situation can be?” said Rose, regarding her brother with a look of affection and regret, as she thought how his proud spirit and sensitive nature unfitted him to contend with the calculating policy and keen-eyed selfishness of worldly men. Rose had of late been her father’s confidante, and even adviser, in some of his matters of business, and had observed the tone of civil indifference or condescending familiarity which the denizens of Vanity Fair assume towards men of broken fortunes.

“Yes,” resumed Mrs. Arundel, “as you say, Rose, what can it be? something in one of the Government offices, perhaps.”

“Curator of Madame Tussaud’s Exhibition, and Master of the Robes to the waxwork figures, more likely,” replied Lewis, laughing. “Or what say you to a civic appointment? Mace-bearer to the Lord Mayor, for instance; though I believe it requires a seven years’ apprenticeship to eating turtle soup and venison to entitle one to such an honour. Seriously, though, if Frere wishes me to take it, I will, whatever it may be, after all his kindness to me, and Faust too. Faust, mein kind! here’s an invitation for you, and a mutton bone in prospect—hold up your head, my dog, you are come to honour.” And thus Lewis rattled on, partly because the ray of sunshine that gleamed on his darkened fortunes had sufficed to raise his naturally buoyant spirits, and partly to prevent the possibility of his mother offering any effectual resistance to his wish—or, more properly speaking, his resolution—to devote himself to the one object of supporting her and Rose in their present position.

It was well for the success of his scheme that Mrs. Arundel had, on the strength of the £300 per annum, allowed her imagination to depict some distinguished appointment (of what nature she had not the most distant notion), which, with innumerable prospective advantages, was about to be submitted to her son’s consideration. Dazzled by this brilliant phantom, she allowed herself to be persuaded to write a civil rejection of Lady Lombard’s patronage, and took leave of her son with an April face, in which, after a short struggle, the smiles had it all their own way.

Rose neither laughed nor cried, but she clung to her brother’s neck (standing on tiptoe to do it, for she was so good, every bit of her, that Nature could not afford to make a very tall woman out of such precious materials), and whispered to him, in her sweet, silvery voice, if he should not quite like this appointment, or if he ever for a moment wished to change his plan, how very happy it would make her to be allowed to go out and earn money by teaching, just for a few years, till they grew richer; and Lewis pressed her to his heart, and loved her so well for saying it, ay, and meaning it too, that he felt he would die rather than let her do it. And so two people who cared for each other more than for all the world beside, parted, having, after a three years’ separation, enjoyed each other’s society for two days. Not that there was anything remarkable in this, it being a notorious though inexplicable fact that the more we like people, the less we are certain to see of them.

We have wearied our brain in the vain endeavour to find a reason for this phenomenon, and should feel greatly indebted to any philosophical individual who would write a treatise on “The perversity of remote contingencies, and the aggravating nature of things in general,” whereby some light might be thrown upon this obscure subject. We recommend the matter more particularly to the notice of the British Association of Science.

And having seated Lewis on the box of a real good old-fashioned stage coach (alas! that, Dodo-like, the genus should be all but extinct, and nothing going, nowadays, but those wonderful, horrible, convenient, stupendous nuisances, railroads; rattling, with their “resonant steam-eagles,” as Mrs. Browning calls the locomotives), with Faust between his knees, apparently studying with the air of a connoisseur the “get up” of a spanking team of greys, we will leave him to prosecute his journey to London; reserving for another chapter the adventures which befell him in the modern Babylon.

CHAPTER III.—IN WHICH RICHARD FRERE MENDS THE BACK OF ST. THOMAS AQUINAS, AND THE READER IS INTRODUCED TO CHARLEY LEICESTER.

Richard Frere lived in a moderate-sized house in a street in the vicinity of Bedford Square. It was not exactly a romantic situation, neither was it aristocratic nor fashionable; but it was respectable and convenient, and therefore had Frere chosen it; for he was a practical man in the proper sense of the term—by which we do not mean that he thought James Watt greater than Shakespeare, but that he possessed that rare quality, good common sense, and regulated his conduct by it; and as in the course of this veracious history we shall hear and see a good deal of Richard Frere, it may tend to elucidate matters if we tell the reader at once who and what he was, and “in point of fact,” as Cousin Phoenix would say, all about him.

Like Robinson Crusoe, Richard Frere was born of respectable parents. His father was the representative of a family who in Saxon days would have been termed “Franklins”—i.e., a superior class of yeomen, possessed of certain broad acres, which they farmed themselves. The grandfather Frere having, in a moment of ambition, sent his eldest son to Eton, was made aware of his error when the young hopeful on leaving school declared his intention of going to college, and utterly repudiated the plough-tail. Having a very decided will of his own, and a zealous supporter in his mother, to college he went, and thence to a special pleader, to read for the bar. Being really clever, and determined to prove to his father the wisdom of the course he had adopted, sufficiently industrious also, he got into very tolerable practice. On one occasion, having been retained in a well-known contested peerage case, by his acuteness and eloquence he gained his cause, and at the same time the affections of the successful disputant’s younger sister. His noble client very ungratefully opposed the match, but love and law together proved too powerful for his lordship. One fine evening the young lady made a moonlight flitting of it, and before twelve o’clock on the following morning had become Mrs. Frere. Within a year from this event Richard Frere made his appearance at the cradle terminus of the railroad of life. When he was six years old, his father, after speaking for three hours, in a cause in which he was leader, more eloquently than he had ever before done, broke a blood-vessel, and was carried home a dying man. His wife loved him as woman alone can love—for his sake she had given up friends, fortune, rank, and the pleasures and embellishments of life; for his sake she now gave up life itself. Grief does not always kill quickly, yet Richard’s ninth birthday was spent among strangers. His noble uncle, who felt that by neglecting his sister on her death-bed he had done his duty to his pedigree handsomely, and might now give way to family affection, sent the orphan to school at Westminster, and even allowed him to run wild at Bellefield Park during the holidays.

The agrémens of a public school, acting on a sensitive disposition, gave a tone of bitterness to the boy’s mind, which would have rendered him a misanthrope but for a strong necessity for loving something (the only inheritance his poor mother had left him), which developed itself in attachment to unsympathising silkworms and epicurean white mice during his early boyhood, and in a bizarre but untiring benevolence in after-life, leading him to take endless trouble for the old and unattractive, and to devote himself, body and soul, to forward the interest of those who were fortunate enough to possess his friendship. Of the latter class Lewis Arundel had been one since the day when Frere, a stripling of seventeen, fought his rival, the cock of the school, for having thrashed the new-comer in return for his accidental transgression of some sixth-form etiquette. Ten years had passed over their heads since that day: the cock of the school was a judge in Ceylon, weighed sixteen stone, and had a wife and six little children; Richard Frere was secretary to a scientific institution, with a salary of £400 a year, and a general knowledge of everything of which other people were ignorant; and little Lewis Arundel was standing six feet high, waiting to be let in at the door of his friend’s house, in the respectable and convenient street near Bedford Square, to which he and Faust had found their way, after a prosperous journey by the coach, on the roof of which we left them at the end of the last chapter.

A woman ugly enough to frighten a horse, and old enough for anything, replied in the affirmative to Lewis’s inquiry whether her master was at home, and led the way upstairs, glancing suspiciously at Faust as she did so. On reaching the first landing she tapped at the door; a full, rich, but somewhat gruff voice shouted “Come in,” and Lewis, passing his ancient conductress, entered.

“What, Lewis, old boy! how are you? Don’t touch me, I can’t shake hands, I’m all over paste; I have been mending the backs of two of the old Fathers that I picked up, dirt cheap, at a bookstall as I was coming home to-day: one of them is a real editio princeps—Why, man, how you are grown! Is that Faust? Come here, dog—what a beauty! Ah! you brute, keep your confounded nose out of the paste-pot, do! I must give Aquinas another dab yet. Sit down, man, if you can find a chair—bundle those books under the table. There we are.”

The speaker, who, as the reader has probably conjectured, was none other than Mr. Richard Frere, presented at that moment as singular an appearance as any gentleman not an Ojibbeway Indian, or other natural curiosity for public exhibition in the good city of London, need to do. His apparent age was somewhat under thirty. His face would have been singularly ugly but for three redeeming points—a high, intellectual forehead; full, restless blue eyes, beaming with intelligence; and a bright benevolent smile, which disclosed a brilliant set of white, even teeth, compensating for the disproportioned width of the mouth which contained them. His hair and whiskers, of a rich brown, hung in elf locks about his face and head, which were somewhat too large for his height; his chest and shoulders were also disproportionately broad, giving him an appearance of great strength, which indeed he possessed. He was attired in a chintz dressing-gown that had once rejoiced in a pattern of gaudy colours, but was now reduced to a neutral tint of (we may as well confess it at once) London smoke. He was, moreover, for the greater convenience of the pasting operation, seated cross-legged on the floor, amidst a hecatomb of ponderous volumes.

“I received your letter this morning,” began Lewis, “and, as you see, lost no time in being with you; and now what is it you have heard of, Frere? But first let me thank you——”

“Thank me!” was the reply, “for what? I have done nothing yet, except writing a dozen lines to tell you to take a dusty journey, and leave green trees and nightingales for smoke and bustle—nothing very kind in that, is there? Just look at the dog’s-ears—St. Augustine’s, I mean, not Faust’s.”

“Don’t tease me, there’s a good fellow,” returned Lewis; “I’m not in a humour for jesting at present. I have gone through a good deal in one way or other since you and I last met, and am no longer the light-hearted boy you knew me, but a man, and well-nigh a desperate one.”

“Ay!” rejoined Frere, “that’s the style of thing, is it? Yes; I know all about it. I met Kirschberg the other day, with a beard like a cow’s tail, and he told me that Gretchen had bolted with the Baron.”

“Never mention her name, if you would not drive me mad,” exclaimed Lewis, springing from his chair and pacing the room impatiently. His friend regarded him attentively for a moment, and then uncrossing his legs, and muttering to himself that he had got the cramp, and should make a shocking bad Turk, rose, approached Lewis, and laying his hand on his shoulder, said gravely—

“Listen to me, Lewis: you trusted, and have been deceived; and, by a not unnatural revulsion of feeling, your faith in man’s honour and woman’s constancy is for the time being destroyed; and just at the very moment when you most require the assistance of your old friends, and the determination to gain new ones, you dislike and despise your fellow-creatures, and are at war in your heart with society. Now this must not be, and at the risk of paining you, I am going to tell you the truth.”

“I know what you would say,” interrupted Lewis vehemently: “you would tell me that my affection was misplaced—that I loved a girl beneath me in mind and station—that I trusted a man whom I deemed my friend, but who, with a specious exterior, was a cold-hearted, designing villain. It was so; I own it; I see it now, when it is too late; but I did not see it at the time when the knowledge might have availed me. And why may not this happen again? There is but one way to prevent it: I will avoid the perfidious sex—except Rose, no woman shall ever——”

“My dear boy, don’t talk such rubbish,” interposed his friend; “there are plenty of right-minded, lovable women in the world, I don’t doubt, though I can’t say I have much to do with them, seeing that they are not usually addicted to practical science, and therefore don’t come in my way—household angels, with their wings clipped, and their manners and their draperies modernised, but with all the brightness and purity of heaven still lingering about them,—that’s my notion of women as they should be, and as I believe many are, despite your having been jilted by as arrant a little coquette as ever I had the luck to behold; and as to the Baron, it would certainly be a satisfaction to kick him well; but we can’t obtain all we wish for in this life. What are you grinning at? You don’t mean to say you have polished him off?”

In reply, Lewis drew his left arm out of his coat, and rolling up his shirt-sleeve above the elbow, exposed to view a newly-healed wound in the fleshy part of his arm, then said quietly, “We fought with small swords in a ring formed by the students; we were twenty minutes at it; he marked me as you see; at length I succeeded in disarming him—in the struggle he fell, and placing my foot upon his neck and my sword point to his heart, I forced him to confess his treachery, and beg his hateful life of me before them all.”

Frere’s face grew dark. “Duelling!” he said. “I thought your principles would have preserved you from that vice—I thought——”

A growl from Faust, whose quick ear had detected a footstep on the stairs, interrupted him, and in another moment a voice exclaimed, “Hello, Frere! where are you, man?” and the speaker, without waiting for an answer, opened the door and entered.

The new-comer was a fashionably-dressed young man, with a certain air about him as if he were somebody, and knew it—he was good-looking, had dark hair, most desirably curling whiskers; and, though he was in a morning costume, was evidently “got up” regardless of expense.

He opened his large eyes and stared with a look of languid wonder at Lewis, then, turning to Frere, he said, “Ah! I did not know you were engaged, Richard, or I would have allowed your old lady to announce me in due form; as it was, I thought, in my philanthropy, to save her a journey upstairs was a good deed, for she is getting a little touched in the wind. May I ask,” he continued, glancing at Lewis’s bare arm, “were you literally, and not figuratively, bleeding your friend?”

“Not exactly,” replied Frere, laughing. “But you must know each other: this is my particular friend, Lewis Arundel, whom I was telling you of,—Lewis, my cousin Charles Leicester, Lord Ashford’s youngest son.”

“Worse luck,” replied the gentleman thus introduced; “younger sons being one of those unaccountable mistakes of Nature which it requires an immense amount of faith to acquiesce in with proper orthodoxy: the popular definition of a younger son’s portion, ‘A good set of teeth, and nothing to eat,’ shows the absurdity of the thing. Where do you find any other animal in such a situation? Where——But perhaps we have scarcely time to do the subject proper justice at present; I have some faint recollection of your having asked me to dine at half-past six, on the strength of which I cut short my canter in the park, and lost a chance of inspecting a prize widow, whom Sullivan had marked down for me!”

“Why, you don’t mean to say it is as late as that?” exclaimed Frere. “Thomas Aquinas has taken longer to splice than I was aware of; to be sure, his back was dreadfully shattered. Excuse me half a minute; I’ll just wash the paste off my hands, make myself decent, and be with you in no time.” As he spoke he left the room.

“What a life for a reasonable being to lead!” observed Leicester, flinging himself back in Frere’s reading-chair. “Now that fellow was as happy with his paste-pot as I should be if some benevolent individual in the Fairy Tale and Good Genius line were to pay my debts and marry me to an heiress with £10,000 a year. An inordinate affection for books will be that man’s destruction. You have known him some years, I think, Mr. Arundel?”

Lewis replied in the affirmative, and Leicester continued—

“Don’t you perceive that he is greatly altered? He stoops like an old man, sir; his eyes are getting weak,—it’s an even chance whether he is shaved or not; he looks upon brushes as superfluities, and eschews bears’ grease entirely, not to mention a very decided objection to the operations of the hair-cutter; then the clothes he wears,—where he contrives to get such things I can’t conceive, unless they come out of Monmouth Street, and then they would be better cut; but the worst of it is, he has no proper feeling about it,—perfectly callous!” He sighed, and then resumed. “It was last Saturday, I think,— ’pon my word, you will scarcely believe it, but it’s true, I do assure you: I had given my horse to the groom, and was lounging by the Serpentine, with Egerton of the Guards, and Harry Vain, who is about the best dressed man in London, a little after five o’clock, and the park as full as it could hold, when who should I see, striding along like a postman among the swells, but Master Richard Frere! And how do you suppose he was dressed? We’ll begin at the top, and take him downwards: Imprimis, a shocking bad hat, set on the back of his head, after the fashion of the he peasants in a pastoral chorus at the Opera House; a seedy black coat, with immense flaps, and a large octavo edition of St. Senanus, or some of them, sticking out of the pocket; a white choker villainously tied, which looked as if he had slept in it the night before; a most awful waistcoat, black-and-white plaid trousers guiltless of straps, worsted stockings, and a clumsy species of shooting shoes; and because all this was not enough, he had a large umbrella, although the day was lovely, and a basket in his hand, with the neck of a black bottle peeping out of it, containing port wine, which it seems he was conveying to a superannuated nurse of his who hangs out at Kensington. I turned my head away, hoping that as he was staring intently at something in the water, he might not recognise me; but it was of no use. Just as Egerton, who did not know him, exclaimed, ‘Here’s a natural curiosity! Did you ever see such a Guy in your life?’ he looked up and saw me: in another minute his great paw was laid upon my shoulder, and I was accosted thus:—‘Ah, Leicester! you here? Just look at that duck with the grey bill; that’s a very rare bird indeed; it comes from Central Asia. I did not know they had a specimen in this country; it is one of the Teal family,—Querquedula Glocitans, the bimaculated teal,—so called from two bright spots near the eye. Look, you can see them now,—very rare bird,—very rare bird indeed!’ And so he ran on, till suddenly recollecting that he was in a hurry, he shook my hand till my arm ached (dropping the umbrella on Vain’s toes as he did so) and posted off, leaving me to explain to my companions how it was possible such an apparition should have been seen in any place except Bedlam. Richard Frere’s a right good fellow, and I have an immense respect for him, but he is a very trying relative to meet in Hyde Park during the London season.”

Having delivered himself of this sentiment, the Honourable Charles, or, as he was more commonly denominated by his intimates, Charley Leicester, leaned back in his chair, apparently overcome by the recollections his tale had excited, in which position he remained, cherishing his whiskers, till their host reappeared.

The dinner was exactly such a meal as one gentleman of moderate income should give to two others, not particularly gourmands; that is, there was enough to eat and drink, and everything was excellent of its kind; one of those mysterious individuals who exist only in large cities and fairy tales having provided the entire affair, and waited at table like a duke’s butler into the bargain. When the meal was concluded, and the good genius had vanished, after placing before them a most inviting magnum of claret, and said “Yessir” for the last time, Frere turned to Lewis, and observed, “By the way, Arundel, I dare say you are anxious to hear about this appointment, or situation, or whatever the correct term may be,—the thing I mentioned to you. My cousin Charles can tell you all there is to hear concerning the matter, for the good folks are his friends, and not mine; indeed, I scarcely know them.”

Thus appealed to, Charley Leicester filled a bumper of claret, seated himself in an easy attitude, examined his well-turned leg and unexceptionable boot with a full appreciation of their respective merits, and then sipping his wine and addressing Lewis, began as follows:—

“Well, Mr. Arundel, this is the true state of the case, as far as I know about it. You may perhaps be acquainted with the name of General Grant?”

Lewis replied in the negative, and Leicester continued—

“Ah! yes, I forgot, you have been on the Continent for some time; however, the General is member for A————, and a man very well known about town. Now, he happens to be a sort of cousin of mine—my mother, Lady Ashford, was a Grant; and for that reason, or some other, the General has taken a liking to me, and generously affords me his countenance and protection. So, when I have nothing better to do, I go and vegetate at Broadhurst, an old rambling place in H———shire, that has been in his family since the flood—splendid shooting, though; he preserves strictly, and transports a colony of poachers every year. I was sitting with him the other day, when he suddenly began asking about Frere, where he was, what he was doing, and all the rest of it. So I related that he was secretary to a learned society, and was popularly supposed to know more than all the scavans in Europe and the Dean of Dustandstir put together. Whereupon he began muttering, ‘Unfortunate!— he was just the person—learned man—good family—well connected—most unlucky!’ ‘What’s the matter, General?’ said I. ‘A very annoying affair, Charles—a very great responsibility has devolved upon me, a matter of extreme moment—clear;£ 12,000 a year, and a long minority.’ ‘Has;£12,000 a year devolved upon you, sir?’ returned I. ‘I wish Dame Fortune would try me with some such responsibility.’ In reply he gave me the following account:—

“It appeared that one of his most intimate friends and neighbours, an old baronet, had lately departed this life; the title and estates descend to a grandson, a minor, and General Grant had been appointed guardian. All this was bad enough, but the worst was yet to come—he had promised his dying friend that the boy should reside in his house. Now it seems that, as a sort of set-off against his luck in coming into the world with a gold spoon in his mouth, the said boy was born with even less brains than usually fall to the lot of Fortune’s favourites—in plain English, he is half an idiot. Accordingly, the General’s first care was to provide the young bear with a leader, and in his own mind he had fixed on Frere, whom he knew by reputation, as the man, and was grievously disappointed when he found he was bespoke. I suggested that, although he could not undertake the duty himself, he might possibly know some one who could, and offered to ascertain. The General jumped at the idea—hinc illae lachrymae—hence the whole business.”

“Just as I received your letter,” began Frere, “Leicester came in to make the inquiry. In fact the thing fitted like the advertisements in The Times—‘Wants a situation as serious footman in a pious family; wages not so much an object as moral cultivation.’—‘Wanted in a pious family, a decidedly serious footman, wages moderate, but the spiritual advantages unexceptionable.’—‘If A. B. is not utterly perfidious, and lost to all the noblest feelings of humanity, he will forward a small enclosure to C. D. at Mrs. Bantam’s, oilman, Tothill Street.’—‘A. B. is desirous of communicating with C. D.; if forgiven, he will never do so no more, at any price.’ You may see lots of them in the advertising sheet; they are like angry women, sure to answer one another if you leave them alone. And now, what do you think of the notion, Lewis?”

“Why, there are one or two points to be considered,” replied Lewis. “In the first place, what would be the duties of the situation? In the second, am I fitted to perform them? In the third—— But, however, I have named the most important.”

“As to the duties,” replied Leicester, “I should fancy they would be anything but overpowering—rather in the nothing-to-do-and-a-man-to help-you style than otherwise. All the General said was, ‘Mind, I must have a gentleman, a person who is accustomed to the rank of life in which he will have to move—he must be a young man, or he will not readily fall into my habits and wishes. As he is to live in my family, he must be altogether presentable. His chief duty will be to endeavour to develop my ward’s mind, and fit him for the position which his rank and fortune render it incumbent on him to occupy.’ To which speech, delivered in a very stately manner, I merely said, ‘Yes, exactly;’ a style of remark to which no exception could reasonably be taken, unless on the score of want of originality.”

“Is the General in town, Charley?” asked Frere.

“Yes; he is waiting about this very business,” was the reply.

“Well then, the best thing will be for you to take Arundel there to-morrow morning, and bring them face to face; that is the way to do business, depend upon it.”

“Will not that be giving Mr. Leicester a great deal of trouble?” suggested Lewis.

“Not at all, my dear sir,” replied Leicester, good-naturedly; “I’ll call for you at twelve o’clock, and drive you up to Park Crescent in my cab. Having once taken the matter in hand, I am anxious to bring it to a satisfactory conclusion—besides, a man must lunch, and the General’s pale ale is by no means to be despised.”

At this moment the servant entered, and handing Frere a card, informed him the gentleman wished to speak with him.

“Tell him to walk in. Say that I have one or two friends taking wine with me, and that I hope he will join us. Now, Lewis, I will introduce you to an original—you know him, Leicester—Marmaduke Grandeville.”

“De Grandeville, my dear fellow—don’t forget the De unless you intend him to call you out. What, is ‘the Duke’ coming? Yes, I certainly do know him, rather—just a very little.” Then, speaking in an affected yet pompous tone, he continued—“Ar—really—yes—the De Grandevilles—very old Yorkshire family in the West Riding—came in with the Conqueror.”

“That’s exactly like him,” exclaimed Frere, laughing. “Hush! here he is.”

As he spoke the door opened slowly, and a head with a hat on first appeared, then followed a pair of broad shoulders, and lastly the whole man entered bodily. Drawing himself up with a stiff military air, he closed the door, and slightly raising his hat, shaded his eyes with it, while he reconnoitred the company.

“There, come along in, man; you know Charles Leicester—this is an old Westminster friend of mine, Lewis Arundel: now here’s a clean glass; take some claret.”

The individual thus addressed made the slightest possible acknowledgment on being introduced to Lewis, favoured Leicester with a military salute, laid a large heavy hand adorned with a ring of strange and antique fashion patronisingly on Frere’s shoulder, poured himself out a glass of wine, and then wheeling round majestically to the fire, and placing his glass on the chimney-piece, faced the company with an air equally dignified and mysterious, thereby affording Lewis a good opportunity of examining his appearance. He was above the middle height and powerfully made, so much so as to give his clothes, which were fashionably cut, the air of being a size too small for him. He wore his coat buttoned tightly across his chest, which he carried well forward after the manner of a cuirassier; indeed, his whole gait and bearing were intensely military. His age might be two or three-and-thirty; he had dark hair and whiskers, good though rather coarse features, and a more ruddy complexion than usually falls to the lot of a Londoner. After sipping his wine leisurely, he folded his arms with an air of importance, and fixing his eyes significantly on the person addressed, said, “Ar—Leicester, how is it Lord Ashford happens to be out of town just now?”

“’Pon my word, I don’t know,” was the reply; “my father is not usually in the habit of explaining his movements, particularly to such an unimportant individual as myself. I have a vague idea Bellefield wrote to beg him to come down for something—he’s at the Park, at all events.”

“Ar—yes, you must not be surprised if you see him in Belgrave Square to-morrow; we want him; he’s been—ar—written to to-night.”

“How the deuce do you know that?” inquired Frere. “I never can make out where you contrive to pick up those things.”

“Who are we?” inquired Lewis in an undertone of Leicester, near whom he was seated. “Does Mr. Grandeville belong to the Government?”

“Not really, only in imagination,” was the reply. “We means himself and the other Whig magnates of the land, in this instance.”

“Then you did not really know Graves was dead?” continued Grandeville.

“I am not quite certain that I even knew he was alive,” replied Leicester. “Who was he?”

A significant smile, saying plainly, “Don’t fancy I am going to believe you as ignorant as you pretend,” floated across Grandeville’s face ere he continued: “You need not be so cautious with me, I can assure you. The moment I heard Graves was given over, I wrote—ar—that is, I gave the hint to a man who wrote to Lord Bellefield to say the county was his; he had only to declare himself, and he would walk over the course.”

“Extremely kind of you, I’m sure,” replied Leicester; then turning to Lewis, while Grandeville was making some mysterious communication to Frere, he added in an undertone, “That’s a lie from beginning to end. I had a note from Bellefield (he’s my frere aîné, you know) this morning, in which he says, ‘Our county member has been dangerously ill, but is now better;’ and he adds, ‘Some of the fools about here wanted me to put up for the county if he popped oft, but I am not going to thrust my neck into the collar to please any of them.’ Bell’s too lazy by half for an M.P., and small blame to him either.” Frere having listened to De Grandeville’s whispered communication, appeared for a moment embarrassed, and then observed—but an adventure so important as that to which his observation related deserves a fresh chapter.

CHAPTER IV.—LEWIS ENLISTS UNDER A “CONQUERING HERO,” AND STARTS ON A DANGEROUS EXPEDITION.

“I should be happy to join you, but you see I am engaged to my friends here,” observed Frere to Grandeville.

“You would never dream of standing on ceremony with me, Frere, I hope,” interposed Lewis.

“Why should we not all go together?” inquired Frere; “the more the merrier, particularly if it should come to a shindy.”

“What’s the nature of the entertainment?” asked Leicester.

“Tell them, De Grandeville,” said Frere, looking hard at his cousin, as he slightly emphasised the De.

“Ar—well, you won’t let it go further, I’m sure, but there’s a meeting to be held to-night at a kind of Mechanics’ Institute, a place I and one or two other influential men have had our eyes on for some time past, where they promulgate very unsound opinions; and we have been only waiting our opportunity to give the thing a check, and show them that the landed gentry are united in their determination not to tolerate sedition, or in fact anything of the sort; and I have had a hint from a very sure quarter (I walked straight from Downing Street here) that to-night they are to muster in force—a regular showoff; so a party of us are going to be present and watch the proceedings, and if there should be seditious language used, we shall make a decided demonstration, let them feel the power they are arraying themselves against, and the utter madness of provoking such an unequal struggle.”

“Then we have a very fair chance of a row, I should hope,” interposed Lewis eagerly, his eyes sparkling with excitement; “ ’twill put us in mind of old sixth-form days, eh, Frere?”

“Leicester, what say you? Do you mind dirtying your kid gloves in the good cause?” asked Frere.

“There is no time to put on an old coat, I suppose?” was the reply. “A broken head I don’t mind occasionally, it gives one a new sensation; but to sacrifice good clothes verges too closely on the wantonly extravagant to suit either my pocket or my principles.”

“I will lend you one of mine,” returned Frere.

“Heaven forfend!” was the horrified rejoinder. “I have too much regard for the feelings of my family, let alone those of my tailor, to dream of such a thing for a minute. Only suppose anything were to happen to me, just see how it would read in the papers: ‘The body of the unfortunate deceased was enveloped in a threadbare garment of mysterious fashion; in the enormous pockets which undermined its voluminous skirts was discovered, amongst other curiosities, the leg-bone of a fossil Iguanodon.’”

“Gently there!” cried Frere; “how some people are given to exaggeration! Because I happened accidentally one day to pull out two of the vertebræ of——”

“Ar—if you’ll allow me to interrupt you,” began Grandeville, “I don’t think you need apprehend any display of physical force; our object is, if possible, to produce a moral effect—in fact, by weight of character and position, to impress them with a deep sense of the power and resources of the upper classes.”

“Still a good licking is a very effectual argument where other means of persuasion fail. I have great faith in fists,” said Frere.

“Ar—in the event of our being obliged to have recourse to such extreme measures, I must impress upon you the necessity of discipline,” returned Grandeville. “Look to me for orders, ar—I am not exactly—ar—regular profession—ar—military, though when I was at the headquarters of the ——th in Ireland last year, they did me the honour to say that I had naturally a very unusual strategic turn—a good officer spoiled—ha! ha!”

“I always thought you had a sort of Life-guardsman-like look about you,” said Leicester, with a sly glance at the others. “You often hear of a man being one of ‘Nature’s gentlemen,’ now I should call you one of ‘Nature’s guardsmen.’”

“Ar—yes, not so bad that,” returned Grandeville, the possibility of Leicester’s meaning to laugh at him faintly occurring to him, and being instantly rejected as utterly inconceivable. “Here, sir,” he continued, turning abruptly to Lewis, “feel my arm; there’s muscle for you! I don’t say it by way of a boast, but there is not such an arm as that in her Majesty’s ~*—th; there was not one of their crack men that could hold up so heavy a weight as I could, for I tried the thing when I was over at Killandrum last autumn, and beat them all.”

“At what time does your entertainment commence, may I ask?” inquired Leicester.

“Ar—I promised to join the others at a quarter before nine; the meeting was to commence at nine, and we shall have some little way to walk.”

“Then the sooner we are off the better,” said Frere. “But you expect a reinforcement, do you?”

“Ar—some men, some of our set, you understand, very first-rate fellows who have the cause at heart, have agreed to come and carry the matter through with a high hand. Failure might produce very serious results, but the right measures have been taken; I dropped a hint at the Horse Guards.”

“I suppose I had better not take Faust,” observed Lewis. “If there is a crowd he will get his toes trodden on, and he is apt to show fight under these circumstances. May I leave him here?”

“Yes, certainly,” replied Frere; “that is, if you can persuade him to stay quietly, and bind him over to keep the peace till we return.”

“That is soon accomplished,” rejoined Lewis, and calling the dog to him, he dropped a glove on the floor and uttered some German word of command, when the well-trained animal immediately laid down with the glove between his huge paws.

“Caution your old lady not to interfere with the glove,” he continued, “or Faust will assuredly throttle her.”

“What, is he touchy on that head?” inquired Grandeville, poising himself on one leg while he endeavoured to kick the glove away with the other. A growl like that of an angry tiger, and the display of a set of teeth of which a dentist or a crocodile might equally have been proud, induced him to draw back his foot with rather more celerity than was altogether in keeping with the usual dignity of his movements.

“The dog has not such a bad notion of producing a moral impression,” said Leicester, laughing. “Don’t you think he might be useful to us to-night?”

“Ar—now, there is nothing I should like better than to take that glove away from him,” observed Grandeville, casting a withering glance on Faust. “Ar—I wish I had time.”

“I wish you had,” returned Lewis dryly.

“Why, do you think it would be so mighty difficult?” retorted Grandeville.

“When Rudolph Arnheim, a fellow-student of mine, tried the experiment, I had some trouble in choking Faust off before the dog had quite throttled him,” was the reply. “Rudolph is no child, and had a heavy wager depending on it.”

“Ar—well, I can’t see any great difficulty in the thing, but it depends on a man’s nerve, of course. Now, are we ready?”

So saying, Marmaduke Grandeville, Esq., placed his hat firmly on his head, and with the gait of a heavy dragoon and the air of a conquering hero, marched nobly out of the apartment. Leicester held back to allow Lewis to follow, then drawing Frere on one side, he said—

“Richard, I like your friend Arundel; he is a manly, intelligent young fellow, much too good to be bear-leader to a half-witted cub like this precious ward of old Grant’s; and if I were as rich as I am poor, I would do something better for him. Now, if he had but a few hundreds to go on with, matrimony would be the dodge for him. With such a face and figure as his, he might secure no end of a prize in the wife market; there’s a thoroughbred look about him which would tell with women amazingly.”

“He has all the makings of a fine character in him,” replied Frere, “but he is proud and impetuous; and pride and poverty are ill companions, though they often go together.”

“Do they?” replied Leicester. “Well, I am poor enough for anything, as a very large majority of the metropolitan tradesmen know to their cost, but, upon my word, I am not proud. Any man may give me a good dinner, and I’ll eat it,—good wine, and I’ll drink it; I never refuse a stall at the Opera, though the bone may belong to an opulent tallow-chandler; and there is not a woman in England with £150,000 that I would not marry to-morrow if she would have me. No! I may be poor, but you can’t call me proud.” And placing his arm through that of his cousin, they descended to the street together, and rejoined Lewis and his companion.

CHAPTER V.—IS OF A DECIDEDLY WARLIKE CHARACTER.

The place of rendezvous for the “gallant defenders of the British constitution,” as Leicester had designated the little party, was a cigar shop in the immediate vicinity of the building in which the meeting was to be held. On their arrival they perceived that the shop was already occupied by several young men, who were lounging over the counter, bandying jests and compliments with a ringleted young lady, who appeared thoroughly self-possessed and quite equal to the part she had to perform, having through all her pretty coquetries a shrewd eye to business, and reserving her most fascinating smiles for the most inveterate smokers.

As Grandeville entered the shop, which he did with a most lordly and dignified air, he was welcomed with general acclamation.

“All hail, Macbeth!” exclaimed a thin young man, with a white greatcoat and a face to match, throwing himself into a tragedy attitude.

“Most noble commander!” began another of the group. “Most illustrious De Grandeville! how is——”

“Your anxious mother?” interrupted a short, muscular little fellow, with as rich a brogue as ever claimed Cork for its county.

“Hush! be quiet, Pat; we have no time for nonsense now, man,” cried a tall youth with a profusion of light curling hair, a prominent hooked nose, a merry smile, and a pair of wicked grey eyes, which appeared to possess the faculty of looking in every direction at once. “You are late, De Grandeville,” he added, coming forward.

“Ar—no, sir; five minutes good by the Horse Guards. Ar—I should have been here sooner, but I have been—ar—recruiting, you see. Mr. Bracy, Mr. Frere, Mr. Arundel—you know Leicester?”

“Delighted to see such an addition to our forces,” replied Bracy, bowing; then shaking hands with Leicester, he added in an undertone, “Walk with me when we start; I have a word to say to you.” Leicester nodded in assent, and then proceeded to accost others of the party with whom he was acquainted.

“Ar—now, gentlemen, will you please to attend to orders?” began Grandeville, raising his voice.

“Hear, hear!” cried the pale young man, faintly.

“We’ll do it betther if you’d be houldin’ yer tongue, maybe,” interposed the hero from Cork, who, being interpreted, was none other than Lieutenant McDermott of the Artillery, believed by the Commander-in-Chief to be at that very moment on duty at Woolwich.

“Ar—you are to divide yourselves into three or four bodies.”

“Faith, we must get blind drunk, and see double twice over then, before we can do that,” remarked the son of Erin argumentatively.

“Now, Paddy, be quiet,” said Bracy, soothingly; “you know you never got so far in your arithmetic as vulgar fractions, so you can’t be supposed to understand the matter.”

A somewhat forcible rejoinder was drowned by Grandeville, who continued, in his most sonorous tone: “Ar—you will then proceed to the hall of meeting, and make your way quietly to the right side, as near the platform as possible. There—keep together, and attract as little attention as you can, and Mr. Bracy will transmit such directions to you as circumstances may render advisable. Do you all clearly understand?”

A general shout of assent, varied by a muttered “Not in the slightest degree,” from McDermott, was followed by the order, “Then march!” and in another moment the party were en route. The pale young man, who was in his secret soul rather alarmed than otherwise, had attached himself firmly to Frere, with whom he was slightly acquainted, and who he thought would take care of him, so Lewis was left to pair off with Leicester.

As they proceeded, the latter began: “Depend upon it, there’s some trick in all this, probably intended for Grandeville’s benefit; that fellow Bracy is one of the most inveterate practical jokers extant, and he seems particularly busy to-night; he’s a clerk in the Home Office, and Grandeville believes in him to an immense extent; but here he comes. Well, Bracy, what is it, man?”

“Is your friend safe?” inquired Bracy aside, glancing at Lewis as he spoke.

“The most cautious man in London,” was the reply, “and one who appreciates our noble commander thoroughly; so now allow us a peep behind the scenes.”

“Well, the matter stands thus,” returned Bracy. “I was walking with Duke Grandeville one night about three weeks ago, when we chanced to encounter the good folks coming away from one of these meetings; they were nothing very formidable—a fair sample of young Newgate Street, youthful patriots from Snow Hill, embryo republicans of St. Paul’s Churchyard, Barbican, and other purlieus of Cockaignia, led by a few choice spirits—copying clerks, who hide their heroism from the light of day in lawyers’ offices, booksellers’ shopmen from the Row, who regard themselves as distinguished literary characters, and prate of the sovereignty of the press, and the like. Well, as might be expected, they discoursed most ferociously, and the Duke, overhearing some of their conversation, was deeply scandalised, and fancied he had discovered a second Cato Street conspiracy. The thing appeared to promise fun, so I encouraged him in the idea, and we attended the next meeting, when they talked the usual style of radical clap-trap. Everything was an abuse—the rich were tyrants, the poor slaves, and property required transferring (i.e., from its present possessors to themselves); they knew they never should be kings, so they cried down monarchy; but they trusted that, with strong lungs and good-luck, they might become paid delegates, therefore they clamoured for a republic. There was much noise, but no talent; sanguinary theories were discussed, which they had neither minds nor means to enable them to carry out; in short, the place is one of those innocent sedition shops which act as safety valves to carry off popular discontent, and ensure the health and vigour of the British constitution. Of course, however, Grandeville did not see it in that point of view, and from that night forth he became positively rabid on the subject; so it entered the heads of some of us that we might improve the occasion by persuading him that he might, through me, communicate information to the Home Office (I need scarcely tell you that it never reached the authorities there), and we have led him on sweetly and easily, till he positively believes that he is to be at the Hall to-night as an accredited government agent, with full powers to suppress the meeting, and I know not what else.”

“But surely you’ll get into a fearful row,” urged Leicester.

“We are safe for a bit of a shindy, no doubt,” was the cool reply; “in fact I do not consider that the thing would go off properly without it, so I brought an Irishman with me to render it inevitable; but I have bribed a doorkeeper, and let the worst come to the worst, we can easily fight our way out.”

“To be sure we can,” exclaimed Lewis, “lick a hundred such fellows as you have described. This is glorious fun; I would not have missed it for the world.”

Bracy glanced at him for a moment with a look of intense approval, then shaking him warmly by the hand, he said, “Sir, I’m delighted to make your acquaintance; your sentiments do you honour, sir. Are you much accustomed to rows of this nature, may I ask?”

“I have been resident in Germany for the last three years,” was the reply; “and although they have a very fair notion of an émeute after their own fashion, they don’t understand the use of the fist as we do.”

“There are two grand rules for crowd-fighting,” returned Bracy. “First, make play with your elbows, Cockneys’ ribs are as sensitive as niggers’ shins; secondly, if it comes to blows, strike at their faces, and never waste your strength; but when you do make a hit, drop your man if possible; it settles him, and frightens the rest. Here we are!” So saying, he turned into a kind of passage which led to an open door, through which they passed into the body of the hall.

It was a large room with a vaulted ceiling, and appeared capable of holding from five to six hundred persons. At the farther end of it was a platform, raised some feet, and divided from the rest of the hall by a stout wooden railing. The room was lighted with gas, and considerably more than half filled. Although the majority of the audience appeared to answer the description Bracy had given of them, yet along the sides of the apartment were ranged numbers of sturdy artisans and craftsmen, amongst whom many a stalwart form and stern determined visage might be detected.

“There are some rather awkward customers here to-night,” whispered Leicester. “If we chance to get black eyes, Arundel, we must postpone our visit to the General to-morrow.”

“The man that gives me a black eye shall have something to remember it by, at all events,” returned Lewis quickly.

“Hush! that fellow heard you,” said Leicester.

Lewis glanced in the direction indicated, and met the sinister gaze, of a tall, heavy-built mechanic, in a rough greatcoat, who frowned menacingly when he found that he was observed. Lewis smiled carelessly in reply, and proceeded after Bracy up the room. When he had passed, the man, still keeping his eye upon him, quitted his seat and followed at some little distance. On reaching the upper end of the room they perceived Grandeville and two or three others, among whom was McDermott, on the platform, while Frere and the rest of their party had congregated on and near a flight of five or six steps leading to it from the body of the hall.

“Bravo, Grandeville!” observed Bracy, in an undertone, to Leicester. “Do you mark that! he has secured a retreat—good generalship, very. I shall have to believe in him if he goes on as well as he has commenced. Hark! they are beginning to give tongue.”

As he concluded, a little fat man came forward and said a good deal about the honour which had been done him in being allowed the privilege of opening the evening’s proceedings, to which he appended a long and utterly incomprehensible account of the objects of the meeting. His zeal was evident, but Nature had never intended him for an orator, and the chances of life had fitted him with a short husky cough, so that nobody was very sorry when he ceded the rostrum to his “esteemed friend, if he might be allowed to say so (which he was), Jabez Broadcom.” This Jabez Broadcom was evidently a great gun, and his coming forward created no small sensation. He was a tall, gaunt-looking man, with straight weak hair and an unhealthy complexion; but his great feature, in every sense of the word, was his mouth.

It was a mouth, not only for mutton, but for every other purpose to which that useful aperture could be applied; at present it was to be devoted to the task of conveying its owner’s mighty thoughts, in appropriate language, to the eager listeners who surrounded him.

This gentleman then, having, by dint of drawing in his lips and thrusting them out again, and rolling his eyes so fearfully as to suggest a sudden attack of English cholera, got up his steam to the required height, proceeded to inform the assembly that they were, individually and collectively, free and enlightened citizens of the great metropolis of Europe, prepared to recognise their sacred rights, and resolved to go forth as one man to assert and maintain them. Having imparted this information (through his nose, for the greater effect), he began to ask himself a species of Pinnock’s Catechism, so to speak, which ran somewhat after the following fashion:—

“And why am I here to-night? Because I love profit? No. Because I love personal distinction? No. Because I love my country? Yes. Because I would not see her children slaves? Yes. Because purse-proud oppressors, revelling in their wealth, trample on the honest poor man? Yes.”

Having said by heart several pages of this, in which he was exceedingly well up, and which he rattled off most fluently, he continued—

“But such tyranny shall not always be tolerated. British freemen, whose proud boast it is that they have never borne a foreign yoke, shall no longer crouch beneath a despotic rule at home. The atrocious barbarities of a brutal poor-law, which taxes honest householders to furnish salaried ruffians with power to drag the half-eaten crust from the famished jaws of helpless poverty——”

(A slight sensation was here occasioned by McDermott mentioning for the benefit of the meeting in general, and the orator himself in particular, his conviction that the last sentence was “very pretty indeed,” together with a polite inquiry as to whether he could not be so kind as to say it again. Peace being restored after sundry shouts of “Turn him out!”)

“Shame!” etc., the orator resumed—

“Let them build their bastiles, let them tear the wife from her husband, the mother from her child; let them crowd their prison-houses with the honest sons of labour whom their brutality has forced into crime—the poor man need never dread starvation while the hulks hunger and the gallows gapes for him—but a day of retribution is at hand; let the tyrants tremble beneath their gilded roofs—those unjust usurpers of the soil—the poor man’s bitterest foes, the landed gentry, as they arrogantly style themselves, must be cut off and rooted out.”

“Pretty strong, that!” observed Bracy, in a whisper.

“Ar—this won’t do, you know!” returned Grandeville, in an equally low voice. “I must, really—ar—interfere.”

“Better hear him out,” rejoined Bracy, “and then get up and address them yourself.” To which suggestion, after a slight remonstrance, the former agreed; but such a shining light as Mr. Jabez Broadcom was not to be put out as quickly as they desired; he was the great card of the evening, and knew it, and prolonged his speech for a good three-quarters of an hour, during which time he theoretically dethroned the Queen, abolished the Lords and Commons, seated a National Convention in St. Stephen’s, and made all the rich poor, and the poor both rich and happy, whilst he practically rendered himself so hoarse as to be nearly inaudible; for which gallant exertions in the cause of liberty he received the tumultuous applause of the meeting, together with Lieut. McDermott’s expressed conviction that he was “a broth of a boy entirely,” together with an anxious inquiry, “whether his mother had many more like him.”

When Broadcom retired from the rostrum there appeared some misunderstanding and confusion as to his successor; taking advantage of which, Grandeville looked at Bracy, who nodded, adding, “Now’s your time! Go in, and win;” then, catching a cadaverous-looking individual who was about to advance by the shoulders, and twisting him round, he exclaimed, “Now, my man, stand out of the way, will you? This gentleman is going to address the company.” He next thrust Grandeville forward, and patting him encouragingly on the back, left him to his own devices. That heroic gentleman, having bowed to his audience with much grace and dignity, waved his hand to command attention, and began as follows:—

“Ar—listen to me, my friends! Ar—hem—I am prepared to admit—that is, it is impossible to deny—that many great and serious evils exist in the complicated social fabric of this glorious country. The vast increase of population——”

“Owing to the introduction of chloroform,” suggested Bracy.

“Though slightly checked by——”

“The alarming consumption of Morrison’s Pills,” interposed the Irishman——

“The wise facilities afforded for emigration,” continued Grandeville, not heeding these interruptions, “is one chief cause of the poverty and distress which, though greatly exaggerated by the false statements of evil-disposed and designing persons (groans and cries of ‘Hear!’), are to be found even in this metropolis, beneath the fostering care of an enlightened and paternal government (increasing murmurs of dissatisfaction). But if you believe that these evils are likely to be redressed by such measures as have been pointed out to you this evening, or that anarchy and rebellion can lead to any other result than misery and ruin—ar—I tell you, that you are fearfully mistaken! Ar—as a man, possessed of—ar—no inconsiderable influence—and ar—intimately connected with those powers against which you are madly arraying yourselves, I warn you!”

Here the excitement and dissatisfaction, which had been rapidly increasing, reached a pitch which threatened to render the speaker inaudible; and amid cries of “Who is he?”—“an informer!”—“government spy!”—“turn him out!”—“throw him over!” several persons rose from their seats and attempted to force their way on to the platform, but were kept back by Lewis and others of Grandeville’s party, who, as has been already mentioned, had taken possession of the flight of steps, which afforded the only legitimate means of access from the body of the hall.

Undisturbed by these hostile demonstrations, Grandeville continued, at the top of his voice,—“I warn you that you are provoking an unequal struggle,—that you are bringing upon yourselves a fearful retribution. Even now I am armed with authority to disperse this meeting—to——”

What more he would have added the reader is not fated to learn, for at this moment the man in the rough greatcoat, who had followed Lewis from the entrance of the room, exclaiming, “Come on, we are not going to stand this, you know; never mind the steps,” seized the railing of the platform, and drawing himself up, sprang over, followed by several others. In an instant all was confusion. Grandeville, taken in some degree by surprise, after knocking down a couple of his assailants, was overpowered, and, amid cries of “throw him over,” hurried to the edge of the platform; here, grasping the rail with both hands, he struggled violently to prevent the accomplishment of their purpose.

“Come along, boys! we must rescue him,” exclaimed Bracy; and suiting the action to the word, he bounded forward, and hitting right and left, reached the scene of conflict. Lewis and the others, abandoning the steps, followed his example, and the row became general. For some minutes the uproar was terrific; blows were given and received; blood began to flow from sundry noses; and certain eyes that had begun the evening blue, brown, or grey, as the case might be, assumed a hue dark as Erebus. As for Lewis, he knocked down one of the fellows who had hold of Grandeville; then he picked up the Irishman, who of course had singled out and attacked the biggest man in the crowd (none other indeed than the rough-coated patriot, who appeared a sort of leader among them), and been immediately felled by him to the ground; then he assisted Frere in extricating the pale-faced youth from three individuals of questionable honesty, who were availing themselves of the confusion to empty his pockets; as he did so he felt himself seized with a grasp of iron, and turning his head, found he was collared by the gigantic leader. A violent but ineffectual effort to free himself only served to convince him that in point of strength he was no match for his antagonist, who, regarding him with a smile of gratified malice, exclaimed, “Now then, young feller, I’ve been a-waiting to get hold of you. How about a black eye now?” As he spoke he drew him forward with one hand and struck at him savagely with the other. Avoiding the blow by suddenly dodging aside, Lewis closed with his adversary, and inserting his knuckles within the folds of his neckcloth, tightened it, until in self-defence, and in order to avoid strangulation, the fellow was forced to loosen his grasp of Lewis’s collar. The instant he felt himself free, Lewis, giving the neckcloth a final twist, and at the same time pressing his knuckles into the man’s throat, so as for the moment almost to throttle him, stepped back a couple of paces, and springing forward again before the other had time to recover himself, hit up under his guard and succeeded in planting a stinging and well-directed blow exactly between his eyes; this, followed by a similar application rather lower on the face, settled the matter. Reeling backwards, his antagonist lost his footing and fell heavily to the ground, dragging one of his companions down with him in a futile attempt to save himself. The fall of their leader threw a damp on the spirits of the others; and although those in the rear were still clamorous with threats and vociferations, the members of the crowd in more immediate proximity to the little party showed small inclination to renew the attack.

“Now’s our time for getting away,” said Bracy. “Make a bold push for the door.”

“Ar—I should say,” rejoined Grandeville, one of whose eyes was completely closed from the effects of a blow, and whose coat was hanging about him in ribands, “let us despatch one of our party for the police and military, and stand firm and maintain our ground till they come up, then capture the ringleaders and clear the room.”

“Nonsense,” said Leicester, who, despite his regard for his wardrobe, had behaved most spiritedly during the skirmish. “We shall all be murdered before they appear; besides” (he added aside to Bracy), “it will be making much too serious a business of it; we should get into some tremendous scrape.”

“Yes, that’s true,” said Bracy; then turning to Grandeville, he added, “I don’t think my instructions would bear us out if we were to go any further. Remember, we were only to make a pacific demonstration.”

“And faith, if breaking heads, and getting a return in kind, comes under that same denomination, it’s a pretty decent one we’ve made already, ’pon me conscience,” put in McDermott, wiping away the blood that was still trickling from a cut in his forehead.

While these remarks were bandied from one to another, the party had contrived to make their way from the platform, and were now in the body of the room, striving to push through the crowd towards the side door. This at every step became more and more difficult, till at length they were so completely hemmed in that further progression became impossible, and it was evident that a fresh attack upon them was meditated. Fortunately, however, they were not far from the point of egress, and Bracy, having caught the eye of his ally the doorkeeper, who was on the alert, exclaimed, “Now, Grandeville, we must fight our way through these fellows and gain the door; there’s nothing for it but a spirited charge. You and I, Frere and his friend, and Paddy had better go first as a sort of wedge.”

“Ar—head the column and break the enemy’s ranks, ar—yes, are you all ready? Charge!”

As he gave the word they rushed forward in a compact body, and knocking down and pushing aside all who opposed them, succeeded in reaching the door. Here a short delay occurred while Bracy and his friend were opening it, and several of their late antagonists, irritated at the prospect of their escape, incited the others to attack them, so that before their egress was secured even the Irish lieutenant had had fighting enough to satisfy him, and the pale young man, having long since given himself up as a lost mutton, actually fainted with fear and over-exertion, and was dragged from under the feet of the combatants and carried out by Frere and Lewis, but for whom his mortal career would then and there have ended.

How, as they emerged into the street, a party of the police arrived and caused more confusion and more broken heads; and how Grande-ville and the Irishman on the one hand, and sundry Chartists, with Lewis’s late antagonist among them, on the other, were jointly and severally taken into custody and marched to the station-house, where they spent the night; and how Leicester contrived just in the nick of time to catch an intelligent cab, into which he, Lewis, Frere, and the fainting victim with the pallid physiognomy compressed themselves, and were conveyed rapidly from the scene of action, it boots not to relate: suffice it to say that a certain barrel of oysters, flanked by a detachment of pint bottles of stout, which had taken up their position on Frere’s dining-table during the absence of its master, sustained an attack about half-past eleven o’clock that night which proved that the mode in which their assailants had passed the evening had in no way impaired their respective appetites.

CHAPTER VI.—IN WHICH LEWIS ARUNDEL SKETCHES A COW, AND THE AUTHOR DRAWS A YOUNG LADY.

It was about noon on the day following the events narrated in the last chapter. Frere had departed to his office at the scientific institution some two hours since, and Lewis and Faust were looking out of the window, when a well-appointed cab dashed round the corner of a cross street, and a pair of lavender-coloured kid-gloves drew up a splendid bay horse, who arched his proud neck and champed the bit, impatient of delay, till a young male child in livery coat and top-boots rolled off the back of the vehicle and stationed itself before the animal’s nose, which act of self-devotion appeared to mesmerise him into tranquillity, and afforded the occupant of the cab time to spring out and knock at Frere’s door. Five minutes more saw Leicester and Lewis seated side by side and driving rapidly in the direction of Park Crescent.

“I don’t know how you feel this morning, Arundel,” began Leicester; “but positively when I first woke I could scarcely move. I’m black and blue all over, I believe.”

“I must confess to being rather stiff,” was the reply, “and my left hand is unproducible. I cut my knuckles against the nose of that tall fellow when I knocked him down, and shall be forced to wear a glove till it heals.”

“You did that uncommonly well,” returned Leicester; “the man was as strong as Hercules, and vicious into the bargain. He evidently had heard what you said about a black eye, and meant mischief. I was coming to help you when you finished him off.”

“It would have been most provoking to have been disfigured just at this time,” rejoined Lewis. “One could not very well go to propose oneself as a mentor for youth with a black eye obtained in something nearly akin to a street row.”

“No,” said Leicester; “the General would consider our last night’s exploit as dreadfully infra dig. He is quite one of the old school, and reckons Sir Charles Grandison a model for gentlemen. You must be careful to avoid the free-and-easy style of the present day with him; but I think you’ll suit him exactly; there’s naturally something of the preux chevalier, héros de roman cut about you that will go down with him amazingly.”

“In plain English, you consider me stiff and affected,” returned Lewis. “Do not scruple to tell me if it is so.”

“Stiff, yes; affected, no,” was the rejoinder. “Indeed, your manner is unusually simple and natural when you thaw a little, but at first you are—well, I hardly know how to describe it; but there is something about you unlike the men one usually meets. You have a sort of half-defiant way of looking at people, a sort of ‘you’d better not insult me, sir’ expression. I don’t know that I should have observed it towards myself, but it was your manner to Grandeville that particularly struck me. I have not annoyed you by my frankness?” he added interrogatively, finding that Lewis did not reply. Regardless of this question, Lewis remained silent for a minute or two, then suddenly turning to his companion, and speaking in a low, hurried voice, he said—

“Can you conceive no reason for such a manner? Is there not enough in my position to account for that, ay, and more? By birth I am any man’s equal. My father was of an old family, a captain in the Austrian service, and in the highest sense of the word a gentleman. I have received a gentleman’s education. Up to the present time I have associated with gentlemen on terms of equality, and now suddenly, through no fault of my own, I am in effect a beggar. The very errand we are upon proves it. Through the kindness of Frere and of yourself,—a stranger,—I am about to receive a favourable recommendation to some proud old man as a hired servant; for though in name it may not be so, in fact I shall be nought but a hireling! Is it strange then that I view men with suspicion? that I am watchful lest they attempt to refuse me the amount of courtesy due to those who, having never forfeited their own self-respect, are entitled to the respect of others?”

He paused, and removing his hat, allowed the cold breeze to blow freely around his heated brow. Leicester, who, despite his foppery, was thoroughly kind-hearted, being equally surprised and distressed at the burst of feeling his words had called forth, hastened to reply.

“My dear fellow, I really am—that is, ’pon my word, I had no idea you looked upon the affair in this light. I can assure you, I think you quite mistake the matter; a tutorship is considered a very gentlemanly occupation. If I had any work in me, I’m not at all sure I might not—that is, it would be a very sensible thing of me to look out for something of the kind myself. Stanhope Jones, who was up at Trinity with me, and about the fastest man of his year, ran through his fortune, got a tutorship in Lord Puzzletête’s family, went abroad with the eldest cub, and picked up a prize widow at Pisa, with tin enough to set the leaning tower straight again, if she’d had a fancy to do so.”

During this well-meant attempt at consolation Lewis had had time to come to the conclusion that he was in the position of that unwise individual who wore “his heart upon his sleeve for daws to peck at;” or, in plain English, that he had been betrayed into a display of feeling before a man incapable of appreciating or understanding it; and a less agreeable conviction at which to arrive we scarcely know. Nothing, however, remained but to make the best of it, which he accordingly did, by admitting the possibility that there might be much truth in Leicester’s view of the case, and changing the subject by saying, “Now I want you to give me a peep at the carte du pays of the unknown region I am about to explore. I think I pretty well comprehend the General from your description. Of what other members does the family consist?”

“Ah! yes, of course you must be curious to know. Well, the dramatis persono is somewhat limited. First and foremost, the General,—you comprehend him, you say?” Lewis made a sign in the affirmative, and Leicester continued: “Then we have an awful personage, who I expect will be a severe trial to you—Miss Livingstone; she is a relation, an aunt I think, of the General’s late wife, who lives with him and keeps his house, and was the terror of my boyhood whenever I was staying down at Broadhurst. She never was over young, I believe; at least I can’t imagine her anything but middle-aged, and she must now be sixty or thereabouts. For the rest, she looks as if she had swallowed a poker, and, by some mysterious process of assimilation, become imbued with its distinguishing characteristics; for she is very stiff, very cold, and as far as I know utterly impenetrable, but of a stirring disposition withal, which leads her to interfere with everybody and everything. Lastly, there is my cousin Annie, the General’s only daughter; she inherits her mother’s beauty, her father’s pride, her great-aunt’s determination to have her own way, and the devil’s own love of teasing. To set against all this, I believe her to be thoroughly good and amiable, and everything of that kind; at all events she is a most bewitching girl, and bids fair, under judicious management, to become a very charming woman! fancy her mission is to reform my brother Bellefield and render him a steady married man, and I wish her joy of it. She comes into her mother’s fortune when she is of age, and the respective governors have set their hearts upon the match.”

“And what says Lord Bellefield?” inquired Lewis listlessly.

“Oh, Bell reckons she won’t be of age, and that the match can’t come off these four years, by which time he expects to be so hard up that he must marry somebody; and as there will be plenty of the needful, she will suit his book as well as any other.”

“The young lady, of course, approves?” continued Lewis dreamily, untying a knot in the thong of Leicester’s whip.

“Catch a woman refusing a coronet,” returned Leicester, as he pulled up at a house in Park Crescent so suddenly as almost to throw the bay on his haunches.

“General Grant begs you will walk upstairs, Mr. Leicester. He is engaged at present, but desired me to say he particularly wishes to see you,” was the reply made by a most aristocratic butler to Leicester’s inquiry whether his master was at home. “Keep the bay moving, Tim. Now, Arundel, turn to the right—that’s it,” and suiting the action to the word, Charley the indolent leisurely descended from the cab, and crossing the “marble hall,” lounged up a wide staircase followed by Lewis.

“Silence and solitude,” he continued, opening the door of a large drawing-room handsomely furnished. “I hope they won’t be long before they introduce us to the luncheon-table. Oysters are popularly supposed to give one an appetite; but the natives we demolished at Frere’s last night must have been sadly degenerate, for I declare to you I could scarcely get through my breakfast this morning. Ah! what have we here?—a water-colour landscape in a semi-chaotic condition. Annie has been sketching, as sure as fate. I’ll introduce a few masterly touches and surprise her.” So saying he seated himself at the table and began dabbling with a brush.

“By Jove, I’ve done it now!” he exclaimed in a tone of consternation, after a minute’s pause. “Just look here; I thought I would insert the trunk of a tree in the foreground, and the confounded brush had got red in it, so I have made a thing like a lobster and spoiled the drawing.”

“I think, if you wish, I could turn it into a cow, and so get you out of the scrape,” suggested Lewis, smiling at his companion’s guilty countenance.

“My dear fellow, the very thing,” exclaimed Leicester, hastily rising and thrusting Lewis into his seat; “let’s have a cow, by all means. That’s famous,” he continued, as with a few graphic strokes Lewis converted the red daub into the semblance of an animal. “Bravo! make her an eye—now the horns—what a fascinating quadruped! Where’s the tail to come?”

“You would not see the tail in the position in which the cow is supposed to be lying,” remonstrated Lewis.

“Still, it would make it more natural,” urged Leicester. “As a personal favour, just to oblige me, stretch a point and give her a tail.”

“There, then, I’ve twisted it under her leg,” said Lewis, making the desired addition; “but depend upon it, there never was a cow’s tail so situated.”

“All the greater proof of your talent,” was the reply. “The ideal is what you artists (for I see you are one) are always raving about, and this is a specimen of it.”

So engrossed had the two young men been with their occupation that they had not observed the entrance of a third person. The newcomer was that most charming of all created beings, a very lovely girl of seventeen.

As every poet since Homer has done his utmost to clothe in fitting language a description of the best specimen of the class which it may have been his hap to meet with, and as no man in his senses would exchange half-an-hour of the society of one of the originals for all the fanciful descriptions of women that ever were written, we would fain be excused from adding one more to the number; and were all our readers of what grammarians most ungallantly term “the worthier gender,” we should cut the matter short by begging each man to imagine the damsel in question exactly like the “unexpressive she” who is, for the time being, queen of his soul. But as we flatter ourselves certain bright eyes will sparkle and coral lips smile over this “o’er true tale,” and as we have already been asked by “oceans” of young ladies, “What is the heroine to be like?” we will e’en make a virtue of necessity and give a catalogue raisonné of her many perfections.

Annie Grant, then (for we’ll have no disguise about the matter, but own at once that she it was who entered the drawing-room unperceived, and that she it is who is destined to play the heroine in this our drama of the Railroad of Life; and be it observed interparenthetically that we use the theatrical metaphor advisedly, for Shakespeare has told us that “all the world’s a stage,” and it is a matter of common notoriety that in the present day all stages have become railroads)—Annie Grant, then, we say, was rather above the middle height, though no one would have thought of pronouncing her tall; her gown of mousseline—poil de—psha! what are we thinking of?—she had not a gown on at all; how should she, when she was going to ride directly after luncheon? No, her habit, which fitted to perfection, was well calculated to set off her slight but singularly graceful figure to the best advantage. Her hair, which was braided in broad plaits for the greater convenience (seeing that ringlets under a riding-hat are an anomaly, not to say an abomination), was really auburn,—by which definition we intend to guard against the pale red, or warm, sand-coloured locks which usually pass current for the very rare but very beautiful tint we would particularise,—and if a poet had speculated as to the probability of some wandering sunbeam being imprisoned in its golden meshes, the metaphor, though fanciful, would not have been unapt. Delicate, regular features, large blue eyes, now dancing and sparkling with mischievous glee, now flashing with pride, a mouth like an expressive rosebud, a clear skin, with a warm glow of health painting each velvet cheek, but retreating from the snowy forehead, combined to form a whole on which to gaze was to admire.

This young lady, being such as we have described her, tripped lightly across the apartment till she had stationed herself behind her cousin Charles, and perceiving that both gentlemen were so preoccupied as not to have observed her approach, contrived, by standing on tiptoe and peeping over Leicester’s shoulder, to witness the introduction of the cow of which we have already made honourable mention.

During the animated discussion on the tail question she nearly betrayed her presence by laughing outright; repressing the inclination, however, she retraced her steps, and had nearly succeeded in reaching the side door by which she had entered, when her habit, catching against a table, caused the overthrow of a piece of ornamental china and revealed her presence.

On hearing the sound, Lewis, recalled to a sense of his situation, and for the first time struck by the idea that, in touching the drawing, he had been guilty of an unwarrantable liberty, rose hastily from his seat, colouring crimson as he did so, from an agreeable mixture of shyness, mortification, and proud self-reproach. Leicester, on the other hand, with the à-plomb and presence of mind of a man of the world, turned leisurely, and whispering, “Keep your own counsel, there’s no harm done,” he advanced towards his cousin, saying with a nonchalant air, “You have stolen a march upon us, Annie. This gentleman and I called to see the General upon business, and as he seems resolved to afford us a practical lesson on the virtue of patience. I ventured to while away the time by showing my friend some of your sketches. By the way, let me introduce you. My cousin, Miss Grant—Mr. Arundel.” Thus invoked, Lewis, who in order to atone to his wounded self-respect, had wrapped himself in his very coldest and haughtiest manner, and resembled a banished prince rather than an every-day Christian, advanced a few steps and acknowledged the introduction by a most Grandisonian inclination of the head.

The lady performed her part of the ceremony with an easy courtesy, into which perhaps an equal degree of hauteur was infused, although not the slightest effort was visible.

“Mr. Arundel is doubtless a judge of painting, and my poor sketches are by no means calculated to bear severe criticism,” remarked Miss Grant demurely.

As Lewis remained silent, Leicester hastened to reply: “A judge! of course he is; he’s just returned from Germany, the happy land where smoking, singing, and painting all come by nature.”

“Indeed!” returned Miss Grant. “Then, if it is not too troublesome, perhaps I might ask Mr. Arundel’s advice as to a sketch of Broadhurst I was attempting before your arrival; I left off in despair, because I could not manage anything for the foreground.”

“Try an elephant,” suggested Leicester; “it would have a grand effect, besides possessing the advantage of novelty, and filling up lots of space.”

“Would you bring me the drawing, Charles?” returned his cousin.

“I know too well the style of assistance I may expect from you in such matters. Who embellished my poor head of Minerva with a pair of moustaches?”

“I did,” rejoined Leicester complacently, “and I am proud of it. Minerva was the goddess of war, and sported moustaches in virtue of her profession.”

“Are you never going to give me the drawing, Charles?” asked Annie impatiently. “Positively, cousins are most uncourteous beings. Mr. Arundel, might I trouble you to hand me that sketch?”

Thus appealed to, Lewis had nothing for it but to comply, which he did accordingly, biting his lip with vexation at the dénouement which now appeared inevitable. But Leicester’s resources were not yet exhausted; stretching out his hand before his cousin had received the drawing, he coolly took possession of it, saying, “I know you meant this drawing as a little surprise for me. You have heard me say how much I coveted a sketch of dear old Broadhurst, and so you have kindly made one for me. You have really done it extremely well! Who was it—Fielding—you have been learning of? Positively, you have caught his style!”

“Don’t flatter yourself that I did you the honour of recollecting any such wish, even supposing you really uttered it in my hearing, of which I entertain grave doubts,” returned Annie; “but if you particularly desire it I will make you a present of it when it is finished—if I could only manage that tiresome foreground!”

“I like it better without,” was the reply. “There’s nothing to interfere with the outline of the building, which stands forth in bold relief—and—eh!—well, what’s the matter?”

During his speech his cousin had risen from her seat, and approaching him, caught sight of the drawing, which she had no sooner done than, raising a little white hand, she pointed to the intrusive cow and asked quietly, “Where did that come from?”

The comic perplexity of Leicester’s face was irresistible to behold, as, with a glance at Lewis to secure his sympathy and co-operation, he was evidently about to adopt the cow at all hazards, when the door opened, and a tall, stately old man, with a military port and erect bearing, entered, and surveying the group with evident surprise, drew himself up still more stiffly, ere, with slow and measured steps, he advanced towards them.

It was General Grant!

CHAPTER VII.—WHEREIN THE READER IS INTRODUCED TO MISS LIVINGSTONE, AND INFORMED WHO IS THE GREATEST MAN OF THE AGE.

“Ah! General,” exclaimed Leicester, as he rose leisurely from the arm-chair in which he had been reclining, “I hope they have not disturbed you on our account. I was criticising one of Annie’s sketches pour passer le temps—really she draws very nicely. Let me introduce Mr. Arundel, Mr. Frere’s friend, about whom I wrote to you yesterday.”

A stiff bow, acknowledged on Lewis’s part by an equally haughty inclination of the head, was the result of this introduction, when General Grant observed—

“Mr. Frere is a man of whom I have a very high opinion, both on account of his unusual intellectual attainments, and his manly, upright character. Have you been long acquainted with him, sir, may I ask?”

“He was my guide and protector when I first went to Westminster,” replied Lewis, “and we have been close friends ever since.”

“A most fortunate circumstance,” remarked the General sententiously. “The mind of youth is easily impressible for good or evil, and unless such establishments are greatly altered for the better since my time, Satan has no lack of emissaries at a public school. Will you allow me a few minutes’ private conversation with you, Mr. Arundel? The library is in this direction.” So saying, General Grant opened the door with frigid courtesy, and signing to Lewis to precede him, followed with a stateliness of demeanour admirable to behold.

Scarcely had they left the room, when Annie, clapping her hands joyfully, exclaimed, “What a creature! why, he’s as stiff and dignified as papa himself. Now then, Charley, tell me who he is, and all about him: we shall have Aunt Martha or somebody coming, and then I shall never know, and be obliged to die of curiosity. You are asleep, I believe.”

“There you go—that’s always the way with women,” returned Leicester, speaking very slowly and with an exaggeration of his usual mode of pronunciation, which was something between a lisp and a drawl; “asking half-a-dozen questions in a breath, and resolved to get up a suicidal amount of curiosity if they are not as speedily answered. Why, my dear child, I would not speak as quickly as you do for any amount of money—at least any amount of money I should be at all likely to get for doing so.”

“Now, Charley, don’t be tiresome. Who is the man?” rejoined Annie, half pettishly. Then, seeing that her imperious manner only induced her cousin still further to tease her, she added, in an imploring tone, which no heart of any material softer than granite could resist, “You will tell me—won’t you? I want to know so much, and I have had nothing to amuse me all day.”

“There, do you hear that?” soliloquised Leicester, appealing to society in general. “Trust a woman to get her own way. If she can’t scold you into giving it to her, she’ll coax you. Well, you little torment, I suppose you must know all about it. The man, as you please to call him, is seeking the honourable post of bear-leader to the cub your father has the felicity of being guardian unto.”

“What, a tutor for poor Walter!” rejoined Annie meditatively. “But surely he’s a gentleman, is he not?”

“Very particularly and decidedly so, as far as I am a judge,” returned Leicester, hooking a footstool towards him with his cane, and depositing his feet thereupon. “At least I dined and spent last evening in his company, and never wish to meet a better fellow.”

“But,” continued Annie, pursuing her train of reasoning, “if he is a gentleman, why does he want to go out as a tutor?”

“Because, unfortunately, there is a vulgar prejudice extant in this feeble-minded country that the necessaries of life, such as bread and cheese, cigars, kid gloves, and the like, must be paid for—this requires money, whereof Arundel has little or none. Moreover, Richard Frere hinted at a mother and sister in the case, who likewise have to be supported.”

As he spoke a shade of deeper thought flitted across Annie’s expressive features, and after a moment’s pause she resumed.

“Now I understand his strange manner: he was mentally contrasting himself (he is evidently a proud man) and his position; it must indeed have been a struggle—and he does this for the sake of his mother and sister. Charley, do you know, I rather admire him.”

“Yes, I dare say you do; he’s a decidedly good-looking fellow for the style of man; there’s a thoroughbred air about him, and he carries himself well.”

“Psha! I am not talking of his appearance: except that he is tall and dark, I scarcely know what he is like,” returned Annie quickly. “No! I mean that there is something fine in the idea of a proud mind submitting to degradations and indignities for the sake of those it loves; bearing with a martyr-spirit the thousand hourly annoyances——-” Checking herself suddenly, as she perceived upon her cousin’s face something nearly akin to a contemptuous smile, Annie continued, “Charles, how stupid you are! I hate you!”

“Not possible,” was the cool reply. “Moreover, you have really no cause to do so. I assure you I was not exactly laughing at your sudden plunge into the sentimental; it was merely a notion which crossed my mind, that out of the thousand hourly annoyances by which poor Arundel is to be martyrised, some nine hundred and fifty would originate in the caprices of a certain young lady who shall be nameless. In the monotony of life amid the leafy shades of Broadhurst, even teasing a tutor may be deemed a new and interesting variety, as the botanists have it. Seriously, though, you can coax the General to let him teach you German.”

“And embellish my water-colour sketches by the insertion of occasional cows, with impossible tails made to order—eh, cousin Charley?” returned Annie with an arch smile. “Give me my drawing, sir, and let me look at the creature. How well he has done it! I know a cow at Broadhurst with just such a face!”

“There’s a world of speculation in the eye,” rejoined Leicester carelessly, though he was slightly surprised at the extent of her information respecting the “tail” debate; “the animal appears to be ruminating on the advisability of petitioning Parliament against the veal trade, or some other question of equal interest to the ‘milky mothers of the herd.’”

While Annie and her cousin thus gaily conversed, a very different scene was enacting in the library. During a short delay, occasioned by General Grant’s being obliged to answer a note, Lewis had time to recollect himself, and to school the rebellious feelings which his conversation with Leicester and the other events of the morning had called into action. He thought of Rose and his mother, and of his determination that they at least should be spared all knowledge of the real evils of poverty; and this reflection was for the time sufficient to efface every selfish consideration. Bringing his strength of will into play, he regained the most complete self-control, and even experienced a sort of morbid pleasure in the idea of voluntarily humiliating himself before the proud old man, whose clear, cold eye was occasionally raised from the note he was employed in writing to fix its scrutinising glance on Lewis’s features.

Having sealed the missive and given it to a servant, he slowly approached the spot where Lewis was standing, and after a word or two of apology for having kept him waiting, began—

“I presume my nephew, Mr. Leicester, has made you in some degree acquainted with the nature of the circumstances in which I am at present placed, and of the necessity which renders me anxious to secure the services of some gentleman as tutor to my ward, Sir Walter Desborough?”

“Mr. Leicester informed me that the young gentleman’s education had been neglected, and that his mind was singularly undeveloped,” replied Lewis, choosing the least offensive terms in which he might express his conviction that the youth in question was rather a fool than otherwise.

“Yes, sir, though it is even worse than you describe,” returned the General. “In fact it depends upon the degree of success which may attend the efforts which must now be made whether Sir Walter Desborough can ever be considered capable of managing his own affairs, or able to take that place in society to which his rank and fortune would naturally entitle him. You perceive, therefore, that the post of tutor will be one of much trust and importance, and the duties attending it most onerous. Mr. Frere has written so high a character of your various attainments that I cannot but feel perfectly satisfied of your competency; but you are very young, and as I should, in the event of your undertaking the charge, expect a strict performance of your duties, it is only fair to inform you that I conceive they may be irksome in the extreme. What is your feeling on the subject?”

Lewis paused for a moment in thought, and then replied—

“I will be frank with you, sir. Were I free to act as I chose, such an office as you describe would be one of the last I should select; but the welfare of others depends upon my exertions, and I have determined to refuse no occupation not unworthy a gentleman which will enable me to render the necessary assistance to my family. If, therefore, you consider me fitted to undertake the charge of your ward, I am willing to do so, and to fulfil the duties of such a situation to the best of my ability, on one condition.”

“What is that?” inquired General Grant quickly.

“That I may be allowed to pursue whatever system I may deem best fitted to attain the desired end, without the interference of any one, and may be accountable for my conduct to you alone.”

“Rather a singular request, young gentleman,” returned the General, knitting his brows.

“My reason for making it is easily explained, sir,” replied Lewis, firmly but respectfully. “Unless such permission is accorded me, I feel certain all my efforts would prove unavailing: I must have full power to do what I think right, or I could not act at all, and should have undertaken a duty which I should be incompetent to perform.”

“Well, sir, there is truth in what you say,” replied General Grant, after a moment’s consideration. “I like you none the worse for speaking in a manly, straightforward manner. It is my intention to go down to Broadhurst in a day or two: you shall accompany me; and if, after seeing my ward, you are still willing to undertake the task of conducting his education, I shall be happy to entrust him to your care, upon the conditions you have proposed. Your salary will be £300 a year. This, you are aware, is unusually high, but the case is a peculiar one, and money, fortunately, a very secondary consideration. An entire suite of rooms will be devoted to the use of yourself and your pupil, and a horse kept for you, that you may accompany him in his rides. Do these arrangements meet your wishes?”

Lewis bowed his head in token of acknowledgment, and said, “I have one other request to make. I brought a Livonian wolf-hound with me from Germany; he is much attached to me, and I should be unwilling to part from him.”

“Bring him with you, sir,” returned the General, his lip slightly curling with a sarcastic smile; “a dog more or less will make little difference in such an establishment as that at Broadhurst. And now, if you will give me the pleasure of your company at luncheon, I shall be happy to introduce you to my relative, Miss Livingstone, who does me the honour to preside over my household. My daughter, I believe, you have already seen;” and as he spoke he led the way to the dining-room, where the rest of the party were already assembled.

Miss Livingstone, who scrutinised Lewis as if she suspected him of belonging to that ingenious fraternity yclept the swell mob, was, in appearance, a very awful old lady indeed. The nearest approach we can make to a description of her features is to say that they bore a marked (with the small-pox) resemblance to those of Minerva and her owl; the sternness of that utilitarian goddess—the Miss Martineau of Olympus—and the sapient stupidity of the so-called bird of wisdom, finding their exact counterpart in Miss Livingstone’s time-honoured physiognomy. This lady was appareled after a strange and imposing mode, as behoved a spinster of such orthodox station and ferociously virtuous propriety as the General’s female commander-in-chief. Minerva’s helmet was modernised into a stupendous fabric, wherein starch, muslin, and ribbon of an unnatural harshness struggled upwards in a pyramid, whence pointing with stiffened ends innumerable, suggestive of any amount of porcupines, they appeared ready and anxious to repel or impale society at large. A triangle of spotless lawn supplied the place of the breastplate beneath which Jove’s daughter was accustomed to conceal her want of heart; and a silk gown of an uncomfortable shade of grey, made so scanty as to render at first sight the hypothesis of a mermaidic termination conceivable, completed the costume of this immaculate old lady.

Having apparently satisfied herself that Lewis had no immediate design upon the spoons and forks, she condescended to afford him the meteorological information that although the sunshine might delude the unwary into believing it to be a fine day, she had received private information that the weather was not to be relied upon: after promulgating which opinion she placed herself at the head, and assumed the direction of, the luncheon-table.

Charley Leicester appeared to be the only individual of the party insensible to a certain freezing influence, which might be specified as one of Miss Livingstone’s most characteristic attributes. Having exerted himself to supply that lady with every possible adjunct she could require, and seduced her into an amount of Cayenne pepper which afterwards subjected her to considerable physical suffering, he began—

“I was present, a day or two ago, Miss Livingstone, when a question was started as to what man of modern times had been the greatest benefactor to his race. It opened a mine of very curious speculation, I can assure you.”

“I do not doubt it, Charles,” returned Miss Livingstone; “and I am glad to learn that the young men of the present day employ their time in such profitable discussions. What decision did you arrive at?”

“Well, ma’am,” resumed Leicester gravely, “there was of course much difference of opinion. James Watt had rather a strong party in his favour, but an ex-railway director was present who had lost £10,000 on the Do-em-and-Foot-in-it Line, and he blackballed him. Lord John was proposed; but some of the men who took in Punch laughed so immoderately when his name was mentioned that it was immediately withdrawn. One youth, who is known to be a little bit flighty, not quite accountable, poor fellow! declared for Lord Brougham, but we soothed him, and he had sense enough left to see his error almost immediately. At length it came to my turn——”

“And whom did you mention?” inquired Miss Livingstone, with a degree of interest most unusual in her.

“I had been pondering the matter deeply,” continued Leicester, “to try and hit on some worthy against whom no valid objection could be raised. At one moment I thought of Moses——”

“I fancied it was restricted to men of modern times,” interposed Miss Livingstone.

“He to whom I referred, ma’am,” returned Leicester, “was not the Israelitish lawgiver, but the man of the City Mart, that benevolent individual who clothes poverty in ‘a light paletot at ten-and-six,’ and enables the honest hearts of free-born Britons to palpitate beneath a ‘gent’s superior vest’ for the trifling remuneration of five shillings.” This speech was algebra, or thereabouts, to the lady to whom it was addressed, but she had a sort of instinctive apprehension that Leicester was talking nonsense, and accordingly drew herself up stiffly, completing her resemblance to Minerva by composing her features into a very satisfactory likeness of the Gorgon. No way affected by this transformation, Leicester continued—

“On mature reflection, however, I discarded Moses & Son, and was going to give it up as hopeless, when, all of a sudden, a bright thought flashed across me, and springing to my feet, I exclaimed in a voice of thunder, ‘Gentlemen, I have it; the difficulty is one no longer: the greatest modern benefactor to the human race is—Bass!’”

“Who?” exclaimed Miss Livingstone, entirely mystified and a good deal flurried by the narrator’s unusual energy.

“Bass,” resumed Leicester; “that remarkable man whose gigantic intellect first conceived the project of regenerating society through the medium of pale ale! The idea was hailed with enthusiasm; we immediately sent for a dozen; and ere the liquor was disposed of, there was not a man present but would have staked hundreds on the soundness of my opinion.”

Utterly disgusted and confused by this unexpected termination to the anecdote, Miss Livingstone rose from her chair, sailed out of the room, and thus the visit concluded.

Lewis, after a solitary walk, during which he was revolving in his mind the step he had just taken, and striving to discern in the dull lead-coloured horizon of his future one ray of light which might yield promise of brighter times to come, was ascending Frere’s staircase, when the door of the room above opened suddenly, and a voice, which he thought he recognised, exclaimed—

“Then I may depend upon you; you’ll be with me by eight at the latest, and bring your friend, if possible. Ah! here he is! Mr. Arundel, delighted to see you—none the worse for last night, I hope—wasn’t it glorious? Grandeville has got such a face on him, he won’t be able to show for a week to come; and Meeking of the pallid features is so seedy this morning that I was forced to burthen my conscience by inventing a fictitious fall from his horse, on the strength of which I sent his mamma to nurse him. We must book that to the pious fraud account, and let the charity absolve the lie. Rather shaky divinity, eh, Frere? Well, au revoir; I’m off.”

So saying, Mr. Tom Bracy—for he it was, and none other—dashed down the stairs, and having deeply scandalised Frere’s ancient domestic by an anxious inquiry how it was she did not get a husband, took his departure.

“Frere!” exclaimed Lewis, throwing himself into a chair and coldly repulsing Faust, who never could imagine himself otherwise than welcome, “I’ve done it!”

“So have I, man,” was the reply; “and pretty considerably brown, too, as that nice youth who has just left me would call it. But what have you done to make you so doleful?”

“Sold myself,” returned Lewis bitterly.

“Not to the old gentleman, I hope,” rejoined Frere, “though your black looks would almost lead one to imagine so.”

“What weak, inconsistent fools we are!” pursued Lewis.

“Speak for yourself, young man,” observed Frere parenthetically.

“How vacillating and impotent,” continued Lewis, not heeding the interruption, “is even the strongest will! I have done this morning the thing I believed I most anxiously desired to do—the thing I came here hoping to accomplish—I have secured a competence for my mother and sister. I have done so on better terms than I had deemed possible. I have met with consideration, if not kindness, from—from my employer.” He pronounced the word firmly, though his temples throbbed and his lip quivered with suppressed emotion as he did so. “All this should make me contented, if not happy. Happy!” he repeated mockingly. “Frere,” he continued, with a sudden burst of impetuosity, “it has not done so—I am miserable!”

He rose from his seat and began pacing the room with impatient strides. Faust followed him for one or two turns, wagging his tail and gazing up into his face with loving eyes; but finding his efforts to attract attention unavailing, he uttered a piteous whine, and, retreating to a corner, crouched down, as perfectly aware that his master was unhappy as if he had been a human creature and could have “told his love” in words. Frere would have spoken, but Lewis checked him by a gesture, and continued his rapid walk for some minutes in silence. At length he spoke—

“You think me selfish and ungrateful, and you are right; I am so. I have schooled myself to bear all this, and I will bear it; but bitter thoughts arise and at times overpower me. I am very young” (“True for you,” muttered Frere, sotto voce), “and I am so unfit for such a life as lies before me, a life of tame and ceaseless drudgery, in which to indulge the high aspirations and noble daring that win men honour becomes misplaced folly; to live with people whose equal, if not superior, I feel myself, in a semi-menial capacity; to obey when I would command; to forfeit all that is bright and fair in existence—intercourse with the higher order of minds, the society of pure and refined spirits; and, above all, to lose the only thing I really prize on earth—my independence.

“Well,” he continued, after a pause, “the die is cast, and repining is worse than useless. I will give this experiment a fair trial; it may be the harness will set more easily on me than I imagine; and should it become unbearable, I can but cast it off and start afresh: there is such a thing as to compel one’s destiny!”

CHAPTER VIII.—LEWIS RECEIVES A LECTURE AND A COLD BATH.

Richard Frere listened to the somewhat grandiloquent remark with which the last chapter concluded, muttering to himself, “‘Compel destiny,’ indeed; it strikes me you’ll find ‘destiny,’ as you call it, will have the best of it at that game;” then turning to his companion, he observed more gravely, “Now, listen to me, Lewis. What you have just said is no doubt true enough; you are about as unfit in tastes and habits for the life that is before you as a man well can be, but for that reason it is exactly the very best thing for you. For what purpose do you suppose we are sent into this world? Most assuredly not only to please ourselves, and by following out our own desires and caprices, create a sphere for the exercise and increase of our natural faults. No; the only true view of life is as a school, wherein our characters are to be disciplined, and all the changes and chances, sorrows, trials, and temptations we meet with are the agents by which the education of the soul is carried on.”

“And a low, wretched view of life it is,” replied Lewis bitterly; “a seventy years’ pupilage under the rod of destiny. The heathen sage was right who said that those whom the gods love die early. If it were not for Rose and my mother, I would join some regiment bound for India, volunteer into every forlorn hope, and trust that some Sikh bullet would rid me of the burthen of life without my incurring the guilt of suicide.”

“In fact, you would die like an idiot, because you lack moral courage to face the evils of life like a man,” returned Frere. “But wait a bit: your argument, such as it is, is founded on a fallacy, or on that still more dangerous thing, a half-truth. Granting that life were one scene of bitter experiences,—which would be granting a very large lie,—for what is this discipline intended to fit us? That is the question. You are ambitious—how would you regard obstacles in your path to greatness? You would rejoice in them, would you not, as opportunities for bringing out the high qualities you fancy you possess? fortitude, courage, indomitable perseverance, ready wit, aptitude to lead and govern your fellow-men, and fifty other magnanimous attributes; and deem the greatness unworthy your notice could it be obtained without a struggle. But what is human greatness? A triumph for the hour, bringing its attendant cares and evils with it—mark that,—a bauble, which some other ambitious genius may possibly wrest from your grasp, which old age would unfit you to retain, of which death must deprive you in a few years more or less. Now take the true, the Christian’s view of life—obstacles to overcome, demanding all our strength of mind, and then proving too mighty for us without the assistance of a Power superior to that of man, but which will be given us if we seek it properly. And the victory won, what is the prize we shall obtain? A position, according to our advance in righteousness, among the spirits of just men made perfect intercourse (with reverence be it spoken) with the Source of all good, Omniscience our teacher, Omnipotence our only ruler, Perfect Justice our lawgiver, Perfect Wisdom our director, the Powers of Heaven for our associates, and our own souls, freed from the trammels of mortality, fitted to appreciate and enjoy these inestimable blessings; and all this, not for time, but for eternity. Lewis, you are a reasonable being, and to your own reason I will leave the question.”

There was silence for some minutes. At length Lewis raised his head, revealing features on which the traces of deep emotion were visible, and stretching out his hand to his friend, said in a voice which trembled from excess of feeling, “God bless you, Frere; you are indeed a true friend!” He paused; then added suddenly, “Frere, promise me one thing,—promise me that whatever I may do, whatever rash act or evil deed my feelings may hurry me into, you will not give me up; that while we both live you will act by me as you have done to-day—that you will preserve me from myself, stand between me and my fiery nature; then shall I feel that I am not utterly deserted—you will be the link that shall still bind me to virtue.”

“Well, if you fancy it will make you any happier, or better, or more reasonable, I will promise it,” returned Frere; “more particularly as I should most probably do it whether I promise it or not.”

“You promise, then?” asked Lewis eagerly.

“I do,” replied Frere.

Lewis once more wrung his friend’s hand with such eagerness as to elicit a grimace of pain from that excellent individual, and then continued—

“A conversation of this nature regularly upsets me; I must go out and walk off the excitement before I shall be fit for anything. Come, Faust, good dog! I spoke up for Faust to-day, Frere, and the General accorded a dignified assent: ‘A dog more or less will make little difference in such an establishment as Broadhurst.’”

“Did he say that?” inquired Frere.

“Word for word,” returned Lewis.

“Well, I thought better things of him! ‘Folks is sich fools!’ as my old lady downstairs says. Are you off? Mind you are at home in good time for dinner, for I have been seduced into accepting another evening engagement for us.”

“Any more fighting?” asked Lewis anxiously.

“No; thank goodness for that same!” returned Frere.

“I wish I could meet that long Chartist,” continued Lewis, shaking his fist; “not that I bear him any ill-will, but it would be such a relief to me just now to knock somebody down. Mayn’t I set Faust at a policeman?”

“Not unless you prefer Brixton to Broadhurst, and the treadmill to the tutorship,” returned Frere.

“Well, good-bye till dinner-time,” responded Lewis, leaving the room. “I won’t punish your carpet any longer. Come, Faust!”

“That is a most singular young man,” soliloquised Frere as he took down and unrolled a Persian manuscript; “very like an excitable steam-engine with an ill-regulated safety-valve in disposition; I only hope he won’t blow up bodily while I have the care of him. He is a fine fellow, too, and it’s impossible not to be very fond of him; but he’s an awful responsibility for a quiet man to have thrust upon him.”

Meanwhile Lewis, walking hurriedly up one street and down another, with the design of allaying the fever of his mind by bodily exercise, found himself at length in the neighbourhood of Hyde Park, and, tempted by the beauty of the afternoon, he continued his stroll till he reached Kensington Gardens. Here, stretching himself on one of the benches, he watched the groups of gaily-dressed loungers and listened to the military band, till he began to fear he might be late for Frere’s dinner; and retracing his steps, he proceeded along the bank of the Serpentine towards Hyde Park Corner. As he arrived nearly opposite the receiving-house of the Humane Society, his attention was attracted by the lamentations of a small child, whom all the endearments of a sympathising nursery-maid were powerless to console. The child, being a fine sturdy boy, and the maid remarkably pretty, Lewis was moved by a sudden impulse of compassion to stop and inquire the cause of the grief he beheld. It was soon explained. Master Tom had come to sail a little boat which his grandpapa had given him; the string by which the length of its voyage was to have been regulated had broken, and the boat had drifted farther and farther from its hapless owner, until at last it had reached a species of buoy, to which the park-keeper’s punt was occasionally moored, and there it had chosen to stick hard and fast. In this rebellious little craft was embarked, so to speak, all Master Tom’s present stock of earthly happiness; thence the sorrow which Mary’s caresses were unable to assuage, and thence the lamentations which had attracted Lewis’s attention.

“Don’t cry so, my little man, and we’ll see if we can’t find a way of getting it for you,” observed Lewis encouragingly, raising the distressed shipowner in his arms to afford him a better view of his stranded property. “We must ask my dog to go and fetch it for us. Come here, Mr. Faust. You are not afraid of him? he won’t hurt you—that’s right, pat him; there’s a brave boy; now ask him to fetch your boat for you. Say, ‘Please, Mr. Faust, go and get me my boat!’ say so.” And the child, half-pleased, half-frightened, but with implicit faith in the dog’s intellectual powers, and the advisability of conciliating its good will and imploring its assistance, repeated the desired formula with great unction.

“That’s well! Now, nurse, take care of Master—what did you say?—ay, Master Tom, while I show Faust where the boat is.” As he spoke he took up a stone, and attracting Faust’s attention to his proceedings, jerked it into the water just beyond the spot where the boat lay, at the same time directing him to fetch it.

With a bound like the spring of a lion the noble dog dashed into the water and swam vigorously towards the object of his quest, reached it, seized it in his powerful jaws, and turned his head towards the bank in preparation for his homeward voyage, while the delighted child laughed and shouted with joy at the prospect of regaining his lost treasure. Instead, however, of proceeding at once towards the shore, the dog remained stationary, beating the water with his forepaws to keep himself afloat, and occasionally uttering an uneasy whine.

“Here, Faust! Faust! what in the world’s the matter with him?” exclaimed Lewis, calling the dog and inciting him by gestures to return, but in vain; his struggles only became more violent, without his making the slightest progress through the water.

Attracted by the sight, a knot of loungers gathered round the spot, and various suggestions were hazarded as to the dog’s unaccountable behaviour. “I think he must be seized with cramp,” observed a good-natured, round-faced man in a velveteen jacket, who looked like one of the park-keepers. “The animal is suicidally disposed, apparently,” remarked a tall, aristocratic-looking young man, with a sinister expression of countenance, to which a pair of thick moustaches imparted a character of fierceness. “Anxious to submit to the cold-water cure, more probably,” remarked his companion. “It will be kill rather than cure with him before long,” returned the former speaker with a half laugh; “he’s getting lower in the water every minute.”

“He is caught by the string of the boat which is twisted round the buoy!” exclaimed Lewis, who during the above conversation had seized the branch of a tree, and raising himself by his hands, had reached a position from which he was able to perceive the cause of his favourite’s disaster; “he’ll be drowned if he is not unfastened. Who knows where the key of the boat-house is kept?”

“I’ll run and fetch it,” cried the good-natured man; “it’s at the receiving-house, I believe.”

“Quick! or it will be of no use!” said Lewis in the greatest excitement.

The man hurried off, but the crowd round the spot had now become so dense—even carriages filled with fashionably-dressed ladies having stopped to learn the catastrophe—that it was no easy matter for him to make his way through it, and several minutes elapsed without witnessing his return. In the meantime the poor dog’s struggles were becoming fainter and fainter; his whining had changed to something between a hoarse bark and a howl, a sound so clearly indicative of suffering as to be most distressing to the bystanders; and it was evident that if some effort were not speedily made for his relief he must sink.

“He shall not perish unassisted!” exclaimed Lewis impetuously; “who will lend me a knife?”

Several were immediately offered him, from which he selected one with a broad blade.

“May I inquire how you propose to prevent the impending catastrophe?” asked superciliously the moustached gentleman to whom we have before alluded.

“You shall see directly,” returned Lewis, divesting himself of his coat, waistcoat, and neckcloth.

“I presume you are aware there is not one man in a hundred who could swim that distance in his clothes,” resumed the speaker in the same sneering tone. “Do you actually—I merely ask as a matter of curiosity—do you really consider it worth while to peril your life for that of a dog?”

“For such a noble dog as that, yes!” replied Lewis sternly. “I might not take the trouble for a mere puppy;” and he pronounced the last two words with a marked emphasis, which rendered his meaning unmistakable. The person he addressed coloured with anger and slightly raised his cane, but he read that in Lewis’s face which caused him to relinquish his intention, and smiling scornfully he folded his arms and remained to observe the event.

This was Lewis’s introduction to Charles Leicester’s elder brother, Lord Bellefield, the affianced of Annie Grant.

Having completed his preparations, Lewis placed the knife between his teeth, and motioning to the crowd to stand on one side, gave a short run, dashed through the shallow water, and then, breasting the stream gallantly, swain with powerful strokes towards the still struggling animal. As he perceived his master approaching, the poor dog ceased howling, and seemingly re-animated by the prospect of assistance, redoubled his efforts to keep himself afloat.

In order to avoid the stroke of his paws, Lewis swam round him, and supporting himself by resting one hand upon the buoy, he grasped the knife with the other, and at one stroke severed the string. The effect was instantly perceptible: freed from the restraint which had till now paralysed his efforts, the dog at once rose higher in the water; and even in that extremity his affection for his master overpowering his instinct of self-preservation, he swam towards him with the child’s boat (of which, throughout the whole scene, he had never loosened his hold) in his mouth.

Merely waiting to assure himself that the animal had yet strength enough remaining to enable him to regain the shore, Lewis set him the example by quitting the buoy and striking out lustily for the bank; but now the weight of his clothes, thoroughly saturated as they had become, began to tell upon him, and his strokes grew perceptibly weaker, while his breath came short and thick.

Faust, on the contrary, freed from the string which had entangled him, proceeded merrily, and reached the shore ere Lewis had performed half the distance. Depositing the boat in triumph at the feet of one of the bystanders, the generous animal only stopped to shake the wet from his ears, and then plunging in again swam to meet his master. It was perhaps fortunate that he did so, for Lewis’s strength was rapidly deserting him, his clothes appearing to drag him down like leaden weights. Availing himself, of the dog’s assistance, he placed one arm across its back, and still paddling with the other, he was partly dragged and partly himself swam forward, till his feet touched ground, when, letting the animal go free, he waded through the shallow water and reached the bank, exhausted indeed, but in safety.

Rejecting the many friendly offers of assistance with which he was instantly overwhelmed, he wrang the water from his dripping hair, stamped it out of his boots, and hastily resuming his coat and waistcoat, was about to quit a spot where he was the observed of all observers, when Lord Bellefield, after exchanging a few words with his companion, made a sign to attract Lewis’s attention, and having succeeded in so doing, said, “That is a fine dog of yours, sir; will you take a twenty pound note for him?”

Lewis’s countenance, pale from exhaustion, flushed with anger at these words; pausing a moment, however, ere he replied, he answered coldly, “Had he been for sale, sir, I should scarcely have risked drowning in order to save him; I value my life at more than twenty pounds.” Then turning on his heel, he whistled Faust to follow him, and walked away at a rapid pace in the direction of Hyde Park Corner.

Amongst the carriages that immediately drove off was one containing two ladies who had witnessed the whole proceeding; and as it dashed by him, Lewis, accidentally looking up, caught a glimpse of the bright eager face of Annie Grant!

CHAPTER IX.—WHEREIN RICHARD FRERE AND LEWIS TURN MAHOMETANS.

Lewis rather expected a lecture from Richard Frere on account of his aquatic exploit; but he need not have made himself uneasy on the subject, for the only remark his friend volunteered was: “Well, you know, if the dog could not be saved without, of course you were obliged to go in and fetch him. I should have done the same myself, though I hate cold water as I hate the old gentleman, and never could swim in my life.”

When they had concluded dinner, Frere inquired suddenly: “By the way, do you mean to come with me to-night?”

“Before I can answer that question,” returned Lewis, “you must condescend to inform me where you are going, and what you mean to do when you get there.”

“To be sure; I thought I had told you; but the fact is, I have been working rather hard lately (I read for three hours after you were gone to bed last night), and my head is not over clear to-day. The case is this, sir: Tom Bracy, who, as I before told you, is lamentably addicted to practical jokes, happens to be acquainted with a certain elderly lady who devotes her life to lion-hunting.”

“To what?” inquired Lewis.

“To catching celebrities, otherwise termed lions,” replied Frere, “and parading them at her parties for the benefit of her friends and acquaintance. On the last occasion of this kind she confided to Bracy her longing desire to obtain an introduction to a certain Persian prince, or thereabouts, who has lately come over to this country to avoid the somewhat troublesome attentions of his family, his younger brother being most anxious to put out his eyes, and his grandfather only waiting a favourable opportunity for bow-stringing him.”

“‘A little more than kin, and less than kind,’” quoted Lewis.

“I knew you would say that,” returned Frere; “in fact, I should have felt quite surprised if you had not. But to proceed with my account. Bracy soon found out that his hostess had never seen the aforesaid Asiatic magnate, and knew next to nothing about him; whereupon he determined ‘to get a little fun,’ as he calls it, out of the affair, and accordingly informed her, very gravely, that from his acquaintance with the Persian language, he was in the habit of accompanying the prince to evening parties in the character of interpreter, and that if she would entrust him with an invitation, he should be happy to convey it to his Highness, and try to induce him to accept it. She joyfully acceded to the proposal, and this very evening the party is to take place. And now can you guess the purport of Bracy’s visit to me?”

“He wants you to act as interpreter in his stead, I suppose; his knowledge of Persian being probably confined to the word ‘bosh.’”

“Wrong!” rejoined Frere, laughing. “A higher destiny awaits me. I am for the nonce to be elevated to the proud position of one of the Blood Royal of Persia. In plain English, Bracy knows as much of the Prince as I do of the Pope; the whole thing is a hoax from beginning to end, and he wants me to personate his Highness, which I have promised to do, while you are to represent an attendant satrap, a sort of Mussulman gold stick-in-waiting, always supposing you have no objection so to employ yourself.”

“To tell you the truth, I am scarcely in the vein for such fooling,” returned Lewis moodily. “I hate practical jokes to begin with, nor can I see much fun in taking advantage of the absurdities of some weak-minded old lady. At the same time I am tolerably indifferent about the matter, and if you have pledged yourself to go, relying upon my accompanying you, I will put my own tastes out of the question, and do as you wish.”

“Equally sententious and amiable,” returned Frere; “but the truth is, I have promised Bracy (partly fancying you would like the fun), and go I must.”

“I’ll accompany you then,” rejoined Lewis. “I’d make a greater sacrifice than that for you any day, old fellow. And now may I ask who is the lady to be victimised?”

“An opulent widow, one Lady Lombard, ‘the interesting relict of a be-knighted pawnbroker,’ as Bracy calls her,” replied Frere.

“Who inquired Lewis, becoming suddenly interested.

“Why, how now?” returned Frere, astonished at his friend’s impetuosity. Then repeating the name, he continued, “Do you know the lady?”

“Yes, I do,” rejoined Lewis; “know her for a coarse-minded, purse-proud, wretched old woman!”

“Phew!” whistled Frere. “May I ask how the good lady has been so fortunate as thus to have excited your bitter indignation against her?”

“Never mind,” returned Lewis, rising hastily and walking to the window; “it is enough that I know her to be the character I have described.”

“That’s odd now,” muttered Frere, soliloquising. “If I had not been acquainted with his ‘antécêdens’ as the French term it, nearly as well as I know my own, I should have fancied the late lamented Lombard had, in bygone hours, refused to negotiate some small loan for him, on the perishable security of personal clothing. He can’t have popped the question to the widow at one of the German watering-places, and encountered a negative?”

“Frere, don’t mention my dislike of Lady Lombard to your facetious acquaintance,” observed Lewis, turning round. “I have no ambition to become a butt for his bad puns.”

“Never fear, man, I’ll not betray your confidence,” returned Frere; “more particularly when, as in the present instance, I don’t happen to share it.”

“Do you care to know?” asked Lewis.

“Not by no manner of means, as the young lady said, when the parson asked her whether she was prepared to give up all the pomps and vanities of this wicked world,” returned Frere. “And now, as we have to be converted into Pagans before ten o’clock, suppose we start.”

A quarter of an hour’s brisk walking brought them to Bracy’s lodgings, where they found that gentleman deeply immersed in study, with the fez which was to assist in changing Frere into a prince stuck rakishly on one side of his head. On perceiving his visitors he sprang from his seat, and making a low salaam, in the course of which performance the fez tumbled off and knocked down a candle, he exclaimed—

“Most illustrious brothers of the Sun, and first-cousins once removed of the Moon and all the stars, may your shadows never be less! You do me proud by honouring my poor dwelling with your seraphic presences!”

“I see you have got the wherewithal to make Heathens of us,” returned Frere, pointing to the couple of Persian dresses which hung against the wall like a brace of Bluebeard’s headless wives.

“Bude Light of the Universe, yes!” replied Bracy. “Your slave has procured the ‘wear with all’ necessary to complete your transformation from infidel Feringhees to true sons of Islam. Would I have had my prince appear without a khelaut—a dress of honour? Be Cheshm! upon my eyes be it;—by the way, it’s a remarkable fact that the expression ‘my eyes’ should be Court lingo in Persia, and bordering upon Billingsgate in English.”

“You seem particularly well up in the pseudo-oriental metaphor to-night, Bracy,” observed Frere; “has the fez inspired you?”

“No, there’s nothing miraculous in the affair,” returned Bracy; “it is very easily explained. I have been reading up for the occasion—cramming, sir; a process successfully practised upon heavy Johnians at Cambridge and corpulent turkey poults in Norfolk.”

“Indeed! I was not aware that you are a Persian scholar. May I inquire what line of study you have adopted?”

“One that I have myself struck out,” responded Bracy, “and which has been attended, I flatter myself, with the most successful results. I first subjected myself to a strict course of Hajji Baba, after which I underwent a very searching self-examination in Morie’s ‘Zohrab’, or the ‘Hostage.’ I next thoroughly confused my mind with ‘Thalaba,’ but brought myself round again upon ‘Bayley Frazer’s Travels’; after which I made myself master of ‘Ayesha, or the Maid of Khars.’ And by way of laying in a fitting stock of the sentimental, finished off with Byron’s ‘Giaour’;—stop, let me give you a specimen.” And replacing the unruly fez, he sprang upon a chair, and throwing himself into a mock-tragedy attitude, began bombastically to recite—

“ ’Twas sweet, where cloudless stars were bright,

To view the wave of watery light,

And hear its melody by night;

And oft had Hassan’s childhood play’d

Around the verge of that cascade:

And oft upon his mother’s breast

That sound had harmonised his rest;

And oft had Hassan’s youth along

Its banks been sooth’d by Beauty’s song,

And softer seem’d each melting tone

Of music mingled with its own.’

“There now, I call that pretty well for a young beginner; a little of that will go a great way with my Lady Lombard; it is like a penny bun, cheap to begin with, and very filling at the price.”

“Turks and Persians are not exactly alike, though you seem to think they are,” observed Frere dryly. “Have you laid down any plan of operations, may I ask? You must give me very full and clear directions how to behave, for, to tell you the truth, my acquaintance with the manners and customs of the higher ranks of Persia is infinitesimally select.”

“Oh! it’s all plain sailing enough,” returned Bracy; “you have only to look wise, roll your eyes about, and occasionally jabber a little Persian, or any other unknown tongue you may prefer, which I, not understanding, shall translate ad libitum as the occasion may require.”

“And sweetly you will do it too, or I am much mistaken,” muttered Frere, divesting himself of his greatcoat.

“Pray inform me, as I am unfortunately ignorant of all the oriental languages, how do you propose to supply my deficiencies?” inquired Lewis. “Is my part, like Bottom the weaver’s, to be nothing but roaring?”

“Why, as you are about to enact a lion, it would appear not inappropriate,” returned Bracy. “Yes, it never struck me; there seems a slight difficulty there—you never got up any Memoria Technica, did you?”

Lewis shook his head.

“That’s unlucky,” continued Bracy; “a page or two of that would have served the purpose beautifully. I met a man the other night who had struck out a new system for himself, and was perfectly rabid about it. He had bottled, according to his own account, the whole history of England into an insinuating little word that sounded to me something like ‘Humguffinhoggogrificicuana,’ and bagged all Hansard’s Reports, from Pitt to Peel, in half-a-dozen lines of impossible doggerel. Oh! he was a wonderful fellow—clearly mad, but intensely funny. I kept him in tow two good hours, and made him explain his system twice over to everybody, till the people were ready to cry, he bored them so. I was nearly being punished for it though, as he was actually weak enough to believe in me, and called the next day to fraternise.”

“And how did you escape?” asked Lewis.

“Why, I have a sort of tiger (the imp that let you in, in fact), who is a first-rate liar—most excellent, useful boy, I do assure you, sir; I sent him down with a message that I had an attack of Asiatic cholera, but if he would take a glass of wine, and look at the paper till the crisis should be over, I would come to him if it terminated favourably. That settled the business; he did not wait the event, but was off like a shot, thinking the Infection might disagree with his ‘system,’ perhaps.”

“Then he has not repeated his visit?” inquired Frere.

“No; and I hope he will not,” returned Bracy, “for there will be nothing left for me to have but Elephantiasis or the Plague, and he must be very far gone in innocence if he can swallow either of them.”

“Am I expected to put on these things?” asked Frere, holding up a most voluminous pair of Persian trousers, made of a species of silk gauze enriched with glittering spangles.

“Yea, verily, most emphatically and decidedly yes,” replied Bracy.

“Well, what must be must be, I suppose,” rejoined Frere, with a sigh of resignation; “but I never thought to see myself in such a garment. ‘Sure such a pair were never seen!’ One thing is clear, I must stand all the evening, for there’s no man living could sit down in them.”

“Never fear,” returned Bracy encouragingly; “only do you go into my bedroom and put on your robes, and I’ll ensure your ‘taking your seat on your return.’ Never make mountains of molehills, man; there are worse dresses than that in the world; for instance, it might have been a kilt.”

“That’s true,” said Frere reflectively, and unhooking the richest Mrs. Bluebeard, he proceeded after sundry ejaculations of disgust to carry it into the other room, whither after a minute or two Bracy followed him, to perform, as he said, the part of lady’s-maid. After a lapse of about a quarter of an hour the door was again unclosed, and Bracy, exclaiming, “Now, Mr. Arundel, allow me to have the honour of introducing you to his Sublime Highness Ree Chard el Freer,” ushered in the person named.

Never was so complete a transformation seen. The Persian dress, rounding off and concealing the angularities of his figure, gave a sort of dignity to Frere, quite in keeping with the character he was about to assume; while moustaches and a flowing beard imparted a degree of picturesqueness to his countenance which accorded well with his irregular but expressive features and bright animated eyes. A shawl of rich pattern confined his waist, while a girdle, studded with (apparently) precious stones, sustained a sword and dagger, the jewelled hilts and brilliantly ornamented sheaths of which added not a little to the magnificence of his appearance.

“Voilà!” exclaimed Bracy, patting him on the back. “What do you think of that by way of a get-up? There’s a ready-made prince for you. Asylum of the Universe, how do you find yourself? Do your new garments sit easily?”

“None of your nonsense, sir,” replied Frere. “If I am a prince, behave to me as sich, if you please. I tell you what, I shall be tearing some of this drapery before the evening is over. Ah! well, it is not for life, that is one comfort; but I never was properly thankful before for not having been born a woman. Think of sinking into the vale of years in a muslin skirt—what a prospect for an intellectual being!”

“Now, Mr. Arundel, your dress awaits you,” said Bracy, “and ‘time is on the wing.’ We shall have her ladyship in hysterics if she fancies her prince means to disappoint her.”

Lewis’s toilet was soon completed, and proved eminently successful, the flowing robe setting off his tall, graceful figure to the utmost advantage, and the scarlet fez, with its drooping tassel, contrasting well with his dark curls and enhancing the effect of his delicately cut and striking features. Bracy making his appearance at the same moment, most elaborately got up for the occasion, with a blue satin underwaistcoat and what he was pleased to denominate the Order of the Holy Poker suspended by a red ribbon from his button-hole, the tiger of lying celebrity was despatched for a vehicle, and the trio started.

“To a reflective mind,” began Bracy, when an interval of wood-pavement allowed conversation to become audible,—“to a reflective mind, there is no section of the zoology of the London streets more interesting than that which treats of the habits and general economy of the genus cabman.”

“As to their general economy,” returned Frere, “as far as I am acquainted with it, it appears to consist in doing you out of more than their fare, and expending the capital thus acquired at a gin-palace.”

“Sir, you misapply terms, treat an important subject with unbecoming levity, and libel an interesting race of men,” returned Bracy, with a countenance of the most immovable gravity.

“Interests, you mean,” rejoined Frere.

“One very striking peculiarity of the species,” continued Bracy, not heeding the interruption, “is their talent for subtle analysis of character, and power of discriminating it by the application of unusual tests.”

“What’s coming now?” inquired Frere. “Keep your ears open, Lewis, my son, and acquire wisdom from the lips of the descendant of many Bracys.”

“I am aware an assertion of this nature should not be lightly hazarded,” resumed Bracy, “as it carries little conviction to the ill-regulated minds of the sceptical, unless it be verified by some illustrative example drawn from the actual.”

“You have not got such a thing as a Johnson’s Dictionary about you, I suppose?” interrupted Frere. “I want to look out a few of those long words.”

“With this view,” resumed Bracy, “I will relate a little anecdote, which will at the same time prove my position and display the capacity of the London cabman for terse and epigrammatic definition. I had been engaged on committee business at the House of Commons a short time since, and was returning to my lodgings when, as I emerged into Palace Yard, it began to rain. Seeing me without an umbrella, a cabman on the stand hailed me with a view of ascertaining whether I required his services. While I was debating with myself whether the rain was likely to increase or not, I was hailed by the cad of an omnibus just turning into Parliament Street.”

“I never do make puns,” began Frere, “or else I should be inclined to ask whether being exposed to so much hail and rain at the same time did not give you cold?”

“It happened that I had just betted a new hat with a man,” continued Bracy, still preserving the most perfect gravity, “as to how many times the chairman of the committee would take snuff, and had lost my wager; this made me feel awfully stingy, and accordingly availing myself of the lowest of the two estimates, I fraternised with the ’bus fellow, and metaphorically threw over the cabman. As I was ascending the steps of the vehicle I had resolved to patronise, the following remark from the injured Jehu reached my ears; it was addressed to an amphibious individual, ‘en sabots et bandeaux de foin’ (as the Morning Post would have it), yclept the waterman; and if you don’t think it fully bears out my previous assertions, I can only say that you are an incompetent judge of evidence. He first attracted his friend’s attention by pointing to me over his shoulder with his thumb, and winking significantly; then added in a tone of intense disgust, ‘See that cove; I thort he worn’t no good.‘Stead o’ takin’ a cab to his self, like a gent, he’s a goin’ to have threepen’orth of all sorts’” As Bracy, amid the laughter of his companions, concluded his recital, the vehicle which conveyed them drew up at the door of Lady Lombard’s mansion.

CHAPTER X.—CONTAINS A PRACTICAL COMMENTARY ON THE PROVERB, “ALL IS NOT GOLD WHICH GLITTERS.”

Lady Lombard, being in many senses of the word a great lady, lived in a great house, which looked out upon that gloomy sight, a London garden, and had its front door at the back for the sake of appearances. At this perverted entrance did Bracy’s mendacious tiger, standing on tip-toe the better to reach the knocker, fulminate like a duodecimo edition of Olympian Jove, until two colossal footmen, in a great state of excitement and scarlet plush, opened the door so suddenly as nearly to cause the prostration of the booted boy, who only saved himself from falling by stumbling, boots and all, against the tall shin of the highest footman, thereby eliciting from that noble creature an ejaculation suggestive of his intense appreciation of the injury done him, and hinting, not obscurely, at his wishes in regard to the future destiny of his juvenile assailant. That youth, however, who, we are forced to confess, was not only as “impudent as he was high,” but, reckoning by the peculiar standard which the expression aforesaid indicates, at the very least three feet more so, hastened thus to rebuke his adversary: “Hit’s lucky for you, Maypole, as I hain’t hon the bench of majorstraits yet, hor ther’d a been five bob hout o’ your red plush pockets for swearin’, as sure has heggs is heggs! Hif that’s hall yer gratitude for me a-bringin’ of ye my honourable master and two noble Purshun princes, hi’d better horder the carridge to turn round and take’em back agen.”

Having astonished the disgusted giant by this speech, the imp bounded down the steps and held open the cab-door with an air of dignified condescension.

“Is not that boy a treasure?” whispered Bracy to Frere as they alighted. “How neatly he took the shine out of that thick-witted pyramid of fool’s flesh! I could not have done the thing better myself.”

“I don’t pretend to any very unusual powers of foresight,” muttered Frere under his beard, “but I think I could point out that brat’s residuary legatee.”

“Ah, indeed!” returned Bracy; “and who do you fix upon? the Archbishop of Canterbury?”

“No, the hangman,” was the gruff reply.

“Well, I’d myself venture to insure him against drowning for a very moderate premium,” rejoined his master, laughing; “but now I really must beg you to bear in mind that you are utterly ignorant of the English language.”

“Inshallah! I’d forgotten my illustrious descent most completely,” answered Frere, “but I’ll be careful; so, for the next three hours, ‘my native’ tongue, ‘good-night.’”

While this conversation had been carried on in an undertone, the party had been ushered upstairs amidst the wondering gaze of servants innumerable, of all sorts and sizes, from the little foot-page staggering under a galaxy of buttons to the mighty butler barely able to walk beneath the weight of his own dignity.

“What name shall I say, gentlemen?” asked the last-named official in his most insinuating tone; for a Persian prince was a rarity sufficient to impress even his imperturbable spirit with a sense of respect.

“His Highness Prince Mustapha Ali Khan and suite,” returned Bracy authoritatively.

Immediately the door of a well-lighted saloon was flung back on its hinges, and in a stentorian voice the major domo announced, “His Highness Prince Mystify-all-I-can and see-it.”

“By Jove! he’s hit it,” whispered Bracy to Lewis, as, following Frere, they entered the room. “He won’t beat that if he tries till he’s black in the face.”

As he finished speaking, the guests, who had crowded as near the door as good breeding would allow to witness the Prince’s entrée, drew back as a rustling of silks and satins announced the approach of their hostess.

Lady Lombard, who, to judge by appearances, would never again celebrate her forty-fifth birthday, had been a handsome, and still was a fine-looking woman. She was tall and portly; in fact portly is rather a mild term to use in speaking of her ladyship, but we don’t like to stigmatise her as stout, and beyond that we could not go in speaking of a lady. She had a very bright colour and a very fair skin, in the display of which she was by no means niggardly, her gown having short sleeves (so short, indeed, as scarcely to be worth mentioning), and being——well, we know a French word which would express our meaning, but we prefer our own language, and must therefore say, being rather too much off where it would have been better a little more on. She wore a profusion of light ringlets, which we feel justified in stating, upon our personal responsibility, to have been her own, for Lady Lombard was an honourable woman, and paid her bills most punctually. These flaxen locks rejoiced in one peculiarity—they were not divided in the centre, after the usual method, but the in medio tutissimns ibis principle had been abandoned in favour of a new and striking coiffure, which, until we were introduced to her ladyship, we had believed to be restricted to the blue-and-silver epicene pages who worship the prima donna and poke fun at the soubrettes on the opera stage. The page-like parting, then, was on one side of her head, and across her ample forehead lay a festoon of hair, arranged so as to suggest, to a speculative mind, a fanciful resemblance to the drapery at the top of a window curtain. Her features were by no means without expression; on the contrary, meek pomposity and innocent self-satisfaction were written in legible characters on her good-natured countenance.

The most carefully written descriptions usually prove inadequate to convey to the reader’s mind a just idea of the object they would fain depict; but as we are especially anxious that others should see Lady Lombard with our eyes, we must beg their attention to the following simple process, by which we trust to enable them to realise her.

Let each reader, then, call to mind the last average specimen of fat and fair babyhood which may have come under his notice; let him imagine it clothed in the richest sky-blue satin; let him deprive it of its coral, and substitute in its place a gold watch and appendages; round its fat little excuse for a neck let him clasp a diamond necklace; let him dress its hair, or provide it a flaxen wig—if its hair should be as yet a pleasure to come—made after the fashion we have above described; and let him, lastly, by a powerful effort of imagination, inflate this baby until, still preserving its infantine proportions, it shall stand five feet nine in its satin shoes,—and he will then have arrived at a very correct idea of Lady Lombard as she appeared when, rustling forward in a tremor of delight, she advanced to perform the part of gracious hostess to the Prince of Persia.

“Really, Mr. Bracy,” she began, as that gentleman, with a countenance of solemn satisfaction, stepped forward to meet her, “really, this is too kind of you; how do you do? So you have positively brought me the dear prince? Will you introduce me to him, and explain to him how very much honoured I am by his condescension in coming this evening?”

Be it observed, by the way, that her ladyship spoke with the greatest empressement, and had a habit of uttering many of her words in italics, not to say small capitals.

“It will give me much satisfaction to do so,” returned Bracy, with grave courtesy; “but I can assure you the prince came quite of his own accord. The moment I had explained your invitation to him he caught the note out of my hand, pressed it three times to his forehead, and exclaimed in the court dialect of Iraun, ‘Hahazyr imeyur manzur, he did, indeed.”

“No-o-o, really!” ejaculated Lady Lombard, more emphatically than she had ever yet spoken in her life; then, as a faint glimmering came across her that there was a slight anomaly in appearing so deeply interested in a remark which she could by no possibility understand, she added: “But you should recollect, Mr. Bracy, that every one does not possess your remarkable acquaintance with the Eastern languages.”

“Psha! how forgetful I am!” returned Bracy. “Your ladyship must excuse me; the prince has been so short a time in this country that I am scarcely yet accustomed to my new duties. The few words I had the honour to repeat to you merely signify—you know the Eastern metaphors are very peculiar—‘I will kiss’—it’s the usual form of accepting any distinguished invitation—‘I will kiss her ladyship’s door-mat!’ Curious, is it not?”

“Yes, indeed,” was the sympathetic reply. At the same moment Bracy, turning to Frere, presented him to their hostess, saying “Prince, this is Lady Lombard—Twygt-hur rhumauld gâl!”

The first sound that escaped his Highness was a hysterical grunt which, in an Englishman, might have been deemed indicative of suppressed laughter, but proceeding from the bearded lips of a Persian potentate, assumed the character of an Eastern ejaculation. After muttering a few real Persian words with an appearance of deep respect, Frere took her ladyship’s plump white hand between both his own and raised it to his lips; then, relinquishing it, he spoke again, made a low salaam, and drawing himself up to his full height, crossed his arms on his breast and stood motionless before her. The appealing looks which she cast upon Bracy when the prince spoke was a severe trial to his gravity; but by long experience in practical joking he had acquired wonderful command of countenance, which stood him now in good stead, and he proceeded to translate Frere’s sentences into certain flowery and unmeaning compliments, which were about as unlike their real signification as need be.

After Lewis had gone through the same ceremony without the speeches, for which omission Bracy accounted by explaining that it was not etiquette for the Persian nobles to speak when in attendance on their princes, they were led to the upper end of the apartment, where Frere seated himself cross-legged on a sofa and made himself very much at home, keeping Bracy fully employed in inventing translations to speeches, not one word of which he, or any one else present, comprehended. Lewis, in the meantime, who was becoming dreadfully tired of the whole affair, stood near the end of the sofa, with his arms folded across his breast, looking especially scornful and very particularly bored.

“Ah!” exclaimed Lady Lombard, as a pretty, graceful girl, very simply dressed, made her way up the room, “there’s that dear Laura Peyton arrived. I must go and speak to her, and bring her to be introduced to the Prince.” She then added, aside to Bracy, “She’s immensely rich; clear six thousand a year, and does not spend two.”

“A very charming trait in her character,” returned Bracy. “I’ll mention it to the Prince. I don’t know that there ever was an Englishwoman queen of Persia; but that’s no reason there never should be one.”

Bracy was accordingly introduced to the young lady, and led her, smiling and blushing, up to Frere, by whom he seated her, and paved the way for conversation by the following remark:—

“Tharmy buoi aintsheaz tunnar?” which for the damsel’s edification he translated—“Asylum of the Universe! the maiden, the daughter of roses, salutes thee!”

After a short interval Lady Lombard again bore down upon them in full sail, towing in her wake a small, hirsute, baboon-like individual, evidently one of her menagerie.

“There’s a chimpanzee!” whispered Bracy to Frere. “Now, if that picture of ugliness turns out an eastern traveller we’re gone ’coons.”

“All right,” returned Frere in the same tone, “he’s only an exiled something. He came to our shop with a recommendation from some of the Parisian savans the other day.”

“I must trouble you once again, Mr. Bracy,” insinuated Lady Lombard. “Professor Malchapeau is dying to be introduced.”

“No trouble, but a pleasure,” returned Bracy. “I shall have the greatest satisfaction in making two such illustrious individuals known to each other. Does the Professor speak English?”

“Yas; I vas spik Angleesh von pritté veil,” replied the person alluded to, strutting forward on tiptoe. “I ave zie honaire to vish you how you did, my prince?”

Frere made some reply, which Bracy paraphrased into “The descendant of many Shahs kisses the hem of the mantle of the Father of science.”

The Professor’s “Angleesh” not providing him with a suitable reply ready made, he was obliged to resort to that refuge for destitute foreigners—a shrug and a grimace.

Lady Lombard came to his assistance.

“Now, Professor, suppose you were to tell his Highness your affecting history;” adding in a whisper, “Mr. Bracy, the interpreter, is connected with government, and might be of the greatest use to you.”

“Ohf, miladi, if all zie bodies had your big heart in dem, zies vicked vorld should be von eaven,” replied the Professor, gratefully, through his talented nose. “My littel storie! ohf, zie Prince should not vant to ear him?”

His Highness, however, being graciously pleased to signify his anxiety so to do, the small man resumed—

“Ah, ma Patri! vhats I ave come thro’ for him, ven I vill raconte nobody shall not belief.”

“To enable the Prince to understand your account more clearly,” interrupted Bracy, “may I ask to what country it relates?”

“Vidout von doubt, saire! you shall tell zie Prince dat my littel tale is Swish. My fadaire vas vot you call von mayor of zie canton of Zurich. My brodaire and myselfs vas his only schild; since a long time ve vas live very appy, mais enfin—but on his end—zie sacré Autriche—von bad Oystrish government, did vot you call oppress ma pauvre patrie, and my fadaire, toujours brave, got himself into von littel conspiration, vaire he did commit vat you call zie offence politique; vas trown to prison, and in his confinement he did die. Ah! ‘mourir pour la patrie, c’est doux,’ to die for zie country is zie—vat you call doux in Angleesh?”

“You will find the same word in both languages, Professor, only we pronounce it deuce,” replied Bracy politely.

“Ah! c’est bon, to die for zie country is zie deuce! Eh bien, after my poor fadaire was entombed, my brodaire did run himselfs avay, and vas converted to un berger, a little shepherd of cows, and I, hélas! Pour moi, fêtais désolé—for myself, I was dissolute, left alone in zie vide vorld, visout von friend to turn against. Mais le ciel embrace les orphelins—eaven embarrasses zie orphans; I marched on my foot to Paris; I found an unexpected uncle, who had supposed himself dead for some years; I undervent all zie sciences, and enfin me voici—on my end here I am.”

“A most affecting history indeed,” returned Bracy, covering his mouth with his hand to conceal a smile. As for Frere, he had for some time past been nearly suffocated by suppressed laughter, which at length made itself so apparent that nothing but his beard and an assumed fit of coughing could have saved him from discovery.

While this conversation had been going on, Miss Peyton called Lady Lombard’s attention to Lewis by observing: “The interpreter, in entertaining the Prince, seems entirely to have forgotten that very handsome young attendant who stands there, looking so haughty and disconsolate.”

“Dear me! so he does,” exclaimed Lady Lombard anxiously. “How very handsome he is! such a thoroughly Eastern countenance! He’s a man of very high rank, too, over there. What could we do to amuse him?”

“Perhaps we might show him some prints,” suggested Laura; “at all events the attention might please him.”

“Oh, yes! how clever of you! I should never have thought of that now. I’ve a table covered with them in the boudoir,” exclaimed Lady Lombard delightedly; “but do you think you could turn them over for him? I’m so foolish, I should be quite nervous; you see it’s so awkward his not understanding English, poor fellow! I know I’m very foolish.”

“I shall be most happy to do anything I can to lessen your difficulties,” replied the young lady good-naturedly. “Shall I look out a book of prints?”

“If you would be so kind, my dear, you’ll find plenty in the boudoir; and I’ll go to Mr. Bracy and get him to speak to him for me.”

The result of this application was the capture of Lewis, who, inwardly raging, was carried off to the boudoir and seated at a table, while Miss Peyton, half frightened, half amused, turned over a volume of prints for his edification. Lady Lombard and sundry of the guests stood round for some minutes watching the smiles and pantomimic gestures with which Lewis, or rather Hassan Bey, as Bracy had named him, felt bound to acknowledge the young lady’s attentions.

Amongst the guests who were thus amusing themselves lounged a young dandy, who, on the strength of a Mediterranean yacht voyage, set up for a distinguished traveller. To Lady Lombard’s inquiry whether he spoke Persian he simpered, “Re’ely—no, not exactly so as to talk to him; but he’ll do vastly well. They prefer silence, re’ely, those fellows do. You know I’ve seen so much of ’em.”

“You were in Persia, were you not?” asked one of the company.

“Re’ely—not exactly in his part of Persia. Stamboul, the city of palaces, was my headquarters: but it’s much the same; indolence, beards, and tobacco are the characteristics of both races.”

“Don’t you think he is charmingly handsome?” asked an old young lady, shaking her ringlets after a fashion which five years before had been a very “telling” manoeuvre.

“Re’ely, I should scarcely have said so,” was the reply; “the boy is well enough for an Asiatic, I like a more—ahem!—manly style of thing.” And as he spoke he passed his hand caressingly over a violent pair of red whiskers which garnished his own hard-featured physiognomy.

The cool impudence of this remark inspired Lewis with so intense a sentiment of disgust that his lip curled involuntarily, and he turned over the print before him with a gesture of impatience. On looking up he was rather disconcerted to find Laura Peyton’s piercing black eyes watching him curiously.

“You’ve given us nothing new in the musical way lately, Lady Lombard,” observed the “sere and yellow leaf” damsel before alluded to.

“I expect a lady to stay with me soon,” was the reply, “whom I think you’ll be pleased with; she sings and plays in very first-rate style.”

“Indeed! Is she an amateur or professional, may I inquire?”

“Why, really, my dear Miss Sparkless, you’ve asked a difficult question. The fact is,” continued Lady Lombard, sinking her voice, “it’s one of those very sad cases, reduced fortune—you understand. I mean to have her here merely out of charity.” Sinking her voice still lower, the following words only became audible: “Wife of a Captain Arundel—foreign extraction originally—quite a mésalliance, I believe.”

As she spoke some new arrival attracted her attention, and she and her confidante left the boudoir together.

It may easily be conceived with what feelings of burning indignation Lewis had listened to the foregoing remarks; but Frere’s lecture of the morning had not been without its fruits. With his anger the necessity for self-control presented itself, and he was congratulating himself at having checked all outward signs of annoyance when he was startled by a silvery voice whispering in his ear: “Persian or no Persian, sir, you understand English as well as I do;” and slightly turning, his eyes encountered those of Laura Peyton fixed on him with a roguish glance. His resolution was instantly taken, and he replied in the same tone: “Having discovered my secret, you must promise to keep it.”

“Agreed, on one condition,” was the rejoinder.

“And that is———?” asked Lewis.

“That you immediately make a full confession and tell me all about it.”

“It is a compact,” was the reply.

“That is good,” rejoined the young lady. “Now move the portfolio, so that your back will be towards those people. That will do. Hold down your head as if you were examining the prints, and then answer my questions truly and concisely. First, you are an English gentleman?”

“Yes, I hope so.”

“Who is the prince?”

“My friend, Richard Frere.”

“And why have you both come here dressed like Persians?”

“To mystify our foolish hostess.”

“For shame, sir! I’m very fond of Lady Lombard.”

“But you know she is a silly woman.”

“Well, never mind. Who planned this hoax?”

“Bracy, the so-called interpreter.”

“Does Prince Frere talk real Persian?”

“Yes.”

“And does the other man understand him?”

“Not a bit.”

“Then he invents all the answers? That’s rather clever of him. I shall go and listen presently. And you can’t talk either Persian or gibberish, so you held your tongue and looked sulky. Well, I think it’s all very wrong; but it’s rather droll. Poor, dear Lady Lombard! she’d never survive it if she did but know! And now, tell me, lastly, what put you in a rage just this minute and enabled me to find you out?”

“You would not care to know.”

“But I do care to know, sir, and you have promised to answer all my questions.”

“You heard the speech that woman made about a Mrs. Arundel?”

“Yes, surely.”

“Learn, then, that my name is Lewis Arundel, and the lady referred to was my mother. Now do you understand?”

As Lewis uttered these words, in atone of suppressed bitterness, his companion hastily turned her head and said, in a low, hurried voice—“I beg your pardon! I fear I have pained you; but I did not know—I could not guess——”

“Pray do not distress yourself,” returned Lewis kindly, Rose’s smile for a moment smoothing his haughty brow and playing round his proud mouth. “I am sure you would not hurt any one’s feelings knowingly; and since you observed my annoyance, I am glad to have been able to explain its cause.”

So engrossed had they been by this conversation that they had not observed Miss Sparkless enter the boudoir by another door; and they were first made aware of her presence by seeing her standing, breathless with astonishment, at discovering Miss Peyton in familiar colloquy with a Persian nobleman utterly ignorant of the English language.

“Do you speak German?” asked Lewis quickly.

“Yes, a little,” returned Miss Peyton.

“She has not caught a word yet,” continued Lewis. “Tell her you found out by accident that I had picked up a few German sentences when the Prince was at the court of Prussia. White lies, unhappily, are inevitable on these occasions,” he continued, seeing his companion hesitate. “It’s the only way to prevent an éclaircissementt; and then, think of poor Lady Lombard’s feelings!”

“As I seem fairly embarked in the conspiracy, I suppose I must do your bidding,” was the reply, and Miss Sparkless, the middle-aged young lady, was accordingly informed of Lewis’s German proficiency, whereat, falling into an ecstasy, she replied—

“How charming! What a dear creature he is!” On which the dear creature himself, catching Miss Peyton’s eye, was very near laughing outright.

“Laura, my love,” exclaimed Lady Lombard, entering hastily, “the Prince is going down to supper; will you come?” Then taking her hand caressingly, she added, “Have you been very much bored by him, poor fellow?”

“I found he could speak a few words of German, and that helped us on,” was the reply.

“Yes, really—ah; we might have thought of that before,” returned Lady Lombard, by no means certain the German language might not form an important and customary branch of Persian education.

During supper Laura Peyton contrived to be seated between Frere and Bracy, the latter of whom she kept so constantly engaged in interpreting for her that he scarcely got anything to eat, and came to the conclusion that in the whole course of his experience he had never before encountered such a talking woman. Nor was his annoyance diminished by observing that Lewis, who was seated opposite, appeared to be deriving the utmost amusement from his discomfiture. Having exhausted every possible pretext for breaking off the conversation, and being each time foiled by the young lady’s quiet tact, he was about to resign himself to his fate and relinquish all idea of supper, when a project occurred to him which he immediately hastened to put into execution. Waiting till Frere had spoken a Persian sentence, he suddenly drew himself up, looking deeply scandalised, frowned at the speaker, shook his head and muttered something unintelligible in a tone of grave remonstrance, then paused for a reply, which Frere, intensely perplexed, and by no means clear that he had not done something un-Persian and wrong, was forced to utter. This only seemed to make matters worse: Bracy again remonstrated in gibberish, then appeared to have determined on his course, and muttering, “Well, there’s no help for it, I suppose,” he turned to Lady Lombard, and began in a tone of deep concern—

“I have a most disagreeable duty to perform, and must beg you to believe that nothing but absolute necessity could have induced me to mention the matter; but I have remonstrated with his Highness without effect, and I dare go no further—he is subject to most violent bursts of passion, and becomes dangerous when opposed. He drew his dagger and attempted to stab me only yesterday, because I interfered to prevent his having one of the waiters of the hotel strangled with a bow-string.”

Lady Lombard turned pale on receiving this information, while Bracy continued—

“It is most unfortunate, but the Prince has been so much delighted with this young lady’s charming flow of conversation that, in his ignorance of the customs of this country, he has actually commissioned me to offer you £500 for her, and declared his determination of taking her home with him.”

The effect of this communication may be “better imagined than described.” Miss Peyton, aware of the true state of affairs, hid her face in her handkerchief in an uncontrollable fit of laughter; Lewis, sorely tempted to follow her example, bent over his plate till the flowing tassel of the fez concealed his features; Frere, excessively annoyed at the false imputation, all but began a flat denial of the charge in somewhat forcible English, but remembering his assumed character just in time, clenched his fist and ground his teeth with impatience, while Lady Lombard, observing these gestures, and construing them into indications of an approaching burst of fury, was nearly swooning with terror, when a note was put into her hands by a servant; hastily casting her eyes over it, she handed it to Bracy, saying—

“This is most fortunate; it may serve to divert his attention.”

As he became aware of its contents his countenance fell, and holding it so that Frere might read it, he whispered—

“Here’s a treat! We are in for it now, and no mistake!”

The note ran as follows:—

“Dr. ————, Persian Professor at Addiscombe, presents his compliments to Lady Lombard, and begs to inform her that being only in town for a few hours, and learning accidentally that his Highness Prince Mustapha Ali was spending the evening at her house, he has ventured to request her permission to intrude upon her uninvited, as he is most anxious to renew his acquaintance with his Highness, whom he had the honour to know in Persia.”

CHAPTER XI.—TOM BRACY MEETS HIS MATCH.

The position in which we left Lewis and his friends at the conclusion of the preceding chapter was decidedly more peculiar than agreeable, and afforded no bad illustration of the American expression, “a pretty tall fix.” Bracy, the fertile in expedients, was the first to hazard a suggestion, which he did by whispering to Frere, “You had better be taken suddenly ill; I shall say you have had too much tongue (if you have not, I have), and that it has disagreed with you.”

“Wait a bit,” returned Frere; “you have seen the real Prince, haven’t you?”

Bracy nodded in assent, and Frere continued, “He’s something like me, is he not?”

“Better looking,” was the uncomplimentary rejoinder.

“Well, never mind that,” resumed Frere. “I don’t set up for a beauty, but if I am sufficiently like to pass for him I might contrive to humbug the fellow for a few minutes, and then we could manage to slip away quietly without any shindy at all.”

“You can try it on if you choose, but he is safe to find you out, unless he is a perfect fool, and that is too great a mercy to hope for,” returned Bracy dejectedly. “If the worst comes to the worst, pretend to pick a quarrel with him, draw your carving-knife and make a poke at him; then Arundel and I will bundle him out of the room bodily, and swear we are doing it to save his life. I can see nothing else for it, for there go the women, and, by Jove, here’s the learned Pundit himself! Oh! isn’t he pretty to look at? Why, he is a fac-simile of the picture in the old editions of Gay’s Fables, of ‘the Monkey who had seen the World.’”

While this dialogue was proceeding, Lady Lombard, having gathered the ladies under her wing, had marched them off to the drawing-room, Miss Peyton finding an opportunity as she passed Lewis to say, in German, “Tell your Prince that when I sell myself I shall want a great deal more than £500.”

“In fact, that your value is quite inestimable,” returned Lewis.

“Exactly so,” was the reply. “I am glad you have sufficient penetration to have found it out already.”

The description given by Bracy of the Doctor’s outward man was by no means inapt. His hair and whiskers were grey, and, still adhering to the fashions of his younger days, he wore powder and a pig-tail. His dress consisted of a black single-breasted coat with a stand-up collar, knee breeches, and silk stockings; a profusion of shirt-frill rushed impetuously out of the front of his waistcoat, a stiff white neckcloth appeared thoroughly to deserve the appellation of “choker” which Bracy applied to it, while a shirt-collar starched to a pitch of savage harshness invaded the region of his cheeks to an extent which rendered the tract of country lying between the ears and the corners of the mouth a complete terra incognita. Constant study of the Eastern hieroglyphics had probably rendered his wearing spectacles a matter of necessity; at all events a huge pair in a broad tortoiseshell setting garnished his nose, which, truth compels us to confess, was more than slightly red, in which particular it afforded a decided contrast to his general complexion, which was, we say it distinctly and without compromise, yellow.

To this gentleman, who entered with a hasty step and glanced round him with a quick, abrupt, and rather startling manner, did Bracy address himself with much empressement.

“My dear sir, this is most fortunate; the Prince is quite delighted at the rencontre, but you must expect to find his Highness greatly altered. The cares of life, my dear sir, the anxieties attending—ah! I see you are impatient; I won’t detain you, but I wished to warn you that if you should perceive any great change in his appearance, you must not be surprised, and above all be careful not to show it by your manner. You have no idea how sensitive he is on the point; quite morbidly so, really. Don’t let me detain you—how well you are looking!”

A good deal of pantomimic action had accompanied the delivery of this speech, the Doctor being engaged in making vain and futile attempts to get past his persecutor, who on his part continued, with an affectation of the deepest respect, constantly, and with the utmost perseverance, to frustrate them. The concluding words of his address, however, elicited the following rejoinder, spoken in a quick, cross manner:—

“You have the advantage of me, sir, for I do not remember ever setting eyes on you before in my life. I never forget a face I have once seen.”

“Confound his memory!” thought Bracy, “Frere won’t have a chance with him;” he only said, however, “You are right, Doctor; the fact of your looking well is so self-evident that I ventured to remark it, without having any previous data to go upon—but here is his Highness,” and as he spoke, he at length moved on one side and allowed the man of learning to pass.

Frere coming forward at the same minute, Bracy whispered, while the Doctor bent in a low salaam:

“I have bothered his brains sweetly for him, he hardly knows whether he’s standing on his head or his heels; so now you must take care of yourself, and joy go with you.”

Frere, thus apostrophised, returned the Doctor’s salute with much cordiality, and Bracy, feigning some excuse, left them to entertain each other, having before his eyes a wholesome dread of the newcomer’s addressing him in Persian, and thereby discovering his deplorable ignorance of that interesting language.

Time, which does not stand still for princes any more than for private individuals, passed on with its usual rapidity. Most of the gentlemen having eaten as much, and drunk probably more (looking at it in a medical point of view) than was good for them, had rejoined the ladies, and it became evident to Bracy that a crisis in his evening’s amusement was approaching. On his return to the drawing-room he must of course resume his duties as interpreter, and this inconvenient Persian professor would inevitably discover the imposture. This was the more provoking, as Frere’s likeness to the Prince must evidently have been much stronger than he had imagined, and his acquaintance with the rules of Persian etiquette more extensive than he had believed possible, for the Doctor continued to converse with the utmost gravity, and appeared to believe in him implicitly. While he was still pondering the matter in his anxious mind, the few last remaining guests conveyed themselves away, and the Prince and his party were left to dispute possession of the supper-room with empty champagne bottles and half-tipsy waiters. Frere, when he perceived this to be the case, beckoned Bracy to approach, and as soon as he was within earshot, whispered—

“I have humbugged the old fellow beautifully on the score of our Persian recollections, but he has just been questioning me about you,—where you acquired your knowledge of the language, whether you have been much in the East, how I became acquainted with you, and all the rest of it. I put him off with lies as long as I could, but it would not do, and as a last resource, I have been obliged to refer him to you.”

“The deuce you have!” was the reply; “that is pleasant. He’ll be jabbering his confounded lingo, and I shall not understand a word he says to me; besides, my jargon won’t go down with him, you know. I tell you what, I shall be off, and you must say upstairs (he can interpret for you) that I have been sent for by the prime minister at a minute’s notice, à la De Grandeville.”

“’Tis too late,” replied Frere; and at the same instant the Doctor seized Bracy by the button, and in a stern and impressive manner asked some apparently searching question in Persian. Few men had enjoyed the delight of seeing Tom Bracy in the unenviable frame of mind expressed by the nautical term “taken aback,” but of that favoured few were the bystanders on the present occasion. Never was an unhappy individual more thoroughly and completely at a loss; and it must be confessed the situation was an embarrassing one. To be addressed by an elderly stranger in an unintelligible language, in which you are expected to reply, while at the same time you are painfully conscious that your incapacity to do so, or even (not understanding the question) to give an appropriate answer in your native tongue, will lead to a discovery you are most anxious to avert, is an undeniably awkward position in which to be placed. That Bracy found it so was most evident, for he fidgeted, stammered, glanced appealingly towards Frere for aid, and at last was obliged, between annoyance and an intense appreciation of the absurdity of his situation, to get up a fictitious cough, which, irritating the membrane of the nose, produced a most violent genuine sneeze. From the effects of this convulsion of nature he was relieved by a hearty slap on the back, while at the same moment the tones of a familiar voice exclaimed in his ear—

“Sold, by all that’s glorious! Bracy, my boy, how do you find yourself?” and on looking up he recognised in the laughing face of the Addiscombe doctor, now divested of its spectacles, the well-known features of Charley Leicester.

CHAPTER XII.—LEWIS FORFEITS THE RESPECT OF ALL POOR-LAW GUARDIANS.

Equally surprised and mystified at the complete manner in which the tables had been turned upon him, Bracy stood listening with a disgusted expression of countenance to the peals of laughter which his discomfiture elicited from his companions.

“Yes, laugh away,” growled the victimised practical joker; “it’s all very funny, I dare say, but one thing I’ll swear in any court of justice, which is, that you have been talking real Persian, at least if what Frere jabbers is real Persian.”

“Of course I have,” returned Leicester, still in convulsions. “When Frere and I planned this dodge we knew what a wide-awake gentleman we had to deal with, and took our measures accordingly. I learned four Persian sentences by heart from his dictation, and pretty good use I have made of them too, I think.”

“It was not a bad idea, really,” observed Bracy, who, having got over his annoyance at the first sense of defeat, instantly recovered his good-humour. “How well you are got up! I did not recognise you one bit till you pulled off the barnacles.”

“Yes, I got little Stevens, who does the light comic business at one of the minors, to provide the apparel and come and dress me. I hope you admire my complexion; he laid on the red and yellow most unsparingly.”

“He has done it vastly well,” returned Bracy. “I shall cultivate that small man; he may be extremely useful to me on an occasion.”

“Now we ought to be going upstairs,” interrupted Frere; “these waiter fellows are beginning to stare at us suspiciously too. I say, Bracy, cut it short, man; we have had all the fun now, and I’m getting tired of the thing.”

“Ya, Meinheer,” rejoined Bracy aloud, adding in a lower tone, “The slaveys will swallow that or anything else for Persian. They are all more or less drunk, by the fishy expression of their optics.”

Laura Peyton was astonished somewhat later in the evening by the Addiscombe professor leaning over the back of the sofa on which she was seated and asking whether she had enjoyed her last valse at Almack’s the evening before last.

“Surely you can feel no particular interest about such a frivolous and unintellectual matter, sir,” was the reply.

“I was about to follow up the inquiry by asking whether your partner made himself agreeable.”

“To which I shall reply, after the Irish fashion, by asking how it can possibly concern you to know, sir?”

“Merely because I have the honour of the gentleman’s acquaintance.”

“That, in fact, you are one of those uncommon characters who know themselves,” returned Laura with an arch smile. “Is not that what you wish to impress upon me, Mr. Leicester?”

Charley laughed, then continued in a lower tone, “I saw you knew me. Did your own acuteness lead to the discovery, or are there traitors among us?”

“Your friend Mr. Arundel’s expressive features let me into the secret of his acquaintance with the English language before we went down to supper; but I entered into a contract, not to betray the plot if he would tell me all I might wish to know about it, so the moment he came up I made him inform me who you were. What a gentlemanly, agreeable person he is!”

As she said this a slight shade passed across Leicester’s good-natured countenance, and he replied, more quickly than was his wont—

“I had fancied Miss Peyton superior to the common feminine weakness of being caught by the last handsome face.”

“What a thoroughly man-like speech!” returned the young lady. “Did I say anything about his appearance, sir? Do you suppose we poor women are so utterly silly that we can appreciate nothing but a handsome face? Your professor’s disguise has imbued you with the Turkish belief that women have no souls.”

“No one fortunate enough to be acquainted with Miss Peyton would continue long in such a heresy,” replied Leicester, with the air of a man who thinks he is saying a good thing.

“Yes, I knew you would make some such reply,” returned Laura. “You first show your real opinion of women by libelling the whole sex, and then try to get out of the scrape by insulting my understanding with a personal compliment. Wait,” she continued, seeing he was about to defend himself, “you must not talk to me any more now, or you will excite Lady Lombard’s suspicions and betray the whole conspiracy. Go away, and send my new friend Mr. Arundel Hassan Bey here; Lady Lombard committed him to my charge, and I want to cultivate him.”

Leicester tried to assume a languishing look, which he was in the habit of practising upon young ladies with great success, but becoming suddenly conscious of the wig and spectacles, and gathering from Laura’s silvery laugh that such adjuncts to an interesting expression of countenance were incongruous, not to say absurd, he joined in her merriment, then added, “You are in a very wicked mood to-night, Miss Peyton; but I suppose I must e’en do as you bid me, and reserve my revenge till some more fitting opportunity;” then, mixing with the crowd, he sought out Lewis and delivered the young lady’s message to him, adding in his usual drawling tone, “You have made a what-do-ye-call-it—an impression in that quarter. Women always run after the last new face.”

“You are right,” returned Lewis, with a degree of energy which startled his listless companion; “and those men are wisest who know them for the toys they are, and avoid them.”

Leicester gazed after his retreating figure in astonishment, then murmured to himself, “What’s in the wind now, I wonder; is the good youth trying to keep up the Asiatic character, or suddenly turned woman-hater? Confound that little Peyton girl, how sharp she was to-night!”

“How very well Mr. Leicester is disguised!” observed Laura Peyton to Lewis, after they had conversed in German for some minutes on general topics.

“Yes,” replied Lewis; “though I can’t say his appearance is improved by the alteration.”

“A fact of which he is fully aware,” returned Laura, smiling.

A pause ensued, which was terminated by Laura’s asking abruptly, “Do gentlemen like Mr. Leicester?”

“Really I have not sufficient knowledge of facts to inform you, but I should say he is a very popular man.”

“Popular man! I hate that phrase,” returned his companion pettishly. “It is almost as bad as describing any one as a man about town, which always gives me the idea of a creature that wears a pea-jacket, lives at a club, boards on cigars, talks slang, carries a betting-book, and never has its hair cut. Can’t you tell me what you think of Mr. Leicester yourself?”

“Well, I think him gentlemanly, good-natured, agreeable up to a certain point, cleverish—-”

^ “Yes, that will do; I quite understand. I don’t think you do him justice—he has a kind heart, and more good sense than you are disposed to give him credit for. You should not form such hasty judgments of people; a want of charity I perceive is one of your faults. And now I must wish you good-night; I hear my kind old chaperone anxiously bleating after me in the distance.”

So saying she arose and hastened to put herself under the protection of “a fine old English gentlewoman,” who, with a hooked nose, red gown, and green scarf, looked like some new and fearful variety of the genus Parroquet. At the same time, Bracy summoned Lewis to join the Prince, who was about to depart, which, after Lady Lombard had in an enthusiasm of gratitude uttered a whole sentence in the largest capitals, he was allowed to do.

Leicester accompanied them, tearing himself away from Professor Malchapeau, who had singled him out as a brother savan, and commenced raconte-ing to him his affecting history, thereby leaving that shaggy little child of misfortune to lament to his sympathising hostess the melancholy fact that “Zie Professor Addiscombe had cut his little tale off short, and transported himselfs avay in von great despatch.”

’Twere long to tell the jokes that were made, the new and additional matter brought to light, as each of the quartette, assembled round a second edition of supper in Bracy’s rooms, detailed in turn his own personal experiences of the evening’s comicalities—the cigars that were smoked, or the amount of sherry cobbler that was imbibed: suffice it to say, that a certain lyrical declaration that they would not “go home till morning,” to which, during their symposium, they had committed themselves, was verified when, on issuing out into the street, the cold grey light of early dawn threw its pale hue over their tired faces and struggled with sickly-looking gas lamps for the honour of illuminating the thoroughfares of the sleeping city.

Leicester’s cab, with his night-horse—a useful animal, which, without a leg to stand upon, possessed the speed of the wind, and having every defect horseflesh is heir to, enjoyed a constitution which throve on exposure and want of sleep, as other organisations usually do on the exact opposites—was in waiting. Into this vehicle Charley (who bore some token of sherry cobbler in the unsteadiness of his gait), having made two bad shots at the step, rushed headlong and drove off at an insane pace, and in a succession of zigzags.

Frere and Lewis watched the cab till, having slightly assaulted an unoffending lamp-post, it flew round a corner and disappeared; then, having exchanged a significant glance suggestive of sympathetic anticipations of a sombre character in regard to the safety of their friend, they started at a brisk pace, which soon brought them to Frere’s respectable dwelling. While the proprietor was searching in every pocket but the right one for that terror of all feeble-minded elders, that pet abomination of all fathers of families, that latest invention of the enemy of mankind—a latch-key—they were accosted by a lad of about fifteen, whose ragged clothes, bronzed features, and Murillo-like appearance accorded well with his supplication, “Per pietà Signor, denaro per un pover’ Italiano.”

Frere looked at him attentively, then exclaimed, “I tell you what, boy, it won’t do; you’re no more an Italian than I am. You should not try to impose upon people.”

The boy hung down his head, and then replied doggedly, “It’s your own fault; you’ll let an English boy starve in the streets before you’ll give him a bit of bread, but you are charitable enough to them foreign blackguards.”

“That’s not true,” replied Frere. “However, liar or not, you must be fed, I suppose; so if you choose to take a soup-ticket, here’s one for you.”

“No,” returned the boy proudly, “you have called me liar, and I won’t accept your miserable bounty. I’d sooner starve first.”

“As you please,” returned Frere, coolly pocketing the rejected ticket. “Now have the goodness to take yourself off. Come, Lewis.”

“I’ll join you immediately,” replied Lewis.

“Mind you shut the door after you, then,” continued Frere, “or we shall have that nice lad walking off with the silver spoons.” So saying, he entered the house.

Lewis waited till his retreating footsteps were no longer audible, then fixing his piercing glance upon the boy, he said in an impressive voice, “Answer me truly, and I will give you assistance. Where did you learn to speak Italian with so good an accent?”

“In Naples, sir!”

“How did you get there?”

“I served on board a man-of-war.”

“And how have you fallen into this state of beggary?”

The boy hesitated for a moment, but something led him instinctively to feel that his confidence would not be abused, and he answered: “When we got back to England and the crew were paid off I received £15. I got into bad company; they tempted me to everything that was wrong. My money was soon gone; I had no friends in London, and I wouldn’t have applied to them after going on so bad if I’d had any. I sold my clothes to buy bread; and when I had nothing left I begged, and lately I’ve passed myself off as an Italian boy, because I found people more willing to give to me.”

“And do you like your present life?”

“No, I have to bear cold and hunger; and when people speak to me as he did just now it makes me feel wicked. Some day it will drive me mad, and I shall go and murder somebody.”

“What do you wish to do, then?”

“If I could buy some decent clothes, I’d walk down to Portsmouth and try and get afloat again.”

“And what would it cost to provide them?”

“I could rig myself out for a pound.”

Lewis paused for a moment, then added quickly: “Boy, I am poor and proud, as you are, therefore I can feel for you. Had I been exposed to temptation, friendless and untaught, I might have fallen as you have done. You have learnt a bitter lesson and may profit by it; it is in my power to afford you a chance of doing so.”

He drew a card from his pocket and wrote upon it a few words in pencil, then handing it to the boy, continued: “There is the direction to a friend of mine, the captain of a ship about to sail in a few days; show him my card, and tell him what you have told me. There is a sovereign to provide your dress, and five shillings to save you from begging or stealing till you get to Portsmouth; and when next you are tempted to sin remember its bitter fruits.”

As he spoke he gave him the money. The boy received it mechanically, fixed his bright eyes for a moment on the face of his benefactor, and then, utterly overcome by such unexpected kindness, burst into a flood of tears. As Lewis turned to depart the first rays of the rising sun fell upon the tall, graceful figure of the young man and the tattered garments and emaciated form of the boy.

Far different was the scene when Lewis Arundel and the creature he was thus rescuing from infamy met again upon the RAILROAD OF LIFE!

CHAPTER XIII.—IS CHIEFLY HORTICULTURAL, SHOWING THE EFFECTS PRODUCED BY TRAINING UPON A SWEET AND DELICATE ROSE.

Rose Arundel sat at the open window of her little bedroom and gazed out into the night. The scent of many flowers hung upon the loaded air, and the calm stars looked down from Heaven, contrasting their impassive grandeur with the unrest of this weary world. The evening had been lovely; not a breath of wind was stirring; the long shadows that slept upon the green sward, and afforded a dark background on which the brilliant glow-worms shone like diamonds on a funeral pall, were motionless; the silence, unbroken save when some heavy beetle or other strange insect of the night winged its drowsy way across the casement, was almost oppressive in its depth of stillness; it was a time and place for grave and earnest thought, a scene in which the full heart is conscious of its own sorrow. And Rose, although she had too much good sense and right principle to allow herself to feel miserable, was far from happy. The key to the inner life of every true-hearted woman must be sought in the affections. The only two people whom Rose had loved, as she was capable of loving, were her father and brother; for Mrs. Arundel, though all her impulses were kind and amiable, did not possess sufficient depth of character to inspire any very strong attachment. Between Captain Arundel and his daughter had existed one of those rare affections which appear so nearly to satisfy the cravings of our spiritual nature, that lest this world should become too dear to us they are blessings we are seldom permitted long to enjoy. Rose and her father were by nature much alike in disposition, and in forming her character, and educating and developing her mind, he had for some years found his chief interest, while in her affection lay his only solace for the blighted hopes and ruined prospects of a lifetime.

Originally highly connected, Captain Arundel had incurred the displeasure of his family by forming in the heat of youthful passion, and under peculiar circumstances, a marriage with the daughter of an English resident at Marseilles by a foreign mother. Too proud to seek to conciliate his relations, Mr. Arundel became a voluntary exile, entered into the Austrian army, where he speedily rose to the rank of captain and served with much distinction, till failing health induced him to resign his commission and return to England for the sake of educating his children. His heart was set on one object—namely, to bestow upon his son the education of an English gentleman, and for this purpose he had availed himself of a very unusual talent for painting as a means by which he might increase his slender income sufficiently to meet the expenses of sending Lewis to Westminster and afterwards to a German university. The constant application thus rendered inevitable fostered the seeds of that most insidious of all ailments, a heart-disease, and while still forming plans for the welfare of his family, an unwonted agitation induced a paroxysm of his complaint, and ere Rose could realise the misfortune that threatened her she was fatherless.

Although stunned at first by the unexpected shock, hers was not a mind to give way at such a moment, and to those who judge by the outward expression only Mrs. Arundel’s grief appeared much more intense than that of her daughter. But Rose’s sorrow was not a mere transitory feeling, which a few weeks more or less might serve to dissipate; it had become part of her very nature, a thing too sacred to be lightly brought to view, but enshrined in the sanctuary of her pure heart it remained a cherished yet solemn recollection, which would shed its hallowing influence over the future of her young life. And now, as she sat with her calm, earnest eyes upturned to the tranquil heaven above her, her thoughts wandered back to him she had so dearly loved, and she pondered the solemn questions which have ere now presented themselves to many a mourning spirit, and longed to penetrate the secrets of the grave and learn things which death alone can teach us. Then she recalled conversations she had held with him that was gone on these very subjects, and remembered how he had said that the things which God had not seen fit to reveal, could neither be needful nor expedient for us to know; that such speculations were In themselves dangerous, inasmuch as they tended to lead us to form theories which, having no warrant in Scripture, might be at variance with truth; and that it was better to wait patiently in humble faith—that a time would come when we should no longer see through a glass darkly, and the hidden things of God should be made known unto us. Then her thoughts, still pursuing the same train, led her to reflect how all her father’s aspirations, crushed and disappointed in the wreck of his own fortunes, had centred in his son, and the bitter tears which no personal privations or misfortunes could have forced from her, flowed down her cheeks as she reflected how these bright anticipations seemed doomed never to be realised.

Unselfish by nature, and trained to habits of thoughtfulness by witnessing her father’s life of daily self-sacrifice, Rose had never been accustomed to indulge on her own account in those day-dreams so common to the sanguine mind of youth. But the germs of that pride and ambition which were Lewis’s besetting sins existed in a minor degree in Rose’s disposition also, and found vent in a visionary career of greatness she had marked out for her brother, and for which his unusual mental powers and striking appearance seemed eminently to qualify him. In nourishing these visions her father had unconsciously assisted, when in moments of confidence he had imparted to her his hopes that Lewis would distinguish himself in whatever career of life he might select, and by his success restore them all to that position in society which by his own imprudence he had forfeited. What a bitter contrast did the reality now present! Rose had received that morning a letter from her brother detailing his interview with General Grant and its results; and though, from a wish to spare her feelings, he had been more guarded in his expressions than on the occasion of his conversation with Frere the preceding day, yet he did not attempt to disguise from her his repugnance to the arrangement, or the degradation to which his haughty spirit led him to consider he was submitting.

“Poor Lewis!” murmured Rose, “I know so well what misery it will be to him; the slights, the hourly petty annoyances which his proud, sensitive nature will feel so keenly; and then, to waste his high talents, his energy of character and strength of will on the drudgery of teaching, when they were certain to have led him to distinction if he had only had a fair field for their exercise—it would have broken dearest papa’s heart, when he had hoped so differently for him. But if he had lived this never would have been so. He often told me he had influential friends, and though he never would apply to them on his own account, he declared he would do so when Lewis should become old enough to enter into life. I wonder who they were. He never liked to talk on those subjects, and I was afraid of paining him by inquiring. I am glad there is a Miss Grant: I hope she may prove a nice girl and will like Lewis; but of course she will—every one must do that. Oh! how I hope they will treat him kindly and generously—it will all depend upon that. Poor fellow! with his impulsive disposition and quick sense of wrong—his fiery temper too, how will he get on? And it is for our sakes he does all this, sacrificing his freedom and his hopes of winning himself a name. How good and noble it is of him!”

She paused, and leaning her brow upon her little white hand, sat buried in deep thought. At length she spoke again.

“If I could do anything to earn money and help I should be so much happier. Poor papa got a good deal lately for his pictures; but they were so clever. Lewis can paint beautifully, but my drawings are so tame. I wonder whether people would buy poetry. I wish I knew whether my verses are good enough to induce any one to purchase them. Dearest papa praised those lines of mine which he accidentally found one day. Of course he was a good judge, only perhaps he liked them because they were mine.” And the tears rolled silently down her pale cheeks as memory brought before her the glance of bright and surprised approval, the warm yet judicious praise, the tender criticism—words, looks, and tones of love now lost to her for ever, which the accidental discovery of her verses had drawn forth. With an aching heart she closed the casement, and lighting a candle, proceeded to unlock a small writing-desk, from whence she drew some manuscript verses, which ran as follows:—

THE PREACHER’S ADDRESS TO THE SOUL.

Weary soul,

Why dost thou still disquiet

Thyself with senseless riot,

Taking thy fill and measure

Of earthly pleasure?

The things which thou dost prize

Are not realities;

All is but seeming.

Waking, thou still liest dreaming.

That which before thine eye

Now passeth, or hath past,

Is nought but vanity—

It cannot last.

This evil world, be sure,

Shall not endure.

Art thou a-weary, Soul, and dost thou cry

For rest? Wait, and thou soon shalt have

That thou dost crave,

For Death is real—the Grave no mockery.

THE SOUL’S REPLY.

Preacher, too dark thy mood;

God made this earth—

At its primeval birth

“God saw that it was good.”

And if through Adam’s sin

Death enter’d in,

Hath not Christ died to save

Me from the grave?

Repented sins for His sake are forgiven—

There is a heaven.

For that this earth is no abiding-place,

Shall we displace

The flowers that God hath scatter’d on our path—

The kindly hearth;

The smile of love still brightening as we come,

Making the desert, home;

The seventh day of rest, the poor man’s treasure

Of holy leisure;

Bright sunshine, happy birds, the joy of flowers?

Ah, no! this earth of ours

Was “very good,” and hath its blessings still;

And if we will,

We may be happy. Say, stern preacher, why

Should we then hate to live, or fear to die,

With Love for Time, Heaven for Eternity?

Rose perused them attentively, sighed deeply, and then resumed—

“Yes, he liked them, and said (I remember his very words) there was more vigour and purpose about them than in the general run of girlish verses. How could I find out whether they are worth anything?” She paused in reflection, then clasping her hands together suddenly, she exclaimed—

“Yes, of course, Mr. Frere; he was so good and kind about the pictures, and Lewis says he is so very clever, he will tell me. But may not he think it strange and odd in me to write to him? Had I better consult mamma?”

But with the question came an instinctive consciousness that she was about the last person whom it would be agreeable to consult on such an occasion. Rose, like every other woman possessing the slightest approach to the artist mind, felt a shrinking delicacy in regard to what the Browning school would term her “utterances,” which rendered the idea of showing them where they would not be appreciated exquisitely painful to her. Now, Mrs. Arundel had a disagreeable knack of occasionally brushing against a feeling so rudely as to cause the unlucky originator thereof to experience a mental twinge closely akin to the bodily sensation yclept toothache.

It will therefore be no matter of surprise to the reader to learn that Rose, after mature deliberation, resolved to keep the fact of her having applied to Mr. Frere a secret, at all events till such time as the result should become known to her.

She accordingly selected such of her poetical effusions as she deemed most worthy, in the course of which process she stumbled upon a short prose sketch, the only thing of the sort she had ever attempted, it being, in fact, a lively account of her first appearance at a dinner-party, written for the benefit of a young lady friend, but for some reason never sent. This, after looking at a page or two, she was about to condemn as nonsense, when an idea came across her that if Mr. Frere was to form a just estimate of her powers, it was scarcely fair to select only the best things; so she popped in the sketch of the dinner-party as a kind of destitution test, to show how badly she could write.

Then came the most difficult part of the business—the letter to Frere. True, she had written to him before, acting as her father’s amanuensis, but that was a different sort of thing altogether. Still, it must be done, and Rose was not a person to be deterred by difficulties; so she took a sheet of paper and wrote “Sir” at the top of it, and having done so, sat and looked at it till she became intensely dissatisfied. “Sir”—it seemed so cold and uncomfortable; so she took a second sheet and wrote, “Dear Sir.” Yes! that was better, decidedly. She only hoped it was not too familiar in writing to a young man; but then, Mr. Frere was not exactly a young man; he was a great deal older than Lewis; above thirty most likely; and three or four-and-thirty was quite middle-aged; so the “Dear Sir” was allowed to remain.

“Ce n’est que le premier pas qui coute? and having once started, it was not long before Rose’s nimble pen had covered two sides of the sheet of paper, and the following letter was the result:—

“Dear Sir,—I know not how to offer any excuse for the trouble I am about to give you, otherwise than by explaining the reasons which have induced me to apply to you; and, as I know your time is valuable, I will do so as briefly as I can. Do not think me forgetful of, or ungrateful for, your great kindness to Lewis, when I tell you that ever since I received my brother’s letter informing me of his engagement as tutor to General Grant’s ward, I have felt miserable at the idea of his working hard at an occupation which I fear must be distasteful to him, in order to provide for Mamma and myself the comforts we have hitherto enjoyed. It was impossible to prevent this in any way, for we tried to shake his determination, but in vain. Now I feel that I should be so much happier if I could assist, in ever so small a degree, in relieving him from his burthen; and the only possible idea that occurs to me (for he will not hear of my going out as governess) is that I might be able to earn something by my pen. With this view I have ventured to enclose for your perusal a few verses which I have written at odd times for my own amusement; and I trust to your kindness to tell me honestly whether they possess any merit or not. I dare not hope your opinion will be favourable; but if by possibility it should prove so, will you do me the additional kindness of advising me what steps to take in order to get them published. I have never been in London, but I have heard there are a good many booksellers who live there; and as I dare say you know them all, perhaps you would kindly tell me to which of them you would recommend me to apply. I have not told Mamma that I am writing, for, as I feel a presentiment that your answer will only prove to me the folly of the hopes I am so silly as to indulge, it is not worth while disturbing her about the matter. Once again thanking you for your extreme kindness to Lewis, and hoping that you will not consider me too troublesome in thus applying to you, believe me to remain your sincerely obliged,

“Rose Arundel.

“P.S.—I have enclosed a little prose sketch with the verses, but I am quite sure you will not like that. Perhaps, if Lewis has not left you when this arrives, you will be so very kind as not to say any thing to him about it, as he would be sure to laugh at me.”

When Rose had finished this epistle she felt that she had done something towards attaining the object she had at heart, and went to bed feeling more happy than she had done since the receipt of Lewis’s letter. Straightway falling asleep, she dreamt that she was introduced to Mr. Murray, who offered her £100 to write a short biographical memoir of General Grant for the “Quarterly Review.”

CHAPTER XIV.—PRESENTS TOM BRACY IN A NEW AND INTERESTING ASPECT.

Three days passed by, and still poor Rose received no answer to her letter, but remained a prey to alternate hopes and fears and all “The gnawing torture of an anxious mind.” On the fourth arrived the following characteristic note:—

“My dear Miss Arundel,—I dare say you’ve been abusing me like a pick-pocket; at least I must have appeared to you deserving of such abuse, for treating your request so cavalierly; but the fact is, I have been down in a Cornish tin mine for the last two days, and only received your packet on my arrival in town, an hour ago. And now to business. I don’t set up for a judge of poetry, though I know what pleases me and what doesn’t (I should be a donkey if I did not, you’ll say); for instance, the present school of ‘suggestive’ poetry doesn’t suit me at all. But then I have an old-fashioned prejudice in favour of understanding what I read, and calling a railway locomotive a ‘resonant steam eagle,’ for instance, does not tend to simplify literature; the only thing such phrases ‘suggest’ to me is that it would be a great deal better if the authors were content to stick to plain English, and when they have such inexpressibly grand ideas, not to trouble themselves to express them at all. Your verses have at least one good point in them—they are so worded that a plain man may understand them; in fact, all that I have yet read I like—the feeling is invariably pure, true, and beautiful (your heart’s in the right place, and no mistake); the language is well chosen, and sometimes eloquent; there are, of course, plenty of places where it becomes weak and young lady-like, but that was only to be expected. We can’t all be men, unfortunately. I could not help laughing when you ‘supposed I knew’ all the booksellers and publishers in London, Heaven forbid! for in that case I should have a very miscellaneous acquaintance. However, I do know several, and I will go the first thing to-morrow morning and consult one of them—a gentleman on whose judgment I can rely as to what will be the most advisable course for us to pursue. I say us, because, as I don’t mean to let the matter rest till I have succeeded, I consider myself a partner in the concern. Lewis parted from me in high health and very tolerable spirits. He left town, with General Grant, the same morning on which I started for Cornwall. You shall hear from me again when I can report progress. Don’t write any more nonsense about giving me trouble: in the first place, the thing is no trouble; in the second, I should not mind it one bit if it were.

“I am yours very truly,

“Richard Frere.”

The first thing next morning Frere called upon his friend the publisher, who, as soon as he understood that nothing beyond advice was required of him, became very communicative and agreeable; glanced his eye over the verses and approved of them, though he added, with a Burleigh-like shake of the head, that he wished they were anything but poetry. Frere wondered why, and asked him. In reply he learned that the public mind had acquired a sadly practical bias, which leading him to suggest that poetry was the very thing of all others to bring it right again, he was further informed that the evil was much too deeply seated to be affected by so weak an application as the poetry of the present day; and the truth of this assertion appearing undeniable, the subject was dropped.

“The best thing for you to do with these MSS., Mr. Frere,” continued his adviser, “would be to get them inserted in some popular periodical.”

“Well, I don’t object,” returned Frere. “Which had I better send them to? There’s ‘Gently’s Miscellany,’ and the ‘New Weekly,’ and ‘Gainsworth’s Magazine,’ and half-a-dozen more of’em.”

“What do you suppose would be the result of adopting such a line of conduct?” inquired his friend.

“Why, as the things are in themselves good, they’d probably put ’em in next month, and send a cheque for the amount, enclosed in a polite note asking for more.”

“I fear not,” was the answer. “A very promising young friend of mine sent a nicely written paper to the least exclusive of the periodicals you have just mentioned; hearing nothing of it, he ventured at the end of six months to write and inquire its fate. In reply he received a note from the editor, which appeared to him more explicit than satisfactory. It was couched in the following laconic terms:—‘Declined with thanks.’”

“Phewl that’s pleasant,” rejoined Frere. “What would you advise, then, under the circumstances? I place myself quite in your hands.”

His friend leaned back in his chair and considered the matter deeply. At length he seemed to have hit upon some expedient, for he muttered with great emphasis, “Yes, that might do. He could if he would. Yes—certainly!” Then turning suddenly to Frere, he exclaimed, “Mind, you’ll never breathe a word of it to any living being!”

“Not for the world,” returned Frere. “And now, what is it?”

“You’ve heard of ‘Blunt’s Magazine’?”

“Yes; I’ve seen it in several places lately.”

“No doubt; it’s a most admirably conducted publication, and one which is certain to become a great favourite with the public. Now I happen to be acquainted with one of the gentlemen who edit it, and shall be happy to give you a note of introduction to him. But you must promise me to be most careful never to reveal his name.”

“Certainly,” rejoined Frere, “if you wish it. But may I venture to ask what it would signify if all London knew it?”

His companion turned upon him a look of indignant surprise; but perceiving that he made the inquiry in honest simplicity of heart, his face assumed an expression of contemptuous pity as he replied, in such a tone of voice as one would use to a little child who had inquired why it might not set light to a barrel of gunpowder, “My dear sir, you do not know—you cannot conceive the consequences. Such a thing would be utterly impossible.”

He then wrote a few lines, which he handed to Frere, saying, “You will find him at home till eleven.”

“And this mysterious name,” observed Frere, glancing at the address, “is!—eh! nonsense!—Thomas Bracy, Esq. Why, he is an intimate friend of my own! That’s famous. Oh! I’ll have some fun with him. I’m sure I’m extremely obliged to you; good morning.” So saying Frere seized his hat, shouldered his umbrella, and hurried off, overjoyed at his discovery.

The mendacious tiger, of whom we have already made honourable mention, answered Frere’s inquiry as to whether his master was at home with a most decided and unequivocal negative, adding the gratuitous information that, “he had gone down to dine with his uncle at Hampstead the previous day and was not expected home till four o’clock that afternoon.”

“Well, that’s a nuisance,” returned Frere. “I tell you what, boy, I’ll step in and write your master a note.”

“Yes, sir, certainly, if you please, sir; only we’ve been a having the sweeps hin, and the place is hall in a huproar, so as it’s unpossibul to touch nothink.”

At this moment a bell rung violently, and the boy, begging Frere to wait, bounded up the stairs with a cat-like rapidity, returning almost immediately with the information that “He was wery sorry, but he’d just been to the greengrocer’s, and while he was hout master had comed home quite promiscuous.”

“And how about the soot?” asked Frere, a light breaking in upon him.

“Please, sir, cook’s been and cleaned it hup while I were gone.”

“I thought so,” returned Frere; “you’re a nice boy!” Then catching him by the collar of his jacket, he continued, “Tell me, you young scamp, how often do you speak the truth?”

The urchin, thus detected, glanced at Frere’s face, and reading there that any attempt to keep up appearances must prove a dead failure, replied with the utmost sang froid, “Please, sir, whenever I can’t think of nothink better.”

“There’s an answer,” returned Frere meditatively. “Well, you need never learn swimming—water won’t harm you; but mark my words, and beware of hemp.” So saying he loosened his hold on the boy’s collar and followed him upstairs.

The tiger, not having recognised Frere in his European habiliments, had merely told his master that a gentleman wished to see him on business; and Bracy, who had reason to expect a visit from a certain literary Don, had rushed into his dressing-room to exchange a very decidedly “fast” smoking-jacket for the black frock-coat of editorial propriety; for which reason Frere was left to entertain himself for a few minutes with his own society. After examining sundry clever caricature sketches of Bracy’s, which evinced a decided talent for that branch of art, Frere seated himself in an easy-chair in front of a writing-table on which lay a mysterious document, written in a bold, dashing hand, which involuntarily attracted his attention. Perceiving at a glance that it contained no private matter, he amused himself by perusing it. For the reader’s edification we will transcribe it:—

Blunt’s Magazine, June. Sheets 3 and 4

Questions on Quicksilver...4

The Homeless Heart (Stanzas by L. O. V. E.) . . .1

Hist. Parallels, No. 3 (Cromwell and Cour-de-Lion) . . 7

L’Incomprise (by the Authoress of Inconnue). . .6

Hard Work and Hard Food; or, How would you like it yourself?

A Plea for the Industrial Classes .. . 5

Dog-cart Drives (by the Editor), Chap, 10 The Spicey

Screw;” Chap. II, Doing the Governor” . .. 7

Wanted something light, abt...2

The last item in this singular catalogue was written in pencil. “Now I should like to know what all that means,” soliloquised Frere. “Something light about two? A luncheon would come under that definition exactly—two whats? that’s the question! Two pounds? It would not be particularly light if it weighed as much as that. Perhaps the figures stand for money—the prices they pay for the magazine articles, I dare say; 4—6—7. Now, if they happen to be sovereigns, that will suit my young lady’s case very nicely. Ah! here he comes.”

CHAPTER XV.—CONTAINS A DISQUISITION ON MODERN POETRY, AND AFFORDS THE READER A PEEP BEHIND THE EDITORIAL CURTAIN.

The position in which Frere had placed himself prevented Bracy from discerning his features as he entered, and he accordingly accosted his visitor as follows:—

“My dear sir, I am really distressed to have kept you waiting, but as you arrived I was just jotting down the result of a little flirtation with the Muse.”

“And that is it, I suppose?” observed Frere, turning his face towards the speaker and pointing to the document before alluded to.

“Why, Frere, is it you, man?” exclaimed Bracy in surprise. “As I’m a sinner, I took you for that learned elder, Dr.———-. My young imp told me you were a gentleman who wished to see me on particular business. If that juvenile devil takes to telling lies to instead of for me, I shall have to give him his due for once, in the shape of a sound caning.”

“You may spare yourself the trouble,” returned Frere, “as by some accident he has only spoken the truth this time; for I hope you don’t mean to insinuate that I am anything but a gentleman, and I have most assuredly come to you on business—that is, always supposing Mr. ———— of ———— Street has informed me correctly in regard to your editorial functions.”

“What! has the cacoethes scribendi seized you also, and tempted you into the commission of some little act of light literature?” added Bracy.

“Thank goodness, no,” answered Frere. “I’m happy to say I’m not so far gone as all that comes to yet. No, this is a different case altogether,” and he then proceeded to inform his companion of Rose’s, application, and the necessity which existed to make her talents available for practical purposes.

“Magazine writing affords rather a shady prospect for realising capital in these days,” observed Bracy, shaking his head discouragingly. “Let’s look at the young lady’s interesting efforts. Have you ever seen her? Arundel’s sister ought to be pretty. What’s this? ‘The Preacher’s Address to the Soul.’ Why, it’s a sermon in rhyme. Heaven help the girl! what’s she thinking of?”

“Read it and you’ll see. I like it very much,” returned Frere, slightly nettled at the reception his protégées productions appeared likely to meet with.

“Oh! it’s a sermon clearly,” continued Bracy; “here’s something about vanity and the grave. I heard it all last Sunday at St. Chrysostom’s, only the fellow called it gwave and gwace. He’d picked up some conscientious scruple against the use of the letter R, I suppose. It’s quite wonderful, the new-fangled doctrines they develop nowadays. Hum—ha—‘Making the desert home,’—rather a young idea, eh? ‘Happy birds,’—don’t like that, it puts one too much in mind of ‘jolly dogs’ or ‘odd fish.’ I should have said dicky birds, if it had been me; that’s a very safe expression, and one that people are accustomed to. ‘The joy of flowers,’—what on earth does she mean by that, now? I should say nobody could understand that; for which reason, by the way, it’s the best expression I’ve seen yet. Poetry, to be admired in the present day, must be utterly incomprehensible. We insert very little, but that’s the rule I go by. If I can’t understand one word of a thing, I make a point of accepting it; it’s safe to become popular. ‘Love for time, Heaven for eternity,’—well, that’s all very, nice and pretty, but I’m sorry to say it won’t do; it’s not suited to the tone of the Magazine, you see.”

“I can’t say I do see very clearly at present,” returned Frere; “what kind of poetry is it that you accept?”

“Oh, there are different styles. Now here’s a little thing I’ve got in the June part, ‘The Homeless Heart, by L. O. V. E.’ Her real name is Mary Dobbs, but she couldn’t very well sign herself M.D.; people would think she was a physician. She’s a very respectable young woman (such a girl to laugh), and engaged to an opulent stockbroker. Now listen:

“‘Homeless, forsaken,

Deeply oppress’d,

Raving, yet craving

Agony’s rest;

Bitterly hating,

Fondly relenting,

Sinning, yet winning

Souls to repenting;

When for her sorrow

Comes a to-morrow,

Shall she be bless’d?’”

“That’s a question I can’t take upon myself to answer,” interrupted Frere. “But if those are in the style you consider suited to the tone of your Magazine, it must be a very wonderful publication.”

“I flatter myself it is, rather,” replied Bracy complacently. “But that’s by no means the only style; here’s a thing that will go down with the million sweetly. Listen to this,” and as he spoke he extracted from a drawer a mighty bundle of papers labelled “Accepted Poetry,” and selecting one or two specimens from the mass, read as follows:—

“THE COUNTESS EMMELINE’S DISDAINMENT.”

“Bitter-black the winter’s whirlwind wail’d around the haunted hall,

Where the sheeted snow that fleeted fester’d on the mouldering wall.

“But his blacker soul within him childish calm appear’d to view,

And when gazing, ’twas amazing whence the sceptic terror grew.

“Then her voice, so silver-blended, to a trumpet-blast did swell,

As she task’d him when she asked him, ‘Mr. Johnson, is it well?’

“Ashen-white the curdled traitor paled before her eagle eye,

Whilst denying, in replying, deeper grew his perjury.”

“There! I can’t stand any more of that, at any price!” exclaimed Frere, putting his hands to his ears. “Unless you wish to make me seriously ill, spare me the infliction of those detestable compound adjectives.”

“My dear fellow, you’ve no taste,” returned Bracy. “Why, that’s written by one of our best contributors; an individual that will make Tennyson look to his laurels, and do the Brownings brown, one of these days. But if that’s too grand for you, here’s a little bit of pastoral simplicity may suit you better:—

“‘TO A HERBLET, NAME UNKNOWN.

‘Once upon a holiday,

Sing heigho;

Still with sportive fancy playing

While all nature was a-maying,

On a sunny bank I lay;

Where the happy grass did grow,

‘Neath the fragrant lime-tree row,

Sing heigho!

‘There a little fairy flower,

Sing heigho!

Glancing from its baby eyes

With a look of sweet surprise,

Grew beneath a bower,

Brought unto my soul the dawning

Of a mystic spirit warning,

Sing heigho!

‘Then I wept, and said, despairing,

Sing heigho!

Fate is dark, and earth is lonely,

And the heart’s young blossoms only

Render life worth bearing——”

Lewis Arundel; Or, The Railroad Of Life

LEWIS ARUNDEL

Or, The Railroad Of Life

By Frank E. Smedley,

Author Of “Frank Fairlegh.”

With Illustrations By “Phiz”

The Walter Scott Publishing Co., Ltd.

London And Newcastle-On-Tyne.

1852

CHAPTER I.—IN WHICH THE TRAIN STARTS, AND THE READER IS INTRODUCED TO THREE FIRST-CLASS PASSENGERS.

CHAPTER II.—SHOWING HOW LEWIS LOSES HIS TEMPER, AND LEAVES HIS HOME.

CHAPTER III.—IN WHICH RICHARD FRERE MENDS THE BACK OF ST. THOMAS AQUINAS, AND THE READER IS INTRODUCED TO CHARLEY LEICESTER.

CHAPTER IV.—LEWIS ENLISTS UNDER A “CONQUERING HERO,” AND STARTS ON A DANGEROUS EXPEDITION.

CHAPTER V.—IS OF A DECIDEDLY WARLIKE CHARACTER.

CHAPTER VI.—IN WHICH LEWIS ARUNDEL SKETCHES A COW, AND THE AUTHOR DRAWS A YOUNG LADY.

CHAPTER VII.—WHEREIN THE READER IS INTRODUCED TO MISS LIVINGSTONE, AND INFORMED WHO IS THE GREATEST MAN OF THE AGE.

CHAPTER VIII.—LEWIS RECEIVES A LECTURE AND A COLD BATH.

CHAPTER IX.—WHEREIN RICHARD FRERE AND LEWIS TURN MAHOMETANS.

CHAPTER X.—CONTAINS A PRACTICAL COMMENTARY ON THE PROVERB, “ALL IS NOT GOLD WHICH GLITTERS.”

CHAPTER XI.—TOM BRACY MEETS HIS MATCH.

CHAPTER XII.—LEWIS FORFEITS THE RESPECT OF ALL POOR-LAW GUARDIANS.

CHAPTER XIII.—IS CHIEFLY HORTICULTURAL, SHOWING THE EFFECTS PRODUCED BY TRAINING UPON A SWEET AND DELICATE ROSE.

THE PREACHER’S ADDRESS TO THE SOUL.

THE SOUL’S REPLY.

CHAPTER XIV.—PRESENTS TOM BRACY IN A NEW AND INTERESTING ASPECT.

CHAPTER XV.—CONTAINS A DISQUISITION ON MODERN POETRY, AND AFFORDS THE READER A PEEP BEHIND THE EDITORIAL CURTAIN.

“THE COUNTESS EMMELINE’S DISDAINMENT.”

“‘TO A HERBLET, NAME UNKNOWN.