"Don't let us talk any more about this, Lugard," said the other quietly. "With me you always give everything that turn. I have not seen you now for some years, and here, the very first night we meet, you begin your old ways again. It was the same when we were at school together."

"What do you mean by that?" said Lugard, his eyes flashing. "Is that what you plume yourself on? I make you a present of that victory. I see what's in your mind."

"That's always been in your mind, evidently," said Bligh, "and it seems to rankle there in a manner quite incomprehensible to me. But no matter; let us have no compliments, and do our best. I really meant it in kindness; and I give you every notice-expect no quarter from me."

"Who wants it?" said the other. "You've not got me before you in one of your fusty courts of law, that you can hector and always have the last word. Come, let us go into the drawing-room, unless you want more wine. I don't."

Lugard talked a great deal to Diana that night, sitting in a favourite pose of his-stooping low, his head reclining on his hand, and looking into her face. The mother and son sat apart, and looking over, saw Diana's face playing with various expressions. Amusement, sympathy, interest, demureness-all followed each other in that expressive face. Our Diana was so glad to see her old friend, whom she had not met for so long, and who indeed had paid her the best compliment in

his power.

After a while Robert rose, and said he would go downstairs "to duty," for "a field-night," as he called it, "among the papers."

"How kind of you!" said Diana. "I often thought of doing so. myself; but the very sight of those dusty old papers would make me faint."

Mrs. Bligh gave him a strange look, which seemed to order him to remain; but Bligh would go to his office.

"What's this about papers?" asked Richard Lugard with a curious air, as he rose to go for the night.

"O, he is so kind!" said Diana. "I can't tell you the trouble he has taken. He is now going to set all my poor darling's papers in order, quite neat and nice, for me; so that I shall have no trouble, and be able to lay my hand on anything I want. I assure you, those papers in tin boxes and bundles frighten me and make my head

go round." Lugard laughed. "My dear Diana, I am an old married man now, and entitled to give advice. Now, I must tell you again, all this looks very odd, and has been remarked upon a great deal. Robert Bligh is a very good fellow-the soul of honour, and all that-and means well; but, really, to allow anyone to have the run of family papers in that way, to read everything and handle everything, is a privilege I declare I wouldn't allow my own father."

-No; mi viE F DTS, & prlege he'd have too much delicacy to at de les of nov-od that's all a different matter-unless the Prora In Tre: side of coarse

Mr. Lapısı vani away that night in great spirits. He enjoyed bis man, and sang as he went home. Robert sat into the watches of the men on be work delving among the old letters and documents which the late squire had left in sad confusion. He was not quite so Cerful as Richard He had been, in truth, much taken aback by the silo sperice of his old schoolfellow in the character of an opproent. He had indeed, reckoned on a smooth pleasant progress. It seemed to anot body. Diana went to her room, very grave and thoughtful For the first time she felt worried, and had begun to know in the world wor

VIOLETS AT HOME

L

O HAPPY buds of violet!

I give them to my sweet, and she
Puts them where something sweeter yet
Must always be.

II.

White violets find whiter rest;

For fairest flower how fair a fate!

For me remain, O fragrant breast!

Inviolate.

MORTIMER COLLINS.

'It is like a scene in an opera,' cried Madame Carlitz.

"And it was evident the scene awakened no higher emotion in her mind.

'If such a set were only manageable at the Bonbonnière! But we have not enough depth for this kind of thing. That is what we want, you see-depth.'

'Yes,' I answered almost sadly, 'that is what we want-depth.'

The moonlight effect is only a question of green gauzes, and lamps at the wing. I think, by the bye, we make our moonlights a little too green. I wonder whether Mr. Fresko has ever seen the moon. He spends all his evenings in the theatre, smoking and drinking beer in his painting-room, or hanging about the side-scenes, smelling intolerably of stale tobacco. I really doubt if he has ever seen this kind of thing. But I can't afford to change him for a better painter. His interiors are exquisite. He was painting a tapestried drawing-room, after Boucher, when I left London-a scene that will enchant you next season. The draperies are to be blue watered silk-real silk, you know; and folding-doors at the back will open into a garden of real exotics, if I can get my florist to supply them; but he is rather an impracticable sort of person, who is always wanting sums on account.'

'And the piece?' I asked.

'O, the piece is a pretty-enough little trifle,' the lady replied with supreme carelessness; 'The Marquis of Yesterday, a vaudeville of the Pompadour period, adapted from Scribe. Of course, I am to play Pompadour.'

"On this I would fain have become more sentimental. The mountain light, the deep mysterious shadows, the glimpse of ocean-all invited to that dreamy sentimentality which is of earth's transient intoxications the most delightful. But Madame Carlitz was not sentimentally inclined. To shine, to astonish, to enchant-these to her were but too easy. The melting mood was out of her line. And though she fooled me by her charming air of sympathy, I felt, even in the hour of my delusion, a vague sense that it was all stage-play, and that the looks and tones which thrilled my senses, and almost touched that finer sense I had been taught to call my soul, were the same looks and tones which the dramatic critics praised in the finished actress of the Bonbonnière.

"Have I any right to be angry with her if she was all falsehood, when there was so little reality in my own fade sentimentality and hackneyed flatteries? No; I am not angry. I encountered the enchantress but a few nights ago in society, and said to myself wonderingly, 'Once I almost loved you.'

"H. awoke, and smiled upon us with his genial smile, as we returned to the pretty lamp-lit room.

'Have you two children been rehearsing the balcony scene in the

moonlight?' he cried. And then we went back to our London talk and London scandal, and H. told us some admirable stories, more or less embellished by a glowing imagination; and Mrs. H. simpered placidly, just as she had simpered at dinner; and madame contradicted her friend, and laughed at him, and interrupted him by delicious mimicry of his dramatis persona, and behaved altogether in a most fascinating manner.

"I went home slowly in the moonlight, meditating on my evening's entertainment.

6

Have I been happy?' I asked myself. No. I have been only amused; and I have come to that period in which little beyond amusement is possible for me.'

"And all my dreams had resolved themselves into this! My Cynthia was not to be found on earth; and the next best thing to the spirit that walks as free as air the clouds among, was—an elegant and fashionable actress.

"My evening had been very pleasant to me; and I was angry with myself, disappointed with myself, because it had been so.

"I thought of Byron. It was not till his star was waning that he found that one companion spirit who was to console him for the bril liant miseries of his career.

Numa was an old man when he met his Egeria,' I said to myself. Perhaps for me too the divine nymph will appear in life's dreary twilight.'

"I found that my poor C. had been sorely distressed, and even alarmed, by my unwonted absence; and I had no choice but to burden my conscience with a falsehood, or to make her unhappy by the confession that I had been beguiled into the forgetfulness of time in the society of a more fascinating person than her poor, pretty, sentimental self.

I found my friend T. at his hut beyond D—— H———,' I said; and the fellow insisted on my dining with him.'

"My simple-minded C. had implicit faith in my word, even after that one broken promise which had caused this poor child so many tears.

I am so glad you found an old friend,' she said; but O, H., I cannot tell you what I have suffered in all these long hours! There is no terrible accident which I have not pictured to myself. I thought how you might lose your footing in the narrow path at the edge of the cliff; I thought you might have been tempted to go round by the sands, and that the tide had risen before you could reach G▬▬▬▬. I sent D. to look for you.'

66

"I told her that on another occasion she must disturb herself with no such fear, and hinted that as E. T. was a very intimate and affectionate friend, I might find myself compelled to dine with him occasionally during his stay.

Will he be here long?' she asked piteously.

'O dear no,' I replied; 'depend upon it, he will soon be tired of these desolate regions.'

"I had pointed out the cottage to her in one of our walks, and had given her some slight account of the owner.

"After this I was often away from my too sad, too gentle companion. Carlitz seemed to me every day more delightful. I forgot all that I had been told about this most volatile of human butterflies, this most enchanting of the papilionaceous tribe. I, the blasé worldling, suffered myself to be caught in that airy net. Most completely was I deluded by her smile of welcome; the sweet low voice, that grew lower and sweeter when she talked with me; the tender tones in which the enchantress confessed her love for these wild, romantic regions; the unexpected happiness she had found amongst these rugged hills; the disinclination-nay, indeed, the positive disgust with which she contemplated her approaching return to London ;all the meretricious charms of the accomplished coquette had given place to the tender grace, the almost divine loveliness of the woman who for the first time discovers that she possesses a heart, and who only becomes aware of that possession in the hour in which she loses it for ever.

"It must not be supposed that I yielded to this new influence withont some weak struggle. Every night I went back to my eyrie determined to see the divine Carlitz no more. Every morning I found C.'s society more hopelessly dull, and was fain to take refuge in a mountain ramble. Unhappily, the ramble always ended at the same spot.

"To me had been offered some of the sweetest flatteries ever shaped by woman's lips; but the lovely proprietress of the Bonbonnière was past-mistress of the art, and her flatteries were more subtle than sweetest words. She fooled me to the top of my bent. C. was day by day more neglected; my books were abandoned; my ambitions, my aspirations, for the time utterly forgotten. I had found the supreme good of the Sybarite's life-amusement. And my vanity was flattered by the idea that I was beloved by a woman whose name was synonymous with the verb 'to charm.'

"Yes; I was beloved. How else could I account for that gradual transformation which had changed the most volatile of women into a creature pensive and poetical as Sappho or Heloise? If there had been any striking suddenness in this change, I might have considered it a mere stage-trick; but the transition had been so gradual, and seemed so unconscious. What motive could she have for deceiving me? Had she been free to marry, she might have considered me an eligible parti, and this might have been a matrimonial snare; but I had been given to understand that somewhere, undistinguished and uncared for, there existed a person answering to the name of Carlitz, and possessing legal anthority over this lovely lady. From matrimonial designs I was there