and bow to, when required. But this, besides being wrong and unjust, and all that kind of thing-which I don't so much mind-is risky, which I dislike; and if detected, brings the whole fabric to the ground. So we may put that on one side."

"Ah!" said Beresford, with a sigh of relief; "and the other?"

"The other is a totally different method, and unlike any thing you have ever tried, I suspect, with any one. It is simply by professing hopeless, unswerving, unconquerable spooniness. You have hitherto pardon the question-merely looked and sighed, &c.? Ah, I thought so; that gesture was quite satisfactory as to the amount of tenderness. Well now, then, you must declare yourself. Quietly, of course, and, if you please, without any manifestations, which would entirely spoil our plan, the essence whereof is virtue. You declare yourself to this effect: that you are so completely smitten that you can keep silence no longer; that previous to going away for a lengthened period (for you believe that expatriation is the only thing that will afford temporary relief), you have determined on speaking to her, fearing she might think your absence strange, or hear it's cause wrongly explained by somebody else; that yours is not like the feeble sentiment of the butterflies who flutter around her, &c. &c.; but a deep and stedfast passion, which will only cease with life. You know all that business. Then, that your respect for her is so great, that you will not give scandal the smallest chance of a whisper. Had you met in happier times-oh! you did, eh? Well, then, had you been in a position, when you first met, to have offered, &c.; but now, too late! love for ever; but leave for ever-foreign climes." "Yes; but you know well enough I can't go abroad, and-"

"My dear fellow, she'll never dream of your doing any thing of the sort. If I've any knowledge of women, she'll be deeply affected, as she ought to be, by your deucedly romantic story. She'll say a good deal about if,' in reference to former years; she'll state her full determination to do nothing approaching the smallest shadow of wrong; but she'll avow she should be miserable at the idea of being the cause of your banishment, and therefore she'll entreat you to stop in England and be her brother."

"Be her brother?"

"Ay, and a first-rate position you'll have of it as her brother. There'll be an immense amount of sentiment in the connexion; she'll defer to you in every thing; your presence will always keep every body else off, and she'll never dream of carrying on with any one but you. How could she expect again to meet with such delicacy as you've shown? And, if any thing should happen, you're safe to be first in the field and to carry off the cup. Now do you see the line of country?"

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it.

Oh, yes, I see it fast enough, and I've no doubt I can manage It's rather a duffing business altogether; however, needs must, and I mustn't risk any more flukes. One thing I am curious about, Simnel." "What's that?"

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Why you take such an interest in this business? You first put me on to it, and you've evidently given it some of your precious time in thinking it out while I've been away. Be frank for once in your life, and say-"

"Why does it interest me?" said Simnel, nursing his leg, and giving a grin which showed all his big teeth. "Well, Master Charley, your memory has never been good, but you might occasionally recollect that you owe me eight hundred pounds!"

"Yes," said Beresford, "I know that well enough; but it isn't for that alone. You'll be safe to get that, if I marry and come into money; but there's something more in it than that, I know. It's that business with the name of that firm that you made me say to old Townshend, isn't it now, eh?"

"What, Piggott and Wells!" said Simnel, rocking to and fro"Piggott and Wells of Combcardingham? Well, perhaps that has something to do with it; who knows? Meantime, stick to what I've told yon; begin at once, and in a month's time come to me with a good report."

And so ended the colloquy between this precious pair.

Pursuing his instructions with a certain amount of relish, and all the experience of an accomplished and versatile actor, Mr. Beresford threw himself into his new character with spirit, and made a decided hit in it. All the raillery and nonsense, all the smiles and laughter, had vanished. Owen Meredith had been exchanged for Lord Byron; and Mr. Beresford as a ninteenth-century London-made Giaour was doing terrible execution to that feeble little bit of Mrs. Schröder's anatomy which she called her heart. There was no one to say a kind word, to give proper advice, to the poor little woman in her need. Barbara was absolutely lost to her: she had been two or three times to Great Adullam Street, and Barbara had returned the call; but there was evident restraint on both sides. The outside show of friendship remained, but there was no animating spirit; none such, at least, as to call for the kind of confidence which Alice Schröder would gladly have made, had she received the slightest invitation. But Barbara was not the Barbara of old days: she looked worn and anxious, was constantly preoccupied, and answered at random; she confined herself, moreover, to the merest commonplaces in her conversation, so that Alice got no help from her. Nor from her father had she any supervision: strict to a fault before her marriage, Mr. Townshend, having once settled his daughter, imagined that his duty in life was done, and that henceforth he might devote himself entirely to pleasure, consisting in haunting the City by day and the whist-tables at the Travellers by night. And it began to be noticed that this hitherto model British merchant drank a great deal of wine with his dinner, and a great deal of brandy after it; and there were ugly rumours running about 'Change and drifting through Garra

way's; and Townshend's clerks were rather in request at the Bay Tree, and were manifestly pumped as to whether there was any thing wrong with their governor, under the guise of being requested to "put a name" to what they would like to drink. It may be imagined, therefore, that under this state of circumstances Mr. Townshend had neither time nor inclination to bestow any advice upon that daughter, who, as he was in the habit of saying, "had made such a splendid alliance." With her husband Alice had, as has before been said, nothing in common. He was a cold, proud, well-meaning man, who gloried as much as a white-blooded elderly person can be said to glory in his riches and his state, and who liked to have a pretty, elegant, well-dressed woman before him at table, in the same way that he liked to have a stout bigwhiskered butler in a white waistcoat behind him. He liked his wife, when he had time to think about her; but he had been brought up in business, and that absorbed his whole attention by day; while giving or going to parties, in which he could spend the result of what he had attained by business, occupied him at night. But he had the highest opinion of Mrs. Schröder's conduct, which he imagined was on a par with every thing else in the establishment-real and genuine; and he paid her bills, and presented her with cheques, with lavish generosity. Only he was not exactly the man on whose bosom a wife could lay her head and confess that she was tempted beyond her strength.

ever.

There was a man who, without being much mixed up with this little episode in the great drama of human life, overlooked some of the scenes, and saw the dangers to which one of the characters was rapidly exposing herself. That man was Fred Lyster, the one sentiment of whose life— his love for Alice Townshend-was as fresh and as green and as pure as The announcement of her engagement was a great shock to him, and he had taken care only to meet her face to face once or twice since her marriage. The meeting upset him; and though she was apparently unconscious of any feeling in the matter, it did her no good; and there was no earthly reason why it should be. But he went every where where she went, and watched her in the distance; his ears were always on the alert whenever her name was mentioned in club smoke-rooms and such-like haunts of gossip; and he found, as he had dreaded with fatal prescience, at Bissett, that Beresford was on the trail. Long and earnestly he deliberated with himself as to what course he should pursue. Should he pick a quarrel on some other topic with Beresford, and shoot him? Shooting had gone out of fashion; and if he killed his man, he should be exiled from England; if he didn't kill him, where was the use of challenging him? Should he speak to Mr. Townshend? or was there no female friend to whom he could apply? Yes; Barbara Churchill. In Barbara Churchill he had the greatest confidence, and to her he would go at once.

CHAPTER XXIV.

BARBARA'S FIRST LESSON IN THE MANEGE.

FOR Some few months after the events just described, the lives of those who form the characters of this little drama passed evenly on without the occurrence of any circumstance worthy of special record on the part of their historian. Mr. Beresford, implicitly following Mr. Simnel's advice, proceeded to lay siege to Mrs. Schröder in the manner agreed upon, and found his advances received very much after the fashion predicted by his astute friend. In all child-like simplicity Mrs. Schröder firmly believed in the baneful influence which she had unconsciously exercised over her admirer, and strove to make him amends by a charitable and sentimental pity. She could perfectly appreciate all his feelings; for was not she herself misunderstood? had her girlhood's dream been realised? what was wealth, what was position, to her? was she not mated with one who &c.? So she not merely permitted but encouraged Mr. Beresford's fraternal sentiments; though she by no means eschewed the world and its frivolity, and gave herself up to solitary romance. On the contrary, she went out a great deal into society, and had frequent receptions at home; Beresford being her constant but always unobtrusive companion. It is difficult to say what motive about this time prompted a considerable change in Mr. Schröder's manner towards his wife; but some such change undoubtedly took place. It may possibly have been that the insufficiency of money as a source of happiness may have dawned upon him, steeped as he was to his very lips in constantly-increasing wealth. It may have been that he suddenly awoke to the fact that he was expected to lavish something more than generosity on the young girl whom he had made the head of his house, and who, as he thought, conducted herself with so much propriety. This new feeling may have had its germ one night when they were sitting in their grand-tier box at the Italian Opera, during the performance of Der Freischütz; and as the old familiar strains rang through the house, Gustav Schröder's memory travelled back for five-and-thirty years, and he saw himself a lad of seventeen, seated in the pit of a little German theatre by the side of a plump little girl, who wore a silver arrow through the great knot of her flaxen hair, and down whose cheeks tears were rolling as she listened to the recital of Agatha's woes. had loved that plump little Kätchen, loved her with a boy's pure and ardent passion; and when sent to his uncle's counting-house in Frankfort, they had parted with bitter tears, and with the exchange of very cheap and worthless love-tokens. He wondered what had become of that five-groschen piece with the hole drilled through it, and the bit of red ribbon. He wondered why he had never loved since those days. And then he looked up and saw his pretty, elegant little wife, whom every one admired and praised; and it flashed upon him that he had never tried to break through the outer crust of staid formality

He

with which business and the world had covered him; and he determined to try to love and be loved once more. And so Mrs. Schröder, beginning to be dreadfully frightened at the incantation scene, was astonished to find her hand gently taken in her husband's, and on looking up to find his eyes fixed on hers. From that time out Gustav Schröder was a changed man; he took frequent holidays from business; he strove in every way to let his wife see how anxious he was for her happiness; and she saw it, and was to a certain extent touched by his conduct. It needed all Mr. Beresford's sophistry, all his attention and quotation, the employment of all the art in which he had been indoctrinated by his friend Simnel, to make head against the influence which Gustav Schröder's quiet watchfulness and fatherly affection were attaining; for the affection was, after all, more fatherly than conjugal in its display. Mr. Schröder was far too much a man of the world to affect to ignore his age or the result of his life-habits; and no one was better pleased than he to see his wife happy among younger and livelier companions.

A happy influence properly exercised at this time would have been immediately beneficial to Alice Schröder, and have brought matters back into the right course. For instance, ten minutes' talk with Barbara Churchill would have settled the question; for Barbara was to Alice that one grand idol whom we all of us (although we change them at different periods of our lives) set up and worship. And Barbara had not derogated one whit from her high position in Alice's estimation by her marriage. It was exactly the thing that she imagined a girl of her friend's high spirit would do, if pressed to it; there was something romantic in it, savouring of the legends of the high dames of old, who gave themselves to poets after scorning kings; and the whole process entirely agreed with certain of the dicta of Mr. Owen Meredith, who, as has been explained, was poet-laureate at the Schröder court. And Alice called on Barbara, and petted her and praised her, and in her silly little way did every thing possible to prevent the smallest rapprochement between them. And then Alice went away, and cried in the carriage on her way home, and declared that Barbara was cruel and unkind and unjust, and had utterly changed in every thing.

Were these assertions correct? I fear that at all events they had a certain proportion of truth. The spirit which had induced Barbara Lexden to marry a man without money, and of, as her friends thought, inferior position; which had made her scorn the threats of being cast off by those among whom her life had hitherto been placed, and to hold to one whom she knew but little, yet trusted much,-this same spirit made her brave the fate to which she had resigned herself, and determined that if she repined, it should be in secret and unheard. It was a mistake; that she had already confessed to herself with bitter tears many and many a time; done in haste, repented at leisure-the old, old story, the old seductive myth, which will find believers for ever and aye. How often, brooding in the solitude of her chamber, had she gone over