resumed that gentleman, "I can give Sophy nothing but my blessing."

The curate looked aghast; " and 2000l.," continued Mr. Tufton. "You have about as much more, and your curacy, 150l. a-year, and the interest of 4000l. No love could live upon that; you would be starved into hatred before the end of the first six months."

"There, there are my expectations, sir, in addition," stammered Charles, with a rueful visage.

"All at an end, as you very well know," rejoined Mr. Tufton; "if your uncle marries the widow, and so, my dear fellow-I'm sorry to say it would be your engagement with my daughter."

My uncle shan't marry Mrs. Sparrow."

And Charles threw himself into a defiant attitude, and fell into a deep silence:-"I'll marry her myself!" he cried at last, starting from it.

"Miss Tufton, and Miss Tufton's papa, are very much obliged to you," said Mr. Tufton, smiling; "but, indeed it is not a bad idea." "I'll consult Sophy," said Charles.

"Will Sophy consent?" said Mr. Tufton.

Sophy, on being summoned, and taken into council, did consent. She demurred a little at first, but finally yielded her approval, and the conclave having been broken up, and solemn secresy enjoined, she departed to the drawing-room, followed by Charles, and wearing a very pretty little look of importance on her blooming face.

It was a rainy morning, dark, dismal, dreary; a day for billiards, for letter-writing, for flirting, for any other innocent in-door occupation. There was no possibility of stirring out. The widow was in the drawing-room, seated on a low stool, drawn close to the side of Colonel Butt, her upturned face fixed on his, her hand reposing on the arm of his chair, the other holding up, screen-fashion, a garnished pocket-handkerchief, and defending, as she best could, her carmined cheek from the perilous influences of the fire.

The Colonel, the poor devoted Colonel (who, it must be acknowledged en passant, looked rather foolish) seemed disposed for his part, to take shelter behind the ample columns of "The Times." A newspaper, however, especially turned upside-down, could form but an ineffectual defence against the artillery of glances such as Mrs. Sparrow's. The fortress was evidently on the point of being surrendered at, if not with discretion. It must have been the widow's evil genius that conducted Charles and Sophy to the room at this eventful crisis. She started when she saw them.

"Oh, there you are, you dear interesting pair!" she cried. "Just returned from your morning ramble, I suppose."

Sophy pointed to the window, against which the rain pattered with increasing fury.

“Oh, true-I forgot the rain," said Mrs. Sparrow; "but it's a delightful morning for your music. You'll have no tiresome visitors or interruptions-and there's a famous fire in the next room."

"I don't intend practising this morning," said Sophy, drily. "I'm regularly bored with music," observed Charles.

"A lover's quarrel!" thought the widow. "Dear me, he is very handsome, and I never minded it before. I'm sure I wish he were the uncle!" And she sighed, and glanced towards the arm-chair, where the Colonel (we blush to say it) was fast sinking into slumber.

"Come, come, Colonel," she cried, "it's too early for your nap; suppose we try a hit." And she laid her little hand upon his

shoulder.

"Where is the backgammon-box?" said Colonel Butt, rubbing his eyes.

Here, sir; here, sir," said his nephew. "Allow me, Mrs. Sparrow." And Charles arranged the tables with an assiduity that was truly edifying. "I don't see the dice, though," he said.

"God bless my soul!" exclaimed the Colonel.

"Where can they have got to?" said Mrs. Sparrow; and she fussed and fidgeted about the room. "Do you know, Sophy?" she enquired.

Sophy did not know-she seemed in a dry, disagreeable humour that morning, and sat motionless, with her hands crossed before her. Charles, on the contrary, was most alacritous, and overturned all the chairs and tables in the fervour of his search for the missing dice. "Perhaps Frank has taken them," he suggested, when he had knocked down a vase of flowers, and drenched a blue and silver purse, which poor Sophy had been making for him, and which, unluckily, lay upon the table. "I'm sure Frank has got them," he repeated.

"The disagreeable, troublesome boy!" said Mrs. Sparrow, "I hate boys."

"The young rogue !" said Colonel Butt, as he retreated from the clatter to his arm-chair. He was fast asleep again in five minutes. Sophy exerted herself so far as to ring the bell. "Call Master Frank," she said, with infinite majesty, to the servant.

Frank stoutly denied the imputation of the dice. His private opinion was, that Mrs. Sparrow had them in her pocket.

"We must give them up," Charles said to Mrs. Sparrow; "I have searched every nook and corner of the room."

"How kind you are, dear Mr. Herbert! how much trouble you took!" said Mrs. Sparrow.

"And there is my uncle off again, you see," rejoined Charles. ""Twould be ten thousand pities to disturb him. Let him sleep on; and suppose we have a little music to enliven us."

"I thought you were tired of music - regularly bored?" said Mrs. Sparrow.

"Not with your's-oh, no, not with your's," responded Charles, with an emphasis more flattering to Mrs. Sparrow than to Sophy. The widow looked at Charles Herbert, and thought him handsomer than ever. She looked at the Colonel, and thought-no matter what. "Well," she said, "I don't much care if we do try some of those new songs." And she placed her arm within that of Charles Herbert. "Sophy," my love," she continued, looking back towards her with matchless effrontery, "you will have the goodness to call me when the Colonel wakens."

Sophy made no reply, and the folding-doors (for the receptionrooms at Tufton Lodge communicated one with another) closed on the retreating pair.

"What shall I sing for you, Mr. Herbert ?" said the lady, with a bewitching smile, as she seated herself at the piano.

"Let the choice be your's, Mrs. Sparrow. I chose once, madly,

rashly," replied Charles, with a furious sigh.

"Not irrevocably, let us hope," said the widow-and her heart pal

pitated. "Bel idol mio," she began, "caro oggetto," and she thundered through an Italian bravura. The house rang with her melody. "Entrancing!" exclaimed Charles.

"You don't really think so?"

"By my soul I do; I never heard such execution." (Murder had been the fitter word.) But do you never try the ballad? the simple ballad?"

"I detest Scotch ballads," said Mrs. Sparrow, with a little toss of the head. "They don't suit me; but there are those sweet things of -'s, I do so dote on them. I quite love his songs."

"Try one," said Charles.

She tried several. The admiration they elicited was rapturous. 'Twas amazing the expression which Mrs. Sparrow threw into them, and one especially had something in it so tender and so touching, that Charles, who stood behind the songstress, was fain to have recourse to his pocket-handkerchief. He drew it forth, as was his custom, with a flourish, when some hard substance fell from its folds at Mrs. Sparrow's feet, and rattled on the ground. She looked down-it was the lost dice. "Forgive the subterfuge," Charles cried imploringly.

He seized her hand-she smiled upon him-he kissed it. "For shame, for shame, Mr. Herbert! I'll betray you."

The door opened. "Luncheon is on the table," said the fat butler. The afternoon did not clear up; Sophy was not inclined for music -Charles and Mrs. Sparrow were; perhaps Sophy had had enough through the folding doors. Certain it is, the Colonel, in spite of the miraculous recovery of the dice, did without his backgammon for that evening, and many a succeeding one.

And why?-because Charles wooed the widow, and his uncle, the most amiable but the most punctilious of old gentlemen, drew back. "He would not, for the world, have interfered with Charlie. He was sorry for Miss Tufton; she was a pretty little girl, and, probably, would break her heart at first, but she'd soon get over it and marry some one else, and she should not want, as far as he (the Colonel) was concerned a handsome wedding-gift-a thousand pounds, perhaps, or a nice dressing-box. And as to Charlie-boys will be boys; they never knew their own minds-no, no more than women."

Master Frank Tufton told his sister Di. in confidence "that, if it were not for the fellow's cloth, he'd call him out." Di, a sharp little maiden of fifteen, thought "Sophy had no spirit."

Her mother thought she was a suffering saint, so did the housemaid. Miss Sophia herself" bore up wonderfully," as the phrase goes; her spirits were marvellous. Perhaps, after the approved manner of poetical souls, she "laughed that she might not weep," since the only symptom she exhibited of a "crushed or broken heart," was a tendency towards hysteria.

Affairs stood thus, when, one afternoon (the ladies had retired to dress for dinner) Colonel Butt said to his nephew,

Charlie, I don't feel very well."

Sorry to hear it, uncle."

"I shall go to town for a week or so," said the Colonel. "I've ordered horses in the morning-don't say anything about it."

"Not a word," replied Charles. "We can start before any one is up. Smith will get us some breakfast."

"You are not going with me, surely?" the Colonel asked, in some

amazement.

"To be sure I am.

Tufton says so."

I must see after the settlements myself. Mr.

"Mr. Tufton! What has he to say to them?"

"Why," replied Charles, "he is naturally interested, in the arrangements to be made for his daughter's future provision, if— if, sir, she should have the misfortune to survive me."

"I protest, Charlie, I don't understand you. In fact, I conceived your engagement with Miss Tufton at an end. I-I-I imagined you engaged to that very agreeable little woman, Mrs. Sparrow.' "Never dreamed of such a thing, sir," said Charles.

"In the name of Heaven, then," said the bewildered Colonel, "what have you been driving at?"

"I'll tell you to-morrow, on the journey. I'll explain all; I have n't time now there is the second dressing bell for dinner." I shall be late And Charles was hurrying from the room, when his uncle exclaimed in terror

66

"Stop! stop! Don't leave me in suspense. Can she bring a breach of promise against you, my dear boy?" Tell me one thing,No, no," said Charles eagerly. "I took good care of that." That night the widow sang and smiled her best, her sweetest. Charles was more attentive, more enamoured than ever. To be sure, he whispered for a long time with Sophy in the corner, but then that was done to save appearances, and because Mr. and Mrs. Tufton were sitting near them. The morning came, and Mrs. Sparrow, who had lingered long over her looking-glass, and a new cap, descended rather later than her wont to breakfast.

"I declare I'm not the last," she said, looking round the room, while Mr. Tufton placed some tongue and chicken on her plate. "Why, the Colonel and Mr. Herbert are not here!"

"The fact is," said Mr. Tufton, "Colonel Butt and his nephew are gone to town, to arrange some necessary preliminaries for my daughter's marriage with Mr. Herbert, which is to take place on the 30th."

Mrs. Sparrow neither shrieked, nor wept, nor fainted, for, as we said before, her little body contained a great soul. She took another slice of tongue, finished her breakfast, retreated to her room, called for her trunk, packed up all her own things, and a good many of Sophy's, and then sat down to indite the following epistle to "Mrs. Sparrow, senior, Montpelier Parade, Cheltenham :"

"MY DEAR MAMMA SPARROW

"(For so I must ever call you), I hasten to congratulate you on your legacy. Long, long may you live to enjoy it! It is charming to think of your being so delightfully settled at Cheltenham, the very place for the dear girls! I have been far from comfortable lately; indeed I never am when separated from you. My heart still fondly turns to the family of my poor Sparrow. Twice within the last week have I been solicited to change that name, but I could not, I would not part with it. I have refused Lieutenant-Colonel Butt of the 21st, and I think, by so doing, have hurt the feelings of my kind friends here. Under these circumstances, I am sure you will think it my duty, as it is my inclination, to hasten to you. I hope to arrive in Cheltenby the seven o'clock train. Ever your own, "LUCY SPARrow.

"P.S.-I understand there is to be a fancy ball at the Queen's on the 30th. I hope the dear girls have secured tickets. Tell dear Ju. I am delighted to hear her Captain has arrived in Cheltenham. I quite long to be introduced to him."

THE CELLINI CUP.

BY SAMUEL JAMES ARNOLD.

MANY years have lapsed into the past, and floated down the old stream of time, since events occurred, the outlines of which made a strong impression on my memory, and the details are at this time recalled by circumstances of no ordinary interest or occurrence.

At the time I refer to, Old Bond Street was the fashionable lounge of Westminster, and thither the aspiring young tradesman, who could command the means, resorted also, not merely to lounge over his counter, it may be presumed, but to attract other loungers to visit it. Amongst these a new, and newly decorated, shop excited much attention. It was a silversmith's; and, though the modern display of splendid plate glass, however appropriate, was then unknown, there was a sort of elegance and style in the display exhibited within the well-guarded panes which could not fail to invite the notice of those accustomed to distinguish between elegant arrangement and the mere conglomeration of a load of valuable materials. The door was superscribed with a name which, from its peculiarity and reference to the tenant's calling, rendered it extremely obnoxious to remark; it ran thus :

SILVERTHONG-Silversmith, &c.

Behind the counter of this shop was observed a young man of a somewhat attractive, because interesting, appearance. He had no striking personal advantage that would have excited attention, being merely a good-looking man; but there was an expression of melancholy on his pale countenance which to many, even in the busy world of the metropolis, rendered him an object of notice, if not of actual interest. To such, but more especially to his immediate neighbours, it was known, soon after he established himself in that quarter, that his family consisted of six individuals only, unless we include a rather remarkable dog, who was securely chained at the back of the shop to a strong staple in the wall, who was understood to be savagely fierce, and nightly let loose in the lower floor as a watch and guard of the premises. The bipeds, who ought in courtesy to have been mentioned in the first place, were young Silverthong; a fair and extremely elegant girl, his sister, who appeared some few years younger than himself, and who was very rarely seen at all; a fat, healthy-looking servant-wench, who appeared to be the maidof-all-work in the house; a pretty, modest-looking girl, who seemed to be attendant on the mistress; a stout and determined-looking person, who, though apparently of an equivocal character in the family, was obviously the occasional shopman and assistant; and a sturdy lad, who performed the duties of porter and footman to the establishment.

The young lady was announced as the sister of the silversmith, and of course at first universally supposed to be such, until, shortly after their settlement, a maiden-perhaps it would be more safe to say a single lady-who occupied the second floor directly facing his residence, having more curiosity than good-breeding, indulged a propensity to espionage, and with less discretion than malignity, began to whisper the fact that, on more than one occasion, with the aid of an opera-glass, she had discovered them in the drawing-room embracing each other with