high clear voice, imaginarily burning, and as imaginarily being extinguished-with one of Mrs. Webster's best silver candlesticks lying dinted and doubled up at her feet, her joyous eyes seek her lover's face for applause; but as soon as they light on it, both her laughter and her screams together die. Unmindful of her assistants, she hurries back into the dining-room.

"You stopped much too soon," says Major Webster, reproachfully; "you ought to have gone on for a quarter of an hour longer."

"Is your dress damaged? Did any of the wax fall on it?" asks Scrope, eagerly, falling on his knees before her, and catching hold of the silk. His back is turned to the others, who have already fallen into fresh wranglings and janglings; nobody sees him; he stoops his head hurriedly, and brushes one of her smart lace-flounces with the silky gold of his moustache.

"What are you doing?" she cries, angrily, twitching it away from his clasp.

"I am playing a Dumb Scrambo of my own," he says, lifting his eyes with a defiant flash to hers. "Why do you stop me? It amuses me, and it does you no harm."

"I hate Dumb Scrambo!" she cries, passionately. "It is a vile game; why did you play at it?-who wanted you? There were plenty without you."

"I played," says the young man, raising himself from his kneeling posture, and growing rather white under these amenities, “because I have a benighted idea that when you go to other people's houses you should conform to their amusements, and not consult only your own, as some people do."

"Is that meant for a sneer at Paul?" asks Lenore, in a fury. "Do you think," continues the young man, incisively, "that I enjoyed crawling along a beeswaxed floor in my dress-clothes?" No-answer.

"Do you think that I enjoyed hauling about that Jack Pudding (with a glance at Major Webster's broad back)" for the amusement of half-a-dozen old women?"

"Of course you did, brusquely.

or you

would not have done it," answers Lenore,

"It, at least, had the good effect of rooting you out of your corner," says Scrope, with a bitter laugh. "Perhaps it was worth while breaking one's back, and spoiling the knees of one's trousers, to accomplish such a result."

"Why on earth could not you leave us there in peace ?" cries the girl, angrily." You might have sat in a corner till the crack of doom, and I would not have put out a finger to move you."

"You are in disgrace," says the young man, speaking in a low voice, but with an eager flush; "I know it-so do you! we saw it in

his face-in disgrace, because I poured an imaginary bucket of imaginary water over you! Such being the case, I wish you joy of your future life!"

*

WHAT JEMIMA SAYS.

We are in the omnibus, going home. There is not an earthly vehicle that makes a more deaving din than an omnibus-a sort of steam threshing-machine in one's head; yet we are all talking-at least not all-four of us-à qui mieux mieux.

"Very stingy with their champagne; did not half fill one's glass." "Very bad oyster-sauce!-something oily about it!"

"The fricandeau was good; I am always fond of a fricandeau." "I think that, considering they have a three hundred guinea chef, and three in the kitchen beside, they might give one better breadsauce."

"I am sure Major Webster has got a temper! I saw him scowling at one of the footmen at dinner."

These are some of the severe and spirited strictures that we are passing on the entertainment we have just quitted.

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"I almost wish that we had asked Mrs. Webster to wait for us in the cloak-room, at the ball on Friday night, so that we might all go into the room together," says Sylvia, with what I feel, though I cannot see, to be a simper. "Of course I am really quite an efficient chaperone, but people make such stupid mistakes! The man who took me into dinner asked Miss Webster whether I was out! Just fancy!"

"How differently people see things!" I say, with my usual malevolence. "The man who took me into dinner asked me which was the older, you or I?"

Meanwhile Lenore says little, and Paul nothing, though they are sitting side by side. As we clatter and rumble with redoubled noise through a village, a light from a window darts a ray into our darkness. I see that Lenore's face is turned towards him, and that the hand nearest him lies ungloved on her knee, as if wishing to be clasped by his. Under cover of the others' chatter, I listen treacherously to their whispered talk:

"Paul, are you dead?"

"Would you be less angry if I told you (stoop down your head) that I have been in Gehenna all the evening, and that I think him a greater bore than ever?"

The next lamp-post that we pass reveals the white hand nestling in its owner's.

CHAPTER V.

WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS.

"IF there is a thing in all this wide world that gives me the horrors," says Sylvia, with a little shudder, "it is mutton dressed lamb fashion. I know my temptation lies in quite the other direction, to make a grandmother of myself!"

This is at luncheon, on the day succeeding the Dumb Scrambo; the friendly criticisms on the entertainment and the entertainers are being renewed and carried on with a spirit hardly less piquant than the sorrel sauce that is flavouring the interlocutors' cutlets.

"Poor Harriet Webster! a white book-muslin frock-one can call it nothing else—and a pink sash, low, too, nowadays, when no one thinks of being décolleté except at a ball!"

"She only wanted a rattle, and to have her sleeves tied up with coral, to be the complete infant," says Lenore, laughing maliciously. "If she had thought of it, Mr. Scrope, you might have carried her in last night instead of her brother; she would have been several stone lighter."

"I really

"And the way she kept hoisting up those wretched little shoulders, too, to her ears," says Jemima, putting in her oar. trembled for the string of her tucker. I wonder her brother does not remonstrate!"

"Pooh!" cries Lenore, carelessly, "I do not suppose that he knows whether she has any shoulders or any tucker either-brothers never do!" A little pause while the first sharpness of hunger is appeased; then Lenore recommences: "What bushy black brows your lady had, Paul. Poor fellow! I did pity you; and they met so

amicably in a tuft on the top of her Roman nose."

"I did not think much of Miss Jemima's friend," says Scrope, laughing; "he looked as if he had been run up by contract-hands like feet, and feet like fire-shovels."

"And his wife?" says Jemima; "did you see her? No?-a little bunchy thing, who never says anything but 'Fancy!' and if you are very intimate with her, 'Just fancy!'"

"Men like her, I cannot imagine why," says Sylvia, languidly, "she has a way of looking down her nose."

"Paul, why don't you speak?" cries Lenore, with a pout; "we have all said something clever; it is quite your turn!"

"Is it?" says Paul, lazily. "Mine is a long time hatching; it will come presently; but, you see, you do not know any of my best friends; so it will lose all its point, I am afraid."

"I am sure we have not said anything that was not perfectly goodnatured," says Sylvia, with an air of injured innocence; "and as to that, I have no doubt we are quite quits; I dare say they have made quite as many comments on us-not that they can say we are décolleté as we have on them.”

A diversion is here effected by the depravity of Tommy, who, being dissatisfied with his dinner, insists on saying, "Thank God for my nasty pudding!" instead of the authorized form of thanksgiving. He is instantly degraded from his high chair, and borne off wriggling like an eel, and kicking the footman's shins.

"Let us go out," says Lenore, laying her hand on her lover's coat sleeves, as she passes out of the dining-room. "Let us go into the wood! I love a wood in winter! I love kicking the dead leaves! If you are good you shall kick them, too!" Five minutes later she has joined him as he stands in the wintry garden puffing at his pipe. "Wait a minute!" she cries, her eyes flashing gleefully; "look at the children going out walking; did you ever see any thing so becomfortered and be-gartered? I must run and knock their hats over their eyes!" She springs away from his side, and in two seconds is back again. "It is such fun!" she says, breathlessly; "it makes them hate one so!"

And now they are in the wood; above them the high brown boughs meet in wintry wedlock; each little fine twig, no longer hid by leafage, asserts itself, standing delicately out against the softlytravelling, sad-coloured clouds beyond. Underneath all the trees dead children lie heaped; there is no wind to stir them. There they lie! one can hardly tell one from another now-the horse-chestnut's broad fan from the beech's pointed oval-massed together in one bronze-coloured death. They are over Lenore's ankles as, with all the delight of a child, she ploughs through them, kicking them up, laughing, and insisting that her lover shall kick them too.

"What a good smell they have when one stirs them up," she cries, something half-pungent! Smell, Paul, smell!" Paul obeys, and stands docilely inhaling the autumnal odour. "And now," she says, clasping her two hands round his arm, leaning a very considerable weight upon him as they again pace slowly onwards, "talk a great deal. I seem hardly to have heard your real voice yet; yesterday was all church and plum-pudding and scolding, and to-day we have done nothing but dissect the Websters; talk! talk! talk!"

"How can I talk?" he says, laughing; "you will not let me get a word in edgeways."

"Tell me all about everything," she says, comprehensively. "Begin

at the beginning, like a story-at the very moment you stepped off the Dinan boat-letters go for nothing. Were you very sea-sick? I believe you were, though you would not own it."

Frightfully, since you insist upon it," replies Le Mesurier, with a mendacious smile. "I lay on deck on the small of my back, with a livid face, praying for shipwreck-that is the right feeling, is not it? —while, to add to my sufferings, everybody kept stumbling over my legs."

"And when you got home," continues the girl, eagerly, taking this statement for what it is worth, "were they all very glad to see you? Did they all rush out to the door to meet you?"

"The butler came out, I believe; I do not think that even he ran; certainly no one else did."

"And when they saw you" (speaking very rapidly), "how did they look? Did they look odd? What did they say to you?"

"Oh, I don't know; much the same as they always say-nothing different-why should they? they did not know anything then; they said, 'Oh, here you are!' or something equally brilliant; and my father said, 'For God's sake, do not touch me! I have got it in both hands.' He meant the gout."

"And then you kissed them all," says Lenore, a little envious at this part of the programme. "Do you kiss your father? Some

grown-up men do."

"Do they?" replies Paul, grimly. "How very unpleasant for both parties! No; I do not, certainly."

"And-and was there no one there besides just your own peoplejust your father and sisters?" asks Lenore, with wily suavity.

"My cousin, of course ?" (with a tone of airy nonchalance).

"And" (laughing not quite so easily as before)—" and what was she doing?"

"My dear soul" (with slight symptoms of impatience), "it is six months ago; how the mischief can I remember ?"-then, seeing her countenance fall a little-"stitching, I fancy; making a flannel petticoat for some old woman."

"Which she ostentatiously thrust into a cupboard the moment you appeared," says Lenore, sarcastically, turning down the little red corners of her mouth

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'Did good by stealth, and blushed to find it fame.""

Paul lets this thrust pass in silence.

"And did you bring me on the tapis that night, or did you keep me till next morning?" (looking anxiously up in his face).

"I kept you for several days," he answers, smiling-" very much against my will, I can tell you; but I knew that as long as IT remained in his hands, there was no use breaching the subject."

VOL XXXIV.