graphed instead of writing more fully, when that good lady entered the room in full war paint and feathers, looking daggers. Lady Hornbury saw that there was going to be a fight, and was determined that she would not be the last to begin it. The conversation was carried on in French, which was greatly to Madame d'Aurilliac's advantage. But then Lady Hornbury had a great advantage in not understanding the most stinging of Madame's points, and so preserving a coolness which deserted that lady at one period of the conversation.

"How do you do, madame, and how is my daughter Edith? May I ask the reason of this mysterious telegram, and whether my daughter is ill?"

"I am not in the least degree aware of the state of your daughter's health, madame.'

"Would you be kind enough to explain yourself, madame?"

"Certainly. Your daughter left here five days ago."

Though Madame d'Aurilliac said this while she was looking straight into the eyes of Lady Hornbury, the Englishwoman never flinched or changed colour. Her mouth was as dry as dust, and her heart going wildly, but she never moved a muscle before the Frenchwoman. "Not before her," she thought, "not before that woman.

said Lady Hornbury.

"Into Burgundy."

"With your leave, madame?"

I

"No, madame, without my knowledge. I have nourished a viper in my bosom which was weak enough not to expel."

"If you allude to my daughter as a viper, madame, you forget yourself; and as for expelling her, she seems to have expelled herself. Are any further explanations convenient?"

"I have been most grossly deceived, yet I have borne everything. Madame, when I took your daughter into my house, did you say a word about the clandestine correspondence with Holmsdale?"

"Certainly not," said Lady Hornbury. "It was no business of yours: and what you choose to call a clandestine correspondence was limited to a single letter from her, in which she forbade Mr. Holmsdale to speak to her." "Madame, her late maid tells quite another story," said Madame d'Aurilliac.

"If madame chooses to believe the word of a discharged and most unprincipled servant in preference to mine, I can only pity madame: my daughter is incapable of a mean or underhanded action."

"I think that you will change your opinion of Madame Rocroy directly," said Madame d'Aurilliac.

"Madame Rocroy? I never heard of the woman," said Lady Hornbury.

"Your daughter Edith is now Madame Rocroy," said Madame d'Aurilliac. "She was

ask you civilly to give me an account of this matter from beginning to end, first requesting you to give me your honour as a D'Aurilliac that my daughter was married as you say."

"Madame de Rocroy," said Madame d'Aurilliac, "has made a marriage which I should have recommended myself had it been sanctioned by your ladyship. M. de Rocroy is a gentleman in every way worthy of the best woman in France, and of fortune, not large, but good. He is a gentleman high in favour with his majesty Henri V., as these jewels will show. It would seem that his majesty condescended to take interest in the love affairs of M. de Rocroy, and knew what was going on, for these jewels have arrived only to-day from Frohsdorf as a bridal present for Madame Rocroy. Here are the jewels, my lady; perhaps you will take charge of them."

"Thank you," said Lady Hornbury, coolly. "I may as well take them until my daughter arrives in England: they are very fine jewels; indeed, I think that I will wear them myself until my daughter, Madame - what name did you say?"

"Rocroy.

"Ah! Rocroy claims them. And now, my dear creature, how did all this come about? I am really dying to know."

"Insular wretch!" thought Madame d'Aurilliac; "she cares nothing for her daughter."

There was a wild, nearly bursting heart behind Lady Hornbury's broad bosom which told another tale though; and one sentence

was ringing in the ear of her mind continually "It will kill John; it will kill John:" but she faced the Frenchwoman as though she had no fox under her tunic.

"In consequence of your directions with regard to the visits of Lord Lumberton as the fiancé of Miss Hornbury-"

"None such were given," said Lady Hornbury, interrupting.

"I beg madame's pardon. Here is madame's letter, in which you told me that his visits were a family affair."

"I wish I had written in French," said Lady Hornbury.

"I wish you had, madame. I suppose that with that letter in my hand I may be excused from blame."

"Go on with your tale, and we will talk about blame afterwards," said Lady Hornbury, who felt a trifle guilty, though she would have died sooner than show it.

"In consequence of that letter I admitted Lord Lumberton's visits; nay, after I had discovered the affair Holmsdale, I encouraged them."

Lady Hornbury nodded, and sneezed in the most unconcerned manner, and said, "Go on, madame, for you begin to interest me."

"I encouraged his visits, knowing what I knew, and at last he proposed to her. She refused him with scorn, and he told me of it. I went to her and told her that in consequence of the affair Holmsdale she was destined to marry that young man by her parent's orders." "Oh, you told her that, did you, madame?" said Lady Hornbury.

"Yes, madame; I considered that I was acting under your instructions, and I told her that. I told her that she must give Lord Lumberton a favourable answer in five days. On the second day after that she was gone, and at night the young Comte de Millefleurs came and told me all that had happened: he had acted as groomsman, and his sister as bridesmaid."

"How very nice of them," said Lady Hornbury. "You have not got such a thing as a hair-pin, have you, countess? for I slept in the train last night, and my hair is coming down. Now about this young Millefleurs. He is quite respectable?"

"He is gentleman-in-waiting to his majesty Henri V."

"Ah! we call him Comte de Chambord; I respect your prejudices; he will claim his title as King of France some day, and I wish he may get it." (This vulgarism was utterly lost on Madame d'Aurilliac.) 'Well, madame, if you

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will send me a note of my daughter's expenses here to my hotel to-night I will discharge it. May I ask, had you any suspicions of the attentions of M. de Rocroy towards my daughter?" 'Madame's memory is short. I thought that his attentions were directed to your daughter's maid, and so I discharged her; she was only the go-between subsidized by Rocroy."

"Ah! I see," said Lady Hornbury. "Well, madame, I suppose that neither of us has much cause to talk about this matter. I do not want to talk about it, and I should think you did not either. You had better not. If you hold your tongue I will hold mine; if you speak I will ruin you: you depend on your pension; and affairs of this kind, so grossly misconducted as this has been by you, would ruin a dozen pensions."

So Lady Hornbury got into her fiacre and went to the Hôtel Meurice after her great victory. Madame d'Aurilliac would have given a year's income had she seen her in her bedroom, alone with her maid, an old friend, who had been her nurse in times gone by.

“Pinner,” said Lady Hornbury, throwing herself in a chair, "I have borne up before that woman, but I am going to die."

"What is the matter, my lady?" said the maid, kneeling before her. And oh, my

"I never can face Sir John. Edith! my Edith! dearer than ever, why could you not have trusted your mother?"

"Is Miss Edith dead?" asked the frightened

maid.

'No, Pinner; but she has married a Frenchman, and deceived us all. Oh, Madame d'Aurilliac, I will remember you!"

Pinner got her mistress to bed as soon as possible. Lady Hornbury wrote a letter to her daughter, poste restante, Dijon, full of tenderness and kindness, only regretting that Edith had not confided in her, and putting her entirely in the right about Lord Lumberton's attentions. "I will not conceal from you the fact, my darling, that we should have liked you to marry Lord Lumberton, but that old idiot, Madame d'Aurilliac, mistook everything. As for this Rocroy of yours, give him a box on the ears for me, and tell him that I will give him another when I meet him."

That was the way that Lady Hornbury got out of the difficulty: was she a wise woman, or was she not? I think that she was wise. She said to Pinner before she cried herself to sleep, "She shall love me still, though that miserable old Frenchwoman made her distrust me. We must be off by the first train to Calais, and

I must break it to Sir John. That woman d'Aurilliac will send in her bill to-night. Wait up and pay it. It will be 10,000 francs, or thereabouts. Don't haggle; I'll give her her receipt some day."

Sir John slept over Mr. Compton's astonishing communication, and he came to this conclusion, that it was in all probability perfectly true.

In the first place, it was obvious that Compton believed it, and Compton was the first solicitor in London. It was also obvious that Watson believed it, and Watson was the last man in the world to take up a case unless he was as good as certain. Compton might still find something not known as yet, but it seemed highly improbable. Sir John quietly acquiesced in the matter as far as he was concerned: the worst thing was the breaking it to his wife. "How will she take it?" he repeated to himself a hundred times over. "There will be one explosion when I tell her the truth about Compton's story, and another when I order her to give up her fortune. I wonder how she will go through with it. Poor sweetheart, she has

never seen trouble yet."

Here she was, late the next day, fresh from Paris with a new bonnet and a frank smile. "Now, John," she said, "you may kiss me, but if you rumple my bonnet you rumple two pound four, and so I warn you. And how are you, my dear?"

"I am as well as ever I was, I think," said Sir John. "I am wonderfully well. But I will come up to your dressing-room while you change your dress for dinner, for I have some very heavy news to tell you."

"I suppose that you have heard about half the truth, John," she said. "Come up and tell your story, then I will tell mine. Any one to dinner?"

phantly, and plying her hair-brushes. "I knew it as soon as you spoke. Tell me all about it, and don't keep me waiting. I was certain it was that when you spoke."

Sir John sat down and told her the whole matter, as Compton had related it, from beginning to end.

"Well," she said, "surprises will never cease in the world. At all events, we have my fortune, and we can be very comfortable on that." 66 Mary," said Sir John.

"Yes, dear."

"If this man is proved to be my nephew, I shall owe him about £300,000."

"I am afraid so; but we never can pay it." "We can pay him your £15,000."

"If you think it necessary to your honour, of course I will obey you; but it leaves us penniless. I suppose that we ought to give it. I will tell you what I can do better than most women-I can give music lessons."

"You are not afraid of the future, then, without a penny?"

"Not in the least. I have got you, John, and it will go hard but what I will keep you. I am not afraid so long as you are with me." "Come here, you golden woman, and sit on my knee," said Sir John.

She came, and their cheeks were together, and her brown hair was mingling with his gray hair, and they sat in the silence of love. "Then you do not mind it?" he asked.

"I don't see that there is anything to mind in it," she said. "I like money and society more than most, but I love you better than all. We are not the first people who have lost their money, and we sha'n't be the last. I should have liked my fifteen thousand pounds for your sake, but it must go if it turns out that we have been living false lives."

"Edith could make everything straight for us," said Sir John.

"How?"

"The claimant is that young man Holmsdale who was in love with Edith. He will never move in the matter during my lifetime if Edith marries him. He says that he has won her love could the match be brought about. And, by the way, how is Edith, for I had forgotten to

"Now this is checkmate," said Lady Hornbury. "How is Edith? Why, Edith is as well as a bride can expect to be. Edith, living in that atmosphere of lies which every Frenchwoman carries about with her, has been frightened by old D'Aurilliac into running away with a French count. Edith is now Madame de Rocroy."

"Is he a gentleman?" asked Sir John.

"Oh yes; a man about Frohsdorf. By-theby, here are the jewels which the Comte de Chambord sent her."

"She might have done worse," said Sir John. "Has he money?"

"He has enough," said Lady Hornbury.

'Well, then, under the circumstances, we really must not grumble," said Sir John. "Now come, let us go down and meet old Compton."

Old Compton was waiting for them, and dinner was waiting for all three of them; but old Compton wanted a few words on business before they went into the dining-room.

"Sir John," he said, "you have, I suppose, put her ladyship in possession of the facts?" "I have," said Sir John.

"My lady," said Mr. Compton, "I have been at work ever since I spoke to Sir John, and I have to tell your ladyship that we have not a leg to stand on; those Jesuits are good men of business.'

"Have the goodness to bring me a glass of wine," said old Compton, "I am faint.'

Lady Hornbury rang the bell violently, and, not waiting for the footman, hurried Mr. Compton and Sir John into the dining-room, where she poured out a glass of wine.

"Don't you see what you have done?" said Mr. Compton, after he had drunk his wine. "Not in the least," said Lady Hornbury. "Don't you see that your daughter has married Holmsdale, the very man we wanted her to marry? This Holmsdale, whom I believe to be your nephew, always has taken the title of Rocroy in France. Your daughter has married her cousin, and we are uncommonly well out of it. Sir John, do you forget everything when you forget that the family name of the De Touls was Rocroy?"

"I had completely forgotten it," said Sir John. And so they went to dinner and discussed matters very quietly.

"It is perfectly plain to me now that we have to thank the folly and stupidity of the Comtesse d'Aurilliac for this," said Lady Hornbury. "She put things in a false light to Edith, and Edith was foolish enough to believe that we should force her into a marriage with Lumberton. Well now, what do you say about my going to Dijon and taking Mr. Compton?"

"Or what do you say to my going to Dijon and taking Lady Hornbury?" said Mr. Compton.

"Well, you must fight it out on the way as to who is the commander-in-chief," said Sir John, "but you had better both go. Compton, you have full power to act for me with this man. I feel sure that I shall like him. Mary, my love, what do you say to dropping the title, and becoming Mrs. Hornbury?"

"I think on the whole that it would be the best thing to do for Edith's sake. The world will say some hard things of us-will say, for example, that we discovered the justice of the claim, and sacrificed our daughter to save ourselves, but we, knowing otherwise, can laugh at that. However, nothing can be done until I have taken Mr. Compton to Dijon."

Edith had written a letter to her mother, which had crossed that lady's; she was therefore profoundly astonished, as she was sitting alone deeply anxious, to see her mother come sailing into the room, and saying, "My sweet Edith, get me some tea. I am as tired as if I had walked all the way. Where is your cousin?" "My cousin, mamma?"

"I should say your husband. Don't you know that you have married your cousin, and are Lady Hornbury? Come here and kiss me, you curious child. So he has never told you."

Meanwhile Mr. Compton and Edith's husband had been in conversation. At first that young gentleman refused emphatically to touch the estates, titles, or anything else, save a decent allowance from Sir John. The most that he could be got to do was this: he was to be received as a nephew of Sir John's and heir to the baronetcy at Sir John's death, drawing such money as should be decided on from the estates. The marriage was to be immediately announced, and Sir John was at once to be told to do so.

"Now, my dear sir, I want to ask you to do a certain thing very much."

"I will do it," said Richard Hornbury. "Go at once, to-morrow, to Frohsdorf, and take your wife with you. You are pretty sur●

"I see," said the bridegroom, laughing.

People in London have got over the matter very easily. Sir John appeared in the Park on his famous horse, and told everybody his own version of the affair. His daughter Edith had married her cousin Dick abroad, and her mother had gone over to see her. The bride and bridegroom were staying with the Comte de Chambord at Frohsdorf: the jewels which the bride had received from the legitimist aristocracy were very handsome, monstrous handsome: the girl had won everybody's heart over there.

The world was a little puzzled about this new nephew of Sir John's, and also rather amazed at the suddenness of the marriage; but there came half a dozen other things to wonder about, and so the postponement of Lady Hornbury's hall was soon forgotten.

TO A CHILD.

Whose imp art thou, with dimpled cheek,
And curly pate, and merry eye,
And arm and shoulder round and sleek,
And soft and fair?-thou urchin sly!

What boots it who with sweet caresses First called thee his,- —or squire or hind? Since thou in every wight that passes

Dost now a friendly playmate find.

Thy downcast glances, grave, but cunning,
As fringed eyelids rise and fall;
Thy shyness, swiftly from me running,
Is infantine coquetry all.

But far a-field thou hast not flown;

Well; let it be !-through weal and woe,
Thou know'st not now thy future range;
Life is a motley shifting show,
And thou a thing of hope and change!
JOANNA BAILLIE

WIND AND STARS.

The stars are shining fixed and bright,
I stand upon the windy height,
Alone with sorrow and the night.

O stars so high, from earth apart,
Ye are the hopes that stirred my heart;
O wind, its beating wings thou art.

The wind may rave, the starry spheres
Unheeding shine, nor moved by fears
Nor shaken into trembling tears.

O hush, wild heart, regarded not;
Sink to the level of thy lot,
In pity sink, and be forgot.

ISA CRAIG-KNOX.

A BLIND BOY'S SONG.1

Oh! tell me the form of the soft summer air,
That tosses so gently the curls of my hair!
It breathes on my lip, and it fans my warm cheek,
Yet gives me no answer, tho' often I speak.
I feel it play o'er me refreshing and kind,
Yet I cannot touch it-I'm blind! oh! I'm blind!

spoken,

I feel thee pulling at my gown,

Of right good-will thy simple token.

And thou must laugh and wrestle too, A mimic warfare with me waging, To make, as wily lovers do,

Thy after-kindness more engaging.

The wilding rose, sweet as thyself,
And new-cropt daisies are thy treasure:
I'd gladly part with worldly pelf

To taste again thy youthful pleasure.

But yet, for all thy merry look,

Thy frisks and wiles, the time is coming When thou shalt sit in cheerless nook, The weary spell or hornbook thumbing.

ing strain,

Till pleasure, till pleasure is turning to pain. What brightness of hue is with music combined? Will any one tell me? I'm blind! oh! I'm blind!

The perfumes of flowers that are hovering nigh, What are they? On what kind of wings do they fly?

Are not they sweet angels, who come to delight
A poor little boy, that knows not of sight?
The sun, moon, and stars are to me undefined,
Oh! tell me what light is: I'm blind! oh! I'm
blind!

HANNAH F. GOULD.

1 Appropriate and beautiful music, composed by W. R. Dempster for this song, is published by R. Cocks &. Co., London.