"a viper, battening to fatness on the ruins of an ancient Church," in his speech that evening. So far had rancour spread for the debate on Reform had been carried on in our slow-thinking land for many years; and, while the victory of the Reformers was not far off, the feelings of the opponents of Reform had become more and more intense.

"Yes," said Mr Scorem, jotting down the choice epithets, "the Russells still live at Woburn Abbey. I think I have fitted the cap there. Hallo! Come in."

As the person did not come in, Mr Scorem gathered up the few sheets of blue wove scribbling paper, pocketed a half-eaten apple, and opened the door.

Mr Checketts, out of breath, and somewhat confused, stood outside the door.

"Does Mr Edgar Wade live here?"

The barrister's clerk, with his mouth partially engaged with an apple, tapped with a roller on the name of his master duly painted up on the door.

"Ah! yes," said Checketts, confusedly. "Can I see him?" "He is engaged with a lady."

"I want to see him particular and immediate," urged Checketts, regardless of adverbs.

"What name, sir?" asked Mr Scorem, taking out a slip of blue paper.

"Checketts. Say I come from the Earl of Chesterton."

The name was one of might to the conservative and aristocratic Scorem. He took a fresh piece of paper, and wrote, "Checketts, Esq., from the Right Honourable the Earl of Chesterton." Then begging the messenger to be seated in his apple-scented office, he apologised for the delay; and gave Checketts shortly to understand that Mr Wade's time was very precious indeed, and in some mysterious manner hinted. that he was about to do the Earl a personal favour in daring to break in upon his master's privacy. Then, with an important knock, he gave notice of his approach; and entering in a business-like way, as if he had not a moment to spare, he marched up to his master's desk, and laid the paper upon it.

Stay a moment, Mr Scorem," said Edgar Wade.

For the faithful clerk, with his eyes fixed upon the ground,

had again reached the door, as if his life depended on his finishing his business-say of copying out a most important brief, in which Mr Wade was coupled as leading junior with the Solicitor-General.

“What is this messenger?"

"A kind of a gentleman, sir. Wants to see you, he says, 'immediate and particular.'"

The lady arose at this. She was admirably dressed, as to neatness and selection of colour-evidently a French lady; indeed, no other than the companion of Mdlle. Natalie Fifine.

"I shall be disengaged in one moment. Pray sit down, madame. Tell the gentleman I will see him shortly."

Mr Checketts heard the words, and repressed his impatience. Perhaps time never appears longer than when one is waiting at the office of a lawyer, or in the anteroom of a fashionable doctor. Checketts' state was not to be envied. His love for Lord Wimpole was rude and rough possibly, but very great.. His belief in the power of the great house he served-which had grown with his growth, and strengthened with his strength-had been put to a severe test. The entrance of the police into Chesterton House was to him a perfectly revolutionary proceeding; and the faithful Cléry, valet to Louis the Sixteenth, could not have been more rudely shocked by the entry of the rough canaille of Paris into the King's chamber than was Checketts. For the servants and underlings of great people feel their position even more than the great ones themselves; and the loyal Checketts had an esprit de corps in regard to his " family," as warm as any soldier in the most crack regiment of his Majesty's army. Down in the steward's room, the movements of " our family" were debated in a kind of unprinted "Court Circular," of which Mr Roskell was the chief editor.

While Checketts fidgeted, and Mr Scorem, admiring the coolness of his master, went on writing out his speech with an air and business manner that fully persuaded his companion that he was drawing out an important brief, Mr Wade coolly finished his discourse.

He had on his table a beautiful bouquet of autumnal roses and other flowers, which scented the dull room; and as he

softly talked, the plash of the little fountain, which spouted upwards from a single three-quarter-inch pipe, in a most inartistic and artless manner, could be heard at intervals; drowned sometimes by the hurry of steps in the paved court below, or borne away from them by a gust of wind. It was not an unpleasant room for a student. Books duly bound in law-calf lined one side of it; a table, covered with briefs, was on the other; and a fire burnt cheerfully in the high-cheeked, tall old grate, which reached half up the chimney, and came down between its broad hobs like the letter V.

Outside, in the waiting-room, poor Checketts, fretting himself for his master, experienced some slight foretaste of the law's delay. He, too, could hear the fountain, the regular rise and fall of Mr Wade's soft and sonorous voice, the racing of Mr Scorem's pen upon his blue-lined brief paper, and the hurry of the feet below. A quarter of an hour seemed an age to him to him whose master's name had hitherto been a passport for immediate attention.

At length Edgar Wade stopped short, and drew to an end. All Mdlle. Fifine desired was, that he should take some tickets for her night. The young lady, who afterwards created so great a sensation, was not then of importance enough to have a benefit for herself; and was-after the manner of our friends the actors and actresses of to-day-anxious to get the house packed with her partizans. And although Mr Wade, in his blind passion, had been perfectly prodigal of the presents he had made her, Fifine-with the genius the ladies of her class and nation have for saving money-looked as sharply after the shillings as she did after the fifty-pound notes. The elephant, in the simile which has been used a few times before this, is said to be able to pick up a pin and to rend an oak. Fifine had the same wide range in picking up money: she would stoop for a farthing, and scramble for a sovereign; and the same quality may have been observed in all who love money for the money's sake. And, after all, was Fifine to be blamed? She expatriated herself from beautiful France, from her blue skies, from her gay-and, at that time, somewhat redolentcity; and took up her temporary residence amongst us cold islanders, for the purpose of making money. Why should an

actress be less active, wary, and capable of attending to her business than a merchant, a grocer, or any other man who devotes himself to the one purpose? Why should we publish laudatory notices of the industry and money-making capacity of a merchant or a tallow-chandler, and not praise the same qualities in the little merchant of roulades and glissades, who sold her glances, smiles, wiles, dances, activity, and high and low notes, for as much money as she could get ?

"You will tell Mademoiselle, then, that I will be sure to be there. I have the two stall tickets, and I am provided with a bouquet. Here is the money."

Edgar Wade packed the sovereigns in a neat envelope of his own making, and handed it to the dame de compagnie, who was kept purposely by Fifine to play propriety, and to be as a watchful dragon over those golden charms of hers.

"Be sure to come!" Edgar Wade's infatuation was so great, that he would have gone to Nova Zembla for her. Men of mature age, who have never loved before, love strongly indeed; and young ladies of very tender years universally show a wise and prescient intelligence in preferring the love of a man of thirty, or thereabouts, to a boy's love. Fifine was herself a female philosopher in these matters, and had quite a tendresse for somewhat advanced admirers.

"They were," she said, "so generous. Boys, as a rule, were so selfish."

As the lady prepared, with the most polite courtesy, to depart, Mr Wade, who had risen, said, with what the French call empressement

“You will be sure and tell Mdlle. Natalie that, in coming to her benefit, I am paying her a compliment I would not pay any other artist in the world.”

The lady bowed.

"And I may tell you," continued the barrister, "that my mother, Mrs Wade "-here he passed his hands over his weary, sunken eyes—“is, and has been now for some time, very ill, and that properly I should be with her during the night at least, since business detains me during the day; but, nevertheless, assure Nathalie that I will not fail. I shall be sure to be there, to cast these flowers at her feet."

"Cast these flowers at her feet!" Yes, those were the words that Mr Checketts heard from the opening door as the veiled lady passed out. The faithful valet was in a half-dreamy state from having had so long to wait, from the room redolent of apples, the monotonous plash of the fountain, and the halfawakened, slow, dull atmosphere of law which had fallen for some hundreds of years upon the Temple and its buildings-an atmosphere which lies like a thick fog upon our venerable laws and ever-to-be-venerated law-makers.

"Cast flowers at her feet!" murmured Scorem, as he noted down the phrase to be used before the assembled Cogers, or Lumber Troopers, as a pretty figure in connection with the Majesty of Britannia, the Queen of the Seas, and the Leader of Order and Civilisation.

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Casting flowers at her feet!" thought Checketts, in his dreamy state. "Why, he is talking poetry and play-making, not law. And my dear master in prison, and the old Earl in a fit, and old Gurgles-God bless him!-beside himself, and swearin', quite forgettin' the 'Gorspel Mag.' Half of us mad, and this cool fellow talking like that. Dash it! there's always a woman at the bottom of it."

The door shut, and a little bell was heard to ring.

"Now, Checketts, Esquire," said Scorem, jumping off his stool and into his business way always kept for clients-"it's your turn next, sir! Pray walk in, sir!"

CHAPTER XXV.

MY DEAR GOOD MASTER, I WOULD PLEAD HIS CAUSE.” MR CHECKETTS entered Edgar's room, still eagerly bent upon his master's business, but somewhat toned down by waiting and reflecting in the outer office; for even the chambers of counsel learned in the law have that effect upon the uncultured laity who approach the temples of Themis, as, heretofore, the strongholds of the priesthood of the Eleusinian mysteries had upon the strangers who came near them.

Mr Checketts' ideas concerning law were few, and were not