partial fair one? To soar aloft, false, flattered, and unscathed, rather than thus to fall, truehearted and alone.

Alas for Ada! that she was not one of these wiser sisters. Alas for her! that her cargo was heaped and stowed away by deck and hold, till the waters lipped the gunwale, that the eggs were crowding and hurtling in the narrow basket, and never a one left to tempt the bird back to her cold empty nest, when she had spread her wings and flown

away.

The dove fluttered home to her cage, and sat down to think, to brood over her coming happiness, and stifle the misgivings that would cast their shadows athwart the promise of the sunny future. On her table lay a letter addressed to her in the handwriting of an agent with whom she had not corresponded for years. In good truth, Ada's bankers sustained no heavy load of responsibility. Carelessly she opened the envelope, and its enclosure fell out upon the floor. As the sealed side turned uppermost, she perceived it was a ship letter; and concluding that it could have come from but one correspondent over the water, her eyes filled with tears of joy as she pressed it eagerly to her heart before tearing it open to devour the contents. Then she read on, word by word and line by line, to the very end. Here it is::

'DEAREST ADA,-You will, I fancy, be surprised to see my handwriting once more; and I hope you will forgive me any pain I may have caused you by one of those dodges that the pressure from without obliged me to practise, much against my will. I am an honest fellow enough, I believe, as times go; and had I not learned that you still bear my name, I would never have troubled you again, but kept dark on my own hook, and allowed you to believe that poor old Will had gone under once for all. Well, dear, the water has been over my head many a long day, but I've come up pretty dry notwithstanding. You know I always had a knack of getting afloat again after

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a capsize. Bad times I have had of it since I saw my own_name amongst the deaths in the Sydney papers; but it is a long lane that has no turning; and things have come round of late better than I had reason to expect. I shall have some queer stories to tell you when we meet for meet we shall, Ada, I am determined, and that before very long. I have purchased some lots up the country that answer considerably better than my first venture; and I am not one of those people who wish to go on buying experience all their lives. I shall hold on for a favourable time, and then realize. If the thing comes off as I expect, I shall land a pretty good stake, and come straight home. Will you take me back, Ada? and let bygones be bygones? I sometimes think you had a hardish time of it, my dear; but we have both of us seen a deal of rough usage since then; and I hope it will be different in future. I've had to work hard for my plunder; and they shan't skin me again, not if I know it. I sometimes think I'll be with you before the cuckoo begins to sing; and I feel somehow as if it would do me good to see Old England and your kind face once again. I've got your bracelet, Ada, still: I've stuck by it through many a rough job; but I never thought to see its owner again.

'I came through the Bush awhile ago with a chap that knew you, and had heard you sing. His name is Gordon, a likely lad enough, and one of the right sort, but uncommon sharp. However, he did me a good turn camping out one night; and I never forget either the man that puts me on, or the man that lets me in. He had a pal with him who beats me altogether: they call him Orme, a tip-top swell, and a face I remembered to have seen before in the old country. He's mad, I guess, for he never speaks to any one, and a man wouldn't give a hundred dollars to speak to him. He's got a cross game look about him, for as mild as he is. Poor chap, I think he's had bad news from England, for when I was bragging to him about going home,

he turned quite white, and trembled. He's not one of the chickenhearted ones neither. But this makes no odds to you or to me.

'Don't expect me, Ada, till you see me. You remember of old I never could bear to be tied to time. But be sure I shall come home before the fall, and that I am always

'Your very affectionate,
'WILLIAM LATIMER.

'Sydney, 18th.'

She had the courage of a lion, that gentle Ada. She read every word of her letter over again, examined the postmark, compared it with the date, folded it, locked it away in her desk, and then tottering across the room caught at the back of a chair to save herself from falling on the floor. As she did so she saw her own white face in the glass, and wondered vaguely whether those parted lips and dull protruding eyes could belong to Ada Latimer. It was no question now of vexation, or sorrow, or resistance no case of accepting or refusing the bitter draught, or disguising its taste, or otherwise making the best of it. Not so. The hammer had fallen. At one blow it had shivered the goblet into a thousand particles, and the liquid -good, bad, or indifferent had vanished soaking in the plain. Not a fragment nor a drop remained.

For a minute or so the feeling of suffocation, I mean the physical feeling, was unbearable. She strove to cry aloud, but nothing came of it save an inarticulate gasp. She put her hands to her throat, turning wildly round and round like a dumb animal caught in a noose. Then she sank upon her kneesher shoulders heaved, her bosom sobbed to bursting. With the first cry for mercy came the saving tears; and so the crisis of a lifetime was past.

I will leave her alone with her sorrow. There are griefs for which it is mockery to offer consolation. There are losses to which bereavement by death were comparatively a gain. So long as a single strand of rope holds, the human heart will cling to it, and trust in it, as

if it were an iron cable. So long as ever the past belongs to us there is a dry spot on which the dove can rest her foot. Alas! for her when she must flit aimlessly to and fro over the dark waters. Alas! when that which might have been is but a maddening impossibility-when that which has been is but a baseless and uncertain dream. Whilst memory remains we are not all alone. Far, far back in the gloomy perspective sits the immovable image, a long way off indeed, but yet existent; and its glance, cold and stony though it be, turned upon us still. Woe to the utter desolation that is fain to veil the statue of the goddess! Woe to the hand, cold and pitiless as the marble itself, that must needs draw the kerchief

O'er the eyes of Mnemosyne there.

CHAPTER XXXII.

EBB AND FLOW.

Bella Jones has had no pleasant winter. That young lady is beginning to find out that life is not all a journey down hill in the sunshine. On her, too, is breaking the chill suspicion that childhood, notwithstanding its little restraints and sorrows, may have been the best season, after all. That to be grownup,' means to be 'put to work,' to carry a certain burden, which must, moreover, be carried erect and with a bold front, which is also constantly increasing in sad disproportion to the strength that year by year fails ever such a little, and which no one seems inclined to help his brother wayfarer to bear more easily.

There's none will weep for thy distress, Though friends stand firm and true. For in the tangled wilderness

They bleed and battle too.

Bella, like many another warrior, takes her place in the combat with a confident face and a sinking heart.

She has much to contend with. The alderman, under the combined influence of gout and anxiety, has

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He

become testy and irritable. will not bear to be questioned about his affairs, nor listen for an instant to any of his daughter's schemes for retrenchment. At the same time he allows her, as he has always done, to take the entire management of his household. 'Nonsense, Bella,' is his invariable reply to her expostulations; girls can't be expected to understand these things. Never show your hand, my dear, whether you've four by honours or haven't a single trump. All you have got to mind is to return your partner's lead; so let me hear no more about it, but do as I bid you.'

She has, nevertheless, her own plans of economy and self-denial. Amongst other gloomy forebodings, she looks forward to the day when her father's servants must be dismissed, and when their present establishment must be reduced to the narrowest possible limits. In anticipation of this evil time, Bella thinks it well to go marketing regularly with Mrs. Garnish, thereby putting a considerable check on that confidential servant's expenditure, the while she herself gets a good many valuable lessons in the difficult art of making both ends meet. Mrs. Garnish, I need hardly observe, disapproves highly of this practice, but submits the more quietly that she has herself certain suspicions of the coming storm, and having already feathered her nest pretty handsomely, is quite prepared to leave the tree so soon as it ceases to shelter her from the wind. Three times a week Bella, in a plain straw hat and quiet gown, was used to accompany that domestic at an early hour to the shops of the different tradespeople, thereby largely reducing the amount of the weekly bills, and giving much dissatisfaction to all concerned.

Thus it fell out that on a certain bleak spring morning, of which mention has been already made, Miss Jones and her attendant, pervading the streets of that rural city which lies at the back of the Regent's-park, encountered, at the door of a baker's-shop, no less a person than Lord Holyhead; and

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his lordship, whose mind, though certainly not 'wax to receive,' was doubtless of the order which is 'marble to retain,' stopped to greet her with marked cordiality and delight. Holyhead had not forgotten the episode of the parrot, and never recurred to it without a pleasant recollection of the frank, warm-hearted girl who had tended him so gently, and bound up his wounds with such chirurgical skill.

He quite started with pleasure when he caught sight of her, and leaping from his horse, led the animal by the bridle while he accompanied Miss Jones along the footway, a proceeding which considerably discomfited Mrs. Garnish, but drew down marks of decided approval from a London urchin, who was watching his lordship's

movements.

'I have not set eyes on you for months,' said Holyhead, in his kindest tones. 'How lucky to come across you at an hour when I thought ladies were in their first sleep. Why, what an early bird you are, Miss Jones!'

6

'I am come out marketing,' she answered good-humouredly; perhaps you didn't know that was one of my accomplishments. I can buy beef and mutton by the pound, and can tell the weight of a chicken without asking for it to be put in the scales. I've made a capital bargain this morning. Would you like to see what I've got in the basket?'

Mrs. Garnish, who had her own ideas of good breeding, and who held the article abovementioned, turned on her young mistress a look of angry expostulation.

'I wish I might carry it for you,' said he, and take a lesson in so useful an art. But is this only a freak for once? or do you really go out every morning on these foraging expeditions?

If Lord Holyhead asked this invidious question with a view of facilitating future meetings like the present, he must have been a little disappointed by the grave unconscious tone of Bella's reply.

'Yes,' she said; 'and glad I am to be able to do so. I can be of

very little use to my father, I fear; but it is not my fault that I was born a woman. If I were a man I should be at some harder work than this. Oh, how I wish it was all so different!"

He saw she was uneasy in mind, and partly guessed the cause. He was better acquainted than she knew with her father's affairs, and indeed had his own share in some of the alderman's ventures. He talked on of indifferent subjects for a while, but showed no inclination to get into the saddle again, although they were now returning to the vicinity of Verbena Villa.

Bella had evidently something on her mind. Her manner was constrained, her replies absent and inconsequent. As she neared her home she seemed to nerve herself for an effort. At last she made a plunge, as it were, and got out what she had to say.

'Oh! Lord Holyhead,' stammered Bella, gaining confidence from the vicinity of the gardengate, 'I have never been able to thank you for your great kindness last year. I am afraid you must think me very ungrateful; but, indeed, I heard of it, and whenever I have seen you, I have always wanted to tell you how much I— how much we all-felt it. Somehow, I never could get it out till to-day. Thank you really. Goodbye.'

She was close to the gate now, and put out her hand, blushing bright scarlet. He pressed it very cordially, and wishing her 'Goodbye,' jumped on his horse, and was off; nor could Bella have adopted

a

more expeditious method of getting rid of her cavalier, Lord Holyhead being one of those gentlemen whose insuperable objection to being thanked is the less accountable that they are in the constant habit of perpetrating actions for which thanks can be their only payment.

He had ridden the same road once before with his bridle-hand neatly bound up in a silk handkerchief. It was some months ago, yet had he not forgotten how certain vague ideas crossed his mind

then, which bore reference to the villa, the parrot, and other possessions of Alderman Jones. The same current of thought, brighter, more engrossing, yet perhaps not quite so pleasant, took possession of him now. On some minds the force of contrast has a stronger effect than even the influence of association; and Lord Holyhead, as he rode soberly along at a foot's pace, with his rein dangling loose on the neck of his astonished hack, called up in his mind's-eye a picture to which Bella Jones, with her fresh morning colour and her quiet morning toilet, above all, with her frank simplicity and honest diffidence, was as different as light from darkness.

It was not so long since he had been sitting in a luxurious and beautiful little room, furnished with every appliance that could be thought of for comfort and amusement, rich in gaudy colours, and costly ornaments, which, though not invariably in the best taste, were of high price and indisputable beauty. Groups of choice little statuettes filled the corners, and prints of well-known artists, dramatic and otherwise, adorned the walls. Books, music, flowers, were scattered about the room, and a large pianoforte encumbered its somewhat contracted dimensions, a pianoforte over which Holyhead had ere this hung enraptured, drinking in its tones, as if such draughts were drained from a fountain always sweet, always inexhaustible. A blazing fire gave an air of home to all this brilliancy; and the out-of-doors view, not very engaging in cold spring weather, was shut out by pyramids of exotics, completely blocking up the windows.

Enters on this luxurious little scene a stout dark-browed lady, with her shining bands of hair pressed closely to her temples, and an ominous frown, harbinger of stormy weather, louring on her forehead. She has the sallow complexion and black piercing eyes of the South, also the sharp, shrill tones of the Italian voice, which although capable of being modu

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lated by art into the sweetest of music, commonly strikes harsh and disagreeable on the ear in ordinary conversation.

She flounces in, without taking notice of Holyhead, sweeps her hand over the keys of the instrument with practised skill, trills off a roulade that makes the window-glasses ring again, and sinking into an easy chair by the fire, puts her feet upon the fender, disclosing a creased stocking and a slipper down-at-heel, while she gives vent to a yawn of such capacious energy as betrays an amount of ennui by no means complimentary to her companion.

Holyhead looks as if he meditated departure, but did not exactly know how to set about it.

The lady stares at him contemptuously for a minute or so, pulls a bunch of keys and a letter out of her pocket, and flinging the latter in his lap, says in no mellifluous accent, Take it. Read me, then, that. What does that mean to say?'

Holyhead recognises the hand of a gentleman with whom he has already had no little correspondence; it is, indeed, from the manager of a great theatre, declining to make any advance on the liberal offer he has tendered the star. As his lordship, with her own consent, had previously closed the bargain for her on these very terms, he is not surprised that an adherence to the contract should be required, and he says as much, pretty decidedly.

Bah!' returns the lady, with an emphasis on the monosyllable that

an

Englishwoman could never effect; he seems to forget I make my own affair-who saved him last year from bankruptcy? who filled the house night after night, though Coronella sang false through a whole opera, and Tamboretto was as hoarse as a crow? Terms! I make my own terms. What does he mean by terms? Effectively, he is stupid, this man!'

'But my dear Signora,' interposed the nobleman, with more meekness than was his wont, 'I wrote to you in Italy, and you were quite satisfied with the agree

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ment. You yourself bade me accept it on your behalf; I am compromised in this matter as well as you. I think you ought to consider this. Fair play is a jewel!'

'What signifies that?' retorted the syren; I did not then know the offer that Garotte would make me from St. Petersburg, nor the share I might have had in La Scala, if I had not tied myself to this odious country. What a place! what people! what a climate! what infamous coffee! Enfin, I shall abandon the whole engagement and go back.'

Holyhead was inexpressibly provoked. There is scheming and there is intrigue behind the imitative scenes of a theatre as within the actual walls of a court. Who knows what amount of trouble, and civility, and subservience, foreign to his real nature, he had lavished to effect the arrangement which he now saw on the point of subversion? Bravoura entertained no mean opinion of her own powers, in fact, it was whispered that the celebrated singer considerably overrated her talents, and the manager was satisfied that he could have got sweeter notes for less money elsewhere. He was willing, however, to oblige Holyhead, nor was he averse to a name that still looked so attractive in the bills; accordingly he concluded a treaty of extreme liberality on his own part, and now he felt he was unfairly used in being required to bid more than the article was worth. Holyhead appreciated his sentiments, and shared his indignation.

'You will not,' said he, controlling his temper with an effort ; 'you will think better of it, Signora, if only on my account.'

Qui vivra verra,' answered the lady with a peculiar expression of brow and lip that he well knew; 'I sent for my passport yesterday afternoon.'

She had done the same thing on more than one previous occasion, and had only been induced to stay by great personal entreaty and pecuniary sacrifices. He determined to try firmness for once and abide the result.