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'Won't you take another cup of tea or a glass of wine?'

'I don't care for wine so early; but, if I might venture to ask—if you have such a thing in the house as a little brandy ?’

His teeth chatter as he speaks. She looks up quickly.

'Are you not well?'

'I feel slightly chilled-rather damp about the extremities, in fact.'

She glances at his habiliments, and sees with horror that his trousers are soaked through up to the waist.

'Good heavens! Lord Muiraven. How did that happen? Did you -you-fall in too?'

'Not exactly; but you can hardly expect a man to fish a child out of four feet of iced water and keep warm and dry at the same time.' 'And I never thought to ask if you required anything!'

Her face turns red with shame, and with a deeper feeling, that is half self-reproach and half anxiety lest he should come to harm through her neglect.

'Oh, never mind me,' he answers laconically. 'I shall do well enough; and I didn't expect that you would think about it.'

'Lord Muiraven, please don't say that. What can I do for you now?

You ought not to remain in those wet clothes. I know it is

very dangerous. Shall I send a man to the "Coach and Horses for a change?'

'No, thank you. I think I'd better walk back myself. If you will give me a glass of brandyBut he is shivering as he speaks.

She flies to the bell all excitement and eagerness again, and orders the servant to bring what he desires.

'But that is not sufficient!' she exclaims as he drinks the brandy -I am sure that is not sufficient. And I am so helpless to do more for you. Lord Muiraven, do go home! It seems inhospitable to say so; but I am sure it will be the safest thing to do. Go and get dry clothes on you at once-oh! how you are trembling!-and go to bed, or do anything that is necessary. You should take care of yourself for foreverybody's sake.'

He turns and looks at her. 'If I go, may I come again?' 'For the child?' - nervously. 'Oh yes, of course; but he had better wait until to-morrow now, had he not?'

'I should not think of moving him to-day. Till to-morrow, certainly; and perhaps I shall see you before then. Good-morning.'

He walks downstairs almost abruptly, and leaves her to herself. As soon as he is gone she sits down and drinks her tea, and feels as though she had but just wakened from some fearful midnight dream to find that it was morning.

Tommy sleeps quietly for half the day, and is miraculously good the other half. The cut upon his forehead has made his head ache, and he is disinclined for anything but to lie still and hear Irene read to him; and when he is wearied of that, and closes his eyes in

sleep, she sits beside him offering up thanks to heaven for his preservation, and thinking, not without some qualms of self-reproach, of the man whose claims to sympathy she had almost ignored in her alarm about his son, but who is nevertheless, though she will not acknowledge it, ten thousand times dearer to her than Tommy can ever hope to be. As she sits in the darkened room recalling his features and the sad air with which he greeted her, her heart pleads for him and for herself; and she speaks his name in a fond, low whisper, whilst she entreats him not to think hardly of her for her reception of him. 'If you only knew, Eric!-if you only knew!' she keeps on repeating, until her fancied colloquy resolves itself into tears.

In the evening, when Tommy has finished his tea, sitting wrapped up in a shawl upon her knee by the drawing-room fire, and has been carried back to bed again, her heart leaps to hear Muiraven's step upon the stairs. 'How foolish of me,' she thinks, as she bolts into the bedroom to recover herself, 'when we shall never, never be anything but friends. 'Oh, Eric! Oh, my love!' And then she falls to kissing Tommy till she nearly wakes him up again.

'Mrs. Mordaunt!' says Muiraven through the half-closed door.

'I am coming, Lord Muiraven!' And in a minute she appears before him. 'I hope you have taken no harm from your immersion this morning. I have been reproaching myself for my carelessness ever since; but I never thought that you were wet.'

'Pray don't think about it again. I am all right. How is the boy?'

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him?" She leads the way into the next room, and they stand beside the bed together looking at the sleeping child. Presently Muiraven stoops down, and kisses him upon the forehead. 'Poor little chap!" he says softly.

'Lucky little chap, you mean, replies Irene, speaking far more cheerfully than she feels.

'To have you to love him and look after him. Yes.'

'He will not have that long. By the way, Lord Muiraven,' as they return to the sitting-room, 'please tell me-I would rather know at once-are you going to take him away to-morrow or the next day?'

I don't want to take him away at all.'

'But under the circumstances, considering that he is

'Do you love him very much, Irene ?'

'Oh, Lord Muiraven, you need not ask me that! You knowyou must know— Tears prevent her finishing the sentence. 'Then keep the child. I have no wish to part you.'

She looks up in astonishment with sweet, wet eyes that make him tremble with eagerness to fold her in his arms; but he only moves his chair a little nearer to her own.

'Keep him! But how can I, knowing he is your lawful son? It could not be for long, you see; in a very few years his education, his welfare, his station in life, everything would combine to part us; and I-forgive me for saying so-but I have had so many partings, I feel as if I could not undergo another. No; it is best it should be as you first intended. He is your heir. Take him away, and rear him to be a comfort to you. I have no longer lot nor part in him.'

'Irene! Irene! I cannot bear these tears.'

'I am very weak to let them flow. I didn't mean it; but you know how hard it is for a woman to restrain them. Don't let us discuss the matter any more. His clothes are all packed and ready to go, and II am ready to resign him.'

'You love him almost as well as if you were his mother.'

'I think almost as well.' 'You have kept and looked after him for two long years, during which without your care he might have died; and do you think that I will part you now? Never! Irene, you have acted as a mother towards my child. Don't give him up. Be his real mother now.'

He has come quite close to her, and got possession of her hand; but the face she turns to his is pained with doubt and misconception.

'Eric, what do you mean ?' 'I mean that the barrier that has spoiled both our lives is broken down, Irene; that you and I are free to love.' 'Good God!'

'Have you not guessed it? Did you not understand that the obstacle that kept me years ago from asking you to be my wife was this same marriage tie which was broken, but not disannulled; which from shame I had kept a secret from the world and my own father, and dared not divulge even to yourself? And can you wonder, after what has passed between us, that, finding myself once more free, you find me here?'

arms

He has clasped both around her waist, and flung himself upon the ground before her; and she has placed her hands upon his hair, and, with blurred and misty sight, is gazing blindly into the depths of the violet eyes

that are fixed so passionately upon her own.

'Irene, my darling, my angel, answer me. Are you to be mine?'

Yours?' she says dreamingly. 'Yes, mine-my wife-my very own for ever! Think of the years I have been waiting for this happiness, and don't keep me in suspense.'

But she startles him by suddenly leaping from her chair like one possessed.

'Oh, I never thought! I never dreamt,' she says rapidly, in a kind of feverish delirium, 'that it was that that separated us. Tommy, Tommy, my baby, we shall never part again!' and thereupon she leaves her lover standing by himself, and, running to the next room, falls weeping on his child.

Muiraven, with a comical look of disappointment on his face, follows and stands beside her.

'I've not had an answer to my question,' he says presently.

She turns in all her frank, glowing womanhood, and throws herself into his arms.

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Now I should like to leave my tale just where it is, and my hero and heroine just where they are, for, since anticipation is invariably better than reality, I am sure they have reached their climax of happiness. But there are other people connected with their story, in whom perhaps some interest may have been awakened, and therefore I will throw myself into the highest condition (all novelists are clairvoyants), and tell you what I see happening in a year to come.

Oliver Mordaunt is living at Fen Court with his aunt Isabella, and they really get on wonderfully

together. Since Irene has lived at Berwick Castle he has conquered his antipathy to holding Colonel Mordaunt's property; yet he declares that he shall never marry, but leave it to her eldest son. Nous verrons. Doubtless it is not the first vow that Fen Court has seen registered and broken. One thing is certain, however, Mrs. Quekett's baneful presence will darken its walls no more. The housekeeper is still living upon her dear Lady Baldwin, and other fashionable patronesses, of whose secrets she has become possessed, and will not let them forget the circumstance. Painful as the revelation of his birth proved to him, Oliver would not take back his former ignorance, were it to be coupled with a servant's tyranny. He has laid that ghost, once and for ever, for the Leicestershire Mordaunts.

Joel Cray is married, and the possessor of a very neat little farm on the outskirts of Priestley, where his mother and her family live with him. His love for his cousin was true enough whilst it lasted; but, with the discovery that she had not been more wronged than her husband, some of his chivalry died out. Does that fact lower him in the opinion of my readers? He had a large and generous heart -why should its affections be all wasted on the dead, whilst the living lived to benefit by them?

It did not take long to secure Lord Norham's forgiveness for his son's delinquency, and he welcomed Irene with all the affection of a father, and the pride of a nobleman who rejoices in the prospect of seeing his ancient line carried on

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Ah! my friends, is anybody happy in this world? Don't try to peer too closely into Irene's second married life, lest you should be disappointed. You expect so much for your characters of fiction -so little (if you are reasonable) for yourselves. She loves her husband as devotedly as it is possible for one human being to love another she would not have him in any particular different from what he is-she could not imagine the horror of having her life separated from his own. And yet

And yet (if there have not already been) I have no doubt there often will be times when she will wonder how she could have made herself so utterly miserable without him. The fact is, no creature in the world is worth the misery of another creature's life. We pine for them, we rave after them, we strain every muscle-sometimes. we commit every sin to attain them-and when the gold lies in our hand, it turns to ashes and dead leaves.

Ah! mortals, take love when it comes to you thankfully-adoringly, if you will; but never sin to grasp it.

The only love which satisfies in the attainment (and in this last sentence lies the whole moral of my story) is the Love in Whose Presence sin must not be named.

CONCLUSION.

VOL. XXV.-NO. CXLVI.

I

TH

DON CARLOS, THE SPANISH PRETENDER.*

HE present pretender to the throne of Spain, styled by his followers Charles VII., and by the world at large Don Carlos de Bourbon, Duke of Madrid, is twenty-five years of age, having been born in Austria, in March 1848. He is a powerful-looking, dark-haired man, about six feet one, and of frank, somewhat curt manner. His face, since he began to wear a full beard, has become quite handsome, though a slightly slobbering aspect of his mouth, not being in harmony with his manly physical appearance, spoils somewhat the first pleasing impression. He is a man easy of access, without any trace of haughtiness; and when seen on horseback at a certain distance, especially when saluting people, and frankly taking off his Basque cap, has something picturesque about him. His ways in private life remind one very much of those of a younger son of an English nobleman's family; that is to say, he would undergo for a while any amount of hardship with great serenity of temper. Of the sovereign, the statesman, or the warrior there is absolutely nothing in him. But he is very fond of playing the part of a prince; that is to say, of lording it over everybody, in the old fashion of Spanish kings, not excluding even his councillors, some of whom are thrice his age; and of surrounding himself with a large number of chamberlains, aide-de-camps, secretaries, and similar people, all of whom have no other merit, or duty, than that of flattering his pride. I saw, myself, genuine Spanish noblemen carrying away

slops after Don Carlos had washed himself, and busily engaged in seeing that his top-boots and spurs were properly polished. He is undoubtedly a religious man, but there is much less bigotry about him than is generally supposed; and, for all I could observe, the Spanish clergy do not seem to exercise any undue influence on his mind. In fact, I have seen him marching for weeks without having a single curé on his staff, or at his table; but in every village he comes to, he goes, first of all, to the church, and pays a visit to the local priest. Like the majority of Spaniards, he is a bad horseman, and in about a month's time I saw him ruin three excellent horses. At the same time he likes very much to ride, and evidently thinks that he looks a fine cavalier; and so he does with his glistening black beard, his dark blue hussar uniform, the stars on his breast, his red trousers, his high circus boots, and his red cap with the golden tassel.

His political notions seem to be of a very unsettled character. At all events, each time I happened to talk to him, or listen when he talked to some one else, on political subjects, I was never able to make out what was the substance of his views. Sometimes he seemed quite a commonplace Liberal of our own time; at other times his utterances seemed to be the produce of the most old-fashioned traditions of Spanish absolutism. On the whole, I think he would make a pretty fair constitutional king were He properly restricted by law; for,

The Editor does not necessarily agree with the political opinions expressed in this

paper.

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