too, with the Theobalds, as I hope to spend a great many more with them if I live

"Rawdon !"

"I'm not a schoolboy any longer, you know, mother. I really am old enough to be master of my own time."

us

"And our position? The position in which such conduct places

"Juliana, my dear," cries out the sleepy voice of old Crosbie from within; "don't you think you had better go to your bed, and leave the boy alone? This isn't the time of day for argument."

"Nor is Rawdon in a state to listen to it," says Mrs. Crosbie, with another withering look at her son. However, she has wisdom enough to follow her husband's advice, and withdraws; shutting the door, with all the righteous sternness of outraged parental authority, full in the delinquent's face.

Rawdon runs, two steps at a time, up to the next floor, puts his rosebud tenderly in water, and long before Mrs. Crosbie's head has reached its pillow, falls asleep, and dreams of the Grande Duchesse waltzes, and of Jane.

CHAPTER IX.

BLOSSY'S DEPLORABLE PASSIONS.

He wakes, a good many hours later, in that state of utter moral collapse which seems the stipulated payment to-morrow has to make for all human happy over-nights. He fell asleep with music in his heart and brain, with a fair woman's hand upon his shoulder, a sweet woman's breath on his cheek. He wakes, and his watch tells him it is a couple of hours past the usual breakfast hour, and he remembers that Jane is the wife of Francis Theobald (and the intimate associate of Monsieur de Lansac) and that he is nothing to her! The ball, and those three hours in the Theobalds' rooms, and the dreams that followed, are all unrealities, things gone by, and done with for ever. And he must get up and dress, and join the people who belong to him, and face his destiny: must go on with life.

When he comes down-stairs he finds the breakfast equipage still upon the table, and Emma Marsland diligently looking over 'Bradshaw,' while she writes down labyrinthine rows of figures on a slip of paper. A bundle of wraps, strapped, and his father's hat-box, are in one corner of the room; Mrs. Crosbie's travelling-bag is on a chair beside the window.

"Rawdon! down at last! Do you know what time it is, sir ?" Miss Marsland runs to meet him, her kind little plump hands outstretched, and Rawdon stoops and kisses her. She is not beautiful;

she is not Jane; but her smiling face of welcome picks up his spirits somewhat. Anything to a lad of Rawdon's age is better than a lecture. After anticipating a family conclave, to find himself alone with Emma, and to find Emma good-tempered and forgiving, comes to him in the nature of a reprieve.

"Mamma thought the tea would keep warm enough, but I know how you hate half-cold things, so I rang for fresh as soon as Lucy told me you were getting up. If you hadn't stirred by eleven, we decided we must call you; for-I hope you won't mind it, Rawdon, but we are going away to-day."

Oh, are we, indeed ?" says Rawdon, trying not to look as blank as he feels. And pray what is the reason of this sudden exodus ?”

66

Well, Mamma seems to think it will be best; and you know, Rawdon, how anxious your father is about the hay."

"But that is no reason why we should go, Emmy. We are not anxious about the hay. Let them do as they like, and you and I will stop in Spa and enjoy ourselves."

Before Emma can recover herself from the shock of this horrible, this delightful proposal sufficiently to answer, Rawdon's breakfast is brought in. She crosses to the table, pours out his tea, helps him to the liberal cream and sugar that his soul loves, then stands, with her eyes downcast, and more colour than usual in her face, tracing little imaginary patterns on the table-cloth with her finger.

"You have got something disagreeable to say, Emmy. Oh, but I know you have! Whenever people make fortresses of bread-crumbs, it shows their minds are not at rest. Now, out with it! You'll be better afterwards."

“I—oh, Rawdon, I'm so afraid you'll be cross; but mamma got it out of me, and you know we never could have kept it a secret long!" "Kept what a secret ?"

"Rawdon !"

Miss Marsland's lips quiver, and, with a pang of self-reproach, Rawdon remembers the love-scene in the woods. He remembers everything!

"You are not, say you are not angry with me," she pleads, watching his face. "I couldn't help it. Mamma has such a way of searching one's very thoughts, and it all came on, somehow, about Mrs. Theobald. She looked so dreadfully annoyed, poor mamma, at breakfast, and—and I didn't know how to defend you, Rawdon, and then I told them that. It seems a very vain speech, but I knew it was the one way to please mamma, and it has pleased her-oh, so much, and father, too."

your

Rawdon Crosbie drinks half a cup of tea and butters himself a roll, "And when are we to be married, Emmy? Angry, my dear, why should I be angry?" He holds out his hand, and she takes and clings

to it. "You had a perfect right to do as you liked, and, as you say, nothing that two people know can be a secret long. When is it to be, Emmy? Of course my mother has decided everything." "Of course nothing of the kind, sir. It will be only an engagement for I don't know how long yet." In her heart, Emma has fixed upon the second week of August. "Papa says my other guardian's consent must be asked, my cousin, Mr. Mason, you know, in Jamaica. But that can be only a matter of form, I'm sure. And then there will be the trousseau and bridesmaids, and everything else to think of. Oh, Rawdon, won't it be funny, you and me going back engaged? I wonder what all the Chalkshire people will say!"

Rawdon, failing it would seem to grasp the humour of the situation, does not offer any guesses on the subject, but, gradually freeing his hand from that of his betrothed, goes on with his breakfast. He feels in the very flattest spirits he has experienced during his whole not too highly-pitched life: reaction after the ball, perhaps, to start with, superadded to this the weight of his avowed, legitimate, to-be-congratulated engagement, and now, crowning all, the conviction that he is defeated! The conviction that Jane and his short, sweet, opening friendship for her are nowhere, and his mother and Emmy, and all the old humdrum responsibilities and blessings of his lot, in fullest possession of the field.

"Yes, it was certainly apropos of Mrs. Theobald that it began," says Emma, presently. "I don't think I ever saw mamma so thoroughly cut up before; and really and truly, Rawdon, I must say mamma was right. Now was it, was it nice of you, to be at an uproarious party, and us on the floor above, till three in the morning ?"

Miss Marsland lays due emphasis on the word "uproarious." Rawdon remembers the Theobalds' room, with its silent écarté players, and Jane and himself whispering in the moonlight over their supper. "Uproarious! I came home with the Theobalds from the ball, and stopped to have a glass of wine in their rooms. Emmy, by the way, whatever you may do hereafter as to the rest, don't take one leaf out of my mother's book. Don't sit up for me! I think I could be driven into any crime," says Rawdon, looking ferociously miserable, "by a wife who sat up for me."

"I hope you'll never want sitting up for then," says Emma, discreetly. "When you go out anywhere, of course I shall go too. As to your being with the Theobalds last night, I can only say I did feel hurt, and I cried; yes, Rawdon, I cried, to think you could take pleasure either in the ball or in their society. I'm not of a jealous disposition

"Oh, not in the least," remarks Rawdon, grimly jocular.

"But as it is not proper for me to know a person like Mrs. Theobald, why...

"Go on, my

love."

"Why, I don't think, now we are engaged, that it is proper for for you. I'm sure I don't want to say anything against her-her moral character I mean; but she is not a lady-now is she?"

"Really, Emma, I am no judge. She is a very well-mannered woman, and has more to say for herself than most people. That is all I know."

"And you would like me, now or hereafter, to be intimate with her ?"

"You are echoing my mother in all this, Emma," answers Rawdon, shifting his position. "What question is there of your being intimate with Mrs. Theobald? She is not especially anxious, that I know of, for the distinction of our family's patronage."

“Well, no,” remarks Miss Marsland, drawing an envelope from her pocket, "Mrs. Theobald has taken pretty good care to show us, me and mamma I mean, the value she sets on our good opinion! You remember my giving the child an ornament off my guard yesterday, and it was that nice little fish Mr. Mason sent me once, with real emeralds for eyes. Well, here it is, returned! Just wrapped in a sheet of paper, you see, put into an envelope, and directed To Miss Marsland.' And without a word of apology, too!"

Rawdon Crosbie takes the envelope and its contents, and examines them curiously. So this is Jane's handwriting-quite a commonplace schoolgirl hand, Reader; but Rawdon sees a new revelation of character in every upstroke. "To Miss Marsland. Number fourteen.” He reads aloud, in an absent sort of way.

"Yes, "To Miss Marsland, number fourteen,' and not a word of explanation," repeats Emma. "As mamma says, after I had been good-natured enough to give it to the child, Mrs. Theobald might at least have apologised for sending it back."

"Certainly," Rawdon acquiesces gravely. "After having been mistaken for the Princess Czartoriska, and cut as soon as the mistake was discovered, the very least Mrs. Theobald could have offered us would have been an apology. But some people have no delicacy of feeling."

"I'm glad you see it, as we see it," cries Emma, upon whom Rawdon's small irony is lost. "But perhaps," charitably, "we ought to set her conduct down to ignorance? It would have been difficult for her to say 'with compliments,' or 'kind regards.””

"After having her acquaintance declined, only the day before," adds Rawdon. "So it would, Emmy, rather."

He laughs aloud; Emma, not knowing how to take him in his present mood, laughs too; and just at this moment in comes Mr. Crosbie. Ah! the spirits, the happiness of these poor children, he

inks, looking pityingly at the faces of the two young lovers. Will

they laugh as loud when they have been married a dozen years? Mr. Crosbie gives his bald head a shake full of mournful premonition, and crossing the room lays his hand kindly on his son's shoulder. "You are down at last, sir, then?" he remarks.

And Rawdon knows that he has received his father's congratulations. In situations where a father and son of any other nation would find room for a score of pretty little dramatic effects, six commonplace words, a shake of the hand, a clasp of the shoulder, are sufficiently expansive demonstrations for two phlegmatic Britons. Rawdon Crosbie knows that he is congratulated, his engagement paternally ratified. He can see himself standing, an automaton in an embroidered waistcoat, before the altar of Lidlington church, the shining old rector and a couple of shining curates busily tying him, till death them shall part, to Miss Marsland. Bridegroom, best man, bouquets; bridesmaids in sky-blue, matrons in mauve satin;-by one instinctive, prophetic stretch of the imagination Rawdon can see it all. And in the background, to make the picture complete, a mischievous fair face, a pair of mocking blue eyes, perhaps, watching the ceremony with amusement.

"I have been giving Rawdon a good lecture, papa," says Emma, prettily, “trying my best to make him promise to be a better boy for the future."

"Ah, never lecture, my dear Emma," answers poor old Crosbie, almost solemnly. 'Never lecture any man, and never make any man promise anything. A woman's proper weapon is sub... ahem, yes," the entrance of Mrs. Crosbie, robed for travelling, abruptly cutting him short. "Submission to the inevitable is the first duty of us all," he adds. Then, meekly, betakes himself to strapping together wraps, and tying on labels, nor speaks again out of monosyllables till he and Rawdon are smoking the pipe of retrospection together that night in Brussels.

Mrs. Crosbie's congratulations are offered after a very different fashion to her husband's. She advances, with elegant effusion, to Rawdon's side, puts an arm round his neck, in a few well-chosen words "forgives" him his last night's crime, hopes that he will prove himself worthy of one who already occupies a daughter's place in his parents' hearts! Tears swim, with dignity, in Mrs. Crosbie's eyes; they well over in Emma's, who cries, "Oh, mamma, mamma, how can you?" and is finally obliged to take out her pocket-handkerchief. Rawdon feels like stone. He calls himself a monster, he tries to rouse his graceless heart into sentiment, nay into ordinary, decent human feeling, and fails. Luckily Mrs. Crosbie and Emma are too much occupied with their own emotions to analyse his; luckily, too, one of the waiters enters before long to say that in another quarter of an hour the Pepinster char à banc will be at the door.

VOL. XXXI.

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