chambers himself, the face of the retired soap-boiler grew more and more rubicund, his manner more triumphant, his heart more elate.

arm.

He was a small stout man, with a tendency to grow warm, and an inveterate habit of holding those to whom he talked by the Ladies with short sleeves did not like it. His new black coat, evidently so new, shone in the light; his black satin waistcoat glistened, and his chain and rings and big diamond studs glittered and sparkled as he bowed and smirked, and rubbed his own hands with satisfaction after he had shaken those of his guests with effusion. In one thing only was he disobedient to the great goddess of form; he would not wear his white kid gloves, but kept them dangling in one hand or thrust into the bosom of his vest. He had once seen a young Frenchman do this; and the trick had taken his fancy, both as nobby,' according to his phraseology, and less troublesome to himself.

By his side stood his wife and daughter; pale where he was flushed; timid to his pride; shrinking, nervous, depressed, not self-confident, jovial, glad as he. Both were dressed in exquisite taste, so far as the mere style and material of their garments went: Lady Machell had taken care of that: but Mrs. Brown de Paumelle's dead-leaf and gold, and Jemima's white and silver, though made by Worth himself, looked more out of keeping with their meagre awkward persons than if they had been clothed according to their own ideas. These would have given them a full puce' for the mother, and a 'grass green' for the daughter, made by a local dressmaker after the most elaborate of the two figures in a fashion-book, and largely trimmed with modern point. Do what you would with them, you could not bring them up to the standard. Their heads were dressed according to the correctest canons of the art; they had not a faulty point about them; down to their very shoe-buckles and their glove-buttons, their get-up was perfect. And yet it wanted no magician to see, as they stood there, that they were mere clothes-horses decked to order-well decked if you will-but none other than clothes-horses, when all was done. They felt themselves to be shams and out of place, for all that they had said one to the other admiringly: La! ma, how splendid you look!' and, La! Jemmy, you are lovely, my dear!' and just as Mr. Brown showed the pride that was in his heart, so did they show the trouble and humility that were in theirs.

Mrs. Brown looked as if she had been newly taken from behind a counter where she served her customers in silence and with meekness, and said Thank you, ma'am,' as she handed back the change; while poor little Jemima, with her huge bouquet of

white flowers-so suggestive of the bridal bouquet of which indeed it was only the forerunner-was the patient landlady's daughter' who attended to the lodgers with diligence, and even would herself have run for the supper beer to please the parlour,' who joked her so pleasantly. You could make nothing else of them. Trains and fans and rare old lace, diamonds and pearls, my lady's faultless taste and the deftest hands of maid and milliner to put her ideas into force, all failed to make them the things they simulated-all failed to bring them up to the mark, and transform them from the Browns of Clapton into the de Paumelles of Grantley Bourne. And they felt it, and knew it, and sank under the weight of their grandeur, like llamas crushed by carrying gold.

Lady Machell and her party came early. Had there been no ulterior object to gain, her substantially kind heart-substantially kind when not interfered with by ambition-would have made her careful to be in good time, that she might lend the strength of her presence to the unaccustomed hostess. As it was, she was doubly desirous to appear as the de Paumelle right hand-in part, to show the world in what intimate relations she and her house stood to all this wealth; in part, to support while compelling her

son.

The group was a noticeable one; and the social gulf originally existing between the host and the guests was nowhere marked with more distinctness.

Sir Gilbert, my lady, Wilfrid and Arthur, were tall, fine, majestic looking people; and Hilda, though of a smaller type, had that nameless grace and beauty which are born of generations of good breeding and refinement. The four towered above short, round, rosy-gilled Mr. Brown de Paumelle, his pinched and withered wife, his faded meagre daughter, as if they had been creatures of another race and sphere. Standing at the entrance to the gorgeous rooms, blazing with light and glittering with gold, the guests looked like the hosts, the hosts like some inferior creatures in masquerade who had been admitted by chance and were allowed to remain on sufferance. Sir Gilbert's quiet face--a sealed book where no one could read the closed pages-and Mr. Brown de Paumelle's, bursting with pride and alive with transparent exultation; the Baronet self-contained, at perfect ease, slightly shabby, and with not as many pence as this man had hundreds of pounds-and the retired soap-boiler, fussy, restless, newly minted, lustrous, but because of that newness rough at the edges and crude all through-what a contrast they made! It was as great as that made by Lady Machell, looking like some old

VOL. XXXII. NO. CXXVII.

A A

time queen in her heavy, straight-cut, flowing velvet gown and superb black lace mantilla, stately, calm, gracious, and aristocratic to her finger tips, and Mrs. Brown de Paumelle timid, weak-eyed, ill at ease in her finery, and bent in at the chest with nervousness and conscious unfitness; as great as that made by Hilda, young as she was, also calm and gracious and aristocratic like her mother, and poor little Jemmy whose rightful sphere was to be found in that eight-roomed house at Clapton, and her rightful owner honest 'Arry whose highest flight of ambition did not soar beyond five hundred a year and a confidential clerkship in the city. But money is our modern magician; and Circe to succeed in nineteenth century society would have to bribe her lovers by gold not wine.

Even Sir Gilbert, philosopher though he had become, according to the wisdom of an unlucky man who will not lose time or strength in useless regret, as he wandered about the rooms examining the pictures and ornaments on the walls-one arm behind his back according to his favourite attitude-even he felt that all this belonged by the nature of things to him rather than to that other, and wondered greatly how it was that Providence had left old families to decay and set up soap-boilers in the high places in their stead. It was a problem to which just then he could not find an answer; but it held him, and made him feel uncomfortably sceptical of superior ordering.

Lady Machell, with Hilda close to her side, stood by Mrs. de Paumelle as her shield and sponsor; and Arthur talked to his little sister and made her smile-both furtively watching the arrival, to the one of her fairy-tale kind of prince, to the other of the woman who made all the world beautiful for him. Wilfrid, who had spoken to Mr. Brown de Paumelle of his intentions with regard to Jemima, and received his glad permission to sound her for himself,' stood as if mounting guard over the poor little girl who felt as if she should sink into the earth when the tall, largelyframed, arbitrary-mannered man bent down and spoke to her as if she were already his engaged wife, claiming her as his private property and his captive, as much as if she had been taken by his bow and spear. It was an hour of trial to all save Mr. Brown de Paumelle and Lady Machell. He was tasting for the first time the full fruits of his success; and she, having resolved, looked only to the good of the event which she had ordained, and put halting and regret as far behind as did placid Sir Gilbert himself.

6

The great people began to come. Mr. Brown de Paumelle shook hands with each heartily. Glad to see you, my Lord;' 'Hope you are well, my Lady;'Glad to welcome you to Paumelle

House, sir; the first time and I hope not to be the last;'I hope you'll enjoy your evening, ma'am, and the young ladies too; make yourself at home, and the more you're pleased, the more you'll please me;' he said, with honest hospitality running through his vulgar pride, and in his full-flavoured London accent. His wife said nothing. She only bowed to each incomer in the nervous dislocated way of which no teaching by my lady before a pier glass could cure her; and Jemima made a timid little movement which courtesy accepted as the conventional reverence.' Brown had taken to it like life, as his wife said; and they were content to efface themselves behind his masculine courage and spirit, and to wonder meekly how ever he could do it; and la! but he had a way with him!

Together with the more distant families, those forming the immediate society of the place appeared with a punctuality which destroyed the ordinary calculation of the two-thirds.' No one was absent. Miss Dinah Forbes, in a plain black silk gown of a severe not to say androgynous cut, without an ornament of any kind, or anywhere, and no covering on her head save her shortcut grizzled hair, came leading in her sister Aurora in white gauze flushed here and there with pink and much bestrewed with flowers-to emblemise her name. They too wandered about the rooms, a little avoided by the neighbourhood because of that unlucky protégé who was sure to murder every living soul among them some of these nights, and who was regarded much as a mad dog would be regarded, wilfully let loose among defenceless folk. Little cared the stalwart Dinah for cold looks or hard words, wherever met with. She rather liked a row, she used to say hardily; and was not a meek Miss to be afraid of a cup full of hot water. Quite unabashed by her temporary unpopularity, she examined the pictures and the blue china, the Japanese vases and the Venetian mirrors, which the upholsterer had supplied according to the direction of the art-decorator, and expressed her approbation or disapprobation in a stentorian voice like a showman; while Miss Aurora echoed her sentiments sweetly.

The Constantines from Sharpeley came, still conscious of those silver Hamburghs, and looking like people who have received a nervous shock and are yet objects for public sympathy. They were three gaunt daughters dressed precisely alike-not a ribbon nor a ringlet differing; one ungainly son; a father who looked more like a Methodist grocer than an English country gentleman; and a mother so prim, so thin, so dry, as to fill one with astonishment how she had ever found herself a wife and mother at all. They avoided the Tower ladies pointedly, but Miss Dinah did not

choose to be avoided; so she went straight up to the group, and ' rallied' them to her heart's content.

The Lucrafts came; always with an eye to business and that not too luxurious larder at home; he blunt and a trifle coarse, she bland, attentive, insinuating, but never forgetting to be her husband's fugleman, and vaunting his merits with rather too evident an air why, for the taste of most people. Then came in Guy Perceval with his chin in the air and his necktie awry; honest if queer; bringing with him an able editor from London, whose ear he specially wished to gain. And then came in Derwent and Muriel Smith; and with them the interest of the evening began for little Hilda as well as for Arthur, and the half-hour of expectant watching ended. What signified the stream of titled nobodies, of well-known county families, of stray lions from London picked up by a few lucky hunters and paraded as treasures of which not half-a-dozen people in the room understood the value? The world and its fulness faded from his sight, or rather all fulness was concentrated in the sweet face that came smiling through the doorway, happy and loving and young-too young to live with fear, too loving to harbour doubt, too happy to remember pain.

As she came into the room-looking like some human flower in her soft flowing creamy dress, with the graceful run of her figure not distorted by the ungainly lines of superfluous millinery, and for all ornament, blush-roses in her bosom and her hair-the band at the end of the drawing-room began the first waltz; almost as if they had waited for her before they opened the ball.

Something that was more than pain passed like a sickness over Lady Machell, as she looked at her son when Muriel came up to their group by the door, and made her greetings to the hosts real and vicarious. She saw in his face what she had never seen there before-a purpose, a resolution, an undisguised openness of passionate love which showed her his heart as a flash of lightning shows the rock across the ship's path. And though Muriel was less demonstrative, and only smiled and blushed, and looked glad and shy and sweet as any other pretty girl might have done, yet in hers too Lady Machell read that subtle something which reveals itself as love, and knew that she had to combat here with truth as well as there with passion.

'Just in time,' said Arthur offering his arm; and Muriel took it, looking at Derwent pleadingly and at Lady Machell in a pretty kind of deprecation of wrath, but with a whole world of shy delight in her eyes as she glanced up at Arthur, and walked before them all leaning on his arm through the rooms, They followed