her curls over the housekeeping books."

He drew a chair up and sat down on the other side of her. The people who called Ernestine cold would scarcely have known her had they seen her now, her face covered with fleeting emotions as she sat between these two men.

"She says we have too many servants," he went on, speaking in a manner of his own, half humorous and half in earnest ; "and she has taught me such a lesson by running away and leaving me to find out what it was like without her, that I believe, if she sends off all the servants, and only allows me a dinner once a week, I shall submit. By the way," he said, more quietly, and opening the subject evidently with the need of some self-control, "has Ernestine told you of her unexpected meeting yesterday ?"

"Yes," said Dorothy, "we have been talking about it, and Ernestine is innocently amazed that we think it possible.'

"Well, possible or not, I am inclined still to think it a dream. Ernestine has only seen him once in the street."

"Don't you remember, Dorothy," said Ernestine, turning to her, and blushing a little, " that night when we passed him under a lamp-post outside Aunt Vavasour's house? When you saw him afterwards in court you recognised him."

66

"Let me think . . . " said Dorothy, with her head on one side. Yes, I remember. He was smoking; and as we passed he took his cigar from his mouth to say, 'deuced fine woman.' He admired you very much evidently, if you care for the compliment.'

Well, now," said Ernestine eagerly, arresting a rising laugh from the others, "you will allow that I cannot be mistaken when I tell you that, as he looked out of

"The leopard cannot change his spots," said Coventry, when the laugh which Ernestine's eagerness and blushes raised had subsided; "but what a lamentable want of originality. Thorough paced scoundrels appear as a rule to lack imagination. They go over the worn tracks of villainy, and the same vulgar phrase of admiration which they have applied to handsome women since modern slang existed, they will use for our Minerva Medica."

He was interrupted by the entrance of Lewis Lingen, who had constituted himself an occasional visitor at this house, which had the especial charm, for him, of being unlike any other house he entered. The atmosphere of mingled purity and Bohemianism which pervaded it made every one feel at his ease; and an hour spent in calling on Mrs. Silburn was generally found to be an hour of

of appearance apart from changes of dress."

"Very true," said Dr. Doldy, gravely; "a nightcap or a new Paris bonnet; the difference is marvellous."

"You are profane, Doctor," said Mr. Lingen (who was a little relieved to find his old friend in a less terribly tragic mood to-day). "Mrs. Doldy's remark is a very discerning one. She is quite right; a doctor is much less liable to be deceived by a change in appearance than a person with a less practised eye. I am disposed to think that we may put faith in Mrs. Doldy's recognition of the

man.

"I can't think what the House is about," said Dr. Doldy, "when things like this can be done under the rose."

"The younger members would be glad to get hold of such a case," said Coventry; "judicious nursing of it would make the political fortune of a rising Radical. But who is to overlook our great systems of legislation? Who can have an eye upon every corner in the land? Who can ascertain whether every official does his duty? And, more difficult still, who is to check the secret orders of high functionaries? Anyone who has watched the working of a large household will know enough of the difficulty of managing human beings by system, to see the impossibility of making any system perfect, or of preventing infringements of it minor elasticities, informal pieces of jobbery-call them what you will. If we had no private interest in this affair, I should like to hear B—— asking his question upon it."

"And do you suppose," said Mr. Lingen," that there would be found no one clever enough to answer him? Public matters are, more or less, as they are made to appear."

His thought was, as he spoke, From what I have heard, I should not be too sure that B- has not been among the quiet intriguers for this release. Where there are ladies concerned, a social bramble creeps a long way. "You see," he went on aloud, "when you consider the matter quietly, Yriarte's party would have a very strong case. Not only is there the ordinary power of a foreign Government, which always has great weight and has accomplished more remarkable things than this before now; but, if Yriarte has made the most out of his facts to his supporters, they can put on the screw by saying that a gross injustice has been committed.'

"How ?" asked Dorothy, whose eyes looked very bright.

"Only a little collusion," said Lingen in an airy manner, to satisfy Dorothy, "I must not go into detail." Then turning to Dr. Doldy he said in a low voice, audible to him alone, "They can put it that he was prosecuted for attempting to obtain some money from Miss Doldy for the maintenance of the child which had claims on them both; and it would appear that Yriarte was at the time supporting the child, although of course he has never spent a penny on it himself. Still, he got it cared for; and, as Miss Doldy is well known to be an heiress, and Mr. Yriarte a man now altogether without means, the prosecution would appear in a rather bad light, and there would be a strong case for the Home Secretary."

"And I," ejaculated Dr. Doldy, with a groan so touching that everyone started, "I was the prosecution. A nice affair this for a man of position."

Dorothy's bright eyes were now explained by a remark of hers. Dr. Doldy had risen from his chair, and was walking about the room in a fume; everybody was silent,

feeling sympathetic and uncomfortable, and her voice dropped quietly into the silence, disturbing it more effectively than the report of a

cannon.

"What a glorious paragraph this will make !"

Mr. Lingen dropped his eyeglass suddenly and sat down very unobtrusively in a chair near. He had been a little touched and flattered by the earnest regard of Dorothy's unusually bright eyes. Quite true what people say of these female journalists, he thought. Did I not see a review the other day in which Dorothy Silburn was denounced as an unsexed woman? I'm inclined to think that reviewer had some wit: it cannot be right when a woman looks at you so sweetly that you think she has fallen in love, and you find she is only sucking your information for a newspaper paragraph!

"Mrs. Silburn," said Dr. Doldy, pardon me, but you are not so lost to all sense of everything but journalism that you will betray the confidence of your friends ?"

"Oh," she said, waking up from her absorption (in imagination she had already earned an unusually large fee from the Morning Mail), "I suppose you would not like it!"

"How can you ask?" exclaimed Dr. Doldy. "Give me your word

of honour

Sandwich Islands or some such place?"

"Oh, it will all be forgotten soon enough," said Dorothy, "especially if nothing more is told," she added, ruefully.

"The Government will say nothing, you may be sure," said Mr. Lingen. "Go for a holiday; forget it yourself, and you will find it forgotten by others. When Sir Percy and Lady Flaxen return and take their place in society, their friends will not be curious. Yriarte, if escaped, is of course out of the country already; and his connections will look after him in future, we may hope."

Miss Armine, who, being a discreet little lady, had held her peace all this time, now ventured to ask Mr. Lingen a question.

"Do you think," she said, "if Mr. Yriarte has been let out, that Anton will be let out also?"

"I don't know," he answered; "it is doubtful, I should think, as he has no connections. But there will be some efforts made, probably."

"I would like a talk with you about that, Lingen," said Dr. Doldy. "We must find some means of helping that poor fellow."

"I hope you will," said Dorothy. "He looked so innocent and puzzled in court; I don't think he half understood what it was all about."

"And I hope so!" cried Miss Armine, enthusiastically. "He was such a handsome creature, with the loveliest grey shadows about his shoulders. And such a model-he never seemed even to breathe. Fancy wasting him on convicts!"

Her wail was so genuine that it created an effectual diversion. Everybody laughed except Ernestine, who was thinking perplexedly to herself.

"How strange it is," said she to Coventry, "that if you look at the

world and events with their proper face on, all seems so commonplace and easy; yet if one turns back but a little bit of the curtain which hides the realities of the mingled lives which make up the world, everything appears different and complicated."

"Dr. Doldy," said Coventry, turning to him, "Minerva Medica is puzzling her brains too much. I prescribe an immediate holiday for her. Make her give up attempting to think out the problems of this world. Women ought not to think, you know."

"At all events," said Ernestine, with a smile, "it is a mistake to think too much, from a hygienic point of view. One reaches a stage every now and then when one should give up thinking and take to living. And perhaps, too, the experiences of life do more to solve the problems of existence than too much thought."

"Let us all go for a holiday," said Dr. Doldy. "Suppose we hire a barge and go down the river."

"Or a gipsy caravan!" cried Dorothy.

Mr. Lingen rose, to take his departure. The proposed delights were slightly out of his line; a skiff above Windsor, or a four-in-hand to Brighton, might have attracted him.

"When you discuss such idling as that," he said, "it is time for me to go. Such men as I are not made for dreamy holidays. We are plunged so rapidly from one series of complications into another -our minds are so filled with a succession of romances, crimes, secrets, intrigues-our brains are required to work so incessantly, that such a holiday would be maddening in its quiet." This is what he said, and it sounded very well indeed; it does not do for a busy lawyer to convey the idea that he even knows how to unbend.

"I suppose," said Coventry, "your plan is to rattle half over the world in an express train, thirty-six hours at a stretch. Yours is an essentially modern life. I believe I belong to a bygone age; I like to be idle."

So saying he stretched himself in his hammock. His kittens, who were asleep in it, aroused themselves to purr over him. Mr. Lingen departed; and the others gathered round Coventry to "babble of green fields." And Coventry, with his eyes on Ernestine's sweet face, from which the cloud was passing, murmured snatches of verse full of buttercups and children's laughter.

So much more attention is paid in the schools to the poetry, mythology, and history of Greece than to her gnomists and ethical philosophers, that one falls into the habit of regarding Hellenic glory as the embodiment of consummate art and exquisite Pagan life, and of doubting whether it can be made to present on the spectrum of the mind any of the deep colour of religious thought. Of Plato it is true, with his wealth of ideal suggestions, his quasi-Christianism, something indeed is known, as of Aristotle; but to the most distinctly ethical remains of the Hellenic sages less attention is paid than to the amours of the popularised Jupiter, the brave battles with the Persians, or the political history of Athens.

Perhaps there has been, too, a tinge of unworthy jealousy of sublime thought when found to antedate the Christian era.

It was convenient for sectarian purposes to regard the heathen world as benighted in darkness, and remote from love of God or consciousness of immortality. Marcus Aurelius has been welcomed, but Pythagoras almost ignored; Plutarch has been preferred to Solon.

Or perhaps it is that the door of the ancient philosophy has been tco rudely and sharply closed against cram. No way into it has been widened and made easy for the multitude, so that the empty nominalist should enjoy the freedom of the shrine. It is the reverse of a clever bid for popular

favour to say such unpleasant truths as:

Approach ye genuine philosophic few,
The Pythagoric life belongs to you;
But far, far off ye vulgar herd profane,
For Wisdom's voice is heard by you in
vain :

And you, Mind's lowest link, and darksome end,

Good Rulers, Customs, Laws, alone can mend.

Messrs. Moody and Sankey could prophesy smoother things than this to anyone that would throw in his lot with them.

Even in respect of Plato, if we put out of sight the comparativelv few men of culture, and take into view the great reading masses, we might almost repeat the words of Jerome, now nearly a millennium and a half old :

"Who is it that now reads Aristotle? How many people know Plato's books, or even his name? Perhaps in a corner some vacuous old man may be conning him over. But of our rustics, our fishermen, the whole orb is speaking, with them the entire world resounds."

The cause of this prejudice no doubt has been in the past, that we had derived, through another channel, our main stream of such spiritual wisdom as we had made our own. The cause of the comparative neglect of the higher Greek ethics at the present day, when philosophic studies are becoming broadened, perhaps lies in the fact that it is being discovered that the characteristics of the inmost Hellenic thought are rather drawn from