out before an elder son or wealthier man. an awfully dismal place this is so close Several times he had been deceived into and stuffy! Besides, I can hardly breathe." thinking he had secured a love pure and "Poor old Charlie!" exclaimed Audrey, fresh enough to withstand all other tempta-" it is too bad not to make home look its tions, but he had been rudely awakened best to welcome you back. It is a most unfrom his dream to find that his successful comfortable room, and just now it certainly rival possessed the real "Open, sesame," looks its worst. Whenever I return from to all women's hearts -a rent-roll or a staying out, I always feel that we have the cheque-book. most inconvenient and the most dingy house in the world — a sham, my dear, like the part we play in life, and a hanger on to a grand locality, just as we are to our noble relations. Oh! when these things grate on me and rub me up the wrong way, as they so often do, is it any wonder that I turn idolater and worship mammon?"

So he began to resolve that he would try the barter system, and see how much money his good looks and name and position could bring him. An uncle had left him an income of £700 a year independent of his mother, but, as he often ruefully said, it was impossible for him to think of marrying upon that. No, no; he would do as other men did. He would go in for money, and he might chance to get a nice girl, and if he didn't why, she must go her way and he must go his. Then he jumped up suddenly and exclaimed, "What a bothersome nuisance poverty is! I wish I was not such an extravagant fellow; a good wife would be the saving of me, if she only loved me enough. She would soon make me ashamed of my selfishness, and I believe make me do anything to please her. I wonder why fate has never sent such a woman across my path? I suppose there are such treasures in the world."

Here his reflections were suddenly brought to an end by the entrance of his sister, who, hearing from Marshall that Captain Verschoyle was already in the dining-room, came hurrying down in her morning wrapper to keep him company at breakfast.

I

"Well, no," returned Captain Verschoyle. "I feel with you. I do not believe either of us would shrink from good honest poverty, but it is the straining after what we cannot reach that frets one. only wish that dear mother of ours would feel the same, and always say she cannot afford what really can give neither you nor her much pleasure."

“I

"Ah! there it lies," said Audrey. have become so accustomed to deception that I sometimes ask, am I not cheating myself into an idea that I do not care for those very excitements which form the whole business of my life? No, I can only be sure of one thing insuring happiness, and that is money; and I intend to go to Dyne Court, armed to the teeth with charms to subdue its master, and come away only to return to it as its mistress - Mrs. Richard Ford. An aristocratic name, is it not? I "Accept, my dear Charlie, this tribute bear mamma whispering to people, An to fraternal affection - the sight of your old Windsor family, mentioned, if you beloved and admired sister minus the adorn-recollect, by Shakespeare.' Let me see, ment of person substituted by the modern Mrs. Ford was a merry wife - hum! But Briton for the woad of their ancestors." from the view I at present take of Mr. Richard Ford, his wife will be a merry widow."

"I am delighted to see you under any circumstances," said Captain Verschoyle, "for I was just beginning to take a very rueful view of things in general.”

"Ah, now you have just spoilt your compliment," laughed Audrey; had you stopped at circumstances I should have tapped you on the shoulder, after the fashion of the stage coquette, and cried 'courtier;' as it is, romance has vanished, and I am merely regarded as a dispeller of the blues.' So ring the bell and we'll sit down to breakfast in the Darby and Joan style of everyday life.”

As soon as the servant had departed Audrey made a little moue at the breakfast table and said,

"This does not look well after Shilton, does it ? "

“No,” replied her brother; "but what

Captain Verschoyle laughingly shook his head, saying, "Come, it is too bad to be sending the old gentleman off into the other world before you have got possession of him in this one. But how about my heiress? for I am thinking seriously of her; it is quite time I got married, and as you seem to think her ladylike and tractable, I will resign myself, and bid farewell to my early visions."

"What were they?" inquired Audrey. "Oh, a home reigned over by an ideal creature, who was too ethereal to care for more than I could give her, and earthly enough to love, with all her heart, a stupid, common-place fellow like me."

"You dear old creature!" said Audrey. "Any woman might be proud of you; so

Don't be too confident," said her broth-questionably good. er. Many a stronghold that has stoutly prepared itself for a siege has been taken by storm."

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But," said Captain Verschoyle, "he must be a great deal older than Audrey."

with) married, and married well too, and | fashion for good families to marry those all since Audrey came out well! it only sort of people, provided they are very shows one that there must be some higher wealthy." power than ours moving in such matters." "She'll get married yet, mother," answered her son. "I am certainly surprised at her being single still; but, perhaps, you have expected too much for her. Who is this man we're going to visit now, and where did you meet him?"

"We met him last Christmas at the Bouveries," replied her ladyship. "Audrey took part in some charades and tableaux they got up, and he so admired her, and paid her so much attention, that I quite thought he would have proposed then; but not being able to find out everything about him, I did not encourage him so much as I should now. He is quite a millionaire; and Dyne Court is a lovely place. He said then that he hoped we would come and see him in the summer, when this new place, which he had recently bought, and which was then undergoing extensive alterations, would be ready; and about six weeks since I had a letter begging me to fix my time, and he would then ask a few people to meet

us."

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'Well, yes, there is a difference certainly, still nothing to speak of. I almost wish he would wear a wig, for being so bald makes him look rather old. However, when they are married it won't make any difference, and if Audrey cared for him to look younger I should suggest the wig; but I don't think she will trouble herself about him then, and he is certainly not older than Lord Totnes was, nor Lady Gwendoline Farnham's husband."

"I hope he's presentable," exclaimed Captain Verschoyle.

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Oh dear, yes!" answered his mother. "Of course you must be prepared for the manner of the British merchant honest and bluff; but many people like that now. I remember Lord Tewkesbury saying that nothing pleased him better. However, you will soon be able to judge for yourself. We shall leave on Thursday morning, and I hope we shall all enjoy our visit, for Audrey is not the only one I have formed plans for. The welfare of my children is always next my heart, my dear Charles; and if I could see you both well married, with good establishments, such as your family and position entitle you to expect, I could sink into comparative insignificance, feeling that I had carried out and accomplished my work in life, and had not lived in vain."

DOES any one ever reckon the waste of mental and corporeal energy which is represented by the superfluous noise of a great town? To listen to the great hum of London in the dusk of the evening, in some spot not liable to any acute sounds, is as suggestive and as mysterious as trying to fathom and analyse the murmurs resounding in a sea-born shell; and if we may believe the learned ones, this arises from the same cause- the collection and intermingling of many faintly-heard echoes. But to hear those same sounds from their very midst, to have each clamouring more violently than its fellow for entrance into our brain, how much labour does it not involve upon that easily-tired organ, to which it ought not to be liable? Railways with their whistles, their fog-signals, their grinding of iron on iron, their constant shocks, the banging of doors, the hoarse, unintelligible screaming of porters, are becoming more and

more part of the hourly life of a Londoner. Be-
side these, our streets have since Hogarth's
day become far noisier; first Macadamised roads,
and now granite, worn down with overwhelm-
ing crowds of vehicles of all weights, going at
all kinds of paces. These drown the minor
abominations of organ-grinders and street bands,
that would otherwise make the words we are
reading or writing waltz before us, or would
connect our most serious thoughts with that
most dreary of all inventions, a comic song.
Surely we may welcome anything that will mit-
igate the torture our nerves undergo from these
causes, and not the less when we consider that
whatever diminishes noise lessens friction. If
the new tramways, of which we are about to
have an instalment, effect something in this way,
we shall hail them as steps towards a return to
peace.
The Graphic.

CHAPTER XIV.

down in Mr. Crediton's office, as if he had dropped from the skies. He was the junior clerk, and did not know the business, and his perch was behind backs, not far from one of the windows from which he could see all Kate's exits and entrances. He saw the public, too, coming and going, the swingdoor flashing back and forward all day long, and on Saturdays and market-days caught sometimes the wondering glances of country folks who knew him. He sat like a man in a dream, while all these things went on around him. How his life had changed! What had brought him here? what was to come of it? were questions which glided dreamily through John's brain from time to time, but he could give no answer to them. He was here instead of at Fanshawe Regis; instead of serving the world and his generation, as he had expected to do, he was junior clerk in a banker's office, entering dreary lines of figures into dreary columns. How had it all come about? John was stupefied by the fall and by the surprise, and all the overwhelming dreary novelty; and accordingly he sat the day through at first, and did what he was told to do with a certain apathy beyond power of thinking; but that was a state of mind, of course, which could not last for ever. Yet even when that apathy was broken, the feeling of surprise continued to surmount all other feelings. He had taken this strange step, as he supposed, by his own will; nobody had forced or even persuaded him. It was his own voluntary doing; and yet how was it? This question floated constantly, without any power on his part to answer it, about his uneasy brain.

MR. CREDITON's bank was in the High Street of Camelford - -a low-roofed, rather shabby-looking office, with dingy old desks and counters, at which the clerks sat about in corners, all visible to the public, and liable to constant distraction. The windows were never cleaned, on principle, and there were some iron bars across the lower half of them. Mr. Crediton's own room was inside you had to pass through the office to reach it; and the banker, when he chose to open his door, was visible to the clerks and the public at the end of the dingy vista, just as the clerks, and the public entering at the swing-door, and sometimes the street outside, were to him. The office was a kind of lean-to to the house, which was much loftier, more imposing, and stately; and Mr. Crediton's room communicated with his dwelling by a dark passage. The whole edifice was red brick, and recalled the age of the early Georges, or even of their predecessor Anne - - a time when men were not ashamed of their business, but at the same time did it unpretendingly, and had no need during office hours of gilding or plate-glass. The house had a flight of steps up to it almost as high as the top of the office windows, and a big iron horn to extinguish links, and other traces of a moderate antiquity. Up to these steps Kate Crediton's horse would be led day after day, or her carriage draw up, in very sight of the clerks behind their murky windows. They kept their noses over their desks all day, in order that a butterfly creature, in all the brilliant colours of her kind, should flutter out and in in the sunshine, and take her pleasure. That was He was close to Kate, sitting writing all perhaps what some of them thought. But, day long under a roof adjoining the very to tell the truth, I don't believe many of roof that sheltered her, with herself before them thought so. Even Mr. Whichelo, the his eyes every day. For he could not help head clerk, whose children were often ailing, but see her as she went out and in. But and who had a good deal of trouble to make still it was doubtful whether there was much both ends meet, smiled benign upon Kate. comfort in those glimpses of her. Mr. CredHad she been her own mother, it might have iton had not been unkind to him; but he been different; but she was a creature of had never pretended, of course, to be deeply nineteen, and everybody felt that it was nat- delighted with the unexpected choice which ural. The clerks, with their noses at the his daughter had made. "If I consent to grindstone, and her father sombre in the Kate's engagement with you,” he had said, dingy room, working hard too in his way "it must be upon my own conditions. It all to keep up the high-stepping horses, the is likely to be a long time before you can shining harness, the silks and velvets, and marry, and I cannot have a perpetual phithe high supremacy of that thing like a rose- landering going on before my eyes. She bud who sat princess among them, - after might like it, perhaps, for that is just one all, was it not quite natural? What is the of the points upon which girls have no feelgood of the stem but to carry, and of the ing; but you may depend upon it, it would leaves and thorns but to protect, the flower? be very bad for you, and I should not subBut it may be supposed that John Mit-mit to it for a moment. I don't mean to ford's feelings would be of a very strange say that you are not to see her, but it must description when he found himself dropped be only at stipulated times. Thus far, at

least, I must have my own way." John had to Kate. He felt that he could have lived acquiesced in this arrangement without much and worked like Jacob for twice seven resistance. It had seemed to him reason-years, had his love been living such a life able, comprehensible. Perpetual philan- as Rachel did by his side-going out with dering certainly would not do. He had the flocks, tending the lambs, drawing water to work to acquire a new trade foreign at the fountain, smiling shy and sweet at to all his previous thoughts and education him from the tent-door. These were the to put himself in the way of making terms in which his imagination put it. Had money and providing for his wife; and he he seen Kate trip by the window as his too could see as well as her father that to mother did with her little basket, or trip be following her about everywhere, and in- back again with a book, after his own ideal terrupting the common business of life by idle of existence, his heart would have blessed love-making, however beatific it might be, her as she passed, and he himself would was simply impossible. To be able to look have returned to his ledger and worked forward now and then to the delight of her twice as hard, and learned his duties twice presence -to make milestones upon his as quickly; but to see her flash away from way of the times in which he should be per- the door amid a cavalcade of unknown riders mitted to see her, and sun himself in her eyes,- with that solace by the way, John thought the time would pass as the time passed to Jacob - as one day; and he accordingly assented, almost without reluc

tance.

to see her put into her carriage by some man whom he longed to kick on the spot to watch her out of sight going into scenes where his imagination could not follow her, was very hard upon John. And thus to see her every day, and yet never, except once a-week or so, exchange words with her! Against his will, and in spite of all his exertions, this sense of her continual presence, and of her unknown friends, and life which was so close to him, and yet so far from him, absorbed his mind. When he should have been working his office work he was thinking where could she have gone to-day? When he ought to have been awakening to the interests of the bank, he was brooding with a certain sulkiness quite unnatural to him over the question, who that man could be who put her on her horse? It is impossible to describe how all this hindered and hampered him, and what a chaqs it made of his life.

But he did not know when he consented thus to the father's conditions that Kate would be flashing before him constantly under an aspect so different from that in which he had known her. Her engagement, though it made such an overwhelming difference to him, made little difference to Kate. She had come home to resume her usual life-a life not like anything that was familiar to him. Poor John had never known much about young ladies. He had never become practically aware of the place which amusement holds in such conditions of existence-how, in fact, it becomes the framework of life round which graver matters gather and entwine themselves; and it was a long time before he fully made the And even Kate herself found it very difdiscovery, if, indeed, he did ever make it. ferent from what she had anticipated. She Society could scarcely be said to exist in sent in a servant for him several times at Fanshawe Regis; and those perpetual rid-first; and once, when she had some little ings and drivings and expeditions here and errand in the town, had the audacity to walk there those dinners and dances - those into the bank in her proper person and call afternoon assemblages the music and the her lover from his desk. "Please tell Mr. chatter, the va et vient, the continual flutter Mitford I want him," she said, looking Mr. and movement, confounded the young man. Whichelo full in the face, with an angelical He tried to be glad at first that she had so blush and smile; and when he came to her, much gaiety, and felt very sorry for himself, Kate turned to him before all the clerks, who was shut out from all share in it. And who were watching with a curiosity which then he got a little puzzled and perplexed. may be imagined. "Oh John," she said, Did this sort of thing go on forever? Was" come with me as far as Paterson's. It is there never to be any break in it? Kate market-day, and I don't like to walk alone." herself unconsciously unfolded to him its perennial character without the remotest idea of the amazement she was exciting in his mind. So far as John's experience went, a dance, or even a dinner-party, or a croquet-party, or a picnic, were periodical delights which came at long intervals, but they were the common occupations of life

Of course he went, though he had his work to do. Of course he would have gone whatever had been the penalty. The penalty was that Mr. Crediton gave Kate what she called "a dreadful scold." "It was like a fishwoman, you know," she confided to John afterwards. 'I could not have believed it of papa; but I suppose when people are in

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