young then, and now-it is so long ago; -ah, Geoff, you must not be angry with me. The little children are with Mary. She did not tell me much, for her heart did not soften to me as mine did to her. But there they are; the mother dead who was at the bottom of it all; and nobody to care for them but Mary; all through something that happened before they were born."

Lady Stanton grew red as she spoke, her voice trembled, her whole aspect was full of emotion. The young man shook his head

"I suppose a great many of us suffer for harm done before we were born," he said gravely. "This is no solitary in

stance.'

"Ah, Geoff, it is natural, quite natural that you should feel so. I forgot how deeply you were affected by all that happened then."

"I did not mean that," he said gravely. His youthful face had changed out of its light-hearted calm. "Indeed I had heard something of this and I wanted to speak to you

Run away, my darlings," said Lady Stanton; go and see what-nurse is about. Make her go down with you to the village and take the tea and sugar to the old women in the Almshouses. This is the day-don't you remember?"

"So it is," said Annie. "But we did not want to remember," said Fanny," we liked better to stay with you."

However, they went off, reluctant but obedient. They were used to being sent away. It was seldom their mother who did it willingly-but everybody else did it with peremptory determination-and the little girls were used to obey. They untwined themselves from her arms to which they had been clinging, and went away close together, with a soft rush and sweep as of one movement.

66

Cousin Mary, will it hurt you much to tell me all about it?" said the young man. "Forgive me, I know it must be painful; but all that is so long over and everything is so changed-"

"You mean I have married and forgotten," she said, her lips beginning to quiver.

"I scarcely remember anything about it," said Geoff, looking away from her that his eyes might not disturb her more, "only a confused sort of excitement and wretchedness, and then a strange new sense of importance. We had been nobodies till then-my mother and I. But I have heard a few things lately. Walter-will it pain you if I speak of him?” "Poor Walter!-no. Geoff, you must understand that Walter loved somebody else better than me."

She said this half in honest avowal of that humiliation which had been one of the great wonders of her life, partly in excuse of her own easy forgetfulness of him.

"I have heard that too, Cousin Mary, with wonder; but never mind. He paid dearly for his folly. The other-"

I

"Geoff," said Lady Stanton with a trembling voice," the other is living still, and he has paid dearly for it all this time. We must not be hard upon him. do not want to excuse him-it would be strange if I should be the one to excuse him; but only-"

"I am very sorry for him, Cousin Mary. I am glad you feel as I do. Walter may have been in the wrong for anything I know. I do not think it was murder."

Geoff looked up surprised at her eager tone and the trembling in her voice.

"You knew him-well?" he said, with that indifferent composure with which people comment upon the past, not knowing what depths those are over which they skim so lightly. Could he have seen into the agitation in Lady Stanton's heart! But he would not have understood nor realised the commotion that was there.

"I always-took an interest in him," she said, faltering, and then she felt it her duty to do her best for him as an old friend. I had known him all my life, Geoff, as well as I knew Walter. He was hasty and high-spirited, but so kind -he would have gone out of his way to help anyone. Before he saw that young woman everybody was fond of John.'

"Did you know her too?"

"No, no; I did not know her. God forbid! She was the destruction of every one who cared for her," said Lady Stanton with a little outburst. Then she made an effort to subdue herself. "Perhaps I am not just to her," she said with a faint smile. "She was preferred to me, you know, Geoff; and they say a woman cannot forget that-perhaps it is true."

66 How could he? was he mad?" Geoff said. Geoff was himself tenderly, filially in love with his cousin Mary. He thought there was nobody in the world so beautiful and so kind. And even now she was not understood as she ought to be. Sir Henry thought her a good enough wife, a faithful creature, perfectly trustworthy, and so forth. It was in this light that all regarded her. Something better than an upper servant, a little dearer than a governess. Something to be made use of, to do everything for everybody. She who, Geoff thought in his enthusiasm, was more lovely and sweet than the youngest of them, and ought to be held pre-eminent and sacred by everybody round her. This was not the lot that had fallen to her in life.

"So I am not the best judge, you see," said Lady Stanton with a little sigh. "In those days one felt more strongly perhaps. It all seems so vivid and clear," she added half apologetically, though without entirely realizing how much light these half confessions threw on her present state of less lively feeling, "that is the effect of being young-"

"I think you will always be young," he said tenderly; then added after a pause" was it a quarrel about -the woman?" He blushed himself as he said so, feeling the wrong to her yet only half knowing the wonder it was in her thoughts, the double pain it brought. "I think so. They were both fond of her; and Walter ought not to have been fond of her. John-was quite free. He was in no way engaged to any one. He had a right to love her if he pleased. But Walter interfered, and he was richer, greater, a far better match. So I suppose she wavered. This is my own explanation of it. They met then when their hearts were wild against each other, and there was a struggle. Ah Geoff! Has it not cost John Musgrave his life as well as Walter? Has he ever ventured to show himself in his own country since? And now their poor little children have come home to Mary; but he will never be able to come home."

"It is hard," said Geoff thoughtfully. "I wish I knew the law. Fourteen years is it? I was about six, then. Could anything be done? I wonder if anything could be done."

She put her hand on his shoulder with an affectionate caressing touch," Thanks for the thought, my dear boy-even if nothing could be done-"

"You take a great deal of interest in him, Cousin Mary?"

"Yes," she said quickly; "I told you we were all young people together; and his sister was my dear friend. We were called the two Maries in those days. We were thought-pretty," she said with a vivid blush and a little laugh. "You may have heard."

Geoff kissed the pretty hand which had been laid on his shoulder, and which was perhaps a little fuller and more dimply than was consistent with perfection. tion. "I have eyes," he said, with a little of the shyness of his years, “and I have always had a right as a Stanton to be proud of my cousin Mary. I wonder if Miss Musgrave is as beautiful as you are; I don't believe it for my part-"

"She is far prettier-she is not stout," said Lady Stanton with a sigh; and then she laughed, and made her confession over again with a half jest, which did not make her regret less real, "and I have lost my figure. I have developed, as

people say. Mary is as slim as ever. Ah, you may laugh, but that makes a great difference; I feel it to the bottom of my heart."

Geoff looked at her with tender admiration in his eyes. "There has never been a time when I have not thought you the most beautiful woman in all the world," he said, "and that all the great beauties must have been like you. You were always the dream of fair women to me-now one, now the other-all except Cleopatra. You never could have been like that black-browed witch--"

"Hush! boy. I am too old to be flattered now; and I am stout," she said with that faint laugh of annoyance and humiliation, just softened by jest. Geoff's honest praise brought no blush to her soft matronly cheeks, but she liked it, as it pleased her when the children called her "Pretty Mamma." They loved her the best, though people had not always done so. The fact that she had grown

stout did not affect their admiration. Only those who have known others to be preferred to themselves can realise what this is. After a moment's hesitation, she added in a low voice: "I wonder-will you go and see them? It would have a great effect in the neighborhood. 'Oh, Geoff, forgive me if I am saying too much; perhaps it would not be possible, perhaps it might be wrong in your position. You must take the advice of somebody more sensible, less affected by their feelings. Everybody likes you, Geoff, and you deserve it, my dear; and you are Lord Stanton. It would have a great effect upon the county; it would be almost clearing him—”

Then I will go-at once-this very day," said Geoff, starting up.

"Oh, no, no, no," she said, catching him by the arm, "first of all you must speak to some one more sensible than me."

(To be continued.)

In spite of all that has been written and said-not without truth-about the errors of public taste, it may be safely affirmed that when a book reaches its twenty-ninth edition it possesses considerable merit of some kind. It may be useful, instructive, clever, or simply amusing, but one of these things it must be, for even the work of the best known writer will not go beyond a certain limit of success without something more substantial than a name to recommend it. With the exception perhaps of usefulness, M. Daudet's novel possesses all the virtues we have enumerated,-we say perhaps, in deference to the opinion of those who hold that truth of any kind is always useful. Indeed a glance at the cover of the book reminds us that it has been couronné par l'Académie Française, and the title to such "crowning" is precisely the fact of being "un ouvrage utile

aux mœurs." Personally, we confess our inability to discover the usefulness of these pictures of bourgeois vice so unsparingly exposed, but the French Academy and the French public ought to know best, and these two great authorities have proclaimed in their several ways the morality of M. Alphonse Daudet's work.

It must be said that novels are judged in France, as regards their moral tendency, by singularly indulgent rules. They may be summed up thus:-The author has not held up vice to our admiration, or rendered virtue ridiculous and disagreeable; his bad people are not successful in the long run, or, if they are, they do not succeed, thanks to their badness; ergò, his book is worthy of being crowned. Judged by this lenient code, M. Daudet is undoubtedly entitled to a triumphant acquittal. He has certainly not rendered vice attractive. In his pages it has neither wit, grace, elegance, nor even gaiety, and Sidonie, his entirely bad heroine, the embodiment of unmitigated selfish vice, without one redeeming

point or even an amiable weakness, leads a life which seems to us only by a few shades less dull than that of her virtuous, long-suffering rival. The poetry of vice-if we may be excused so immoral an expression-is entirely absent. M. Daudet has painted good and bad bourgeois of both sexes, but the same prosaic atmosphere envelopes them all, and in this perhaps consists the perverting tendency of this well-meaning book. There can be no doubt that after reading it, the land of Bohemianism, with its surprises and its excitement, the varied land into which outcasts from the dull paradise of bourgeois respectability must wander forth, acquires a false prestige of romance when contrasted with the monotonous circle in which good Madame Fromont and bad Madame Risler suffer and sin. When we have added that M. Daudet, in spite of his subject, has carefully avoided all those glowing descriptions and perilous scenes in which French novelists love to indulge, and that his book may lie on the drawing-room table, we shall have disposed of one part of our subject, which we are well aware, however, is not the one which chiefly interests English readers. The main attraction for them lies in the second title of the book," Mœurs Parisiennes." Are these really Parisian manners? is the natural question of a foreigner. If the picture is not a likeness, it is worthless. We can safely affirm that it is not only a likeness, but a life-like photograph of one ugly aspect of French society-unflattering no doubt, as photographs mostly are, but cruelly real. And having said so much it is, we think, unnecessary to dwell on the story. Those whom our remarks would interest should turn to the volume itself, if they have not read it already. No one who has read it is likely to have forgotten it, and we would not spoil the pleasure of others. A few words will suffice. M. Daudet's heroine is an irredeemably bad woman, selfish, ignorant, and totally unscrupulous. As a poor, vain, workinggirl, she is devoured with envy and all the vulgar longings of her kind. Her beauty and her cunning raise her to the bourgeois class, and she becomes the wife of an honorable man, the respected partner in a large house of business. But "la petite Chèbe," in becoming

"Madame Risler," has not changed her nature, and her little venal soul" (sa petite âme vénale), as M. Daudet has it, remains unaltered. She passes through respectability unpurified and unelevated, scatters shame and misery around her, and at last drives her husband to suicide. Finally, having lost all she has toiled and plotted for, husband, station, wealth, good name, we leave her, still beautiful and always callous, sinking gaily into depths even below her starting point, and taking to a life of glitter and tawdry vice as to her native element. We found her in a garret, and take our leave of her on the stage of a café-concert-the right woman in the right place.

It is a story full of dramatic, and, in parts, even of tragic interest, with numerous and varied personages; and yet so flowingly told that, but for its length, one might suppose it to have been written off at a single sitting. There is none of that labored building up of incidents, that toilsome tangling and then unravelling of the story which is perceptible in most novels. The shortest tale could not be more easily told. Thanks to this work, M. Alphonse Daudet became suddenly famous. He had been before the public more than a dozen years, and was known as the author of many short tales and clever sketches, that were both graceful and life-like, but which scarcely gave promise of a novelist of the first order, such as he has proved himself to be. Had he possessed far less literary merit, the reality of his pictures would have entitled him to a foremost place; but he is something more than truthful, he is æsthetically truthful. He belongs to a realistic school, it is true, and the hackneyed comparison of the photographer came naturally under our pen; but his personages, photographed though they may be, are grouped with the skill of a true artist.

A novel which depicts truthfully any of the aspects of French social life should be highly prized, for it is a rare phenomenon. The French novelist may have, and often has, wit, fancy, and power; his dialogues may be brilliant, his incidents skilfully combined, his scenes of passion eloquent and thrilling, but, as a rule, his portraiture of manners and society is utterly valueless. The characters and the homes he paints belong to the

domain of fancy, and might well be the inventions of some foreigner who had never visited France. English readers are often scandalized, and with reason, at the strange doings attributed in French novels to English "milords" and "charming misses," but they would, perhaps, be somewhat appeased if they could be aware that the French personages of the book are only a trifle less exaggerated and improbable. We appeal to that numerous class in England whose experience is limited to the novels published in the Revue des Deux Mondes, which may be supposed to be among the best: who has not remarked that one of the stock characters among heroines is a lovely and imperious heiress, who lives alone in a château with one or two faithful domestics, and gallops about the country day and night in the wildest manner, on the most unmanageable of steeds? Even if there is an elderly relative in the background, the young and wilful Amazon is never thwarted. Now this kind of liberty is simply impossible in France. Again, there is another favorite female personage, the impassioned heroine who, regardless of social censure, indulges in the most daring and compromising freaks on the slightest provocation-certainly a most exceptional type in a country where even vice usually respects appearances, and where social and family ties are valued so highly that passion hardly ever relinquishes them voluntarily.

As to the heroes, it may be remarked that their chief characteristic is generally prodigality pushed to a fearful extent, and this, again, is decidedly not a distinguishing trait of the national character. Indeed one might say, generally speaking, that French society is depicted by its novelists, as the children's game has it, "by the rules of contrary.' As a last instance, we may point to the immense amount of travel that the French novelist imposes on his heroes whenever their loves or their fortunes take an unfavorable turn. Who does not know the stereotyped phrase: "Un beau jour le Vicomte" (or shall it be le Marquis?) "disparut de Paris, et personne ne put dire ce qu'il était devenu. La société Parisienne s'émut pendant quelques jours de cette disparition, puis elle l'oublia. . . . . When the Vicomte comes back to astonish oblivious society he has

invariably visited Japan, Cochin China, and Central Africa, to say the least. Now, do we not know that a French traveller is a rare being, and that in real life when the Vicomte or the Marquis has failed in the romance of life he generally, in the bitterness of his despair, gives a sullen consent to his own union with the eligible young lady his family have provided for him-marriage being the mitigated form of suicide usually adopted by young viveurs when reduced to desperation?

It may be said that French novelists, by choosing their chief actors among possessors of long pedigrees and large rent-rolls, have wilfully rendered accuracy impossible, as they neither belong nor are admitted to the blessed regions where these things are to be found. A Frenchman of high birth and large fortune does not write novels himself, and there are usually very good reasons why he should not associate with those who do. He is well educated, and has even been made to study hard enough, perhaps, up to the age of twenty or thereabouts-probably to pass his examination for the military school of St. Cyr; but, this point gained, with a few splendid exceptions, the intellectual effort is relaxed for life. Even the exceptions belong to politics or science, and light literature finds few or no recruits among the higher class. The scenes of aristocratic life to be found in French novels are necessarily mere fancy pictures painted by outsiders gifted with strong imaginative powers. At the other end of the social scale we have the ideal working man of socialist writers, who, if possible, is still less life-like and upon whom it is needless to dwell. Sufficient to say that he is as unreal as he is tiresome, and that is saying a great deal.

Nor is family life in the middle class more truthfully described. When a novelist condescends to represent it, the result is almost always a hideous caricature. All the unlovely and prosaic features of bourgeois life, which are evident enough, are made so prominent that they cast into shade the pleasanter lines. For the literary artist, the bourgeois is a Philistine whose function in a novel can only be to serve as a foil for the brilliant personages of that fantastic world where perfidious Russian princesses, with unbridled caprice, green eyes and boundless