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Your weed if well lit, troth your face seems the same,
With your one eye alight and your nose all aflame:
Abroad

As each gaud

Of our dance scatters round,
While patter

And clatter

Quick heels on the ground.

Ah! sweet mistress Lucy, with ringlets like gold,
And ruby mouth dimpling with laughter untold,
Rein up the white palfrey that champs at the bit,
And give the clear trill of your laughter its fit;
Not a wag of us all but his heart would rejoice
To hear, though derisive, the chime of your voice:
Each clown,

Up and down,

Through the maze of the dance,
Letting flow

To and fro

Gayest streamers that glance.

Ho! burly old Roger, the grimy, the grey,

Still ringing from anvil the work-chime of day

From greed of stout blows that no labour can gorge,

Now lean on the hammer that rests on the forge,

Sweeping grizzled locks back from your brow smirched and warm,
Vulcan's cavern your smithy, a Cyclop's your form:
While fair

To the air

With fast fluttering gleam,

To the beat

Of our feet

Snow-white handkerchiefs stream.

Hist! rosy-cheeked Patty, with frank laughing eyes,
As arch in their beauty as blue as the skies,

Tripping fresh from the buttercup mead by the stream,
With milk-pails well poised brimming over with cream,
Let them drip on the sod while you pause to look back,
As though daisies were dropping fresh blooms on your track;
And hear

Ringing clear,

Where our foot-notes prevail,

One alone

You can own

Love oft lures on that trail.

Come striplings, come maidens, troop round in a ring,
Here watch our quaint gambols that welcome the spring;
Old gaffer in holiday smock trimly clean,

Old gammer in scarlet cloak brave as a queen,

And urchins swept back by the whirl of the thong
Wielding bladder elastic, restraining their throng:
Draw round

Where we bound

In retreat and advance,

To each shout

Ringing out

From our wild Morris-Dance.

LITTLE GRAND AND THE MARCHIONESS;

OR,

OUR MALTESE PEERAGE.

PART III.

THE rooms were all right again, my Marchioness was en grande tenue, amber silk, black lace, diamonds, and all that sort of style. Fitzhervey and the other men were in evening dress, drinking coffee; there was not a trace of bottled porter anywhere, and it was all very brilliant and presentable. The Marchioness St. Julian rose with the warmest effusion, her dazzling white teeth showing in the sunniest of smiles, and both hands outstretched.

"Augustus, bien aimé, you are rather"

"Late," I suppose she was going to say, but she stopped dead short, her teeth remained parted in a stereotyped smile, a blankness of dismay came over her luminous eyes. She caught sight of Conran, and I imagined I heard a very low-breathed "Curse the fellow!" from courteous Lord Dolph. Conran came forward, however, as if he did not notice it; there was only that queer smile lurking under his moustaches. I introduced him to them, and the Marchioness smiled again, and Fitzhervey almost resumed his wonted extreme urbanity. But they were somehow or other wonderfully ill at ease-wonderfully, for people in such high society; and I was ill at ease, too, from being only able to attribute Eudoxia Adelaida's evident consternation at the sight of Conran to his having been some time or other an old love of hers. "Ah!" thought I, grinding my teeth, "that comes of loving a woman older than oneself. I'd rather fifty times over have Little Grand for a rival than Conran."

The Captain, however, seemed the only one who enjoyed himself. The Marchioness was beaming on him graciously, though her ruffled feathers were not quite smoothed down, and he was sitting by her with an intense amusement in his eyes, alternately talking to her about Stars and Garters, whom, by her answers, she did not seem to know so very intimately after all, and chatting with Fitzhervey about hunting, who, for a man that had hunted over every county, according to his own account, seemed to confuse Tom Edge with Tom Smith, the Burton with the Tedworth, a bullfinch with an ox-rail, in queer style, under Conran's cross-questioning. We had been in the room about ten minutes, when a voice, rich, low, sweet, rang out from some inner room, singing the glorious flammatus." How strange it sounded in the Casa di Fiori! Conran started, the dark blood rose over the clear bronze of his cheek. He turned sharply on to the Marchioness. "Good Heaven! whose voice is that?"

"In

"My niece's," she answered, staring at him, and touching a hand-bell. "I will ask her to come and sing to us nearer. She has really a lovely

voice."

Conran grew pale again, and sat watching the door with the most extraordinary anxiety, while I wished him at the devil for changing our free-and-easy, dashing, and not over-particular Casa di Fiori into the stupid, gêné, Englishified affair. And, besides, my Marchioness took no notice of me. What cursed flirts those women are!-with my bracelet glittering on her arm too! Some minutes went by; then the door opened, and Lucrezia da Guari entered, with the same haughty, reserved air which her soft young face always wore when with her aunt. By George! it changed, though, when her glance fell on Conran, into the wildest rapture I ever saw on any girl's countenance. He fixed his eyes on her with his stern iron look-the look Little Grand says he's seen him wear in a charge in Scinde-a contemptuous smile quivering on his face.

"Sing us something, Lucrezia dear," began the Marchioness. "You shouldn't be like the nightingales, and give your music only to night and solitude."

Lucrezia seemed not to hear her. She had never taken her eyes off Conran, and she went, as dreamily as that dear little Amina in the "Sonnambula," to her seat under the jasmines in the window. For a few minutes Conran, who didn't seem to care two straws what the society in general thought of him, took his leave, and went, to the relief, apparently, of Fitzhervey and Guatamara.

As he went across the verandah-that memorable verandah !—I sitting in dudgeon near the other window, while Fitzhervey was proposing écarté to Heavy, whom we had found there on our entrance, and the Marchioness had vanished into her boudoir for a moment, I saw Lucrezia da Guari spring out after him, and catch hold of his arm:

"Cecil! Cecil! for pity's sake!-I never thought we should meet like this!"

"Nor did I, signorina."

How coldly and chilly he spoke.

"Hush! hush! you will kill me.

In mercy, say some kinder words!” "I can say nothing that it would be courteous to you to say."

I couldn't have been as inflexible, whatever her sins might have been, with her little hands clasped on me, and her little face raised so close to mine. Lucrezia's voice changed to a piteous wail:

"You love me no longer, then ?"

"Love!" said Conran, fiercely-"love! How dare you speak to me of love? I held you to be fond, innocent, true as Heaven: as such, you were dearer to me than life-as dear as honour. I loved you with as deep a passion as ever a man knew-Heaven help me! I love you now. How am I rewarded? By finding you the companion of blackguards, the associate of swindlers, one of the arch-intrigantes who lead on youths to ruin with base smiles and devilish arts. Then you dare talk to me of love!"

With those passionate words he threw her off him. She fell at his feet with a low moan. He either did not hear, or did not heed it; and I, bewildered by what I heard, mechanically went and lifted her from the ground. Poor little Lucrezia! she hadn't fainted, but she looked so wild, that I believed the Marchioness, and set her down as mad; but

then Conran must be mad as well, which seemed too incredible a thing for me to swallow-our cool Captain mad!

"Where does he live ?" asked Lucrezia of me, in a breathless whisper.

"He? Who ?"

"Cecil-your Captain-Signor Conran."

"Why he lives in the barracks, of course."

"The barracks! Ah! they are in the town. Can I find him there?" "I dare say, if you want him," said I, now decided she was mad. "Want him! Oh, Santa Maria! do I not want him always. Is not his absence death to me? Can I find him?"

"Oh yes, I dare say.

rooms.

"Thank you."

Anybody will show you Captain Conran's

With that, this mysterious young lady left me, and I turned in through the window again. Heavy and the men were playing at lansquenet, that most perilous, rapid, and bewitching of all the resistless card Circes. There was no Marchioness, and having done it once with impunity, I thought I might do it again, and lifted the amber curtain that divided the boudoir from the drawing-room. What did I behold? Oh! torture unexampled! Oh! fiendish agony! There was Little Grand-self-conceited, insulting, impertinent, abominable, unendurable Little Grand-on the amber satin couch, with the Marchioness leaning her head on his shoulder, and looking up in his thrice-confounded face with her most adorable smile-my smile, that had beamed, and, as I thought, beamed only upon me!

If Mephistopheles had been by to tempt me, I would have sold my soul to have wreaked vengeance on them both. Neither saw me, thank Heaven! and I had self-possession enough not to give them the cruel triumph of witnessing my anguish. I withdrew in silence, dropped the curtain, and rushed to bury my wrongs and sorrows in the friendly bosom of the gentle night. It was my first love, and I had made a fool of myself. Stuart is right, the two are synonymous.

How I reached the barracks I never knew. All the night long I sat watching the stars out, raving to them of Eudoxia Adelaida, and cursing in plentiful anathemas my late Orestes, Little Grand-confound him! He had cut me down after all. How should I bear his impudent grin every mortal night of my life across the mess-table? I tore up into shreds about a ream of paper, inscribed with tender sonnets to Eudoxia Adelaida. I trampled into fifty thousand shreds a rosette off her dress, for which, fool-like, I had begged the day before. I smashed the looking-glass, which could only show me the image of a pitiful donkey. I called on Heaven to redress my wrongs. Oh! curse it! never was a fellow at once so utterly done for and so utterly done brown!

And in the vicarage, as I learnt afterwards, when my letter was received at home, there was great glorification and pleasure. My mother and the girls were enraptured at the high society darling Gussy was moving in; "but then you know, mamma, dear Gussy's manners are so gentle, so gentleman-like, they are sure to please wherever he goes!" Wherewith my mother cries, and dries her eyes, and cries again,

over that abominable letter copied from Little Grand's, and smelling of vilest tobacco. Oh! women! women! how little they know of the very best of their lovers, and husbands, and sons!

Then enters a rectoress of a neighbouring parish, to whom my mother and the girls relate with innocent exultation of my grand friends at Malta; how Lord A. Fitzhervey is my sworn ally, and the Marchioness St. Julian has quite taken me under her wing. And the rectoress, having a son of her own, who is not doing anything so grand at Cambridge, but principally sotting beer at a Cherryhinton public, smiles and is wrathful, and says to her lord at dinner:

66

My dear, did you ever hear of a Marchioness St. Julian?"

"No, my love, I believe not-never.'

"Is there one in the peerage?"

"Can't say, my dear. Look in Burke."

So the rectoress gets Burke, and closes it, after deliberate inspection, with malignant satisfaction.

"I thought not. How ridiculous those St. Johns are about that ugly boy Augustus. As if Tom were not worth a hundred of him!"

I was too occupied with my own miseries then to think about Conran and Lucrezia, though some time after I heard all about it. It seems that, two years before, Conran was on leave in Rome, and at Rome, loitering about the Coliseum one day, he made a chance acquaintance with an Italian girl, by getting some flowers for her she had tried to reach and could not. She was young, frank, and talkative, and had only an old Roman nurse, deaf as a post and purblind, with her. The girl was Lucrezia da Guari, and Lucrezia was, as you know, lovely, like one of her own myrtle or orange flowers. Somehow or other Conran went there the next day, and the next, and the next, and so on for a good many days, and always found Lucrezia and her camériste. Now, Conran had at bottom a touch of unstirred romance, and, moreover, his own idea of what sort of woman he could love. Something in this untrained yet winning Campagna flower answered to both. He was old enough to trust his own discernment, and, after a month or two's walks and talks, Conran, one of the proudest men going, offered himself and his name to Lucrezia da Guari, a girl of whom he knew nothing, except that she seemed to care for him as he had had a fancy to be cared for all his life. It was a deucedly romantic thing-however, he did it! Lucrezia had told him her father was a military officer, but somehow or other this father never came to light, and when he called at their house-or rather rooms-Conran always found him out, which he thought queer, but, on the whole, rather providential, and he set it down to a foreigner's roaming habits.

The day Conran had really gone the length of offering to make an unknown Italian his wife, he went, for the first time, in the evening to Da Guari's house. The servant showed him in unannounced to a brightlylighted chamber, reeking with wine and smoke, where a dozen men were playing trente et quarante at an amateur bank, and two or three others were gathered round what he had believed his own fair and pure Campagna flower. He understood it all; he turned away with an iron curse upon him. He wanted love and truth; intrigantes he could have by the score, and he was sick to death of them. From that hour he never saw