They pleaded against him volubly with the rising of her image into it. His manager at the mines had sent word of ominous discontent down there. His presence might be required. Obviously, then, the threatened place was unfitting for the Countess of Fleetwood. He dispatched a kind of order through Mr. Howell Edwards, that she should remove to Esslemont to escape annoyances. Essiemont was the preferable residence. She could there entertain her friends, could spend a pleasanter time there. He waited for the reply. Edwards deferred it. Were they to be in a struggle with her obstinate will once more? Henrietta was preparing to leave London for her dismal, narrow, and after an absence desired, love-nest. The Earl called to say farewell, cool as a loyal wife could wish him to be, admiring perforce. Marriage and maternity withdrew nothing-added to the fair young woman's bloom. She had gone to her room to pack and dress. Livia received him. In the midst of the casual commonplaces, her memory was enlightened. "Oh," said she, and idly drew a letter out of a blotting-pad, "we have heard from Wales." She handed it to him. Before he knew the thing he did, he was reading: "There is no rest for my brother, and I cannot help; I am kept so poor I have not the smallest of sums. I do not wish to leave Wales, the people begin to love me; and can one be mistaken? I know if I am loved or hated. But if my lord will give me an allowance of money of some hundreds, I will do his bidding; I will leave England or I will go to Esslemont; I could say to Mr. Woodseer, in that part of London. He would not permit. He thinks me blacked by it, like a sweep-boy coming from a chimney; and that I have done injury to his title. No, Riette, to be a true sister, I must bargain with my lord before I submit. He has not cared to come and see his little son. His boy has not offended him. There may be some of me in this dear. I know whose features will soon show to defend the mother's good name. He is early my he. "Why give me this? Take it," said She laid it on the open pad. Henrietta entered and had it restored to her, Livia remarking: "I found it in the blotter after all." She left them together, having to dress for the drive to the coach-office with Henrietta. "Poor amusement for you this time." Fleetwood bowed, gently smiling. "Oh!" cried Henrietta, "Balls, routs, dinners, music-as much music as I could desire, even I. What more could be asked? I am eternally grateful." "The world says you are more beautiful than ever." "Happiness does it, then-happiness owing to you, Lord Fleetwood." "Columelli pleased you?" "His voice is heavenly. He carries me away from earth.” 'He is a gentleman, too-rare with those fellows." He will speak "A pretty manner. his compliments in his English." "You are seasoned to endure then in all languages. Pity another of your wounded; Brailstone has been hard hit at the tables." "I cannot pity gamblers. May I venture?-half a word? respected. But, one instant, Lord Fleetwood, pray. She is I have to speak of her as my sister. I am sure she regrets .. She writes very nicely." "You have a letter from her?" Henrietta sighed that it would not bear exposure to him; "Yes." "Nicely worded?” "Well, yes, it is." He paused; not expecting that the letter would be shown, but silence fired shots, and he has stopped the petition. "We are to have you for a week's yachting. You prescribe your company. Only, be merciful. Exclusion will mean death to some. Columelli will be touring in Switzerland. You shall have him in the house when my new bit of ground northwest of London is open; very handy, ten miles out. We'll have the opera troupe there and you shall command the opera." Her beauty sweetened to thank him. If, as Livia said, his passion for her was unchanged, the generosity manifested in the considerate screen it wore over any physical betrayal of it deserved the lustre of her eyes. It dwelt a moment, vivid with the heart close behind and remorseful for misreading of old his fine character. Here was a young man who could be the very kindest of friends to the woman rejecting him to wed another. Her smile wavered. How shall a loving wife express warmth of sentiment elsewhere, without the one beam too much, that plunges her on a tideway? His claim of nothing called for everything short of the proscribed. She gave him her beauty in fullest flower. It had the appearance of a temptation; and he was not tempted, though he admired; his thought being: Husband of the thing! But he admired. That condition awakened his unsatisfied past days to desire positive proof of her worthlessness. The past days writhed in him. The present were loveless, entirely cold. He had not even the wish to press her hand. The market held beautiful women of a like description. He wished simply to see her proved the thing he read her to be; and not proved as such by himself. He was unable to summon or imagine emotion enough for him to simulate the forms by which fair women are wooed to their perdition. For all he cared, any man on earth might try, succeed or fail, as long as he had visual assurance that she coveted, a slave to the pleasures commanded by the wealth once disdained by her. Till that time, he could not feel himself perfectly free. Dame Gossip prefers to ejaculate, young men are mysteries, and bowl us onward. No one ever did comprehend the Earl of Fleetwood, she says: he was bad, he was good; he was whimsical and steadfast; a splendid figure, a mark for ridicule; romantic and a close arithmetician; often a devil, sometimes the humanest of creatures. In fine, he was a millionaire nobleman, owning to a considerable infusion of Welsh blood in the composition of him. Now, to the Cymry and to the pure Kelt, the past is at their elbows continually. The past of their lives has lost neither face nor voice behind the shroud; nor are the passions of the flesh, nor is the animate soul, wanting to it. Other races forfeit infancy, forfeit youth and manhood with their progression to the wisdom age may bestow. These have each stage always alive, quick at a word, a scent, a sound, to conjure up scenes, in spirit and in flame. Historically they still march with Cadwallader, with Llewellyn, with Glendower; sing with Aneurin, Taliesin, old Llywarch; individually, they are in the heart of the injury done them thirty years back, or thrilling to the glorious deed which strikes an empty buckler for most of the sons of Time. An old sea rises in them, rolling no phantom billows to break to spray against existing rocks of the shore. That is why, and even if they have a dose of the Teuton in them, they have often to feel themselves exiles when still in amicable community among the preponderating Saxon English. Add to the singular differentiation enormous wealth-we convulse the excellent dame by terming it a chained hurricane, to launch in foul blasts or beneficent showers according to the moods during youth-and the composite Lord Fleetwood comes nearer into our focus. Dame Gossip with her jigging to be at the butterwoman's trot, when she is not violently interrupting, would suffer just punishment were we to digress upon the morality of a young man's legal possession of enormous wealth as well. Wholly Cambrian Fleetwood was not. But he had to the full the Cambrian's reverential esteem for high qualities. His good-by with Henrietta, and estimate of her, left a dusky mental void, requiring an orb of some sort of contemplation; and an idea of the totally contrary Carinthia, the woman he had avowedly wedded, usurped her place. Qualities were admitted. She was thrust away because she had offended; still more because he had offended. She bore the blame for forcing him to an examination of his conduct at this point and that, where an ancestral savage in his lineaments cocked a strange eye. Yet at the moment of the act of the deed he had known himself the veritable Fleetwood. He had now to vindicate himself by extinguishing her under the load of her unwomanliness: she was like sun-dried linen matched beside oriental silk; she was rough, crisp, unyielding. That was now the capital charge. Henrietta could never be guilty of the unfeminine. Which did he prefer? It is of all questions the one causing young men to screw wry faces when they are asked: they do so love the feminine, the ultra-feminine whom they so hate for her inclination to the frail, His depths were sounded, and he answered independently of his will, that he must be up to the heroical pitch to decide. Carinthia stood near him then. The confession was a step, and fraught with consequences. Her unacknowledged influence expedited him to Sarah Winch's shop, for sight of one of earth's honest souls; for whom he had the latest of the two others down in Wales, and of an infant there. He dined the host of his Ixionides, leaving them early for a drive at night eastward, and a chat with old Mr. Woodseer over his punching and sewing of his boot-leather. Another honest soul, Mr. Woodseer thankfully consented to mount his coach-box next day, and astonish Gower with a drop on his head from the skies about the time of the mid-day meal. There we have our peep into Dame Gossip's young man mysterious. (To be concluded.) IT was said the other day of a man noted for his charitable estimate of his fellow-creatures that he would find something to admire in Satan himself. The remark was told him, and he said, "Yes, I always did admire the devil for his persistence." If he adopted the popular notion of Satan he might have found easily enough other grounds for admiring him; for while it is commonly held that the devil is not so black as he is painted, the better opinion seems to me to be that nowadays he is not painted anything like as black as he is, and that owing to the unfaithfulness with which his likeness is set forth he is very much more generally admired and respected than his qualities and true character deserve. The popular contemporary conception of Satan is of a highly successful man of the world. It is admitted that there are shady spots in his past history, that he has done some things that he should regret, that he is a hazardous associate and an unsafe person to have transactions with. But conversely it is realized that he is rich, powerful, and attractive, and intimately concerned and interested in promoting the material prosperity of the human race. He is known to be full of enterprise and public spirit, disposed to make things pleasant, and powerful in carrying the enterprises with which he is concerned to a profitable issue. It is true that he is understood to be unscrupulous, but it is felt that success excuses very much, and that when an individual has attained a position which enables him to be useful to the public it is a mistake to be over-nice about rejecting his good offices because in early life when his necessities were more pressing, his methods or affiliations were not always such as VOL. XVIII.-14 a conscientious person could approve. Then, thanks to the misdirected zeal of a multitude of worthy persons who assume to abhor Satan and all his works, he gets credit for a host of things with which he really had very little to do. Lots of clergymen and others are sure that he invented all kinds of dances and laid the cornerstones of all the theatres. He gets immense credit all the time in certain quarters as the loosener of restrictions as to the use of the Sabbath, so that in some parts of the country folks can hardly walk in the fields on a Sunday afternoon without a sense of obligation to him for his share in the enlargement of their liberties. Inasmuch as he is earnestly and continuously denounced by hordes of good and zealous people as the discoverer and promoter of all exhilarating beverages, people who like beverages of that sort and feel safe in consuming them in moderate quantities cannot help a certain kindliness of feeling toward him on that account. The upshot of all this perversion is that the enemies of the Adversary have unwittingly carved him out a great reputation as the champion of personal liberty, and the purveyor of manifold terrestrial delights which are not necessarily hurtful to those who realize them with discretion, and which are undeniably in favor with the natural man. Consequently it is easy for him to masquerade as a public benefactor, and folks, without admitting even to themselves how well they think of him, grow to feel that perhaps he has come to be good-natured in his old age, and that, nowadays, anyhow, his behavior seems pretty square, and that, maybe, the stories of his depravity do him an injustice. To give the devil his due is proverbially proper, but to make such a hero of him is not only inexpedient but very bad morals. John Milton is partly to blame for it, for he first made Satan grand and semi-respectable, but the work has made great progress since his day. The pleasantest and most reassuring line in the prayerbook is that which describes the service of God as perfect freedom. If that idea of God's service would be more generally disseminated, with due supplementary inculcation of the truth that all the salutary and truly pleasant things in life are the gifts of God and not devices of the Evil One, Satan would come much nearer to getting his due than he usually does come nowadays, or is likely to come perhaps, until the final reckoning. WHILE we toil slowly together up life's long incline our fellow - travellers upon the strange, eventful journey observe, if we ourselves do not, that certain of our peculiarities in speech, gesture, and expression have gradually become so intensified as to make remembrance of us incomplete without them. "Thread by thread the strands we twist Till they bind us neck and wrist," before we are conscious of the self-inflicted thraldom; and no man who has come to what are commonly called years of discretion ever entirely frees himself from the net-work of habit daily forming 'round him. The utmost that an altruistic philosopher can do is to make his net a web of gossamer, so that, however much he may be entangled in its meshes, those who are forced to brush by him shall escape galling. This is a task by no means easy. But to snap, or even to lighten the web of opinion when we have once woven it about some obstinate brain-cell-hoc opus, hic labor est, which might baffle the Cumaan Sibyl herself, with all her seven hundred years of wisdom. Why then will many of us persist in accumulating such fetters upon the reason, and even go so far as to glory in the servitude which their adoption entails? Of course we must all have our little innocent preferences which need not therefore be aggressive even to ourselves preferences in the choice of food, of our friends, for the hard bed and the leather cushion. We like some cheeses best, but we can put up with Roquefort if Camembert and Brie are not attainable. These are mild affairs of semi-unconscious growth, like the personal manners and customs that spring from the conditions in which we live. It is not of these that I speak, but of those assertive, rasping prejudices which yield to no persuasion, gentle or otherwise, and are flaunted upon all occasions with arrogant pride. I know men, and good men too, who sit so encircled by unquenchable bigotries that they resemble Wotan's daughter, cut off from temporal things by tongues of fire. For discussion leading always to the same invincible issue is profitless, and the points upon which they have satisfied themselves through their own violent iteration grow wearisome to others. A mystic circle of conviction, solemnly drawn about a subject soon makes that subject one to be tabooed. When these howling dervishes of prejudice are strictly faithful to their tenets what delight in life they lose! Following the beaten path which they maintain is the right one, they see but a single landscape, and never know the pleasures of exploration. In literature and the arts their course, like some Italian by-way between high garden-walls, has no outlook at all. One declares that music died with Beethoven, and that Liszt, Chopin, and Berlioz are all charlatans, while Wagner, of course, is an abomination. "Trollope!" cries another; "I have never read a line of him. Scott is my novelist." As though Barsetshire were non-existent, and human nature valueless south of the Tweed! Yet this same tissue of complexities will only laugh in the theatre; he must see French farce there, or nothing ; the words of Hamlet bore him. much surer his ground of satisfaction might be, if he would draw one long breath and expand sufficiently to like Hamlet and the French farce too. How Once, long ago, in the street, there was pointed out to me a man who had become famous in his little way, for never committing himself to an opinion. I suppose that he was a very ridiculous person ; evi |