where comedians and piquant actresses could always fill the benches. She knew where the best seats were, and how to make use of an order to most advantage; and, indeed, seemed hardly ever to have gone to a theatre except in the company of somebody armed with such a missive. She had been to parties of all kinds -to Kew, to Richmond, to Vauxhall (yes, I think there was a Vauxhall then), to Greenwich, to Dulwich, to Rosherville. She appeared to have an intimate knowledge of all places where supper was to be most comfortably and cheaply had in the neighborhood of each theatre. She had been to the Derby; and she never missed seeing the Queen going to open Parliament, or even the Lord Mayor's Show. She knew all about the great people of London-the Duchess of Sutherland, Lady Palmerston, and the like; and, by some strange process of information, she often used to get to know beforehand when grand balls were given in the neighborhood of Belgrave Square or Park Lane, and she loved to go and watch at the doors to see the ladies pass in. Her uncle, she told me, had often promised to take her to the Ladies' Gallery of the House of Commons to hear a debate, but as yet he had not carried out his promise. He took her to the National Gallery and the Royal Academy's Exhibition; but she did not much care about these places of entertainment, and could not tell the name of any picture or painter afterward. Mr. Lyndon, M.P., clearly wanted to impress her with the necessity of some sort of mental culture, for he sent her a new piano and a heap of books, and made her promise to learn. She might have mastered most studies quickly enough had she but shown the same aptitude for them which she had for picking up the private histories of actresses and great ladies, for turning and trimming old dresses, for reviving decayed bonnets, and for stimulating flat porter, by the application of soda, into a ghastly likeness of bottled stout.

I thought her naturally so clever, and indeed I felt such a warm interest in her, that I set to work to teach her something. The piano she played very badly, and that I could teach her; singing I was likewise qualified to instruct her in; and French I spoke fluently enough. These, then, I offered, and in fact was determined, to teach her; and she was very glad to learn, and, when she was in humor for it, very quick and docile. What she went about teaching in the families where she had tried to be governess I never could guess. Just now I was glad she knew so little, and that there were some things I could teach her. I had nothing to do half my time; I was lonely and unfriended; these people had been kind to me, as indeed kindness was a part of their nature, and I felt so grateful that I was only too glad to have any chance of showing my gratitude. So I became Lilla's music-master and French teacher when I could and when she would; and Mrs. Lyndon was delighted. The good woman trusted

me entirely. She had so often told me what her dreams and hopes for her daughter were, that she knew so poor a caitiff as myself would never be mean enough to play Marplot by making love to Lilla. We were all poor together, and Mrs. Lyndon felt that hawks would not pick hawks' eyes out.

Little or nothing in this story turns upon my pupil-teaching of Lilla. In a direct sense, nothing came of it. I mention it here only to explain the fact that Lilla and her mother got to think themselves deeply indebted to me, and that Lilla in particular was determined to make me some return.

One evening I was walking rather listlessly along Sloane Street, feigning to myself that I had business in town, when I met Lilla returning homeward. She was all flushed and beaming, evidently under the influence of some piece of splendid good news.

"Yes. I always wanted to speak to him about you, and I made up my mind to go up specially to-day and do it. I told him all about you; how you were living in our house, and how kind you had always been to mamma and me-which I'm sure we don't forgetwhenever we needed it; and Heaven knows we always do need it, for we never yet were able to pay any thing at the right time."

"Well, well, pass over all that, and come back to Mr. Lyndon."

"Yes, I told him all about you, and how you were better than a colony of sons to mamma, and a whole schoolful of brothers to me, and how you teach me this and that—every thing in fact. I can tell you your ears ought to have tingled, for such praise as I gave you mortal man never yet deserved. I told him what a singer you were-ever so much better than Mario, I said; at which I promise you he smiled very grimly, and grumbled out that he had heard of too many singers who were ever so much better than Mario. But I told him that you were, and no mistake. And then I said you wanted to get on the stage, only that you had no friends; at which he smiled again, and said a man who could sing better than Mario didn't much stand in need of friends."

"Well, but, Lilla, I don't quite see.” "Don't you? No, I dare say you don't; but I just do. Why, did I never tell you that my uncle knows all the great swells about the theatres? Oh yes. He once had a share in a theatre with a tremendous'swell, Lord Loreine, and he adores operas and singers, and he gives dinners at Greenwich to prima donnas. He is constantly behind the scenes every where-odd places for him to go to, I have often told him

and every great singer who comes out he always meets. Who is Reichstein? Is it a man or a woman?"

"Reichstein is a woman."

Nobody much likes any chaff about his name. I did not at first quite relish my young friend's remarks, but I soon saw there was some sense in them. I had indeed, for many reasons, determined on changing my name in some way, and this slight alteration would do as well as any other. So I went through the provinces as Emanuel Temple, and I have never since been publicly known by any other name.

CHAPTER X.

I MAKE A NEW ACQUAINTANCE.

SOME few weeks of professional wandering among chilling audiences in country towns, meeting with tolerable success in most places, brought me to Dover, and the first glimpse of the sea I had enjoyed for years. I felt boyish again at the sight of my old confidant; and the shining track of the moon across the water seemed to mark out a bright path back to the delightful dream-land, the far-off, fading Island of the Blest, with its "light of ineffable faces," whither my boyhood and my first love were banished, the one seemingly as much lost to me as the other. Not for years had I thought so bitterly, so passionately, of Christina as during my short stay in Dover by the sea. And yet she seemed to me almost like a creature in a dream -like some beautiful spirit-love, which had descended upon me while I lay in ecstatic delirium, and faded with my waking. I can almost believe the stories of men who have fallen madly in love with the daughters of dreams, and pined and sickened away their lives in longing after the unreal, and were glad to die, that they might be relieved of the vain tormenting wish.

I pass, however, from recalling these purely personal and egotistical recollections to the subject which I meant to speak of when I recurred to my visit to Dover. An accidental meeting there threw me in the way of making an odd acquaintanceship, which had no little influence afterward on one part at least of my fortunes, and those of two distinct and divided sets of persons, whose histories make indirectly a chapter of mine.

One evening, after I had sung at a concert and been somewhat applauded, I went to have my customary stroll by the sea. I turned into a cigar-shop in one of the steep, stony, narrow little streets, chiefly made up of oyster-shops and public houses, which alone are astir in Dover after nightfall. I asked for a cigar, hardly observing that somebody else was being served with something by the young woman who stood behind the counter.

"Glad he's come in!" said a full mellow male voice; "very glad. He'll decide; he looks a sort of person who ought to know."

It did not occur to me that this could well have any reference to myself, and so I asked again for a cigar. I noticed then that the girl was flushed in the face, and was biting her lips, half amused and half angry.

"Shall I refer it to him?" said the male voice again.

"I really don't care," replied the girl, "whom you refer it to; I've told you the price and the quality, that's all."

I looked round, and saw that there was seated on a chair at my left a short, stout, wellpreserved elderly personage, with black, beady, twinkling eyes, shining white teeth, a rubicund complexion, and a black wig. His opened lips had a full, sensuous expression, and there was a dash of something in his whole face which vaguely spoke of cruelty, or marked eccentricity, or something else that is out of the commonplace character of the everyday Briton. There was an odd, indefinable mixture about his appearance and manner of the broken-down gentleman and the artist. I should say that he was probably a naturalized Bohemian-one not born among the gipsies, but who perhaps had strayed into their encampments in early life, or got changed at nurse. His uncommon appearance and queer ways struck me at once. observed that his hands were small, fat, and beautifully white.

I

"Then we refer the case to arbitration," complacently remarked this personage; and, still remaining in his chair, he touched his hat very graciously to me, and with a wave of his hand invited my attention. "We have had a dispute, Sir, I and this young lady-her name is Fanny; I address her by her name because we are old acquaintances; I have been here twice, I think-touching the quality of these cigars. She declares them to be prime Havanas, and has the conscience to ask eightpence each. I represent them to be rather inferior Veveys, and suggest one penny each, or seven for sixpence. On these terms I am willing to treat for one shilling's worth. I tell her frankly it is no use trying to deceive me. I have been to Havana, and I have only just come back from Switzerland; and I remark to her that I rather think I saw the light at least a year or two before she did, and that, generally speaking, I have not knocked about the world for nothing. She refuses to admit the force of these arguments. Fortunately you have come just in time to arbitrate. You seem to me a man who ought to know tobacco from dock-leaves and brown paper. Come, then, how say you-Havana or Vevey ?"

"I am afraid I must decline to arbitrate. I have not been to Havana."

"But you are not a Dover man? You don't belong to this confounded dirty, disgraceful little place? Don't tell me.”

"No, I am not a Dover man." "Of course not; I knew it.-You see, Fanny, it's no use trying to deceive me. Take example, sweet girl."

The sweet girl only tossed her head and looked remarkably sour.

"If you're not going to 'ave the cigars," she said, "I just wish you'd put them down, and not bother."

"Fanny, you rush to conclusions with the impetuosity of your sex. It must be something, I fancy, in the nature of petticoats that makes the wearers of them so quick in their conclusions. No, Fanny, I shall not put the cigars down, because I do mean to ''ave them,' as you express it, with the delicious disregard of aspirates peculiar to our common country. I mean to ''ave them' and to pay for them, fair being, even at your own price; but I am anxious to convince you that, though you may extort my money—"

"Extort, indeed!

Fare

I followed my whimsical acquaintance. I observed that all his clothes were of foreign cut and fashion, and looked rather decaying. deed, he might have been taken for a shabby old Frenchman who had once been in good so

In

"No, I think not; I don't know at least; and pardon me if I say I don't much care." "And do you think I care. Not I. They have done their best for years, and I have stood out against them, and defied them, and bade them go to the devil; and just because they wouldn't go, and wanted me very particularly not to go either, I did my utmost to go there as fast as possible."

"Which I do believe you're going," muttered the girl, with a glance at me.

"I am a victim, Sir, to my sense of justice, and my determination not to be conquered. I left England when they wanted me to stay here; I come back now because I know they want me away. I'll spoil their game. There are people would rather see all the Beelzebubs and Molochs and Asmodeuses, and the rest of them, than me. Therefore I come. 'Confound their politics; frustrate their knavish tricks!' Good-evening, Sir. Or, stay, are you walking my way, and will you permit me to walk a little with you?"

I was about to decline very firmly the proffered companionship, but a supplicating look from poor Fanny seemed to beg of me to take him out of her way, wheresoever he might then desire to go. So I was pleased to be able to oblige the perplexed lass, who seemed half talked to death already; and it really did not much matter to me whether I endured my new acquaintance's company for a few minutes longer or got rid of him at once. So I expressed myself as quite delighted to have the pleasure of his company, and I was thanked by a glance of gratitude from under Fanny's eyelids.

unmistakably English. His voice was peculiarly sweet, full, and mellow, and its natural intonation when he dropped the manner of roistering buffoonery, which seemed to me purposely put on, was decidedly that of an educated English gentleman.

"That's a pretty little devil," remarked my friend as we emerged from a dark street suddenly into the moonlight of the quay.

"The girl in the shop?"

"As if you didn't know at once whom I meant! Of course the girl in the shop-I dare say you'll be found dropping in upon her again." "Not likely at all."

"Lord, Lord, how this world is given to lying! Don't be offended, Sir; I have only been quoting Jack Falstaff."

"I know, and I am not offended." "Thanks; I begin to think you are rather a good sort of fellow in your way, and I only offend people I don't like. But you know very well, you sly rogue, you'll be looking in upon little Fanny again. I saw telegraphic glances passing between you."

"I don't care one rush ever to see her again, and I don't mean to.'

"How odd! They tell me young fellows in England are greatly changed since my time. Apparently so. When I was your age I should have liked to see such a girl more than once. Even now, I can assure you, I am a martyr, a positive martyr, to my general affection for the petticoat. But look there! God! how can a man talk of petticoats, and such fribbles and frou-frou, when he has a sight like that before him?"

He pointed to the sea. We had reached a part of the road from which you looked, on the one hand, at the grand old castle and the white cliff's; on the other, out across the waves, whereon the soft moonlight of late summer seemed floating. The muffled, gentle thunder of the