long ride, and still longer fast. But he was accustomed to such occasional strains upon his strength without any such results. Ah, no! He had come within the edge of the shadow of judgment, and its darkness was stealing over him, and its chill touched his heart.

These were the dreamy surmisings with which he rode slowly toward the house, and a few good resolutions in a nebulous embryo state, hovered uncomfortably about him.

No letter of any interest had come by the early post, and Sir Jekyl sate down tête-à-tête with his pretty daughter, in very dismal spirits, to dinner.

Beatrix was fond of her father, who was really a good-natured man, in the common acceptance of the term, that. is to say, he had high animal spirits, and liked to see people pleasant about him, and was probably as kind as a selfish and vicious man can be, and had a liking, moreover, for old faces, which was one reason why he hated the idea of his housekeeper's leaving him. But Beatrix was also a little in awe of him, as girls often are of men of whom they see but little, especially if they have something of the masculine decision of temper.

"You may all go away now," said the baronet suddenly to the servants, who had waited at dinner; and when the liveried phantoms had withdrawn, and the door had closed on the handsome calves of tall and solemn Jenkins, he said

"Nothing all day- no adventure, or visiter, Trixie-not a word of news or fun, I dare say?"

"Nothing-not a creature, papa; only the birds and dogs, and some new music."

"Well, it is not much worse than Wardlock, I suppose; but we shall have a gay house soon-at all events plenty of people. Old General Lennox is coming. His nephew, Captain Drayton, is very rich; he will be Lord Tewkesbury, that is, if old Tewkesbury doesn't marry; and, at all events, he has a very nice property, and does not owe a guinea. You need not look modest, Trixie. You may do just as you please, only I'd be devilish glad you liked one another-there, don't be distressed, I say, I'll mention it no more if you don't

like; but he'll be here in a few days, and you mayn't think him so bad."

After this the baronet drank two glasses of sherry in silence, slowly, and with a gloomy countenance, and then, said he

"I think, Trixie, if you were happily placed, I should give the whole thing up. I'm tired of that cursed House of Commons. You can't imagine what a bore it is, when a fellow does not want anything from them, going down there for their d--d divisions. I'm not fit for the hounds either. I can't ride as I used-egad! I'm as stiff as a rusty hinge when I get up in the morning. And I don't much like this place, and I'm tired to death of the other two. When you marry I'll let them, or, at all events, let them alone. I'm tired of all those servants. I know they're robbing me, egad. You would not believe what my gardens cost me last year, and, by Jove, I don't believe all that came to my table was worth two hundred pounds. I'll have quite a different sort of life. I haven't any time to myself, looking after all those confounded people, one must keep about them. Keepers, and gardeners, and devil knows who beside. I don't like London half as well as the continent. I hate dinner parties, and the season, and all the racket. It doesn't pay, and I'm growing old--you'll not mind if I smoke it?" (he held a cigar between his fingers)-"a complaint that doesn't mend by time, you know. Oh yes, I am old, you little rogue. Everybody knows I'm just fifty; and the fact is I'm tired of the whole thing, stock, fock, and barrel; and I believe what little is to be got of life is best had—that is, if you know how to look for it-abroad. A fellow like me who has got places and properties -egad, they expect him to live pro bono publico, and not to care or think two pence about himself-at least it comes to that. How is old Gwynn ?"

"Very well, I think."

"And what has she to say for herself; what about things in general!"

"She's not very chatty, poor old Gwynn, and I think she seems a little-just ever so little-cross."

"So she does-damnably She was always a bit of a vix she isn't improving, poor old

assemble, and in a few days more old Marlowe Hall began to wear a hospitable and pleasant countenance. The people were not, of course, themselves all marvels of agreeability. For instance, Sir Paul Blunket, the great agriculturist and eminent authority on liquid manures, might, as we all know, be a little livelier with advantage. He is short and stolid; he wears a pale blue muslin neck-handkerchief with a white stripe, carefully tied. His countenance, I am bound to say, is what some people would term heavy-it is frosty, painfully shaven, and shines with a glaze of transparent soap. He has small, very light blue round eyes, and never smiles. A joke always strikes him with unaffected amazement and suspicion. Laughter he knows may imply ridicule, and he may himself possibly be the subject of it. He waits till it subsides, and then talks on as before on subjects which interest him. Lady Blunket, who accompanies him everywhere, though not tall, is stout. She is delicate, and requires nursing; and, for so confirmed an invalid, has a surprising appetite. John Blunket, the future baronet, is in the diplomatic service, I forget exactly where, and by no means young; and lean Miss Blunket, at Marlowe with her parents, though known to be elder than her brother, is still quite a girl, and giggles with her partner at dinner, and is very naive and animated, and sings arch little chansons discordantly to the guitar, making considerable play with her eyes, which are black and malignant.

This family, though neither decorative nor entertaining, being highly respectable and ancient, make the circuit of all the good houses in the county every year, and are wonderfully little complained of. Hither also they had brought in their train pretty little Mrs. Maberiy, a cousin, whose husband, the M. jor, was in India-a garrulous anĺ good-humoured syren, who smiled with pearly little teeth, and blushed easily.

Old Dick Doocey was there also, a colonel long retired, and well known at several crack London clubs, tall, slight, courtly, agreeable, with a capital elderly wig, a little deaf, and his handsome high nose a little reddish. Billy Cobb, too, a gentleman who could handle a gun, and knew lots about horses and dogs, had arrived.

Miss

Captain Drayton had arrived a swell, handsome, cleverish, and impertinent, and as young men with less reason will be, egotistical. He would not have admitted that he had deigned to make either plan or exertion with that object, but so it happened that he was placed next to Miss Beatrix, whom he carelessly entertained with agreeable ironies, and anecdotes, and sentiments poetic and perhaps a little vapid. On the whole, a young gentleman of intellect, as well as wealth and expectations, and who felt, not unnaturally, that he was overpowering. Beatrix, though not quite twenty, was not overpowered, however, neither was her heart pre-occupied. There was, indeed, a shadow of another handsome young gentlemanonly a shadow, in a different styledark and this one light; and she heart whole, perhaps fancy-free, amused, delighted, the world still new and only begun to be explored. One London season she had partly seen, and also made her annual tour twice or thrice of all the best county houses, and so was not nervous among her peers.

And General and Lady Jane Lennox had come. The general, a tall, soldierlike old gentleman, who held his bald and pink, but not very high forehead, erect, with great gray projecting moustache, twisted up at the corners, and bristling gray eyebrows to correspond over his frank round gray eyes-a gentleman with a decidedly military bearing, imperious but kindly of aspect, good-natured, prompt, and perhaps a little stupid.

i

beautiful a figure and wonderful a waist, might have made one marvel how a lady so well qualified for a title, with noble blood, though but a small dot, should have wreeked herself on an old general, thongh with eight thousand a year. But there were stores and reasons why the simple old officer, just home from In lia, who knew nothing about London lies, and was sure of his knighthood, and it was said of a baronetage, did not come amiss.

There were people who chose to believe these stories, and people who chose to discredit them. But General Lennox never had even heard them; and certainly, it seemed nobody's business to tell him now. It might not have been quite picasart to tell the General. He was some what muddled of apprehension, and slow in everything but fighting; and having all the old fashionet notions about hairtriggers, and “ten Jices,” as tie proper or lead in a mis lers nding, people avo ded urcomi qt be toples in has compar y, at i were for the most put disposed to let well a, ne.

La tv Jane had a wili and a temper; but the General head his ground fi m'y. As bave nn as he have been hen perked; bat south ow he was not of the temperament w 11 wal suit to be bal eventy a lady; and as he was ing. tent and mangel, that t.. de W.8 tue une sue hai vs piel. L. Jae was not a riant beauty. Luxurions, Í aneste, su en, ti. mystery and relancholy of her fa e W.15 a relief among the status ar i sill Ders of the b. Im, ad t.. very of the style interested 1r a time even the be then of two *} = 1 4

*** of desse note there Were, all fre cong1 2 Vladsat jown to g aber, with f Reverd Dyes Mat. We, To

his appearance in the pa.. ur, a litt e to the sulpose of 1 « be mer the baronet, who d. i not expect hem

I may term the rudiments of a double chin altogether an ugly and even repulsive face, but with no lack of energy and decision--one looked with wonder from this gross, fierce, clerical countenance to the fine outlines and proportions of the baronet's face, and wondered how the two men could really be brothers.

The cleric shook his brother's hand in passing, and smiled and nodded briefly here and there, right and left, and across the table his recognition, and chuckled a harsher ei uckle than his brother's, as he took his place extemporized with the quiet legerdemain of a consummate butler by Ridley; and answered in a brisk, abrupt voice the smiling inquiries of friends.

"Hope you have picked up an appetite on the way, Dives,” said the baronet. Dives generally cared a pretty good one about withì im. “Good kar on the way, and pretty good mutton here too my friends te.i me, ' “Capital air capital mutton — capital fish,' replied the ecclesiastic in a brisk bas ness like tone, while being a man of nerve, he got some fish, a'though that esculent had long vanished, and even the entrees had possed into history, and called over

is shoulder for the special satices When has soul loved, and taiked, at d compounded his condiments with ency and precision.

The re tor was a shrewd and gentlemanlike, t} .h not a very petty, apostie, and had made a säiliölelt to let betre presenting himse f, and shipped and demoliseed his fish, in a

e breasted coat, with stall ling conar; a ribbed sick waistcost, covering his ample chest, al

stike a cassack, and ore of those tia ispient mus, n dog colars Winch 1.dt tæer men affect.

“Well, Daves, cried Sir Jekyl," “how do the tus ring! I gave them ach me, por deve ths was addressed to La ly Eur ket at his chow "by way of expensation when I Bet tiem Dives

and drank off half his glass of hock.

"Can't believe it, Dives. Here's Lady Blunket knows. He's the aged incumbent of Droughton. A devilish good living in my gift; and of course you've been asking how the dear old fellow is."

"I haven't, upon my word; not but I ought, though," said the Rev. Dives Marlowe, as if he did not see the joke.

"He's very severe on you," simpered fat Lady Blunket faintly across the table, and subsided as if the exertion hurt her.

"Is he? Egad, I never perceived it." The expression was not clerical, but the speaker did not seem aware he had uttered it. "How dull I must be! Have you ever been in this part of the world before, Lady Jane?" continued he, turning towards General Lennox's wife, who sat beside him.

"I've been to Wardlock, a good many years ago; but that's a long way from this, and I almost forget it," answered Lady Jane, in her languid, haughty way.

"In what direction is Wardlock," she asked of Beatrix, raising her handsome, unfathomable eyes for a moment.

"You can see it from the bowwindow of your room-I mean that oddly shaped hill to the right.

"That's from the green chamber," said the rector. "I remember the view. Isn't it?"

"Yes. They have put Lady Jane in the haunted room," said Beatrix, smiling, and nodding to Lady Jane.

"And what fool, pray, told you that," said the baronet, rather sharply.

"Old Gwynn seems to think so,' answered Beatrix, with the surprised and frightened look of one who fancies she has made a blunder. "Iof course we know it's all folly."

"You must not say that you shan't disenchant us," said Lady Jane. "There's nothing I should so like as a haunted room; it's a charming idea -isn't it, Arthur?" she inquired of the general.

"We had a haunted room in my quarters at Puttypoor," observed the general, twisting the point of one of his moustaches. "It was the storeroom where we kept pickles, and olives, and preserves, and plates, and

jars, and glass bottles. And every night there was a confounded noise there; jars, and bottles, and things tumbling about, made a devil of a row, you know. I got Smith-my servant Smith, you know, a very respectable man uncommon steady fellow, Smith--to watch, and he did. We kept the door closed, and Smith outside. I gave him half-a-crown a night and his supper- very well for Smith, you know. Sometimes he kept a light, and sometimes I made him sit in the dark with matches ready.

"Was not he very much frightened?" asked Beatrix, who deeply interested in the ghost.

was

"I hope you gave him a smellingbottle inquired Tom Linnett, with a tender concern.

"Well, I don't suppose he was," said the general, smiling good-humouredly on pretty Beatrix, while he loftily passed by the humorous inquiry of the young gentleman. "He was in fact on dooty, you know and there were occasional noises and damage done in the store-room-in fact just the same as if Smith was not there."

"Oh, possibly Smith himself among the bottles "suggested Linnett.

"He always got in as quick as he could," continued the general; "but could not see anyone. Things were broken-bottles sometimes."

"How very strange "exclaimed Beatrix, charmed to hear the tale of wonder.

"We could not make it out; it was very odd, you know," resumed the narrator.

"You weren't frightened, general?" inquired Linnett.

No, sir," replied the general, who held that a soldier's courage, like a lady's reputation, was no subject for jesting, and conveyed that sentiment by a slight pause, and a rather alarming stare from under his fierce grey eyebrows. "No one was frightened, I suppose; we were all men in the house, sir."

"At home, I think, we'd have suspected a rat or a cat," threw in the Rector.

"Some did, sir," replied the general;" and we made a sort of a search; but it wasn't. There was a capital tiled floor, not a hole you could put a ramrod in; and no cat neither-high windows, grated; and the door al