CHAPTER III.

Mr. Harcourt

THE widow's cause was won! had done wonders; at least so said Mr. Marsden, and so thought the bereaved Mrs. Wilkins: and even the young barrister was inclined to be somewhat of the same opinion when he received a wellfolded envelope, enclosing a bank-bill for five hundred pounds, and an invitation to dinner. At first, Harcourt could scarcely believe his eyes; the point gained was so very a trifle, so almost unworthy of contention he forgot, for a time, that there is such a weakness in the world as ostentation; a much more luminous idea struck him; he understood the thing at once: his friend Marsden (Marmaduke Maxim had been his butt hitherto!), his friend Marsden had described him to the lovely widow, she had become interested, perhaps more than interested, by the portrait he had drawn; or, still more probable, she had herself actually seen him! Him; Frank Harcourt, barrister at law, and bachelor; there were so many opportunities for her to see him, the thing was certain; she had seen him, she was enamoured of him, she was sighing in solitude for the delicious Wednesday, when, at half past seven (as the card informed him), he was to see the lions fed in Baker-street, and to share in their repast. Harcourt remembered the flutterings and flushings of Lady Clara, and really felt sorry for the widow !

Let no one carelessly decide that so great a change in so short a period in the nature of Har

court, was either unnatural or improbable. He was poor, fastidious in his tastes, and vain. Had he at once decided on a plan of action, without reference to his peculiar feelings, looking only to an ultimate good, without cavilling at the pleasantness of the path which led to it, he had sufficient energy of nature to have overcome a host of impediments; but now vanity, and that inherent love of all which was refined and luxurious, had paralyzed the sterner and more manly impulses of honest and uncompromising resolution. Harcourt was a Sybarite in soul; and when once the bed of roses had been spread for him, even in idea, he shrank with loathing from the more healthy and independent rest which his own hands might have insured to him. "Why," he asked himself, for he became logical in his solitude, "why should I be an outcast from fortune, when she has rained her favours, like a manna-shower, on Joseph Nichols? Am I not as worthy of them as he? am I not as highly educated, as finely constituted, as, likely to charm the goddess into smiles? ergo, Frank Harcourt, thou shalt not toil to gain an unsatisfactory competence, a starveling sufficiency, a mere comfortable independence,--that undefined and undefinable something which every man rates according to his own estimate:-no! thou shalt take Lady Fortune by storm; thou shalt win her by the most delicious of all methods-by smiles, and glances, and gentle tones! the keystone of thy prosperity shall be lovely woman, and its foundation as glowing a specimen of la belle passion as ever made captive the heart of a young beauty!"

Frank's revery was becoming quite pleasant and poetical; and ever and anon he extended his leg, and looked complacently on a foot which certainly did no discredit to the goodly specimen of Hoby's

very perfect performance in which it was enclosed. It would have been grossier à vingt quatre carats to have premeditatedly interrupted such a delicious, anti-mundane fit of enjoyment as that in which the young barrister was now absorbed; and doubtless, if the comely and elaborately attired Mrs. Fisher, his very respectable landlady, had suspected, for a moment, that he was so pleasingly engaged, she would have forborne her visit; however, she, good woman, could not possibly have an idea, judging from the import of a very long, narrow, closelyinscribed manuscript which she held in her hand, that Frank Harcourt, Esq., at the very moment when she applied her fair fingers to the brass knob of his door, to effect an entrance into the smartly curtained and carpeted room, which he had, within the last hour, been industriously converting into, what some imaginative print-sellers in our sentimental metropolis have lately designated their shops,--" a Temple of Fancy;" she, I repeat, poor woman, could not possibly suspect that he was at that identical moment standing on the lowest step of a certain edifice near Hanover Square, handing a lovely woman, all blonde and orange-blossom, into a superb travelling chariot, drawn by four high-bred bays. So it was, however; and he started, "more in sorrow than in anger," when, without even the courtesy of a preliminary signal, the portly Mrs. Fisher crossed the threshold of his apartment, and stood before him. Harcourt saw, at a glance, that what his fair visiter held in her hand was not a white glove; but he remembered the widow's bank-bill, and turned towards her with one of those smiles, which, as Mrs. Fisher was wont to acknowledge to her particular friends, "always conjured her heart into her mouth, as long as his account was under twenty pounds."

Ha, my pretty landlady," said Frank, in a tone of light-hearted gallantry," and how are you, Mrs. Fisher? though it is a very useless question when I look at your eyes; take a seat, my good hostess; nay, nay, no ceremony; pray be seated."

"Pretty or ugly, Mr. Harcourt," replied his creditor, striving, despite his handsome face and his very polite attention, to preserve her look and attitude of dignity and decision, "pretty or ugly, sir, sitting or standing, I am come to say that you really must pay your bill, or leave my first floor." "But I am attached to your first floor, Mrs. Fisher."

"I don't doubt that, sir" and the owner of the chintz curtains and Brussels carpet looked complacently round the apartment; "but I am a lone widow, sir, and I depend on my lodgers."

Harcourt smiled again; she was not his widow! "I am really sorry to trouble you, sir," continued Mrs. Fisher, as she looked up, and encountered the smile, which she, with all a woman's ingenuity, immediately misconstrued. Harcourt did not instantly reply, for a new fold of the cloud of imagination in which he was enwrapped when the lady broke in upon his solitude, was just floating past his "mind's eye." Mrs. Fisher made no remark on his uncourteous silence; for I know not whether castle-building be contagious, but the worthy widow was in an instant busily employed with a Chateau en Espagne of her own. Her dark eyes ran up and down, and in and out, following all the little intricacies of the pattern of her best Brussels, but her mind went not with them: she was thinking that it was ten thousand pities that so young, nice, genteel, and handsome a young gentleman should be poor, and not marry, or take some means of making money! Little did Mr. Frank

Harcourt suspect, when in his turn he aroused his landlady from a revery, which, from some unaccountable cause, had considerably heightened her complexion, that he was at that moment an object of her pity, and that she had decided in her own mind that he was "a very nice, genteel young gentleman!" Nice! and genteel!! Had he suspected the application of two such adjectives to himself, he would never have recovered the shock. "And so, Mrs. Fisher, you are quite determined that I shall pay my bill, or vacate the premises?"

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Why, not exactly that, sir," said the widow; who, during the five minutes of silence in which she had just indulged, had," at all events," and "let things turn out as they might," resolved "not to be hard upon the poor young gentleman;" "but if you really cannot settle your account, I must request that you will move up to the next floor: the room is quite as comfortable as this, except, to be sure, that one of the windows is built up to save taxes, and that the curtains are white dimity, and the carpet only a Kidderminster."

"And now tell me, Mrs. Fisher," said Frank, in his most silvery tone, and with one of his sweetest smiles, "could you really find it in your heart to send me, who have lodged with you so long, into an apartment up two pair of stairs, as dark as a dungeon, hung with white dimity, and carpeted with Kidderminster ?"-He could have laughed outright as he asked the question, but he refrained.

"To be sure, Mr. Harcourt, you have lodged with me a long time," said the widow, vacillating between avarice and admiration: "but then you know, sir, you have never paid for your apartments-and if you think that another week or two"--She paused for a moment, and Harcourt waited silently to hear the termination of her