excuses; so he looked her very full in the face, and replied a little haughtily, with a slow and delicate articulation, using his lips more than usual, and yet compressing them:

"I beg your pardon, madam, if I have unintentionally displeased you: but if you ever do me the honor of knowing more of me, you will be the first to confess that your words are unjust. Do you wish me to see your son, or do you not?"

Poor Mrs. Trebooze looked at him with an eye which showed that she had been accustomed to study character keenly, perhaps in self-defence. She saw that Tom was sober; he had taken care to prove that, by the way i. which he spoke; and she saw, too, that he was a better bred man than her husband, as well as a cleverer. She dropped her eye before his; heaved something very like a sigh; and then said, in her curt, fierce tone, which yet implied a sort of sullen resignation:

"Yes; come upstairs."

Tom went up, and looked at the boy again, as he lay sleeping. A beautiful child of four years old, as large and fair a child as man need see; and yet there was on him the curse of his father's sins; and Tom knew it, and knew that his mother knew it also.

"What a noble boy!" said he, after looking, not without honest admiration, upon the sleeping child, who had kicked off his bedclothes, and lay in a wild graceful attitude, as children are wont to lie; just like an old Greek statue of Cupid. "It all depends upon you, madam, now."

"On me?" she asked, in a startled, suspicious tone.

"Yes. He is a magnificent boy: but I can

"He will have that, at least, I should hope," she said, nettled.

"And on your influence ten years hence," went on Tom.

"My influence?"

"Yes; only keep him steady, and he may grow up a magnificent man. If not you will excuse but you must not let him live as freely as his father; the constitutions of the two are very 'different."

me

"Don't talk so, sir. Steady? His father makes him drunk now, if he can; teaches him to swear, because it is manly God help him and me!"

Tom's cunning and yet kind shaft had sped. He guessed that with a coarse woman like Mrs. Trebooze his best plan was to come as straight to the point as he could; and he was right. Ere half an hour was over, that woman had few secrets on earth which Tom did not know.

"Let me give you one hint before I go,” said he at last. "Persuade your husband to go into a militia regiment."

"Why? He would see so much company, and it would be so expensive."

"The expense would repay itself ten times over. The company which he would see would be sober company, in which he would be forced to keep in order. He would have something to do in the world; and he'd do it well. He is just cut out for a soldier, and might have made a gallant one by now, if he had had other men's chances. He will find he does his militia work well; and it will be a new interest, and a new pride, and a new life

to him. And meanwhile, madam, what you have said to me is sacred. I do not pretend to advise or interfere. Only tell me if I can be of use how,

when, and where servant."

and command me as your

And Tom departed, having struck another root; and was up at four the next morning (he never worked at night; for, he said, he never could trust after-dinner brains), drawing out a detailed report of the Pentremochyn cottages, which he sent to Lord Minchampstead, with:

"And your lordship will excuse my saying, that to put the cottages into the state into which your lordship, with your known wish for progress of all kinds, would wish to see them, is a responsibility which I dare not take on myself, as it would involve a present outlay of not less than £450. This sum would be certainly repaid to your lordship and your tenants, in the course of the next three years, by the saving in poor-rates; an opinion for which I subjoin my grounds drawn from the books of the medical officer, Mr. Heale: but the responsibility and possible unpopularity which employing so great a sum would involve is more than I can, in the present dependent condition of poor-law medical officers, dare to undertake, in justice to Mr. Heale, my employer, save at your special comand. I am bound, however, to inform your lordship, that this outlay would, I think, perfectly defend the hamlets, not only from that visit of the cholera which we have every reason to expect next summer, but also from those zymotic diseases which (as your lordship will see by my returns) make up more than sixty-five per cent of the aggregate sickness of the estate."

Which letter the old cotton lord put in his pocket, rode into Whitbury therewith, and showed it to Mark Armsworth.

"Well, Mr. Armsworth, what am I to do?" "Well, my Lord; I told you what sort of a man you'd have to do with; one that does his work thoroughly; and, I think, pays you a compliment, by thinking that you want it done thoroughly."

Lord Minchampstead was of the same opinion; but he did not say so. Few, indeed, have ever heard Lord Minchampstead give his opinion: though many a man has seen him act on it. "I'll send down orders to my agent."

"Don't."

"Why, then, my good friend?"

"Agents are always in league with farmers, or guardians, or builders, or drain-tile makers, or attorneys, or bankers, or somebody; and either you'll be told that the work don't need doing, or have a job brewed out of it, to get off a lot of unsalable drain-tiles, or cracked soil-pans; or to get farm ditches dug, and perhaps the highway rates saved building culverts, and fifty dodges beside. I know their game; and you ought, too, by now, my Lord, begging your pardon."

Perhaps I do, Mark," said his lordship, with a chuckle.

So, I say, let the man that found the fox run the fox, and kill the fox, and take the brush home."

"And so it shall be," quoth my Lord Minchampstead.

CHAPTER IX

"AM I NOT A WOMAN AND A SISTER?

BUL

OUT what was the mysterious bond between La Cordifiamma and the American, which had prevented Scoutbush from following the example of his illustrious progenitor, and taking a viscountess from off the stage?

Certainly, any one who had seen her with him on the morning after Scoutbush's visit to the Mellots, would have said that, if the cause was love, the love was all on one side.

She was standing by the fireplace in a splendid pose, her arm resting on the chimney-piece, the book from which she had been reciting in one hand, the other playing in her black curls, as her eyes glanced back ever and anon at her own profile in the mirror. Stangrave was half sitting in a low chair by her side, half kneeling on the footstool before her, looking up beseechingly, as she looked down tyrannically.

66

Stupid, this reciting? Of course it is! I want realities, not shams; life, not the stage; nature, not art."

"Throw away the book, then, and words, and art, and live!"

She knew well what he meant; but she answered as if she had misunderstood him.

"Thanks, I live already, and in good company enough. My ghost-husbands are as noble as they