find plenty of room in my heart for you, my poor hunted deer."

Why keep it?

free England."

"But he

No one need be ashamed of it here in

-he-you do not know, Sabina! Those Northerners, with all their boasts of freedom, shrink from us just as much as our own masters."

"O, Marie, do not be so unjust to him! He is too noble, and you must know it yourself."

ad

Ay, if he stood alone; if he were even going to live in England; if he would let himself be himself. But public opinion," sobbed the poor self-tormentor, "It has been his God, Sabina, to be a leader of taste and fashion mired and complete the Crichton of Newport and Saratoga. And he could not bear scorn, the loss of society. Why should he bear it for me? If he had been one of the abolitionist party, it would have been different; but he has no sympathy with them,-good, narrow, pious people, or they with him; he could not be satisfied in their society, or I either, for I crave after it all as much as he — wealth, luxury, art, brilliant company, admiration, -- O, inconsistent wretch that I am! And that makes me love him all the more, and yet makes me so harsh to him, wickedly cruel, as I was to-day; because, when I am reproving his weakness, I am reproving my own, and because I am angry with myself, I grow angry with him too-envious of him, I do believe at moments, and all his success and luxury!"

And so poor Marie sobbed out her confused confession of that strange double nature which so many Quadroons seem to owe to their mixed blood; a strong side of deep feeling, ambition, energy, an intellect rather Greek in its rapidity than English in sturdiness; and withal a weak side, of instability, inconsistency, hasty passion, love of present enjoyment, sometimes, too, a tendency to untruth, which is the mark, not perhaps of the African specially, but of every enslaved race.

Consolation was all that Sabina could give. It was too late to act. Stangrave was gone, and week after week rolled by without a line from the wanderer.

CHAPTER X.

THE RECOGNITION.

ELSLEY VAVASOUR is sitting one morning in his study, every comfort of which is of Lucia's arrangement and invention, beating the home-preserve of his brains for pretty thoughts. On he struggles through that wild, and too luxuriant cover; now brought up by a "lawyer," now stumbling over a root, now bogged in a green spring, now flushing a stray covey of birds of Paradise, now a sphinx, chimera, strix, lamia, fire-drake, flying-donkey, two-headed eagle (Austrian, as will appear shortly), or other portent only to be seen now-a-days in the recesses of that enchanted forest, the convolutions of a poet's brain. Up they whir and rattle, making, like most game, more noise than they are worth. Some get back, some dodge among the trees; the fair shots are few and far between; but Elsley blazes away right and left with trusty quill, and, to do him justice, seldom misses his aim, for practice has made him a sure and quick marksman in his own line. Moreover, all is game which gets up to-day; for he is shooting for the kitchen, or rather for the London market, as many a noble sportsman does now-a-days, and thinks no shame. His new volume of poems ("The Wreck" included) is in the press; but, behold, it is not as long as the publisher thinks fit, and Messrs. Brown and Younger have written down to entreat in haste for some four hundred lines more, on any subject which Mr. Vavasour may choose. And, therefore, is Elsley beating his home covers, heavily shot over though they have been already this season, in hopes that a few head of his own game may still be left; or, in default (for human nature is the same, in poets and in sportsmen), that a few head may have strayed in out of his neighbors' manors.

At last the sport slackens; for the sportsman is getting tired, and hungry also, to carry on the metaphor; for he has seen the postman come up the front walk a quarter of an hour since, and the letters have not been brought in yet. At last there is a knock at the door, which he answers by

a somewhat testy "come in." But he checks the coming grumble, when not the maid, but Lucia, enters.

Why not grumble at Lucia? He has done so many a time.

Because she looks this morning so charming; really quite pretty again, so radiant is her face with smiles. And because, also, she holds triumphant above her head a news

paper.

She dances up to him—

"I have something for you."

"For me? Why, the post has been in this half-hour." "Yes, for you, and that's just the reason why I kept it myself. D'ye understand my Irish reasoning?"

No, you pretty creature," said Elsley, who saw that whatever the news was, it was good news.

Pretty creature, am I? I was once, I know; but I thought you had forgotten all about that. But I was not going to let you have the paper till I had devoured every word of it myself first."

'Every word of what?"

"O what you shan't have unless you promise to be good for a week. Such a Review; and from America! What a dear man he must be who wrote it! I really think I should kiss him if I met him."

"And I really think he would not say no. But, as he's not here, I shall act as his proxy."

"Be quiet, and read that, if you can, for blushes; and she spread out the paper before him, and then covered his eyes with her hands. 'No, you shan't see it; it will make

you vain."

Elsley had looked eagerly at the honeyed columns (as who would not have done?); but the last word smote him. What was he thinking of? his own praise, or his wife's love?

"Too true," he cried, looking up at her. "You dear creature - vain I am, God forgive me; but before I look at a word of this I must have a talk with you."

"I can't stop; I must run back to the children. No; now don't look cross,' as his brow clouded; "I only said that to tease you. I'll stop with you ten whole minutes, if you won't look so very solemn and important. I hate tragedy faces. Now, what is it?"

As all this was spoken while both her hands were clasped round Elsley's neck, and with looks and tones of the very sweetest as well as the very sauciest, no offence was

given, and none taken; but Elsley's voice was sad as he asked,

So you really do care for my poems?"

"You great silly creature! Why else did I marry you at all? As if I cared for anything in the world but your poems; as if I did not love everybody who praises them; and, if any stupid reviewer dares to say a word against them, I could kill him on the spot. I care for nothing in the world but what people say of you. And yet I don't care one pin! I know what your poems are, if nobody else does; and they belong to me, because you belong to me, and I must be the best judge, and care for nobody, no, not I!" And she began singing, and then hung over him, tormenting him lovingly while he read.

It was a true American review, utterly extravagant in its laudations, whether from over-kindness, or from a certain love of exaggeration and magniloquence, which makes one suspect that a large proportion of the Transatlantic gentlemen of the press must be natives of the sister isle; but it was all the more pleasant to the soul of Elsley.

"There," said Lucia, as she clung croodling to him; "there is a pretty character of you, sir! Make the most of it, for it is all those Yankees will ever send you."

"Yes," said Elsley, "if they would send one a little money, instead of making endless dollars by printing one's books, and then a few more by praising one at a penny a line."

"That's talking like a man of business; if, instead of the review, now, a check for fifty pounds had come, how I would have rushed out and paid the bills!"

"And liked it a great deal better than the review?"

"You jealous creature! No. If I could always have you praised, I'd live in a cabin, and go about the world barefoot, like a wild Irish girl."

"You would make a very charming one."

"I used to once, I can tell you. Valencia and I used to run about without shoes and stockings at Kilanbaggan, aud you can't think how pretty and white this little foot used to look on a nice soft carpet of green moss."

"I shall write a sonnet to it."

"You may, if you choose, provided you don't publish it."

"You may trust me for that. I am not one of those who anatomize their own married happiness for the edification

of the whole public, and make fame, if not money, out of their own wives' heart."

"How I should hate you, if you did! Not that I believe their fine stories about themselves. At least, I am certain it's only half the story. They have their quarrels, my dear, just as you and I have; but they take care not to put them into poetry."

"Well, but who could? Whether they have a right or not to publish the poetical side of their married life, it is too much to ask them to give you the unpoetical also."

"Then they are all humbugs; and I believe, if they really love their wives so very much, they would not be at all that pains to persuade the world of it."

"You are very satirical and spiteful, ma'am."

"I always am when I am pleased. If I am particularly happy, I always long to pinch somebody. I suppose it's Irish

'Comes out, meets a friend, and for love knocks him down.""

"But you know, you rogue, that you care to read no poetry but love poetry."

"Of course not; every woman does; but let me find you publishing any such about me, and see what I will do to you! There, now I must go to my work, and you go and write something extra-superfinely grand, because I have been so good to you. No. Let me go; what a bother you are! Good-by."

And away she tripped, and he returned to his work, happier than he had been for a week past.

His happiness, truly, was only on the surface. The old wound had been salved as what wound cannot be ? by woman's love and woman's wit; but it was not healed. The cause of his wrong-doing, the vain, self-indulgent spirit, was there still unchastened; and he was destined, that very day, to find that he had still to bear the punishment of it.

Now the reader must understand, that though one may laugh at Elsley Vavasour, because it is more pleasant than scolding at him, yet have Philistia and Fogeydom neither right nor reason to consider him a despicable or merely ludicrous person, or to cry, "Ah, if he had been as we are!"

Had he been merely ludicrous, Lucia would never have married him; and he could only have been spoken of with indignation, or left utterly out of the story, as a simply unpleasant figure, beyond the purposes of a novel, though admissible now and then into tragedy. One cannot heartily