coming to him when he came of age-and Bitter Butts, her own two particular coveys, round either of whose young necks she would willingly have tied the noose matrimonial, went over also to the enemy-cut up so rough that she took her guests in to luncheon without asking any one of us: an unusual spitefulness on Miss Helena's part which made us all vow never to dance the deux-temps with her, or bore ourselves to accompany her abominable German songs any more to please her. We were accustomed to spend a good many hours in the master of Brazenbricks's drawing-room, for old Jermyn, good, easy man, took no sort of notice of his daughter's ways, and almost as little of his fellow commoners and under-grads, unless his proctors pulled us up for anything atrociously flagrant, and was in profound ignorance, as he sat deep in his Greek authors, of the traps that were laid in his drawing-room to catch the offshoots of the aristocracy, and the scions of the gentry of England, enrolled on the books of his college.

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How bitterly and savagely the other fellows envied us when Calvert, Cavendish, Egerton, Bitter Butts, and I, were asked to dinner at the Jermyns to meet Rosalie Rivers and the Fitzcowrie. We, I dare say, flattered ourselves it was because the little beauty and the widow had singled us out for preference. I am half afraid it was only because we sported fellow-commoners' gowns, and had certain distinguished nexions;" but I am afraid if, not only fellow-commoners but most other people, knew the head and root of their dear friends' complaisance, they would not have quite so comfortable a fauteuil of self-admiration, in which to wheel themselves through life, as most appear to have. I laugh when I see the Bitter Buttses firmly believing that the Earl of Magnus does really and truly delight in receiving old Butts at his dinner-table; and I know if I were to tell the B. B.s how Magnus sneers at the nouveaux riches with Hervey's bitterness and Pope's sting, and how he does in reality court them merely because he and his domains are going to smash as fast as they can, and he wants to put a drag on his wheel by borrowing several neat thousands of old B., I should be shown out of their house as an impudent slanderer. I laugh when my cousin Helena is so immeasurably elated at her intimacy with the Hon. Mrs. Malachite, who is "such perfect ton, and so fond of me, Frank;" but Honoria would blacken my character for ever to all our mutual acquaintance if I told her that Mrs. Malachite has been cut by all her own set, and is glad to know even Honoria, "bad style" though she pronounces my little toady of a cousin to Tinless of the Scots Greys. I laugh, but the world loves these pretty veils, which soften their amour propre, as their little blonde falls soften young ladies' complexions, and if they were torn away I tremble to think how all these dear friends would hate each other, and what a spiteful weeping and gnashing of teeth there would be throughout the land; videlicet, when such as the gallant-hearted author of "Vanity Fair" ventures to put his lance in rest, and tear away one of these little flimsy, tinselled veils of the temple, and show the Holy of Holies to be a dirty hole of rats, and rubbish, and skeletons, is he not forthwith honoured by the dire animosity of all these little swarms who seem to me too contemptible to be flattered by a single stroke of that bright sabre of his, though they may deserve their punishing? However, as I was saying, we being still happily blinded to a great degree, though we

flattered ourselves we knew life, and did know it, too—at least a roistering, dashing, lark-loving, barmaid-flirting portion of it—never set down our invitation to its just cause, our tufts, but to our irresistible personal attractions, before which we had not a doubt Rosalie Rivers and the Fitzcowrie had gone down as completely as the Dean's little merry-eyed daughter, or our pet pâtissière of the Petty Cury, or any other of our innumerable victims.

Those two ladies looked bewitching, each in a totally different style, when we entered the Jermyn drawing-room that evening. The widow was very grand to sight, with that superb jewellery which seemed to poor Calvert such sinful waste to be lying on a woman's arms and throat, when it might be turned into money and buy up the primest horseflesh in the yard; and Rosalie Rivers, so exquisitely lovely-got up for conquest as that young Semiramis knows so well how to do when a campaign is in project-that Egerton, a very blasé man indeed, who seldom saw beauty in anything save the kindly face of a punch-bowl, allowed she was "deuced pretty." Gore, who would make love to our deaf old bedmaker, I believe, rather than not make love at all, would have flung himself at her feet at the very dinner-table, had such declarations been customary; Bitter Butts retired behind a chess-table, and never took his little pink eyes off her face once; Charlie Cavendish, the least susceptible and the most earnest of us all, thought, as she talked to him on a causeuse, and made him promise to take her out on the river, that not his ideal of Haidée, or none, was ever so fair as this face, with its delicate bloom and its dangerous eyes, that had carried-no wonder either such destruction into the stately ranks of the gallant Enniskilleners.

I think we all wished him further when the door opened, and Fane, who had, confound him! beaten the highest-titled Lauzuns and the most fascinating D'Orsays out of the field before now, came in with his careless ease, his brilliant kill-you-whenever-I-like look, apologised for being late in his most graceful style, and examined Rosalie with the glance men give to a thorough-bred that has been recommended them, and that they have promised to "think about." Didn't we all anathematise him with as much ready and willing earnestness as a clergyman always displays when cursing everybody (except himself, we presume; though, if he has never come under some of those clauses, he must be more than mortal) in that charitable and refreshing Commination Service, when we saw him-Lionel Fane, the flirt and conqueror par excellence—take in Rosalie to dinner, while old Jermyn gave his arm to her mamma? Montressor was bored with Miss Helena, and Calvert, by the good luck of that happy Honourable, was fortunate enough to be blessed with his widow, whose certain Anglo-Indian twang in her speech was passed over in the general air of riches that somehow or other seemed to pervade her whole person, from her glittering earrings to her pearl-embroidered satin shoes. "An awfully large foot she has, though," said the Hon. Mortimer to me; but what of that? Large feet find numbers to swear they are small when they stand in golden shoes, and hidden beneath a diamond-studded robe there are plenty who would vow that Satan's very hoof would fit the tiniest brodequin possible. If we anathematised Fane for the simple fact of taking Rosalie into dinner, we swore at him more fiercely still for the

manner in which he occupied her attention during that meal from the fish to the move. Rosalie was so exquisitely armed for conquest-the dangerous Miniés of her eyes, the ruthless Long Enfields of her smiles, the victorious mitraille of her mischievous, bewitching glances, the entire army of her charming tout ensemble, from her dress, perfect as taste could make it, to her figure, perfect, too, as Pauline Bonaparte's, or as Pauline's grand-niece, the Comtesse de Solms's, who, if her beaux yeux lighted on these pages, would pardon my citing that charmante taille, which all who see admire-all her weapons of war were so bright and so ready for use, that I dare say she was glad to have some victim to try them on besides us Cantabs, who to that slayer of Guardsmen, men about town, statesmen, and lions, must have seemed something as tame and unprofitable as popping at the Sydenham butt would seem to the men who used to pick off Russians from the traverses before Sebastopol, or to that adventurous-minded Englishman who has joined Garibaldi's sharpshooters because he is "so fond of shooting." Fane, too, had a desire to see what this young lady, who had done such damage to the Enniskilleners, and had made Bertie Lyons, the coolest and least inflammable fellow going, lose his head about her, was like; and when he came up after dinner, usurped Cavendish's seat on her causeuse in a way that made Charlie, sweet temper though he was, long insanely to kick him, though, to be sure, Miss Rosalie gathered us all round her, and was pretty well as kind to us as to him. But we had not Fane's experience in flirtation; we had not that easy, careless, calm superiority; we had not that cool right-ofway manner with which, as a matter of course, he invariably usurped the most attractive woman in the room; and already we began to hate him a little, and to thirst to pitch him out of the window, or knock him down, or get rid of him someway, we did not much care how. Confound the fellow! he could put more into a word than we could into our finest-turned phrases, and admiration into one glance than we into fifty, he meaning nothing of it, too, and we meaning how much.

"Well, what do you think of The Rivers, Fane ?" asked Montressor, as they drove home to the Chancery.

"Well," answered Fane, whipping up his mare, "I think, like most rivers, she is the source of some considerable wealth, and an ornament to the counties through which she passes, but rather full of quicksands to those that trust themselves to her tender mercies, and the cause of more than one case of Found Drowned' and felo de se."

"Don't be a fool," retorted Montressor, courteously. "Do you think she's worth poor Bertie Lyons going so crazy about her ?"

"No, I don't," responded Fane. "I think it's great tomfoolery to go crazy about the loss of any woman, since one can replace them so easily; but if you mean, do I think her very charming, yes I do, if she hadn't been told so too much. She's very pretty, very accomplished, and very agreeable altogether, but she's been so much courted and killed so many, that she fancies she has only to be seen to be worshipped. It would do her good to show her two can play at that game, and that after wasting a great deal of ball and powder, her covey may still fly away, laughing at her, with not a shot in him anywhere."

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Perhaps you'll give her a lesson."

'Perhaps I shall. Meanwhile, give me a fusee, there's a good fellow."

"Do you think Lionel Fane handsome ?" asked Helena Jermyn of Rosalie, as they stood chatting with their bed-candles in their hands, preparatory to wishing each other good night.

"That man that took me in to dinner? Yes, very; he's good style, and distinguished-looking. I fancy I have heard his name before; I'm not sure he isn't an intimate friend of Major Chevasney's-Cosmo Chevasney, of the Enniskilleners, you know. How beautifully that man used to waltz, to be sure, poor old fellow!" answered Miss Rosalie, certain remorseful recollections of her own prompting her to the adjective, I suppose. "Lionel Fane! surely I have heard Alice Vivian mention him. Isn't he a tremendous flirt ?".

Miss Jermyn threw up her hands, silver candlestick and all, and shrugged her shoulders, smiled, and sneered.

"Flirt! my love that is much too mild a term for Lionel. When he was at college-I was quite a little girl, of course

"You couldn't be much younger than I am now," thought Rosalie. "I wonder when I am one-and-thirty if I shall revert to my present self as 'quite a little girl?' It might be better for Cosmo and some others, perhaps, if I were!"

"But," continued Helena, in that blessed ignorance of her friend's passing thoughts, in which we all of us exist, happily for own peace and for conversation, which would otherwise too often come to an untimely end, or blow up in a shindy-" but I remember even then he was quite a mauvais sujet, and made love to one of the coaches' wives! He's a shocking flirt, love; he boasts he can make any woman in love with him in a month, and he keeps a whole despatch-box full of the gages d'amour he has had from different quarters. He believes himself irresistible, and he's been engaged ten times to my knowledge. I think flirting so unprincipled, don't you?"

Rosalie laughed.

"Do you forswear it conscientiously, Helena? Your friend wants a lesson."

"Perhaps I shall give it to him," thought the young lady, smiling as she glanced at herself in her glass, and her maid unclasped her bracelet. That bracelet was a bet that Cosmo Chevasney had betted her against gloves at the Goodwood the year before. Poor Cosmo! she hadn't cared a button about him, but she hadn't used him well, lightly as it lay on her conscience; and now, as she put his emeralds carelessly aside, she amused herself with thinking of the lesson with which resistless Rosalie Rivers would punish Lionel Fane for her own sin. She is not singular in that proceeding, unjust though it may be. I may steal a whole sheep if I like, but if my neighbour's dog run away with a bare mutton-bone, do I not call him forthwith a thief?

III.

THE WIDOW'S DEBENTURES AND THE BEAUTY'S FASCINATIONS.

"AT that blessed Tennyson of yours again, old boy?" said Calvert, coming into my rooms one morning, and looking over my shoulder, where I lay on my sofa mingling the material and the spiritual in horrible conjunction, eating a devil and reading, for the hundred and twentieth time, certain poems which I admired for the reason that very many people admire very many things, because I couldn't for the life of me make out what they meant, and was, therefore, imbued with the persuasion that they must be something very fine.

"Oh, for the touch of a vanished hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still!"

said the Hon. Mortimer, reading in horrible rhythm that really lovely little song. "Bah! why don't they write sense? Do that into intelligible modern English

Oh, well for the millionnaire's son

That he wins lots of gold bobs at play,
Oh, well for the merchant on 'Change
That the funds rise and fall every day,
But the smiling face of the bill that is due
Will never come honoured to me-

and I may read it, perhaps, and understand it, but as for the 'vanished
hands,' and the 'voices still,' why, if they're women's, as Fane says, one
can soon replace 'em, and find the new brooms rather preferable to the
old. I say, old boy, à propos of that, I'm deucedly hard up. No news
that, you'll tell me, but, on my life, it's getting worse and worse."
"As such things generally do."

"Hold your tongue if you can't say anything pleasanter; it's easy enough to philosophise on other people's business, and bear their sorrows unrepiningly. I'm in a devil of a mess. I owe that horrid little chap in Bond-street five hundred pounds-and I'm sure his coats fit like ploughmen's slops-and that rascally Parkins, here, Heaven knows how much, for wine not fit to swallow; and if Geranium don't win the Two Thousand (and Montressor is deucedly sure of his little Girouette), I shall lose no end-I shall, on my honour; and where the deuce to get any tin I haven't an idea. I've nothing to get post-obits upon, and I don't believe there's a man going idiot enough to take my I O U, for everybody knows I haven't a rap present or prospective. Do you know, Frank, I bave been thinking of that widow ?"

"Indeed! you've been looking at her, I know, because you told me her feet were like elephants', her eyebrows tinted, and her age certainly not under thirty-five."

"Well, one can't have everything, and she's a deuced fine woman still ---eh ?"

"Very fine, there's no doubt about that."

"And, you know, if a woman's a good lot of consols, that's the chief charm in a wife after all, and the only one that will last."

"If it's tied up securely, otherwise it will, in all probability, disappear