Front matter (continued 2)

All the masculine world would bow down before the intellect combined with the beauty—of Britomart-Kriemhilde-Brünhilde-Isolde—and so on, for he amalgamated new heroines with the others, in the course of his reading. But one man lived who would not bow down. She would taunt him with this stiff-necked pride of his, in the course of an interview on the terrace of a castle, whose moat he had swum and whose guarded ramparts he had scaled in order to be discovered, scorning her, and communing with the moon. And he would quell her tempestuous wrath, and silence her reproaches, by telling her that it was for her to pay homage and court smiles. Then she would summon her vassals and lovers, and half a dozen of them would set upon P. C. Breagh, who would strangle one with his naked hands, run another through with his own sword—and provide materials, broadly speaking, for half a dozen first-class funerals—before he leapt into the moat, carrying a rose that she had dropped between his teeth—-and "gained the distant bank in safety," or "dripping and bloody, emerged from the dark water, gripped an iron chain, eaten with the rust of centuries, and, painfully scaling the frowning masonry, disappeared into the..." etc.

Absurd, if you will, and bombastic and impossibly high-flown. Yet such boyish dreams keep the soul clean and the body from grosser stain. Walking with your head erect you may stub your toe, and come a cropper on the stones occasionally. But you pick yourself up again and proceed more warily—none the less rejoicing, seeing the splendor of the sunset, or braving the blaze of noonday, or drinking in the delicate spring-like hues of dawn....

One does not know how long P. C. Breagh might have remained upon the steps of St. Dunstan's, had not the hour of twelve sounded from the new clock—a youngster barely forty years old—that had replaced the gong-hammering wooden giants, now on view outside the Marquis of Hertford's villa in Regent's Park. A constable civilly asked him to move on. He got up, heavily, and mechanically felt for his watch that was in keeping of the landlord of the fourth-rate hostelry in the Euston Road. And it occurred to him—as a pin-prick among innumerable stiletto strokes—that the watch alone, being a heavy silver one attached to a slender gold snake-chain once the property of dead Milly—would have satisfied the man's claim, which, exorbitant as it was for the accommodation afforded, was considerably under three pounds. You are to understand that P. C. Breagh had been so certain of returning in a few hours, heavy with ready money, that he had treated the landlord's detention of his luggage as a joke.

The present situation was no joke. But Youth preserves above all the property of rising unbruised and elastic from a tumble, and of healing readily when it has sustained mental or physical wounds!

The blood in the veins of P. C. Breagh was mingled with the finer strain that came from the breed of Fermeroy. He had no idea of finding a craven's refuge in suicide. The single shilling remaining to him might purchase sufficient strychnine for a painful, unheroic exit, but P. C. Breagh was not disposed to invest his remaining capital in that unpleasant alkaloid. And neither did it occur to him then to test the depth and drowning-capacity of the muddy liquid running under any one of London's bridges, from Westminster to the Tower. For by the contradictory law of Nature, reversing scientific fact, a helpless weight that hung about his strong young neck kept his moral head above the turbid waters of Despondency.

He was not alone in the world. There was Monica. With the remembrance of that frail link, binding him to the rest of humanity, awakened in him the desire to see her. He turned his face Westward and stepped into the moving throng.

VII

The Great Class fermented in irrepressible excitement. Subsequently to the arrival of a foreign mail, Juliette Bayard had been summoned by an attendant lay-sister to the presence of Mère M. Catherine-Rose.

She had remained nearly half an hour in the Parlor of Cold Feet—so called in recognition of the fact that the apartment contained no fireplace, and that even in the hottest weather cool draughts played hide-and-seek across the polished parquet from circular brazen gratings inserted in the wainscot, which ancient legend connected with the presence of a French calorifère.

When the door opened and Juliette emerged, somewhere about the middle of the noon recreation, an advance-patrol in the shape of a pupil of the Little Class, by name Laura Foljambe—happened to be buttoning a shoe-strap at the end of the corridor. The apoplectic attitude inseparable from this particular employment would have rendered observation impossible—in the case of an adult. But Laura, under the cover of a luxuriant head of yellow ringlets, unconfined by any comb or ribbon, observed, firstly, that Juliette had been crying, and secondly, that Mère M. Catherine-Rose had tears in her own eyes. More, she had called Juliette back, embraced her affectionately, and said: "We shall miss you, my dear!" "You will be brave, I know!" and "Remember to write!" Packed with news, Laura rushed into the Lesser Hall, where the seniors were gathered round the stove, the raw chill of the January weather rendering the garden a place of penitence, and emptied her budget of intelligence upon the spot.

Juliette must be going away! The forty girls of the Great Class had unanimously arrived at this conclusion when Juliette herself arrived upon the scene. It needed but a glance to assure her of the treachery of Laura; it needed but a moment, and the spy, blubbering and protesting, was seized, shaken, and forced upon her knees.

You are to understand that when Juliette Bayard was angry, she was so with a vengeance. Heroic by temperament, her wrath smacked of the superhuman. A demi-goddess enraged might have manifested as semi-divine a frenzy. Ordinary prose seemed too poor a vehicle to convey such indignation. You expected hexameters or Alexandrines....

"That you listened I would stake my honor!—I would pledge my life!—I would put the hand in the fire! Mean! Base! Despicable! Ah, you look simple, little thing, but you are cunning as a mouse—fine as amber! No! I do not pinch, I would scorn it—you know that perfectly! Yes! I will permit you to go when you confess who set you on!"

Laura, unwilling to incur the resentment of forty grown-ups, undesirous of forfeiting the saccharine reward of treachery, boohooed in a whisper, for class-hour was approaching. The wrathful goddess towered over her, eyed with blue lightning, crowned with dusky clouds of thunder, flushed like the sunset that comes after the day of storm.

Had Arthur Hughes or Fred Walker been privileged to peep—one painter at least would have armed her uplifted hand with a bulrush-spear, helmeted her with a curled water-lily leaf, and given the smiling world Titania in the character of Pallas Athene, or Queen Mab as an Amazon. And Juliette would never have pardoned the painter. For—despite the testimony of her tale of inches—she would have it that she was tall, even above the average height of woman.

"I shall not be beautiful, no! but I shall be commanding!" she had assured those favored girls on whom she deigned to bestow her imperial confidence. This select number in turn possessing a circle of confidantes, the drop of a secret meant a series of widening rings, extending to the circle of the day scholars, reaching the Orphanage by-and-by, and trickling at length into the basement, where the Poor School assembled on Wednesdays and Fridays, to gather up the crumbs of knowledge that fell from the tables of the daughters of the great and rich.

You may imagine the scene in Lesser Hall upon this chilly day in January. Excitement was much more warming than crowding round the smoky stoves. Of the semi-circle of great girls in their black school-dresses, enlivened only by the red or white class-rosettes, or the pale blue ribbons of the Children of Mary, all the heads, adorned with every shade of feminine tresses,—all the eyes of all colors, set in faces plain or pretty—were turned toward the tragic figure of Juliette.

Once kindled, such violet fires of wrath blazed in those implacable eyes, one would have supposed nothing could ever quench them. But when she was sorrowful, they were bottomless lakes of misery. Despair lay drowned and wan amid the long black sedges drooping at their borders. Under the dark, hollowed precipices that shadowed them it seemed as though no sun could ever shine. But when the laugh was born, it leaped to the surface with a quiver that caught the light and flashed it back pure sapphire or loveliest Persian turquoise. No face ever framed of earthly clay had more of the mirth of Heaven in it, then. Her long upper lip, the elastic, mobile feature that could draw out to so portentous a length, would be haunted by flying smiles, and the deep-cut corners of her short scarlet under lip would quiver. To inventory the beauties of a young lady and omit the nose would suggest cause for reticence on the writer's part. Juliette's nose was not of Greek or Roman type, but neither was it snubbed or tip-tilted. It had a rounded end, and deep, curved, passionate nostrils. It pertained to no known order of nasal architecture. It was Juliette's nose, and could never have belonged to anybody else.

If you would more of her,—and after the first encounter you either sought or shunned—loved or loathed—as she would have had you do who was in all things sincere and candid, you are to understand that her cloud of dusky hair framed a small oval face that made no show of carnation or vaunt of rose. Her clear fine skin was almost always pale. She would have laughed you to scorn had you likened those colorless cheeks of hers to lilies. She prided herself upon a frame of mind eminently commonplace, antipodean to the romantic. "I am sensible, me!" you often heard her say.

In form—though as you know she believed herself to be a giantess—she was small and slight, and not at all remarkable. A framework of slender bones, frugally covered with tender, healthful flesh. Her shoulders sloped so much that in her loose-bodied, full-sleeved, black merino school uniform she seemed about to vanish. Her hips were narrow, without the voluptuous curves that belong to heroines. But a Divine jest had added to her little high-arched head a tiny pair of rosy shells for hearing, and the palms and nails and finger-tips of her narrow hands,—and feet I have heard it said by some who loved her—were roseate also. The younger children liked to pretend that this was a judgment on Juliette for stealing strawberries in the early June season, but she only joined in that one raid on the Sisters' kitchen-garden "To be a good comrade!" ... and as it happened, all the strawberries were slug-eaten. And where are there strawberries worth the stealing, unless it be in France?

For next to God and Our Lady, and her father M. le Colonel, Juliette Bayard loved her country. Paradise was but an improvement on France, to hear her describe it to the little ones. Further, though she had a perfect taste in dress, when released from the school uniform; though an ordinary hat under her deft transforming fingers would become a miracle of exquisite millinery; her groups of flowers, and landscapes, in water-color, her crayon dog's heads, were mercifully hidden from the drawing-master's eye. She sang out of tune, but in time; played correctly, but hated the piano; danced like an air-wafted tuft of dandelion-down or a gnat upon a summer evening,—and had a Heaven-born gift for housekeeping and cookery.

Of this last gift more anon. Meanwhile Laura writhed, or seemed to writhe, under the torrent of passionate reproaches, culminating in another shake, and a slap which might have damaged a kitten newly-born. Laura fell prone, moaning and gurgling. And Juliette, pierced by remorse at her own ruthlessness, sank, pale as ashes, beside the victim's corse.

"Darling Laura! sweetest Laura!—tell me I have not hurt you! Just Heaven! how could I strike you?—I, who am so strong! Indeed, I might have killed you! ... Pray for me, my little angel! It will need a miracle to cure my temper, as Mother Veronica constantly says. Cannot you get up? Do try, to please me! Tell me where you feel most injured? Quick, or I know I shall be angry again! ... Show me the bruise! Pouf! that is a mere nothing! I will kiss it and make it well, and you shall have the blue bead Rosary."

The mention of the blue beads palpably restored vitality. The sufferer was understood to intimate that a chocolate elephant would absolutely complete the cure.

"The elephant to-morrow when the Great Class return from the promenade. The Rosary before Benediction. Away with you!"

Laura scuttled. Juliette blew her a parting kiss, and said, with a comprehensive glance of scorn at the faces of her classmates:

"It was not she who deserved the—— I have not the expression! ... It is one of your English words that mean many things together ... a kiss ... a blow ... the boat of a sailor who catches fishes and crabs.... I have seen such boats at Havre and Weymouth, and they are very pretty.... Ah! Now I remember. You call them fishing-spanks!"

The Class shrieked. Juliette stood calmly while the tumult of laughter and exclamations raged about her. Her long upper lip shut down upon its scarlet neighbor, her brows frowned a little; her slender arms, lost in their loose sleeves, hung straightly by her narrow sides. Millais would, seeing her, have painted a maiden martyr. Watts might have limned her as Persephone new-loosed from the dark embrace of Dis, her wooer, taking her first timid steps upon the glowing floor of Hell.

"When you have finished making so much noise—peu importe—but I have a piece of news to tell you. You are none of you inquisitive—that goes without saying!—or you would not have dispatched that poor infant to play the spy outside the parlor door. Bridget-Mary and Alethea Bawne, I do not mean you—you are souls of honor—incapable of curiosity! ... Also, Monica Breagh, c'est là son moindre defaut! But there are others—yet my friends—who are not so delicate,—and to these I address myself. You do not deserve to hear—and yet I cannot be unkind to you; I, who have such joy of the heart in the knowledge that I am to return to my dear father!—such grief—ah! but such grief of the soul in bidding adieu to the School!"

"Not for good?"

"You are going to leave the School?"

"Dear, darling Juliette, say you're only joking!"

"She is in earnest. Look at her upper lip!"

"Vous moquez-vous du monde de parler ainsi!"

Throbbed out a Spanish voice, husky and passionate:

"Qué vergüenza! No, no, es imposible!"

"Sure, dear, you'd not be so cruel as to make game of us?"

She stood her ground, firm, but no longer frowning. Her heart swelled, her eyes were heavy with the promise of rain. Her slender arms went out as though she would have embraced them all.

"My dears, it is true! I go to Versailles to rejoin my father. He says to me also—I have his letter here!" ...

Silence fell upon the turbulent crowd as she laid a slender hand on the place where her heart could be seen throbbing. The paper rustled, but she did not draw it forth.

"He says, in this—I am to be married ... soon,—very quickly!"

A Babel of cries, ejaculations, and exclamations broke out about her. A girl's voice, more strident than the rest, shrieked:

"I hate your father! Beast!" and broke down in hysterical sobbing. Juliette replied, those about her hushed to hear; and in the oasis of silence her tender, silvery voice rose like a fountain springing from the heart of purity.

"My father is not what you say, but the Emperor's brave soldier and a noble gentleman. I am proud to obey when he commands! He has said to me that I am to be married, and does he not know what is best for me? Would he wish to bring unhappiness upon his Juliette?"

She was not so much loyal as Loyalty personified, standing there defending him; with her little hand keeping down her bursting heart of anguish, and salt lakes of unshed tears pent up behind her sorrowful sapphire eyes.... Her voice broke as she said "his Juliette," and one of the Bawnes, a stately, black-browed girl, answered, speaking in French:

"He would not if he is—what you have described him! ... But—unless you knew of this before—it is so sudden.... It would seem to argue that M. le Colonel was thinking more—you will not be offended!—of the happiness of his future son-in-law than of his daughter's——"

"Non, non, non!" She made an emphatic gesture with her little hand, and shook her head so that a tear fell from her lashes on the bosom of her black school-dress, "Dear Lady Biddy—you are mistaken. For—comprehend you?—my happiness is in obeying that beloved father, always. For me, there is no greater joy.... And his letter bears date of the New Year—three days since—behold the postmark. It is the custom to give young people étrennes at that season—my father bestows on me a husband, and I am—content! See you well?"

It was faulty English, yet Juliette's "See you well?" haunted the music-loving ear.

And now even the reserved began to question, while the frankly curious waxed importunate concerning the date of Mademoiselle Bayard's impending departure, the name, rank and personal appearance of the mysterious husband-elect, the number and uniform of his regiment. For, of course, he was certain to be an officer of Cavalry, Dragoons, Lancers, or Cuirassiers. That he must be handsome went without saying; but were his eyes dark or light, and did he wear a moustache only, or sport the hirsute ornament in conjunction with an imperial? Beset from all quarters, Juliette was beginning to lose command of herself, when the hour of two struck from the great clock in the corridor.

The clang-clang of an iron bell succeeded, the double doors at the upper end of the Hall rolled backward, uniting the Great and the Middle Classes in the religious exercise that opened afternoon School. The hymn sung, the brief litany chanted to an accompaniment played on the harmonium by a mistress in the purple habit and creamy veil of the choir-sisters, another nun approached Juliette and whispered in her ear.

She was to go to the dormitory and pack her trunk, which would presently be brought her by one of the lay-sisters. And this done, she was free to spend the half-hour previous to Benediction in the parlor with——

The name was lost in Juliette's embrace and kiss of gratitude. She was usually chary of caresses, perhaps she wished to hide her eyes.

They were fairly overflowing, poor eyes! when their owner gained the solitude of her white-draped cubicle in the Greats' dormitory. Once the curtains fell behind her she was free to fall upon her knees beside the bed and sob there, to call upon Our Lady for succor and pity, to rock herself and hug her bleeding heart. And all these things Juliette did, until the dull thump of felt shoes upon the shining boards betokened the arrival of the lay-sister, bearing the oilskin-covered dress-basket, disinterred from some below-stairs repository, which had to be filled from the locker, dress-hooks, and drawers.

Ten minutes had been devoured in grief, forty yet remained for packing. A lover of method in all things, frugal and prudent in the expenditure of resources ("I am sensible, me!"), Juliette was economical of time. Ten minutes might be spared to re-perusal of the letter that had set her faith in that dearest father rocking like a palm in tempest, and wrung such tears of anguish from the heart that worshiped him.

She drew the bulky envelope from its pure hiding-place, kissed it, and moaned a little. There were three sheets of thin foreign note, flourished over in a big, bold, soldierly hand. The date bore evidence that the letter had been penned on the Eve of Saint Sylvestre, answering to our New Year's Eve. The address was:

"Barracks of the 777th Regiment, "Mounted Chasseurs of the Imperial Guard, "Versailles.

"My Daughter,

"Of news thy father has not much to tell thee that thou wouldst find of the most interesting, save that of the fashions prevailing in Paris at the moment, the most daring and eccentric is the little hat or miniature bonnet, tilted forward upon the forehead by the chignon, and spangled with beetles, dragon-flies, and other brilliant insects. Jeweled birds, yachts in full sail, or baskets of flowers, dangle from the ears of all the feminine world!

"The Empress is as beautiful as even she could wish to be. I saw her driving a pair of little thoroughbred mares in the low park-phœton yesterday in the Bois, near the Rond des Cascades. She was so gracious as to recognize me—though I was in civilian riding-dress—and beckoned me with her parasol-whip from the line of equestrians respectfully mustered on the left side of the road. She patted the gray Mustapha—thou wilt be glad thy horse was so honored!—and asked if I was quite recovered of the wound I received at Solferino,—proving that an Imperial memory can be conferred with the hand that raises to Imperial rank. Later on I met Dumas, and—at the corner of the Rue Laffitte—Baron Rothschild and Cham, the caricaturist—and there thou hast a résumé of the encounters of the day.

"Do political matters really interest thee? Learn, then, a new Ministry is in formation by M. Emile Ollivier—a 'homogeneous cabinet,' is to be drawn chiefly from the Left Center in the Corps Législatif. My father's friend, M. le Général Lebœuf, Minister of War, retains the post he held in the expired Administration. M. le Maréchal Vaillant continues as Minister of the Emperor's Household. Haussmann has fallen! his ten thousand hands will no longer scatter gold from the Imperial Treasury. The last announcement emanating from the Prefecture of the Seine gave notice that the cemeteries of Mont-Parnasse, Montmartre, Ivry, and others are to be seized by the municipality in 1871. All the private monuments are to be withdrawn before the first of April.... With what sorrow of heart these tragic removals will be effected thou wilt realize, who hast so often accompanied thy father, bearing wreaths to lay upon thy grandmother's tomb at Père Lachaise. Pray that the necessity to find a home for those sacred, beloved ashes may not devolve upon us.

"Thou must know that in October, during the maneuvers at the camp of Châlons, a new and terrible weapon was placed in the hands of the Imperial army of France. It is the Mitrailleuse, conceived by the brain of De Reffye—an invention worthy to rank with that of the Chassepôt rifle, which fulfilled such great expectations the first time the weapon was used in action, at Mentana, against the Garibaldians. How shall I describe it? I will say, briefly, that it is a rifled, breech-loading gun of from fourteen to twenty-nine barrels; that it has as many locks as barrels; that it can be transported from place to place by two men, and fired by one, who manipulates a lever, sitting upon a saddle attached to the gun-carriage. And that it is a mill that grinds—a machine that hails—death upon an enemy. Armed with batteries of these invincible weapons, the march of an invading army would be irresistible!

"Two of these marvelous guns have been by the Imperial favor bestowed upon our regiment. The men baptized them in wine by the names of Didi and Bibi. They are treated as regimental infants, and thrive exceedingly well.

"My child, whether this news will make thee sad or joyful it must be that Juliette joins her father here at Versailles not later than on the twentieth of the month of January. Madame la Supérieure will supply thee with funds in exchange for the enclosed note of credit furnished me by my bankers. Purchase thyself—on arriving in Paris—for certainly the modes of London will never content a taste so fastidious—some fresh and charming toilettes of the evening, costumes for the house, theater or promenade, and suitable lingerie. Last, but not least, bring a marriage-robe, crown and veil. I am not joking, I assure thee! For my daughter I have found a husband. A young man, sincere, upright, honorable, and a good Catholic, whom I have known from boyhood, whom my child will love as a wife should; and by whom she will be adored and cherished. Thou knowest Charles Tessier, the son of my mother's widowed friend, the estimable Madame Tessier, whom we have visited in the Rue de Provence, Versailles! Charles has succeeded to his father's large businesses at Paris, Lyons, and in Belgium, as a manufacturer of woolen dress-materials, the pattern Écossais, so much in favor with S.M. the Empress and the belles of the Imperial Court, having been imported, woven and supplied by this wise, enterprising and energetic young man. Who—but it will be for his wife to perceive and praise his many excellencies. I leave thee to the pleasant task of discovering them.

"My Juliette, if so much of thy father mingles in thy nature that of all careers this of a soldier seems to thee the noblest—if the pursuit and attainment of military glory—distinctions won upon the field of War, appeal to thee—as Heaven knows they have to me!—since my blood first learned to thrill at the roll of the drum—and leap at the sound of the trumpet—if thou hast pictured in thy innocent mind—loved in thy spotless dreams—some brave and noble officer chosen for thee by him who now writes—tear the picture!—forget the dream! For when such dreams become realities they are—how often rudely shattered by the rush and shock of armies meeting in the blood-stained field of War!

"My dear, War is a monster composed of flesh, and iron, and steel, that like the dragon or chimera of classical mythology—devours the hopes of virgins and the happiness of matrons, and leaves children orphans and homes heaps of dust. Thou rememberest thy grandmother? She had been married just five years when my father reddened with his heart's blood the soil of Algeria. Yet when I wished to follow the profession of arms she did not endeavor to dissuade me. She hid her anguish as only mothers can, but her beloved life was shortened by anxiety undergone during the terrible war of the Crimea; that war so protracted, so disastrous to our brave ally of England—so fraught with loss and suffering to the more fortunate army of France. And that was not the only blow Fate dealt me while I served as aide-de-camp upon the staff of M. le Maréchal Grandguerrier. Thou dost not know as yet!—one day I may find courage to tell thee.... Even a soldier may shrink from baring wounds that are of the soul.

"My daughter, I have never spoken to thee of thy mother.... The time has arrived when——"

The sixteen words were lined out by a heavy stroke of the quill. The closing sentences were——

"In the event of War abroad—taking thy father from thee—perhaps to lay his bones in a trench hastily dug by peasants in some foreign province!—or in the event of War at home,—sudden, unexpected—sweeping as a cataclysm over thy native soil, thou wilt believe me, my Juliette, when I tell thee this marriage would be absolutely for the best! Living or dead, for me to know thee safe and cherished, here at Versailles with thy husband Charles and his estimable mother, would be happiness.... Wilt thou consent to the union? Wilt thou obey thy father, who loves thee as his soul? One finds this a scrawl which will prove difficult to decipher. As thou knowest, I am a better artist with the sword than with the pen.

"Written here at my new quarters, which comprise a sleeping chamber and boudoir elegantly furnished, suitable for a young lady of refinement; and a little kitchen, full of pots and bright pans.

"Thy father, "HENRI-ANTOINE-ALBERT DE BAYARD, "Colonel Commandant."

VIII

Will it not be admitted that a letter such as this was calculated to cause a flutter of agitation in the meekest feminine bosom? To be recalled from School before the completion of the tiresome process technically known as "finishing," that was matter for rejoicing. The little bedroom-boudoir in the Colonel's quarters at the Cavalry Barracks, "elegantly furnished, suitable for a young lady of refinement," presented an alluring picture, the tiny kitchen, "full of pots and bright pans," charmed....

For Mademoiselle de Bayard, going back to her Colonel after two years' absence, laden as the working-bee with the honey of accomplishments and the well-kneaded wax of useful knowledge, promised herself that it should not be long before her idol should be convinced by practical demonstration that his Juliette had not forgotten how to cook. Irish stew, saddle-of-mutton with onion-sauce, pancakes, Scotch collops, English plum-pudding and mince-pies had been added to her lengthy list of recipes, by grace of the Convent cook, Sister Boniface, who had permitted the ardent amateur to experiment in a second kitchen, used in hot weather, abutting on the garden, and not regarded as a portion of the nuns' enclosure.

To return, and resume the old dear life of companionship, how sweetly welcome had been the summons. But nothing could disguise the taste of the powder that came after the jam.

You are to conceive the struggle in Juliette's faithful heart between obedience and anger. Marry, my faith! yes! Every sensible young girl naturally expected to be married; but a husband approved of by oneself, if selected by one's father—that was what one had had reason to expect.

And this Charles, eulogized as wise, sensible, far-seeing, and business-like. Were these qualities, though naturally desirable in the estimation of a father-in-law, attributes that weighed down the scale in the opinion of a bride? Had one ever beheld him? She shut her eyes and summoned up all the masculine faces in her gallery of mental portraits, dismissing one after the other with no's, and no's, and no's! ... Was it not horrible to have to admit even to oneself that one had not the faintest recollection of ever having seen or spoken to him? Madame Tessier she remembered well as a little, stout, very gentille and amiable, elderly lady, whom she had visited with M. le Colonel, who had embraced one cordially, and insisted on one's partaking—immediately and at great length—of a collation of sandwiches, fruit, cakes, and syrups; excellent—and to a hungry school-girl, welcome at any hour of the day. What more? ... Ah, yes! Madame had much deplored Charles's absence, possibly at Lyons or in Belgium. Further, Madame had remarked to M. le Colonel:

"My friend, your Juliette is the image of her beloved grandmother!"

"Will nobody ever say that I am like my mother?" Juliette had gaily cried. And with a strange stiff smile, the Colonel had answered for Madame Tessier,—who at that juncture had opportunely upset a dish of little sugar-cakes.

"There have been moments, my child, when I have"—he coughed rather awkwardly for M. le Colonel—"anticipated that a resemblance might exist."

Could he have been on the verge of saying "feared," and substituted the other word at the last moment? Such an idea was ridiculous, yet it had occurred to Juliette.

To questions on the subject of the faintly remembered mother the grandmother had been impervious. The Colonel had always answered—yet with palpable reticence....

"You have no mother, my little Juliette; she was taken from us, my child, while I was absent with the Army in the Crimea," or "She left us, while yet I was detained in Eastern Russia, serving as aide upon the staff of M. le Maréchal Grandguerrier.... It is true, she was both good and beautiful when I married her! Now run and play!" Or, in later years: "Now come and read to me!" or "Walk with me," or "Ride with me," or "Now tell me how and where thou didst learn to turn out such savory dishes with those tiny pattes de mouche of thine? Nowhere is there a chef whose choicest efforts can com-pare with my Juliette's. And I have dined with the Emperor—and with Milord Hertford at Bagatelle—and with Consul-General Baron Rothschild—and—parole d'honneur!—I have told them so!"

And all the time M. le Colonel had been keeping back something.... Was it not strange, thought Juliette, that, while upon the anniversary of the Jour des Mort Mass had invariably been offered for all deceased relatives of the De Bayard family, the actual date of the death of one so young and beautiful had never been marked with special solemnity.

Could it be that the lost mother was not dead, but living! Oh, but impossible! ... And yet—once awakened, the doubt would never sleep again....

Did ever a girl receive such a letter? It was fuller of darts than even the fabled porcupine. It awakened stinging doubts of the kindness of the gentlest and tenderest of fathers. "Tear the picture!—forget the dream!" he had said. Ah, my Heaven! what young girl cherishes not such images—such visions! ... Juliette wondered sorrowfully. Sitting on her school locker, lost in thought, her elbows on her knees, her little pointed chin cupped in the slender hands, you saw her as a haggard, weary little creature. For while joy made of Juliette a living rainbow, grief transformed her to the wan and rigid nymph that droops above a classic urn upon a mourning cameo; and anxiety or suspense or remorse of soul set a changeling in her place, wizened her, pinched her, struck her prematurely old.

She might—to employ hyperbole—have been sitting on her locker until the present hour, had not her sad eyes lighted upon a colored photograph of M. le Colonel in full military harness and equipment, contained in a little ivory frame fastened by a safety-pin to one of the starched white dimity curtains that imparted an air of select privacy to the little white-covered dormitory bed.

You are to behold Juliette's father—per medium of this pen-portrait—and would that you might have heard his cordial voice, and pressed his living hand.... Conceive him as a little man; and somewhat stout and paunchy; you would never have dared to term him so in the presence of Juliette. And yet so manly, soldierlike and ingratiating was the boldly-featured face, with its brave eyes, curled moustache and imperial; the fur talpack with the green and scarlet plume and the red Hussar bag, was worn with such an air; the dolman of fine green cloth, laced and corded with heavy galons of silver and faced with the brilliant red of his silver-striped pantaloons, fitted his compact round person with such creaseless tightness; his silver-striped ceinture, belts and buckles were so point-device; his spurred Hessian boots graced such neat small feet; his right hand rested on his hip, his left upon the hilt of his long saber, with so pleasant a grace, that you could not but warm to this picture of a cavalry commander.

His daughter melted even as she gazed. The generous soul, once wrought to the pitch of heroism, piles sacrifice on sacrifice. She had meant to temporize, but she would not do so now. She began to comprehend, as stray sentences of the father's letter floated back, that his mood had been sorrowful when he wrote it; and that those wounds of the soul he spoke of had been bleeding, though hidden from his daughter, many a year.... He was never sentimental; that sentence about laying his bones in a trench hastily dug by peasants in a foreign province had been struck from the steel of his nature by some flint hurled from the sling of Fate. The words that followed, picturing War,—sudden, unexpected, sweeping as a cataclysm over the country,—had the solemnity of deep organ-notes. And the rushing tenderness in the words, "Living or dead, to know thee safe and cherished!" thrilled, and the dignity of the entreaty touched and conquered: "Wilt thou obey thy father, who loves thee as his soul? ..."

You saw light and warmth and youth and loveliness visibly flowing back into her as she looked at the picture. The witches' changeling fled, a christened maiden remained in her place. Words came to the lips that had been dumb, dews of tenderness bathed the eyes that had been dry as those of a sandstone statue in the Theban desert....

"Dearest—beloved—best! ... Oh! shame that I should have dreamed of doubting you! ... There is some great reason for this decision—something terrible behind this haste of yours. What, I may not know now!—one day all will be explained to me! ... Until then"—she rose and kissed the portrait—"until then I will trust you—who have never deceived me.... I will write to you as you would wish me to this very night. Now I must pack, and then go down to Monica.... How to answer if she should question! ... but no, she never will!"

Dismissing the phantom of Charles, faceless and bodiless, but none the less terrible, she flew at the locker—pulled out the three drawers—stripped the row of regulation dress-pegs. Brushing, smoothing, and folding, she even sang as she worked.... Presently a bell rang twice. It was yet vibrating where it hung, on the passage-landing at the dormitory stair-head, when Juliette passed on her way to the guest-parlor. Monica was waiting there.

IX

A tall slight figure in the plain black, tight-fitting gown of a novice, made with a little cape covering the upper arm. A sweet plain face with eyes of hazel brown, framed in a close white cap with three rows of gophered frills, and there you have Monica, the chosen friend of the fiery Juliette.

"She has not three ideas! How can you think so much of her?" a jealous rival is reported to have said.

Juliette retorted with a lightning riposte:

"Possibly no more than three, but they are good ones!" She marked them off on her tiny fingers. "First, to serve God.... Again,—to serve her friends.... Once more—to help her enemies! ... If not, how is it that she spent two hours yesterday, working with you at that F major fugue in Bach's Book of Forty-eight? ... Has not that stopped you the whistle? ... I have eyes in my head, see you well? Pour tout dire—you are an ingrate, you!"

"See you well!" could be a slogan on occasion, a blood-chilling note heralding the shock of battle. But it came now in the softest of dove-notes, as they hurried to meet each other, clasped hands, and kissed.

"Dear one, I am so glad! See you well, we have a whole half-hour to spend together.... And there is so much to tell you that I know not where to begin." ... She drew back frowning a little, vexed that Monica was not alone. "I entreat your pardon! ... I did not know you entertained a visitor.... It is best that I retire.... I fear I am.... how do you say? ... very much in the road!"

Monica explained, holding the big red hand of an awkward young man in a shaggy greatcoat.

"You are not in the way, dear—and this is not a visitor! Let me introduce my brother, of whom you have heard. Caro, this is my friend, Mademoiselle de Bayard."

The shaggy young man, blushing savagely to the tips of his ears and the roots of his flaming hair, made a clumsy inclination, and offered the large red paw to Mademoiselle, who gravely inspected it, drawing down her upper lip, folding her own infinitesimal hands before her narrow waist, but made no movement to take it.

"He has angry eyes, with curious amber taches in them, ..." she thought. "And he looks dusty as a voyager after a long travel.... Not bien tenu as a gentleman should be.... Living with Germans in Germany—he has become indifferent to the petits soins of the toilet. I would put the hand in the fire rather than tell Monica!—but, for me, I find him horrible. What is he saying? One would expect from a being so clumsy and so shaggy, not merely speech, but a roar!"

Yet the voice was fresh and rather pleasant, as he replied to Monica's interested questions. Had he had a good journey? ... How long had he been in London? ... Three days, and never let her know? ... Why not? ... Had he dined early, or lunched, and if not—he had been understood to mumble a negative,—would he not have something now? Tea and sandwiches—Sister Boniface would cut the latter in a minute. It was only three o'clock. Benediction wasn't until four—there would be heaps of time....

The mumbled refusals grew faint. Monica smiled her triumph. Intent on hospitality she hurried out of the parlor, saying with a backward glance, and a smile halved between sulky Carolan and somber Juliette: "Sit down!—talk to each other ... I'll soon be back again!..."

But the sound of the closing door smote the shaggy youth with a dumb palsy and transformed Mademoiselle de Bayard into the semblance of a large mechanical doll in black merino.

"Stiff, pale, proud little creature!" Carolan mentally termed her. It occurred to him that, attired in a brocade Court dress over a hooped farthingale, crowned with a wig of stiffened ringlets adorned with lace and ribbons and diamond powder, with a fan in one of those rigid little hands, she might have sat to Velasquez as a child Infanta. Or, upholstered and decked in Moorish finery, posed as one of the female midgets in the royal group of the Familia. Whatever Velasquez might have thought, she was priggish, prudish, dull, doltish.... Obstinate, too, with that long, deeply-channeled upper lip. And how persistently she kept those long, thick, uncurling lashes down. One wondered rather what might be the color of the eyes so concealed? Black or brown? Or—one had had a gleam of blue when for an instant she had looked at one. Nobody cared—but perhaps they were blue?

She made no movement to sit down, nor did she indicate a desire that he should seat himself. She flickered her somber eyelids for an instant, and the eyes seemed inky-black. Burnt holes in a blanket, the observer brutally termed them, lifting his mental gaze to the china-blue orbs of his ideal, the colossal Britomart-Kriemhilde-Brünhilde-Isolde.

In contempt of the prim puppet in the black merino he found himself adding inches to his loved one's height. Or perhaps it was to keep himself from madly shouting to Monica to tell them to hurry up with that tray....

When you have pawned your jacket and waistcoat for two-and-eightpence early on Wednesday, and have dined on a sausage and mashed for threepence, supped on a drink of water from a pump in a livery-stable yard.... When the bed at a coffee-house has cost you a shilling, breakfast of burned-bread coffee and roll, threepence, and you have spent twopence on a paper collar, your remaining capital stands at a shilling, and by three o'clock on Thursday, if you have not ventured to break into this, you are beginning to return to the savage of the Earlier Stone Age. Who, supposing his neighbor to be gnawing a lump of gristle when his own stomach was clamorous, dropped in upon the banquet armed with a flint axe, and possessed himself of the coveted bonne-bouche.

P. C. Breagh was frankly astonished at the savage voracity of his own impulses. It did not occur to him that his nerves—he had always jeered at men who had talked of their nerves—had sustained a tremendous shock, and that this was the inevitable reaction. His laboriously crammed scientific knowledge had never yet been called upon to account for his own bodily sensations—unless in the case of a jammer headache—diagnosed as the result of too many beers overnight. At any rate he was not hungry now,—and the room with its stiff row of chairs, its high-molded ceiling, its dingy blue distempered walls, hung with engravings of Popes and Cardinals, Roman views, and Scriptural oil-paintings, began to heave and surge like the decks of the evil-smelling, second-rate passenger-steamer that had brought him third-class from Ostend. He thought of that old man with the shattered skull sprawling among his bloody papers, and knew that in another moment he should—horror of horrors! despite the presence of yonder speechless Immobility in the fiddle-bodied black frock and medaled blue neck ribbon—either faint or be violently sick.

He chose the first alternative, for the whole room, with its faded gilt mirrors, its album-laden tables, its formal rows of chairs skirting the wainscot, the little mats in front of them, and the beeswaxed floor on which with growing difficulty he maintained a perpendicular position, melted away from about and from under him, letting him sink down, down ... into bottomless, boundless abysses of intangible gray mist....

Out of which, after an interval of a hundred years or three minutes, he emerged sufficiently to say in a husky whisper:

"It's nothing! I'm all——"

And then be swallowed up again. Coming to the surface in another æon or so to ask, with a wince of pain:

"Did the old fellow shoot me in the head? It—hurts like the dickens!"

And to receive the answer in a cool little silvery voice like the playing of a fountain in a mossy basin at the end of a green alley, or the trickle of a brook through lush grasses and forget-me-not beds.

"You knocked the floor with it when you made to fall so suddenly!" Something cool and light touched his aching forehead, and the voice went on again: "It does not bleed, no! but there will certainly be one big bump there!"

"One bump.... Feels like one-and-twenty!" P. C. Breagh muttered, adding, with a heave and struggle that brought him into a sitting posture: "Help me up, whoever you are! ... Not all at once.... Donnerwetter! how giddy I am! Try again in a minute! ... Here! ... Give me hold of your fist!"

The silvery voice said, with a liquid tremble in it that might have been laughter or shyness:

"But I do not comprehend—feesth! Permit that I offer you the hand.... I am so very strong, me!"

"Strong, eh?" P. C. Breagh said vacantly, being still absorbed in the effort to remember where he was. He was certainly sitting up on a shiny, cold and slippery floor, leaning back against something warm and fragrant and soft, but he had not the least notion as to the nature of the support afforded him, nor did he associate the ownership of the voice with any person previously met.

"Strong!..." he repeated, and yawned, and could not leave off yawning. "Physical exhaustion, fatigue, and lack of food," he mentally diagnosed, and found that, when his eyes had left off blinking and watering, the room was coming back. There were the Popes, Cardinals, and views of Roman Basilicas; there the oil-paintings of sacred subjects—there the dingy gilt mirrors, the round center-table with books upon it, the oval one with an inkstand and nothing more,—the formal rows of chairs, instantly reviving the impression of a Convent parlor ... and stimulating him to rise, after some slips and sprawls and flounders, and stand upright on the beeswaxed boards, smiling rather stupidly and clutching something small and soft and sentient, for it fluttered in his big inclosing palm as a captive titmouse or robin might have done.... Donnerwetter! it was the hand whose aid he had asked a moment before in his extremity.... A child's.... No!—a girl's.... Who was the girl? ...

The truth burst on him then that it was to the mechanical doll, the stiff, pale, proud, absurd little creature, the Infanta of the drooping eyelids, the Moorish pigmy, he owed the help the little hand had given. The silvery, sweet voice was hers, and against her he had leaned as he sat on the floor gathering in his scattered faculties.... The light touch that had visited his aching forehead, when she had said it did not bleed, had soothed him like the contact of a flower. The sweetness of the voice was in his ears again....

"Will you not sit down? You are not strong, and should manage your forces. A gentleman to faint like that I have never before seen! Your sister will be grieved that you——"

"You are not to tell her!" He dropped heavily into the chair she had brought, and made a feebly-emphatic blow at the table near which she had set it. "Promise me! ... I—I must ask you to be good enough.... Who has gone and unbuttoned my coat?"

X

The pitiable secret the shaggy garment had concealed, the absence of jacket and waistcoat, bringing his hidden poverty into horrible relief, the dinginess of the shirt of two days' wear, the deceptive nature of the paper collar purchased at an outlay of twopence, had been revealed by some traitorous hand during his unguarded weakness of a moment back. The color rushed back to his haggard young face in flood, as with shaky fingers he wedded the big horn buttons to their buttonholes, and felt about his neck to find it wet.... Juliette had said to herself that he had angry eyes. They were tigerish as they flamed at her. Then the yellow flame died out of them and they were nothing but gray and miserable. He said brokenly:

"I—beg your pardon! I must seem the last thing out in the way of a brute to you. I had—fainted or something!—I've been through a lot of late! And you meant to—be kind, I'm sure...."

He had thought her a mere child in size, but her personal dignity lent her height and presence. Her great eyes met his full, and they were deeply blue as scillas in May, with great black pupils and velvety-black bands about the irises. She said in an icy little voice:

"Sir, it is customary in these days to instruct young ladies in the knowledge of imparting medical aid to the sick or wounded. A moment since I saw you fall to the floor! I lanced myself to your side!—I debuttoned your paletot—sprinkled on your forehead water from that vase upon the table,"—she indicated the ornament with an infinitesimal forefinger,—"and in a few minutes I have the relief to behold you sufficiently recovered to demand if a man has shooted you? ... Naturally, I do not mean to be unkind! But the promise not to speak of this to Mademoiselle, your sister, see you well?—I cannot give it! Young ladies"—there was an appalling stateliness about the tone and manner of this delivery, worthy of a mistress of deportment—"young ladies do not have secrets with strange young gentlemen! And Monica is my dear friend, not you!"

"Then if she is so much a friend of yours, you would wish to spare her knowledge of things certain to shock and grieve her. You would not like to have her anxious and worried about what she couldn't help, would you?" His eyes constrained and besought. His voice was humbly entreating....

Juliette recognized the cunning in this appeal. She lowered her little pointed chin and leveled her thick straight eyelashes at the speaker. "Yes!" the chin said: "No!" the eyelashes replied. Thus encouraged, P. C. Breagh had an inspiration.

"But if I trust you!—you look as if you could be trusted...."

From her little neck in its plain white frill to the cloud of dusky hair that crowned her, she flushed rosy as Alpine snows at sunset. Did he mean to insult, or ingratiate, this overbearing, shaggy youth? She said, with delicate reproof, completely lost upon his bluntness:

"My father has honored me with his confidence, as long as I can remember, sir."

"Then I'll risk mine with you!" said P. C. Breagh.

"Not risk!" She had lost her glow, the sapphires of her eyes were shadowed by the blackness of the lowered lashes. "Do not say risk, for that is to gamble. See you—I will be trusted absolutely, or I will not be trusted at all!"

He understood, in part, that he had wounded, and awkwardly begged her pardon, ending: "And show that you forgive me by letting me tell you that I wouldn't have my sister know, for the world!" He got up and went to one of the white-curtained, ground-glass-filled windows, that masked the outlook upon Kensington Square, and said still more awkwardly:

"You see—you must have already seen from my togs—that I am a beggar. I came back from Germany three days ago to find myself one. I was to receive a fortune from the hands of trustees, and I found that their firm had gone bankrupt. The elder partner had committed suicide—the younger had shot the moon. My thousands in his pockets!" He ground his teeth. "And if I live—and ever meet that fellow!—he'll pay me in inches of skin!"

She said, and the silvern voice had the sweetness of Cordelia's:

"I am so very sorry! Could you not prevail upon this dishonest gentleman to restore to you your property?"

P. C. Breagh said, with a flash of white teeth in his blunt-featured freckled face:

"I might, if he had been considerate enough to mention where I could find him! ... Meanwhile..." He shrugged his strong young shoulders in rather a despondent way.

"Meanwhile you are without a home ... and without money?"

He nodded, biting fiercely on his jutting underlip. "Just now! But by-and-by——"

She persisted.

"Without money and—starving! Surely, starving! and that was why you fainted! ... And I, mon Dieu!—I have been blind and stupid.... Je ne me doutais de rien! Forgive me, I beg of you!"

Her small face was all white and pinched and working. Sobs choked her voice; she struck her little bosom—she wrung the tiny hands in anguish.... And it was all real. You could not doubt Juliette's sincerity. And though his manhood was sufficiently new to revolt at commiseration, still, it was not unpleasant to know that one's misfortunes had pierced the bucklered pride of the little Infanta, and wrung tears from the most wonderful eyes he had ever seen. And what was she saying?

"Monsieur Breagh, it is a misfortune of the most grand that you are a man and I a woman! Otherwise it would be so easy to say to you this.... Me, I am for the moment rich. I could—if you would accord me the permission?—relieve these pressing necessities.... Let me know where a letter will readily find you.... Do not, I entreat you, be angry that I ask this!"

But he was angry. His broad stripe of meeting red eyebrows came loweringly down over eyes that had the tigerish flame in them. His face burned and he clenched his hands until the knuckles showed out white upon their sunburned backs. He tried to speak and could not, so choking was his indignation. To be asked to borrow from a girl—his sister's schoolmate, added one last dash of wormwood to the brimming cup of bitterness. Unlucky P. C. Breagh!

"I'm uncommonly obliged, but decent men—in this country—don't do that sort of thing! Even Frenchmen might call it caddish!" he choked out at last.

Her eyes blazed murderously, a savage dusky crimson dyed the small white face that had looked at him with such pitiful entreaty. She did not tower, she contracted—she crouched like a savage little cat ready to spring and rend him; her muscles grew visibly tense under her transparent skin. He could hear the sharp hiss of her intaken breath, and see her lips writhe in the struggle to control utterance that seemed on the point of breaking from them. When she spoke, it was in a low clear whisper, more piercing, it seemed to her unlucky auditor, than any shriek.

"Sir, when you say to me that even a Frenchman might find despicable the deed an Englishman would shrink from as a stain upon his honor,—you insult my country of France, and my brave father; and the noble gentleman who will be my husband soon! ... It is fortunate for you that M. Charles is not here, see you well? Brave as a lion, he is a master of the sword. But enough!—I was mistaken and I have been justly humiliated.... Permit that I wish you a very good afternoon!"

She curtsied to the miserable P. C. Breagh with crushing ceremony, turned, and had swept from the room before he could even reach the door. It shut in his face with a deliberate gentleness that was more final than a slam would have been....

"I've done it, by golly!" said P. C. Breagh.

Just after this lofty, dignified fashion had Britomart-Krimhilde-Brünhilde-Isolde quitted the scene of many an imaginary interview. That a being so small and frail should assume the airs of these heroines tickled even while it angered him. A moment more he glowered and fumed, cursing the Fate that had dealt him another set-back, and then ... the tinkle of crockery heralded the return of Monica with Sister Boniface and a tray, satisfactorily laden with a stout brown teapot, bread and butter, home-made preserves, and a dish of somewhat solid ham-sandwiches, the welcome sight of which drove away the dark blue devils and restored his cheeriness again. He could go a long time on one full meal, he told himself, as he perpetrated a surprising onslaught on the eatables and thirstily swallowed cup after cup of convent tea.

Replete at length, he leaned back in his chair, conscious—so overwhelming was the sensation of fullness after his protracted fast—of feeling like a boa-constrictor who had swallowed his blanket. He longed to sleep, the continual battle with recurrent yawns was becoming painful; and yet you are mistaken if you suppose that this young man did not love his gentle step-sister, and was not glad at heart to be once more in Monica's company. But Brother Ass, the body, ridden fast and far by the turbulent spirit and the eager mind, belabored by the cudgel of Fate until his solid ribs were cracking within his shaggy hide, wanted repose more than social converse. Carolan's eyelids were closing under the stream of Monica's eager talk. His head was nodding—his mouth had fallen ajar—a faint snore was on the point of issuing from the organ immediately above it—when he started as broad awake as though a wasp had stung him.... Monica was speaking of Juliette....

"I am so glad that you have met her!—yet sorry, too, because she is leaving us so soon now. Is she not sweet?—with those grave airs, and those angelic eyes under determined eyebrows, and that shy wild smile..." thus Monica prattled on. To stop her—or to prevent himself from giving her his candid opinion of her lauded idol, he inquired whether she did not find him handsome, and had her reply:

"Not a bit! rather ugly than otherwise; but I love your face, and always shall, Caro! Why, you have a mustache already!" she cried.

He blushed as Monica jumped up for a nearer inspection, to discover that the close sprinkling of dark-brown freckles on the egg-smooth young surface of his upper lip had deceived the sisterly observation.

"The mustache will come," Monica said with a smile, "and then you will begin to be more of a dandy."

He fancied that her look betrayed a shade of disappointment. "No wonder! such a beast as I must look!" he thought. But he said with rather a clumsy air of indifference:

"I daresay my clothes are a bit shabby, perhaps more than a bit! But, you see, I've been knocking about on the rail—and aboard steamers—and so on."

"Still, you could be—what Juliette would call more soigné." There was a little accent of sisterly rebuke in the words. "And I have talked to her so much about you——"

"That you're afraid she'll chaff you, now she has beheld the wonder! If she did I shouldn't be surprised! ... And if I'd known you wanted me to turn up a thundering swell, I'd have polished myself up a bit. My hair is too long, of course.... But—most British fellows run shaggy after a year or two at a German University."

He spoke as easily and naturally as was possible, with a lump in the throat embraced by the paper collar, and a savage pain tearing at his heart.

She said:

"It is a bargain then, and I shall see my old Caro looking as he ought to look, next time he comes here! ... Tell me, when will next time be?"

He stuttered, inwardly writhing:

"I had no idea you'd mind the sort of—togs a fellow went about in! You, who are going—you told me in your last letter! to take a vow of poverty and all the rest!..."

She laughed and patted the brown hand.

"But you aren't going to take a vow of poverty.... You will be independent.... You will have everything—I hope you will have everything; that goes to make Life pleasant, and all the other things that make it—precious.... I am very ambitious for you, Carolan!"

He laughed rather roughly.

"Ambition in the cap and cape of a postulant! What would the Mistress of the Novices say to that?"

The face framed in the triple row of white frills was very pure and tender.

"She would say that there are more kinds of ambition, than one. I am ambitious that my brother should be spoken of among men—as a man who in the whole course of his career was never once ashamed to own himself a Catholic, and to prove not only in words, but in deeds—his loyalty to his Master in the face of the world! You understand me, don't you?"

He answered her in an embarrassed, awkward way, and with a look that evaded hers.

"Of course! You mean—you'd like me to be the kind of fellow who goes regularly to Mass, and receives the Blessed Sacrament on all the Feasts of Obligation! Well, I can't boast of being quite as scrupulous as that! But at any rate I have—ringed in with the late-comers—at Christmas and Easter and Whitsuntide...." He added, "Not that I should have been thought priggish if I'd gone oftener.... Of course the bulk of the students at Schwärz-Brettingen were Lutheran Protesants. But about one-third were Catholics, I should think."

"And were all of them late-comers—ringing in at the last minute?"

"I can't say that. When one did turn out for early Mass one found the churches—there were three of 'em—packed full."

"Ah! ... Where are you staying?" she asked him in a changed tone.

He faltered, sick at heart at having to lie to her.

XI

"I—I haven't got the address on me just now! By George, that's just ... Ha, ha, ha!"

"What is the joke? Do tell me!" she urged, puzzled by the mirthless bark of laughter.

He could not have explained. His Irish sense of humor had been tickled to realize that in actual fact he did carry his address about him. Did not the shabby old frieze greatcoat constitute his hotel, chambers and club? To change the subject he began to question her experiences in the Novitiate. She looked happy, he admitted. He did not hide that her decision to take the Veil had been a surprise.

"You see, you'd always been such a jolly girl," he told her. "Such a stunning companion—I'd never have expected it of you."

Her bright laugh rang through the room.

"Dear boy, do you suppose that nuns are dismal things, or indifferent to pleasant companionship? You should hear us laugh and chatter at Recreation. Perhaps because the time for fun is limited, as the time for other things—we enjoy that half-hour's freedom all the more. Not"—her smile did not leave her, but it changed in expression,—"not that I did not have my miserable hours. For the matter of that I have them still!"

He got up and went over to the hearth-side, where a tiny gas-fire made pretense of cheerfulness.

"I never thought it was all jam in the Novitiate. A fellow I knew who had wanted to be a Carthusian monk—and found it impossible to stick out the preliminaries!—hinted as much to me."

"I suppose," she said calmly, "that he could not submit to the—necessary experiences that lead to the final breaking of the will."

"Breaking of the will!" He kicked the old-fashioned fender savagely. "What do they do to break yours, in Heaven's name?"

"What is done is done in Heaven's name," she said, "and that is why one can submit cheerfully. But my first weeks in the noviceship were cloudlessly happy." She laughed a little. "I thought it was always going to be like that!"

"I see! ... I twig! ... They made much of you in the beginning...." He gritted his teeth and turned his face away.

"Perhaps they did! ... I remember I had all the nicest things to do, and nobody minded.... I was allowed to dust the High Altar, change the flowers in the vases, and help the Sister-Sacristan brush and fold the vestments away. And one day I was permitted to wash the lunette of the monstrance. It was a wonderful experience. One could understand how the Magdalene must have felt when she wiped the Sacred Feet."

He was silent, for she had soared to heights beyond him.

"Perhaps it made me proud, for next day I was set to tidy the linen-room presses. I worked for some weeks there, darning and mending and folding. Then I was sent to the Refectory." The smile was only in her eyes now. "I liked laying the long tables, but I hated washing dirty plates and dishes, and I simply loathed cleaning knives and forks."

"I should think so! Housemaid's duty! I understand now what you meant a minute back! ... By George! ... 'Miserable hours!' ..."

Her deep eyes rested on him calmly:

"And after I am clothed—after I have received the habit—I shall most likely go on having them! I daresay I shall have them after I have taken the Veil."

He kicked the fender again, his hands shoved deep into his empty pockets, and felt the shilling, sole coin remaining to him, burn against his aching ribs. He would have given ten years of life to have been able to tell her that a home with him was ready and waiting,—in case she shrank from the final plunge. He made a great effort and groaned out:

"But that won't be for two years to come. And things may happen—who knows!"

"Oh! I pray," she said with a sudden flush, "that I need not wait two years!"

Her eagerness lifted a load that had been crushing him. In sheer relief he began to stammer:

"What a blessed idiot I am! I didn't understand ... I thought you ... I believed you.... Of course you don't do the dirty work now. That was only for a time, at the beginning. Well, I'm glad! I'd hate to think of my sister tackling servants' duties, anyway! All right! Well, what are you on to now, eh? Back at dusting the Altar and doing the flowers?"

"No. That is for others.—There are many others, and each of them must have a turn at the pleasant things. When you have lived in the community only a short time, you begin to understand that.... And when you have lived in it only a little longer you learn that between the pleasant duties and the unpleasant duties there is no difference, whatever. Nothing being done that is not done for God. When I was scrubbing the desks in the Little Class to-day,—there are seventy children, and the tiny ones come in with muddy boots from the garden in wet weather, and splash the ink over everything,—I was dusting the Altar.... When I was washing the slates I was washing the Feet of Christ. It is no matter what we do as long as it is nothing to be ashamed of—and is done with a right intention! ... The lowest service counts as the highest in the sight of Almighty God. It is one of the great mysteries of Faith that this should be so. But it is so! ... There's the first bell for Benediction!"

It was too late now. But even as she rose with that wonderful look in the calm face framed in by the triple row of little starched frills, and took his hand and led him to the door, P. C. Breagh realized that he ought from the first to have told the truth to her.

The parlor door led them into the corridor upon the boarders' side. She guided him along it, left him at the entrance of the chapel, pressed his hand, whispered "Good-bye for now!" and vanished through a curtained archway on the right hand, communicating with the cloister, possibly.

He entered the chapel. A small portion of the nave, near the west door, was open to the public. Some dozen worshipers, chiefly elderly ladies, knelt or sat upon the rush-bottomed chairs. Beyond, a high, wrought-iron grille partitioned off the capacious choir, separated from the cloisters upon either hand by the tall carved screen that backed the rows of stalls. And the dying daylight of the January afternoon shone through high windows, stained in hues tender as flower-petals or brilliant as jewels, depicting the various scenes in the life of the Virgin Mother of Christ.

The second bell had not yet rung for Benediction as Carolan bent the knee and slipped into a chair near the central gate of the grille. The place was full of the presence and perfume of flowers, and the spice of incense burned at the morning Mass. Tapers tall and short blazed on the High Altar, and a nun in purple habit and creamy veil knelt at a faldstool, absorbed in adoration of the Throned Mystery of Faith. Within the space of a Paternoster the second bell rang. The choir-sister rose, knelt in adoration, moved her stool carefully aside, and went out by a side-door in the sanctuary. And a sound as of many moving waters began to grow upon the ear. A curtain was drawn that masked an archway upon the farther side of the grille upon the right side: there was the invariable convent signal of a hand-clap, and two girlish shapes, in long white muslin veils over dark uniform dresses, entered together; and went to the bottom of the broad aisle between the rows of benches, moving sedately side by side. One wore a pale blue, the other a crimson ribbon supporting a silver medal. One was of solid Teutonic build, with magnificent plaits of golden hair, vivid red and white coloring, and rather stiff, if dignified, bearing. The other—a slender creature of stature almost childlike, yet with womanly coils of duskiness shot through with a tortoiseshell arrow, seemed insignificant as she walked beside her stately white-veiled mate. And yet, it was not walking, but gliding, hovering, floating ... such airy grace of movement as P. C. Breagh had never dreamed of,—Britomart-Krimhilde-Brünhilde having covered the ground with the magnificent indolence of a glacier, or traversed it with the overwhelming rush of an avalanche, when the exigencies of some imaginary scene of passion had compelled her to "fly from her conqueror's presence," or "impetuously gain his side." Now for the first time her inventor found himself wavering.... Was his heroic ideal too Titanic, too colossal, too big and too clumsy? Would it not be just as well to shorten her by half a dozen superfluous inches—reduce her superabundant flesh? And if at the same time one were to darken her dandelion tresses?—tone down the staring china-blue of her eyes into——

What was the color? The blue of the spring flower or the blue of the sapphire? ... You never knew until she looked at you ... and then you weren't certain ... you kept wanting her to look again! Meek or tigress-like, in whatever mood you found her, you would always be wanting Juliette to look, and look again.

The revelation of his monstrous folly, the knowledge of his faithlessness came in the instant of recognition, hit him like a seventh wave and bowled him off his mental legs.

Before he had recovered, the white-veiled hovering figure had vanished. The aisle had noiselessly filled with a great procession of similar figures, standing motionless, waiting, two by two. There was a second clap of hands,—and the white-veiled column knelt in adoration. At a third signal they rose and slowly filed into their seats. And a second double line of younger girls, the Middle Class, also white-veiled and white-gloved, formed in the place of them, and the orderly, impressive maneuver was repeated by these. Little children took their places, and did as their seniors. A noble voluntary burst from the organ in the high-placed loft, and the purple-habited, creamy-veiled choir-sisters poured in and took their stalls, and the lay-sisters and novices followed, filling the great choir to overflowing, as the door of the vestry was opened by a sweet-faced child in a red cassock and white cotta, and the vested priest, a scholarly-looking, gray-haired man, came in and went to his place. And the strains from the organ changed, and a voice fresh and sweet as a thrush's, passionless-pure as an angel's, began to chant O Salutaris,—and something like a sob broke from P. C. Breagh's throat, and hot tears came crowding, and one at least fell.

He had been shipwrecked, and here was a little green-palmed islet of peace to rest on—his only for a moment, but a moment in which to gather strength, and breath to face the raging seas again. His mood changed. He was glad he had not told Monica that he was homeless, half-clothed, and all but penniless in big, black, brutal, noisy London, and would have to water cab-horses, or sweep a crossing, or clean boots to keep alive.

Ah, what was it Monica had said? Without her knowing it those words had been somehow meant for Carolan. Let's see—how did they go? ... Something this way....

"It is no matter what we do, as long as it is nothing to be ashamed of, and is done with a right intention. The lowest service counts as the highest in the sight of Almighty God. It is one of the great mysteries of Faith that this should be so. But it is so!"

"I—see!"

He had sheltered his shamed and burning face in his big hands. But with that ray of inward light had come courage and resourcefulness. He lifted his head bravely now and drew in a deep chestful of the sweet, warm, pleasant air.

"Perhaps the money was spoiling me!—making me look to it instead of to myself—and I've been stripped and pitched into deep water as the big fellows used to do to us little chaps, when we funked. Perhaps this is for the best—and I'll find it so one day. Perhaps I can make up for some of the caddish things I've done—refusing that girl's offered help so savagely among 'em—by taking this thing well! Facing what there is to face—and putting up with what I've got to. Well, I'll have a shot at it!" said P. C. Breagh to P. C. Breagh. "I'll do nothing that I'm ashamed of—and be ashamed of nothing that's honest; I'll labor for my daily bread—and for my nightly bed,—with these hands and shoulders,—if nobody will pay me for my brains!—And what I do I'll do cheerfully. Shall I kick at sweeping a crossing, when He was a carpenter?"

It seemed to him that he had not prayed, and yet he had without knowing it. The Benediction seemed to fall on him like dew. He went out by the west door with the small congregation, and found himself in the foggy London square within sound of the roaring traffic of the London streets, with a return of the old hideous shrinking. A sensation paralleled by that of the shipwrecked castaway who has found brief resting-place upon the tiny coral atoll and must perforce commit himself, upon his crazy raft of planks and hencoops, to the shark-infested, treacherous Pacific seas again.

XII

He strolled up a short street, and looked for and found a roomy, double bow-fronted house of warm old red brick, with huge capacious areas. "Vanity Fair" had been written there, he knew, perhaps "Esmond" too, though he was not sure. He took off his hat to the memory of the magician, and wondered where his other idol, the still living author of the "Cloister and the Hearth," and "Never Too Late to Mend" might be run to earth, and made up his mind to see Dickens's grave in Westminster Abbey on the morrow, whether it cost sixpence, or whether it did not.... And then he wavered, sixpence, as we know, being the moiety of his capital; and then he remembered that to-morrow could only be reached by the bridge of to-night. He walked very fast for some distance, trying to exorcise the demons that this thought evoked, and,—blinded by their buzzing and stinging—was in Piccadilly before he knew. The high railings of the Green Park, and the foggy solitude of the gravel-walks between the wintry lawns, tempted him to turn in and rest upon a seat a while, for he was still somewhat giddy and shaky, and the bump so confidently prophesied by the Infanta had appeared upon his brow.

He took off the old felt wideawake and stared at Piccadilly, brilliant with the paroquet-colors of passing omnibuses, green and royal blue, chocolate and white-and-gold. Behind the shining windows of the great Clubs, the members' heads, gleamingly bald, or affluent of hair and whiskers, alternately appeared and vanished. He caught brief passing glimpses of white-bosomed waiters, ... the twinkle of gilt buttons on livery coats.... Beer-drays, driven by burly red-faced men, frequently in shirt-sleeves, went by with a whiff of malt, and the thunder of heavy hoofs. Vans of business-houses passed with a clang of bells. Victorias and landaus with muffled, and furred, and veiled ladies in them; shut-up broughams, madly-daring velocipedists on the machine of the era, a giant wheel followed by a pigmy one, made fleeting pictures on the retina of P. C. Breagh. And the double river of traffic, and the eastward and westward-flowing stream of pedestrians went by without a break in them. Gas-lamps began to make islands of yellow light upon the fog, but showed no dwindling in their numbers. He wondered if they would go on like this all night? And then some one came up and sat down on the other end of the seat rather heavily, and the slight resultant shock and jar brought round P. C. Breagh's head.

He saw the thick-set, rather lax and round-shouldered figure of a man of middle age, dressed in a suit of tweeds patterned in giant checks of black and white and gray, the dernier cri in masculine morning-wear, had the observer but known it. His hat, a low-crowned chimney-pot in hard gray felt, was tilted backward, his hair, of a pale tow-color, tufted out from beneath the hat in a way that cried for the attention of the barber; his whiskers, and mustache, of the same shade as the hair, were raggedly in need of the shears. He wore a buttonhole-bouquet composed of a pink camellia with Neapolitan violets, and pale lemon kid gloves, and sucked the carved ivory knob of an ebony stick he carried, until,—upon his neighbor's looking round as above recorded,—he took it from a somewhat lax and swollen mouth, and observed that it was a nice afternoon. Adding, as P. C. Breagh made a sound which might have been assent or denial:

"If it is affernoon? Without my fellow to post me, I'm apt to be wrong about time. Not that that's remarable. Lots of people the same, don't you know? Nothing extra—nothing ex—oh, damn!"

A covert anxiety—and a very visible tremulousness were combined in the speaker's manner. His large watery blue eyes were painfully vague and blurred, with distended pupils that looked uneven; his gestures were uncertain, and his words, well chosen enough, and uttered with the tone and accent usually distinctive of a gentleman, came haltingly from a tongue that seemed to be too large for its owner's mouth:

"You don't regard it as extra ... Stop a minute!" A pause ensued, during which the vague-eyed gentleman waited, clutching his stick with both hands, and holding his swollen mouth ajar. And when he shut the mouth to shake his head, and looked at P. C. Breagh in the act of doing this, the perspiration shone upon his puffy cheeks and stood in beads upon his reddened forehead, as though it had been July instead of a foggy afternoon in January, and the pink-bordered cambric handkerchief with which he wiped his worried face became, after this usage, a very rag. And a queer, unwillingly-yielded-to sense of commiseration prompted Carolan to suggest:

"'Extraordinary' was the word you wanted, wasn't it?"

"Much obliged! The word, unnoutedly! 'Stror'nary how words do dodge one on occasion!" returned the uncertain gentleman in the large-patterned tweeds. He added, pulling at the ragged light mustache, with a gloved hand that was decidedly shaky: "I don't know that it matters parricurarly—but I'd prefer you to know that I'm not runk!"

"Not—what?..."

"Not runk!" repeated the vague-eyed gentleman emphatically. "Not cut, foozled, miffed, fizzed, screwed! Not that it's oblig—that's another of the words that perretually queer me!—or incumment on me to isplain, but I regard it as due to myself, by Gad! that you should clearly unnerstand the case. As I said to the manuscript upon the Bench when the bobby ran me in on Thursday—or was it Friray? ... Appearances are sally against me, but I have never been a rinking man! The doctors have a crajjaw name for my connition, which under the exissing circ—and that's another of the words that play the deuce and all with me! ... Look at my westick, buttoned all wrong!"

He slewed round upon the seat, and throwing back the large-patterned, fashionably cut-away coat, exhibited the garment mentioned, every buttonhole of which afforded hospitality to a button not its own. His necktie, the ample, sailor-knotted necktie of the period, was under his left ear, and his shirt had come unstudded. Being appealed to, P. C. Breagh admitted that the existing condition of things left something to be desired!

"When a man entirely ripends on valets and domessicks," explained his incoherent neighbor, "a man is apt to be neglected and so on. As a marrer of fact I live in that little joppa cottisit!" He waveringly pointed to a large, handsome private dwelling with an ornate portico, situated nearly opposite, and sandwiched between two Clubs. "An' as a narrural conquicense of my temorrary irrability to pronounce words of the most orinary nature, I am——" He drew an aimless figure in the muddy gravel with his ivory-topped, ebony stick, and went on with a weak laugh, "I am absoluly neglected by my own househol'. My own children seem ashamed or afray of me—all but Little Foxhall—splendid little chap is Little Foxhall! But his mother—my wife——" He broke off to say—"You will escuse my touching on these priva' matters in conversation with a perfec' stranger. I am quite conscience I trepsass against the orinary usages of propriety, especially in speaking of my wife! ... But—the fact is, sir! I am most desperately wretched. Six people imagine me runk—out of every half-dozen. While the other six—the irriots whisser it when they think I'm out of earshock—suppose me to be suffrig from Sofrig of the Bray!"

He began to tremble and shake, and put his stick between his knees to hold on to the edge of the seat with his lemon-kidded hands—and couldn't hold the stick in that position, and it fell, and P. C. Breagh picked it up and put it back.

"I am murrabliged," said the owner of the stick, "by your kind attention!" Something struggled and fought in the vague blue eyes that he turned upon Carolan,—it seemed as though in another moment Fear and Terror might have leaped glaring into sight. "And while I am boun' to ajopolize for thrussing my privarrafairs upon a stranger—I feel bound to put the quession; Why should thissorathing happen to ME? Goolor'! I've been no worse than lossa urra fellers!" He rose up shaking, and shakily sat down again, nearly missing the bench.

"Bessaran loss of 'em—if you come to that!" He turned to Carolan, and the vague eyes were piteous and desperate.... "You see the sort of chap my luck—my damble luck—has made o' me! Yet I used to be envied—envied ... you unnerstand! I have belonged to the best regiment in the Brigade of Guards—the devil another! I have played the bes' cards, driven the bes' turnouts, smoked the bes' cigars and had the most stunnin' women! Do you unnerstand me?—Have!" He brought down the uncertain hand in an attempt to strike his knee emphatically, and missed it; and tried to look as though he had not, and went on: "And I have belonged to the best gloves, by Gad! an' put on the clubs with the most celebrarred li'-weights! And I rode my steeplechase at York, and romped in first, and they toasted and speechified me at the Gimcrack dinner. And I won my Oaks and my Derby—and led in the winner, with all the cheeple reering;—the seeple peering—the—Goolor'! Goolor'! And the horse was Gladianor—and the victory was a popular one—and my name was a household word through the Unirred Kingom. A household word!..." He broke off, trembling and sweating, as the horse might have done after the race, and put the wavering hand to his head, and turned his empty blue eyes from Carolan's as though they hurt. "What was my name?" he asked himself in a dull, thick, shaky whisper, "Goolor'! Goolor'! What was my name? ... That you, Murchison?"

For a decent figure in the irreproachable dark clothing of a servant out of livery had passed and turned back, and now approached the bench, eyeing Carolan suspiciously even in the act of uncovering its well-brushed head, and saying in the smooth accents of servility:

"It is Murchison, your Grace. It's cold, your Grace, and you've not got on an overcoat. Your Grace had best come home now, before your Grace is missed!..."

"Home?" His Grace looked mildly from the authoritative Murchison to the stately "cottage opposite," and one of the uncertain hands in the pale lemon kid gloves, making as though to pluck at an untrimmed whisker, found itself imprisoned in a deferential but vigorous grip.

"Home, your Grace!" said Murchison, applying muscular leverage to raise the inert figure.

"All right. Prass I better, Murchison!" He rose to the perpendicular.... "Wish you a very good evening, sir!" With a faded reminiscence of what might have been a courtly manner, he touched his hat to P. C. Breagh, who returned the farewell greeting, avoiding the sharp glance of Murchison. Then valet and master moved off, leaving a little trail of dialogue behind them:

"You give us the fair slip that time, your Grace!..."

"Perhass I did, Murchison—now you happen to mention it."

"Might have been killed crossing Piccadilly, your Grace, and none of us the wiser."

"Goolor'! I'd wish I had, Murchison—if it wasn't for Little Foxhall!" ... Then in a high, quavering note of eagerness, the plea, pitiable and ridiculous and pathetic: "I—I say! ... Tell me the boy'd have minded, Murchison—whass a lie to you, you dam' smoo'-ranged Ananias!—and I'll give you my nex' week's sovereign—I'm dead broke now!"

And Murchison and His Grace went away together, the man steering, with deft guiding touches of the master's elbow, the latter stepping high and bringing his feet down with a peculiar thump that threw a light upon the situation in the eyes of P. C. Breagh. Not softening of the brain.... Donnerwetter! what were the London doctors thinking of? Had none of them read the "Dissertation on Tabes Dorsalis" of the Herr Doctor Max Baumgarten, published in Berlin only a twelvemonth previously, and dealing fully with that rare and curious disease of the nervous system? ... Fibrous degeneration of the posterior columns of the spinal cord, affecting the patient's sight, gait, and—in isolated cases—speech and memory.

"I'd like to have got him to let me rap his shins! Bet you anything there'd have been total absence of reflex action! Remember that peddler in the Nervous Ward of the Augusta Hospital at Schwärz-Brettingen! ... They cured that chap with spinal injections and regular massage. And this man—being a thundering swell and having the best advice possible—is naturally being treated all wrong! Hang it!—how cold I am! Better be moving!" He got up and stamped some warmth into his cold feet and flailed his cold ribs with his elbows until they tingled again. He had learned something of the wretchedness that may sometimes dwell in princely homes, yet be homeless; and fare delicately from plate of gold and silver, and yet go hungry,—and lie down to toss and stare through dreadful sleepless nights on soft luxurious beds. Therefore the bright reflections of great fires dancing on the plate-glass windows of the "cottage opposite" stung him to no comparisons. "Is it base in me that the knowledge of the misery of this wealthy nobleman makes me more contented with my own obscure poverty?" he asked himself, and the answer was: "Not if your content does not make you callous to his woe!"

"I hope that Little Foxhall would have minded!" he found himself saying; "and I wish to Heaven Baumgarten could get a chance of doing something for his father! I've half a mind to drop a postcard to him—or write a line to the Herr Professor! ... Stop, though!"

He remembered that he must break into his last remaining shilling to buy the postcard and pay for the stamps. Then he swung out through the Park side-gates, and now he was one of the crowd rolling Circus-wards, and all the street gas-lamps had been lighted by certain officials with poles, furnished with hooks for keying the gas on, and perforated iron sockets filled with blazing tow that had been soaked in naphtha; thus every shop or restaurant became an Aladdin's cave of brilliancy, and the down-drawn blinds of the houses and clubs hid splendor unspeakable—if only one had been able to pull them up....

Alas! to us who live in these pushful days of Electrical Power Supply, the glories of the illuminated capital in the year of grace 1870 would appear murky enough. We should sneer at the stumpy iron lamp-posts and the chandeliers yet adorned with Early Victorian crystal glass lusters. The wood pavement, an invention de luxe economically confined to the West End, and upon the greasy surface of which bus-horses broke legs as easily as the most aristocratic thoroughbreds—the loose iron gratings covering basement-lights, and incidentally presenting man-traps for unwary pedestrians, as receptacles for stray umbrellas, dead cats, wisps of packing straw, discarded newspapers and orange-peel—the untrapped gutter-drains and sewer-vents would awaken our ridicule and evoke our indignation, even as the displays in the shop windows, especially those of modistes, couturières, and tailors, would provoke us to mirth.

The extraordinary little hats, pot-shaped or plate-shaped, worn upon huge chignons, surmounting cascades of ringlets, couleur Impératrice. The preposterous frilled paniers, the bustles, the jupes of velvet or plush, flounced to the waist or kilted—sometimes to mid-leg, displaying boots—such as are worn to this hour by Principal Boys in Christmas Pantomimes and serio-comic ladies of the Varsity Stage, who are, we know, Principal Boys in the pupa, or chrysalis-state. All these things compel us to hold our sides when we review them in the illustrated papers of the Ladies' Mentor,—which illuminating periodical, in the dearth of Fashionable Intelligence from Paris, the hub and center of the modish world, came to a sudden end in the October of that year, and has defied all efforts at resuscitation.

Though it is possible that the wearers of these long-vanished modes—surveying the belles of Belgravia, with their humbler followers of Brompton and Bayswater,—in the present year of progress, might be moved to laughter or provoked to wrath. To-day, when the ambition of every properly constituted woman is to be shaped like a golliwog and dressed like a pen-wiper, or to acquire the sinuosities of a Bayadere and drape the same in cobwebs calculated to conceal nothing and suggest everything—can we honestly enlarge upon the bygone improprieties of our aunts, and moan over our mothers' taste in toilettes?

It was just six when P. C. Breagh crossed Piccadilly Circus and turned down toward the Haymarket. Why hurry, he asked himself, when you have nowhere to go? The restaurants were filling with diners who were going to the theaters, the smell of cooked meats made savory the fogginess. He shrugged his shoulders, dug his hands deep into his empty pockets, and tried to whistle as he loafed along.

Misery stalked these West End streets, rampant and clamorous. A burly man devoid of legs, shuffling along with his hands in a pair of woman's clogs, entreated P. C. Breagh in stentorian tones to buy a tin nutmeg-grater. A miserable creature, whose sole garment appeared to be the upper portion of an adult pair of trousers, begged him, in the professional whine, to spare a penny for the pore orphan boy! A dank female, in rusty weeds, stationary by the curb, displaying a baby and a row of ballads, besought of him, for the love of Gawd! to pity the unfortunate widow and her starving orphans.

"Buy a ballad, kind genl'man! On'y a penny—goes to a lovelly choone!"

The stave chanted as an appetizer for the music-lover, she wiped the baby's nose with her ostentatiously white apron, and protested it to be the image of its father—blowed up in a Mind.

"You mean a mine, don't you?" P. C. Breagh was beginning, when the widow once more burst into song.

Reverting to prose, as P. C. Breagh lounged listlessly on, she demanded why, if he wasn't going to buy, he had stopped and given a respectable female Tongue.

"And not even fork out a copper, you blistered swindler! You blindin', blazin'——"

"Come now, Chanting Poll, what's all this here row about?"

The gruff, not unkindly voice of a policeman broke in upon the rusty widow's eloquence. P. C. Breagh, yielding to a sudden impulse, wheeled and swung back again.

"It's all right, constable, the lady was only having a bit of chaff with me!"

"I know her!" said P. C. 999, C. Division, removing a heavy but not brutal hand from the lady in question, "and the kind o' chaff she slings. Done Time for it, too, she 'as—before now!"