the evil repute of a Lovelace or a Lauzun. He gave oyster-suppers; he kept a trotting-wagon; it was notorious that he was addicted to faro, Van John, and unlimited loo; and it was currently reported that he was continually behind the scenes of the Park Theatre, and was on much too familiar terms with the pretty actresses there. The only pleas in extenuation which Sam could advance were to the effect that he was scarcely twenty-two, that he was very handsome, and that his father, the Hon. Samuel Bewley, member of the House of Representatives in Congress, and ironmaster of Pittsburg, in the State of Pennsylvania, was worth seven hundred thousand dollars.

"Well, he'll sow his wild-oats," the General observed indulgently. "Barring a bit of wildness, he's just the man for my Corney."

"If he could be weaned from the paths of profligacy and vice, and led into those of virtue and decorum," added Miss Tittytitt, "less eligible partners might perhaps be found for our beloved Cornelia. He would be just the husband for her."

"I will reform him," said the beauteous Cornelia. She did not say that Sam Bewley was just the husband for her, but she may have thought so. Young ladies think a great many things to which they discreetly refrain from giving articulate utterance.

It chanced that about this time some famous English comedian was announced to appear in a starring engagement at the Park Theatre. It may have been Buckstone, it may have been the Keeleys; but at all events the new arrival was a celebrity and a late importation from Europe, and it became the fashion to witness his performance. The Perfitt family, as a rule, set their faces against the stage; but in this case (the comedian being a person of the strictest moral character, and all New York flocking to the Park to see him) Miss Lucretia Tittytitt consented for once in a way to waive her prejudices against the profane and immoral exhibitions known as stage-plays, and the General paid a round sum in dollars for a private box at the Park. The performance of the celebrated comedian was to be followed by a ballet; but it was unanimously agreed in the Canal-street council that the box should be vacated immediately after the European celebrity had concluded, and that the morals of Cordelia should not be contaminated by witnessing the unseemly gyrations of shameless dancing-girls in abbreviated skirts and pink hose. The night of performance arrived, and Miss Perfitt and her aunt from Vermont, sitting bolt-upright as usual, were visible in the front of the box. The General occupied a back seat and went to sleep quite comfortably. Mr. Sam Bewley was to join the party in the course of the evening; but he had pleaded a business engagement, which, as he said, would detain him until half-past eight o'clock.

The performance duly commenced at seven; and by nine o'clock the piece, in which the celebrated comedian convulsed as usual his audience, had terminated. But Mr. Samuel Bewley had failed, much to the indignation of Miss Tittytitt, and more to the disappointment

of Cornelia, to make his appearance. They waited in the box for some minutes after the comedy was over, hoping that the truant would arrive; but as the overture to the ballet had begun and no Sam Bewley was in sight, Miss Lucretia was fain to wake up the General and insist on their departure. Otherwise, in their own despite, they might have been compelled to gaze upon the lost creatures and their legs.

Suddenly the music in the orchestra ceased, and after a brief interval began again in a livelier strain. The curtain had risen, and the ballet was visible. Involuntarily (of course) the two ladies, who had been occupied at the back of the box in the process of shawling and bonneting, turned their heads towards the stage. Miss Lucretia Tittytitt shuddered, and Cornelia uttered a scream. At the same time General Perfitt was heard to make the profane exclamation of "Zounds!” and simultaneously a mighty roar of laughter, mingled with hisses and catcalls, arose from the boxes, pit, and gallery of the Park Theatre.

Scream, shudder, profane exclamation, roar of laughter, hisses, and catcalls, were all due to one and the selfsame cause. This is what was manifest to the horrified eyes of Cornelia and her aunt, and to about two thousand pairs of eyes besides; this is what was plainly, shamelessly, apparent on the stage of the Park Theatre: about twenty of the depraved creatures with legs were grouped on the stage in various immoral attitudes, forming the opening tableau of the ballet, and in their midst, in plain clothes, was Mr. Samuel Bewley! The wretched young man had evidently been flirting behind the scenes with the pernicious sirens of the ballet. He had disregarded commands to "clear;" he had not heard the prompter's whistle; the green-baize veil had been drawn up; and Samuel Bewley stood confessed to the world in general, and his affianced bride in particular, as a frequenter of the coulisses, as a desperate and abandoned profligate.

The next morning the dissolute Sam received a note written in Cornelia's symmetrical but uncompromising up-and-down hand. was to this effect:

"After the dreadful, the shocking, the awful exhibition of last night, it is impossible that I could permit you to continue your visits to Canal-street. My family are furious; still, grieved and harrowed to the heart as I am by the glaring exhibition of your profligacy, I cannot bring myself, as perhaps I should do, to dismiss you irrevocably. But sincere and permanent repentance must be evinced before I can pardon you. Withdraw then, unhappy and misguided youth, from my presence for a season. Go to Europe, Samuel. Travel, observe, reflect, meditate. Study the masterpieces of ancient and modern art; wander among the ruins of the Mighty Past. Converse with wise and learned and virtuous men; and in two years, if amendment be possible, you will be another and a better man. Then you may return; and if you merit it, you may still find an affectionate welcome from CORNELIA."

Sam Bewley, having sought and obtained his father's consent, proceeded, per Great Western steamship, to Europe, and abode there two whole years. Cornelia had forbidden him to correspond with her; but from time to time she heard from friends that Sam was in Italy, in Greece, in Spain, in Germany, or in France. She was sitting one evening, at the expiration of the time mentioned, in her drawing-room in Canal-street, when her mulatto maid entered, and her heart leapt up at the announcement that Mr. Samuel Bewley was in the adjacent apartment, and craved audience of her.

With trembling hands she took a lamp and entered the front drawing-room, and there was Sam Bewley, still very handsome, still very young, still very well-dressed, but very sunburnt, and, if truth must be told, somewhat excited by champagne, or some other vinous or spirituous stimulant.

"I've come back, miss," quoth Mr. Samuel Bewley in a thick voice. "It's me, mum. I've followed your advice; I've studied the masterpieces of ancient and modern art; I've wandered among the ruins of the Mighty Past; I've conversed with wise and learned and virtuous men; I've been away two years, and I've seen the world, and—I don't care that for you!”

And Mr. Samuel Bewley snapped his wicked fingers. Cornelia screamed and fainted.

Ladies, especially Prudes, beware!

CHARLOTTE'S INHERITANCE

BY THE AUTHOR OF "LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET," ETC.

Book the Tenth.

HARBOUR, AFTER MANY SHIPWRECKS.

CHAPTER VIII. LOST SIGHt of.

A YEAR and a half had passed since the disappearance of Philip Sheldon from the circle in which he had been considered a person of some importance. The repudiation of those bills by which he had sustained his exhausted credit, or rather the discovery that the companies upon which the bills pretended to be drawn were of all shadows the most shadowy, had brought consternation upon many, and ruin upon some. Bitter and unmeasured were the terms in which City men spoke of that Phil Sheldon with whom they had eaten the sacred bait and quaffed the social moselle in the taverns of Greenwich and Blackwall.

There is a saying current on the Stock Exchange to the effect that the man who fails, and disappears from among his fellows behind a curtain of commercial cloud, is sure to return sooner or later to his old circle, with a moustache and a brougham. For Philip Sheldon there was, however, no coming back. The moustache and the brougham of the chastened and penitent defaulter were not for him. By his deliberate and notorious dishonour he had shut the door against the

possibility of return.

It may be supposed that the defaulter knew this, for he did not come back; and since he had no lack of moral courage, he would scarcely have refrained from showing himself once more in his old haunts, if it had been possible for him to face the difficulties of his position.

Time passed, and there came no tidings of the missing man, though a detective was despatched to America in search of him by one vengeful sufferer among the many victims of the fictitious bills-of-exchange. It was supposed that he must inevitably go to America, and thither went his pursuer, but with no result except the expenditure of money and the further exasperation of the vengeful sufferer.

"What will you do with him, if you get him?" asked a philosophical friend of the sufferer. "He has nothing to surrender. Zabulon had a bill-of-sale on his furniture."

"Furniture!" cried the infuriated victim; "I don't want his furni

ture. I want his flesh and bones. I want to shut him up in Dartmoor Prison, or to get him twenty years' hard labour at Portland Island."

"That sort of man would get a ticket-of-leave in less than twelve months," replied the philosophic friend. "I'm afraid you are only throwing good money after bad."

The event proved this gentleman but too able a seer. In the monster city of New York Philip Sheldon had disappeared like a single drop of water flung upon the Atlantic Ocean. There was no trace of him: too intangible for the grasp of international law, he melted into the mass of humanity, only one struggler the more in the great army perpetually fighting life's desperate battle.

From among all those who had known him this man had utterly vanished, and not one sigh of regret followed him in his unknown wanderings-not one creature amongst all those who had taken his hand and given him friendly greeting thought of him kindly, or cared to know whither he went or how he prospered. He had not left in the house that had sheltered him for years so much as a dog to whine at his door or listen for his returning footstep.

This fact, if he had known it or considered it, would have troubled him very little. He had played his game for a certain stake, and had lost it. This he felt, and cursed his own too cautious play as the cause of his defeat. That there were higher stakes for which he might have played an easier game was a fact that never occurred to him. In his philosophy there was indeed nothing higher given to the hopes of man than worldly success, and a dull, cold, prosperous life spent among prosperous acquaintance.

He was gone, and those who remembered him most keenly-Valentine Hawkehurst, Diana Paget, Ann Woolper-remembered him with a shudder. The old Yorkshirewoman thought of him sometimes as she bent over the little muslin-bedecked cradle where the hope of the Hawkehursts slumbered, and looked round fearfully in the gloaming, half expecting to see his dreaded face glower upon her, dark and threatening, from between the curtains of the window.

It was a belief of all ancient races, nay indeed, a belief still current amongst modern nations, that it is not given to man to behold the beings of another world and live. The Arab who meets a phantom in the desert goes home to his tent to die. He knows that the hand of doom is upon him. He has seen that upon which, for mortal eyes, it is fatal to look. And it is thus in some measure with those who are admitted within the dark precincts of murder's dread sanctuary. Not swiftly does the curtain fall which has once been lifted from the hidden horrors of that ghastly temple. The revelations of an utterly wicked soul leave a lasting impress upon the mind which unwillingly becomes recipient of those awful secrets.

The circumstances of Tom Halliday's death and of Charlotte's ill